Create a new world. From scratch. Using only your imagination. That's what science fiction writers do with every new book. When I decided to write Sci-Fi, I didn't want to throw away a world I'd gone to the trouble of creating and have to create a new one. Not because I'm lazy but because I wanted to spend my time creating characters for that world.
As a new writer, I had no idea where to begin, so I read as much science fiction as I could get my hands on. All the classics, including Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov. Over the years I've lost count of how many books I've read. But in having that wide variety of exposure to excellent world-building, I learned one important fact.
Be consistent.
You don't give your heroine red hair and green eyes in one book and then talk about her dazzling baby blues in the next. Readers tend to get whiplash from things like that. So you keep a story bible -- a collection of notes about your characters so that you don't write Suzy one way in book 1 and another in book 2. Same with your story worlds.
I sketched a huge image of the Milky Way galaxy and then put liberal dots on the outstretched arms, named them and set them up as planets. I created little empires and then laid out a history of the galaxy to explain what happened when. For years, I played with set up, building and creating, but never finishing a story.
When I hit my 50th birthday, it dawned on me I needed to stop playing and get serious. Like I do with all things, I researched first. I figured out how to get an agent (and decided to skip it and go with small press), how to find a critique group (and joined one of the best ever), and I made contacts with authors by reading their books and telling them what I liked about their stories. One of my critique partners was so impressed with my writing that she offered to mentor me. I jumped on the chance. She was the one who introduced me to her publisher, and within a few months, my first book went live.
I had a review once that said I hadn't done much world-building. Obviously, I told myself, they didn't read the book. But as I studied my craft, I came to realize that it wasn't having the details about the world that mattered. It was the characters' reactions to it.
My favorite example of this are the opening lines from Forged in Fire: Bringer of Chaos. Would this incessant nightmare of darkness never end? The steaming, lightless rainforest stank of alien spores and enough flowers to choke the dead. Let the rescue party inhale, but this cloying scent left a sickening taste in his mouth. Pietas gagged, but controlled his stomach.
In that one paragraph we know a huge amount of detail about this world and how the character feels about it. World-building is more than details and data. It's immersing readers into the feel of the story, by using reactions and interactions of the character with their world. It's letting the reader feel what the character feels.
Creating a new world from scratch involves using more than the imagination. It requires every sensory input you can reasonably fit into the story. When you do that, you will truly welcome the reader into your story world.
I invite you to sign up for my newsletter and get insights into the characters peopling my story universe. You can sign up to become a citizen of the Tarthian Empire and discover inside secrets shared by the Empress herself, and even make yourself immortal by taking lessons from the king of the Sempervians. You can unsubscribe at any time.
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Thank you for hosting me on your site! It was fun to share my worldbuilding background. :)
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