Worldbuilding is an integral part of your story creation, as I've already said.
This isn't going to just be a rehash of the last post, though. This post is more about visualizing your world, even creating aspects of it, so that you can get the details right. I wouldn't recommend doing this for the entire world (unless you are VERY bored or have a lot of time before you want to finish the novel, or something like that). Instead, do it for specific parts of the world, that the characters spend a lot of time in.
There are lots of different ways you could go about these visualizations, but one way I do it is with Minecraft. Minecraft is a powerful tool for creating the buildings in your tale, or even laying out a village (mostly because Minecraft can create said villages for you).
So far, I've build two castles in Minecraft (finished one and started a second), and find that building the castles can create bits of backstory and details about the history that you wouldn't necessarily know. For example, my second castle has gardens on top of each of the buildings. Water from the gardens drips through to the ballroom below, so I had to get creative to solve the problem. Now, instead of ignoring the problem, I've written it into the story that involves that castle, which can give the castle more depth, making it feel real and less like a set of stats on the paper.
You can also draw your settings, like I do with landscapes. I've drawn bio-domes out in space, on an undiscovered planet, because I was struggling to describe it with words. Drawing your landscapes can help you notice things that help you to describe them authentically for your readers.
Another thing that I do is create the entire world as a map. There is a map on my wall that I use as a setting for all my fantasy stories, simply because it took me half a year to get as far as I am (not actually finished) and because it helps me to measure distance and see where my characters are at any given moment. For a little bit of size context on the map, it's taller than me, and I'm five feet six inches. It's also wider than both my arms outstretched. I can't even hold it up anymore, so I just leave it taped to the wall. (Yes, taped. It's too heavy for things like sticky tack.)
If I could, I would post a walkthrough video of my first Minecraft castle, but I can't (the game glitched when I switched computers and I lost everything). Instead, I'll just post a cute picture of some goslings.
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| Unsplash User David Wirzba |
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