How to Develop World Building Concepts

‘World building’… a common term you may or may not be familiar with. To put it in the frame of your OCs, world building is creating the world that exists around and gives context to your character and their story. Whether you’re looking to create a cool new collaborative world or give your OC a home, this article will tackle how to come up with world building concepts.

Method One: Concepts Starting from OCs

This method assumes you already have an OC made and ready to add to a world. 

• First, think about your OC’s backstory. Were they a knight’s squire, or maybe a space cadet? Consider the world they have to exist in for their backstory to make sense and be possible. 
• Next, take a look at your OC’s appearance; whether you have art of them, or just a moodboard, consider what you can tell about their world. Do they stand out compared to others in their world, or are they a special case? Are their clothes custom made, or easily available to others?
• Finally, expand on the ideas you’ve come up with. If you’ve decided that your character is part of a greater organization or group, think about how it’s structured and what its purpose is. If your character is a rare and mysterious species, think about why they’re so rare.

Method Two: Creating a Setting from Nothing

This method involves creating a setting from scratch. These are some tips to get your creativity flowing!

• If you’ve been reading these blog posts for some time now, you might remember my article on world building using genre. Using a genre template to work off of is a great way to start creating a world everyone can understand quickly. Read the article for a deeper dive!
• Draw from historical references and other cultures (and remember to be respectful! Certain things, for instance spiritual concepts from Native American/Indigenous cultures that still are in practice today, should not be taken lightly as set dressing for your story). 
• Draw a map and add all sorts of things you think are cool or unique, and slowly add more information over time. Working on creating a physical map while you think about the world is a fun exercise which I’ve done myself. If you want to see the result, check out Sanctuary Stellaris. 
• A fun way to come up with a strange and unique world is to take something familiar, and give it a twist. 
• As an example of the above, one of my favourite manga is Aria. The familiar idea is that the characters are gondoliers in Venice, Italy; except, they’re on Mars! Neo-Venetsia (or ‘New Venice’) is a replica of the city of Venice at the beginning of the 24th century, and creator meshes the culture of Venice with the new culture of the era, and explores it in a slice of life story (‘slice of life’ being a genre of relaxing vignettes of character’s lives).

Try putting a city underwater, in the sky, or on a giant tree. You could turn the sky into a vast ocean where people sail on sky-ships to other floating islands, or turn a forest into a sea with layers of depth and dangerous creatures inside. Maybe the world your characters live in is an artificial environment inside of a spaceship, with trees growing with artificial gravity!

The possibilities really are endless; I’m sure as you’ve been reading this article, you can think of a few concepts to try out. If you’ve found yourself intrigued by one of the ideas I’ve used as an example here, please, use it! The concept is just the start of something even greater, and even if two people start with the same idea, they can go in wildly different directions with it. 

Keep watching the blog, because next week we’ll be diving into some world building questions to help develop your brand new world. Until then, check out these cool collaborative worlds!

This collab-world by user Odysseyre is called The World at its End, and the first few sentences sum up its setting in an intriguing package! It’s a great example of something familiar with a twist; a parallel world to ours, rotting at its very core. 

“In a post-apocalyptic dystopia set in the near future of a parallel version of our Earth, the hierarchy of men has crumbled, and anarchy eats away at the roots of modern civilization. The world is ending as we know it, but for something to end, there must first be a beginning--It didn't start with the Reconvergence.

This is the future we've built for ourselves. The result of our choices. But can we live through the consequences?”

Cowboys… in space?! Check out the space-western collab world The Western Boundary by user Mephistophyles. The classic American mythos of the Wild West fits snuggly into the cold, empty embrace of space. Reminds me of my bounty hunter days… 

“‘The Western Boundary’ is an Unvale-original collaborative world that follows Captain Amadeo Rambeau and his ragtag team of bounty hunters on the starship Bravo in the year 3224 as they face off against crime syndicate Angel Trigger, narrowly avoid the clutches of the authoritarian Moon Corps, investigate the mysterious Cult of the Borderline, and inadvertently uncover more and more secrets pertaining to the legendary Western Boundary Project—secrets some would kill to have and others would die to hide…”

Now, this one’s a little more mysterious… check out SEAR, the new collab world by user DevilsAvokid. Desert-punk? Sci-fi? Survival-horror? … democracy? Find out by participating!

“You awaken in a small metal room, a bag next to you with supplies such as water and food rations, a blankets, and not much else. As you look around you see a few other people in the same predicament as you as well. Looking down you see your clothes have been changed, something more suited to a blistering hot desert... speaking of which you notice the room seems to be uncomfortably hot, likely what woke you up. A voice can be heard, a group of people in white labcoats, their faces obscured by mask. ‘Welcome to the SEAR trials’”