Do you have pages upon pages of worldbuilding, but no story?
No worries!
Let’s go over some tips for how you can story-ify your premade world, then practice it together!
During the last stream, a subscribers requested that we go over what we can learn from popular bad stories.
Watch a shortened version of the stream here or scroll down for what we did.
How to Make a Story out of a World You’ve Already Built
- It can be a lot of fun to worldbuild, creating an entire fictional civilization, its history, cultures, magic, and more
- But! A world is not a story, and if your goal is to write a story, with characters and a beginning/middle/end, you need to get out of the worldbuilding at some point and get writing the story
- And if you have dozens of pages of worldbuilding ideas, it can be intimidating to figure out how to turn it into an actual story
- So today let’s go over some tips on how to make a story out of a world you’ve already built, then practice doing it together!
Disclaimer: This is not the ONLY way to create a story out of a world you’ve built, but I recommend it for people who are struggling to do so. If you’ve never published a book before, then no one will want to read a 200,000-word tome that has five POVs spanning eight continents. It’s better to focus on one character, in one place, and this is one way to accomplish that.
- The first thing to do is ask yourself, what is the coolest/most unique thing about your world?
- Is it the history, the magic system, the culture/society, or some other peculiarity about the world?
- Let’s take a look at each of them and see some examples
#1. HISTORY
- Maybe the most fun thing about your world is its history, the wars, the rise/falls of nations, certain longstanding organizations
- If so, then try to figure out some way to connect the past to the present in a story
Examples:
Lord of the Rings — Middle Earth has an incredibly rich history, and one of the most important parts was the war that the evil lord Sauron lost. But a magical ring he created back then survives to the present day where it must be destroyed.
Harry Potter — The wizarding world established a school to teach children magic a thousand years ago, and back then there were disagreements on how to deal with magic children born to non-wizard parents. That’s still a problem today.
Ready Player One — An eccentric billionaire created a massive virtual reality world and hid an Easter egg inside it before he died. Today, people are still searching for it.
#2. MAGIC SYSTEM
- Maybe the most fun thing about your world is its magic system, which you have specific rules/limitations for
- If so, then try to figure out a way to have a character learn that magic system in a story
Examples:
Avatar: The Last Airbender — There are four nations (Fire, Water, Earth, Air), and the Avatar has to learn the magic from all of them, and we learn along with him too as he travels.
The Fifth Season — People known as orogenes can control seismic energy like earthquakes, and are feared for their power. We follow a character who finds out she’s an orogene, learns how to control her abilities, and discovers the consequences of being one too.
The Name of the Wind — There are two types of magic in this world: sympathy and naming. Sympathy involves connecting two things like a voodoo doll, and naming involves calling something by its “true name” and having control over it (like iron, water, or wind). The main character knows sympathy, but he goes to a university to learn more about naming.
#3. CULTURE/SOCIETY
- Maybe the most fun thing about your world is its culture/society, the way normal people’s lives are
- If so, then try to figure out a way to have a character learn a secret about the culture/society in a story
Examples:
Wool — The world has been destroyed by disease, and all that’s left is a single giant underground bunker that has everything its thousands of inhabitants need to survive. That’s cool, but then the main character discovers that they’ve been lied to, and there are more bunkers out there.
Scythe — A world where no one can die except when killed by a “Scythe,” a benevolent and impartial judge given the power to kill. That’s cool, but then the main characters train to become scythes, and they find out that there are lots of Scythes who are not benevolent and impartial, and kill for their own gain.
Skyward — A ruined world that is constantly under attack by aliens, and only the skilled pilots of fighter spaceships can fight against them. That’s cool, but then the main character discovers that the aliens aren’t trying to destroy them, just keep them occupied so they can’t leave the planet, because they think humans are dangerous.
#4. PECULIARITY
- Maybe the most fun thing about your world is something weird about it that’s different from our own
- If so, then try to figure out a way to have a character fight against that peculiarity in a story
Examples:
Bloodchild — Humans and centipede-like aliens live together on a planet where the centipedes reproduce by laying their eggs inside humans. The humans survive the procedure, and many see it as an honor, but one boy does not want to do it.
