Worldbuilding 101: The 15 rules of worldbuilding (of mine)
I know, I know, a bit provocative, who I am I to decide the rules of worldbuilding? I am the owner of this wretched blog, that’s who and why! MUHAHAHAHA!
Anyhow, These are the ones I generally use and advocate for, and as a worldbuilder yourself, you are free to tell me to shove them in my tailhole. All I ask is that you consider what I have to say here, and if anything, find it useful in what insights you gain, no matter what they are.
Rule #0: There must be rules!
You fools! You fell for it! There is a zero’th rule! This one is not long, but it is utterly important to remember. There must always be rules to your world and how everything works and interacts! I do not care what the rules are, they can be as silly as that all pancakes turn into waffles within 100 metres of a Belgian, but the rules need to exist! Always make sure you flesh them out and know the rules. If you are writing, the reader/viewer does not need to know them all; what they need to know is determined by other factors related to writing. However, they need to see that you are consistent in how you treat your world and the events within. Never have no rules, or there is nothing of interest in your world! If you are a game master or building a world for another purpose, the same principles apply. For the rest of this, I will only refer to writers, but you GMs and other worldbuilders are also included, just not stated.
Rule #1: The rules are the law!
So you’ve set up a bunch of rules for your worlds. How magic works, how your faster than light (FTL) space magic device works, you got it all set up in a list, and you know them by heart. Now what?
Always follow the rules, for they are the law!
No ands, ifs, or buts! If you start disobeying your own rules, they are no longer rules! The rules you make up are not suggestions, and they are not recommendations. These are the laws of physics of your entire universe and world. Just like we cannot break whatever physics says cannot be done, neither can your world. Again, as a writer, etc, these are the rules you know, not what characters, players, or whatever knows. Their understanding can be fundamentally wrong in nuances, or so off the wall wrong that what you pull seems impossible to them. But the important aspect here is that, by the rules in your secret little notebook that you keep locked away, there is nothing that forbids what you just pulled from happening. Never violate your rules, never!
Rule #2: One exception per rule!
This one is gonna seem like I am contradicting myself a bit, but hear me out. In Sweden 🇸🇪 we have an old saying:
Undantagen bekräftar regeln.
The exceptions confirm the rule.
It has a whole slew of meanings for various contexts, but the relevant meaning for our discussion here is that it says that exceptions contrast with the rule to show us why the rule exists to begin with. Sure, the saying is mostly about laws and social rules and the likes, but for worldbuilding, it can be used in many other ways as well. By having an exception, you can illustrate why the rule exists in the first place. The contrast comes on full display then. My personal favourite reason however is that when an exception exists, it signals to readers, viewers, etc, that the rules might not be as absolute as we writers want them to see. It opens up the imagination for what more there might be. Which I, and many other writers, are fundamentally too lazy to ever bother doing, but the existence of the possibility opens up the imagination for the reader, increasing a lot of engagement for people. What if?
I say one exception primarily to show that the exceptions to any rule should be extremely rarely done, and they have to be very deliberate and thought through. You need to know why you do it, what the purpose is, and what potential consequences for the world can be. If you are uncertain or cannot think of a damn good reason to make an exception, don’t! This is not carte blanche to ignore Rule #1; this rule exists so you can consider a deep and meaningful way to break the first rule if you deem it necessary.
Rule #3: Constraint rules are better than permission rules!
Every setting and every world needs to do things. Fantasy needs magic, space opera of stars needs FTL, mecha stories needs mechas, every genre needs something allowed that our world does not permit. Damn boring world, not allowing us any fun stuff! Anyway, These are perfectly fine “permission rules” as I call them. These are rules that allow you to do things that you normally can’t in the boring real world. Constraint rules, however, are the opposite. Their job is to limit what can be done in your world. In general, constraining options are more important than permitting things. Too many things being permitted makes conflicts within the world less engaging as they become too trivial to fix; after all, there are a myriad of ways to do things and combine them to solve the conflict in question. Worst of all, people might start expecting you to pull something new out of your tail hole because you have allowed so much already. Another factor is that it becomes far too easy to get lost in what is possible in your world. How many of you have read or watched shows, see the characters able to do something, and then, in the next situation where it would be entirely useful to use that something even as menial labour… it isn’t used, and instead some poor sod has to do it? Yeah, this is where too many permission rules tend to lead.
