"What?" you ask me.

Seems like a pretty silly question. Authors, like Tolkien, for example, because of their being authors, build worlds for their fantasy novels, because fantasy novels without worlds aren't fantasy novels.

But it's not so silly, when we consider deeper.

World building doesn't just mean building a fantasy world. It means constructing any sort of world, fantasy or otherwise.

If I was writing, say, a detective novel, then the characters I create, the setting a choose and develop, the elements right down to a character's eyebrows, or a details like a cobblestone street, are all world building.

So, the question is not whether you world build, or write. All writers build worlds.

The question is, why do you write? Why do you build worlds?

I started the whole fantasy thing when I was probably around twelve. Looking back, I've realized that all those stories I made up were merely vehicles for exploring and creating worlds. I am a world builder. I tell stories primarily because that's the best way to build a world, and secondarily because I want to share my world.

On the other hand, some people want to tell stories. World building is merely the way to get that story told.

So why am I talking about this?

A lot of people, including me at one point, don't see how world building for it's own sake brings Glory to God. But I've realized the answer: God delights in us using the gifts He's given us. When we create, we are doing what He intended us to do. We are bringing glory to Him, even if our world only ever exists in our private thought-life.

Likewise, writing is an act of creativity that brings glory to God in and of itself.

So, tell us, are you a writer, or a world builder? Do you write fantasy because you have a story that's desperate to be told, or a world that you want to share? How do you feel about how your work glorifies God? What has your journey through this process been like?

Here's a chance to leave your own bit of lore for the village.

And, hey, just writing that post is glorifying God. Provided your motivations are good.

And your grammar.

I have often talked to people about the fact that many people are either a world builder at heart, or a writer at heart. Not that a writer can’t world build, and not that a world builder can’t write, but that you use the other medium as a vehicle to achieve what you love.

I am a writer, thoroughly and completely. And yet, one of my Beta Readers mentioned the fact that though I say I’m not much of a world builder, my worlds are very deep and complex.

And you can tell I’m a writer based off of how I world build. See, I start out writing, and when I come across something that I need to develop and build for the world, I do. Because I hate wasting info. I see how world builders create all this great info, and then never use some of it in their books. That would drive me crazy! But that’s why I’m a writer first.

I think I'm probably a worldbuilder. I love spending time creating different worlds, so that I can hide in them when life gets hard. : / When I need someplace to go where no one else can bother me, I just kind of withdraw into myself and go to my fantasy world.

So... yes, I do think I'm a worldbuilder.

I'm not sure which I am. Or if I really am one over the other. I mean, I don't world build just to world build, whereas I might write a story just for writing a story, but I don't world build just because it's needed for a story, either.

It's funny you should begin with Tolkien: first, because he's already written extensively on the value of "sub-creation," but secondly that he wasn't a worldbuilder because he was a writer, he was a writer because he was a worldbuilder, and he was a worldbuilder because he was a philologist. Tolkien first began by creating languages---Sindarin, Quenya, etc.---then invented races that spoke them and a world (or, as he described it, an imagined period of the history of our world) in which they lived, and from there went to writing their myths and setting stories in their world.

For me: I feel called to write a particular story (or, given its scope, "saga"), which is set in a particular world (or, rather, set of worlds)---so in my own work it's pretty much all of a piece. But worldbuilding on its own can be fun in a way that sitting down and writing often isn't.

I would mention Tolkien as well. His argument was that because God is the ultimate Creator and becuase we were made in his image, one way of our ways in reflecting that is to "sub-create." Like kingjon said, Tolkien's creativity centered around forming languages (sprung from his love of philology), which naturally transferred into creating races to speak them and a world for those races to reside.

I would have to say that I am a writer. Worldbuilding, though sometimes tedious, is a blast, but my love of being an author is rooted in writing stories, stories I can share with others. I feel compelled to write books that people will love not for the sake of the book itself but for the content it contains.

We're called to go into the world and preach the Gospel, and I find storytelling is an excellent medium for doing that. Lewis and Tolkien were good at this. Even though their desire wasn't to create mere allegory, their faith was to deeply rooted in their lives that it couldn't help but shine through in their writing. There is something about these types of books that "rings true" as it were. That's what I hope to create through my own writing: books that have these qualities because they reflect, as Tolkien put it, the greatest myth ever told, the one true myth about God entering creation and becoming man to die for our sins and grant us salvation. What better story could there be than that? And if that is the core foundation of the books we write, then it glorifies God.

In a way, worldbuilding came first for me, because I was obsessed with mapping when I was younger, and I would go off and create my own maps. Looking back, I see that that was the start of my creativity, even though I didn't realize it then. My passion for writing really began I think from a desire to explore situations I knew would be exciting but which I likely would never go through. Adventures are fascinating, but since I'm not likely to be plunged into a heroic quest anytime soon, what better way to experience that than to write about it? Stories are great vehicles for exploration, because through writing about magical worlds, our imaginations take us on fantastic journeys we could never hope to experience otherwise.

