Enter the World of World-Building

There are a billion and a half questions to answer when you start building an alternate reality in which to set a story (or series of them) What does the world look like? What’s the weather like? The terrain? What’s the political system and climate? history?

Most of this won’t go into your story, in fact, unless it’s a long in-depth saga, only a tiny sliver of all this will go into the tale, however, simply knowing it will help immensely in the writing of the story.

Say your main character does something against the law for your world, if you have done proper world building, there’s already some idea of what happens when someone breaks the rules/laws of the world (be that planet, country, city, etc.)  You don’t have to stop and figure it out before you can continue the story.

Why am I talking about this now? Because I’m working on my world and character building for NaNoWriMo, which starts in less than a month. It’s not the most fun part of writing, but it can make things so much easier that it’s worth it. (Especially if this works out to be a series like I’m hoping, world build once, use it over and over and over.)

Have you started your NaNo Prep?