Worldbuilding for Different Genres

 

A couple years ago, a writers’ organization asked me to conduct an online six-week class in worldbuilding for them. (And yes, they paid me.) I haven’t used the material since then, so I thought I’d share some of it here. I’ve decided to focus on Worldbuilding for Different Genres. (If enough of you like this, maybe I’ll share the other five weeks of material here as well.)

Caveat: My sections on Worldbuilding for Romance, Westerns, and Historical Fiction are a bit thin compared to the others. While I’ve written stories in those genres – and have some advice to pass along – I’m hardly an expert in them.

Okay, let’s build some worlds!

Common Worldbuilding Considerations for All Genres

·       No one can truly recreate the complexity of a world on the page, nor would they want to. We shouldn’t strive for realism but rather verisimilitude – the appearance of being real.

·       One of the ways to do this is to blend different details and to spread them throughout your story. Use a sight, a smell, a character’s reaction or recollection, a bit of exposition, a line of dialogue, to create a mosaic effect, replicating the way humans experience reality.

·       Another way is to use the telling detail. Instead of providing many details about your world, one detail can speak volumes and hint at so much more. For example, if in a science fiction story you write “The door irised open” or “Bob stepped on the slidewalk,” you give readers delicious tidbits that communicate information about your world and intrigue them, making them want to learn more. Readers read for the joy of discovery, not to have information force-fed to them as if they’re a computer.

·       Avoid expository lumps as much as possible. Don’t lecture readers about your world. You can get away with occasional expository lumps in novels because of how much space you have to work with, though. Just don’t use too many and try to keep them as short as possible. Avoid having a sequence of expository sections, one after the other, too.

·       No matter how interesting your world is, your world isn’t the story. Your characters are your story. Your world can be a featureless white room with no windows, doors, and furniture, but as long as there’s at least one character in that room, you can tell a story there. You can have the most detailed setting, but without any characters to inhabit it and deal with problems, there’s no story.

·       You don’t have to include everything about your world. Use only the details necessary to tell your story, and include them at the exact point in the story when they’re important to a scene.

·       Avoid writing a travelogue instead of a story. If there are aspects of your word you want to show readers, make sure they’re important to your plot and that something interesting happens to the characters there.

·       The old maxim “Less is more” applies to blending details about your word into a story – especially short fiction, where you have so much less room to work with than in a novella or novel.

Mythic/Idealized/Heightened Worlds vs Realistic Worlds.

·       Westerns are a good example of this dynamic. A mythic Western takes place in a Hollywood action-adventure version of the late 19th century West. Good guys vs bad guys, with little or no mention of the gritty realities of this world, such as racism, sexism, poor hygiene, poor health . . . A mythic Western is a setting for a fantasy to take place. A realistic Western will have more ethically nuanced characters. No white hats or black hats. Elements like racism and sexism along with poor living conditions will be included, along with realistic details about farming, ranching, weapons, and characters will suffer injuries the way humans do in the real world – no getting shot and continuing to fight on for another ten chapters, as might happen in mythic Western.

·       Decide from the beginning whether you want your world to be Mythic, Realistic, or a combination of both. Back to the Future III is a good example of a blend of mythic and realistic Western elements, with clear Good Guys and Bad Guys and adventure-type action, but also cloudy well water, buckshot in rabbit meat, horse manure in the streets, etc.

·       In Fantasy, Lord of the Rings is mythic, while Game of Thrones is more realistic.

·       In Mystery/Crime, Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple stories are mythic while Joseph Wambaugh’s fiction is more realistic.

·       Since Romance incorporates so many other genres and story types, it ranges across the spectrum of mythic to realistic, with the HEA (Happy Ever After Ending) being the ultimate mythic element, regardless of any other story element.

·       In Horror, H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are mythic while Robert Bloch’s Psycho is more realistic.

Common Worldbuilding Elements for Any Genre

·       Whether your world is small (a family home, a neighborhood, a small town) or large (a city, a country, a world, a star system), there are common elements all worlds have, to greater or lesser degrees.

·       Location

·       Geographic features

·       Flora and fauna

·       Weather

·       History

·       Culture

·       Government

·       Military

·       Religion/Philosophies

·       Economics

·       Social makeup and social issues

·       Professions

·       Conflicts

·       Technology/Magic/Supernatural Elements

·       All of these elements can be addressed whether your worldbuilding is on the micro or macro level – or both.

Micro Worldbuilding

·       Let’s work through the elements of Micro Worldbuilding. We’ll imagine our story focuses on a single family.

·       Location: Two-story house built in the 1960’s. House is located in Greensburg, Pennsylvania (which is a real city). A hilly area. House is located lower down on the hills in a lower-middle class area. (You can also design each room in the house, the yard, the neighborhood, etc.)

