Edit like an Editor: A Wattpad Featured Guide ✔

Part iv. Building a World

Whether your book is set in a real place or an imagined one, you need to build your characters' world so that the reader can fully believe and engage in the story.

When building a world, you have the power to develop it in any way you see fit. What will your world look like? How different is it from our own? What will the people be like? What about the cities and landscape?

Considering these elements is crucial to creating an interesting, engaging, and believable world—in any genre, not just fantasy or science fiction.

Before you write your next story, make sure to give your characters' world the attention it deserves.

The more intricately and intimately you know your story's world, the richer your writing will be.

Go beyond just outlining the setting your characters live and work in. Think about the laws that govern the world, the way the government works, the world's history, geography, technology, and mythology.

Beware, though, the more differences to our own world you introduce, the more you need to focus on getting those details absolutely right–you need to do it in such a way that they almost fade into the background so the reader is instead focusing on the characters and the story.

You don't need to explicitly create and explain all aspects of your world in the first couple of chapters. Without some story developing in these chapters, your readers may not be interested in reading further into your book.

To begin building your world:

What's so important about this place?

At its core, a story is about conflict. Without that, there's really little to tell.

Once you've worked out what it is, you need a world for that conflict to occupy:

• What sort of place best displays this conflict?

• Who are the protagonists in the conflict and where do they live?

• How do they differ from the everyday people we all know, or do they differ at all?

• What role can the environment play in that conflict, both directly and symbolically?

Once you've done this, you're ready to think about the protagonists in the conflict, and how the landscape might influence them.

Set up the society

Societies are anything but vague; they are made up of people who are all trying to do their best to survive and care for those that they love.

Let's begin with the basics. You don't have to have an answer for every question below, but these are just here as a jumping-off point for your brainstorming sessions.

• How do people live here? Where does the food come from? What about cloth, timber, metal? What plants and animals are there and in the society? How technologically advanced are the people here?

• What is their history and how might this have shaped them as a people, their beliefs, attitudes, and identity?

• What races are present? How much migration is there from other places? How integrated are the migrants? How do the locals act towards the migrants and vice versa? What languages are spoken, and by whom?

• What social classes are present, and how do they interact? What creates and sustains their division? How do the leaders gain, preserve, and relinquish power? How do other potential leaders view the current leaders?

This is where you have the opportunity to convey your own worldview: the things you hold to be true in the nature of the society you are creating. How is the society organized, what do they emphasize, and what is their relationship with the environment and each other?