Worlds Within Words: A Structural World-Building Exercise

We’re getting ready for Camp NaNoWriMo next week! Camp is a great way to expand your writing style or work on a different type of project than you normally do. Today, author, educator, and participant Tilia Klebenov Jacobs shares a fun technique to help the worlds that you create come alive:

World-building is the process of constructing an imaginary world, sometimes associated with an entire fictional universe.

In terms of technique, it is sufficiently de rigueur to merit its own joke in La La Land, where a blowhard screenwriter vaunts his supposed world-building prowess as Emma Stone backs politely away. But there’s a reason the term has been around for over half a century: unless your fictional world feels real, the story fails. And by real I do not mean that it cannot contain, for example, trolls, light sabers, or plot devices hinging on magic and/or time travel. It can have all of this and more; but it must feel authentic.

World-building begets authenticity because it combines character and setting to create a believable context for your plot. And although the term is most often associated with fantasy and science fiction (such as Tolkien and Star Wars), the fact is that any writer of fiction needs to master this technique.

The best fictional worlds combine plot, character, and setting in such a way as to make them inextricable from one another. If you, the author, can change the setting without altering the characters, something is amiss. If you can subtract a character from your plot without damaging it, the plot needs work. (Of course, maybe what it needs is to get rid of that character, in which case, congratulations!) But when you combine these three elements in perfect proportion to one another, you have built a convincing world.

With that in mind, I give you a simple world-building exercise that works with pretty much any story in any genre:

Think of a room or other space where a character in your story spends time. The space need not appear in the story; this is primarily for your edification. The easiest option is the character’s bedroom, but his or her jail cell, sailboat, or opium den will also suffice.
Write the numbers one through ten on a piece of paper. Or type them onto your screen of choice.
List ten objects that are in that space. Give yourself five minutes max. Three is better.
One of the objects is something the character does not want anyone else to see.
Now write a half-page description of the space containing these items. Be sure to include plenty of detail, such as the color of the walls, what it smells like, etc.

Chances are that when you are done, you will know more about your character than you did before you started.You will see a space that he or she has crafted, or at the very least hangs out in. You will know what is important to that person, especially because of that one object that the character doesn’t want anyone to see. (Where is it hidden? How did it get there?)

If that isn’t enough, you can add a few more variables: one of the items was a gift. One is the character’s favorite food. One belongs to the protagonist’s antagonist. And so-forth.

For the best results, think of this not necessarily as something you will include in the body of your story (though if it fits there, by all means use it). Instead, consider it scaffolding or framework. When a building is complete, we don’t see the beams holding it up, but they’re certainly there.

This exercise may provide you with a scintillating description of your sexy protagonist’s boudoir, or it may give you information that only you, the author, know or need to know. But the world you build with that knowledge will feel more real. That’s world-building: the creation of a setting that contains more than we can see. The beams are in place, the world is secure. And all because of ten objects in a room we never even see.

Tilia Klebenov Jacobs is an award-winning author who lives near Boston. She writes fiction and memoir. Her newest novel, Second Helpings at the Serve You Right Café, is available at Amazon.com and independent bookstores. Her debut novel, Wrong Place, Wrong Time , won the Beverly Hills Book Award for Best Thriller. A graduate of Oberlin College and Harvard Divinity School, Tilia has also taught middle school, high school, and college, as well as participating as an educator for a writing program for prisons. Visit her website at http://www.tiliaklebenovjacobs.com/ .

Top photo by Flickr user Shereen M.