How to worldbuild

Organising your world

Before you begin, I highly recommend that you create a bunch of folders that you can organise your world within. This will ease the work of keeping track of everything and keeping things consistent through out your world.

Below you’ll find how I go about creating a folder structure.
The names of the folders should be fairly self-explanatory:

Pick a setting for your world

Have you set up your folder system? Great — You will fill it up soon!

Before you start to fill it up and building your world, you will need to pick a setting for your world. Setting up some ground rules and a mood for your world. A premise, an idea. Something that makes this world stand out.

Think about whether the world is a dystopian nightmare, or a utopian dream.
Maybe it is somewhere in the middle?

Dystopian
nightmare

A dark and depressing setting, a dying world, lacking resources.

---

Utopian
dream

A bright and joyous setting. The perfect world, full of resources.

Hold that thought.

Create a character

It’s time for you to fill up your world and get you curious about the world.

Create your first character in the character folder.
Write a document with the name, species, a short detailed description of their appeareance and personality of the character. The naming of species and the character can be placeholders for later.

Here is an example of how a character file could look:

Fredskov

Appeareance

Short and chubby body. Light skin. Curly brown hair and a thick red beard. Usually seen walking around in beige shorts, with a coloured t-shirt and a giant pencil in hand.

Personality

Always happy. Thrives on helping others.

Question everything!

It is time for some investigative work.
Position your character in front of you, and start to question them about everything:

Why?

• Why do they act like they do?
• Why are they dressed like they are?

What?

• What species are they?
• What do they eat?

Who?

• Who are their parents?
• Who are their friends?
• Who do they hate?
• Who do they love?

Where?

• Where do they live?
• Where have they been?
• Where do they want to go?

How?

• How do they travel?
• How do they communicate?

That you should you into the right mindset.
Start questioning any object, species, characters, locations, and culture you might find.

Take notes and ask away. This is where the big discoveries are made!

Breathe life into your world with more than one media type

Adding music to you writing, writing to your artwork or artwork to your music — or any other combination, will breathe life into your story and make it more immersive. Start out using the skill that you are good at. When you are ready to expand your world, find a collaboration partner who is good at other skills and breathe even more life into your world.

Sound

Video

Writing

Illustration

Bringing more media types into your world is something I highly encourage. Use it as an opportunity to learn new skills, team up with a set of friends or pay for professional help.

Good luck on your project.
I would LOVE to hear about it.

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