Worldbuilding

Nonnies are always looking for advice on how to build the worlds in their original fic or fanfic AUs. Words of wisdom from one nonny: “I look at worldbuilding details like the foundations of a building - you don't always see them, but everything works so much better when they're there.”

Outside Links

• N.K. Jemisin: Writing shorter fiction teaches you to worldbuild better
• The Worldbuilding Internet Library
• Worldbuilding in S/F: Pitseleh on Dreamwidth and Tumblr
• 7 Deadly Sins of Worldbuilding (meme discussion)
• Magical World Builder
• Patricia C. Wrede's Worldbuilder Questions
• Fantasy World Building Questions
• Designing A Fantasy World
• Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds
• World Building (Constructing A Sci-Fi Universe)
• Mercenary Tributary (fanart as well); discussed here on meme
• Various worldbuilding tags
• (Fantasy) Town Generator
• Fictional world generator
• Planet Creation Kit
• The Moss-Troll Problem
• The Artful Infodump by C.C. Finlay
• Medieval demographics - numbers for fantasy worlds

FFA Threads

• Worldbuilding thread (Jan. 18, 2012)
• Help with plotting and world building (May 29, 2013)
• “Worldbuild with me” (Jan. 2, 2015; heavy emphasis on daemons)
• Another FFA worldbuilding discussion (Apr. 10, 2015)
• Developing gender equality in a pre-modern setting
• “Implications of [X] Scifi Standard Technology” — teleportation and immortality; cloning
• Worldbuilding: social change over time, in re GoT/ASOIAF
• Social collapse: thread 1, thread 2
• Contemporary fantasy worldbuilding: political council of supernatural creatures
• “Post-apocalyptia: The zombies are gone, the virus has burned itself out, or the radiation has dissipated. You're still here. What do you do?”
• Building of future space colonies: gender of builder group
• A tip from a nonny: “[I]f you're creating [a world] that diverges from our own in the future, or did in the past, pick a certain point and stick with it, mapping out the way that things change or changed before fleshing out the plot.”
• For origfic worldbuilding, one nonny suggests“getting an college level Intro to Archaeology or Intro to World History textbook. It should have good summaries of lots of different ancient civilizations, and then they can go further with which one they find the most interesting. Here's one I like in particular, but honestly most Intro-level textbooks are really similar.”
• Worldbuilding thread ( Nov. 30, 2015)
• Worldbuilding thread! (Jan. 14, 2016)
• Worldbuilding thread (Jan. 29, 2016)
• How much do you like your fantasy universes to be based on real history?
• Share a culture thread!
• Worldbuilding overkill?
• Foundation mythology in a superpowers/soulbond/reincarnation original work
• ”I became aware that the worlds I like the best feel real and living through convincing asides on popular culture."
• Is the age of Tolkienesque levels of worldbuilding past?
• What kind of worldbuilding do people like in scifi?
• "I've been trying out a new system of designing characters, and it's worked out nicely for me."
• "I'm trapped in this multiverse I've been building for years"
• Worldbuilding Thread (Feb. 11, 2016)
• Worldbuilding (Mar. 21, 2016)
• Worldbuilding: Battle of Hastings history divergence (Mar. 20, 2016)
• Worldbuilding (Apr. 7, 2016)