More often than not I’ll crack into a sprawling fantasy series and, while I appreciate the luscious descriptions of furniture, landscapes, and clothing, all I’m focused on is that I don’t actually know how this world works. I only know what it looks like.
Including some functionality to your universe can add to immersion and give your reader a strong foundation on which to build their mental model of your universe.
You certainly don’t need to use all of these questions! In fact, I recommend against that, as all of these certainly won’t make it into your final draft. I personally find that starting my worldbuilding off with 5 to 10 functional questions helps pave the way for glittery and elaborate aesthetic development later on.
How is the healthcare funded in your world?
How does healthcare functionally differ between the wealthy and the poor? (i.e. can only the wealthy go to hospitals? do poor families often have to rely on back-alley procedures?)
Where are health centers (i.e. hospitals, small clinics, etc.) organized in your cities?
Does it differ in smaller towns?
How does this affect people’s ability to get healthcare?
Is healthcare magical, and if it is, how does that affect the healthcare system?
If healing is instantaneous, how does that affect people’s views on injury, illness, and chronic ailments?
If you have both magical and physical healthcare, which one is deemed superior and how does that affect society?
What illnesses are common in your world?
How does this affect daily life?
What do the people in your world think illnesses are?
Is it a miasma theory?
Humor theory?
Demons?
Do they know about biological viruses and bacteria?
How does this affect healthcare?
How do people get water?
Is the water sanitary and if not, how do they sanitize it?
How does agriculture work?
Is it large corporations or individual farms?
What sort of agricultural technology exists in your world and how does it affect food production?
Are farmers wealthy or poor?
What sort of natural resources does your world/country(ies) have and how are they obtained?
How does this affect the average wealth of the country?
How does this wealth affect the culture?
What livestock or beasts of burden are most valued? Least valued? Why?
What is considered a luxury good vs. a regular good?
What forms of transportation does your world have?
What classes use what forms of transportation?
How far has the average citizen traveled, given your transportation limitations?
Which cities are the most accessible and which are the least? Why?
How do popular transportation methods change how cities/towns are laid out?
Does your world have public transportation? What is it?
Is there a coming-of-age aspect to travel?
Describe your world’s postal system or whatever equivalent there is.
Who pays for it?
How reliable is it?
Are there emergency methods for transporting information?
How does your world keep time (i.e. watches, sundials, water clock, etc.)?
Does your world have a currency system, barter system, or something else?
If you have multiple countries, do different currencies have different values across said countries?
How does this affect travel?
Do you have banks in your world and if so, how are they run?
Who owns the banks? Government? Wealthy? How does this affect the economy and/or class system?
How does credit operate in your universe?
Does your world operate more on big corporations or small business? Something in between?
How are workers/labourers treated in your world?
Are there workers unions and if so, what are common views on unions?
Describe your tax system. If you don’t have a tax system, explain why and how your world is affected by that.
Can certain social classes not own property, certain livestock, certain businesses, etc.? Why?
How are business records kept? Are business records kept?
If your world has technology, does your world prioritize developing entertainment tech, communications tech, transportation tech or something else entirely?
What does this say about your world?
How does this affect your economy?
To the closest approximation, what type of government does your world have?
How are rulers/presidents/nobles put in place?
How much power does an individual ruler have?
Is there a veto process?
If you have multiple countries, do they have different types of rulers?
Describe any large-scale alliances (i.e. countries, factions, etc.) that are present in your world.
How did they come about and how are they maintained?
Are they strained or peaceful?
How does it affect the greater politics of your world?
Describe how wars are fought both internationally and nationally.
Do methods of war differ between countries/races?
What about philosophies about war?
If there is a military, what is its hierarchy structure?
How does the military recruit?
Is the military looked upon favourably in your society?
What weapons are used by each country/type of people during warfare, and how does that affect war strategies?
Describe the sentencing system of your world.
Is your accused innocent until proven guilty, or guilty until proven innocent?
How are lawbreakers punished?
If you have prisons, describe how they are organized and run, and who owns them.
Does differing ownership change how the prisons operate?
What are the major ways in which laws between countries vary?
Do laws between cities vary? If so, how and why?
