World Building

This was supposed to be a post about building a world for your novel. Without really thinking about what it would involve, I was planning on looking at ways to make a map for your world. Of course,  after thinking about it for more than 30 seconds, I realised that world building entailed so much more than your map. When I came to build the world for my novel,  I knew how the world worked, but i hadn’t taken into account so much, and it is very easy to get bogged down in detail. Obviously, for a single novel, you could gloss over a lot of the detail, relying on the map and a few minor details. for a series, you need to have more detail.  In this post I will try and cover a large section of what I have used for my planning and world building process.

MAP

The first stage of building a world is visualising it, for me, the first stage of visualisation is the map. I usually know what the map looks like long before I get to the  stage of actually drawing it out. Now, I have played around with mapping tools on the computer, and like usual i am loathe to spend my hard earned cash on tools that I will use fairly rarely, so I searched for free map making software, of course, you will get Demos listed as free software so I should mention one or two of these. Firstly, ProFantasy Software that produce Campaign Cartographer 3 and Fractal Terrains Pro, both available as free or money back demos. The full package of mapping tools can come quite expensive, £460 for the full pack down to £102 for the world builder pack.  For examples of what can be done with the software, try Fantasy Map Maker who creates fantasy maps and allows you to copy and use his creations under a Creative Commons license.

Another Demo version that you can get, that seems to get good press is Dundjinni, have a limited demo available, which doesn’t allow you to save of print out your maps, but you can buy the software itself for less than $40. It should be noted, that at the time of writing, the Dundjinni store is not functioning. 

I have found a free online mapping tool, primarily for fantasy gamers, but useful for generating quick maps to help you out of a tight spot,  the site is called Ye Olde Map Maker.

Probably the best known, most referenced free mapping tool for the computer is AutoREALM, which I have to admit, I have used a couple of times, it is a great tool for creating your electronic maps for your novel.

What, however, do I use most? personally, I usually use a notebook, graph paper or squared paper, coloured pencils and draw it by hand. simple, old school, maybe, but quicker, easier and once done, you can scan it in, photocopy it and have as many copies as you like to draw, scribble or stare blankly at whilst awaiting the bolt of lightening that is the next story idea for your world.

Viewing the world

Most of the time, I find I don’t need to be able to see a visual representation of the world I am describing. I can see it in my mind’s eye and describe it from there. Every once in a while, however, I need to be able to see what I describing. For this, i have a couple of tools that I use. One of these is Bryce 7. A 3D imaging tool made by Daz3d and currently free to download. Every once in a while they have a sale where the software is free to download.

Another tool I use very regularly is Terragen by Planetside software – for which I bought a commercial license to allow me to create some spectacular images, that appear photo-realistic. I have been able to use the images to aid me with descriptions of locations.

Once you have your map or maps, created a couple of visualised locations if you need them, there is more work ahead of you. Details, as basic as currency, coinage, economics, history, mythology, politics,  religion,  technology, magic amongst other things.

Currency, Coinage and Economics

Your world will need a currency of some sort, of course, you can resort to the Gold/Silver/Bronze/Copper coinage model that is used by a large proportion of fantasy novels, however, for more detail, consider what the coins are called? how many silver coins make up a gold coin? how many bronze/copper make up a silver? how much are the poorest people paid? this will help you determine the cost of basic supplies like bread. If you were to have your characters buy a loaf of bread for a silver piece,  does that make it too expensive for a normal person to pay for? why is the loaf so expensive?

Another thing to consider in a fantasy world, mineral wealth. What would the world be like, for example, if Gold was not a rare metal, but very common. what if copper was very rare? your currencies could be reversed. Gold being the coinage of lowest value, Copper being highest. In this scenario, how does trade work between other lands? what if the other lands have a different value for gold?

Do they have banks? is there a banking based economy? or is there just a single national/world bank? Is there paper currency and what form does it take?

For my worlds, I have played around with all these options, even a world with no coinage at all, everything is paid for with a complex barter system, which very soon became unmanageable for a story as people would put a different value on a commodity, forcing the government to put a fixed value on items. Thus, creating a currency.

You could, of course, have a fantasy set in the existing world and not have to consider the currency or economics. You could also just refer to the currency as a generic term “Coin” for example and never go into the details.

In a Science Fiction world, you could have a basic “Credit” system which could be a world or universal currency, making the economics simpler. however, you may have different currencies and have to create a basic currency and create a currency conversion for each.

Politics, History and Religion

Without realising it, your world will suffer from politics. If your world has kingdoms, you have set up a monarchical structure,  you may have a tyrant, even a democracy.  What I have found helpful is listing pro’s and con’s for each political structure in your world. In my fantasy worlds i usually have a monarchical structure, falling into a feudal sub-structure.

My current novel has a king, who has advisers in a parliament of elected officials, one for each of the fifteen states. The king is limited in the laws he can implement by having to have a majority backing in the parliament, thus creating a mesh between monarchical and democratic systems.

There could be a theocracy, where the land is ruled by the clerical classes,  you would need to understand how the religion worked, what power do the clerics have over the people? do they control what happens to them in the afterlife? or could it be simply the ability to destroy their life in this life? This brings in the ideas of a religion,  which may need to be covered outside of the political structure, but it is a good point to work from. Do you have a monotheistic religion? one god? or a polytheistic religion? a full pantheon? what are the gods names? what is their mythology?  Are they even atheistic? are there atheistic clerics that clamp down on any religious beliefs?

what about an oligarchical structure? the wealthy individuals, business men and women who own vast swathes of land, employ tens of thousands of people.  This structure is usually used in science fiction, but there is no reason why it can’t be used in a fantasy world.

From the political structure and religion will stem the history of your world as well. How did your religion become dominant? or is it the only religion in the world? what about the lands? their histories with each other, were there wars? is there bad blood between various lords, kings, nations?  How did the world come to be in the state it is in now?

Magic and Technology

In a fantasy world, there may be magic, with magic comes a magical structure. what levels are there in magic? do you have a school where people can learn to use magic? or is it more an apprenticeship structure,  where a master takes on an apprentice.

for my novel, there are various levels of magic users. The most common that are seen in the story are mages and arch-mages but there are other levels below that, journeymen/journeywomen, apprentices and so on.

Further to this, how is the magic used? is there ritual usage? do the magic users have to use spells to utilise the power? or can the magic users just use the power? is it natural power? do they have to have a potion to give them power?

A further example from my novel, I use all three methods of magic use. Spells, natural use and ritual, all for varying levels of magical power. in my world, magic itself is based on chaos, an element that exists in the same way earth, air, fire and water exist as elements. The magic users can use it directly,  and the more powerful magic needs more law, more structure to control the end results.  Magic can be as simple or as complex as you wish it to be. in a world where everyone can use magic, it has to be fairly easy to use. the fewer people that can use it, the more complex it has to be. Though it could be just a “Black art”, that is, simple to use, if you know how and what to do.

As for technology, your fantasy world could be using steel weapons, but to have not invented gunpowder. They may follow the invention levels of our world, using copper, bronze, iron, steel. Again, using my novel, the attacking army are all using copper weapons. The defenders are more technologically advanced, using bronze weapons.

I will come back to these in more detail in a later post, but, as you can see,  what sounds like it could be a simple thing, suddenly gets very complex very easily. Link the world building to the Conlanging post from earlier, you have almost a whole other story to work on before you even start on the novel. The world you build, however could be one that is used in many stories, novels, a series, so why not spend some time in building the world you will be inhabiting with your characters?

 

For more information, I have found the following blog post regarding world building : Web Writer