Hello! Welcome to the first post in my series about the Craft of Writing. This series will cover different aspects of building a novel, from setting, to characters, to love interests, to plot. Today’s lesson is on worldbuilding, or creating the setting for your characters to inhabit. First, I’ll lay out the steps to creating a full, fleshed out setting, and then I’ll show you how I did it in my popular novella The Ghost and the Real Girl. Ready? Let’s go!
1. Skip the name for now
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But Avery! How can I create a setting without knowing the name?”
Think about the towns you have visited. The places you have traveled to. And yes, the places you have read about. Most cities, towns, and villages share one major naming convention. They are named after a geographic feature nearby. This geographic feature could be a river, a forest, a hill, or a man-made thing like a fort or a castle. If it isn’t named after geography, it might be named after an important person in history, or named as a translation of something else.
Regardless, all of these naming conventions share a common thread: history. So, to name your setting, you need the landscape and history of it first. Which brings me to my second point…
2. What do people eat there?
We all love food. It’s part of the joys of being human. It can also be an easy way to develop your setting, and make it feel more fleshed out and solid. Think about the food your characters eat.
Specifically, you should think about three things with that food.
1. Staple grains
These are the rices and wheats of the world. The sorghum and barley and amaranth. What kinds of grain are grown? What kinds are easily accessible? Grains like wheat and barley need flat, open space to grow, while rice grows best in terraces with plenty of water. Deciding the staple grains will give you a clue to the climate and weather of your setting, and will tell you if you’re writing about a plains setting, or a mountainous setting.
2. Produce
Ah, fruits and vegetables. Truly one of life’s great pleasures. These are perhaps the biggest clue to climate in a setting. Citrus fruits grow best in a tropical setting, whereas stonefruits like plums and cherries thrive in cooler climates. Vegetables are similar. What veggies are easy to grow there? Are they tough and small from lack of water, or are they large and juicy? Answering these questions will help you figure out how much rainfall your setting gets, as well as the soil quality, which will help tell you the general wealth of the people living in your setting.
3. Meat
Another great indicator of social class is the kind of meat you have available in your setting. Coastal towns will be heavy on fish, while light on pasture animals like cows or sheep. Poultry can be widely available anywhere, but do they keep the birds for meat, or for eggs? What do they use to keep the meat from spoiling? Do they eat every part of the animal? Are certain meats only for the wealthy? If so, how do they decide which meats are?
Thinking about food is a great way to begin thinking about the mechanics of your setting. After all, your setting isn’t just a pretty backdrop for your characters to play against. It’s a living, breathing world that exists beyond the bounds of your story. Which brings me to the last thing.
3. What kind of money do they use, and how is it used?
It’s a common saying that “money makes the world go around,” and there’s a reason for that. Everyone thinks about money. Do they have enough? Do they want more? But how can money help develop your setting?
Most money, historically speaking, is based on something that has value. While this has most often been precious metals, other things have been used as well. Sand dollars, cocoa beans, and salt have all been used as currency by different cultures around the world. The kind of currency you create, as well as its values, will go a long way towards establishing your setting.
Do you have mainly a barter economy? Does your setting have coinage? If so, who or what is on the coins? What are the coins made of? Is there counterfeiting? How do people carry the currency around? What are the dangers in carrying the currency that way?
Thinking about coinage can also help develop the mining culture in your setting, and how industrialized your setting is. If metals are easily available and worked, then your setting might have a high degree of industrialization. If they aren’t, your setting might be more primitive. If the metals are repurposed from something whose function is now lost, that tells you something about your setting as well.
Putting It All Together: Caelum
The Ghost and the Real Girl is a spooky, cozy novella set in the city-state of Caelum. The city is built around the concept of a sundial, based on a massive crystal Spire in the middle. There are satellite farms and mining towns stretched out around it, and much of the city is controlled by a religious sect known as The Church of the Wheel. TGatRG has been praised for its immersive, atmospheric worldbuilding, and much of that is attributed to the steps I listed above.
To start: landmarks. The biggest landmark in the city is the giant crystal Spire in the middle of the city. This Spire is old- much older than the city around it- and casts colors on the building in the city as the days pass. The city also has a canal wrapped around it, with old, magical pumps at the mouth where the river splits to form the canal.
With these two landmarks, I was able to start developing the concept of a city that was divided into sections, where the wealthy would live in the area that gets the most Spirelight, and the poor live in the section that gets the least. The connection to a sundial also gave me the idea of the Wheel of the Year, and to split the city into four districts named after the seasons.
Next, food. I already had a massive economic divide built into my city, and I needed to make the food represent that. There are farms positioned all around Caelum that send in all of the food they need. Most of then food goes to the wealthy, and the food left to the poor needs to be split and stretched. So, the main character of TGatRG, Sera, eats mainly pies and stews. These are easy ways to stretch meat and vegetables a little farther. The other main character, Clem, is horrified at these conditions, because she was once a member of the wealthy class. That dichotomy allowed me to develop the setting even further by creating a distinct divide.
Finally, currency. Since the city was already split into a wheel-like pattern, with twelve roads creating “spokes” of the wheel, it was a logical step to make the highest coin denomination wheels. They are silver coins created with a hole in the middle that characters can run a string through. Wheels can be split into bronze ha’moons, which can be split even further into small copper crescents. It’s eight crescents to a ha’moon, and three ha’moons to a wheel. Wheels are given in strings of three, six, nine, or twelve. This allowed me to give my characters ways to interact with the world based on how much money they have or didn’t have, while also developing the industry of Caelum. It’s a somewhat industrialized city, but not enough to have paper notes. There’s a strong socioeconomic divide that my characters have to reckon with.
There are many other things about Caelum that make it a fascinating setting to both read and write about, but the three main things are there. Landmarks, food, and money. The next time you want to create a setting, but don’t know where to start, try these tips!
My name is Avery Carter, and I’m an indie author with six books currently on the market, including the Amazon Top Ten bestseller The Ghost and the Real Girl. I have a Bachelor’s in English Literature and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and am dedicated to making the art of writing more accessible for anyone who wants it.
Avery Carter 