In a world of your own: how to set the scene for great fiction

Every time you read a book, you step inside a whole new world – one the writer has invented, and you get to explore. But how do they do it? How do they create a whole new place? And could you do it?

Creating a new world might sound a bit overwhelming, but I’m going to share some steps that always help me get started.

There are two parts to what writers call “worldbuilding” – creating your world and then telling the reader about it in a way they’ll find interesting.

Q: WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT YOUR WORLD?

When it comes to creating your world, instead of trying to do everything at once, just pick one thing that’s different about it, and think about all the ways that would affect the world.

It could be anything: maybe there’s magic in your world, or maybe it snows every single day of the year, or maybe some people can shapeshift into magical creatures. That last one is an example from my own book, Ice Wolves.

We’re living in an example of this technique right now: one difference between the world today and the world last year is that now there’s a virus in it. What kind of difference has that made? Everything from working and learning at home, to changing how we travel and where we travel, how we see our friends, how many good Zoom backgrounds we have, the list goes on and on. Changing one thing can make the world feel different.

When I was writing Ice Wolves, once I decided that some people could shapeshift into wolves or dragons – and that magic existed in their world – I had to think about all the ways that would change things compared to our own world.

Do they have magical inventions that would make life easier? Does everyone want to be a wolf or a dragon? Do the humans, wolves and dragons all get along? (Hint: they don’t!)

The big advantage of building your world like this is that all the things you’re changing link together and make sense, so the world feels real to readers.

TRY THIS EXERCISE:

Imagine that in the place your story is set, it snows every single day of the year. What kinds of changes would that create in your world? How would they travel, since it would be too cold to walk? You’d have to drive, and if parents didn’t want to drive their kids everywhere, maybe there’d be self-driving snowmobiles? What else can you imagine?

Q: HOW CAN YOU SHOW THIS DIFFERENCE?

Once you’ve figured out what’s different about your world, the next challenge is to show it. You don’t want to just tell your reader giant chunks of information, that’s boring!

And you don’t want to be unrealistic: when you get in the car to go somewhere, you never think “Once upon a time I would have made this journey in a horse and carriage, but these days modern technology exists, so I go in a car.” Or at least, you probably don’t think it very often. So your characters wouldn’t think obvious things about their world either.

What can you do instead? You let your reader see what the characters think is strange, and what they take for granted.

For example, in Ice Wolves, Anders hears a rumour early on that a dragon has been seen over the city. He’s worried by this, and a little scared, but what worries him is that the dragon was over the city. It’s not weird to him that a dragon exists, so we know straight away that dragons are a part of this world, but they don’t usually come near the big city.

TRY THIS EXERCISE:

Write a few sentences set in your world that’s full of snow. Your characters are on their way to school: what do they do, and what do they take for granted that we might think is unusual?

These are the most important things I think about when I’m worldbuilding – what’s one thing that’s different from our world, what ripple effects would it cause, and what would my characters think was normal?

I hope it helps your writing! If you’d like to learn even more about worldbuilding, you can listen to my podcast, Amie Kaufman on Writing, which has lots of tips on worldbuilding in episodes two and three.

Amie Kaufman is a New York Times and internationally best-selling author of young adult and middle grade fiction. Ice Wolves is her first solo novel, and her favourite part of the writing process was taking howling lessons from a wolf expert. The final book in her Elementals trilogy, Battle Born, is in stores now.