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WORLD BUILDING by uschibear
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Where do you start?

If you're like me, and I'm a total pantser, you leave it to come out in little dribs and drabs as you introduce your characters and the plot demands require it.

And then you look at what you've written, and it's where the heck am I?

Now, if you're in the real world, Google Maps are a small miracle of information. You can figure out exactly where you are, right down to the street corner and how many trees are in a park.

It isn't quite so simple if your world is entirely in your imagination. This is where you need to learn how to draw a map. My maps were crude, done in quick strokes of a pencil on a piece of clean white paper, but that was before the internet existed. Yes, I'm that old!

In order to remember where things were, I even went as far as drafting out floor plans for the houses, castles, and other buildings my characters lived in. I'm not kidding. It helps to know exactly how many feet it is to a door, and whether it's a ladder to the upper floor or a grand staircase.

In today's world, the website is the go-to for making maps. I'm totally inept at using it, but I've seen some fantastic work as I go through the website. It's got all the must-haves for a fantasy world, from terrain to lakes, rivers, and oceans. If you want to build a map for your readers, this is the place to go. I have to admit that I do like a map when dealing with a world that isn't based here on our planet.

Once you've got your maps, floor plans, and other aids dealt with, there are a couple of things you need to remember. Do not go into an information dump trying to bring the world your characters travel to life. One of the worst examples, in my opinion, is the descriptive narratives in Jean Auel's Earth's Children books. I've skipped through pages explaining what mountains, grasslands, and animal life looked like reading her books. It's boring. DO NOT DO THIS!!!

Describing the lighting or the building materials as someone walks through a grand hall is better than detailing an entire house when someone drives up to the curb. Use your character's senses to give the reader the basics. Give their imagination credit. They will fill in the blanks.

Again, the old piece of advice, show don't tell, is extremely important. Saying the kitchen cabinets spanned an entire wall isn't the same as getting your character to retrieve a spoon from the storage bin on the other side of the sink. Both give you a sense of the kitchen, but the second example is more enticing to a reader's mind, making them create the scene as they read.

I hope I've given you a few ideas about how to deal with world-building. Don't be afraid to rewrite scenes when you edit. Get the basic descriptions down, and then go back and prune the information dump to the bare minimum while allowing your characters to show the scene through their eyes and actions.