World Building – It’s History

Stop groaning, it’s fun! Think about it. If you are writing in either Science Fiction or Fantasy genres, you get to write your own history.

Do you want a planet to be explored that had some catastrophic geological event in it’s past that wiped out nearly all life? You can do that. Whatever sort of world you can imagine, with whatever sort of society you wish to populate it with, is yours for the writing. Please do take the time to think through the basics of how the past shaped the present. Even if very little of this ever gets into your book, you need to have a good feel for what happened in the past in order to make the present you are writing come alive. It’s a fundamental part of world building. It may be extremely simplified in short fiction, with little more than a general idea of the past that relates to your story, but it still needs to be in your head.

Over time, I have developed a sense of what happened in Sorth’s past, to where I know it almost as well as our own ancient history. Very little of that has come out in the first trilogy, but the casual remarks of the characters let the reader know there is depth and richness to the world and this makes it feel real.

As characters need to be round and multifaceted, so do our worlds and their societies. Do all Irishmen just love whiskey and a good fight? Of course not! They love horses too I’m of Irish ancestry, so I can get away with saying that, I think. The point is, there is a lot more to the Irish culture and knowing part of what made them who they are would be important to writing about them. You need to know your fictional societies in the same way or you get what amounts to flat, stereotyped cultures.

The same thing may be true for the physical properties of the world you write about. It’s current physical characteristics are certainly important and it’s past may be too.