·       Geographic features: We already have hilly area. Houses and buildings are set close together. Small yards. Roads are narrow and winding because of the hills.

·       Flora and fauna: Large older trees. Normal Pennsylvania wildlife. (Here you’d need to research Greensburg and the surrounding area to get more specific.)

·       Weather: Hot and humid in summer, cold, snowy, icy, and miserable in winter. Fall and spring are the most tolerable seasons, with fall being the more pleasant of the two.

·       History: You could research the history of the town, but most important would be creating the history of the family and their relationships.

·       Culture: Five members: Mother, Father, Grandmother (mother’s mother), two adult children in their twenties, one male, one female. Family members are emotionally distant from one another, and while they don’t get physical with each other when they’re angry, they all have cutting tongues.

·       Government: You can research the city government, but you need to also create the family government. Mother is the boss and the daughter is her chief “enforcer.” She always backs up the mother and tries to get the other family members to toe the line.

·       Military: This might not apply to the family, although you could make a member active or former military, or have the member work as a police officer. Maybe one of the members works for a crime organization or a gang. If the family is mixed up in crime, maybe one of the members is the one who uses force to achieve the family’s goals.

·       Religion/Philosophies: City’s religious makeup, but also family’s. They claim to be Christians, but they don’t attend church, know little about the bible, and don’t behave in very Christian-like ways.

·       Economics: The city’s economic situation is a huge factor, of course, but there’s a mico economic situation for the family as well. The family lives paycheck to paycheck and is in debt. The father, the son, and the daughter work, but they all make little more than minimum wage.

·       Social makeup and social issues: Again, the city’s, but also the interpersonal relationships and conflicts among the family members. The family member’s different attitudes toward larger social issues would also come into play here.

·       Professions: Important industries in the city, as well as the specific jobs the father, son, and daughter have. Father is a machinist, son sells furniture, daughter works at a pet store. The daughter also deals drugs as a side hustle.

·       Conflicts: Conflicts in the city of various kinds and between the family members and anyone outside the family.

·       Technology/Magic/Supernatural Elements: The city would have common 21st century tech, but for the family, I’d replace this element with Skills. What skills do they possess? These can be individual talents – such as always being able to tell when someone is lying – or skills learned during the course of their lives.

·       Health: For a family, I’d add the element of health. Mom’s a diabetic who’s lax in taking care of her condition. The son has anxiety disorder. The grandmother has failing kidneys, etc.

Macro Worldbuilding

·       Macro worldbuilding is for creating larger worlds. This could be for an imaginary world, but it could also be for imaginary elements in our world, such as a crime or spy organization you invent for your thriller novel.

·       Let’s invent a fantasy scenario to run through the different elements of worldbuilding.

·       Location: The land of Aramar on the fantasy world of Xhin.

·       Geographic features: Desert, like in Arizona or New Mexico. Not like the Sahara. A large river like the Nile cuts through the land.

·       Flora and fauna: Desert plants like cacti, animals similar to those that exist in the desert on Earth. Maybe some giant insects, like beetles and scorpions. Giant predatory birds.

·       Weather: Same as in the deserts of Arizona of New Mexico for the most part. I’ll add giant dust storms that are sentient demons which seek to kill all life they encounter. (They’d be a fauna/weather hybrid, I guess.)

·       History: Aramar was once a verdant paradise until a powerful sorcerer-king attempted to ascend to godhood. Enraged, the gods turned him into a rodent and turned Aramar into a desert for ten thousand years, after which, it will supposedly return to its original state. (The gods, in a merciful gesture to those who followed them faithfully, left the Nile-like river intact.)

·       Culture: I’d research ancient desert-dwelling peoples and cobble together this world’s culture from those details. I’d have slightly different cultures for different tribes/groups. This is where I’d add other sentient races too, so I’ll add the S’chara, a race of humanoid armadillo people, strong warriors who only fight when absolutely necessary.

·       Government: Various nomadic tribal groups. A central “kingdom” whose reach doesn’t extend very far and which isn’t recognized by the tribes. It’s an old ruined city without a name. It’s the only city in the land, so people just call it the City. The king/queen is determined by battle. Anyone can challenge the current ruler at any time. The ruler must accept all challenges or be killed by his/her/their own guards.

·       Military: A small contingent of fighting men and women who are mostly mercenaries drawn from different tribes (and even a few S’chara). They have little to no real loyalty to the ruler.

·       Religion/Philosophies: Most people are either atheists or hate the gods because of the curse they placed on the land. There’s a pantheon of gods, all equal in power. They don’t have specialties like the gods of myth in our world. Their individual names/identities are unknown. They’re just the gods. Some tribes still worship them, as well as some lone individuals. Worshippers are often hated by others, hunted and imprisoned, enslaved, or killed.

