12 Worldbuilding Details You Haven't Thought Of (+ sharing details from my fantasy project!)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ค. 2024
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - intro + foundational tips
3:27 - lexical gaps
4:21 - alcohol & substance use
5:06 - relationship structures
7:14 - sports & games
8:13 - burial & death care
9:01 - life phases
10:05 - significance of animals
11:00 - world structure
12:06 - gender
13:42 - calendar & weekly cycle
14:14 - counter & subcultures
15:18 - fan culture & cultural icons
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One piece of worldbuilding advice I've always liked is the assigning of endonyms and exonyms both to your place names. In the real world, what the citizens of a country call their country is different from what people in other countries in their own languages call that country. For instance, we here in the west say Japan, but in Japanese, it is Nippon. And we call it Germany, but Germans call it Deutschland. Too often in fantasy settings, countries and places have only one name that they are only known by throughout the entirety of the setting, whether it is a monoculture or many different cultures. And that can make the world seem flat and not convincing. Making up endonyms and exonyms and using them both can give a sense of well-roundedness and multiculturalism to your setting.
This is a great tip!
That's one detail I think is often omitted just for readability, unless there's only a few named places. Remembering one set of fantasy nouns is hard enough lol.
In most fantasy settings, you are dealing with Common, a nigh-universal language that everyone speaks, so it makes sense that there would only be one set of names for places and nations, since it's all one language.
That said, giving places local or historic names is a great way to make them more believable. This works very well if a nation had been concquered in the past and had q new language and nomenclature thrust upon it. Post-liberation, the nation might outlaw such names, or the protagonist could be catching hands in a local tavern for using the wrong names unintentionally.
i once had an abandoned four elements magic system world where the funeral rites were--and i kid you not, VERBATIM--:
if you were earth, you get buried. if you were fire, you get cremated. if you were air, you get yeeted into space. if you were water, you get yeeted into the ocean.
you walked so avatar the last airbender could run
I´m currently reading "The Left Hand of Darkness" and its really interesting to see how Ursula LeGuin created an entire planet with all Intersex people there and how society build around that.
Basically everyone is gender neutral until they find a partner then they develop sexual characteristics in order to procreate but then go back to being gender neutral.
You can father one kid one time and the next you can give birth if you choose.
A really fun moment was when talking to a person from off world (basically a regular dude) and they just find it too depraved that they/we are constantly in "sex mode" unable to turn of our sexual characteristics during times when they arent needed.
3:30 I also can't remember if their lacking a word for thank you is in the book or was added in the show (I don't have a copy anymore or I'd check!) but it's actually a slightly iffy detail worldbuilding wise. From our cultural standpoint lacking a word for 'thank you' might imply that a culture does not care for manners or lacks civility, but actually cultures that lack a practice of thanking people tend to do so because favours or gifts do not imply debts (sometimes we say 'I am in your debt' as 'thank you') but are simply social obligations. Saying 'thank you' is offensive in such contexts as it implies the person did you a favour and is calculating a debt you owe, like a stranger or a merchant. Lacking words for 'please' and 'thank you' (or rather the practice of pleading and thanking) can actually be a feature of egalitarian cultures opposed to commercial values. It can also go the other way; you can't thank someone as if you might repay that debt. By being given a gift you can never repay you are now owned, like an infinite loan ('by gifts are slaves made')-gift giving can actually be a feature of hierarchy, and the practice of thanking someone a degrading recognition of having lost a game of competitive gifting, as opposed to a feature of manners or treating them well. If a character came from a culture like this, finding out their new friends lack a word for 'thank you' would be very comforting rather than scary
So it can help to think not just about lexical gaps but about the cultural contexts that could completely change the nature of a word. Sometimes the words exist but are only used in ritual contexts (one only pleads with the gods) or with superiors (one only thanks the elders not one's friends). And how your own cultural perception of what dropping a word from a lexicon would mean might not be universal (which is why that scene with the 'they have no word for thank you' has always irritated me!-we might see failing to have a concept of thanks as failing to have a sense of equality, but that's a cultural quirk)
Really interesting comment - thanks for such a great addition!
I sorta think of fantasy as history + the supernatural. Find a time and place in the world that you think is cool, then spice it up with whatever supernatural stuff you think is cool.
