WHAT DEVELOPS THE STORY WORLD?
1. TRAVEL – journeying from one location to another not only gives you opportunities to describe different places, it also allows you to develop:
The status of travellers/foreigners
The state of the home world
2. VIEWPOINTS – using a variety of different characters as lenses through which to view the world helps you develop greater depth and breadth.
3. GROUPS vs. INDIVIDUALS – cultures are created by the interaction between groups and individuals. Although dealing with larger groups of characters may lead you to make generalisations, it’s helpful for developing the “big picture” and contrasting it to the private and specific.
4. INTERNAL vs. EXTERNAL – the counterchange between the character’s internal and external worlds, and how the perception of one influences the other (for example, through symbols, metaphors, projection, manifestation, and bias) is a rich vein of material for developing your story world.
5. HOME – a character’s home or “ordinary world” is often an essential component of the story world, allowing you to create contrast and determine the character’s (and reader’s) perception of new cultures. And of course, it makes the return journey possible.
6. REVISITING – if you’ve never studied the worldbuilding of your favourite novels, you might be surprised to find how often characters revisit locations. This kind of repetition really cements the importance of a particular place in the character’s life.
7. TIME – placing the world in a timeline has many uses:
Describe (degenerative or regenerative) cycles
Show how things are forgotten or lost
Describe slower, long-term change
Give events varying degrees of temporal (and narrative) weight
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