So every permission rule needs many more constraint rules to reign it in. A good number, as we say in 🇸🇪, “between the thumb and the index finger”, is that for every permission rule, you need 3-5 constraint rules to control it. As always, keep in mind these are estimates on my part, and you should use as many or few as are necessary. Just keep in mind that it is often better to constrain more rather than permit more. Constraints increase creativity, after all!
Rule #4: The more central the cog is, the more it must be fleshed out!
What on earth is a cog here? I use this metaphorically to mean “Something in your world that you’ve made up”. It is not a character per se, and it is not a story arc; it is something specific in the world. It can be a rule, a law, a technology, a machine, an organisation, it can be anything within the world itself. It is, however, never related to storytelling, games or the likes but within the world itself. The metaphor’s reason will become clearer later.
A dear friend of mine, maybe even a sister, Anne Winchell (check out her writing if you like fantasy or dystopian scifi! She also helps by editing these posts!), has this little quirk of hers that drives me to pull the frills off my head. She is great at writing and all, and then, all of a sudden, important stuff comes up related to her world and…nigh nothing about it is fleshed out. She works it out of course, and as a good limax friend, I help. Bottom line, if it is important in the story, it needs to be fleshed out. If it is important to the structure of your entire universe/world, then it needs to be fleshed out. The more that your world and or story rests upon a specific cog, the more this cog has to be fleshed out! I don’t say it needs to be thought out in every detail, but it has to be enough that you can start extrapolating more from the cog. What properties it has, what it can do, what it will do, etc. You can see the options that are open to it, and what options you’ve already closed off. If it is a nebulous cloud of an idea, it is less of a cog and more a fart in the wind and should not have things resting upon it. Flesh it out! And if you are uncertain, flesh it out at least a little bit. You might not make it into a cog, but maybe it is a solid cylinder, still better than a fart in the wind!
Rule #5: Re-usage is better than adding new cogs.
In Rule #3, I said constraints increase creativity. Well, here is why! You are getting all these cogs, and then you have this new great idea: “What if I add also X?”. Now now, wait a minute! HOLD ON! Do you need to? Sure, the idea is all nice and all! But…what if you can instead use a cog you already have and do the same? If it is an organisation that is going to do a specific task, well, you may by this point already have other organisations doing stuff. What if you tweak said organisation cog instead, so that rather than serving a specific narrow desire you had, they now do what the new cog would have done, and their old purpose as well? Your organisation is now bigger, more multidimensional. Now if they do more things, maybe you have factions within it? Maybe it is something even bigger! Maybe it is a giant conspiracy!? Or maybe it is not. My point is not that you have to expand cogs indefinitely, but that sometimes, and even most often, it is better to expand pre-existing cogs to do more duty than it is to add new ones. Of course, sometimes making a new cog is absolutely necessary, and then you are entirely correct in adding it. I do this when I make species and organisations related to them. When I want some species with a biological quirk I have envisioned, and I cannot put too much of it on any pre-existing species-cog, I make new ones. But for each idea I have, I always try to look into what I have. Can something else serve it instead?
This is also why the constraint thing is important. If you have constraints, the cog you have thought of might violate them… or barely touch the rule! Anyway, you gotta then think real hard, is it really worth invoking Rule #2 for this? Most likely, no it isn’t. It is better to take a long hard look at your new cog idea, see what you want in it, and then maybe, somewhere in all the cogs you have that follow the rules, you will see the solution without invoking Rule #2 to get to have what you want.
Rule #6: A cog that does not fit does not belong.
Oh I am going to get so much on this one–
But I want it!
No
I really really want it!
NO!
I REA-
NO, SHUT UP! Listen carefully, you are making a world, a machine of ideas meant to be enjoyed and understood, not a sammelsurium of noise! This is why every cog, everything, must fit together perfectly! The cog is to be slid into the machinations of the world (see, this is where the metaphor is! A machine with cogs spinning!) and seamlessly spin its part and do the job it must! That is why, no matter how good of an idea you think your latest cog is, if you cannot make it fit, leave it out!.
I will reiterate in bold, leave it out! To continue the metaphor, ill fitting cogs cause friction, start causing wear and tear on everything around them, they in turn put strain on other cogs, and it will all inevitably destroy the entire machine if not removed! In your world, it means that things start to not make sense. You’re only human, you will miss things and that is okay (that is not an ill fit cog in this context, that is a mistake), but because you are only human, you will miss a lot of implications that your ill fit cog will inevitably cause. But others will see the problems, because where one human fails, many succeed, and then everything stops making sense. If you cannot make the cog fit, a sledge hammer will not make it fit any better and will only damage the world more!