·       Economics: Barter system. Different tribes often specialize in certain wares, such as woven cloth, certain animals they raise, etc.

·       Social makeup and social issues: I’d create different societies for each tribe (and the S’chara) and have intertribal issues as well as issues between tribes and between tribes and the City.

·       Professions: I’d research professions of ancient desert societies on Earth. I assume there would be animal herders, farmers, craftspeople, hunters, guides, mercenaries, thieves, sex workers, magic-users etc.

·       Conflicts: These have already been covered in Religion and Social makeup. I’d add new or worsening conflicts to serve as the plot engine for my novel, though.

·       Technology/Magic/Supernatural Elements: The technological level would be the same as ancient desert people on Earth. Magic comes from the gods, and it’s granted seemingly at random to people at birth. Different people have different magical talents. One can read minds, one create illusions, one change shape, etc. Since anything connected to the gods is anathema to the people of Aramar, magic-users are hunted and killed or enslaved and forced to use their powers for their masters. Because of this, most magic-users do their best to hide what they are.

·       Health: I’d create one or two new diseases – maybe of mystical origin – for this world.

Exaggerated Worldbuilding

·       Exaggerating different elements of worldbuilding can work well for mythic stories – warriors that seem to never tire, horses that travel farther and longer than any horse should be able to, gunfighters who never miss – but it also works well for humorous stories, regardless of what genre they belong to.

·       Readers are willing to suspend their disbelief even further if the story makes them laugh.

·       There still needs to be a strong enough element of reality that serves as a core for readers to hang onto.

·       In a Bugs Bunny cartoon, the core might be Elmer Fudd is hunting Bugs, and Bugs is constantly taunting Elmer while trying to avoid getting shot. They also stay in one limited environment, such as a forest. Other than this, all sorts of surreal, unrealistic things happen, and we’re willing to believe them, because they make us laugh.

·       You can exaggerate one element of your world or all of them, as in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

·       You have to be careful not to get too serious at any point in your story or else the exaggerated world you’ve created will collapse for readers.

Worldbuilding for Specific Genres

·       Consider the tropes (recurring character types, settings, story types/patterns, images, ideas, etc.) in your genre. Many readers enjoy genre fiction for its sameness. They read for the comfort of the familiar. But at the same time, they want a certain amount of variety. So if you want to use the trope of a powerful dark lord who wants to conquer a fantasy land, or an hostile alien species that wants to wipe out Earth, or an abrasive genius detective who lacks people skills, try to find ways to put a slightly different spin on those tropes. BUT . . .

·       If you put wildly different/original spins on tropes when worldbuilding (especially when writing a novel), you might write a wonderful story, but you risk confusing agents and editors who don’t know how to pigeonhole your novel to make it easier to market to readers. Or if you indie publish, you might have a difficult time labeling your work so that readers can decide whether or not they want to buy it.

·       Each genre has many subgenres, and certain types of worldbuilding suits some subgenres better than others. As always when it comes to writing, be well-read in your chosen genre/subgenre so you have a good idea how to build worlds within it.

·       You decide how to build your worlds. If you want to do so with an eye to the market, fine. If you want to focus solely on your own artistic satisfaction, great. If you want to do some of both, wonderful. It’s your choice.

Worldbuilding for Realistic/Literary Fiction

·       Drawing details from your experience – even if you tweak them – can give any type of fiction greater verisimilitude, but it can work especially well for realistic/literary fiction.

·       Don’t feel too bound to real life. Shape your story world in whatever ways will make the best fiction.

·       Be careful to not work out your story world in minute detail. You’ll be tempted to put all those details in the story and bog it down.

·       “Real” realism or heightened realism? Much literary fiction isn’t strictly realistic. Characters are often people of high intelligence, uncommon emotional sensitivity, and incredible observational skills who live through common experiences with keen awareness and self-insight. The setting is filtered through their perceptions, resulting in a heightened world. “Real” realism can have more varied characters, and the worlds filtered through their perceptions will be more varied too, at least in terms of the way they’re presented.

·       Character tends to predominate, especially in literary fiction, so the character’s immediate world is often The World in the story. So develop the character’s immediate world in great detail.

·       But Place can be extremely important in literary fiction well, so consider developing the overall setting in great detail, even if the overall setting plays only a small role in the story.

·       Develop the . . .

·       Character’s past.

·       Character’s family, friends, lovers.

·       Character’s living space.

·       Character’s job/profession.

·       Character’s town/city/locale.

·       Character’s psychological landscape. Places mirror the character and vice versa.

