26: how do you go about worldbuilding?
Mostly I go “hey, this sounds like it would be neat” and then I go from there. Like, for space I would go “y’know what’s neat? a planet where the entire forest is luminous and glows from the rumble of lightning strikes” and then make a whole planet where that’s A Thing
But mostly I go for simple, small stuff. What’s a common phrase people say in real life, and then figure out what the equivalent is in the world you’re making. Idioms are a delight and can really enrich the world.
Food! Culture is food and food is culture and giving a place unique food can go far in worldbuilding. What they eat and what they grow and if they trade food for different food (or trade something else for food) can create a culture.
Really simple stuff is what goes the furthest, like taking a world of magic and saying “alright, so everyone has flying brooms. How do they keep people from colliding in the air on the way to the market” and from there comes lanes for broomsticks and flying carpets.
Mainly I take a concept and ask how this would change things, or what people would do growing up around them. Then there’s characters and learning how to live in a city that’s built upside down and how they travel and what the city itself looks like.
A dangerous rabbit hole is “how would this work” because then that can lead into incredibly specific details that could bog down the whole story.
Simplicity! Simplicity is key! If you have ten things about the world you’ve made then remember to space them out for proper use and explanation. Leaving the audience wanting more is about wanting more of that world, not about wanting the answers to questions and implications that were never addressed.
Which leads me to... implications! Even the most throwaway line can have tons of implications about the world, and this is the kind of thing that you can either plan in advance (like implications that lead into the grand plot twist or future plot point) or can be edited out in a later draft (when you’ve figured things out and decided that it’s not going to be explored).
