When writing a story, or even a novel, we typically do at least a little bit of worldbuilding. Where would our story be without the setting? The setting of course can range from time of day to era, to W Elm street in San Francisco. However, no matter the size of your stage for your story, you need to think about how your characters fit within it. A larger world will undoubtedly have more people you can introduce, but some stories are strongest when they only revolve around a few.

It’s a small world after all

This brings us to the pros and cons of size. We might be tempted to “go big or go home” on our first time out in the world of writing, but this isn’t always effective. Some of the most timeless stories are told within a short amount of time, such as a day, or within the confines of a small area of an unknown world. While the author might expand upon the world, or time, through other stories interwoven and connected to the original, some authors prefer the simplicity of not knowing everything. For example, you might have a short story about two witches living in the woods, they can perform magic and even do a few spells throughout your story. This does not mean that you have to rigidly define how one does magic if everyone can do magic, or even if there are other people or a town nearby. If these two characters can subsist on their own interactions and musings then why mess with it? In turn, this zoomed-in focus of the world can make it easier for you to learn from the characters as they go about their day and run into problems. Rather than having a bunch of info about people/places/things that will never even enter into the frame of the story, develop your characters in meaningful ways that move the story along. Perhaps the two witches view magic very differently or have conflicting personalities which allow for conflict within the living space. There are many different paths in which you might pull your characters so it's best practice not to box yourself in too much.

This flowing dynamic of open-ended world-building and ideas can often flow together to create a real work of art, rather than something that feels like it was pulled out of a history book. I’d like to reference Hilda for example. Hilda, the Netflix show, is based on a graphic novel series by Luke Pearson. The show features an array of minimalistic art styles and a beautiful way of storytelling that makes my artist and writer brain both tingle with appreciation and happiness. The worldbuilding isn’t much, at least at first. A family home, a forest, little hidden people. But as the show progresses and Hilda and her mother move to Trollberg, we’re given our first glimpse of the greater outside world. What lies beyond Trollberg? Is there anything other than Trollberg? We don’t know! But that’s where the fun is. Ever since we were children our brain has been hard-wired for learning about the world around us. So, when it comes to shows like Hilda, especially for those of us that like being placed in a fantasy riddled land filled with so many unknowns and adventure, we jump at the chance to learn more about it. This even further explains why some of us go on to make fanfiction, not always raunchy but definitely a personal addition to the story’s world through your own eyes. And while they might not be canonical to the story, they, like our young minds, are our brain’s way of trying to fill in some of the blanks or even add a little personal touch to our favorite landscape (You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to interject myself into Supernatural as some suped-up bitch that’ll solve all the boy’s problems, and maybe snog Castiel or Sam while I’m at it.). Ahem. We… got off track there.

What I should have been leading up to is the cons of using such a small space. Not everyone can write a story that spans a day with such vivid detail as William Faulkner did with As I Lay Dying. It’s hard. And we as writers aren’t always up to the challenge that such a small space brings. In essence, it’s an art form. To be able to write a great book, or even better story, within such a small amount of time is extremely daunting. Understandably so as our own lives often pass us by with barely a second glance. How can we fit so much action into one day? When will the character(s) sleep? Do they even need to sleep? How should my storyline be formatted? By hour? By minute?

Likewise, We might find ourselves reaching for a small corner of our life, such as our bedroom. What would you do all day if you were locked inside? Small spaces, small timeframes, don’t leave much room left for our thoughts. We begin to think that we either need to be super vivid, have fifteen different characters, or grow an extra arm just to start outlining the damn thing. To be honest to you and anyone else who might be reading this, I’ve done a story like this. It was short, under five-hundred words, but I did it. It was a story about my own struggles with my mother and our strained relationship. It was framed around me ending up where I am today, and mostly includes flashbacks to fictional things that happened to cause the rift in the first place, such as the main character having a girlfriend and then her brother finding out and telling their mother. While this never happened to me, just the mere thought of it possibly happening was enough to keep me from seeking out a same-sex partner in high school. I was rarely let out of the house growing up and had immense anxiety when driving, still do, so I definitely just holed up in my room for the entirety of forever. Had zero life, unlike now, well sorta.

