So, I have been away from doing this for a looooooooooooong time. I am just going to take a moment to tell you that a lot of that has been spent writing on various stories, trying to get well from cycles of colds/mental health dips, and then running my own D&D game over discord. Over this period I have also put a lot of emphasis on not thinking too much about the things I like. This has ended up with me making a few D&D characters that feel like I would make back in high school, but more subtle and with a better understanding of how to apply thematic elements. It is neat to have just very straight forward motivation of thinking something is cool rather than being like "oh, this character is meant to question the morality of holding power and if one can ever act truly good when maintaining a hierarchy..." or something. So, not dwelling on the "why" and just reveling in the thing that I just think is really cool. This has been really helpful when approaching my writing and has really created a new exuberance that I approach it with. Mainly that is due to my writing heavily relying on me visualizing key scenes and then finding a way to link them together. This just means I can do that with more confidence. So yeah, that is kinda where I am right now. So, let's get to the subject matter...
I have been playing in various D&D games with strangers and running my own game with 5 actually amazing players (I will definitely talk about my game on here in due time) has given me a lot of perspective. One of the major things I have encountered is how different people approach world building. What is key about this is as DM you need to have a strong understanding of your setting because that is what you are going to be guiding the players through. It is really telling how a potential DM introduces the world to the party, especially when trying to recruit strangers to play in it. I have seen people do this well and also not so well. Sometimes that is because the setting they are pitching just doesn't appeal to me or it just feels like it lacks direction.
So, my last time talking about world building was more in the context of being a creator and setting up the playground. This time around I am going to try and give some idea on how to make people want to actually play in the thing that you set up. This should be helpful for any writer since your world can be as much of a selling point as the characters in your story, for me this is often the case.
Tip #1: Set the tone
I am going to tell you that it doesn't matter how many interesting things your world has if they are approached from a purely mechanical level. Without some element of tone regarding the story there is no direction for a reader to interact with these things. This needs to be your first step when introducing a world since the tone is going to guide the reader through all of the wondrous and strange things that you are going to introduce them to. So when you are creating the world think thematically about the elements that you are introducing. This does not mean that the tone should never change, in fact it very much should. A sudden shift in tone of a setting is a powerful tool to really emphasize a key moment. If your hero leaves the country that is hunting him due to his heretical power and he ends up in among the mysterious dark woods the tone should change. This becomes even more of a powerful moment if your previous world building was able to preface this change of tone before hand. It is still the same process that you would go through creating the initial tone where you need to essentially reintroduce your setting with proper tone setting description. Still, it is important to set that tone as quickly as possible.
For example, let's say that there is a story that is going to entirely happen on a space station. If the space station in question is not described in a manner that clarifies what someone is getting into then it extends the amount of attention that someone needs maintain to get invested in your work. The longer someone has to go into a story to figure out if this space station story is "Deep Space Nine" or "Dead Space" the less likely that they are going to get to that point.
It is also not as simple as leaning on genre to dictate the tone of the text. Horror can be fast and frantic with panicked chases, slow and reserved with growing terror, or even filled with a thick pall of melancholy. How your world interacts with this genre is a great place to find this tone, however. If the world that you are working in is generally rolling hills and is very pastoral then asking about how that interacts with horror, or mystery, or romance can very quickly let you expand your world building with the various cities, cultures, or geography that will act as story points going forward. You are essentially creating a imaginary map for your narrative to move through.
What might trip people up is the desire to not want to tell their readers how to feel about something. I understand the desire to essentially have an open discussion with your reader. Tone is general enough that unique perspectives will occur. Tone is less about dictating feeling and more like creating feeling. If the reader has no baseline to feel about what they are reading then it is going to be difficult for them to form emotions about what happens going forward. It is less of telling people "how to feel" but more that "it is okay to feel".
Tip 2: Wide brushes before fine details
It is so easy to fall into the trap of trying to figure out every nuance of the world that you have created. As you should, being so invested in your own world is a great sign since it means you have found something you really enjoy. Those tiny little fine details are going to be great when things come later but they are meant to be things to discover for a reader rather than the selling point. Establishing the general way that the world works, much like tone, allows the reader to be prepared when you introduce your own personal flairs on something.
This is where pulling from other media or real world cultures is huge. This is why you see a lot of media using a very common trope or narrative structure. This is because people are going to feel comfortable knowing the type of story beats they are going to interact with. I see this a lot in anime. People commonly celebrate the hero that wins with the "power of friendship" or any number of the "-dere" types that suit their fancy. Though these are character archetypes the same principal can function with world building. Don't be afraid of the cliche, something is only cliche as long as it isn't expanded upon and entirely relies on the media that came before to do the heavy lifting.
