Hi! Since I've started dreaming of lands far away, and my head has disappeared into foreign clouds (only intermittently, mind you!) my seven year old brother has wanted to do the same. Mostly whenever he sees me working on mapping my world he shows interest, so we have started another map for him.
Obviously he isn't (yet) prepared for the humongous concept of world building (I don't think anyone is completely, if you think about it) but I was wondering if anyone had done this before and/or has any ideas that might help us have fun together while at the same time making a cool world that might bring him (Judah is his name) into Christian Fantasy writing (which would be AWESOME) and populating his world, naming it (right now it's named something quite ridiculous and he didn't put much thought into it yet, so also some ideas for naming people and things seriously. In short, I want to SUCK HIM INTO THE FANTASY WRITING-WORLD BUILDING MANIA!!

I would say it depends on what else he's interested in. If he's more interested in animals you could teach him about the mythological creatures, if it's weapons or mechanics you could work with him on the technology aspects. Have him draw things from his world or maybe keep a notebook of the thinks he tells you about them. My brother has had a growing interest in dragons lately which I'm trying to nurture into a writer's mind.

That sounds like some good ideas, thank you! I will do that next time me and Judah spend some time talking about fantasy! That's cool about your brother, I really like dragons too!

My brother's been doing the same thing. I listen to his ideas, and make some comments and continue to urge him to write them down.

Cool, yeah, it's really fun to hear their thoughts!

I would say keep it fun. My earliest attempts at worldbuilding were influenced heavily by the Oz books, which were about fantasy lands that were the epitome of whimsy. Talking metal men with no hearts, living scarecrows and people with jack-o'-lantern heads, and girls made out of patchwork. One of my earliest worlds had an entire forest where all the plants and animals were made out of metal, and the river was even cold liquid metal. A fun kinda world with either really literal names (I had towns like "Mid-air City" which was a town suspended between the ground and the sky, and the "Metal Forest"), or fun gibberish names of the Dr. Seuss variety, like Cooka, Flooka, and Mobbeldee Meadows (I've never actually used any of these, by the way).

Cool, sounds like you had a lot of fun with world building when you were young! I wasn't really introduced to anything much like fantasy (although I think a lot of cartoons could be considered such, in a way), until I was like thirteen or fourteen or something, and read the Chronicles of Narnia. It was last Summer, when I was reading a biography of Tolkien that I got it in my head to make my own world. I guess that's sort of off topic, but I'm saying that I wanted my brother to get the chance to try it early on, and hopefully get good at it if he enjoyed it.
Taking your advice though, I have been trying to keep it fun as much as I can bear. I sometimes try to hard to keep it 'realistic' lol, but I do my best to make sure that it's really his world made out of his ideas, I just try to help him name places, because he tends to name them things that are unpronouncable, like stubieoneightundred!

That is an awesome name

I know!

That's my biggest problem: letting my brother have a fan fiction world. I have to remember that at his age I'm was doing the same thing. Just with Starcraft instead of HTTYD.

Wait, what? Were you world-building with/around StarCraft? That would be awesome.

On-topic: I did do something sort of worldbuilding-ish with my little brother once, although I was structuring it as a table-top game. Sort of a super-simplified dungeons and dragons, played with paper and pencil for battles and LEGO figures/landscapes/minimaps for the world. We developed the battle moves and special abilities of our characters together, then I'd make up a section of plot and some bad guys for us to fight, and then we'd adventure together with our characters (and we also had one mercenary each, so, a party of four). It was short-lived (I couldn't keep it up! ) but lots of fun.

Wolf, do you and your brother have an role-playing component to your world building at all, even just an imagined one? Does your brother have a hero which is his avatar in his world?

Agreed, I'm hoping to do it more with him, when I was just a little older than him I was already "fantasizing" about different things, as I got older those things got pretty crazy, and whatever happened I was the hero That always got boring, but I found that imagining exciting and happy things was becoming an addiction, and wasn't helping me think much more of the life God had really given me. Then dad suggested nanowrimo to me, and I realized that when I was going over my story idea, I was getting the same pleasure I had gotten from telling stupid, ridiculous stories to myself-and I was doing something good instead of causing myself to be ungrateful for what God has given me. So I'm hoping to channel Judah's imagination instead of letting it sort of "spill" like mine did. Also I need to spend more time with him...



Thank you for the encouragement! I know, I need to work on letting him do what he wants. I try to make sure he knows I want him to choose what he wants and not just agree with me whenever I suggest something-I want it to be his world, but I also want it to "make sense" at least enough that he could start writing stories later on. But that is true, right now he might even think up something ridiculous that later inspires him to invent something everyone loves...I need to let his world "grow" as much as I can, let him choose what it's like, he can always change it later if need be.

Yeah, come to think of it, I sort of did that too, if I really liked a movie or book, I would imagine myself being in it with the characters. It's good practice though, it still flexes the imagination!

That's awesome! I wouldn't have thought of that...though I am hoping to design an rpg-ish game based on Vadra, my fantasy world...hmm, this would be a cool alternative when Judah and I get tired of making his stuffed animals talk and beat each other up...



Hmm, no, not yet he doesn't. But I can see how we could acquire one for him. You see, we started building his world when he saw me using my mapping software and wanted me to make him a map as well. So I got him to start world-building, and let him draw the land mass on the computer himself. After that came some effects that were helpful, but bored him somewhat. But a few weeks later we revisited it and started naming places. We named an island that was a little ways off of the central continent 'The Isle of the Rogue Knights, which we decided was a place that some knights fled to when their ruler turned evil...I think Judah and I could have quite a bit of fun with this if I figured out how to...I could at least help him name a few of the "rogue knights" and let him choose one to be himself and tell me what he would do in that situation. Hey! Maybe I could even make sort of a simplified "choose your adventure" story with multiple choices...if I get the time at least, I think that'd be really cool. Thanks for the ideas everyone!

Ooh, uh, I've not been doing it very consistently. But thanks for the encouragement! I think I will try to do something concerning it with him today (mostly because you brought it to mind, thanks again!), I really need to spend more time with him anyway. Oh, and I'm also going to try and make it more fun...If I can figure out how to, I'll even try to get him to interact with it (in some wildly abstract way). One thing on our side is: his imagination has no health problems and neither does mine (that's not saying anything about our other mental [possibly dis]abilities)!

I have a five year old brother, and I am very into map making (like I developed a really cool aging process and drawing techniques) and last night Mama discovered him drawing his own little map.
(it was so cute with random lines going this way and that. And somehow he knew which way was north, south, east and west.)
One thing I recommend is blending current animals and plants. (a platamonkey or a dog-fish)Ask him what his favorite super powers are (i.e flying, controlling fire, breathing under water what-have you.) or if he ever imagined having a talking pet giraffe. Make-up imaginary words to replace other words. Oooh and if he's interested, codes can be quite fun.

That's cool that you're brother was drawing a map. My brother has done things to imitate me before too. Thank you for those ideas, I'll definitely keep them in mind and I LOVE codes, so if I can get him excited about them, that'd be awesome too, thanks for the ideas!