World Building

The other day on my blog we were talking about Setting as Character. As I read your delightful comments, I started wondering how far off topic World Building was. Is that essentially what we were talking about? No. Setting as Character is one thing, but when I started mentioning dystopian novels and paranormal, I began to cross into another topic (or dimension--key weird music).

So let's talk about World Building, albeit briefly, because honestly, can you cover everything there is in one short blog post? I read this someplace else, so I can't give full credit for it (I apologize, I seem to have misplaced the link), but I feel that it really sums up what you need to do to build the best world possible: make your own rules and stick to them.

Of course, this implies that you need rules to begin with, right? Since you're in another world, or a world parallel to this one, or an alternate world to this one, or a futuristic world (etc, etc), that world and the characters in it need to act accordingly. These rules apply to government, magic, geography, marriage, language, rivalries, culture, history, etc, etc.

Implement these rules into the story. It isn't enough to just have these rules and write a rule book about them, we need to see your characters interacting with the rules. What is impeding them? How do they feel about the rules? Is it possible to change the rules? How do the rules effect their journey? How have the rules shaped them?

Based soley on World Building, my favorite books:

• Terry Goodkind: Sword of Truth series
• Beth Revis: Across the Universe
• Julia Karr: XVI
• Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games
• Libba Bray: A Great and Terrible Beauty
• Scott Westerfeld. Anything he writes.
• Diana Peterfreund, Rampant

In other words, anything over on my favorite books list. These authors have managed to weave a story so complex, and yet so easy to understand, that it's impossible not to be sucked in. They have other things going for them of course, but the characters interact with the world so well, you can't help but believe it, and imagine how you would have turned out if you had been in that world too.

Ok, so your favorite books? Based on World Building alone.

And, how much different is World Building from Setting as Character? Can you interchange them all the time? Some of the time? Can you have Setting as Character in a Built World, but not World Building in a Character's Setting?

Any great resources you've found for World Building?

Happy writing!