Your Guide To Creating Successful Worldbuilding in Fiction

One of the best things about being an author is creating an entire world, whether based on reality or entirely fictional.

Your setting may be high in the Appalachian Mountains or set in the deepest part of the ocean. Perhaps, you decide not to keep your location on Earth at all, or maybe you find that you want to take your characters to the past, future, or have some variation of the world that exists now.

You can do whatever you want!  

However, your world should be so rich and immersive that your readers have no trouble slipping into your reality so that they can escape their own with each perfectly crafted scene.

Before we jump into how to build a perfect world, first you need to understand the mechanics of worldbuilding.  

What is Worldbuilding?

Worldbuilding is more than just building a world (see what I did there); it is the process of creating a fictional environment, which will be the basis for your scene or setting.

This can be a world based on real-life, such as creating a scene set in a place closely resembling your hometown, or you can choose to create something that is predominately unique and completely made up by yourself.  

 Like many elements of fiction writing, worldbuilding occurs in stages.

You need to think critically about the world itself and how components of the world shape the narrative. Even stories without words, like textless graphic novels or children’s books, or poetry can benefit from worldbuilding.

Learning about worldbuilding will occur in two primary stages.

The visualization of the world and the description of the world.

The first refers to how the world is laid out (such as where the highest peaks are or where the main road is), while the second is what you would write out in your novel.

Let’s look at both:

Literature Maps

The best way I can think of to understand how authors visualize their world is to draw from examples in literature. We will look at a couple of these maps to understand how writers craft their worlds based on their own imagination or from inspiration in real life.

Let’s start with the land of Oz from The Wizard of Oz series by L. Frank Baum.

Here’s a zoomed in version:

Although this is not from the book itself and was instead given to the press to market the movie, it gives you an idea of how vast the Land of Oz is.

Since the story is centered on Dorothy’s journey, it makes sense that Baum would have taken time to consider the distance between each place, but also think of what type of cities Dorothy might encounter.

Is your story about a journey?

If so, you may want to create a similar map in which you spend time thinking of how the character gets from point A to point B, and what kind of people and locations they might encounter along the way.

Let’s look at another map:

This map is of the island from The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss. Unlike the map in The Wizard of Oz, there is no specific journey from point A to point B. Instead, the family must survive being trapped on a strange island after being swept up by a raging storm.

Since the theme is survival, it makes more sense to only focus on the areas that will be known to the family and that impact the plot specifically. While the author could have easily mapped out more parts of the island, it wasn’t necessary.

The author must get a sense of the wild unknown, and by extension, so does the reader.

You will also notice that the author clearly gathered inspiration from looking at real maps of real islands. In fact, the book is set off an island in the East Indies while the movie uses the Island of Tobago.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that that the island in the book is a little inaccurate – such as animals and plants that should not be there, but even with this lapse, the book is often still a part of required meeting for many schools. 

Finally, let’s look at a simpler map:

Drawn by E.H. Shepard for Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne, this book is as simple as it is beautiful. The illustration perfectly showcases the areas where certain plot point happens, but it is also done in a way that does not overwhelm the reader.

After all, this is a children’s book!

Thus, when you begin to create your own maps do not feel that it must be perfect. It can be included in your book, or you can merely use it as a reference.

Once you are done mapping (another pun!) out your world, you can then prepare to write your novel descriptions. This is not only helpful for determining the nuances of your setting, but can also help with each location and scene. For example, if you were to create a dynamic fight scene for your novel.

World Descriptions in Literature

Like with map-building, when you write the descriptions of your world, you can be as detailed or simple as you would prefer.

First, let’s look at rich descriptions:

“The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. They entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some time through a beautiful wood stretching over a wide extent.
She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.
The hill, crowned with wood, which they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object.
As they passed into other rooms these objects were taking different positions; but from every window there were beauties to be seen. The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of its proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendour, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.”

— Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austin

The description above depicts Pembroke Manor, a country estate is a prominent location in the novel. Notice how the author takes time to describe both the inside and outside, completely grounding the reader in both.

This not only helps to establish where the scenes are likely to take place (exterior and interior), but it also helps the reader understand the grandiosity of Mr. Darcy, which will also touch on one of the major themes in the book.

Here’s another description:

“It had been a fortress in old days, and the ancient keep was still in good preservation and very imposing. Behind it stood another portion of the original castle, and behind that again, and separated from it by a deep and broad moat, which ran all round the old buildings, was a handsome modern chateau, erected by the last king, and now forming the country residence of the Duke of Strelsau. The old and the new portions were connected by a drawbridge, and this indirect mode of access formed the only passage between the old building and the outer world; but leading to the modern chateau there was a broad and handsome avenue. It was an ideal residence: when “Black Michael” desired company, he could dwell in his chateau; if a fit of misanthropy seized him, he had merely to cross the bridge and draw it up after him (it ran on rollers), and nothing short of a regiment and a train of artillery could fetch him out. I went on my way, glad that poor Black Michael, though he could not have the throne or the princess, had, at least, as fine a residence as any prince in Europe.”

— The Prisoner of Zenda, Anthony Hope

I love this description because it so clearly speaks to the age of the castle. You get a sense of the power that the Kings and princes have through this castle and the care that has been taken to uphold that borrow.

So much can be said in your description without directly taking time to overexplain anything.

Now let’s look at a less detailed description:

“THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”

— Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut

Notice how the author gets straight to the point. There is no mincing words or room for any kind of misinterpretation. Although this description of the world is a little more factual than the other two, it is largely because the book has themes of political commentary.

The idea of worldbuilding is to give your audience a clear understanding of your setting. Without proper immersive your audience will not feel as though they are part of the journey. Remember, this is why setting is one of the 8 elements of fiction writing.

Through setting your readers enter the doorway into your world.

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