Welcome To The World Contest

First Prompt

Basic Geographical Worldbuilding

 Get ready to pull out your pens and your google machines, because it's worldbuilding time.

(Note: Your story CANNOT take place on Earth, or at least, our Earth. If you're writing an alternate history that is sufficiently different, just remember that it must be some kind of science fiction or steampunk alternative. The point of this contest is to ramp up your worldbuilding skills.)

Your job today is to create a map with at least four different countries on it. Look up pictures of real maps to get an idea of how those maps look. Put islands, big continents, little continents, tectonic shifts, volcanoes, lakes, everything. Keep in mind that rivers take the shortest path to the sea, and mountains follow tectonic shifts. Also remember that your map needs to contain different biomes. Where is it in relation to the equatorial line, and what does that mean for the culture and appearance of folks living there? Where are the major urban centers? Are the people nomadic, which different ports, or are they seafaring people? You won't necessarily be developing the culture of every single country, but it's good to have a general sense of where things are.

When naming countries, try to think about the different linguistics of a country. Not every place in the world is Andalusia or Wysteria. Pull up linguistic choices from non-latinate languages, or even something outside Proto-Indo-European...or use the conventions of Proto-Indo-European! Get creative, look up words and interesting linguistic quirks of other languages besides English, Spanish, and German. I mean, you could if you really want to, but only for one country. Think about the linguistic diversity of our world--there's no way that your world is that homogenous.

As a final piece to this, assign each country a real-world origin. Is your culture going to be based on Portugal? Ancient Incan culture? Modern-day Dubai? Pick something outside of your comfort zone, and do a little research to find which real-world culture you can divine inspiration from. You can even combine cultures, or use subcultures if you wish. Or even create your own, completely from scratch! Just remember that physical location and the biomes people live in have an affect on the culture. You're not likely to see a seafaring Polynesian culture in the middle of a Taiga biome. You're not doing any cultural worldbuilding yet (though go ahead if you're excited about it! These prompts are just to guide you through things).

As you're worldbuilding, remember that this is supposed to be futuristic, or at least gear/steampunk. This isn't some high fantasy world, so remember that technology will eventually end up playing a big part in these cultures.

If you're posting parts of your world bible, maps, small stories, anything at all, tag them with #WTTWcontest or #WelcomeToTheWorld contest, and/or post a link in the comments section of this contest so we can check out what you're doing!  

The next worldbuilding prompt will be posted on February 10, 2017