Rule #7: A cool cog does not compensate for not fitting.
This idea is so cool! I am addi–
Just shut up already Bob!
By Divinum! No, “Cool” is not okay! Yes, we all do a lot of rules that are cool, but that alone is not enough! If you think that “it is cool, therefore I can add it!” is valid, then congratulations, you are using the Divinum forsaken sledgehammer from before. Only now, you pulled it from some anime show! if it is Sword Art Online we got a problem. Anyway, no, cool is never and cannot ever be the sole reason. It is perfectly fine to think an idea is cool and want it in your world. Cool cogs are fun! No denying that! But you still need to make it fit. Slide it around, polish it and work it until it fits into the machinations, and it is a great addition! But a later rule will cover one issue that might arise.
Rule #8: Know the central reason why you want that cog.
There are a myriad of reasons why a cog can be added. As the aforementioned rule says, being cool in and of itself is never enough of a reason on its own. But we have all been there, we have that desire of really wanting something, but then some bastard like me comes along and says “No”. Well, here is a rule to help you! Whenever you get an idea for a cog, I want you to remember this question that I always ask myself for anything:
What is it that I really want/like from this idea?
This question might seem innocuous and even irrelevant, but it is fundamentally very important. An idea is not a single point, it is a nebulous cloud of a lot of things. Your intention, your desires, your sense of “cool”, the properties that the idea itself has, everything is within this nebulous cloud. But you need to consider what within this cloud you find important. Which elements are the ones you would want to maintain as is, which can you throw away, and which parts are malleable to you? If you know where you are willing to start reshaping a cog to make it fit, and where you are not, then maybe, and I would say even most likely, you will be able to make it fit!
Another option, especially if you still cannot make it fit, is that if you know what parts you absolutely love and want, then look back at all the cogs you already have in your world. What if these central things, desires, parts that you oh so love, can be bestowed upon another cog? That follows rule #5 in the process!
Rule #9: If a cog looks cool when placed in the world and nothing more, it needs more work.
Huzzah! You have done the impossible! You had a cool idea! You managed to make it fit into your world! It is the coolest thing since people figured out that it is normal to have 10 fingers and only 2 of those are thumbs! And… why is it that that is all there is? It’s cool, and it is just sitting there. It’s cool, it fits, or at least it isn’t causing friction but…is it on? Have you tried turning it off and then back on again? Why isn’t it doing anything? Yeah, we have a problem here. Here is the thing. Just as coolness is not a justification on its own to shove a cog in, it is also not a good reason to just have the thing alone there. The cog is spinning, but it is not connected to anything else, so it is spinning and doing literally jack shit.
The issue is obvious: it is not connected to any other cog, it has no connection, no relation, nothing to anything else, and that just is not enough. It has this instant moment of awe and “cool”, but then it is mostly a giant paperweight inside your universe that is forgotten as soon as it is introduced. The solution is that you need to add more to it. How does it relate to everything else? What is the history, why is it there? What made it? What caused it? Answer all the questions one can imagine and start connecting it. Do not have it like a giant phallic rock out of the sand in a desert that just happens to be there. Add history, life to it! If you cannot do it, then just remove it. The slot for this cog is then better served by a different cog.
Rule #10: When uncertain, never pick an option that closes more doors than it opens.
Every worldbuilder faces the same problem every single time they do anything: the problem of decision. Every decision you make will close some doors that can no longer be opened, as that will cause inconsistencies (which is always a rule break even if you ain’t stated it, though rare exceptions do exist), while that same decision opens others because it allows your world and people to do certain things. In most cases, these choices are easy–you want this, you want that–so you make one choice after another, but eventually, you will always face that one choice where you have no idea what to pick, but you need to make a choice regardless. It stands in the way of choices you really want to make, but the causal chain between this choice and those future ones isn’t strong enough that one choice is obvious, so both seem just as good. Or maybe it is that you simply do not care what the choice is, it just has to be done! Then this is the rule for you! Look at the options. How many choices does each option open, and how many ones does each option close? Once you can roughly see that, please do not start counting. It is a hopeless task even for a mathematician like me. My advice is, pick the one that closes the least and opens the most future options. This is because it gives you more to choose from in the future. The current choice may not matter or be less consequential than you care for, but leaving the future more open is always important in worldbuilding.