What’s the opposite of an artform?

I’ll answer… an artform. Whether you’re creating a big world or one more confined, it’s still as much of an undertaking going from one to the other. Stories typically average a similar amount of characters. You don’t want too many or your audience won’t know who is who or forget someone who might be important later, but on the other hand, you want to make sure you have enough characters to make sure that the story is interesting and highlights different points of view. The only thing that changes when you go from a large world to a small one is that you focus more on the small intricate details, whereas when you go the reverse you tend to focus on more big picture ideas, focusing in on certain scenes that you’ll either return to later or that might be important to the overall plot. This way, once you’ve been somewhere once you don’t have to describe the way the broken down waterwheel outside looks like a hanging garden the next time you pay a visit. Whereas, if you’re just in an apartment over the span of a day the lighting might change, altering the scene entirely. I’ll say it again, there are many ways to look at your scenes, whether the time changes or the circumstances. One’s childhood home might look different after being gone for too long, or after having suddenly lost your parents.

It’s a big undertaking for a writer to build a world from scratch. Some only focus on a continent or two, while some might just focus on a town. The ones that create an entire planet are the ones to watch out for (that me). We worldbuilders might not go so intricately as to be able to describe the inner workings of every city and how it relates to the next, but I for one can point out where each of the races in my world lives and how they feel about each other. I can also point out the aftereffects of wars long fought and how the overall population of my world leaves much to be desired (two wars and a magical plague will do that to a world).

There are some genres of writing that allow the writer to describe what happened to a large area without expressing how everyone fared. Post-apocalypse writing like the Fallout franchise, for example, takes us through multiple different points in time, in multiple different locales, each with its own factions and complications along the way. We as viewers of the series know that the world went to shit and bombed the U.S. as well as other countries, even though the games mostly focus on U.S.-based locations. Through the different games, the story unfolds one area at a time, some remaining quite hospitable while others are nuclear wastelands home to roving packs of deathclaws.

Typically when we think of large worlds in world-building we think of a Dungeons & Dragons worthy retreat. A home away from home, with its own wars, cultures, and cuisines. However, like the rules of D&D, we often get boxed into what we can and cannot do. Ways around this include having a more open-ended magic system, or other realms that intercede with your own, thus providing your characters with new lands to conquer or explore.

In my own writing, I’ve created a whole world, Leera, for my series I’m working on currently. Over the span of the six or so books, I’m painstakingly planning to write in this world (and that’s just for this series, I’d love to write a prequel book and some other bits and bobs set in that world), I’ve devised the map for the world, thinking ahead to what structures I might outline now that my characters will visit later. Not everything has to be on there but it’s nice to start getting an idea of the stops your characters will make along their journey. And while this style of worldbuilding and writing is for me, at least for now, it might not be for everyone. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to writing, so don’t feel like you have to reinvent the moon every time you sit down to write. Just know that, whatever the scene, you’ll find your own way to bring it to life.

If you’d like more help or practice with writing I’ve created two rather open-ended practice prompts. For someone more interested in smaller world-building, or practice writing details, I’d go with №1, whereas if you’re more interested in building your own world or even town, №2 might be for you.

1. Write a story set only in your room. What would you do? It really doesn’t even have to be your room. It could be a small closet you used to pretend was a secret path to Narnia as a child or a side room that you really like the lighting of. Just let your creativity run wild as you write in your own space. (If you’re having trouble, at the very least have it start and end in that room.)
2. Take out a sheet of paper. Draw a large landmass in the middle. Perhaps sprinkle some little islands here and there. Next, design the continent. This can include names of kingdoms, or counties, townships, or sovereignties. It can be however you like. Think about how the topography might change as you reach the coast or move north, maybe there’s a large mountain smack dab in the middle of the whole thing. How do people get from one place to the other? Are they even people? Write down whatever comes to mind.