Worldbuilding for Science Fiction

·       How much actual science should you use? Hard SF is scientifically plausible and well research. “Soft” SF relies on genre tropes – such as faster-than-light travel, robots, laser weapons, etc. – without worrying about making the details scientifically plausible.

·       If you’re writing Hard SF, make sure the scientific details of your tech, worlds, aliens, etc. don’t overwhelm your story and slow it down. Avoid expository lumps.

·       If you’re writing adventure-focused SF, consider giving at least some general explanation for things, such as Star Trek’s dilithium crystals which make warp drive possible.

·       Be careful not to become so focused on the details or your world(s) that you fail to develop your characters enough.

·       Creating advanced technology: You can use genre tropes or use current tech/research as inspiration.

·       Designing star systems: You can use actual star systems for inspiration, or you can avoid too much specific detail to avoid getting the science wrong. Your star system may have ten planets, but you don’t need to figure out the exact distance between them, their exact orbits, etc.

·       Designing planets: You can base your planets on actual ones or make them more or less like the ones in our own star system and tailor them to your story.

·       Designing aliens and alien cultures: You can research what scientists imagine aliens might be like. You can base alien physiology on Earth creatures. There’s a wide variety of biological types on our planet. You can base alien cultures on human ones, especially older ones, and you can mix and match elements from these cultures. You can base your aliens on mythic beings from Earth culture as well, altering them as necessary for your story.

·       Be careful to avoid racism when creating alien races. For example, in Star Trek, all Vulcans, all Klingons, etc. are generally the same. Sentient beings aren’t interchangeable clones of one another. They’d be individuals just like us, with some commonalities but differences as well in terms of personality, abilities, beliefs, fears, etc.

·       Designing alternate worlds/timelines: Regardless of the change in the timeline you decide on, the new world that’s branched off needs to be extrapolated logically.

·       For example, a couple years back, DC comics was toying with publishing stories in the Linearverse – a world where Superman and Batman started their careers in the early 20th Century and are still relatively young and active today. (This is to explain why they’ve never seemed to age in the comics from their start to now.) The change in the timeline is that people live a very long time in this world, perhaps centuries. This premise has a lot of problems, though, which is likely why DC abandoned it. For example, logically, many figures from history that are dead in the early 2000’s would still be alive and active, just like the superheroes. That would have a huge impact on this world’s history. And what about population control? Do people still breed at the same rate? If so, the world would be massively overcrowded. And what about other biological entities, such as animals, insects, etc.? Do they live for a long time as well? That would have a dramatic impact on the ecosystem, etc.

·       Designing a future world: The farther into the future you set your story, the harder it is to imagine what Earth and humanity will be like. You can research what futurists extrapolate what the future will be like for inspiration. You can let your imagination go wild and not worry about making your future 100% plausible. You can also stick with a near-future world to make your story more believable (and easier to write). You can research historical events, rework them, and base future events on them. As for humans, we’ll likely remain the same core beings for a very long time, unless something interferes with/alters our development.

·       Planetary and galactic governments: Again, you can research current and past governmental structures and base the ones in your story on them. You can expand Earth government types to a system-wide or galactic-wide scale. Consider mixing and matching different governing systems to make your galactic civilization more interesting and realistic. How many different types of government has Earth had its history?

·       Economic system: Again, you can base your world’s economics on current or past Earth economic systems.

·       Utopia vs Dystopia: SF often tends to be set in worlds that are one or the other, but it’s more realistic to make your worlds a combination, even if they lean more heavily one way or another.

·       Religion: Same with religion. Research past and current human religions. Don’t assume that everyone in the future will be atheists. Humans may carry religion with them to the stars, and those religions may change because of it. Or humans may create new religions. Perhaps they’ll adopt an alien religion. You can base alien religions on human ones which you can alter or combine in various ways.

Worldbuilding for Fantasy

·       Contemporary fantasy: The story takes place in our current world with some elements of fantasy intruding from another world or elements which are native to our world but have been hidden.

·       Alternate world fantasy: The story takes place in a completely imaginary world. Traditionally, these worlds have been based on Medieval Europe, but it’s becoming more common to use other time periods or cultures for inspiration. Be careful not to appropriate another culture’s myths or history, though. Use elements of other cultures/time periods as inspiration, but alter/mix and match them. (Don’t appropriate them wholesale, – especially if a culture’s belief system still exists today.)

·       Portal fantasy: Someone from our world is transported to a fantasy world and has adventures there.

·       Designing the world and “The Land”: You can use Earth myths for inspiration, as well as base your world on actual Earth geography. Be careful not to place glaciers next to a desert, though. Be realistic about how geography works – unless there’s some magical reason for geographical anomalies.

