I will no longer be updating this guide. I'm leaving it up in case it will continue to be helpful to anyone in the future.
People have asked me writing tips, Wattpad tips, and whatever. This is some of that advice I give them. Keep in mind most of t...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Now let's talk about making up your world. This is probably what I get asked about a lot, how I come up with my worlds. The first time someone complimented me on my world building I was honestly flabbergasted. I never really felt like I did a good job at it. As strange as it sounds, even a completely made up world still requires research. Even fantasy settings come from some basis of reality. The trees, the people, the homes, they're all something that has some kind of real world influence. Again, a first draft can be a lot thinner, but by the final draft you need things ironed out and ready.
How much goes into your world building really depends on you. You can plan out everything from every little city, to every religion, to whatever. However, not all of it needs to actually be used. Some of it can be made up just for you and you alone to know.
If you're making a world up you need to know everything important and ask yourself lots of questions. Questions are the only real way to create a world from scratch. From the distance between towns, to the kinds of trees, down to where your characters live—you have to ask all of this. If you have magic in it, you need rules for the magic. Are these magic users friend or foe? Do they live among normal humans or are they all magic? Is the world modern or medieval? Do toiletries exist?
That last question seems silly, but it's an honest question my friend asked me when she was helping me go through Freelander's rough draft and figure out the flaws. There was a point when I have my characters traveling from one town to another by foot. She pointed out that, even if I don't have them using the toiletries, I need to make mention they have them in a bag. People need to pee. She also pointed out that the length of time they walked from one place to another was too short and unrealistic. I had to consider the elements and how they affect people walking. I did get one thing right in that Abby got sick during the journey.
Those are all things that go into world building. If you have drawing ability you might want to make a map of your world. Note rivers and towns on this map. Road conditions, weather patterns, all of it plays into your world. There's a great site called Inkarnate that allows you to make a map. At the end of this part I'll post a rough map I quickly made up for Draygon Inferno, which is the book I'm writing at the time of this part being made.
Originally for this part of my guide I talked about Freelander, but I think for this edited version I'm going to use Draygon Frost. In terms of rough drafts, it's still a rough draft but I think it's my more polished rough draft. Plus since I'm working on my sequel it's fresh in my mind.
With DF it's fairly easy, Siobhan spends all her times in the lowlands. Still, I needed to know about the world outside the lowlands because it exists. So I have the lowlands and the highlands on one continent. Between the two is the mountain ranges where the high mages live. Outside of that, I have Ardorn and the pirate nation of Corsard. At the time of writing that book I knew nothing about either the pirates or Ardorn because they didn't play a roll in the book, thus I stopped at just knowing they exist. Same with the highlands. I came up only with only what I needed to mention in DF.