If you’re still having trouble, I’ve written a few other articles that might help. №1 is over writing believable characters (I also have a nice writing exercise at the end), while №2 is over creating a story by using the character-first vs world-first methods.

• How to Write Believable Characters
• World or Characters

This is a question that we as writers tend to find ourselves asking quite often. Which comes first? The characters or the world surrounding them? For many, they like to flesh out characters and then build the world around them piece by piece, while others prefer to figure out what kind of world they’d like to create and then add characters to fit the scene. While both approaches have their own ups and downs, it might be good to see what each approach has to offer before you decide which way to go. Even so, depending on the type of story you’re trying to create you might already have a sense for the scene or likewise the characters. Often we might find ourselves naturally drifting towards one approach or another. Now, this isn’t to say that the other approach has a lesser or greater value than the one you’re drawn to, on the contrary, I think that looking at your story through different lenses can help to enrich both the characters as well as the colorful background the world provides. We can simply think of these two approaches as a left or right-brained response to your natural creativity. Left being more rooted in the infrastructure and social constructs needed in the world you create versus right being rooted in the beauty and depth of your characters. The left helps to lay out the scene while the right helps to, well, write it. Without this dynamic, we wouldn’t know where to begin or even continue on past the first few pages of our stories. This doubly helps when it comes time for revisions, as you have the layout of your chapter or story already made, the left brain has done its job, so now the right brain can come in and make a right mess of things creatively and artistically so that everything shines as bright or as dark as you were hoping. While this might include multiple rounds of editing, the left, and right brain work in tandem for as long as there is still work to be done. But nevermind revising, for now, we first need to figure out how to start your story.

Character-first

When we put our characters first we end up focusing more on the enrichment of their backstory and their surroundings. The people close to them as well as the society they are a part of becomes a high priority when writing, often leaving the world feeling a bit grey and unfinished. While it is important to create a character with a rich background and possible backstory, it is also important to think about what kind of world they might find themselves in, as well as how they might tackle the challenges that face them on the road ahead. Not everyone reacts the same way in dangerous situations, one way to think of this is to ask yourself the question of fight or flight, which is their prerogative? Will they act tough and then run in the face of certain death or act shy but venture bravely on in spite of their timid nature?

One series that I feel exemplifies the character-first story is that of the Legend of Korra. In it, we are met with the newest Avatar. Because of this, the writers have to ask themselves, how has the world changed since Aang was the Avatar? In doing so they built a robust city filled with benders of all kinds, however bringing along its own set of problems and problem people. Likewise, we could say that the original series is the opposite, seemingly a world-first story, even showing that in the opening credits with the base information about the avatars and the fire nation attacking. The writers do incredible world-building as the story shows us these people, places, and scenes through the eyes of our protagonist, seemingly for the first time, or in a different era. When I say that the Legend of Korra is a character the first story is because we as fans already know much about the world of the benders, we know of some of the various animals and different nations and locations that were important to the original story, instead of traveling across the world we are bound to Korra, the newest avatar. She faces her own struggles and finds her own friends and allies along the way. The story is about her, not the world at large.

This is one of the strengths of a character-first approach. In doing so, the right brain helps to create wonderful characters, even when the location might be a bit dull, the content and dialogue between these characters are still engaging and help to develop the characters more throughout the story. One fault of this approach is that you might miss out on some of the worldbuilding that we saw in the original series of the Last Airbender.

If the story you are trying to create revolves around one character, heavily, and a small portion of the world at large, I would suggest this approach. To make up for a lack of a full world build, you instead focus on enriching the characters, focusing on developing them throughout the work of writing. You can have a lack of geography and still have a complete story. Examples of this might be a story set in a small town or over the course of a small increment of time. You might have a story that revolves around one conversation perhaps. You never know your limits when you leave the box unfinished, unclosed.

