What separates one culture from another. It's more than clothes and language, though those are important for making them look and feel distinct from...
Worldbuilding: Cultural Values
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Worldbuilding
Who Can Practice Magic
So, your world's got magic. Great! Since you're in charge, it's up to you to dole out that mystical power to your characters. Time to decide who...
Naming as a Worldbuilding Tool
Many writers struggle with naming characters. I'm not here to help them. I'm actually going to make it harder by giving them another consideration...
When to Start Worldbuilding
One question that an aspiring worldbuilder is going to ask is when to start. Can you build a world without knowing anything about the story you're...
Worldbuilding: Government
One of the main goals of worldbuilding is to create a believable backdrop for telling a story. But after figuring out geography, magic, and...
Worldbuilding: Animals (and Monsters)
From chulls to owlbears, wargs to thestrals, fantasy has taken to the creation of its own wildlife. They make a world feel separate from the Earth...
The 5 Minute Shortcut to Creating Cultures
Often times you'll find a need for a foreign culture in your writing. But you can convey a sense of a vibrant, multicultural world without having to...
Worldbuilding in Skyrim: Politics
Anyone who follows my blog knows that I have a keen interest in worldbuilding. So when I decided to dust off Skyrim and have another go at it, I...
Worldbuilding in Harry Potter
I've already taken a look at the worldbuilding in Star Wars. Now it's time to take a look at a fantasy setting that most of us known quite well:...
5 Worldbuilding Questions About History
How far back does your history go? There's actual history (everything that happened in your world), recorded history (what's happened since people...
When to Stop Worldbuilding and Start Writing
There are two common problems I hear when people are having trouble with their worldbuilding. One camp is overwhelmed by the task, the other unable...
Worldbuilding in Star Wars
I talk a lot about worldbuilding, but this time I'm going to show how it is conveyed in an example that (nearly) everyone is familiar with: Star...
Pop Culture in a Futuristic Society
Unless your futuristic society is comprised entirely of robots (a valid choice, of course), then there is going to be some sort of popular culture....
5 Worldbuilding Fouls (and How to Avoid Them)
If worldbuilding is the art of making someone believe in a world that doesn't exist (and it is), then anything that shakes that belief is a strike...
Medieval Stasis: Why is Fantasy Trapped in the Past
You're reading a story about a knight, a huntsman, and a wizard. They stumble across the ruins of a lost civilization, but something seems strange....
Worldbuilding: the Gift that Keeps on Taking
"I'm working on a story, but I'm stuck on the worldbuilding." I've heard some variant of this enough times that I felt the need to do...
Worldbuilding: One Versus One Billion
There are over 7 billion people on Earth. Your story world may have more, it may have fewer, but unless you are writing a creation myth, you're...
Worldbuilding Part 01 – Introduction to Worldbuilding
Transcript (for whoever might prefer it): What is worldbuilding? The term gets thrown around a lot when talking about science fiction and fantasy....
The 5 Keys to Seamless Worldbuilding
When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all. -God Entity (Futurama) One of the biggest mistakes in worldbuilding is...
5 Questions for Building Futuristic Societies
A lot of speculative fiction takes place in a futuristic setting. This brings up the issue of needing to create futuristic societies. There is no...
Worldbuilding With Ships
An imagined world will only feel as large as you make it appear. By focusing on a limited part of the world, you make a world feel small and...
Writing About Monsters: 3 Creatures for Your World
Speculative fiction is a stretching of the world into new shapes, an expansion of ideas to their logical (or illogical) conclusions. One of the many...
Worldbuilding On the Go
Writing is a time-consuming endeavor. Especially when you have limited time available for your writing, the last thing you need is to spend that...
War in Fantasy
War is a common topic in fantasy. Not every story is about a war, or contains one, but at least in epic fantasy, they are more common than not....