Worldbuilding - part 01

World building is somehow simultaneously the best thing and the worst thing about writing a fantasy, in my experience. I've spent a good few years developing the world where my novels are set (It's a shared universe where I have based two series to this date). It's fun, but it's also vexing, trying to keep all the various details in your head.

In this post, I will point out a few things you might need to consider when trying to build a world from scratch. Here, the main focus on getting the geography and locations down, and I will talk about the rest of the process in a later article.

1. Names!

If you're creating a world (or, let's be realistic, a country and its nearest neighbours), you need to refer to that country in some way. There are a few ways to go about this. 

1. Postpone the problem until you're older and hopefully wiser (guilty!), and use a placeholder in its place. While this may speed up the writing process, it also means you're dropping a crucial detail, and you may lose some nuance it could have added to the story. 
2. Option two is to look for inspiration in foreign languages. This tends to work better if you pick a language that is not too close to the language you're working with. A less widely understood language probably works better than one that everybody knows. Google translate is very useful for this. However, there is one major drawback to this - words tend to have multiple meanings, or mean something else in the particular language's slang. So, tread carefully.
3. The third alternative is to create the name you want from scratch. You could either create a language from scratch first, or use the phonology of the language that your characters use to come up with a word that sounds plausible enough. If you create the language first, you could use words from that language to come up with a name, but it's not strictly necessary - not all countries have names that make sense, immediately, in their own language.

One more thing - you might be tempted to worry about whether the name of the place means something else in a another language. Don't worry - there are so many words that mean one thing in one language and something completely different in another. If it didn't, we'd all be speaking versions of the same language.

2. More names

You will also need to figure out what the people call themselves, and whether they have a different name for their ethnic group and for the nationality. Also, you might need to come up with a name for the continent if your country is in a continent, but that probably won't be necessary in every case.

3. Geography

What is your setting?Is it a country attached to a larger continent? Is it an island? Is it a planet city? Or is it underwater/in orbit? Or is your focus just on one city? Or is it something else entirely?

Ideally, you would have some idea about what sort of setting it is when you get to this stage (unless you're designing a world because you think it's fun - in which case, carry on). 

Once you've picked the type of location, you probably need to decide how big it is. As in, in square kilometres (or miles, centimetres, parsecs, whatever you like). This is important, because you have to know how long it will take to traverse the area in question, for example. The size also determines the number of different climates you can squeeze in there. It also determines the size of the rivers and streams, and possibly of mountains (unless it's a volcanic island). 

Then you need the approximate shape of the area. I would recommend reading some basic geography if you want to keep things realistic. Of course your world doesn't have to play by the rules of reality - if there are forces there that can make a landmass a completely illogical shape, go right ahead.

At this stage, you will have a blank map with the outline of the the area in question. Now, it's time to fill it it.

4. Climate

What is the climate like in there? Are there a lot of micro-climates? What is the average temperature? How much precipitation do they get? What other factors would you expect to influence the climate?

5. More geography

Now, we have to fill in the important features. You can have mountains, lakes and other bodies of water, rivers, plains, marshes and bogs, etc.

I prefer to fill in the approximate elevations first (it's more practical in my case - the country is over 3 million square kilometres) instead of marking individual mountain ranges. The mountains are a good starting point, because they influence climates a lot, and most of the other features I mentioned tend to be dependent on them.

Once you've decided where the mountains are, you can start putting the rivers in. There are specific ways in which rivers work, though, and you might need to be careful about them (unless someone or something is pumping it, a river cannot flow uphill). They can start on flat land on occasion. They can just disappear into a desert (there are a few cases like that). In most cases, however, they tend to start from a mountainous area as a bunch of streams and flow into another stream or the sea, a lake, or other such source of water.

Then there are other features, like lakes. They could be formed by rivers emptying into it. they could be artificial, or they could be caused by springs at the location. They could be poisonous or have pitch in them (depends on volcanic activity). You can also add a few significant waterfalls along the rivers. 

Marshes could be directly connected to the sea, but they don't have to be. you can have a river draining into one if you want to (provided it's not too big). 

Now you can fill in the type of forests and grasslands as appropriate. You also have to determine which areas are occupied, and therefore changed by the inhabitants of the place in question.

All this, of course, refers to a place that is firmly on dry land. If your setting is underwater, for example, you might have to look into different features to liven it up.

6. Settlements

First of all, do they have settlements? If so, what sort of settlements are they? Are they medieval style cities? Or modern cities? Or are they small villages scattered far and wide?

How are these settlements connected? Is there a road network? Or are there alternative means of transport (rail, for example)?

Is there a command center, so to speak, politically or in a military sense? Where is it located? You would want to place it in a place that can be defended, but within a reasonable distance from the places that are being commanded from there.

7. Even more names!

You are going to have to name all the places you just created - the mountain ranges, lakes, rivers, cities/villages, etc. Here, you could use the same approach as you did when naming the country. Alternatively, you could also use words from English or the language you're working in to create an understandable place name (the shire from the lord of the rings comes to mind).

This is not the end of the list by any means. I am planning to cover the rest in a series of articles, but for now, I must say farewell. Please tell me what you think in the comments.
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Until next time!