World Building for the Fiction Writer

Authors: Creators

of Worlds

by GG Collins Copyright 2023

If you write fiction, you must build a believable world for your reader to inhabit for the length of their stay. Make it authentic, personal and full of local color, wherever that might be.

Sometimes writers don’t realize it, but they’ve been building worlds all along. Mostly thought of as a skill for authors of sci-fi, fantasy and paranormal stories; we all do it. Every time you describe a room or what your heroine is wearing, you’re creating a reality in your reader’s head, subject to their interpretation.

Try this, next time you’re at a writing or reading group, read a paragraph that describes a room. Then, ask the participants where the sofa is? You’ll find that almost everyone has a different layout of the room and where all the furniture is located.

When writing my Rachel Blackstone Paranormal Mysteries I frequently have to construct other times and places. In Lemurian Medium, Rachel astral-traveled back to the doomed continent of Lemuria. I read the works of James Churchward and Frank Joseph to get the history. But when it came to clothing, I researched early Roman times.

With Atomic Medium, it was the 1940s Manhattan Project. I was lucky with it because I found photos of the Atomic City houses and buildings in the Science Photo Library at the Atomic Heritage Foundation in Los Alamos, New Mexico. These insights into time and place are invaluable to the writer needing background on historical events.

As I tackled Anasazi Medium, I researched the Fourth World of the Hopi. Both Frank Waters, who probably wrote the book (Book of the Hopi) on this American Southwest tribe, and Harold Courlanders book The Fourth World of the Hopis were a great help in establishing what might happen to my protagonist when she traveled to the Land of the Dead. I used the story of the young man from Oraibi that the Hopi have verbally gifted to each generation. It’s a beautiful account of a boy who risked death to see beyond the veils. Rachel experiences much the same journey as she visits that realm. There, Másaw, the Guardian of the Underworld, speaks with her regarding the end of the Fourth World.

Writing anything historical, for instance, Jacqueline Winspear’s wonderful Maisie Dobbs series, requires not just research, but immersing yourself in that moment in time. Your scenes need to look, maybe even smell and taste, authentic so your reader can’t put it down.

Next time you’re up to your ears in stacks of research and earmarked books, remember how much more interesting and fun your story will be to read because you took the time to hammer together a world beyond our own.