Hone Your World-Building Skills With This Fun Exercise.

The best speculative fiction writers have expert world-building skills. Here’s a quick and fun exercise to develop yours.

One of the greatest joys of reading speculative fiction can be immersing oneself in an utterly unique and richly conceived world, filled with intriguing characters and exotic locales. It’s one of the core mechanisms for enhancing the benefits of escapism in literature. It also sets an author’s work apart from similar stories within the same subgenre. But, ultimately, this act of world-building enhances a writer’s story by providing more depth to its characters and setting, and can even elevate its plot to higher levels of complexity and fulfillment. But how do we develop our world-building skills?

World-building need not require a Tolkien-level dedication to meticulously crafting each and every element of a secondary world. Sure, the best world-building authors create incredibly unique and comprehensive settings. They incorporate small mentions or detailed explanations of their world’s history, social fabrics, economies, mythologies, flora and fauna, and so much more. It’s an exhilarating and beautiful experience as a reader to delve into a richly detailed new world.

As an aspiring writer, though, the task can seem daunting. But you need not get discouraged. Like so many writing skills—and in particular, those unique to science fiction and fantasy writers—world-building can be learned through practice and dedication. And even the smallest elements of world-building can exponentially enhance the allure of your story. Here’s one of my favorite exercises for practicing my world-building skills. It’s a three-step exercise that’s helped me branch out from my comfort zone by honing my abilities to add details to various elements of my stories. And, on occasion, it’s also helped provide inspiration to various works-in-progress that have stalled for one reason or another. Best of all, you can devote as much time to it as you wish—from as little as one minute to several hours if you feel it worthwhile to help flesh out a scene using this technique.

Step 1: Look At Something.

That’s all. Just look at something. Anything. Stop what you’re doing right now and gaze at the space around you. Perhaps you’re inside a room and sitting at a desk. If so, look at the items on your desk and pick out an object. A coffee mug, maybe, or a piece of art on your wall. Or perhaps you’re outside, enjoying a beautiful sunny day. Look around. What do you see? A field of grass, maybe. Or a storefront across the street. Wherever you are and whatever happens to be in your field of vision, choose something. For instance, I’m typing on a laptop and there’s an image file at the ready on my desktop—it’s a photo I took during a family trip to Yosemite last summer.

Step 2: Describe It.

Once you’ve selected your object, image, or whatever else you’re looking at, go ahead and describe it. This should be a very straightforward description that’s simple and to the point. Don’t feel the need to embellish your words just yet. For example, here’s how I’d describe what I’m seeing in the image above:

“There’s a big, rocky cliff next to a meadow, with a row of trees situated between the two.”

Pretty easy, right? But also not very exciting. Sure, it’s an accurate description of what I’m looking at. But if I were telling someone a story that included a description such as this, chances are they wouldn’t care to hear much more. But now that you have a visual inspiration, and you’ve already created a baseline description, it’s time to give it some context.

Step 3: Imagine Details.

Now here’s where the fun begins. Start by looking at each element of your description and substitute some of the more bland words and phrases with more engaging or sensory ones:

“There’s a big, rocky an enormous granite cliff next to overlooking a lush meadow, with a row of trees situated nestled between the two.”

Now think about some fun details about whatever it is that you’re looking at. Create a history for it, with very simple and broad ideas. Did someone build your object? If so, who? What were they like? Or, if you’re looking at an image of landscape like I am, ask yourself, where is this landscape located? Does anyone or anything live within it? Start off by keeping things light-hearted, or even silly, and begin adding details to your baseline description:

There’s an enormous granite cliff overlooking a lush meadow, with a row of trees nestled between the two. The dwarves had been mining these hills for centuries. Great herds of deer used to frolic in the meadow, but moved away long ago, annoyed by the sounds of hammers and pickaxes.

See how much more interesting that is? Go ahead and keep on adding to it. Think of the process as adding extra layers of clothing on a progressively chilly day. Or drizzling extra toppings onto an ice cream sundae. The more little details you add to your description, the more unique and immersive it will feel to your reader. But, of course, this exercise has the potential to result in a thousand words that merely describe this cliff and meadow. Always remember that world-building details should help advance the plot, or give your reader insight into a character’s personality or backstory. This is what sets the world-building skills of the most accomplished speculative fiction authors apart from the rest.

There’s an enormous granite cliff overlooking a lush meadow, with a row of trees nestled between the two. The dwarves had been mining these hills for centuries. Great herds of deer used to frolic in the meadow, but moved away long ago, annoyed by the sounds of hammers and pickaxes. When he was a young boy, John would enjoy picnics in the meadow with his grandfather. The old man would regale John with tales of his youth, when he would spend summers working in the granite mines, hunting for gemstones.

I’ve written full scenes, and nearly complete short stories using this process. It’s incredibly simple, and it can be immensely fun, too, as it lets your creative juices flow in regards to a random subject that you may not have considered before. Start with a single description of an object, person, or place, then elaborate. Then elaborate again. And again. For those writers who seek a continuous flow state when at their keyboards, it’s an easy way to focus your attention on a very specific story element.

If you’ve been writing for any length of time, I imagine that you’ve most likely attempted this method, or at least something resembling it. But if you haven’t, I encourage you to give it a try. As I mentioned, it’s something that’s worked well for me. I routinely do it to help stir up some inspiration for taking a work-in-progress in a new direction (or any direction), brainstorm new story ideas, and even just to enjoy a few minutes of world-building skills fun. Hopefully it’ll be fun for you, too.

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