WORLD BUILDING
Grasping the space and time the characters inhabit.
World building is a thing most writers do, no matter the genre. In order to write a compelling story, you as a writer need to have a firm grasp of the characters. Maybe it’s a specific town, location or a distant planet far into the future. Either way some planning is beneficial.
What I usually do is (since I create worlds beyond our own) I write down the barebones of what the world “rules” are. Meaning; depending on the story I will predefine certain key aspects of this world that govern the story and the characters within. Covering aspects such as social constructs, laws, philosophical and religious boundaries.
You could do all this within Google docs or whatever notebook you’re rocking on your desk, but what I find is that I need a software to help me to organize and visualize what I am trying to achieve.
CRAFTING GRIMLAND
Grimland has a large document now with topics spanning from Classes and Factions, to History and Technology. All this supported by images that inspire me. Building this doesn’t have to be with art you make. Use the art out there to inspires you. This is a safe space for you to imagine things and brainstorm, make sense of things to later use in your writing.
Also remember that nothing is set in stone until you actually are finished. Things might change when you write the book and a character suddenly needs to be a race that you didn’t expect to have in the world. The more open you are for change the easier it will be to roll with the punches. But all this must be in certain paramaters because you don’t want to end up with a hippo unicorn in your gritty sci fi horror novel, unless the story demands it.
I love to keep it flexible and somewhat vague in some aspects because it gives me wiggle room when I start my writing. Also, another thing that helps me a lot is to create a soundtrack to the world you are creating. I made a playlist to help me along while writing the book I am working on and this can also be added to the world building document.
HAVE A LISTEN IF YOU ARE CURIOUS
STARTING OFF
One good tip when starting is to use references to other media as a guide, and then work from there to mix things up.
For example, I used the world of Alien, Mad Max and Warhammer 40K. Put it in a blender to see what crazy stuff I could get out of it. Don’t be afraid to use elements from what you love and make it your own. All great artists use inspirations. Try to change what already exists to make it into something unique.
For the Grimland universe and my still work in progress World of Midland I use Obsidian. A wiki like software that connects between your notes in a really cool way and has a canvas feature that works nicely when connecting various ideas with eachother. Reason why is mainly that it’s free and easy to use with lots of community made plugins to help out with the setup of the boards. Try it and see if you like it, I am not affiliated with them in any way; I just like the way the software works.
Other notable softwares worth a look for mapping your world out:
https://www.pureref.com/ - very simple and lightweight
https://milanote.com/ - Probably the biggest one with lots of features etc.
https://www.campfirewriting.com/ - Good for writers but confusing pricing.
https://www.legendkeeper.com/ - Has subscription model