How does citizenship work in your world? What rights and privileges do citizens have that others do not?
Can certain classes or races not become citizens?
Are there certain taboo subjects or opinions that artist/authors/musicians are not allowed to depict (i.e. portraying the official religion in a negative light, explicit sexual material, etc.)? What does this say about your society?
How do people get around these censorship laws?
What is the official hierarchy of duty in your world? (i.e. is family the most important, or patriotism? What about clan?)
How many languages are there in your world, and how many languages share a common origin?
How many people are multilingual?
Which language is the most common?
How is multilingualism viewed?
How are different languages viewed? (i.e. is one language ugly/barbaric while another is romantic and sensual?)
Feel free to add your own questions in reblogs or in comments!
I know y’all love talking about your books and your WIPs and stuff, but some things to keep in mind:
Tumblr is a public space. Your conversations and idea sharing is public.
If you want to be published, you can’t share too much of your WIP online. That’s called seizing your First Publishing Rights, which you’re allowed to do, but it’s what most publishers will pay for. Seriously.
People do steal ideas. It happens. If you don’t want yours taken, be
circumspect with sharing. Just because someone says they want you to
give them a summary of it so “they can remember” doesn’t mean that’s why
they want it.
All those “snippet” shares are ripe for keeping you from publishing that book traditionally, and also for plagiarism.
1. Tumblr is a public space with so many people talking about so many stories that its hard enough as it is to get anyone to notice.
2. Traditional publishing and self publishing are equally lucritic and traditional publishers will happily take stories previously published online if they know they’ll sell. (I don’t promote doing this because its rare. But a writer who’s talked about their writing online and gained fans is much more promising than one who’s a shot in the dark.)
3. Your ideas have been done before. They’re not as unique or special as you think, and if they are, then they’re not marketable and no business minded publisher will take them.
4. This is just bogus now a days, and shouldnt stop you from building your platform or just plain enjoying yourself. Half those lines are going to be rewritten during the editing stage anyways.
HI I’M A PUBLISHER LET ME TELL YOU THIS IS COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT.
“First Rights” refers to original publication rights. This means, typically, that you are selling your books for profit, with an ISBN, registered with the library of congress. Publishing on Tumblr, Wattpad, or any other blog, or personal space does not interfere with this. Besides the fact that many publishers will still pick up books with followings (especially if you’re looking into small presses! If your book has done well in the self-publishing sphere, consider publishing with a small house, since that benefits everyone.) For example, I’ve seen a dozen books on wattpad that gained a following, or… The Martian? May have heard of that one? Yeah that was published IN FULL on his blog.
People do “steal” ideas. You may have heard of something called Eragon, or Fifty Shades of Gray. Or a dozen other things that have sold well. The people who quote unquote steal your ideas still have to write the damn book which is HARD. If they are directly taking your words, you are protected by intellectual copyright laws. If you have published them in a public sphere, that makes you even safer, because there is proof that these words were yours.
Finally, as a marketing person for my house, let me tell you: KEEP PUBLISHING YOUR SNIPPETS OH MY GOD. There are authors who have twitter accounts solely dedicated to this, fans who follow you for that and who will love your work enough to buy it later. In publishing, we don’t refer to this a roadblock, we refer to it as building your audience. If a publisher is between you and an equally good story, and in your query you’ve thrown in “Oh yeah, and I have a writing blog with 5000 followers,” they’re going to choose you.
So seriously OP, I don’t know if you’re trolling or just severely misinformed, but honestly, the only reason I could think of not to publish your work online is the anxiety of criticism! (Which I have, and is perfectly valid)
Thank you so much for the additions guys. OP had me in a panic for a bit-happy to know that’s not the whole story.
I gotta admit, I was worried when I saw this post too, but the addition is SO SO IMPORTANT, please follow this version instead!!
Hey everyone, Abby here with another writing post! Today I’m talking about that one thing we all hate to love (and really love to hate) in our writing, and that’s prophecies.
What is a prophecy?
In any dictionary, a prophecy is just a prediction. In the writing world, however, the prophecy is often what sends the hero or your group of characters on some big journey to find the magical flower or defeat the Big Bad™. A good example of this in the fiction world is the Warriors series. This series was all about their prophecies, a few of which are below:
“Fire alone can save our Clan.”
