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Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world or setting, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Developing the world with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, culture and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers.
Worldbuilding often involves the Fantasy map, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology, and often if writing speculative fiction, different peoples. This may include social norms as well as invented languages (often called conlangs) for the world.The world could encompass different planets spanning vast distances of space or be limited in scope to a single small village. Worldbuilding exists in , tabletop role-playing games, and visual media such as film, , and comics.
Tolkien addressed the issue in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", where he stated that the "Secondary World" or "Sub-Creation" (the constructed world) is substantially different from the art of play-writing: "Very little about trees as trees can be got into a play." Constructed worlds may sometimes shift away from storytelling, narrative, characters and figures, and may explore "trees as trees" or aspects of the world in-and-of-themselves. Tolkien sought to make his constructed world seem real by paying careful attention to framing his world with narrators and versions of stories, like a real mythology.Letter #131 to Milton Waldman in
Later analysis of fantasy worlds in the 1960s contextualized them in the medium or the narrative of the works, offering an analysis of the stories in the world, but not the world itself. In the 2000s, worldbuilding in film has increased in popularity. When before, writers sought to create a character that could sustain multiple stories, now they create a world that can sustain multiple characters and stories.This is an example.
With the bottom-up approach, the designer focuses on a small part of the world needed for their purposes. This location is given considerable detail, such as local geography, culture, social structure, government, politics, commerce, and history. Prominent local individuals may be described, including their relationships to each other. The surrounding areas are then described in a lower level of detail, with description growing more general with increasing distance from the initial location. The designer can subsequently enhance the description of other areas in the world. For example, an author may create fictional currencies and refer to to add detail to their world. Terry Pratchett says "You had to start wondering how the fresh water got in and the sewage got out... World building from the bottom up, to use a happy phrase, is more fruitful than world building from top-down."
This approach provides for almost immediate applicability of the setting, with details pertinent to a certain story or situation. The approach can yield a world plagued with Consistency, however. By combining the top-down and bottom-up approaches, a designer can enjoy the benefits of both. This is very hard to accomplish, however, because the need to start from both sides creates twice as much work, which may delay the desired product.
Despite requiring considerable work to develop enough detail for a setting to be useful, not every aspect of a setting can be explored, and instead an approach called inferred worldbuilding is often used. Inferred worldbuilding is when the author provides enough detail about the various parts of a setting that readers can extrapolate on what is written to come to their own conclusions regarding specific details that were not provided. This is especially useful for roleplaying game settings, as individual games may require certain details to be created on a case-by-case basis for the RPG's story to function.
An uninhabited world can be useful for certain purposes, especially in science fiction, but the majority of constructed worlds have one or more Sapience species. These species can have constructed cultures and constructed languages. Designers in hard science fiction may design flora and fauna towards the end of the worldbuilding process, thus creating lifeforms with environmental adaptations to scientifically novel situations.
Some fictional worlds modify the real-world Physical law; faster-than-light travel is a common factor in much science fiction. Worldbuilding may combine physics and magic, such as in the Dark Tower series and the Star Wars franchise. One subgenre of science fiction, mundane science fiction, calls for writers to depict only scientifically plausible technology; as such, fictional faster-than-light travel is not depicted in these works.
Fantasy worlds can also involve unique cosmologies. In Dungeons & Dragons, the physical world is referred to as the Prime Material Plane, but other planes of existence devoted to moral or elemental concepts are available for play, such as the Spelljammer setting, which provides an entirely novel fantasy astrophysical system. Some fantasy worlds feature religions. The Elder Scrolls series, for example, contains a variety of religions practiced by its world's various races. The world of the 2000 video game Summoner has a well-developed cosmology, including a creation myth.
The physical geography of a fictional world is important in designing weather patterns and such as , wetlands, , and . These physical features also affect the growth and interaction of the various societies, such as the establishment of and locations of important cities.
Some software programs can create random terrain using fractal algorithms. Sophisticated programs can apply geologic effects such as Tectonics plate movement and erosion; the resulting world can be rendered in great detail, providing a degree of realism to the result.
Creating a cohesive alien culture can be a distinct challenge. Some designers have also looked to human civilizations for inspiration in doing so, such as Star Treks , whose society resembles that of ancient Rome. The fictional world's history can explain past and present relationships between different societies, which can introduce a story's action. A past war, for example, functions as a key plot point in the Shannara and Belgariad series.
Constructed worlds are not always limited to one type of story. Lawrence Watt-Evans, Steven Brust and Robert Kurvitz created Ethshar, Dragaera, and Disco Elysium respectively, for role-playing games before using them as settings for novels. M. A. R. Barker originally designed Tékumel well before the advent of role-playing games, but many , including Barker himself, have used it as a setting for such games.
A shared universe is a fictional universe that can be used by different authors. Examples of shared universes include the Star Wars expanded universe, the Arrowverse and developed specifically for role-playing games. One of the oldest of these is Oerth, developed for the Dungeons & Dragons' Greyhawk setting. Forgotten Realms is another such D&D setting, originally a homebrew campaign world by Ed Greenwood.
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