Rule #11: Nothing exists in a vacuum.
Repeat after me! Nothing exists in a vacuum! Now what do I mean? Everything in the world–in the real world, your world, everything, every cog, everything–always relates to each other and has causal chains interwoven in ways that boggle the mind! Which of course means you are excused for not thinking of everything, because the vast majority of connections between cogs are honestly wholly irrelevant by how miniscule they are. But even the big relationships are very numerous and impossible for a single mind or even a large group to keep track of. This is why you’re allowed to make mistakes! But you as a worldbuilder, when you imagine a new cog, should always start considering the new cog’s relationship with everything. If the cog is a new kind of technology, what will it cause? What can it do with other pre-existing tech? What relationships would a new civilisation have with itself, with others, and so on? This new spell of yours? Well, what else can it reasonably do? How would civlisations use it? What jobs will it replace? Everything is connected, so start thinking!
Rule #12: Ignorance is the greatest limiter of imagination.
Let’s make it perfectly clear: I am not calling you or anyone stupid. “Ignorance” does not mean “stupid”, it means “not knowing”. And want to know a dirty little secret that no one tells? Yah sure? Ok, come close… closer… Every single human on this blue-green marble you call home is ignorant to the vast majority of human knowledge! The full extent of human knowledge is simply too vast for any human to know even a significant fraction of all there is. Your smartest friend? Less than 1% do they know. The smartest person alive today? Still less than 1% of everything there is to know today. It is this vast, so yes, it is fine to be ignorant. Even I, a Limax, am ignorant, and that is fine! I see it as a great opportunity to always learn more.
Now what do I mean with this rule? Ok, I have a challenge for you. Come up with a reproductive system unlike what humans have. Sexes, equipment, anything and everything. I will sit here and wait. Drawing a blank? Yeah, thought so! That is fine! It is perfectly fine and natural. It is because you humans are so stuck in your own little bubble of how it should be that thinking outside of it becomes incredibly difficult. Now, why did I take this topic? Yeah, it is not to make the prudes squirm (that is an additional benefit). I did it because nature on earth gets really weird. The moment you leave the clade that involves most land dwelling vertebrates, the amount of reproductive systems, strategies and oddities sky rockets! What we think is normal is incredibly limited by comparison.
And I did this to illustrate the point that by not knowing about all the various things that nature has already done, you default to what you know, which is limited. Your ignorance restricted your imagination! Now, what is the cure for this? Go to wikipedia, or use a search engine. No matter what cog you want to make, I guarantee you that there are more ways to create it than you imagined. Currencies? Way more than you imagine (I will get very angry if you do D&D style!). Political systems? Same there! Cultures? EVEN MORE! Ways to breathe? Same! There is so much variation in life. You can read up on a metric tonne of it, and it will never be enough! Now, you do not need to have professor level of knowledge to do something. A casual understanding that is wikipedia level at most is more than enough to vastly expand your ability to imagine and create things even more wondrous than you could dream about before. You are nothing but a search away from enriching your own world in ways you have yet to be able to imagine!
Rule #13: Monoliths are the arch-enemy of good worldbuilding
What is a monolith? In these contexts, it generally means that “Everything of a category is all the same without meaningful variation”. In worldbuilding, it generally refers to people, cultures, and even groups. We have all seen the trope in Star Trek where they go to a planet, and the people are all the same. “Planet of the hats”, they call the trope. Or in fantasy, all dwarves are the same, all elves are the same, it is all the same in their culture. There are no subcultures, no divisions, nothing that pulls people in different directions. This is terrible worldbuilding. Why? Look around you! Even in your country, your region, you can see countless differences. Yes, outsiders might not notice the fine nuances, but you do. There are differences, and there are nuances. It is entirely unbelievable that a group of individuals would all be the same and think the same and feel the same. I myself disagree and agree with various things about my own culture and being. It is the nature of individuality and people. Yes, all cultures have a few things that loosely make them what they are. I say loosely because within a culture you will always, no exception, have exceptions and people that disagree. But as patterns among people emerge, you can make generalisations. Just don’t mistake those generalisations for the whole truth.
