Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is the process of creating a believable and immersive setting in which your story takes place. Sounds like hard work but actually, it can be incredibly rewarding and for some, it’s the best part of storytelling.
Whether you are creating a fictional town or an entirely new universe for a science-fiction epic, the world you build will serve as a foundation upon which the characters and the plot, develop. If you have control over the world, if you have a clear picture of how it’s laid out, it will be far easier for you to convey that to your audience.
A compelling world is more than just maps, however. Your world must also contain culture, technology, language and have a history of its own. You might be thinking that your story takes place in the existing world, why would you need to do all that work? Perhaps it does but you’re still going to need to think about the key locations in which the story is set. The influences upon those locations and even details about the season, weather and small things like how your characters move around those places.
Don’t be mistaken into thinking you must lay down pages and pages of text that describe the world in all its glory, a little description helps but much of what you need to share with the reader, can be achieved slowly, bit by bit and cleverly, through dialogue.
“The autumn winds made for a cold and blustery walk to the coffee shop. Clara was pleased it was no more than a stone’s throw from her apartment. The Roasted Bean served the best coffee and cakes in downtown Chicago, no question! Because her entire friends group lived close by, over the years, it had become their default place to meet.”
That one simple paragraph has, established the town, the season, the location, a place, a character, proximity to other characters and moved Clara from one place to another. Some things, however, might need more explanation, if your world contains a particular lore, legend or religion that has relevance to the story, you might have to deliver that to the reader more directly.