Whether your book is set in a real place or an imagined one, you need to build your characters' world so that the reader can fully believe and engage in the story.

When building a world, you have the power to develop it in any way you see fit. What will your world look like? How different is it from our own? What will the people be like? What about the cities and landscape?

Considering these elements is crucial to creating an interesting, engaging, and believable world—in any genre, not just fantasy or science fiction.

Before you write your next story, make sure to give your characters' world the attention it deserves.

The more intricately and intimately you know your story's world, the richer your writing will be.

Go beyond just outlining the setting your characters live and work in. Think about the laws that govern the world, the way the government works, the world's history, geography, technology, and mythology.

Beware, though, the more differences to our own world you introduce, the more you need to focus on getting those details absolutely right–you need to do it in such a way that they almost fade into the background so the reader is instead focusing on the characters and the story.

You don't need to explicitly create and explain all aspects of your world in the first couple of chapters. Without some story developing in these chapters, your readers may not be interested in reading further into your book.

To begin building your world:

What's so important about this place?

At its core, a story is about conflict. Without that, there's really little to tell.

Once you've worked out what it is, you need a world for that conflict to occupy:

• What sort of place best displays this conflict?

• Who are the protagonists in the conflict and where do they live?

• How do they differ from the everyday people we all know, or do they differ at all?

• What role can the environment play in that conflict, both directly and symbolically?

Once you've done this, you're ready to think about the protagonists in the conflict, and how the landscape might influence them.

Set up the society

Societies are anything but vague; they are made up of people who are all trying to do their best to survive and care for those that they love.

Let's begin with the basics. You don't have to have an answer for every question below, but these are just here as a jumping-off point for your brainstorming sessions.

• How do people live here? Where does the food come from? What about cloth, timber, metal? What plants and animals are there and in the society? How technologically advanced are the people here?

• What is their history and how might this have shaped them as a people, their beliefs, attitudes, and identity?

• What races are present? How much migration is there from other places? How integrated are the migrants? How do the locals act towards the migrants and vice versa? What languages are spoken, and by whom?

• What social classes are present, and how do they interact? What creates and sustains their division? How do the leaders gain, preserve, and relinquish power? How do other potential leaders view the current leaders?

This is where you have the opportunity to convey your own worldview: the things you hold to be true in the nature of the society you are creating. How is the society organized, what do they emphasize, and what is their relationship with the environment and each other?

One thing I must stress is to lay down a few rules. A typical rule goes a long way toward making the action in your world more exciting. Rules create problems, and solving problems is exactly what drives a novel. Also, consider what's good and what's bad about your world. What appears good, but is really bad and vice versa?

The past

You don't want to give the impression that your story's world came into existence just before the first chapter. How long has it been here? How did it get here? What are the big events that shape people's behavior today? What are people's beliefs about their creation, their purpose, their past, and their futures? What divergent interpretations of these real or imagined events are present in society?

The more credible these things are, the more real your world will feel. But you have to build rationally, even in a fantasy setting.

The small details count

It's often the little details that make the world you've created real. Earth has so much variety, so many fascinating people and places that are worth celebrating.

So do some research into other cultures and think about how you might use variations of what you've learned in your building–always taking care to fit it all together seamlessly so that it feels right. Create cultures with their own speech patterns, dress codes, and belief systems. How do the people relax? How do they express themselves creatively? What do they aspire to?

The thing to remember is that all of this needs to serve the story, not the other way round. Don't lose sight of your main premise. If something looks like it is taking over, you need to cut back its importance, but still have it make sense.

Realistic characters

Each group will have opinion leaders and powerful people with needs and desires. They need to be fully rounded people, with positive points as well as flaws. Use them to move the conflicts along.

And you need to keep in mind that if they've achieved a degree of success, despite their flaws, they must also have strengths: they must be worthy of the role (or at least capable of gaining it and holding it,) and they must fulfill it to the satisfaction of a powerful portion of those they lead (or have intimidated those they lead into letting them keep the role), or their time at the top will be short-lived. Give them a back-story, and think about their goals, in particular, what they think about the big issues, especially the conflict that is the heart of your story.

As the events of your story unfold, you will find that the reactions of these opinion leaders to the latest events in your story will help to drive it forward, so stay on top of what they are thinking and doing, even if it is off-screen.

Chaos is only natural

So far, our goal has been to create a dynamic but mostly stable society. The important factor in that last sentence is 'stable.' Society is always changing as it adapts to new things, but most of the time it does so in an incremental way.

But conflicts are inherently destabilizing, and that new factor could throw everything into chaos. This 'chaos factor' might be ultimately beneficial for most (like a revolt against a tyrant), or not (like a plague virus), but that's up to you. The important thing for the story is that your world and the people in it react in a credible way to the disruption.

Work toward a resolution: either the change leaves the world altered, or the change is averted and your society continues (relatively) unchanged.

As you can see, you can slice and dice your imaginary society in lots of ways, and what you get is COMPLEXITY. This is good: a complex world is believable, while a simplistic one isn't.

As a storyteller, you need to think about how much complexity you want to show; never forget that all of this is to support the story, not be the story. You need to know all this stuff, but you don't need to show it all. Often just making reference to your world-building (local jargon and customs, oblique references to past events, etc.) can be enough in the early chapters to let the action hook the reader; you can let the back-story seep out bit by bit as the plot develops.

Never forget the world-building is the backdrop and the props; the story close-ups should always be on your characters.

Taking this level of care with your worldbuilding will carry into your writing and make your story more believable.

Still struggling to create a believable world?

Try some of these strategies:

1. Read about other authors' worlds. The tiniest element of another writer's creating could inspire your world. Take note of how the writer shows, rather than tells, elements of her world.

2. Watch and analyze movies. Worldbuilding isn't just for books. What did the moviemakers do to make the world come alive? Pay attention to the details that add life and depth to the story.

3. Mix and match. Take two ideas from different places, put them together, and add your own twist to create a whole new world.

4. Draw a map of your story's world. It doesn't have to be fancy; a quick sketch will do. Add more detail to flesh it out.

5. Think about the history of the world. What kinds of people live there? Are they like you and me? What makes them different?

6. Consider what kinds of flora and fauna live in your world. Are there tame animals? Are there wild, unexplored forests or other landscapes?

7. Outline your world's background. What kind of technology does your world have? What is the government like—or is there one? What is the culture like? Do its inhabitants have fads and styles?

Remember: Your world is not the central character of your story. While it may take center stage at times, ask yourself whether each highlight helps move the story along. Does it help develop the characters in some way? Or is it something you want to add because you worked so hard to develop it? If it's the latter—leave it out.

Please give this part a vote if it assisted you in any shape or form.