Writing Tips for Creating a Fictional World

Creating fictional worlds can be one of the most enjoyable parts of writing. Done most often in fantasy and science fiction genres, it is also necessary in mainstream fiction. Many writers create believable, a realistic worlds based on areas they know that without using actual place names. No matter if you are writing speculative or commercial fiction, these writing tips for creating a fictional world will help transport the reader into your story.

Creating a Fictional World - Necessary Ingredients

Any fictional world you create for your short story or novel needs the basic building blocks of culture and society. Of course the depth you go into these things will depend largely on your plot and storyline

Writing a believable made up the world requires government, an economy, social structure, a system of laws or rules, and general cultural habits, beliefs, and values. In a mainstream, earth based fictional world these things are easy to come up with. In fantasy and science fiction you must create all these things yourself.

Creating a Fictional World - Maintaining Realism

One of the most important writing tapes to creating a fictional world is to maintain or realism no matter what genre you are writing. Even if you're fictional world is populated by fairies, dragons and orcs, you must still create a believable and realistic world.

Using commonly accepted rules of physics is a first step to maintaining realism in your fictional world. Governments, legal systems, economy and religions must make sense. When creating a fictional world for your short story or novel, keep asking yourself, "why?"

Why would the people follow this leader? Why would they submit to that particular fictional god or goddess? If you cannot come up with any good reasons why the people would live in such a way, believe what they do, or follow the laws or value systems, your fictional world will be a tough sell to the readers.

Creating a Fictional World - Acceptance Through Normality

After you have created a fictional world that you think is acceptable and realistic enough to make the readers comfortable with it, you have to write about it in such a way to make it seem normal to the occupants. No one from a particular world or culture is going to expound excessively on the interesting quirks of that fictional world. Writing a fictional world using large doses of normality will help your readers believe in it as much as the fictional citizens of it do.

Writing fiction requires the creation of fictional worlds in many different genres, but especially in speculative fiction. Model any fictional world off what is accepted as real and sensible in our own world. If you stray too far from something that makes sense, your readers may not follow.