I come from a very technical background – my brain is wired for math and logic. I’ve been programming for nearly twenty years now, and I tend to approach most problems in the same way I would when trying to design a system to solve a business need.
- What are the major actors/things?
- How do the actors/things need to interact to solve the problem?
- What traits do the actors/things need to be able to perform their specific tasks?
- Are there any special requirements for specific actors/things to consider?
Obviously, that’s a simplified list, but when you’re looking at Object Oriented Programming, that’s a good initial list to start getting down high level details. I use the same approach when I’m worldbuilding, though the questions look a little different depending on exactly what I’m working on at the time.
- What are the major geographic regions?
- What sets this geographic region apart? How/why do people travel here?
- Are there cities here? What industry supports them?
- Anything special about this region? Strange celestial occurences? Weird minerals? Strange wildlife outside of the norm?
These questions start leading to the data members of the larger object. Maybe you have a region near the coastline dominated by rivers that feed into a large delta. There’s a few bridges spanning a few of the rivers, but most travel would be via boat or ferry. Cities would probably spring up along major river forks or near the delta as stops along trade routes, but you’d probably have a few small places dotted along the river where small bits of trade might happen because fishing in the river could easily support people. The rivers could lead to far reaching lands where important ore or minerals are mined, or to farmlands where crops are harvested. Maybe a major power controls the delta and acts as a trade liaison between the inland cities and a faraway country.
But just like here in the real world, most places have something special about them. You may have to look harder to find the special thing, but it’s there. Maybe the beaches have bioluminescent plankton that glows when you walk on the beach at night. Maybe there’s a special kind of fish that draws people into the area to try to catch it. Maybe the cedar trees that grow in the marshes around the delta are the best wood in the world for building ships. There are a lot of little details you can add that grab people and pull them in, and make that part of the world more immersive and not just another place that your characters are travelling through.
It’s also important to engage all of a person’s senses. Whenever I read a story and it describes how a place looks, the sounds you can hear, the smells that reach the character’s nose, how the wind feels against their skin, it pulls me in and makes me feel like I’m there. Sticking with the Object Oriented Programming example, every thing/place/person would have a certain set of characteristics:
- What does it look it? This could be macro or micro scale. Maybe you’re describing the city as a whole, or maybe you’re just describing the inn the characters are at. Perhaps you’re describing what the people of a region look like, or detailing the gruff, burly bartender with the sense of humor of a piece of sandpaper.
- Does it have a noticeable smell? If it’s a fishing village, does it smell like seafood? If there’s industry, does the smell of smoke hang in the air? What are they cooking in the inn? Has the person your character is interacting with had a shower in a week (or month or year)?
- What sounds does it make? Are their gulls flying overheard? Waves crashing on a beach? People milling about?
- What does it feel like? Does the cool sea breeze make your character’s skin prickle? Is there an enormous amount of heat radiating from a furnace? Is the cold blistering?
- What does it taste like? Please don’t lick the floor of the inn…you don’t want to know what’s been down there. But obviously things like food or drinks could have a distinctive taste, or maybe a smell is hanging so thick in the air your character can almost taste it.
I typically find it easier to start at the high level objects and work down to the smaller, individual objects. But maybe you have a specific character in mind so you start with them, and then start building the world around them. Either way, all the details you’re adding become data members that help your object (character/place/thing/etc.) perform its task in your story.
How do you approach worldbuilding?