27 | Building better worlds

How I start my worldbuilding process

Samantha Garner
July 15, 2024

Deadmedia shares monthly peeks behind the scenes, writing updates, and creativity thoughts from SF/F author Samantha Garner. Learn more here.

Hi everyone,

My “World-building and Cultural Research for Storytelling” panel at the Filipino-Canadian Book Festival was a lot of fun, and it made me remember how much I love all that goes into crafting an SF/F world. I honestly could talk about it forever. One question was about how we get started in our respective worldbuilding processes, and I thought it might be fun to go into it in a bit more detail here.

How I start my worldbuilding

Ninety-nine percent of the time, my novels start with a character, theme, or “what if” situation - The Quiet is Loud started with a woman with prophetic dreams predicting her mother’s death. Seeker of the Lost Song started with the idea of a country that didn’t remember its own history. Its sequel started when I finished writing Seeker and a totally different character just kind of slid into the proverbial room, letting me know there was another story to tell.

Setting

After that, the first worldbuilding thing I typically do is work out the setting. For me, where the idea will live is part of the story itself. Sometimes this setting comes easily to me, but other times there’s some trial and error. Funnily enough, Seeker of the Lost Song falls into both of these categories. As I mentioned when I shared Seeker’s earliest notes, the setting changed twice before the 9th/10th century Finland-under-Swedish-rule setting that unlocked the entire story for me. One of the original settings, a tidally-locked planet where the sun never sets, ended up being perfect for the series of novellas I’m working on now.

When I create a setting, I spend a lot of time on details that I feel are very important to creating a good story and believable characters. Some questions I ask myself are: What’s the climate? What are the flora and fauna? Where do people live? What do they eat? What do they wear? The answers to these questions can lead to some interesting worldbuilding-y answers

For example, in Seeker of the Lost Song, the Vetsi people grow rye and apples like in our-world Finland, but also rice and ube like in our-world Philippines. This is because its magical forest makes it possible to grow crops that normally aren’t seen together. In addition, the only meat eaten is fowl and seafood because the Leitir Empire is so focused on the magical forest and doesn’t want to spend time and resources cultivating space for larger cattle - space that also makes it difficult for Keepers to keep a close eye on people.

History, mythology & language

Now sometimes this is where I start my worldbuilding process, or sometimes it comes even earlier, when I’m creating the characters. I’ll often just freewrite the society’s history, losing myself in my imagination. Sometimes the history and mythology are based on real-world history and mythology, and in that case I’ll note what I’m changing and why, and sort of argue my own case to myself. If I have to change real history that affected real people, I need to have a really good reason.

When it comes to the language, the names of people and places, I like to ground them in something from our world as well. This way I can be more confident that names will sound more cohesive when necessary (since all languages have their own unique rules and therefore a unique sound). However, language can also be incongruous. In my novella series, the settlers of the tidally-locked planet came from Earth ~150 years ago. Some have Earth-names like Mi-kyung and Cécile, but also more comparatively fantastical names like Jhaeros and Ektelian. To my mind, when you spend a century and a half building up your society on a far-flung planet that’s been all but forgotten by Earth, you’re not necessarily going to be beholden to Earth’s naming conventions for very long.

Society & daily life

Next come questions about the characters’ society and daily lives: What are their jobs? Who’s in charge? What’s the class system? What’s their economy like?

I’ll admit that last one didn’t come easy with Seeker. I’d planned for Leitir Empire society to be based on the barter system. To me, it’d be perfect - the Leitir want to keep the Vetsi down, so they wouldn’t introduce the potential for wealth.

Then my husband read the first draft and pointed out that on a country-wide scale, a barter system just wouldn’t work. I resisted it for the longest time. I didn’t want to create an ECONOMY. I was an ARTIST.

But then I got over myself and created an economy. Of course I did, because of course he was right. And it turns out that you can still oppress your people with a monetary system in place (shocking, eh?). Those on top still get more than those on the bottom, all while acting as if they’re altruistic and community-focused. And, money creates barriers when, say, six characters embark on a secretive quest that takes them from one end of the country to another. It created all sorts of delicious little societial micro-conflicts that I love. As a writer, that is.

I should note here too that the characters’ jobs or occupations often change after I’ve built out the world more, depending on what makes most sense in that world. The exception of course is when the character’s job is key to the story overall, like Alaya the monster-hunter in my novella series.

Of course, the worldbuilding process doesn’t end there, but these are the elements that I use to lay the foundation. I hope this was interesting, and most of all I hope it made sense! I really do spend a lot of time on worldbuilding so it can often feel all-consuming and hard to corral into something easily-parsed.

PS, what I’m reading/writing:

I’m excited that Samantha Vitale’s new book, The Lost Alchemist, is out! I love her Lady Alchemist series, a steampunk remix of classic fairy tales, and I’ve been eagerly awaiting this next instalment. (And the covers are GORGEOUS.)

Also, thank you for voting on my poll to help me choose a subscriber thank-you gift! The short story won, and I’ve been having a great time writing it. I hope to be finished it soon and of course, you’ll all get it as soon as it’s ready! And if you voted for one of the other two options, I’ll probably incorporate those ideas into something at some point too.

(Oh, and I have to admit the title of this post is a bit of an in-joke with … myself, I guess? It’s the slogan of the Weyland-Yutani Corp from the Alien movie franchise, printed on my favourite t-shirt.)

This is honestly the only photo I have where you can see the shirt and the slogan - yes, I am sitting in a closet. If I do an audio-only interview, know that I’m doing it like this.

Thanks for reading Deadmedia today, and leave a comment to let me know what you thought!

Talk soon,
-Sg.

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