In the end, no post or set of posts can possibly cover every detail of world-building and weaving it into your story. Your story will have some elements and not others, and your style will utilize some techniques but not others. This means that, if you really want to grow in this area, you’re going to have to read. Read authors who do this work really well. Find out which authors in your area of speculative fiction (or any fiction) are the best at bringing their world to life, then read those authors. Pay attention to how they do it. Mark up your copy of the book (yeah, I know… Write on a book? Are you insane? Maybe, but taking notes in pencil or underlining the sentences that really bring out some aspect of writing you’re trying to learn will help you recognize what works and what doesn’t. If you can’t bring yourself to write on a book, which I rarely can, then jot notes in a notebook and make sure to keep them labeled.). Whatever you do, don’t spend thousands of dollars on courses on how to do it. You don’t need to! You’ll learn best by example and by seeing it done.
To that end, who do I recommend for this endeavor? First, I do recommend reading through Holly Lisle’s ebook course on world-building. It’s the only course I’m going to recommend, but I highly recommend this just because she’ll teach you so much. You’ll go through tons of exercises, and it’s a great way to learn how to do the world-building quickly while also weaving it into your work. Besides Lisle’s course, I recommend reading Tolkien, Brandon Sanderson, Orson Scott Card, Cinda Williams Chima, Ursula K Le Guin, and Terry Brooks. These authors in varying ways and to differing degrees are phenomenal world builders. Tolkien, Sanderson, and Brooks are my top three authors for this area in fantasy. I’ve learned most from Sanderson’s work, but I learned my share of things from Tolkien and Brooks too. I really can’t recommend these guys highly enough.
All of them know how to bring their worlds to life using many or all of the techniques I’ve mentioned plus some. You’re going to learn what really good world-building within a story looks like if you take the time to really dig into and pull apart these authors’ works. Most of them have paperbacks available for a lot of their books in addition to ebooks, so this is a much more affordable way to learn than taking who knows how many courses. Plus, if you’re like me, you have a tendency to start a course and then forget you were doing it in the busyness of life. Sure, you plan to go back to it, but you somehow never do, and so that’s money somewhat wasted. A book though? I might be slow in reading it, but I usually finish the books I start. It’s not too common that I don’t. So I’ll learn more in a less expensive way if I just try to learn from what great authors did well.
