I think what we first decide about a world/universe/culture says a lot about us. ^^;
For mine, I knew I wanted to portray magic and magical features as a cult-like religion, with its own way of thinking and speaking, and have language be a powerful facet of that.
the three novels i'm writing stemmed from the idea of fairies who live among the stars, then went from there to include an entire realm of fairies on the ground. i just really like stars and fairies ⭐️
I started writing down a mythology, just because I liked writing random lore.
I eventually started creating a language, which was entirely separate from the mythology, but eventually the mythology influenced the language.
I then started creating a history, countries, government systems, constitutions, mythical beasts, and all kinds of other things.
I started all of this in September of 2016
Population, and housing. the history came after
Does anyone have any advice on how magic and the world can intertwine?
@Autumn my usual method is to make a decision and dig deeper into the specifics of what that decision entails.
For example, is magic common and mundane in your world, or is it something few people have access to? If it's common, how does it integrate into everyday life - do people cast small luck spells, or weave magic as they cook, or even just acknowledge that their world is magical? If it's not too common, how does an average person view it - as something strange to be feared or something wonderful to be celebrated.
If you're having trouble deciding, though, it's also always worth it to check out Chaotic Shiny, especially their magic system generator (http://chaoticshiny.com/magicgen.php).
The first I started with was that some people had abilities others did not. It's relatively vague which gave me a lot to work out from.
I first started with my MCs having fire powers, then another one of my characters was a witch that dabbled in light spells, and eventually I needed to make a magic world
when i decided that I actually wanted to write this story(It's going to be either a primarily character-driven comic or a children's novel series, still framing out the story), I put the characters aside and focused on the world's basics.
how the worlds of faeries and humans could be separate, where the spots they overlap would be, and how to reach them.
Then the basics of the plot. There's human who navigates? There's a ship full of lost faeries trapped in the human world trying to go home. The human has no reason to seek them out? Well, he's on the run. He hasn't located the Faerie-Human world overlaps bc he didn't really know this was a thing until now? Neither have they, that's why they're lost? Give them many adventures to go on, like Sinbad, but with more character growth.
@Damhan yasssssss fairies! i love the idea of liminal spaces and places between the realms!
Typically, it is character driven for me with the world shaping itself around the character, on other occasions I get an idea for a system or culture and start from there.
I started by imagining the landscapes of the world, and coming up with a cool name for each one, and then imagining how they coexisted. I eventually came up with the forest Arbor, the volcano Cauldron, the ocean Basin, and the glacier Glasshead.
I'll just randomly come up with a weird story idea in the middle of class, beginning with the characters, then the plot. Next comes the location, which is almost always something from a mythical world I watched or read about.
I was just sketching, and thought that I could make a series of the map I had drawn. So now I am.
I usually randomly think of a general plot idea (including the villain and conflict) and then make characters and a location and a setting and try to plan the plot in more detail. Usually there's some romantic aspect.
Mine generally starts with a single character, then I move on to creating any family she/he may have and their personalities as well. All of those characters then gain ambitions and quirks as well as jobs and a place or places where they might live. The world gets created around them.
I started off with characters I usually start there.
I had a vague idea of a world with lots of different types of magic, i.e. priest magic, sorcerers, alchemists, dragon priests, witches etc. but i had no idea where to begin so i went to a website called Inkarnate which is a map making tool and just played around with continent shapes until i got something aesthetically pleasing, then built it up from there. As i shaped the land i got ideas for how the world should work.
I knew my story was going to have a dystopian city setting. It's kind of like what I imagine Divergent's Chicago to be and Maze Runner's Scorch to me. The sky was filled with smoke, all the buildings were grey, the like. I also knew I wanted to write an action filled story with a main character who was like me.
I've only recently started my worldbuilding, but I really liked the Harry Potter 'muggle-born wizards' and KHR!'s 'only a very small amount of people can actually do this' and decided that there would definitely need to be some sort of 'special supernatural ability' that only some people in a modern world setting have or can access. Things are just escalating from there.
I just started and I had the idea to explain suicidal and intrusive thoughts with a realm that lives inside ours. It's still a work in progress though.
You know how some people have intrusive thoughts, that little voice in the back of their head that won't go away? Well, the countless doctors and psychiatrists and adults are wrong. The Dranamins just don't want us to know what is really happening, that there is another universe living inside of ours, and those little voices, are spirits of that world trying to communicate. But because of the language barrier and the fact that the human race does not have right technology to receive these messages, a demon is placed inside your head by the Dranamins to make sure that the spirits on the other side can never contact you by having you regret things that you have done in your life or make you suicidal. The suicidal people are just people that got too strong of a demon and cannot handle the amount of stress that the demon puts on their brain. That is why the reason they commit suicide.
Lavender_Macaroon
That story sounds so interesting! I'd love to read it!
Most of the time, I just come up with a basic plot line and build everything around it. I build a world that fits the needs of my plot.
Dragons! idk, I just really like dragons
Well my universe really started when I was watching Game of Thrones and thought how cool their made up languages were. I decided I wanted my own made up language, but soon decided that was too hard so I stuck to just making up an alphabet. Then the alphabet was named and needed a race to speak it. Then I decided to make another alphabet and it too needed it's own race. Then I just kept adding places from other stories I started years ago and new ones that come into my head, and now my world has about nine kingdoms and eleven stories, and it's still growing