Suppose you saw the little #worldbuilding intro post and you're interested in the concept, but have never built a world before. Maybe you've always wanted to write a novel but could never quite get it off the ground. Maybe you've wanted to be a GM for a tabletop RPG but you just could never come up with a good adventure. Or maybe you just want to see how creative you are, and let your imagination go wild.

Where does one begin?

First, let's consider a goal, or a form of presentation or product your world is wrapped up in. How do you want to present your world to an audience? I'll list a few possible forms here, but if you've got others, please comment and I'll add to this list.

Picking the right goal is important, because it's got to be one you've got an interest in, but it's also important to note that some worlds can be best presented in particular forms. Different media can present different challenges, limitations, and benefits for your world. Perhaps you assumed you wanted to write a novel, but on closer inspection, you realize your world might be better presented as a game, or even a film. Maybe you'll see a form you wouldn't have thought of that works best.

Here are some goals you might consider:

Goal: "I want to write a novel."

This is perhaps one of the most common reasons to worldbuild, but it is about the middle of the road as far as challenges and difficulties involved in worldbuilding. Writing a novel allows for great freedom in form, and gives ample room to show off as much of your world as you want. If you intend to self-publish (or not publish at all), your novel can be as long or as short as you like.

Limitations: When writing a novel, the focus is generally on characters and conflict, so you must devise a plot, create character motivations, and, if you want to show off as much of your world as possible, give your characters reasons to adventure and visit far-off places. If you eventually want to publish the novel the traditional way, the average first-timer genre novel needs to be between 80,000-100,000 words (or about 320-400 pages).

Benefits: You are not limited to a first-person point of view unless you'd like to be, and you can jump around in time with flashbacks, zoom over to what the villain is doing (if you have one), and fill out your world with subplots and minor characters.

Goal: "I want to write a short story or short stories."

Short stories are quicker, but not necessarily easier than writing a novel. There are heavier limitations in regards to content, because you must cut out anything and everything needless to keep the word count from ballooning. However, you must still follow many of the requirements of a novel, by involving characters with desires and goals who develop and change during the story.

Limitations: Short stories give little room to explore, so in a single short story, there won't be too much of your world to show off. Think of a short story as a little vignette in your world, and if you want to show off the world some more, you'll have to write multiple short stories.

Benefits: You have a quick completion time, and can give small, but tantalizing details in your world that tease readers into wanting to read more. By writing multiple short stories, you can jump around your world to a greater degree than when writing a novel, since each story stands on its own and requires no cohesion between one and the next (apart from existing in the same world you've created).

Goal: "I want to write an epic poem."

Epic poems are a delightfully fun form of fiction that dispense with many of the limitations of prose, but present unique lyrical challenges in its stead.

Limitations: It's easy to write bad poetry. Novice poets will oftentimes either stick to amateurish couplets, or think they can do anything with freeform. Writing poetry well takes practice and a deep understanding of meter and rhythm, and even freeform poetry, while giving great freedom, doesn't mean you can do anything and have it sound good. Bad freeform is like banging on a keyboard and calling it art; great freeform is jazz.

Benefits: There are fewer restrictions to content than prose, so you don't have to stick with the character-and-conflict model. Beowulf and Paradise Lost are excellent examples of epics with a prose fiction structure, while The Divine Comedy is more like a tour of the world, while the story itself is not much more than a hook to drag the narrator along. You could write an epic purely as a description of your world, or you could write it as an adventure story, or a saga covering multiple generations, or anything in between.

Goal: "I want to create artifacts from my world."

This option is like bringing your world to life in a more direct way than any other option; it brings your world to life in the most tangible way possible. You might create jewelry your inhabitants might wear, or carve wooden toys your world's children might play with.

Limitations: Your artistry or personal skill limits what kind of artifacts you might make. If you can't sew, you can't make clothes your world's inhabitants might wear. You're also limited by particular supplies and what's available now, so you can't make a starship for your sci-fi world.

Benefits: You can combine other media together to make something unique. You might write a journal of a character from your world (like a first-person novel), or you might create an alternate reality game (ARG), such as a geocache game. You might record a song that's a lullaby or worker's song or bard's song of your world.

