The Best Bits of World-Building

This post is a response to a prompt released by @alonicus in This Post. Wherein he asks us to describe the best bits of world-building.

The prompt this week is - "The Best Bits"

What is your favourite part of worldbuilding, the bit that gives you the greatest joy? Is it having the initial idea, or some part of the creative process, or the reaction of your intended audience when they see the result of all your hard work? Your response doesn't have to be an OOC one, you might find that actually doing a "best bit" is a fun way to respond to this prompt!

Source

What Is World-building?
World-building to me is all of the aspects of the worlds you're writing for, that may or may not end up in the finished story. Maybe only one element is mentioned briefly and is there waiting for you to explore later on down the road.

It doesn't need to exist solely in fictional worlds we're creating. There is definitely room for lore in the real world too, but, it is a large part of fiction - even if only for context for stories we're writing - sometimes it's nice to elude to grander ideas, to let our minds wonder. They also allow for stories to run their course side by side with the main plot.

One example which I've always liked is in Game of Thrones, Arya releases her Dire Wolf in the first book, then as the books go on characters talk briefly about a pack of wolves killing travelers and wiping out entire villages. Most people brush the rumours off as the small folk making up stories, but we know exactly what's going on and it just adds to the tension whenever we follow characters walking the region where the wolves are prominent.

My Favourite Aspect of World-building.
I love factions, groups, and gangs, and how they relate to one another. This is always an area I spend time in because the relationships between certain factions do two things.

1. It reveals history. Why does one faction like, or dislike another? There are countless stories that could be told here. You could always think of something and revisit it later as a short story, novella, or hell, who knows? Maybe even a fully-fledged novel if you wanted to. But, regardless of whether or not you ever do revisit it, these relationships are important to give context to a current story.

2. Flavour. Each city, region, or planet should be different - so each faction or group should reflect those differences and will help to give each place a unique feel. Maybe the planet is home to warlike people who value strength over all else. Well, what if one group is treacherous? How would that look? What would the punishment be? Could they pull off some daring feat that wipes out the honorable and strong factions in one hit? How would that look in the future?

It's About Asking Questions, mainly.
Questioning ourselves is important when writing because these questions can allow us to come up with creative answers.

Like if you have a story set in a semi-abandoned town, you can ask the question - why is it abandoned? Maybe some local wildlife moved in and started hunting the population. That's kind of interesting because then you can ask questions like - how are people going to stop it? Will a hero emerge? Will they work alone, or team up with the locals and train them?

Maybe it's abandoned because all the jobs got moved out of town, so people had to move away. Was there some kind of conspiracy behind this? Does someone want the town cleared out? Why? Again, what will the remaining townsfolk do to stop this?

Questions are everything, and you can include them in any aspect of writing. Questions sometimes produces conflict, and conflict produces stories.

Also, towns and settings are interesting parts of world-building and can produce some interesting stories too. Like if you had two towns near each other, one is rich and the other is poor. There could be some conflict there, how would the locals react to one another?

The Stuff That Isn't Written
World-building can also be the stuff that isn't written, the stories that aren't being told, all the elements that fill notebooks and form incoherent babble and serve no purpose other than piquing the interest of a reader when a character says. "Hmm, I wouldn't travel to the third moon of Kah-Vita. I hear there's some band of pirates operating out of a base there who raid ships."

You could flick past that and say, "Hmm, sounds pretty dangerous, anyway, moving on." Or you could say. "Hmm, a band of pirates, I wonder who's leading them? Do they attack anyone they see? Is the Kah-Vitan government doing anything to stop them?"

Obviously, if you're going to raise questions, it's important to answer them, otherwise, you end up with a load of loose ends. So, I think it's pretty important not to raise too many questions or talk about too many different aspects of the world. It's the kind of thing that you want to let trickle out slowly, to see what turns into a waterfall.

I've had a bunch of elements brought up in dialogue randomly, which piqued my own interest and left me months later exploring certain things which then became some of my favourite aspects of a particular story. So, it's hard to say what may or may not turn into something down the road.

Final Point
I'm not an expert or anything, so some of what I said may make sense and be right and some parts may be wrong.

The final point on world-building is really about breathing life into the worlds you're writing.

The thing I love about world-building, above all else, is making a place feel lived in, to a certain extent. Giving each place history, as well as a rich present, and potentially a future.