·       Other races/cultures: The advice for doing this in SF applies here as well – especially the avoiding racism part. In traditional fantasy, elves are all mostly the same, so are dwarves, orcs, etc.  Imagine writing a realistic story set in the present day where the people of a particular ethnic and racial background all think, feel, and act the same. That would be obviously racist. It’s the same for SF and fantasy.

·       Government: The same advice as creating SF governments applies, with the addition that existence of magic or direct intervention in world affairs by god or gods might have an impact on how a government is structured.

·       Religion: Again, the same advice for creating religions in SF applies, except now the gods may be real and directly or indirectly intervene in world or individual affairs. And different religions may have different actual gods who are in conflict. Gods may aid people, hinder people, manipulate and use people, punish people . . .

·       Economic system: Same advice as for SF, but since imaginary fantasy worlds tend to be based on past Earth cultures, using older economic systems as models might work best.

·       Magical creatures: Like magic itself, the rarer magical creatures are in your world, the better. They’re more special that way. You can use creatures directly taken from myth, such as dragons, satyrs, centaurs, etc. You can alter myth creatures to make them seem fresh/different. You can base your magical creatures on little known or exotic Earth lifeforms, especially ones with really cool abilities.

·       Magic system: Magic can be learned or be an inborn talent or a combination. Magic can be an alternative technology with specific rules and conditions that anyone can use, but magic tends to work best if it’s rare, difficult to achieve, and exacts a heavy price. Be careful not to give your magic-users godlike powers. The more powerful a character is, the duller they are. Characters in fiction need to struggle and overcome adversity, not defeat a foe with a single blast of magic power.

·       The price of magic: Having magic take a toll on its users raises the stakes in your story, creates tension and suspense, and it keeps your magic-users from becoming too powerful.

·       Examples of the price of magic: Casting spells temporarily weakens a magic-user. Casting spells takes time off a magic-user’s lifespan – small spells may cost only minutes of life, but bigger spells might cost years of life. A magic-user must sell his/her/their soul to a powerful being to gain the ability to wield magic. A magic-user must drain others’ lifeforce to power their spells. Each time a magic-user casts a spell, they lose a little of their sanity until eventually they become completely insane. Each time a magic-user casts a spell, they lose a bit of their humanity, and eventually they’ll become a sociopathic monster who’s a danger to all. Feel free to use any of these or come up with your own.

·       The Big Bad: If your story has a Dark Lord (or the equivalent) consider having he/her/them/it stay offstage for as much as possible. In The Lord of the Rings, Sauron isn’t a character. He’s a force of nature that causes bad things to happen but who never appears or directly interacts with characters as a character himself. Keeping your Big Bad offstage like this makes them a stronger, more sinister presence – like an evil deity that remains a distant, unseen but very real threat.

·       Imaginary world Fantasy has a great deal in common with Historical Fiction.

·       It’s important to know why and how things work and why people do what they do. For example, horses are not cars. If you ride them nonstop, they will die. Characters in enemy territory won’t build a fire at night because the light will alert their enemies. Characters won’t use modern words such as electric to describe something. They don’t know about electricity.

·       It’s important to know what historical-based societies were like. For example, throughout most of human history (and still today in many places to one degree or another) women and children were the property of men and had no rights. Woman often died during childbirth. Children often died young. Adults often succumbed to one health condition or another and died young. Adults did very hard physical labor which often crippled them. Rulers and royals were divine and commoners were little more than animals. Brutality was all too common. You’ll have to decide how much realism to use in your world and how much you want to sanitize it for your readers.

·       Immersion in your world: Fantasy readers, especially those who enjoy epic fantasy, often read for the pleasure of immersion in a different world. Thus, they like a lot of detail. So working out a lot of specifics about your world and including them in your story can work well. But as I’ve cautioned before, don’t allow details to overwhelm your characters or story.

Worldbuilding for Romance

·       The personal/emotional worlds of the two protagonists are the most important and need to be developed in detail.

·       Develop the main characters’ hopes and fears regarding romantic relationships.

·       Previous romantic relationships will play a huge role in creating the characters because they can serve as obstacles for the new relationship that’s forming (even if the previous romantic interests remain offstage for the entire novel).

·       Develop the characters’ pasts, family, friends, previous romantic relationships, jobs, living spaces, locales for each. There will likely be overlap in the locale where they live, but not necessarily. The plot may put them in the same locale.

·       Develop the area of connection between the two protagonists. Do they work at the same place? Are they working on the same story problem from different angles? Has circumstance or chance brought them together?

·       Develop obstacles to the characters getting together. These can be psychological/emotional – for example, a previous lover of one of the characters died, and now they are afraid to commit to anyone else because they never want to feel that kind of pain again. Or they could be external. For example, an old flame that insinuates themselves into the burgeoning relationship to derail it.

