In The Study

Alright, now that we have established the general shape of our world and the origins of its creation, we need to populate it with the characters that will shape our story.

Step 3: The Lands and All That Inhabit Them

What good is a world if there is no one in it to enjoy it’s opportunities. We’ve established the creators of this world have made a mortal race of beings to inhabit it so now we just need to develop them. At this point we can start leaning into creating our own fantasy races from scratch or just plugging in some from mythologies. By name, Dwarves, Elves, Orcs and many other popular fantasy races are in public domain so theoretically they are all fair game to put in the world, however this can be too easy. If I were writing this world for a DND campaign, then my work would pretty much end here. The players bring their character sheets with whatever race they want to play, and all would be said and done, but for this story, I am going to lean a little more into the homemade side of things and create my own style of beings.

Let’s start with a base template. I think the obvious choice is a human. Bi-pedal, general face, two arms, two legs, and so on and so forth. But we want them to be a bit more special than just humans. I am going to adapt an idea I have for one of my book series I am working on and utilize that idea for this world. The concept is that the people in the world are connected and engrained to the nature and elements around them. Depending on the region they hail from, their elemental tie differs. For instance, a person that hails from the mountains may have coal black eyes, dark grey skin that has a sort of rocky scale pattern on it. They may be extra strong and can see in the dark. Or someone who lives by the sea may have pale blue skin, seaweed-like hair and may possess the ability to breathe underwater. While I may be pulling from another idea I have for a different story series, this is done in a different way and adapted to be more of a natural way of life with more variety in this world.

Alright, we’ve got the land, we’ve got the way it came to be, and we’ve got the people to inhabit it. But they aren’t just going to be standing around doing nothing. We need some history from the people’s perspective in order to have some interesting story material to work off of.

Step 4: I’ll Tell You a Story

Let’s start with the origins of the people and where they went from there. After the brothers created them, using their own beings as a template and then filling in the gaps with the nature they designed, the people largely lived in unity and peace on the main island. As the populations grew many ventured out to the outer islands to start new lives and explore this new land. For a while, the people all lived happily and peacefully under the watchful eyes of the brothers. But then when the dark brother took his night of chaos and ravaged the mainland, a large portion of the world’s population was either destroyed or corrupted into the monsters that now inhabit this dark land. (Which we will further develop later) The outer islands that had lived in peace but slight independence from the main islands now found themselves with thousands of refugees flocking to their lands for rescue and safety from the destruction and darkness.

Most of the islands welcomed in the lost folk some more begrudgingly than others, but one island did not. This was the island to the southwest. Its small landmass mixed with its relatively more barren landscape would lead to a severe famine if many more people took up residence there. The refusal however led to a massive death toll from the refugees who had nowhere else to go and culminated in the Evenmorn Massacre where a large group of refugees in desperation tried to make their way onto the island anyways. The islanders took up arms against them and slaughtered them. This enraged the other Island nations which started the war (to be named later). The war raged on for many years but eventually after much more death and bloodshed, it culminated in a shaky peace between all four islands. This brings us into the modern world or at least close to with the discovery of the divine substance from the first brother (we shall call it Lupomere which mostly manifests itself in the trees known as Lupowood) (working name), and the formation of the guild that harvests this resource for the civilizations. This guild functions as training grounds as well as administration for two types of individuals: The Sentinels, and the Reapers. The Reapers are in charge of locating deposits of Lupomere and extracting it, while the Sentinels act as guards and protectors while journeying through the dangerous lands.

And now we are to present day with where our story will begin. By establishing this backstory, a plot line has begun to form in my head which we will now flesh out….

Step 5: The Main Plot

Our story will follow a group of 5 individuals put into a group in the guild. They are new recruits at first who go through the training and tests while also dealing with some internal struggles and conflicts. They are sent on to a mission much earlier than they should be due to an issue with the guild and inadvertently get lost in the dark lands. They have many issues but eventually stumble across a massive grove of Lupowood trees. They return with the news which spurs on a larger expedition to go harvest the trees, but this brings in more issues revealing an inner plot to take down the guild and betrayals which culminates in the expedition becoming stranded in the dark lands with the creatures closing in.