World-first

On the other hand, when creating an entire fantasy world, an undertaking that I have had the pleasure of undergoing for my own writing, you can quickly begin to see where the bounds of the so-called “box” lie. You can call this box your universe, your world, your dimension, or just another sandbox to test out new ideas. Whatever it is, you’ve given it definition. Weight and size. Your left brain has really gone and done most of the work, hasn’t it? I’m sure you probably started with a big sphere, or maybe a cube, and then everything just came more into focus over time as you added in more and more information and structure.

As stated before, worldbuilding doesn’t have to be this big project, it could be a small town with a mysterious past or a room that your character just woke up in. When I say world first, what I mean is working on the story itself first, and while this often involves fleshing out the world and all its rules and regulations, it also means figuring out a plot, a path for which your unnamed protagonist and co will follow until its end. In doing so, you begin to picture what might be the antagonizing force, or what town your main characters will be a part of. You can’t begin to finalize your planning details without thinking about your characters at least a little.

Avatar the Last Airbender is great at this because it almost seems as though the writers came up with the idea for the world and the elemental nations before figuring out the ins and out of Aang’s character. In doing so, they create the idea of the Avatar without fully developing Aang, who instead starts out as a playful and naive kid who just woke up from a hundred-year slumber. Throughout the course of the show, the writers use the places and people they meet along the way to help shape Aang’s character and ultimately his relationships with the other characters. One character leads to the next and that’s how you end up with Iroh being a father figure for a lot of young adults as they rewatch the show after years of not seeing it. Iroh’s characterization is so strong and moving because, in spite of the worldbuilding being as big of an undertaking as it was, the writers still found time to develop each character with intent and purpose over a long period of time. Through this, characters like Zuko get their redemption, not only in their own eyes but in the eyes of those around them as well.

A big upside to this approach is that you as the writer are more aware of the surroundings of your characters. The line; Little did they know that they would be wandering into badgerfox territory springs to mind, as only you, the writer, would know of such things. This presents greater opportunities for conflict as you can stage where the fighting will actually happen. For my own writing, if I were to stage a fight within the area where the Orcs live, it would be swampy and muddy, possibly giving way to some slip and slide action on the battlefield(Probably why only the meatheads live there). On the other hand, spending too much time painting the background and scenery can give way to your characters being drowned out by everything around them. Description is nice, but don’t forget to also describe your characters, what they’re feeling, doing, and even what they look like. Without at least some of this, we can’t fully paint the scene in our head, where we can better break it down into its parts and digest it as the readers we are.

In summary, the approach you take is one of your own, but no matter where you start it is important to think about and develop your world, whether it be big or small, as well as your characters. I would suggest starting with what you are most comfortable with and then working the other in, whether it be painting the world after or before the characters.

I wrote another article about writing believable characters if you’re someone who needs help in that area, and I will be writing an article about worldbuilding in the future. My goal is always to help writers however I can so feel free to use my articles as references for whenever you feel stuck or just need to get out of your own head.

How to Write Believable Characters

Your character’s history isn’t the only aspect of their personality and background to consider, however. Whilst the background is important, it is just as important to figure out things such as their medical history and likes vs dislikes. These little details can build upon the foundation that you’ve built and create an even greater character. After all, a story of a person’s life is stagnant, not changing, similar to that of a legend. Whereas, by adding in the seasonings of personality and quirks, you can create a character that is more engaging with your audience, and more alive. This level of character writing, following bouts of incremental character development strewn throughout your works of writing can often lead to your audience sometimes favoring these secondary characters over the main characters by miles. For example, I prefer learning more about Ron Weasley and his colorful band of family members than I do Harry. Although to be fair, Harry’s entire backstory is laid out for the audience before we even learn much about Ron’s, allowing for a richer character development of the Weasleys that is nicely paced out over the course of the Harry Potter series. A nice balance to this equation is to not reveal everything about your main character all at once, leave the reader wanting more, lure them in, and lead them towards the information they seek.

