Step 10: A Guide to Worldbuilding

What it means to "build a world" and how to do it.

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Weekly Update

Here’s what I did this week:

• New Different Publishing website/Shopify store is done!

• At the 1 yard line finishing integration with printer/distributor (who will pull sales data from Shopify each day and then process/ship orders). This has been a huge learning curve, and going to require another ~2 hours consulting with my dear friend, ChatGPT, trying to understand how all of this works.

• Wrote the next chapter of my next LitRPG series/book, called Lumina.

• Created a TikTok Shop account and connected it to my Shopify store. But need to finish getting Shopify/distribution all set up before I can go any further—since I’ll be processing book orders from TikTok inside my Shopify store.

Setting up all this new infrastructure has been a very humbling experience. Not that it’s “hard.” Just tedious. I’ve probably spent 50+ hours getting this new Shopify store & book distribution set up.

But alas, we do what is required.

Dear Fiction Writer,

Last week, I shared the first 6 chapters of a new LitRPG story I’m working on called LitRPG LIVE! On Air.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with this series. I actually started writing it while sitting outside the JSX private terminal outside of Denver, Colorado, waiting for my flight home after attending LitRPG Con. Few things in life get your “head in the clouds” (pun intended) as staring at private jets.

*NOTE: If you’re unfamiliar, JSX is a semi-private airline that flies all along the coasts. And tickets are marginally more expensive than an airline. Couple hundred bucks. And you get to fly out of a private terminal. It’s incredible. Can’t recommend it enough.

ANYWAYS…

I was making some great progress on the story until I got to the end of Chapter 6. When, all of a sudden I realized, “Wait a second… I don’t even know where we are. I don’t know enough about this world to keep the story moving forward.”

So, I paused. And shifted over to worldbuilding.

A Guide To Worldbuilding

Let’s keep it simple.

“Worldbuilding” is really just a fantastical word for “story congruence.”

The more congruent the story, the more immersive its world. Harry Potter is a great example. The more wizardry-congruent places and items and spells and characters, the more that congruence compounds on itself—and the more you believe the world to be “real.”

Or, let’s invert it: what would break Harry Potter’s congruence? Probably a drunk plumber from New York showing up to Hogwartz, lost, just trying to find some morning breakfast. This type of character wouldn’t “make sense” in this world, which means it’s not congruent.

All sorts of things can make-or-break the congruence of a story:

• A fantasy world suddenly having non-fantastical elements, without explanation, would break congruence. (Imagine if Luke from Star Wars hopped on the Millennium Falcon and jumped to hyperspace… only to land in rural Kentucky. Bummer.)

• Or a horror story suddenly trying to be “funny” would break congruence.

• Or a character who never swears, ever, suddenly dropping F-bombs left and right would break congruence.

If the key to creating an immersive world & story is congruence, then Worldbuilding is just one big exercise in maximizing this congruence across all People, Places, and Things.

Start With A Sketch Map

Whenever I begin the Worldbuilding phase of any Fantasy or Science Fiction story, I always start with what I like to call a Sketch Map.

It’s exactly what it sounds like.

It’s a sketch… of the world’s map.

I do this to create my “canvas.”

• Where, literally, are we?

• What are the boundaries of this world?

• How big is this world—across how many different places?

• What are the most important parts of this world? The major cities?

• Etc.

As you can see from the image above, visual artistry is not my forté. But that’s not the point of this exercise. The point is to start creating some constraints for yourself and your story. (And for what it’s worth: I have always found these Sketch Maps to be tremendously helpful in the writing process. Each “place” I put on the map immediately starts giving me ideas for characters, sub-plots, etc.)

*NOTE: I also love when Fantasy/Science Fiction authors include images of maps in their books. It’s a classic copywriting technique just applied to fiction, which is that you always want to give readers/customers something “tangible” because it makes the product feel more real & increases perceived value. And a professionally designed “map” in a fiction story accomplishes this perfectly.

For example, Game of Thrones:

Pro Tip: Aim to create a “Minimum Viable Map”

I have heard many successful fiction writers talk about how Worldbuilding can quickly spiral out of control and become a giant exercise in “productive procrastination.”

This is (obviously) not the goal.

The goal, especially when creating a Sketch Map, is to create something that:

• Sets the boundaries of the world

• Gives you a couple major territories to focus on (where meaningful scenes in the story will take place)

• And help give you ideas for the types of characters & conflicts that may exist in this world

That’s it.

Anything beyond that tends to not be necessary. Especially this early in the writing process.

Just set some constraints and keep going.

(Besides… it will be a lot easier for you to build the rest of your map when you have more of the story written, and learn more about your world & the characters in it!)

Worldbuilding Attributes

Once you have your Sketch Map (V1), the next step is to start making lists of Worldbuilding Attributes.

Again, the magic word here is congruence.

How can you make as many things in this world “congruent” with each other—so that with each little decision, the world becomes more immersive & more immersive & more immersive?

*PRO TIP: I have done this exercises a bunch of times now, and I will tell you this is something you can spend HOURS on. Which is why I’d strongly encourage you to set some sort of time constraint. Writers love getting lost in all the things that aren’t “the writing.” So, yes, take the time to think and brainstorm and let your imagination run wild. But don’t let yourself fall down the rabbit hole for more than 5 or 10 hours total (there… I’m setting the constraint for you).

The 3 Secrets To Worldbuilding Attributes

I want to skip to the answer.

There are 3 secrets to Worldbuilding—and if you do these things as often as possible in your story, you will “build a world” that is immersive and congruent.