World-building - Dividing the Pie

Gumboot

Gumboot

lorcutus.tolere
Joined
Feb 12, 2012
Messages
948
I have something of a dilemma and I thought I'd come here to see what people thought. It relates to world-building, and specifically how people manage and categorise the data they create.

In brief, I'm assembling a website for my WIP, primarily populated with "supporting material" - that is the world-building material that's not specific content for the book; maps, diagrams, history, military formations, coats-of-arms, weird animals and plants, and so on and so on and so on.

The problem is, I'm not sure how to organise it all in a succinct collection that limits the upper menu items to a small number.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

In terms of my file material for the project itself, I have the following main folders:
Architecture, Cartography, History, Images, Languages, Military, Mythology, Other, Poems/Songs but this is too many and I think it's really poorly structured anyway. I'm looking for an improvement.
 
How many different nations do you have in this world? Would it be easier to have the upper menu listing the names of the nations?

Another possibility is combining mythology and history (in a fantasy setting, they are probably seen as the same thing, but I don't know how you've structured your world).
 
Something happen to your login, Gumboot?


Anyway, on topic. I use Microsoft OneNote myself. My notebook is divided into four tabs: Locations, Houses, Histories, Plot. I think mine might be quite a bit simpler than yours though.

Locations is has two subdivisions - one for each nation featured in my book. On the tabs belonging to those nations is a map of their part of the world as well as economy and population details.

The nation tab is further divided into a tab for each major location within that nation, with specific details about the location and lifestyle there, and who the ruling families/councils are.


Houses is divided into a tab for each ruling family, on these pages is included a family tree and brief history of the family.

Histories is the world histories in general and has a sub-division for every major event in history that I've planned out so far. Most of my history is ingrained with mythology so it counts for that section too.

Plot is just one page with the synopsis.


EDIT:

The wiki idea would work, if you initially have a menu picking the nation, and then it goes into a menu selecting those six sections, maybe.
 
Hrm... good suggestions from everyone.

I guess another option is the "kingdom" route, which most of you seem to be suggesting. I do have a sort of "encyclopedia entry" template for some of the kingdoms which I have gradually been building up, which then covers a range of different areas (like the wiki entries).

I suppose that might work best, actually. Do you think it would be better to have a single enormous document, or to branch out further to the individual categories for each kingdom on separate pages?

I suppose my main concern with this is that these entries, when complete, are rather large (I haven't actually completed any yet, but the most complete thus far is 18,000 words), so it's a lot of effort and time to get anything up, whereas if I do it more "bits and pieces" I can just stick up whatever I have.
 
Building on wilco's suggestion, you could steal further from Wikipedia and have a page per kingdom covering the main topics, with additional more detailed pages where you have a lot of information. E.g.

Gondor

Geography

(map)

History

(paragraph or two of history)

(link to List of the Stewards of Gondor)

Architecture

etc.
 
This may not be helpful, but personally I'm "trying" not to be too obsessive about notes and world-building.

I can't write well without planning and world building, but it needs to be flexible and adaptable, and concise enough for easy reference.

I definitely overdid notes and world building when I started out, creating a real headache for myself later when I had to go back through my old (often superseded) notes.

Coragem.
 
I only realised about two days ago that I maybe need to do this. As an incredibly bad manager used to tell me, the information was all in his head...
I did a count and realised I now have 10 planets fully in the story, with another 10 referenced to, a full political system, including planetary hierarchy, several seperate cultural/races of people, and all their characters. My plan is, largely, to stick them up on the wall of my office under headings; planets, people, races, timelines, political. My mother in law is coming to stay in 2 weeks, though, and she uses my office, so I might just let her kip first, or she might think I'm altogether too weird....
 
springs1971 said:
hierarchy, several seperate cultural/races of people, and all their characters. My plan is, largely, to stick them up on the wall of my office under headings; planets, people, races, timelines, political. My mother in law is coming to stay in 2 weeks, though, and she uses my office, so I might just let her kip first, or she might think I'm altogether too weird....
Click to expand...

That is a story all of its own haha

On topic, I have another book I've been world building for and found that it was chaos. So I've got a Folder on my pc that has a folder for each race / faction. In those folders, it branches out into more folders, ranks, history etc... so once you have your main headings, you can include lots more in regards to those headings on their own pages, with their own links?

I think it's a good idea to make a website and you can get at it anywhere... even include a forum for yourself to add ideas etc, if even for your own eyes.
 
I was using Microsoft Word before I discovered how wonderful and convenient Scrivener is. Basically I had all kinds of sub sections in just one document of my fantasy mythology in progress and several separate documents like mythology and character profiles. I tested out Scrivener for the free months trial and imported my documents into a novel template and then began separating all of those sub sections into sectioned off parts of the imported document. As an example, here's how my document looks currently. What follows is a brief example of what scrivener has made possible for my fantasy series in progress (this is all easily accessible and named on a binder section on the left of the document which is scrollable and separate itself):

Characters, Places, and Themes: (Whenever my subconscious gives me a name for a character or locality for instance I'll write it down here. Also, themes that I want to explore consciously I place here as well.).