·       Since Romance can be combined with any genre, follow the worldbuilding advice for those other genres, but without allowing any other genre concerns to get in the way of the two protagonists’ developing relationship.

·       Make sure to have a HEA ending! It’s the very definition of the Romance genre.

Worldbuilding for Mystery

·       Like Romance, Mystery can be blended with any other genre, so if there are additional genre elements, follow the worldbuilding advice for those.

·       The locale where a crime has been committed usually serves as the entire world of a Mystery story. Thus, it needs to be well developed – especially if you have intentions of making it the setting for a series. You can use a real location, base your world on a real place, or cobble it together from aspects of different places.

·       Your locale needs to be suited to the type of Mystery you want to write – noir, hardboiled, cozy, humorous, procedural, etc. It needs to be a place where it feels natural for a specific kind of story to be told. Although having a hardboiled story in a cozy setting might make for an effective humorous story.

·       Mysteries are centered on the detective character, and like any character-centered story, the protagonist’s personal world – friends, family, allies, foes, etc. – plays a huge role, especially if you’re planning a series. Giving your protagonist personal problems unrelated to the mystery ups the pressure on them and increases conflict overall.

·       Your detective character needs a believable reason for investigating crimes if he/she/they aren’t a police officer or private detective – although cozy and humorous Mystery readers are more accepting of amateur detectives than some readers. Common detective types: The genius sleuth, the professional, the amateur, the accidental detective. These types can be blended, but try to avoid cliches when creating your detective. Do your best to make them fresh.

·       Mystery worlds – at least as they’re revealed as the story progresses – tend to be very detailed in order to mask clues so they aren’t so obvious. This means you need to be careful not to get too caught up in those masking details (similar to Literary Fiction) to the point where you lose a story’s forward momentum.

Worldbuilding for Thrillers/Suspense/Action-Adventure

·       Thrillers can overlap other genres too, especially mystery and stories that are close to SF in terms of technology, etc. Those genre concerns should be addressed in worldbuilding, but not developed to the point that their details slow down the forward-moving action.

·       Characters in Thrillers can be ordinary people or people with specific training or abilities that will help them deal with the story problem.

·       The story scope and threats can be smaller/more intimate, such as in domestic thrillers or they can be larger/more far-reaching, as in political thrillers. You’ll create different story worlds depending on the scope of your tale.

·       Thrillers are most often set in the real world (or a version of it), so you can base your story world on the

·       real world as much as you’d like.

·       The Threat is perhaps the most important element of a Thriller. As in Fantasy, the more offstage and mysterious the Threat remains, the harder it is for your hero to deal with and the more suspense is generated. Try to make your threats more developed than “terrorists” or “serial killer.” Try to make them more interesting and fresher.

·       In Thrillers/Suspense/Action Adventure, the protagonist is often isolated from help to make the story problem harder for them to deal with and to increase suspense. Build opportunities for isolation into your story world/plot.

·       Some Thrillers are slow burns, just like Suspense novels. As the story threat mounts, readers read faster to find out what happens, so the pace doesn’t don’t feel slow.

·       Some Thrillers are like Action-Adventure – fast-forward narratives where the events that occur are more important than any other story element.

·       Develop your Thriller story world so that it works with whatever style Thriller you want to write. For example, a slow-burn thriller needs to have reasons why the threat doesn’t immediately manifest to take out your character. Why would a killer wait to kill your character? Why would terrorists wait to set off a bomb?

Worldbuilding for Horror

·       Horror stories most often take place in the contemporary world, but historical horror occurs within the genre, as does dark fantasy, which overlaps with imaginary-world fantasy or contemporary fantasy. The advice for building Historical Fiction and Fantasy worlds applies to these subgenres.

·       Horror can encompass any genre or subgenre of fiction, and the advice for worldbuilding in those genres applies.

·       Suspense and Thriller are the closest genre cousins to Horror, so the worldbuilding advice for those genres is important in Horror. Horror novels often have an investigatory aspect to them, so some aspect of Mystery worldbuilding might be important for your story.

·       Literary Horror is a popular subgenre, and the advice for worldbuilding in Literary Fiction applies here.

·       Loud Horror vs Quiet horror. Quiet horror is more subtle and relies on a slow building of tension. It tends to avoid overt violence and the results of that violence. Because of this, Literary Horror tends to also be Quiet Horror. Loud or Extreme Horror doesn’t shy away from violence and its aftermath and is usually more entertainment-focused. Elements of Quiet and Loud Horror can be combined to create your Horror world in whatever proportions appeal to you. The Haunting of Hill House is Quiet Horror. Richard Laymon’s Beast House is Loud/Extreme.