Let's look at My Hero Academia that really uses a lot of tried and true world building methods in the structuring of its world. People having super powers and a school for notably gifted individuals is not a novel idea (I mean, look at Harry Potter and X-Men). What ends up happening is an intersection of both that ends up using the world building to direct its narrative. The setting being a school means that the children, no matter how powerful they are, are trying to figure out a lot of different things and are having to deal with the trauma of risking their life constantly. So it is expanding upon the very understandable setting with a very unique and honest narrative. Thus you get to explore the motivation of these completely outlandish individuals in a grounded setting.
The point I am trying to get at is huge, sweeping statements are actually a good thing when it comes to world building, especially for introduction to a setting. Figuring out the entire history of a crown or the advanced trade routes of a galactic empire can wait. Lead with a generalization so the reader can easily place themselves in the world and when something stands out from it this will draw the readers attention.
Tip 3: If you have no destination then you don't have a journey
Alright, we have all heard the saying "it is not the destination but the journey" and that is true for many narratives. Where it falls apart if you don't have a clear end point to aim that journey towards. If you don't have a goal for your narrative it is basically a guided tour through a mental space, interesting but not something to get invested in. Your world building is going to colour this process because it creates the physical and social challenges for this journey. It can be as clear as Lord of the Rings with the blasted wastes of Mordor and Mount Doom where the threats are very physical and present. It could also be a social challenge like Avatar: the Last Air Bender where the land of the fire nation is no more hostile than any of the other nations (alright, the water nation in the freezing arctic and the sky nomads being in the sky are more hostile but work with me here) but rather it is a cultural danger of them being directly opposed against the avatar. With both of these examples it is established as early as possible that these places are the destination so we can orient ourselves along with the journey that is going to happen.
Looking to your world building, especially geography, because it creates a logical process for the reader to follow. This is because we have all experienced this sort of decision making. Taking in your surroundings to understand the best way to get to your goals is base line problem solving. It is relatable even if the circumstances are entirely outlandish. Thus a big mountain or a rival nation does much better job at contextualizing a stories journey for a reader than an in-depth character description or how magic works in this world could.
It is fine to want to throw off your readers with twists and turns but that is something that is done through the narrative rather than the set up. Having a clear direction for your world building to head towards will add a tangible factor to the story. The more that someone can relate to the person due to the context you set up in world building will only make that eventual twist all the more powerful. Also, with the world building you can build up to that moment you pull out the rug from under your reader or even pull a double fake, having a nice field only to have the threat be some flying monster making the big dangerous cave the actual safe place is an example of such a thing working. Still, with such things you gotta preface it being there otherwise the impact will entirely lost.
Tip 4: Why do you care about this world?
I think that there is this draw to be clinical about your world building. When it is seen as a means to an end or just a setting for the story to play out then that makes sense. This is an easy trap to fall into when you are trying to purely world build from a logical point rather than narrative point. If you are trying to figure out where a mountain would be an how that would affect the local topography, weather patterns, and the various industries that can be super dull (not for me because I am a huge nerd). There is no reason for you to have to start with that though. If you love the main character of the story you are writing or even there is this fantastic city that you adore then build off of that.
Even simple concepts go a huge way. My homebrew world is entirely based off of 2 ideas:
What if all the traditional D&D monsters weren't around
What if Sorcerers were the nobility
The first one was honestly a self-imposed challenge of just asking a simple question and the second is the follow through of that. So start with something you are excited about first. If you like dance then make that a major part of your world. Maybe magical dance is a common way for magic rituals to be created? Find something that you are passionate about and legit geek out about it. The only thing when it comes to this process is to always remember that what is strange and unusual to us would be common or at least understood in some form in the setting. Purely creating a world because it is novel or weird will shine through. One of the best examples of this line being managed wonderfully is Dimension 20's Crown of Candy, a game of courtly intrigue and betrayal but in a setting entirely composed of food. It is legit like if Game of Thrones happened in the Veggietales world but the setting is internally consistent.
I know that whenever I introduce my homebrew world I start with the lore of the world because that is the thing I am the most excited with and it guided a lot of the world building. Having a strong foundation for your world being something you like will bleed into the rest of the world. It also makes it easier for a reader to interact with the world because they are able to reference back to that foundation. It is far easier to set the tone and have someone be engrossed in a story if you yourself are engrossed in the writing of it. World building should be done in celebration rather than being a chore or an after thought.
So yeah, these tips come from personal experience so your mileage may vary. What I am really trying to put forward is when it comes to a story that you are the guide to it for a complete stranger. Even if you are writing in the current age with no supernatural or mythic happenings there is a requirement to ground your story in the space that you will be working in. Even non-fiction engages in this by letting you understand the factors revolving around a historical event to increase the drama.