When making a story of your own, there are many things to consider. What are the main character’s motives? Who is the villain? What type of genre do I want this to be? One key concept, though that’s probably the most important, is world building and how much of it you want.
You can make a story solely focused on the characters and explain very little about the world itself, or you can make the world expansive, giving the reader details about events, people and places within the world to make them feel immersed into the world itself.
World building is so fun to do, as it allows for the writer to come up with so many different ideas for a singular story, rather than focusing it solely on one aspect. It broadens the mind in a sense, allowing the brain’s creativity to flow. There are so many possibilities for things to make when creating a world. Despite all this though, it isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do. There are still some things to keep in mind when creating a world.
When creating a world, you need to make sure that the world remains consistent. This way there aren’t any contradictions within the world, unless said contradictions are purposeful. For example, if you establish that the world is apocalyptic and that people have slowly started to become crazy, it wouldn’t make sense to have it suddenly be a buddy cop story.
Another thing with world building is to maintain its comprehensibility. Since world building allows for so many possibilities, it is often that we as writers might over explain the world to the point that it is too difficult to even comprehend and can even cause the viewer to lose sense of the plot possibly due to over explanations of the world. It is best to explain the basics, and if you wish to explain more about your world then show it through action rather than explanation.
One suggestion I can give with world building is to take a look at media that has perfected world building and how they did it so well. Some of the best examples that come to mind for me are things like “One Piece” and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom. Both of these have very large worlds that manage to blend perfectly into their respective stories.
One way that they accomplish this is that these two stories delve into not just the story of our main cast, but also the stories of those that they meet.
For example, in “One Piece” there are many side characters who, despite not being a part of the main cast, have been shown to have very tragic backstories that relate to the current state of the world. By connecting the history of these characters to the world itself, as well as to the protagonist’s own challenge, it allows for the world of the story to be expanded in such a way that doesn’t result in it losing it’s own focus from the main story.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom does this as well, but in a different way. Due to it being a game, this becomes optional. It allows the player to discover and learn about the world at their own pace and in whatever way they wish too. It offers up an expansive world to the player that the player can only truly discover if they choose to seek it out. Through its main game though, it still manages to give its player enough information to still understand the basics.
Another way to help build a world is to show the world through multiple different views. If you are seeing a world from the eyes of only one person, then it results in the view becoming biased in a sense. Through seeing it with multiple eyes, it provides the viewer with a larger and more expansive view on the world itself.
“One Piece” also does a great job of demonstrating this idea. Despite Luffy being the main character, he is not the only character we follow throughout the story. Many times we get to see the world through the eyes of citizens, members of the World Government and even Revolutionary Army members.
These moments allow the reader to gain a better view of the world itself and each of their opinions on the current status of the world. Without these moments, many extremely important details about the world currently unknown to Luffy and his crew would be lost to us readers and/or viewers. There is so much consistently going on within the world of “One Piece” that ties to the main story that, without these little details, it wouldn’t be as intriguing as a result.
Despite how much fun and interesting world building can be, it is still a difficult task that needs care put into it in order for it to truly shine. Never be afraid to look towards existing media for inspiration on how to craft a world for your story. Inspiration is a very important tool.