Worldbuilding

Who else is an obsessive world-builder? To make what I mean more clear...

I've spent the past three hours making lists of characters, outlining all of the members of each of the four Greater Houses and the two Lesser Houses, I've planned how the judicial system works and I have a system of government and I've been working on how magic works and what types of magic there are and I just started work on a cast list. Just in case I need random characters for something. I have people from every corner of society on it - main characters, antagonists, general public, high society, famous people, government workers - you name it, it's there.

After this I think I'm going to, er, work out how the school system works. [the school isn't even in the book ; ; it might be mentioned about once]

And then after that I'm going to write a brief history of magical Britain starting with 2000 BC.

So, uh, anyone else obsessive about world building?

*raises hand*

I normally don't do it for no reason at all; it's usually excessive preparation for a story I intend to write and then it dies and so all the worldstuff is relegated to "just in case". Although lately I have been toying with the idea of creating a world or two for the hell of it as an exercise. Since, you know, I can never start/finish any actual stories anyway, so why bother for now?

But yeah, I've made up a language or two (all made of fail, of course, and ripping off English grammar and sentence structure because I am lazy), huge histories, mythology, legends, backstory... jesus christ I even write myself freaking dictionaries detailing every tiny little aspect of Whateverworld. One time I was really bored and started a book of proverbs and wisdom from the line of wise men in this one little village and... yeah. It's not pretty.

's fun though. :D

I thought I was.

Until I read this thread.

Kratos Aurion said:

*raises hand*

I normally don't do it for no reason at all; it's usually excessive preparation for a story I intend to write and then it dies and so all the worldstuff is relegated to "just in case". Although lately I have been toying with the idea of creating a world or two for the hell of it as an exercise. Since, you know, I can never start/finish any actual stories anyway, so why bother for now?

But yeah, I've made up a language or two (all made of fail, of course, and ripping off English grammar and sentence structure because I am lazy), huge histories, mythology, legends, backstory... jesus christ I even write myself freaking dictionaries detailing every tiny little aspect of Whateverworld. One time I was really bored and started a book of proverbs and wisdom from the line of wise men in this one little village and... yeah. It's not pretty.

's fun though. :D

Click to expand...

Oh God I've done that last bit so many times. It's ridiculous. I can spend hours - literally hours - doing this sort of stuff. I think I need some myths and stories and legends for this world, hm. and I've got the backstory already.

Damn I'm never going to relearn how to conjugate French verbs. :(

Huh. You two are making me want to try (Aaaand inevitably fail) to do that stuff with one of my older worlds. And so maybe I shall.

I will plan character's special attacks and transformations (if magical girl-esque powers are involved) and the characters themselves.

Peh, worldbuilding.

I usually have a similar level of intensity with characters' psychological relationships with themselves and their surrounding characters. My writing is usually much more character-focused than setting-focused, though.

It depends, really. The worldbuilding I've done for Morphic is a lot more extensive than in The Quest for the Legends, for instance, and in this fantasy story I'm writing, I'm also doing a lot of worldbuilding. I've never felt the need to write the history of the world or anything, but I did make up a school system and Pokémon League system for the Morphicverse even though I'm not sure they'll ever be of much importance in that story. (In the fantasy, I'm mostly making up animal species right now.)

Usually I feel like I need to do this. My latest story-in-progress (not Wipeout) takes place in the middle of a huge world war between six different races of fantasy animals. So I felt like I had to do a lot of world-building (I like that term you gave it! =D) before I could start writing, because it seemed to fall apart there in the previous versions.

A lot of my stories take place in fantasy worlds, so I do feel the need to obsessively plan the world. Though it doesn't take long for me to think, "Okay, that's enough to write the story, let's move on."

The story I posted here, Wipeout, is a fantasy world but it's very character-based, and the world, while different from ours, is going to be fairly static. So I don't feel the need to do any world-building here, except for what I need to write the story.

I would like to say I obsess over the state of my worlds too much, but after reading this I've been feeling that there's a fair amount of stuff that I have yet to go into full detail with (making a definitive form of government, for one.) Still, this subject is one that I've been trying to pay particularly apt attention to in my writing, given that in original worlds the entire system must be thoroughly explained in order for the readers to have the slightest clue as to what's going on. Although by now I'm starting to think that I spend far too much time developing, even without the background information, as I've spent noticeably more effort writing synopsis's and other kinds of planning than I have on the actual stories.

I've done it, mostly without trying to.
I did it to a book I'm writing (that's still a mess of jumbled ideas, so it's not really a book) that takes place in a world that I now have a complete government, a money system, about a thousand years of history, and basic (badly drawn) maps for. And I haven't even actually started it yet. (for five years now)

I've also tried to make a language for it, but I just can't seem to make it work. Each time I try I do a little better though, so I suppos I'll just keep trying.

Yes, I certainly do. I started writing a novel a few months ago after an awesome idea started residing in my head and a lot of things seemed to build up on that idea. I have a thirty paged Microsoft Word document filled with character profiles and another document which has facts about people and the way certain things work within the book. The likeliness of most of what I've written down actually reaching the final draft is slim but it's still good to be organised and have a background story. I've actually worked on the minor details harder than I have on the story itself, now that I think about it.

But yeah, I do worldbuilding and I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

I'm probably going to do something huge involving my NaNo for this year because there's still a month to wait. I doubt I'll go into such vast detail like the government and social rankings but I'm working on a backstory to the fantasy to give my main characters motivation and such.
I might make a language, if not for the novel, then for the hell of it.
The religion that my novel's storyline is based on will likely get a huge background and such so I don't fail in the process of writing.

I wish I could do this stuff. I wish I was less lazy. :(