World Building for Creative Writers
Many forms of fiction – historical, steam punk, fantasy, science fiction – require the construction of an entire world, which then becomes integral to the plot, and to the protagonist’s challenges. But how do you create a fictional world from scratch? A creative writing tip: some part of the world you build for your novel must reflect our own. Readers need to see themselves and their lives reflected in the fictional world you create, in order to relate to it.
A Creative Writing Prompt
Here is a simple world-building prompt for fiction writers: Compile a list of everything that seems certain about our lives; concrete aspects of our reality that we take for granted. As an example:
People grow older, and eventually die
The sun sets at the end of each day
After Winter, Spring will come
You are anchored by gravity
No one in the world looks exactly like you
Now, choose one item from your list. Imagine a world in which that particular certainty was gone. Many dystopian novels and movies are created in this way. P.D. James’ novel, The Children of Men, grows from the premise that babies stop being born.
Now for the Creative Writing Prompt!
Write about a time in the future when one of these certainties fail. We assume each day that when we open our door, there will be other people on the opposite side. But what if that didn’t happen? You’d begin your creative writing prompt at the moment you open the front door and find the world beyond it eerily silent.
How to Tackle this Creative Writing Prompt:
Write for a certain length of time – maybe 30 minutes or an hour – and use this block of time to find your story. If your idea inspires you, perhaps after that you will want to pause in order to make a plan. Often as writers, when we build a world, the only way to flesh out its rules is to write. And remember: when you build a world and formulate its rules, you are only creating a framework on which to hang your story. The story itself remains all-important, whether your novel is set in a dystopian future, or a world we recognise as our own.
Our Creative Writing Retreats
It’s prompts like this one that inspire our creative writing workshops each morning on our writing retreats. Check out our writing retreats on this website!
