Effective World-building: Creating Immersive Settings for Your Stories

One of the biggest, and fun, challenges of writing fiction is offering readers an immersive experience. To do that involves creating believable, absorbing worlds and scenarios. Worldbuilding is especially important in fantasy and science fiction—two genres where readers’ engagement relies heavily on the author’s ability to pull their readers into their invented world through immersive settings. This is because these two genres quite often require wholesale worldbuilding—from the time when the story takes place, to the place, to the characteristics of the people and other creatures inhabiting the world, and as many details as the author feels would help animate their fictional world. 

Worldbuilding Defined

Worldbuilding is that aspect of the writing process where the author establishes where the story takes place—not just in terms of physical setting, but also factoring in economics, politics, culture, religion, magic, and any other aspects that help the author amplify themes, develop characters, or engage the reader’s imagination, or, simply, entertain. 

The world you build as an author, particularly as an author of fantasy or science fiction novels, should include the landscape that your characters will inhabit, complete with its climate, its flora and fauna, its infrastructure and architecture. It would include the unique physical attributes of your characters, since they are not likely going to be your standard human being. 

It would also encompass the nonphysical setting of your story—which is everything from societal norms and mores; rules and laws; hierarchy and the corresponding behavior, attitude, and overall psychological makeup of the characters; the personal circumstances of your characters; cultural practices; economic activities; and many more.

All together, these elements create a unique atmosphere for your story to unfold in a way that consistently engages your readers.

How to Create an Immersive World for Your Stories

Worldbuilding can be as complicated or as simple as your story needs it to be.

—Moriah Richard

How’s your worldbuilding coming along? The task could prove tricky, involving a considerable amount of work and attention to details, and any first-time or relatively new fantasy or science fiction author could use all the writing tips they can get. 

We have put together 10 writing tips to help you build the world your story needs:

1. Determine the type of world you want. 

To choose the world that’s appropriate for your novel, first, know your genre, and subgenre, if applicable. Working within these important parameters helps you make the right choices in terms of elements to include in your world, like your themes, the overall tone of your writing, and character development. 

For example, if you’re writing a dystopian novel, the world you need to create should include the following:

• oppressive rule
• technological control
• a social injustice
• environmental degradation 
• moral decay

Dystopian novels are a form of speculative fiction (a genre of fiction in which the setting is other than the real world, involving supernatural, futuristic, or other imagined elements). They depict a future where societies are in irrevocable, violent decline. 

The common themes explored in dystopian novels include anarchism, propaganda, oppression, loss of individuality, and mass poverty.

Meanwhile, if you’re writing a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, you’ll want to create a world that includes these elements: 

• inevitable deaths and sickness 
• chaos and anarchy
• unchecked criminal activities
• lack or absence of fair and honest leadership
• oppression
• technological control

In a post-apocalyptic novel, the world you create is one that remains after the end of the world. But first, determine how the world ended. End-of-the-world events can be anything from a nuclear war, to a plague, to natural or man-made disasters. 

To build your post-apocalyptic world, you’ll need to accurately depict the effects of your end-of-the-world event. What would that world be like? How would your characters survive and rebuild their lives and their world literally and figuratively? What would the post-apocalyptic world be like at the start of your novel versus at the end?

2. Find inspiration in the best works in your genre (and also in unlikely places). 

You’ll find plenty of inspiration from published works in your genre. Ideally, whatever your novel is about, you will have read a good number of, if not all, the major works in your genre (and subgenre, as the case may be). Otherwise, do yourself a huge favor and revisit as many relevant works as you can to find inspiration. Take note of how the influential authors in your genre approach their worldbuilding, savor your favorite details and brainstorm on how you can use them as catalysts for your worldbuilding process. 

Naturally, it’s poor taste to simply copy from another work. Be influenced by great ideas, but put your own stamp on the world you’re creating.  

Also, keep in mind that inspiration can come from anywhere, so don’t limit yourself. Find inspiration from other works, other disciplines, as well as from your interests. For example, you never know what your love of history and medieval art and architecture can add to your worldbuilding process. You’ll be able to add details to your story settings and character development simply from your knowledge and appreciation of various fields and disciplines.

3. Pick your starting point. 

Yes, some days the thought of creating a living, breathing fantasy world can be quite the challenge, but you have to start somewhere. It might as well be the aspect or the details that you can’t wait to explore and bring to life. It can be the physical traits of your characters, or the type of creatures/beings they are, their language, their culture, their superpowers (if you’re writing a fantasy novel), the features of the landscape and all the creatures that inhabit its land and waters, and so on. 

Nailing down one element of your worldbuilding will give you momentum. It will get your creative juices flowing and sharpen your problem-solving instincts the farther you get into the process.

4. Set the rules and lay down the laws. 

In a fantasy story’s world, life is lived according to a different set of rules and laws that don’t need to coincide with those in our world or country. Your characters will have their own unique existence, even though your themes will be easily relatable to your readers. 

It doesn’t matter whether your story takes place somewhere on earth or in another galaxy, in a magical world or in a dystopian world—at the heart of the circumstances that your characters find themselves in are universal messages that should resonate with your earthbound readers. 

