The Complete Art of World Building

The Art of World Building #1-3

by Randy Ellefson

Creating a unique, immersive setting one world at a time A guide for authors, gamers, and hobbyists The Complete Art of World Building brings together volumes 1-3 in The Art of World Building series. This how-to guide will make readers a master of inventing imaginary worlds and help a setting stand out from the multitude of fantasy and SF worlds audiences see. Creating Life (#1) teaches readers how to create gods, species/races, plants, animals, monsters, world figures, and even undead. Creating Places (#2) teaches how to create planets, moons, continents, land features, bodies of water, sovereign powers, settlements, interesting locales, and maps. Learn the different government types, how climate impacts vegetation, and consistently calculate how long it takes to travel by horse, wagon, sailing vessels, dragon, or in space. Cultures and Beyond (#3) teaches how to create cultures, organizations, armed forces, religions, the supernatural, magic systems, technological and supernatural items, languages, names, and various systems our world will have, from health, educational, legal, and commerce, to information systems. The series draws on author Randy Ellefson's quarter century of world building experience and will quickly turn a beginner into an expert, making a time-consuming project more fun, easier, and faster. Ellefson shares his experiences, lessons learned, and insights, including how much of your creations can realistically be mentioned during storytelling, how far creators should go, and what the benefits/risks to each approach might be. Elevate your work above the competition. Build better, faster.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

802 pages, Paperback

Published November 17, 2020

Reviews

[Cat Bowser · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, worldbuilding is one of my favorite aspects of a book. I’m always on the lookout for new techniques or ideas to help build your skills.

This book is a great tool if you’re new to worldbuilding. It’s fairly comprehensive and not only explores areas that most craft books don’t dive into but also talks about how different aspects of world building influence one another. This is something that isn’t usually given much insight but is vital to understand.

A lot of this book provides you space to make your own notes which is handy as a paperback but not so much as an ebook. Definitely more worth your money as a tangible book.

Overall, a great resource especially for newcomers but absolutely go for the tangible book as opposed to the electronic to really get your money’s worth

[Madi Taskett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is thicc. A veritable textbook for worldbuilding. Pretty much any question I have about worldbuilding for book writing is answered here. I like that the author poses questions I would have never considered, but make a difference in good novel writing. For example, in the 'famous figures' section, he asks what the public may have gotten wrong about a villain. Details like this can make characters a lot more complex and I didn't expect such care in a book about World Building.

[L. J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Currently, I have no need for this, as my current projects aren’t that complex, but I know it’ll be very helpful in the future, when I get to other writing projects that’ll involve some complex world building. I skimmed through a little bit, read most of it; it’s a good source for newcomers (who haven’t done world building that requires a lot of thinking and brainstorming).