Three Steps for World-Building in the Real World

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, or read any of my other work, or even spoken with me for more than a minute while waiting in line at the grocery store, you know I love world-building. If given half an idea and a few minutes to brainstorm, I’ll whip up a culture that worships diamond giants, spacefaring zombies with sentient comets for brains, or a continent covered with a toxic mutagen fog where the survivors live in mountaintop colonies.

That’s easy.

But you know what’s hard?

World-building in the real world.

After all, you can’t just drop a spaceship full of comet-zombies into the middle of your “1920s cops in Chicago” setting without suspending a whole lot of disbelief. (Though if you do, let me know; I’d love to play in that world.)

Building a world within the real world is something I’m dealing with right now while working on Mind Strike. So while I’m thinking about it, I figured I’d share a few thoughts I had on the subject.

1) Focus on what’s unique

The benefits of building off the real world is that you don’t have to worry about mundane details the audience can fill in for themselves. You don’t have to explain how the sewer system works, or how to order a pizza, or how babies always sit behind you on airplanes. Everyone knows this stuff. This frees you up to focus your energy (and the audience’s attention) on what makes your world unique: the cult of serial killers living the sewers, the pizza delivery joint that’s a cover for the mob, or the demons that disguise themselves as infants to get around more easily.

2) Focus on specifics

Because you’re focusing on what’s unique, you can and should zoom in closer than you would if you also had to describe the rest of the world. Go ahead, give us the mating rituals of the pale people who live in the sewers. Explain how a vampire holds a day job in Miami. Detail the hundred little rituals the gangsters use to establish their pecking order. Yes, yes, it’s still possible to work up too much detail, but since you’re focusing on the specifics of what makes your setting unique, odds are it’s all going to be useful.

3) Focus on the people

There is nothing more specific or unique in your setting than an interesting person. Even if he or she is perfectly “ordinary” (neither a vampire, a psychic, nor a comet-zombie), the character is ideally still a landmark in your setting. The tight-lipped killer with blue eyes and a soft spot for waffle-house waitresses? Unique to your setting. The heavy-set cop with a ready laugh and a troubled past as a clown? He’s all yours.

As a final note: To see a good example of building a world-within-the-world, check out any crime-fighting procedural TV drama. Most of them don’t have anything that doesn’t exist in the real world (except maybe those magical CSI lamps), but what gives the show its unique personality — what makes it a world — is its characters.