Building a world

Worldbuilding in some sense is a requirement for all writers. The people and places in fiction may have analogs in real life, but a writer in the U.S. cannot depend on every reader (or even most readers) being familiar with the Lincoln Park area of Chicago or the lower east side of Manhattan, much less the streets of Bombay or London or Ladysmith. The writer therefore has to recreate the real place in her fiction, choosing key details that evoke or imply a raft of other things that add up to ...