For a long time, "Fantasy" was basically just medieval France + orcs and wizards. But that's just one time and place in history, and just one type of the supernatural. Try pre-Columbian Native America + Eldritch gods, or medieval Uzbekistan + ghosts, or whatever.
"You can do really really interesting stuff with burial." Shaelin Bishop, 2024
One thing I’ve thought about is how news gets spread around in the setting. If there’s no modern postal service or internet, are there other ways messages could be spread besides the usual people on horseback with letters, town criers, etc. Do they have newspapers or something equivalent? If so, what’s the literacy rate of a given culture? What about fake news or gossip that gets out of hand?
Really interesting too!
I had my main character use a funeral tradition to smuggle his friend out of captivity.
Okay love this
Count of Monte-Cristo core
Ja
-The Franks don't want you to know this one simple secret!
-Take Paris in a day!
I actually made a list of sports that I thought would fit in a fantasy world, which I filled with options that I *believe* were present in pre-Colonial Era or pre-Industrial Revolution times
Races
* Mount Races (riding, chariots)
* Foot Races
* Rowing
* Swimming
* Animal Racing
* Obstacle Courses
* Landsailing
Combat Sports
* Gladiator Matches
* Naumachia (staged naval combat)
* Fisherman's Joust
* Pasola (mounted spear fighting)
* Jousting
* Animal Wrestling
* [Mixed] Martial Arts
* Boxing/Kickboxing
* Wrestling
* Shin Kicking
* Pankration (Boxing + Kicking + Wrestling)
* Stick Fighting
Ball Sports
* Handball
* Football (non-American)
* Hockey
* Bowling
* Stoolball
* Lacrosse
* Lawn Bowls
* Cricket
Boardsports
* Surfing
* Windsurfing
* Riverboarding
* River Surfing
* Snowboarding
* Sandboarding
* Bodyboarding/Bellyboarding
* Skysurfing (transported via flying creature or airship)
Olympics/Multi-Sport Events
* Tug of War
* Archery
* Javelin Throwing
* Jumping
* Weightlifting
* Shooting
* Vaulting
* Disc Throwing
Animal Sports
* Show Jumping
* Animal Roping
* Mount Archery
* Tent Pegging
Illegal/Cruel Blood Sports
* Venatio (people vs animals)
* Combat Sports to the death (most notably Gladiator Fights, Naumachia, Pasola, or Fisherman's Joust)
* Animal Tossing/Pulling/Throwing
* Animal Baiting (pitting animals of one species against animals of another species)
* Sport/Trophy Hunting
* Animal Fighting (animals of the same species fight each other)
In a book I wrote there was this burial rite in which the deceased gets chopped into pieces and laid on a cliff to be eaten by birds of prey (as a way to return their dead to nature) I believe they do this in real life too but I don’t remember which culture it was from. Loved the tip about burials (AND THE SOCIETY THATS BASED AROUND HAVING BESTIES DUDE I WANNA LIVE THERE)
Worldbuilding detail I like and don't know if enough people use: the materials things are made with and where they came from. Glass, wool, cedar, limestone, I really like that detailing
In my original world, which is just an alternate version of this one with magic and stuff, a specific kind of magical beings have a tradition that when someone has lost a parent, they dye a part of their hair red for the initial grieving process, usually a year. My main character has kept her red streak for over six years.
What a cool way to show your character's emotional state through worldbuilding!!
@@ShaelinWrites Tysm!! ✨😊
I love all of this but especially the fan culture bit! It makes me think of how popular kabuki theatre actors in 16th-17th century Japan had this whole fan culture & merch business going on around them--people sold painted pictures of them but also beauty products, hand fans etc. They were even fashion trendsetters. Proof that crazy pop culture iconism can exist even before mass media!
I am doing a piece set in 1963 Texas and los Angeles, but this video was great for adding details I didn't realise that would flesh out the world. Btw the lexical gap made me think of the plot twist from doctor who season six. The main character Amy had a child melody pond, and it was something like on this planet there are no ponds in the forest, so the child ended up growing up as river song, which was a big plot twist
Aaah I love the fandom idea! Another neglected detail imo is too many fantasy worlds are earth like planets with single moons that orbit g-type stars. I know old school sun and moon magic is fun but we have so many other beautiful celestial bodies and scenarios to work with.