While there is a lot to consider when making a character, whether for writing or roleplaying reasons, it’s important to stand clear of a few pitfalls that authors, and even myself, find themselves falling into while writing. While they can be corrected through edits and research, I find it’s easier to be aware of potential problems ahead of time so that you can try to avoid them. The first of which, and my personal downfall, is writing characters that are too passive. Often in my own writing working on the first novel of my upcoming series, Banshee’s Scream, my editor and I found that too often I was writing Iona as a passive character. By writing passive characters, I simply mean characters that have things happen to them, they don’t seek out or strive for anything, in particular, they are simply a bystander in their own adventure. Of course in my own writing, I made the voices of Iona’s friends louder in order to cope with a passive character, but then is it really her story anymore? Iona, like your main character, needs to be at the forefront of most decisions. And if there is a disagreement between what characters want to do, allow it. It ultimately adds to the growth of your characters to not have them agree with each other all the time. So, as revisions are being made to my book, I strive to make Iona a more outspoken character and someone who deserves to be called the main character. If you find yourself in a similar situation with your own characters, take a step back and figure out what drives your character forward. In order to further make them more active in the story, give them choices to make, it shows that they are actively choosing which way the story will go instead of simply being a product of it.

The other main point that I wanted to make about what to steer clear from is actually quite simple. DO NOT make your characters based on one personality trait. Your minor characters are not just there to be props, they should have at least some input into the story as well, or else, what’s the point in including them at all? Having a “black friend” character trope is not being inclusive, rather they should have a personality, thoughts, and feelings beyond their skin color, THAT is inclusivity. For my own story, I have some characters that are LGBT, but I don’t stress it much in my first book as I would much like to expand more upon their sexual orientations and personal identities later as a way to further expand their character development. This is one way to tackle these complex ideas, but there are other ways of approaching them too. At the end of the day, it’s important for characters to be known not just for their identity, while that is an important part of them, it should be secondary to who they are as a person. One thing that I’d love to explore in book two, is Iona’s personal identity. As it stands she’s in a weird place, over the years she’s never been able to just be “herself”, it’s always been about survival, which is why she might seem shy at first because she keeps at a distance from people, something that I can personally relate to having grown up in a household in which I was never made to grow as a person, I was meant to walk down a certain path, one that I rejected. Through going on my own journey in college, meeting new people, and trying new things, I’ve finally been able to grow into a more well rounded and less closed off person.

Lastly, I’d just like to say, it’s ok to base characters off of you or someone you’d like to be. Just don’t get carried away. By carried away, I mean that no one is going to be perfect, not even yourself. It’s important to give your characters their own struggles and messes to clean up. Maybe they’re too weak and have to get stronger, struggle in school, or at home with their parents. Basically, don’t forget to NERF* your characters sometimes. Giving your characters a variety of experiences can only help them learn and grow.

*Nerf means to take down a notch, usually when a character is too overpowered(unless that’s the point of course).

Some things to consider:

• How do others view your character?
• How does your character view others?
• Does your character have any addictions?
• Do they deal with any lingering trauma? Physical or psychological?
• How does their family treat them? Around strangers? At home?
• How would you describe their clothing style?
• What’s their work ethic?
• Are they allergic to anything?
• What do they keep hidden from others? Or are they more of an open book?
• What are their hobbies?
• Their music style?
• Do they have any special talents?

While there are sure to be other things you can ask yourself, above is a nice list to start with that should work for most genres and time settings. If some do not work for your character, it might be fun to imagine if they did. In college, I’ve had a similar writing exercise and I remember having to make an email address for a fantasy character… sometimes you just have to imagine, even if it isn’t canon for the story you’re creating. Plus it might give you more ideas about the character’s personality.