World Building Question of the Day

About: This blog posts questions to help you develop a complex and well-balanced setting for you science fiction or fantasy story. It was inspired by 'OC Question of the Day'. Feel free to send an ask if you've have any questions for me or click the submit button if you'd like to post your own world building question.

[wbqotd]

Ok sorry you probably have already answered this a bunch but do you have a masterlist of questions broken up by topic?

I don’t. It's a good idea but I need to rethink what topics I tag before I create something like that and that's gonna take some work.

In the meantime, I've got a masterlist of questions in chronological order on google docs.

I've also stuck a list of tags I use under the cut. Lots of questions are tagged with multiple topics so it doesn't really work as a masterlist but at least you can sort by topics.

architecture

astronomy

attitudes

belief systems

celebrations

children

death

demographics

disability

economics

education

family

fashion

fauna

flora

food and drink

gender and sexuality

government

history

hygiene

important figures

just for funsies

landforms

language

law and crime

leisure

magic

marriage

medicine

meta qs

meteorology

miscellaneous

mythology

nature

occupations

race

relationships

religion

resources

rites of passage

ritual

social hierarchy

symbols

technology

the arts

topography

travel

weapons and warfare

[wbqotd]

Hello! I don't know if it's been asked before but I wanted to translate the questions you've compiled on Gdoc into French (for French-speaking writers). Am I allowed to do so? I will credit the account in this new file.

Yeah, go for it! 😀

[wbqotd]

Hello! First, I want to say thank you for running your blog, it is immensely helpful. Now I have a question that I hope isn't too rude to ask you. I was wondering if you know of any blog who did character specific questions of the day like you do for worldbuilding?

Thanks. Glad you're finding this blog helpful. 😊

Check out: @ocqotd @oc-qotd @ocprompts @yourocdoeswhat @ocaskprompts @characterquestionnaires

[wbqotd]

If a community in your world had to create a time capsule to help preserve their culture and time for future study, what items would they place inside and why?

[wbqotd]

What does a typical general store in your world look like?

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Pick a specific street in your world. Describe the graffiti that can be found on that street.

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Are any articles of clothing or jewelry worn for their (real or imagined) protection against magic?

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What, if any, methods of animal identification are used in your setting?

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Describe a typical chair, sofa, or other object designed for sitting from your setting.

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What are the most common battle injuries in your setting?

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Are there any stories, myths or superstitions about thunder and lightning in your world?

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What cooking utensils does the average person in your setting own?

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List the top three issues for each political party or faction in your world.

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What are conditions like for the livestock of your world?

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What types of physical training takes place in your world? Who takes part and why?

[wbqotd]

Did you stop doing qotds? I joined Tumblr mainly for your qotds

I'm on here sporadically. I don't want to say I've given it up completely but expect long periods without new contect.

[wbqotd]

I am planning a world of different animals that live in Siberia and think about names I don’t there names to be Russian names how do I go about thinking of their names?

Naming things is one of my biggests weakness. The best advice I can give is: don't let a lack of names stop you from writing. Use placeholders if you're stuck. Call the bear Dave and come back to it later.

That said, for my current project I'm using a technique that involves combinining two existing words in a language of your choice to create a name. So, for example, you might take a word like Rosa (Rose) and blend it with another word like Spina (Thorn) to make something like Rospina. I like to pick words which relate to the characters in some way but you can open a dictorionary to a random page or use an online word generator if you're stuck. You can also use this technique to combine two existing names or a name and a word. I've seen some people combine words from two different languages to come up with something unique. If you use this technique, I would highly reccomend you look up any name you come up with to make sure it doesn't have any negative assositions. Portmanteau name generators may also be helpful if you're interested in trying this.

As you're naming animals, I think nature names and/or names based on (physical and non-physical) characteristics could work quite well. Think names like Ravenpaw (Warrior Cats), Hazel (Waterhsip Down), or Fearless (Braveland). It works best if they're naking themselves either after things that could be found in their enviroemnt or how they'd think of each other. Both of these can help make them feel a little less human. Different species could also have different naming conventions, e.g. an animal with good vision might focus more on visual elements when naming their offspring. Name generators could be helpful if you want to go this route. You can also combine this with the portmanteau technique above. If you find this one a little odd, just imagine that the animals are speaking another language and your translating it as closely as you can into English (or whatever language you're writing in).

Another ooptions is to use vulgarlang to generate a new conlang and use the name generator button that comes with that. Russion is one of the options under word structure, if you want to generate a language that sounds like Russian but isn't.

There's no law saying you can't give them human name either. Redwall uses Matthias and Martin and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If you don't want to use Russian or English, there's other languages spoken currently and historically in Siberia you can borrow from if you'd like to use human names.