NEW WORLDS

Another guest post by my husband on world-building today!

What is the hardest part about creating a world?

Oddly enough the hardest part of world building I would say is the “new world.” So what does that mean? Honestly, the hardest part is taking all the details I figured out for my first world -- political systems, historical events, names (i.e. characters, geography, cities, etc), magic systems, good guys, bad guys (the list goes on)--and finding a way to bite off small pieces for myself to work on. Much like any large project, whether you’re designing a product or writing a book, world-building takes a long time, and every New World has a long list of items that need definition, but it is so easy to see the list and begin to feel as though little to no progress is being made.

The best example of this I think is a magic system. Do I want the magic system to be rule based? Is magic performed using verbal skills? Is magic inherent to a species? Is magic a “thing” that can be bottled, or is it simply an ability? And those are just a few examples of the question you ask yourself for just ONE topic. And as soon as you’ve got an idea for how the magic may work in the world, you move on to the next list of things your world needs.

Let’s take characters for a simple further step. Now that the magic system is set, I start looking at a character/character type I am interested in reading about. Are they human? Are they mythical? Is this world based on the “big three” (elves/dwarves/humans)? Is this character/people group completely normal or are they specialized in some way? Where did they come from? Why are they interesting? And before you know it your character doesn’t fit your magic system all. So, what else is there to do but go muddle with your magic system. You love the character you just came up with too much. The whole process of fleshing out a world is defined by that list the first world generated. And the longer I do this, the longer the list of “needs” for a world gets. The longer that list gets, the more they interact with each other.

So the New World always seems the hardest as more and more detail is required to live up to the previous worlds.