Worldbuilding by Necessity

Keeping Worldbuilding Simple

Let's get straight to the point: It's easy for things to spiral out of control and become overwhelming when you're worldbuilding. Much like character profiles, worldbuilding can trick you into falling into a pit of details you'll never really need. And even though it can be loads of fun to create entire worlds with their own cultures, histories, festivals, politics, economic systems, ecosystems, architecture, geography, and so on, you generally won't need to actually flesh all of that out when you're writing. 

Don't get me wrong - it definitely depends on what you want out of your story and your worldbuilding, and I myself have gone the detailed route before (hence the SPLITE worldbuilding pack). But I have also written enough stories to know that that's not always the case, and is, in fact, the exception, not the rule.

So, today's lesson is going to focus on worldbuilding by necessity. 

At its simplest form, this just means that you worldbuild based on the needs of your story. 

A little festival-related worldbuilding piece
I did to answer an ask on tumblr. In the end,
it wasn't really needed.

For example: You're writing a crime thriller in a fantasy world. At some point, you're going to want to figure out what the law enforcement scene looks like in your world, and how investigations are undertaken. You'll also want to consider the motives in the crime, and if they point to some larger systemic issue (like high poverty rates or gang activity or high unemployment rates, etc.). And what happens to the criminal once they're caught? What do prisons and court systems look like in your fantasy world, if they exist at all? All of these are important pieces of worldbuilding you'll need for the story you're writing. 

And you can even go deeper. For example, how does the culture/belief system of the fantasy world come into play? Are autopsies a thing, or are murder victims buried as soon as possible, their bodies untouchable? How involved is the community in the investigation? Are people generally distrustful of detectives, or are they open and ready to offer up information? 

By looking at what happens in your story - even in the broadest sense, if you're not much of a plotter like me - you can get a better idea of the specific elements you're going to have to develop in your worldbuilding. If food isn't really an important part of your book, for example, you won't want to go out of your way creating fantasy menus and considering special ingredients or delicacies. 

So, the advice here is simple. Ask yourself 2 questions:

1. What happens in your story?
2. What do you need to know about your world in order to write it well?

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Related links:

• SPLITE for Worldbuilding
• Plotting with Spreadsheets
  

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