If you’re creating a magical world, set boundaries in terms of who can do what, for how long, and to or with whom. If your characters are superheroes or mutants with unique powers, you’ll need to set down a clear definition of their powers. For example, is a specific character able to access their power anytime, anyplace? When is their power most potent, and when are they most vulnerable?

Boundaries and limitations help establish relatability and key parallel aspects with our real world and helps keep readers from getting disoriented.

5. Create a vivid environment. 

Your fantasy or science fiction world will to convey a sense of place. It will need its weather and climate? You will need to orient your readers in terms of your world’s relationship with or isolation from the rest of the world we know. And if it is does relate with the rest of the world, what influence does it have? 

What about its natural resources? What about the skills of its inhabitants? What are its inhabitants doing to this world? For science fiction, what’s the extent of the science beyond established scientific processes and advancements? How powerful is the technology? 

Once you have a vivid, well-constructed immersive environment, the characters that move through it and the actions that take place also become vivid and engaging.

6. Establish the culture. 

How do the inhabitants of your story’s world live their lives? What do they believe? Is there a religion, a god, or gods and deities? What do they hold sacred, and what do they condemn? What do they celebrate? Are their superstitions, rituals, festivals? How do all these factors dictate the inhabitants’ way of life, their attitudes, their actions, and their reactions to specific events and characters? 

A well- defined culture lends meaning to the existence of your characters and makes them three-dimensional beings, regardless of whether they have wires for fingers and live in a gray steel boxes or they are multicolored creatures who live in a pristine paradise.

7. Let your characters talk in their language. 

How the inhabitants in your invented world communicate is among the key factors in successful worldbuilding. This auditory and verbal element in your worldbuilding helps you provide your readers a multisensory experience while they are immersed in your story.

So: Do your characters have a common tongue? If you create a language for your story, have fun with it, so that in turn, your readers will get the full experience. Go beyond creating words. For example, why not invent common expressions (even idiomatic expressions) and interjections? 

How about linguistic taboos? Create your own version of the f-word and its ilk. Establishing what can and cannot be said in your invented world can help you create compelling character sketches and revealing scenarios and conflicts, which in turn may or may not influence your plot development.

Variety is also a great idea when it comes to language, as it multiple languages and dialects point to the diversity of your characters and the society they live in. In George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, the various tribes of Westeros speak different languages, and each language is linked to a culture with its individual rich history. 

In the 1980 post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker, which is set two millennia after a nuclear war destroyed much of the world and imagines the world of the distant future as inexplicably similar to the world of the distant past, author Russell Hoban employs a language that reflects his novel’s shattered landscape:

I stood there and holding ready with my spear. Nothing like it never happent befor but it wer like it all ways ben there happening. The dog getting bigger bigger unner the grey sky and me waiting with the spear.

Obviously the above possibilities will require a huge chunk of your time and effort, so be sure to commit to bringing this aspect of your worldbuilding to life.

8. Identify the history. 

Steep your world in history and give it a sense of having existed and evolved. A rich, well-imagined, even complex, history will in turn give your invented world “character”—give it its edges and dark corners to challenge the light. World wars, conquests, and natural disasters are a good place to start, and so are Chernobyl-level events. 

On the other hand, age-old conflicts and humorous cultural rivalries can add dimension to relationships among countries and individual characters. How about an antagonist driven by either religion, misguided politics, or just pure greed? 

Giving your world a detailed and complicated and/or complex backstory helps to give it an added dimension and make it more compelling.

9. Create an overview of character development. 

Keep in mind that your characters are a product of their environment even as they go on to influence it, whether by preserving it or by changing it, for better or worse. Be sure that the character development in your story is based on all the factors you establish—sociopolitical, cultural, economic, religious, geographical, etc. 

Tracking your character’s evolution against such factors as social status, marital status, psychological condition, and even the state of their health, is vital in effective worldbuilding. 

10. Stay on top of every aspect of your worldbuilding.

Avoid getting tangled in the small details. Brainstorming can be fun, especially when your imagination is fully engaged and you come up with one irresistible detail after another. Sure, take note of them, but also, be ruthless when it comes to dropping them as soon as they start to unnecessarily complicate things and mess with your plot, characterization, pacing, and perhaps even convolute your novel’s message and themes.

Set your priorities straight and pick only the aspects that will help build the world that your story needs in order to make the greatest possible impact. While you’ll want to invest ample time and effort into your worldbuilding, you will also not want to rob yourself of the time and focus you need to write your book. 

The Takeaway

Worldbuilding is both a fun and daunting aspect of writing a novel, especially for fantasy and science fiction novels. But done right, it’s a highly rewarding undertaking that can make or break your book. They key to effective worldbuilding is knowing firsthand what kind of world is required for the story you need to tell. From there, you can set about the worldbuilding process, aiming always to create an environment that is conducive for character and plot development. Adding the right kind of small details should be part of your to-do list, but make sure to stay in control and avoid getting disoriented by too many small details that ultimately distract from the meat and bones of your story.

Are you ready to start building and writing?