·       Intimate Horror vs Wide-Scope Horror: A person being haunted by an evil spirit that’s trying to possess them is Intimate Horror. One threat, one victim, in one contained location. Wide-Scope Horror affects a number of people and a larger area. Zombie apocalypse fiction is a good example of Wide-Scope Horror. In Intimate Horror you’d use more character-centered worldbuilding, while in Wide-Scope Horror you’d use more Science Fiction of Fantasy worldbuilding techniques, depending on your specific story concept.

·       Horror stories are nightmarish. Even if the threat is a realistic one, such as a human serial killer, the world needs to feel nightmarish, as if reality is distorted in disturbing ways. This effect can be created through writing style and specific story events, but it can also be created through worldbuilding.

·       Silence of the Lambs takes place in a world suffused with dark psychological states and their effect on all the characters contrasted with the rational mindset and procedures of criminal investigation. Alien takes place in what’s basically a haunted house in space – a setting of isolation and the unknown. Poltergeist takes place in suburbia – the perfect middle-class family life attacked by what literally lies beneath the surface of its veneer of normalcy and perfection. Twin Peaks takes place in a small town filled with dark secrets surrounded by mysterious forestland where the normal rules of reality don’t apply.

·       Horror worlds are often psychological landscapes that mirror the type of threat and type of storytelling.

·       The threat in a Horror story – whether realistic or supernatural – tends to be a singular predatory force of some kind which may have an understandable motivation or which may act from an unknown motivation.

·       The threat can be one which is embodied in a physical presence which has clear rules and ways to defeat it, or the threat can be like Sauron in Lord of the Rings – a powerful, enigmatic, unseen, malign, and above all deadly presence.

·       Whichever threat you choose to write about, your Horror world needs to be created to reflect it.

·       Threat onstage or offstage, blatant or implied? Quiet Horror tends to go with having the threat offstage. Loud/Extreme Horror tends to go with having the threat up close and in your face.

·       A huge aspect of Horror is the unknown. Well-used and perhaps overused genre tropes lose their power to affect readers, especially in horror. So if you’re going to use known genre tropes, try to put an original spin on them. Instead of writing about werewolves, you might write about people who are possessed by murderous spirits once the sun sets. This way you keep the power of the original trope – humans turned bestial killers against their will – without having to deal with any baggage the werewolf trope might carry.

Worldbuilding for Historical Fiction

·       Readers of Historical Fiction love to be immersed in a past world. They have this in common with readers of epic fantasy, and much of the same worldbuilding advice for creating imaginary fantasy worlds based on real-world history applies to Historical Fiction as well.

·       Research is paramount here, obviously. You’re trying to recreate an actual historical setting as much as create a story world.

·       Don’t forget to research the way people in your chosen historical period viewed the world. They weren’t people with modern views who happened to live in the past. Their worldviews were very different. You’re writing for a contemporary audience, though, so you may need to make some choices how much of their worldview you incorporate into your story.

·       Racism, sexism, brutality, lack of rights for most people, etc. will likely be part of your chosen historical period. If you’re writing Mythic Historical Fiction (a story based in a real historical setting but a more sanitized version for a modern audience) you might be selective in your choice and presentation of unpleasant details, especially if your aim is for the reader to have fun with your story. If you aim is to write a realistic story, you should include the unpleasant realities, even if sparingly.

Worldbuilding for Westerns

·       Because Westerns take place in a specific historical setting, much of the same Worldbuilding advice for Historical fiction also applies here.

·       Mythic Westerns: These are fantasy adventures in the sense that they have clearly delineated good and bad characters – although bad characters can be protagonists – and take place in an idealized form of the American West in the 19th century. There are nods to realism, but escapist fun is the main story goal.

·       Realistic Westerns: These can still be fun adventures, but the characters tend to be more complex and morally gray, and the setting hews closer to historical fact – including dealing with racism, sexism, genocide, etc.

·       You can mix elements of Mythic Westerns and Realistic Westerns, but market-wise, your story will likely be slotted into one category or the other.

·       William W. Johnstone Westerns are Mythic. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry is Realistic.

Some Final Advice About Worldbuilding

·       If you do Macro Worldbuilding, you’ll also need to do Micro Worldbuilding for your characters, as well as for smaller areas such as villages, cities, different regions, etc. You could call this Tiered Worldbuilding.

·       It’s often easier to base an imaginary world or section of world on real ones on Earth – whether from the present of the past.

·       Same for flora and fauna. You can base them on Earth plants and creatures but then give them your own spin to make them seem different.

·       The “price” idea for science fiction and fantasy can be an element in any type of world, micro or macro. For example, what price did a character pay for marrying and having children young? What price does a detective pay for his/her/their obsession with solving a case?