In a good worldbuilding project, no pure monoliths exist. All groups, sexualities, cultures, disorders, differences, etc, have variations within, and this should be reflected in your world as well. Now if it is a short thing, because it is a few chapters, an episode, one session, or something like that, it is entirely unreasonable to expect you to flesh out everything in great detail. We’re all too lazy for that! A cheap trick is to take what you think is the “hat” of this group that defines them outwardly (not how they define themselves, but how outsiders see them), make some tweaks and even turn some parts of it on its head, then have characters have those traits instead. Or even allude to groups that are of this new variation, even if they are a small variety. It can be off handed remarks, posters, it can be anything really. By doing these small things, you are hinting that there are differences and disagreements, which will show they are not a monolith!
Rule #14: Your world’s people will disagree with you
You have your views, I have mine. We might disagree, and that is fine! I promise, this is not some kind of fancy disintegrator ray I am holding, I promise! That is the thing, you and I will disagree, and others will disagree with you in ways I won’t. Every human and limax on this planet has different opinions and nuances on things. We prioritise things differently even if we happen to agree on something. It is all part of the great continuum of thoughts, and it is amazing! …and I am sorry to tell you, but your own people in your world will disagree with you too.
But I want to make a world promoting my views!
Yes, you do, and that is fine, Bob, but here is the thing. If you do that, you are not making a world with people in it, you are making a world with mini-clones of you, and that is not interesting or engaging for anyone but you. Yeah, you can make your own little wank world if you want, and I won’t stop you. But I am talking about actual worldbuilding where quality and verisimilitude are considered highly valued. In your world, there will be people that think your views are garbage and you need to give them room to breathe and exist. You don’t need to make them powerful or a significant portion of the world where you give a rat’s ass. But maybe there is some kingdom, a nation, a planet, anything, where they are dominant. Maybe they are a minority in your nation or whatever, but their existence is still felt.
Another thing to remember is that while a lot of ideas and opinions get outdated and out of fashion, they never really truly ever die. They only sink into an insignificant minority, and in some worlds, what we consider “big important issues” will fade into obscurity because they simply carry no relevance any more. When was the last time you ever cared what the patriarch of your family thought? Wait, your family has a patriarch? Who is it? Yeah, you don’t know, no one knows, but by ancient rules, there is one. The thing is, no one really cares. There are still some people that kinda go that route still but in new ways, using different words and a different style. The idea is still around, but the really old part is still utterly foreign to most today in the west. Some parts, however, linger on old issues, and that can add to your world’s richness.
Rule #15: Your desires and views do not take precedence over the cogs fitting.
Ok, so you have your desires, your views, your beliefs, as I have stated. Those are all fine and dandy. Most of those are probably great ones, and we share them. Now you have a cog that is a thing, a people, a group, anything, and you wish to add it because it fits your views and desires so well! But… it does not logically fit! You push and shove, struggle and get out the sledge hammer and… No. Just no. Remember what I said before? It is important that cogs fit, because if they do not, problems arise! And no, even if you really really really believe something is good and will help real world people or causes or the like, I am sorry to tell you, but just no. Your desire does not take precedence over the fact you just cannot make the cog fit. So either you gotta accept reality and scrap this cog you really love or…
You do as I have already explained. Look into what it is that you want, and think long and hard about all of the other cogs and rules that you have. Maybe it cannot fit in this one spot you want, but maybe you can fit it into this other spot! Maybe you gotta reshape a bit of the cog to make it fit, maybe another cog gotta pick up the work you wanted this one to do. There are many ways to make your desires and views that you think are important fit into the machinations of your world, but using a sledge hammer to force it in where it has no fit or right to be is never the option. A lot of things are important and close to our hearts, but the integrity of the world that you want to make, the story you wish to tell, the game you wish to provide, cannot be undermined.
Always make the cogs fit to the best of your abilities. If you are honest with yourself in what you want, why you want it, and have a genuine love for the craft of worldbuilding along with a firm belief in the goodness of what you see, then you will have the ingenuity, the capacity, and the ability to make it fit without the cogs grinding themselves into smithereens.
Rule #∞: Conclusion
I may provide more in the future, but these are the first rules I wish to provide. If you follow these, I believe you will drastically improve your worldbuilding and become a master smither as time moves! Remember, as always, these are my thoughts and feelings. If something just cannot work for the goal you wish to achieve, always ignore what I say! The story and goal often take precedence over everything else. But these rules will help you craft worlds that feel genuine, create places where actual humans (or your equivalence) are actually inhabiting, and build a universe where what you wish to do can happen.
Do you have any topics you struggle with or would like to suggest for a future blogpost? We’re open to suggestions!
Copyright ©️ 2023 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. The basic rules are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. All specific language and exact phrasing is individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