Goal: "I want to develop a game."

Whether you're making a board game, card game, tabletop RPG, LARP, or even videogame (or anything else I have forgotten), you're in for some very difficult and interesting challenges. But being interactive by nature, it can involve the audience (in this case, players) much more and get them more interested and excited in your world than any other form.

Limitations: Developing a world and a game in tandem requires some serious knowledge on game design, art, and, if you're making a videogame, programming, so this often requires collaboration with others to reach your goal. You're not likely to make a multi-million dollar videogame unless you've got a multi-million dollar budget, so you've got to know your own personal limitations on what's possible to create. Making a physical game is easier, because it eliminates programming from the mix, and making a tabletop RPG or LARP is easiest, because it largely eliminates the need for art (except in guidebooks). However, meshing game mechanics with the theme of a world is a post all on its own.

Benefits: Games allow for freeform adventure, so you don't need to make a linear static plot; instead you can offer your world as a sandbox to play in, and for a tabletop RPG or LARP, most of the plot is improvised by GMs, and you, as the game creator, only need offer some suggested plot hooks. If you are a GM yourself, that's a whole new can of worms, of course. Also, if you're using an established game system and you want to add your world on top of it, you need not worry nearly as much about game design, and focus more on the setting itself, since the game mechanics have been done for you.

Goal: "I want to make a movie."

This one requires a post all on its own, as the challenges and benefits are entirely different than any other form, and they can vary wildly depending on the world you want to create, and the format your film takes. If you're making an animated film, you've got wildly different issues than if you're making a live-action film. The simplest piece of advice is to start small and start realistic, and, like developing a game, don't expect a blockbuster. But don't let that stop you; filmmaking is getting cheaper all the time and making quality films is easier than ever, and will only continue to get easier in the future.

Limitations: For a live-action film, you're limited to your current surroundings, and must make do with those for representing the locations of your world. Finding decent actors can be a challenge, especially those with the patience for a first-time director (and I assume that's what you'd be). For an animated film, you've got to be a great artist or know great artists, but you are far less limited in your setting.

Benefits: All the other goals, from short stories to games, require some imagination on the part of the audience, and you can't quite ever be sure that what's in your head translates well into what the audience imagines. But if you've captured your world the way you want to on film, everyone sees the world exactly the same, and if you're satisfied with the result, there's no guesswork as to how you did in conveying your world to your audience.

Goal: "I want to make a graphic novel or comic." (Courtesy of War)

Making a graphic novel or comic presents many of the challenges of prose literature with the added challenge of creating the artwork. If you have art skills, it is possible to do this alone, but if not, collaboration will be necessary.

Limitations: As with most prose, you are likely to follow the character-and-conflict formula. If you want to publish and print your work, it does cost a bit of money, however online publishing can offer a free alternative. Also, the principles of graphic novel writing are similar to that of screenwriting, so learning appropriate pacing and understanding how to write a good script is essential.

Benefits: Like other visual media like film, you can show precisely what you want and be sure the audience is viewing what you'd like them to view. You also have a range of styles with which to present your world, from having a narrator or adding third person description, to only having dialogue and letting the art serve as description.

Goal: "I don't want to create a product, I just want to create my world."

This, of course, is the easiest of all, because you have no limitations whatsoever, and you can use any tool you like to create your world, you can write things down as you please or draw whatever you want, create a combination of any of the above goals, or none of them. The world is your playground that you get to make any way you like.

The downside is that your world has no cohesive presentation, so if you want to show off your world to someone else, a notebook full of disjointed notes or biographies or endless maps or histories can seem terribly daunting (and possibly boring) to an audience. But that only matters if you want to make your world for someone else. If you want to make your world for you, go nuts and enjoy yourself any way you want!

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What's your goal? Do any of these possibilities intrigue you? Have you thought of other limitations or benefits of these forms? Have you changed you mind on your goal? Have you thought of interesting ways to get around the limitations? Any other forms of presentation you can think of? I'd love to hear some new ways to present a world.