This is all I have for the moment, but I will further flesh out the story as the process finishes and I have some more time to think through an intriguing and gripping story. Remember, all of this is subject to extreme revision and changing upon further review. But now that we have the world and a working story, let’s flesh out these characters as well as these creatures that inhabit the dark lands.

Step 6: Taking Roll

Naturally we need to start with our protagonists and antagonists. Our protagonist will be a man in his 20s (most relatable to myself which is easiest for this quick exercise.) He hails from the Southeast Island which predominantly holds grasslands and forests. As such, his elemental tie is mainly the forest. He has wooden brown skin that is patterned like bark in some places, his hair holds a green tint to it just like his emerald eyes, and he has the ability to sense the lifeforce of trees and almost feel through them, sensing foreign creatures not native to a natural cycle of life. We will call him Asher.

Next, we have our deuteragonists the first of which is a girl also in her 20s who hails from the Northwest Island. Her elemental tie is the sea, as her family lives on the coast. Her name is Maren. (I guess I should also say that these names probably will change as well. I am a big fan of giving characters names that have meaning or tie into their character but there’s always the risk of it being very on the nose. Maren literally means Sea; Asher is named after Ash trees. This is the difficulty many authors face when naming characters. But we will just work with these names for now.)

Another member of the guild is a young man in his late 20s who also hails from the Northwest island but from the mountains. He has the elemental tie to the earth and his skin reflects that. (see the earlier description of stone people) His name will be Rhodes.

Then there will be another girl who is a member of the group. She will be younger, having just turned 20 and her elemental tie will be the plains. Her hair is long and green like grass, her skin resembles soil and has many bumps like pebbles, and flowery vines tend to grow over her body. She will be called Liana.

And finally, we have the groups advisor, a slightly older woman in her mid 40s whose elemental tie is the snow. Naturally her skin is light grey, and her hair is stark white. Her eyes glow with a bright blue shine and parts of her skin are frozen over with ice. Her name will be Jenna.

Ok, this part has been a little rushed, mainly to just get this article out. This whole exercise is more a proof of concept anyways, so I’m not too concerned about the slightly less than magnificent characters I have developed so far. In all honesty, this world seems to serve itself more towards a DND campaign setting than a traditional book or film series. Either way, the characters have started to take shape and have their base goal with the story, so now let’s finish out this exercise by laying out the enemies they will face in the dark lands.

The Shades, The Fallen, The Ickerwraiths, whatever I will end up calling them, these creatures are the remainder of the old population of the main island, after the spread of the darkness. They have been mutated and transformed into dark vaguely humanoid shaped creatures who either are covered in a dark icker material or look as if they are made from shadow itself. They act like wild animals, yet they show a lingering intelligence that makes them very dangerous to the guild members as they journey through the dark lands.

Alright this is a good start. In just about two hours’ time, we have managed to go from the task to create a world, all the way to a working map with a decent history. This is just the first draft of course, but given some time to flesh everything out, shape the story around the characters and ensure everything feels original and interesting, we have the building blocks for a great series. This is pretty much the method I follow when creating my worlds. The order may slightly be altered, or I might spend more time on certain steps or even go back and alter previous ones after expanding upon a later step. But in general, this is the tried and (at least for me) true method to getting a world created without spending years upon years with writer’s block.

If it hasn’t been said enough, I am not an expert worldbuilder or master storyteller. Most of my ideas just pop into my head and I have the guts or insanity to chase after them. I encourage trying this method out for yourself just to see how it works for you. Don’t be surprised if it doesn’t, but let me know what you think about it, what works best for you, and if you were inspired at all by what I created in these two articles. Either way, I’ll see you all again sometime, but until then you can find me in the study.