/lit/ - Literature

Don't worldbuild. Make things up as the story goes, or as you take down notes for it. Only worry about shit that has a direct impact in the book's events: no need to know about some shit going on in the other side of the world, save maybe as a rumor they might hear.

>>11579170
Take a page from THIS.

Taxes

Don't just reproduce stereotypes.

Climate. Cultural extraversion doesn't seem to exist without lots of sunlight. Rice cultivation tends to result in big bureaucracies and despotism because it needs so much central management. Family types result in different political and economic types (e.g. the Hajnal line) and inheritance has a big political influence (the children of a French aristocrat were all aristocrats, but in England only the heir was due to become one on inheritance; this meant younger sons of aristocrats often ended up marrying rich commoners, while the French tended to be less integrated and eminently more beheadable, at least as far as rich commoners were concerned.)

Oh, and also keep in mind that fantasy readers don't care about anything I've just mentioned.

The YouTube channel Artifaxian actually produces decent scientifically-backed videos about worldbuilding. You should check out some of his videos. I’d also encourage you to stray from the generic LotR type or the Star Wars/Dune type. Try to think about why life works the way it is, about how climates actually work depending on physical facts, and how climate and geography influences technology and culture. He also has some good language based stuff if you want to go that route too, but there is much better content about linguistics like NativLang.
Make sure that your worlds don’t have only one biome, like it’s all 100% desert. First off, it’s hard to imagine life even existing without producers like plants. Second off, the only planet with life we know of (our own) has multiple climates that dynamically influence each other. Take inspiration from your own planet (and maybe look a bit into environmental science, if you are interested in STEM).

>>11579170
Read history books

>>11579170
>Worldbuilding
Never going to make it.

>>11579170
literally just generate a new world in Dwarf Fortress

>>11579234
Not OP but thank you. My searching is calling this "cross-cultural psychology."

https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/more-on-farming-and-inheritance-systems-part-i-iq/

Do you remember where you learned the part about integration with commoners?

TM: It’s a common thing to video games and science fiction novels, right? This idea of world building?

JK: Right, and it used to be something that mainstream literary writers did all the time. It’s fallen out of fashion, but Salinger, Updike, and Vonnegut did it. When you think about works that have become inescapable fixtures of the post-war 20th century, so many of them featured reoccurring characters. So it seems to me that there’s something worthwhile that we can return to, and I don’t know why it’s fallen out of favor.

TM: I’ve been thinking about Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, which is very entertaining for a novel about slavery and Jim Crow. But part of what makes the book so riveting is that every chapter takes you to a new decade and a new character, but every chapter is rooted in a world that she’s built, so that past characters continue to appear. That episodic dynamic is intriguing, and it’s something that’s key to the American literary heritage.

JK: Yeah, and it’s very odd that it’s receded into genre fiction. It really used to be a fixture of the culture.

https://themillions.com/2017/05/tk-on-jarett-kobeks-soft-cuddly.html

>>11579214
kek

>>11579214
this is very accurate lol

>>11579170
Go to the /tg/. We have worldbuilding threads pretty regularly.

If you're writing the kind of story where you need to "worldbuild" then you're writing genre fiction, either science fiction or fantasy. Those are overworked fields. It's already been done before. You're already losing points for unoriginality. My advice is to first do a genre survey of the subgenre you want to write in. Read some of the works, at least the important ones, and some of the latest major releases. Then go on TVtropes and find a list of the fantasy/sci fi tropes in line with what kind of work you want to write, both the overall genre and the subgenre, as well as the deconstructions and subversions of those tropes. Then go down the list and item by item think up your own original deconstructions or subversions of each trope, or an original reconstruction if the trope has already been deconstructed in a well-known work. Then start putting the pieces together into your world. Be aware that you're writing to a shopworn tradition and strive to be original. Some subgenres (say, superheroes) have already been put through the above process and have been worked utterly to death, though, and are best avoided altogether.

>>11579170
Worldbuild only as necessary. If you worldbuild too much, you'll end up killing the story in the cradle.

For example, instead of mapping out the history of every single town on the continent, only make up the history of each town as you go along. That way, when it's convenient for a character/event to happen at a certain place, you can create a history that perfectly fits your needs.

You could, of course, make it beforehand and then retcon later, but this suffers from two disadvantages: one, it's a waste of time and two, it stifles creativity. Especially the latter, having a concrete idea in mind already makes it harder to come up with fresh ideas.

>>11579214
>tfw you've used a few of those cliches in your dnd campaigns
Feels bad man

>>11579170
That map is retarded, the mountains on the Western continent would cause a rain shadow effect in the central valley. The "Gardens of Lorlen" would be a goddamn desert. Who was the fucking geophysical retard who drew this?

>>11581154
>And his name? J.R.R. Tolkien

>>11581171
J R. R. "doesn't even know that air masses cool to their dewpoint and lose moisture when passing over mountains" Tolkien. What a hack

>>11579214
Jesus fucking christ. This is obviously in the northern hemisphere because of the frozen top half, and yet "the maelstrom" is rotating clockwise. What the fuck???

>>11581154
>>11581173
Is there like an article about these geographical stuff in worldbuilding?

>>11579227
Underrated

>>11580341
Unironically this.

>>11579170
>What should I keep in mind when worldbuilding for my story?
That the story is more important than the world-building.

>>11581196
If someone tries to assert that a fantasy book sucks because um ackshually those mountains would cause rain shadow, they're a fucking idiot. Instead of editing your book to be as geophysically sound as possible, you should spit on their face.

>>11579170
Worldbuilding is autistic clutter that only gets in the way of the story.

Language is the most important part of mythology.

>>11579214
>Yggdraseal

>>11581171
Tolkien didn't make this map. And it's wrong. The Halls of Mandos are on the north coast, not the west coast, for instance. I think the Pelori Mountains are only described as being on the east and north coasts.

>>11581171
Pelori is only described as being on the east coast, not all around. Tolkien didn't make this map. And it looks like there's multiple mistakes. The Halls of Mandos are on the northern shore, not the western shore, for instance.

>>11579170
This map is false. Tolkien’s world looks different.

>>11579170
Keep in mind you have to have to make languages.

>>11580596
reoccurring characters doesn’t evidence autistic “worldbuilding”

>>11580283
>>11581603
this
here's a start
>The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
>Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
>Europe by Norman Davies
>Parallel Lives
>The Kingdom of the Hittites
>Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800
>Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe
>The Great Divide: History and Human Nature in the Old World and the New
>The World of Achaemenid Persia: The Diversity of Ancient Iran
>The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions

>>11579170
>>11579214

>>11579170
World building benefits greatly from a strong subtractive process. You should go through many phases of writing and then erasing history that doesn't fit (also including historical events that are too important - don't be afraid to kill your darlings). Consider that a world has a feeling to it and the majority of events and aspects that contribute to that feeling will likely not contribute to the narrative you're writing. Read some early mythology and get a feeling for how the real world is warped to create a convincing fantasy world that's also entertaining to read. My suggestion (also the book that inspired Tolkien) is the Mabinogion - early Welsh myth. You'll find that the Silmarillion is basically a shallow copy of the Mabinogion with a creation myth at the start.

>>11581738
It shows entire world in the ages before Lord of the Rings takes place. The map from the Lord of the Rings is in the center-right of the map to the right of the ship.

>>11579170
Show don't tell.

Ignore Tolkien and all other fantasy writers, because all of them are bad at worldbuilding. Instead, read everything by Faulkner and Hardy and learn how they built Yoknapatawpha County and Wessex, which is worldbuilding done right

The fictional world in your story should exist only to supplement and enhance the main plot itself and its characters and themes.