“Before there is peace, blood will spill blood, and the lake will turn red.”
“After the sharp-eyed jay and the roaring lion, peace will come on dove’s gentle wing.”
(Can you tell I used to be a big fan?) For anyone who has read the Warriors books before, you know exactly what each of these prophecies means. But for anyone who hasn’t, there’s a lot of possibilities, right? This is the essence of a prophecy.
Do I need to include a prophecy in my story?
Nope! It’s completely dependent on the story you want to tell.
What are the main elements of a prophecy?
The main aspect of a prophecy is the foreshadowing it provides for your story. This is one of the most blatant ways you can tell your readers, “This is something that is going to happen in the story and I’m not outright telling you how it goes down yet.”
Look at the first prophecy on the list. What can you gather from that? There’s fire, and it’s going to save a Clan. That’s what you can get from the surface, and that’s the foreshadowing that carries throughout that first series. That’s what you know is going to happen, but you don’t know how; it’s giving you some information, but not enough that you lose interest in the story itself.
The second element is symbolism. Prophecies hardly ever say exactly what is meant (how much fun would it be otherwise?) and this is something you can play around with a lot.
In the second prophecy, the phrase “blood will spill blood” sounds… weird. Is that even possible? This is when we look further. We get the idea that someone is getting injured, but what does blood have to do with it? That’s where you bring your readers into the story; capture their interest and keep it. (The same concept applies to the third prophecy as well.)
The third aspect is vagueness. You have no idea exactly what’s going to happen when each of these three prophecies comes to pass. I’ve read a lot of prophecies that give exact information, like: “On the ___ day, ___ will get the ___ that they need to defeat ___.” Where’s the fun in that?
Look at the prophecy you have now. How vague is it? Ask someone to read it, then guess what’s going to happen. If they can tell you exactly what’s going to happen (or close), then you may need to rework a couple of things.
Incorporating Mood
The language of your prophecy will heavily affect the moods and the symbols conveyed. Maybe you want your prophecy to suggest that a girl needs to get a magical stone to defeat the evil king. The two prophecies I have below are meant to convey the same thing, but you’ll be able to see how the language and the mood affects the message.
The beholder of the stone shall unleash the power to send the dark crown toppling.
Or…
Yo, she’s gonna get the stone and just frickin’ send it, there goes the king.
They convey the same message but not the same mood. When you’re working with prophecies, the mood you’re writing with is going to play a lot into the reader’s interpretation, so that’s something you’ll want to keep in mind while you’re writing.
So, that’s all I’ve got for today! Prophecies are one of those things I love to hate so I had a lot of fun writing this post 😀 If there’s something you want to see me write about in my next post, please don’t hesitate to leave a message in my ask! Until next time, much love <333
Do an
outline, whatever way works best.
Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.
Conflicts
and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps
the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is
hard to write.
Change
the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at
it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor
character, whatever.
Know the
characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you.
Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.
Fill in
holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes,
and add content and context.
Have
flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These
stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency
and uncertainty to the narrative.
Introduce
a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more
compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.
Take
something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force
him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.
Twists
and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist
is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up
and get it rolling again.
Secrets. If
someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good
way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the
secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.
Kill
someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects
all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.
Ill-advised
character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does
something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then
engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.
Create cliff-hangers. Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and
make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really
bring out your creativity.
Raise the
stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder.
Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an
important choice.
Make the
hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the
characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not
necessarily to be successful, but active
and complicit in the narrative.
Different
threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be
killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and
a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me,
how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).
Figure
out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get
the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you
actually end up writing.
What if?
What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When
you write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the
story will present itself.
Start
fresh or skip ahead. Delete the last five thousand words and try again. It’s
terrifying at first, but frees you up for a fresh start to find a proper path. Or
you can skip the part that’s putting you on edge – forget about that fidgety
crap, you can do it later – and write the next scene. Whatever was in-between
will come with time.
*Blinks* I-I’m not the only one to call writer’s block needing to un-stick the story?
foxboylucien 