Tips 2 and 3 returned my mind immediately to Dune and how, to put it mildly, Frank Herbert tried harder.
Tip 5 gave me deja vu, and then I realized I was trying to solve a problem 7 or 8 years ago with a fantasy concept that involved death, and missed the most obvious solution: explain how they're buried. So thank you Shaelin. I might return to that project now.
Tip 7 is a fun one. I wrote one play (a musical) where a town worships bees. If that show is ever produced, the punchline of *why* they worship bees will be one of the funniest reveals I've ever done.
Tip 10 made my brain explode. The reasons you gave for it being your least favorite thing to deal with, and noticeably spent the least amount of time on here, are the same reasons that typical overthinking me is about to make myself very sad.
Anyhow ...... pre-emptive happy St. Patrick Day.
@4:00
Like the dry landers of the Wheel of Time not having a word for the words Bridge or Raft.
Wow ... an immediate live idea from each one.
This video has given me a great idea about how job roles can change and that creates a new stage of life for my characters, thank you!
One thing I don't see enough is different dialects for languages. I live on an island with a vastly different dialect than the main country, to the point where mainlanders can't understand a lot of what we say. It's interesting to think about what caused this distortion of the language, as often it's a result of two cultures mixing because of a shared space :)
Etiquette, faux pas, and taboos are also super interesting. And I don't necessarily mean etiquette as the stereotypical finishing school "if one is stirring tea or coffee then one should do it back and forth rather than circular, and if one is eating soup one should push the spoon away, rather than toward, the self" and all that jazz. I mean more like, like not commenting on someone's weight, or not giving criticism on ao3 (even if it's "constructive") unless specifically asked, the ethics (or lack thereof) of "back butting," taking off shoes in someone's home, or even the back and forth of offering and refusing gifts
like, how people differentiate between "rude and barbaric" and "proper and normal" can imply a lot of things about a culture
I'm writing a story of two fans of a famous author who get caught up in an adventure due to the author's celebrity meet and greet in a tavern.
I agree that dealing with the calendar is The Worst. Before my first draft I thought 'okay, I can just not mention time at all, and I won't have to deal with it'... but that's actually impossible to achieve. I ended up using our weekly cycle because I _needed_ to keep track of what happened when, but for my next draft I need to figure it out 😩
I’ve been watching a lot of your videos over the last few months along with a lot of other channels/podcasts/books trying to understand the craft before I try my own hand at it.
I just wanted to let you know how wonderful of a teacher you are. You’re very nuanced! Which I’ve noticed is probably the most important thing when teaching this stuff. So thank you!! 🙏
banger video as always shaelin! i was wondering if you could potentially do a video on how you would approach discovery writing a fantasy book? i want to work on something fantasy related for my next project, but it feels like a genre catered towards to outliners and i feel a bit lost about how i would discovery write it. your discovery writer tips have always been incredibly helpful for me, so i was curious to hear your take!
To an extent, in the European Middle Ages, fandom was very much related to religion, so its absence in high fantasy might be because people are not thinking of it in that way if they're creating a medieval-inspired world. People were fans of Jesus, but also of saints or pseudo-saints, mystics, preachers, writers; they would travel miles to talk to a certain anchorite or go on pilgrimage to visit the tomb of a famous saint. Even when people create a medieval world, I agree that this aspect is often lacking: religion might influence beliefs very strongly, but not create communities and icons, little fan cultures, in that way. And of course fandom can happen in other ways even in medieval fantasy, but that got me thinking of it: if you create a world with an important religion, if that religion is foundamental to society and how people perceive the world, then it can give rise to icons and fandom - after all, the very world 'icon' and 'fan' (fanatic) originally have religious undertones.
The fan culture icon thing is such a good point
Some great ideas in this video, Shaelin! Thanks a lot!
another banger from shaelin
I’m reminded by the second point meat bees, the village of the frozen tundra having mead, therefore honey, therefore bees, but the bees feed on decaying meat instead of flowers.
These are great things to think about. I am thinking of all the fun texture some of these Ideas could give my work. Thanks!
