Worldbuilding gives the writer a clear understanding of what their world looks and feels like. It’s completely up to the writer what they want their world to be.

The imaginary world serves to establish where the story takes place. Its purpose is to anchor the reader into the book by giving them a concrete location.

When readers enter an invented world they look for believability, depth, and meaning. Worldbuilding is key to communicating themes, captivating your audience, and making your book impossible to put down. If you are writing fiction of any kind, you are engaged in world building. The genre is irrelevant. Suspense, mystery, romance, horror, science fiction, fantasy, literary fiction—all require a specific fictional landscape. No two writers do it the same way.

If you are building a contemporary setting, you will infuse the appropriate social norms and customs into your story without a lot of conscious thought because you know those norms and customs. You live with them. Incorporate that information into your story and know when you are bending or breaking the internal rules of that world.

Building a historical world requires more awareness of the process. Absorb the structure of that world when you do your research. You can alter elements only so much before you slide into another genre such as paranormal, time travel, magical realism, fantasy, etc.

RULE # 1: Your imagination is the limit when it comes to creating a fictional landscape.

RULE # 2: Set up your own rules for your world, but don’t violate them. Maintain internal consistency.

RULE # 3: When in doubt, add an animal. But be warned, animals will take control.

How to world-build:

Margaret Atwood: The multi-award-winning author of “The Handmaid’s Tale” has said she starts her world building by thinking about how her character eats breakfast. What type of kitchen does the character have? Do they prepare their own food or does someone else? Where does their food come from? This process offers her a way to start peeking into the world’s economy and social structures, one step at a time. She shares how she builds out her world from this single moment of the day in this Fast Company article.

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