A Face Like Glass — A world where people can only show certain emotions that they’ve purchased. The main character is a girl who can show any emotion she wants, and so she has to wear a mask at all times.
Steelheart — A world where some people are randomly given superpowers. The main character fights against one of the strongest superheroes-turned-villain, the invincible Steelheart, after he killed his father years ago and he saw him bleed.
After that, chat voted on this world that we would flesh out together:
A world where humans succeeded in building the tower of babel and reaching heaven. Everyone has been living in the heaven parts of the tower, and very few people even remember what the earth looks like, but the tower’s foundation is still attached to the Earth.
We figured that the CULTURE/SOCIETY inside the tower, with its hierarchies and levels, was the coolest part of the world, as well as the HISTORY, with lots of important events that shaped the tower, internally and externally, over time.
Here’s the story we came up with that has a character discover a secret about the CULTURE/SOCIETY, as well as connecting the past HISTORY to the present:
Main character is the descendant of people who ran away from the tower long ago and were punished. His sister has fallen ill, and he intends to climb the tower to get the help of the sky-dwellers. When he loses challenges to rise and is punished by going down levels, he uncovers a secret: there are levels so low they go underground. There, he becomes friends with underbelly dwellers/rebels, one of whom may be the Devil.
And here’s the opening to that story written out:
For the first time in his life Jacob was thankful to live on level six. If they’d been on level four or lower, Lucy would’ve been dead weeks ago.
He sat by her scratchy mattress on the floor, no one else in their small living chamber. A small relief, but the others only spent their time outside due to fear of catching her disease. Jacob didn’t have any other choice. If he didn’t tend to Lucy’s hives and rashes, washing them clean and praying for her salvation as she lay and breathed heavily, then heaven’s fire would have already taken her.
They didn’t have much on level six, but one liter of daily clean water was truly a blessing from the Echelon.
Jacob could hear the other residents grumbling outside their door in the hallway. Some of them were whispering about how they couldn’t wait for Lucy to keel over so they could move back in. Others weren’t whispering it.
“Jacob,” Lucy whined in her strained voice. Her eyes fluttered open, twitching as they tried to focus on him. “You need… to drink.”
She looked over at the clay cups of water that Jacob stockpiled the past week. He only allowed himself a single sip each day, in preparation for right now.
“I’m fine,” he told Lucy. He didn’t tell her it was a constant struggle to not clear his throat and suck away at his own saliva. “You need it more. There’ll be plenty where I’m going anyway.”
Her eyes suddenly snapped open, more conscious than they’ve been since she first came down with devilpox.
“Don’t go.” She reached up to him with a shaking hand, but her fingers were too weak to even grab onto the sleeve of his long, white tunic. He gently pushed it back to her side.
“I’ll be back soon,” Jacob reassured her. “Just rest. By the time you wake up, I’ll be here with your medicine.”
Lucy moved her lips to try and say something else, but she’d already exhausted all her strength. Her eyes closed and she returned to her normal state of laboured breathing.
Jacob quietly moved the cups of water right beside her mattress, to not wake her up. She usually had enough strength to pick one up each day. Hopefully it would last.
With one final breath in the disease-ridden room, Jacob knelt down over his own mattress and reached under it. There was only one thing he needed before heading out.
The knife. He held it before him, staring at its pristine, sharp metal. The only thing he and Lucy inherited from their no-good grandparents, in case of emergency. This certainly counted as one.
Jacob ran his finger along the knife’s cold, flat edge. He tried to imagine what it would feel like thrust inside him. Inside someone else.
He’d find out on his way up to the Echelon.
It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely a decent start! And be sure to check out the video to see the pages upon pages of worldbuilding that we had, how we extracted this specific story from it, and the other equally awesome ideas we came up with.
If we could juice a story out of our world, you can do it for yours.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Top images: pixabay