I love your videos, always insightful and inspiring!
oh my god i REALLY want to read your book. i love to read non-fiction books about the nuclear family and other alternatives (i think that's a general obsession with people of the ace spectrum) and i would LOVE to read a fantasy book that explores that (i also have a fantasy book that subverts that but it's reeeeally far away from being done lol). when you publish it (if you intend to publish it) please share it with us!
I really hope to publish my fantasy work! The book I'm currently writing doesn't explore that facet of the worldbuilding too closely but a future book I want to write in the same world does! It's one of my favourite cultures in the world since the inspiration was basically 'what if we had witch covens instead of families' lol
omg perfect video for me right now! Thank you!!
okay, PAUSE. the basin world structure idea is BEAUTIFUL.
It is lovely, but it does imply the culture that holds this belief to be a bit on the...unobservant side.
IRL, the ancient Greeks and their contemporaries figured out the planet was round by observing the stars they used for maritime navigation. They noticed the North star, Polaris, dipping down towards the horizon the further south they went, and rising higher in the night sky as they went north. This led them to conclude the world was round. If your culture has a belief in a concave world, this also implies they do not travel, their stargazing is not fueled by curiosity, and that critical thought and logic are not highly regarded among them.
Since it's a lovely idea, I would suggest placing a ring of high mountains around their realm, so they would not go travelling long distances, especially by sea.
@ticijevish True, but I figured it could be an abstract belief in an "all roads lead to Rome" kind of way. Could be a belief in an etheric basin instead of a physical one, yaknow?
This culture doesn't travel by sea and is surrounded by mountains! The belief is pretty ancient and originated during a time before they knew there was a world beyond their own lands (so like many thousands of years before the story) so now it's more a piece of folklore or a figurative term used to explain their ideas of fate and destiny more than a literal belief like it used to be.
Yes it's more abstract than literal essentially!
In Worldbuilding, I am adding how the region is seen by others, like stereotype and cliché. Does this add depth?
Gets to gender - not me being queer and trans over here 😂guilty as charged lol.
These are wonderful ideas! And i'm working on the rough draft of a fantasy novel (i'm about 8k in, not that far yet and it's going to be my first novel) and I think these ideas will really help flesh it out! I had to keep going back because my mind wondered onto my story and I realized I hadn't heard what you'd said lol. And had to stop to take notes.
Hi Shaelin, I have an off-topic question I'm dying to hear your thoughts on. I have been loving so many Canadian lit fic writers lately, and it seems like a ton of my favorites are coming out of BC specifically. I know the area has a long literary history, but as an American, I'm only discovering it now. Still, I can't help but feel like it's in a bit of a golden age - and I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that, as someone much more personally connected to that scene. Can you give me a crash course on BC literature? Is there a lot of local pride around writing?
Great tips, thank you! I submitted curses and I would love to know everyone else's made up curse words too!!
Tamora Pierce was my first worldbuilding goddess
A question i like looking at is does your society have an infrastructure for orphans and the homeless? Or does it simply not occur?
World building has never even an issue for me
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I'm laughing so much omg best comment
Important animals! In my story there are more breeds of cattle than breeds of dogs. Dairy, meat, plowing - of course. Wool? Yes! There are cows with rough, thick hair and ones with silky, smooth hair. There are breeds for pulling carriages and traveling, there are even racing cattle that run as fast as horses would.
Why? Because many other animals that usually fit those niches simply don't exist. For example, the angel that was tasked with the creation of horses died before he made them and noone could decipher the blueprints of this crazy animal, so they took a cow and changed it to fit the description as best as possible. The blueprints for goats were lost in the war. God never even issued the ones for sheep, before he gave up and left. So cattle took over the world and diversified into almost every ungulate ecological niche.
Queer!!!!! You call me queer?!?!?!?!?!?
It's true lol
ALE 👹 MEAD 👺
😂 Don’t call me out on the gender concepts! You def know your audience
some of the greatest worldbuilding i’ve read that touches on a lot of these ideas is in the Baru Cormorant books! The author studied social neuroscience and race and has built up a lot of contexts in the series from that knowledge.
I’m reminded by the second point meat bees, the village of the frozen tundra having mead, therefore honey, therefore bees, but the bees feed on decaying meat instead of flowers.