Hopefully, I’ve given you a few more tools to add to your worldbuilding toolkit. Now sit down at your keyboard and have fun playing God!

DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

Book of Madness, Book 2 in the Custodians of the Cosmos series is Out Now

When Maintenance Surveyors Neal and Gina investigate a house saturated with Corruption, they expect the job to be fairly routine. What they don’t expect is for Gina to become psychically bound to a monstrously mutated woman called the Witch Lady. Nor do they expect the Witch Lady’s son Randall to come into possession of a dark tome of unimaginable power called the Insanitarium, which he uses to wreak havoc throughout Ash Creek. And there’s no way they could anticipate the arrival of Neal’s childhood friend Donnie – who thanks to the malign influence of the sinister Mortuum Blade is now the serial killer known as the Ghostmaker, and determined to add Neal and Gina to his long list of victims.

 

Add to this. . .

 

– A visit from Gina’s sister Juliana, who might be a double agent serving the Black Trust.

 

– A member of the Multitude known as Bad Jack, who changed the course of both Neal and Donnie’s lives when they were young, and who now seeks to obtain the Insanitarium for his own nefarious ends.

 

– An extradimensional trip to the deadly realm called Low Town.

 

– And the birth of a very special little girl.

 

It all adds up to one very bad day for Neal and Gina, but in order to get the job done, they’ll have to risk more than their lives. They’ll have to risk their immortal souls.

 

No pressure.

 

Paperback: https://tinyurl.com/5n8z78fx

 

Kindle: https://tinyurl.com/bddetj5u

 

Audiobook: https://tinyurl.com/2s3fu6vt

 

Praise for Book One: The Atrocity Engine

 

"Waggoner offers a fresh variation on the trope of a covert agency combating evil in his blood-drenched Custodians of the Cosmos series opener."- Publishers Weekly

 

"The Atrocity Engine is a wild ride full of entertaining scenarios and scary monsters!" - Booklist

 

"THE ATROCITY ENGINE is a kick-ass cross-genre thrill ride of a novel! Holy moly! Tim Waggoner is easily one of today's best horror writers."- Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of CAVE 13 and NECROTEK

 

"This is edge-of-your-seat Horror Fantasy. It's as if Stephen King wrote MEN IN BLACK!" —Scott Sigler, #1 NYT Bestselling author of EARTHCORE

 

"Fast-paced, cleverly thought-through, and deeply unnerving in all the right places—urban horror fantasy with a decidedly creepy difference. Don't read it in the dark!" - Diane Duane, New York Times bestselling author of TALES OF THE FIVE: THE LIBRARIAN

 

"The story is a thumping, genre-bending tale—one part horror, one part fantasy, and two parts thriller. The pace is frenetic, and the writing delivers. There is an abundance of action and gore, which, delightfully, is not always blood (big green snot tentacles or giant serpents made of corpses, anyone?). For readers who like their tension and thrills to emerge from another Universe, THE ATROCITY ENGINE is one heckuva ride." - G.A. Rivers, The Big Thrill Recommends

 

Terrifier 2: The Official Novelization is Up for Preorder

Titan Books will be bringing out this novel on Oct. 8^th – just in time for the theatrical release of Terrifier 3! I had an absolute blast writing this book, and I hope Terrifier fans will love it! Brad Miska of Blood Disgusting said this about the novel:

 

“Terrifier 2 is seriously one of the coolest and most entertaining novelizations I’ve ever read. @timwaggoner absolutely crushed it!”

 

How’s that for an early review? Here’s the synopsis:

 

The nightmarish Art the Clown returns from the dead to continue his murderous and mad spree, in this gruesome novelization of the hit horror film.

 

It has been one year since the sleepy town of Miles County survived the murderous spree of demented killer Art the Clown, but little do they know the nightmare is about to begin anew.

 

Resurrected by a sinister entity, Art is back with an appetite for murder and mayhem—setting his sights on the recently bereaved teenager Sienna and her younger brother Jonathan. The streets are about to run with blood, and Sienna must somehow survive this gruesome Halloween night and discover how to defeat a brutal and unforgiving killing machine from beyond her nightmares.

 

There's no stopping Art once his sights are set on you…

 

Order links: https://titanbooks.com/72530-terrifier-2/

 

SCHEDULED APPEARANCES

 

IGW Genre Con. August 17^th to August 18^th. Huntington, West Virginia.

 

World Fantasy Convention. October 17^th to October 20^th. Niagara Falls, New York.

 

Authorcon V. March 28^th to March 30^th. Williamsburg, Virginia.

 

StokerCon. June 12^th to June 15^th. Stamford, Connecticut.

 

WHERE TO FIND ME ONLINE

 

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