Worldbuilding while not being an autistic sperg -

[RussianMozart]

I'm not sure if this is a topic worth discussing, but I'll throw it out there anyway. For all the writers out there, how do you go about worldbuilding? I mostly cherry-pick bits from other works that I like, toss them in the metaphorical pot, and see what boils up. Sometimes it works but mostly I end up with a Frankenstein abomination that looks like its parts were ripped off of something living and stitched to other random living and dead body parts. Which makes me think that there has to be a better/more autistic way to do this.

Sorry in advance for the autism of this thread!

 

[mr.moon1488]

I think one thing which is required is multiple factions with realistic motivations.

 

[King Koalemos]

i think even the classics like Tolkein's world or even Gardner Fox doing DC or Lee/Kirby/Ditko/etc. at Marvel came out with a somewhat autistic mess.

A good measure of how to do worldbuilding is to do it like Eichiro Oda's One Piece imo.

 

[RussianMozart]

A good measure of how to do worldbuilding is to do it like Eichiro Oda's One Piece imo.

Never heard of either. Care to elaborate on One Piece?

 

[OfficerBagget]

If a high fantasy world then, Make cool things, think about how they make sense later.

If low fantasy, research the time period the setting is most based on. And build off of actual history.

 

[Shokaract]

Go the Tolkein route and start by making your own fictional language, should be easy enough.

 

[RussianMozart]

Go the Tolkein route and start by making your own fictional language, should be easy enough.

No! I'm not that autistic!

 

[Chaos Theorist]

Never heard of either. Care to elaborate on One Piece?

Popeyes retarded son sets out to become the pirate king by beating the fuck out of other pirates and looking for giant rocks

 

[Cowboy Cat]

I’ve used this book and found it useful to help figure out some stuff I wouldn’t have necessarily thought of on my own.

Seconding also what officerbagget said. Figure out what you want from it and build from there.

Alternatively I’ve found it helpful historically to start with characters/events that I have more solid concepts for and building from there. Like for instance a DND campaign I ran had a big demon war fought in it pre-campaign, so I made a point of including a swath of permanently scorched earth from the fire from this event, and since this was my base concept this was a starting point for thinking about the physical world.

I’m by no means an expert though, just a guy who’s run a few tabletop games and enjoys making shit up for fun sometimes.

 

[King Koalemos]

Never heard of either. Care to elaborate on One Piece?

it's one of the most famous Manga/Anime series out there. As of right now, it's been running since 1997 with 1010 chapters out a the moment and countless movies, anime episodes, and merchandise. The worldbuilding of the series has been its strong point since the mangaka is very good at building the world, characters, and concepts with just hints and foreshadowing dropped between hundreds of chapters. It's an excellent series to read.

 

[Medulseur]

Create an outline for your world. Make a section for location, dieties, races, past events, heroes, villians, ect. Then as you are writing use it as a reference to build up your world.

 

[Judge Holden]

When worldbuilding here are two rules I have just pulled out my ass

1. Keep shit in perspective: If your story is about the end of the world as we know it dont spend hours describing the contents of a character's fridge.​

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If you vomit vastly disproportionate amounts of prose in service to shit that doesnt matter to the story, and wasnt pitched to the reader as one of the main pulls, then you will be wasting your own time, the story's time, and the audiences time.​

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2. Ask the question "How could I use this to utterly break the game?" of any piece of lore you include beyond the utterly mundane.​

​

If you have a character who can teleport shrubbery then there a thousand and one ways this character can become an omniscient godking of the setting by manipulating this seemingly simple power unless you lay down some solid boundaries in terms of power or some reason why he would not use the ability in such a way that stands up to the harshest outside reader scruitiny.​

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

when world building think of it like this: the reader should eat shit and die. Make up bullshit because bullshit is entertaining, and if the bullshit is not entertaining fuck you, i won't read that shit

 

[The Curmudgeon]

Here's a few things I'd like to share.

• Make sure the world has its own internal consistent rules. It needs to make sense in its own context.
• The small things add up! Small things like customs, food, etc. Whether they're human or not, the people in your world should have their own version of daily life.
• Mention things in passing. If something in your world is important to the story, then elaborate on it! Don't forget you're writing a story, not an encyclopedia.
• Related to the above point: Don't forget to add current events and history to your world. These build more context and meaning for your imaginary world.
• Build it a little bit at a time. You probably have a lot of cool ideas, but it's also not possible to share them all at once in a single story.

I'm doing worldbuilding of my own because I have my own projects I'm working on. Hopefully I can get them published this year at the earliest. Best of luck to you though and I hope your project works out!

 

[Fictional Character]

No! I'm not that autistic!

Don't forget to get your vaccine before worldbuilding!

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

1. Start with a simple base and, if you have something out of the ordinary, then make sure it fits the setting and makes sense. If it doesn't then either go back and rewrite the settinf so it does fit and makes sense or scrap the idea. Repeat this iteratively until the setting more or less works. The idea being that an autistic world building is far harder and will likely collapse in on itself. It also has the benefit of making you think while writing new stuff rather than need to plaster what you already wrote.
2. More of having the worldbuilding itself not being autistic. Don't be a George RR Martin, actually look up what distances and sizes mean using references from real life.
3. Cater to a reader who wants to know the plot and characters, rather than autists who want to write a wiki article about the favourite food in his city. If you want to expand on a minor detail only do it if it advances the plot or characters. For example if you have an important fancy dinner either write it as fancy or describe a few dishes with a name that gives the impression of them being expensive. Don't go couple of pages to describe every dish.

 

[RussianMozart]

I'm doing worldbuilding of my own because I have my own projects I'm working on. Hopefully I can get them published this year at the earliest. Best of luck to you though and I hope your project works out!

I hope you do well and get published! I'm not much of a writer, but I like worldbuilding as a side hobby to keep my brain active. But who knows? I might get published one day!

 

[The best and greatest]

The most important part of good world building is to leave somethings to the imagination. Dont feed me your bible pls.

 

[Leonard Helplessness]

I ran into a 4chan post once by a history sperg who said that in order to create his tabletop RPG settings, he would start with some packaged idyllic utopia fantasy setting and put it in the middle of the Balkans. He'd then think his way through a few decades or so of history that were basically "slavs pouring in from all sides and fucking the place up, especially the Serbs, who are just self-aware enough to understand on a deep level that their purpose is to ruin everything so they can leave" and after that was done, he'd use the resulting dystopian hellhole as his setting.

 

[Absolutego]

The most important part of good world building is to leave somethings to the imagination. Dont feed me your bible pls.

This is easily the biggest trap would-be writers fall into. I find that once you've figured out a basic sketch of the setting (and I mean basic, no paragraphs of info about different factions and their motivations and histories and whatnot, if it can't fit in <3 pages of notes you've usually gone too far), you have to figure out the plot first, and worldbuild what you need to get through that plot. Too many people, even published authors (looking at you George R. R. Martin), get so engrossed building things that don't impact the plot in any conceivable way and never actually get to putting prose on paper.