Building Worlds - A Free World Building Guidebook

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Building immersive worlds is a key skill for filmmakers, game developers, and writers. For fantasy, sci-fi, or any original story, world-building is essential. This Building Worlds Document guides you through the process of writing new worlds. If you want to improve your world-building skills, this guide is a great place to start.

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What is World Building?

World-building is the process of creating a fictional world that feels real and lived in. It includes details like history, culture, geography, politics, and economics. A well-constructed world will make the writing process a lot more fun for you. Avoiding gaping plot-holes will be a lot easier. Overall, your audiences will be more engaged with a world that feels believable!

Good world-building helps drive the story and immerses your audience. It can make characters more relatable and environments more tangible.

All Blauw Films Productions start out in this very world building document. Without it, we would have no solid foundation to build upon!

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We have written quite a few blogs about storytelling and world building.

About Theme, Message and Interpretation, 5 Questions to Ask Yourself when Writing Your Story, a Guide to Internal and External Logic, World Building Techniques for Fantasy Stories, How to Create Great Magic Systems, Welcome to Macro-Storytelling, Materialise your Concepts, How To Make Your World Building Feel Detailed, World Building Questions for Costume Designers, and How To Create Realistic Costume Design for Science Fiction Stories?

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What is the Building Worlds Document?

This World Building Workshop Document holds a .PDF training document of 21 pages. 

It explains the basic concepts of world building, and provides lists of essential questions to ask about your story and world.

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How to Use the Building Worlds Document

First, download the Building Worlds Document from our Resources Store.

The document starts by outlining a few key principles of World Building and Storytelling. 

For example, types of world you can build, the hollow ice-berg theory and internal vs external logic. From there on, the document gives you a question to think about. These questions cover all important elements of a world. Answering these questions one by one will force you to think your story through. By the end of it, you'll know more about your world than ever before!

Take into consideration that this document is for building your world. That means, it doesn't yet involve the structure of a story! In this stage, think broad, let your imagination take the wheel and have fun.

If you want to start thinking about how to write your story, take a look at the World Building Intro document. This worksheet takes you through essential storytelling devices. You’ll learn to think about the Setting, the Status Quo, the Turning Point and the Major Players. 

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You can work on both documents at the same time or go back and forth. There is no right or wrong here! The most important part is you getting to know your world inside out.

The Building Worlds Document and World Building Intro Document can also be used as a fun group activity or class exercise.

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The Building Worlds Document is an Open-Source Project

The Building Worlds Document is an open-source project with MIT License. Developers interested in contributing to the project, can contact Harry through our contact form. 

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