Realms, Places, Peoples: (This is where I come up with more concrete descriptions of the kinds of races I have in my world, the realms or planes to which they belong, and the nations and whatnot, the peoples that belong to those nations (or if they belong to separate realms entire), and where they show up in the history of the world)

Character Profiles: (This is where I--predictably--work on my character profiles. I don't stress over this, or at least I'm learning not to. I couldn't tell you how many characters I have in my series thus far, but it's a lot, all ranging from the history of the world to the time of the series that will be written. I have them all in alphabetical order and the only letter that doesn't have a representation is Q.

Flowers, Plants, and Trees: (This is where I place real world plant life to help bring my world to life).

Horses: (Anything I have been able to document on horses I have placed here).

And the list goes on to Animals, Food and Drink, Politics, Military Matters, Real World Minerals, My Made Up Minerals, etc, etc. Scrivener has just made organizing my fantasy series a whole lot more convenient and a lot more fun.
 
Last edited:
Personally, I like using KeynoteNF to organize my world building. While it doesn't offer tools specifically designed to encourage the mind of the writer, what it does do is make everything easily accessible. You can type your information directly into the window, or drag and drop a link to any document in your computer. It's also transportable, so it can live and function on a flash drive.

You can create as many tabs as you want, with Parent Categories, such as Characters, Locations, Artifacts, Gods, Locations, etc, and within each tab you can have nodes with millions of child nodes. A-for instance! http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m118/Seleana_Malloriel/Keynotes%20NF%20Screen%20Caps/Keynote1.jpg So, within each section you can break things down, such as here with Characters you have who your Main characters are, as well as the other classifications you feel are important. When you click on each node you have space in the window to the right to make your notes, which means when you're tickety-typing away in your word processor of choice, and you have a question about any aspect you may have forgotten, you just pull up one program and click-click, you're there.

Here's another project example: http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m118/Seleana_Malloriel/Keynotes NF Screen Caps/Keynote2.jpg

I feel more comfortable using Keynotes than something like the Wiki sites, because I can detail everything out as much as I like (and I can get very detailed even within notes only I will see) without worrying about the information being compromised by eyes that by all rights should never see it. I've spent too long on my world to trust the internet to protect the things that really need protecting.
 
I don't actually formally categorize things when worldbuilding; not into a tangible copy, anyway. I use my head for things. Okay, this is when this happened, in relation to this character's age, or this is this race and they're seen in this island or that ocean or those forests, etc. It helps to base your world off Earth, at least somewhat, in terms of geography and terrain.


Oh, and have a calendar system for your world-that will save you a LOT of headaches.
 
am I the only one who feels like this is asking "how do you organize your closet?" maybe i'm just overly personal about things... everything I can hang up I do, the rest go into drawers.

I use word documents and put them into folders acording to how I would go looking for them. I have a folder called Writing and in it I have folders for all my major stories and my poetry and lyrics. in the folder for Ajan's Adventure I have folders for the world at large, the peoples who live on it, and the stories Ajan will be collecting. in the stories folder i think i have them seperated into where the stories come from, or maybe i just intent to do that.

so as you can see, where I put my socks may not work for you. you should put your socks where you will know to look for them, and where they will be easiest to find.
 
The basic problem is that computers restrict us to two dimensions and hierachical structure (folders within folders, branching tree) to do our Venn diagrams. My brain isn't limited in that way; it can build a five dimensional grid and check out intersections, rotating through as many axes as necessary.

Search engines are conceptually linear, while thought processes don't tend to be. A detail about city location, or biological description of a species might end up in planetology, or comparitive religion; we just remember we've searched it, and, if very lucky, a keyword.

Ctegory, subcategory, origin, word; they can all be useful. But what we really need is a search engine like the web, like our thought processes, near infinite connections and high recognition factor when something useful is found (and an automatic "where can we go from here?")
 
I should clarify that the question was in relation to organising a selection of material to be made publicly available on my website, not for organisation of all my material. With web content the general rule is "the less clicks the better" so I don't want content buried under dozens of sub-pages, hence seeking a simplified way of displaying it for the public.
 
I keep it simple, myself. One MS word document with Table of Contents at the start, and then a 'back to top' link at the end of each entry. That way I can zip anywhere in the whole document in seconds by just zooming back up to the contents page.
 
I'm similar to Jake in my method. I compile a number of Glossaries and pull from each as needed.

I have no current plans to share ALL of my worldbuilding documentation with the public, but in time it's not an entirely bad idea. Thanks for the thought seed. I shall water it and see what color it turns.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
bretbernhoft Worldbuilding an ideal and functional post-Singularity system of governance for an interplanetary species, bound for the stars SFF Lounge 14
Strellers World building website for space opera Writing Resources 10
bretbernhoft Creating AI-powered characters to help with worldbuilding for writing more interesting stories Writing Discussion 2
D World building software Writing Discussion 7
HareBrain ‘Storytelling has become the art of world building’: Avatar and the rise of the paracosm General Film Discussion 69

Similar threads


Back
Top