Worldbuilding Advice

As a fantasy author, I think a LOT about worldbuilding. Like, this is my niche, I’m a worldbuilding guy. My fans often refer to my worldbuilding as dummy thicc. I’m planning a whole nonfiction work on worldbuilding.

The single biggest piece of advice I have for worldbuilders?

Your ability to create inventive, original, and intriguing worlds is ENTIRELY contingent upon your knowledge of our world. Even your imaginative muscles and your worldbuilding practice are entirely secondary to how much you know about the real world. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still important⏤a neophyte worldbuilder who hasn’t been training their imagination probably won’t do as well as a more practiced worldbuilder, even if the former has greater knowledge of the world than the latter. Knowledge of our world isn’t the only factor⏤but it’s undoubtedly the biggest.

I’m FAR from the first author or worldbuilder to point this out, either. N.K. Jemisin and many other excellent authors have done so as well.

The actual mechanics of real world knowledge becoming better worldbuilding are pretty straightforward⏤it’s basically just a close relative of “know the rules before you break them.” Or, to paraphrase @mostlysignssomeportents, “the rules in writing exist not to tell you what you can’t do, but what is harder to do.” The more you know about our own world’s rules, the more you can break them in interesting, fascinating ways to create excellent worldbuilding.

The more you know about weird sea creatures? The more you can use that to design weird fantasy monsters. The more you know about chemistry? The more you can use that to design weird magical interactions. (Much of the magic in my own series, Mage Errant, is just magically induced or altered weird chemical reactions. There’s a mage whose entire gimmick is triggering and reversing the rusting chemical reaction over and over again to create a huge firestorm, since it’s an exothermic reaction.) Physics, same. The more you know about geology and planetary geology, the more you can use it to design weird worlds. The more you understand about our history? The better you can design realistic history for your world. The more you understand sociology and the functioning of real world societies? The better you can design fictional societies.

So… want to become a better worldbuilder? Read and listen to more nonfiction. Watch more documentaries. Audit classes online. And don’t just dive into the deep end⏤go back to basics, shore up your foundational knowledge of history, the sciences, whatever. You’ll be genuinely surprised at some of the ideas you’ll pick up from that.

Being an author? It’s one of the few careers that rewards breadth of knowledge as massively as it does. Lean into that, take advantage of that.

And have fun with it. Learn about stuff that genuinely interests you, and you’ll find it much easier to motivate yourself. The ideas will come easier, and be more intriguing to readers.

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Originally posted on Tumblr.