Worldbuilding Handbook

Worldbuilding: The Grand Endeavour

'This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.' - Franz Kafka

Worldbuilding is not as you may imagine. You may think it's just the crawling, petty character upon the stage, refusing to move along as the play begins. You may think it's merely a matter of getting some clay and making the features apparent over a few weeks or months before you start the real work, the novel, or otherwise.

It is not that at all. It is so much more and it never ends, even when the world or novel is complete. And, in fact, it relates so directly to novel-writing or creative writing itself, and, indeed, the story itself and characters within said story, that I have connected this worldbuilding book with chapters on matters such as writing advice, novel structure, Plot, and characters.

Worldbuilding begins as a large, blank canvas. First, you fasten the border, the confines, then you find the centre, grab a pencil, and begin to create, moving naturally and logically outwards in all directions. And, you change, every few moments, to a different brush and different paint, each time adding new hues, shades, and textures. By the end, you have an array of techniques, colours, and layers throughout, what Tolkien called, the secondary world.

Worldbuilding is never building a world out of nothing, quite the contrary, you are to construct a new world, galaxy, universe, city, ship, or inlet, from everything. Read, think, write, and borrow, borrow, borrow.

Now, to state the definition. Worldbuilding: the process of constructing an imaginary world, sometimes associated with a whole fictional universe.
... Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers.

The worldbuilder is the sorter, the puzzle solver, the detective, the thinker, the borrower.

And it never ends. The world is still built even once the novel is complete. The mind must never stop thinking. The writer must never stop creating, and they must force themselves into ever better states... one must try and remain objective, rational, moral, scientific, and philosophical if one is to create a coherent secondary world, first, in and of itself, and secondly, in relation to the real world. 

The worldbuilder must decide at the outset what kind of world he or she wishes to form.  

What kind of world do you wish to see? What kind of representation would you like?