For me, writing is the journey, and worldbuilding is the necessary stops along the way that allow me to regain my bearings and make sense of where I am. So I build worlds not for their sake, but because they house the stories I want to create and share.

Writer, definitely. I detest spending loads of time on world-building. I kill my poor story idea with boredom. For me, it's about the people and what they experience. Not the world and exploring. I've got a perfectly good one in real life to explore.

Definitively a world builder. It all started with the eye of a dragon. None in particular, but there it is. Then most of the characters and races started as hypothetical thoughts until I needed a place to put them all. I am still fully capable of writing, and rather enjoy it, because it tends to draw out more world building. But I can't write unless I have something to say, whereas I can world build from scratch for no particular reason.

I think I am naturally a writer and used to be a lot more of a writer than a world builder, but after joining the forum here and actually doing more world building, I think I'm morphing more to that side...

I am definitely more of a worldbuilder than a writer. For me, worldbuilding is natural and easy and fun, while writing is often quite painful. Yet I still find both enjoyable and satisfying, just in different ways. Worldbuilding satisfies my desire to explore and imitate the real world, to observe it, see how it works, and play with it; writing satisfies my desire to express truth. Worldbuilding just happens to be easier for me.


I think that worldbuilding on its own can bring glory to God in other ways, too. I use my worlds to express what I believe is true about the real world, and even if nobody else ever sees my world or recognizes those expressions of truth, I think I am still glorifying God by considering truth and trying to understand it and reflect on it. It's kind of like writing about your studies of the Bible in a private journal. Nobody's ever going to read your thoughts about the truth you found in the Bible. But it's still worthwhile to express it just for yourself.

I also use my worldbuilding to help me better explore and understand the real world. Recently I've been creating a church structure for a Sheesanian country, and this had led me to think hard about the roots of church structures on Earth and what roles churches have played in society and government. And the things I've learned have helped me to appreciate God's work on earth, and someday may also help me in other ways to glorify Him.


Yep! Very true!


Ha, but even though I'm a worldbuilder and not a writer, it still bugs me when I can't include everything I want to about my world in a story...because I LIKE those details about the world so much, and I want to share them!


See, but for me I explore the real world BY worldbuilding...It's like writing helps you to better understand novels, or knitting helps you to better understand clothing. My excitement about my imaginary world and my excitement about the real world feed into each other; I do the most worldbuilding at the times when I am most engaged with my studies of the real world, and vice versa.

I do the same. Where I explore the world through building and fitting things into my world. Either I want something to fill a hole and must quest far and wide to find the perfect thing, or I find some lovely bit of knowledge and must give it a home in my own mind. That's also similar to how my values fit into my writing.

What is also lovely is how worldbuilding and writing draw everything together. I was first very found of plants and animals and so began my worldbuilding from there, but then civilizations sprung up and I began to explore cartography, astronomy, economics, and anatomy. Subjects I had learned to find tedious such as history and politics quickly became fascinating because I had to understand them to know whether this poor character would be killed for a careless deed, or how this meddlesome dragon's words might subtly reshape a culture.

The same can happen from a writing focus because what matters to the plot and the character has to matter to the writer. It simply fascinates me how deeply connected it all becomes.

And, Sheesania, it helps me avoid info dumping or over explaining worldbuilding by throwing it all on Holy Worlds. It gives you a place to release and it gives all the other worldbuilders something shiny with which to play.

Exactly! Yes! Sometimes I learn something fascinating and then I know that I MUST put it somewhere in my imaginary world just so I can play with it. Like when I learned about moiety systems, and then came up with my huge system of how Thomoraii scholars marry... (http://sheesania.com/marriage-among-scholars-in-the-thomoraii-empire/ if you have a lot of time)


Yes! Yes! For me, I tend to already be interested in everything - worldbuilding just lets me express all my interests in a unified whole.


Yup. It is fascinating!


I should consider doing that a bit more!

Glad to see a kindred spirit.

*looks up moiety* I knew I heard that word before in Riven...

This is similar to plot versus character. Some people say there are three: plot, character, and setting. Others say that setting is in the same category as character, but I do think they are separate. In fact, setting may be more separate than plot and character are separate from each other.

You could say that the best stories come from the worldbuilding, as they do in the familiarworld. All of earth's history, especially those things recorded in the Bible, arise from the worldbuilding of earth.

I have recently made some great strides forward in discovering the nature of Iniel. I have updated my "Introducing You to Iniel" post, and I hope to post a lot about refigurations soon.

It is really wonderful to create stories and worlds and see how they mirror God's own story and creation.