So now that you’ve decided to do this thing, how do you kickstart the art?
Well, like I said in the previous post, that can be different for everyone. You just need to start with one single idea, build from it, and let your setting lead its own development. Let’s unpack that.
Kickstart Your World With a Single Seed
For me, most of my short fiction ideas get started around a single idea, the seed of your world. This might be based around an event. I’ll think, “what about a story told from the point of view of a character in a pre-FTL culture whose planet is being fought over by aliens,” and then I’ll go from there.
Other times, it can be a character, a place, an event in the fictional timeline of your setting, a bit of culture or any other “thing” that you can build off of. Oftentimes, you’ll find that once you kickstart your brain, ideas build off each other, leading naturally from one to the next as one part of your setting asks questions of the next.
For example, the setting for my space fantasy story Honor in the Dark came from a tiny seed of an idea while I was listening to the Spellmonger series by Terry Mancour. Spellmonger is a refreshingly original take on straight-forward medieval feudal fantasy. I was listening to the audiobook read, and I just had a thought pop into my mind of: “but what if this was in space?”
From that seed of an idea, immediately questions poured into my mind. “If it’s in space, what happens to castles? How does sword combat work in space? If there’s magic in the setting, how does that change the course of technology and invention? Etc, etc, etc.
(Write all those questions down, by the way. It’s a surprise tool that will help us later).
Don’t get Overwhelmed
For some, that deluge of questions might feel overwhelming. That’s okay. The great thing about worldbuilding is that you can take it one idea at a time, and you do not have to answer every question you think of. You only need to answer the questions you’ll need for your story or just what sparks your imagination. You also don’t have to write a two page essay about every question or bit of setting; sometimes an answer to one of those questions will do nothing more than inform you, the creator, about your world.
From that seed of an idea (medieval feudal fantasy in space), I dove right in and wrote a short story, just a thousand-word scene of a group of footmen with sword, shield, and a mage holding an airlock of their starship from boarders. This scene asked a few questions of me about the world: who are these soldiers, who is attacking them, and why?
Now, if you notice something, none of those questions are particularly complex. I’m not designing a Sandersonian hard magic system for the mage in the scene, and I’m not detailing the schematics of the jump drive in the starship they’re on. I also didn’t have to answer any of the questions I mentioned before. You can certainly start with any those things, but to begin with, I answered only the questions my story asked of me.
Lead your Setting to the Goal
Unless you’re like me, and just enjoy worldbuilding for the imaginary exercise and grand adventure, you’ve probably got a goal in mind. You’re writing a story, whether that be a novel, short story, audio drama, or something else entirely.
If you do have a goal, you will need to push your worldbuilding toward that goal. From that gigantic list of questions you’ve made, find the ones that are going to matter for your project and start there. If you’re writing a novel, what do you need to write your basic outline (plotter) or your first chapter (pantser)? Gamemasters, what do you need for your very first session? When I ran a homebrew setting in my very first GM session, all I had was a single cave, a dragon, some goblins, and some traps and puzzles. I started with a cave, then added a coastal town near the cave, then built out the region, then the outlying lands, then the foreign lands. One step at a time.
So find that seed, plant it, and see where it goes.
See you next week,
Nate
