In this Day 23 session of the "Your Book Challenge," Monica Leonelle and a co‑host walk writers through the world‑building component of life and culture. They explain that the depth of cultural detail varies by genre—fantasy and sci‑fi often need extensive research, while thrillers or romances may only need a heightened, aesthetic layer. The discussion covers key identity‑based labels (ethnicity, religion, politics) and how they shape characters and themes, urging writers to include only what serves the story. Social class, daily lifestyle, work, entertainment, and monetary systems are highlighted as essential facets to consider. Practical visual‑inspiration methods are suggested, especially creating Pinterest vision boards tailored to a novel’s tone (e.g., pastel romance, dark mystery). The hosts stress that world‑building is usually “icing on the cake” rather than the structural foundation, except in genre‑heavy speculative works. They conclude with a call to join the ongoing challenge and invite questions from viewers.
Hey there, Igniter! Monica Leonelle from theworldneedsyourbook.com. Today is day 23 of the challenge and we are talking about settings and world, specifically life and culture.
Today we're on day 23 and we are doing settings in world again. This time we're specifically focusing on life and culture. So with these days, day 22, 23, 24, we're doing, you know, some world building stuff that's highly relevant to some novels, and you need to go really deep on that for some novels, like if you're writing a fantasy or a sci-fi. It's not as relevant to other novels like a thriller or romance. So, you know, we're gonna try to hit somewhere in the middle, and definitely feel free to skip days if you want. Feel free to skip questions if you want. Also, if you need to go much deeper on this, then I— you can find some recommendations for books that I recommend, um, probably, you know, just on the website. And yeah, like, we're just gonna— we're gonna kind of hit the middle of the road to serve everybody as best as we can. All right, so with life and culture, uh, it basically— if you— if your book is set in you know, if it's a fantasy, a sci-fi, historical, then you're going to want to do a lot of research on this. But even if your book is set in a non-magical modern-day place, you may still want to do something, you know, give, give the life and culture some heightened drama and paint a surreal version of that place. So some examples I can think of You know, Gone Girl has a— it's a thriller and mystery. It has a very noir type of look to it. Same with Veronica Mars, Riverdale, and I'm naming TV shows, by the way, and TV shows and movies. Big Little Lies. So that's the second question here. Big Little Lies is set in Monterey, California, but there is this really glitzy lifestyle. There's big mansions, overbearing moms, crazy personal drama, becomes a murder mystery. So it's, you know, there's kind of like a soapy feel to it. Another example would be like Melrose Place or Gossip Girl. So think about that as you are writing your story and think about like, how can I, how can I give this an aesthetic even though it's not a television show or a movie? Because you may want to sell, sell the script someday or sell the rights to your story someday if it, you know, if it's very successful. So why not think of that now? And why not make it a little bit easier, you know, definitely seed some of that stuff as you are writing it. So different social classes— this could be a really big one. We talked about this a lot in groups. This is a place where you can finalize that or enhance that. What— where do your characters fit in, and what does that disparity mean for the world, for each of your characters, for the characters' personalities? What identity-based labels drive your characters? So So this can be ethnicity, religion, another one it could be is politics. These are bound to have a huge impact on your characters, so this may be important for you, it may not be. If it's, and I would say the other thing is, if it's not relevant to your story or to your theme, then don't do it because why do? I've never understood that with worldbuilding. It's like, why do all this work when you're not really going to use it and it's not relevant to your story. So if your story is a political drama, then you need to know all the politics of every character. But if it's not, like, it's okay to not know their politics because it's probably, you know, it's probably more of a procrastination exercise than it is building your novel.
So how do these identity-based labels change?
And remember, you know, if you're talking about ethnicity, religion, politics, these are just very large groups within your novel. So you can go back to the section on groups and do a little bit more work there if you discover anything here that's important to your novel. So then the next thing is just lifestyle. What do you— what do people do for fun in your world? What do they eat, drink, home life, entertainment? And then how do they survive? What is work like? How does money work? You know, again, this, this may play into the social class. So the last thing I'll say is that the workbook format isn't a great way to explore life and culture, especially if you need to go deeper. So for me, what I do for worldbuilding is I'll do, you know, like a Pinterest board basically. So you can create a vision board using just images that you find online. You can also do it the old-fashioned way, get some magazines and scissors and like make a poster board. But yeah, like I would, I would just do this on Pinterest. It just seems a little bit simpler, but you can, you know, you can kind of find images that inspire you and then that is something, and you can create private boards on Pinterest if you want. That's something that you can use to inspire you as you're trying to describe what's going on. So, you know, if I were doing a romance book, I would probably have like light pink, light green, you know, flowers. It would be like, um, I'd have like cute little bakeries and, uh, really fun restaurants. And like, like, it would, it would be like this very cozy style, um, for, well, for like a sweet romance. I would, you know, I'd do something else for if it were like a heated romance, um, but you know, if it's something else, like if If it's a, you know, if it's a murder mystery, my images are probably going to be, you know, dark. And like, maybe if it's set in a specific city, I'll have some monuments, uh, that I can, you know, like monuments at night or places that I know my characters are gonna go. So it really just depends on, you know, how you, how you want to figure this out. And you can— to me, the setting and world building, that, that stuff can be done, you know, as you're writing a bit more. It's not— it's— it definitely is a very important part of your book, but it's not something that is going to, I guess, like make or break your book. So it's, it's definitely like— it's more of the icing on top than it is the foundation of the cake. I guess is how I'd say that. Unless you're— unless it's like, you know, you're doing a fantasy or sci-fi or something where it is, you know, kind of the foundation or part of the foundation due to the genre. But otherwise, it's definitely more like the lipstick that you put on a pig than it is the skeleton of the story.
Thank you so much for watching and listening. If you have any questions about this day, then make sure you leave a question in the comment section. I'm happy to answer all of your questions.
Happy to help in any way that I can.
Additionally, if you want to join the challenge, yes, it's day 23. I know we only have a week left, but you can still join the challenge. So make sure you check out the links in the description because that will give you all the information about how to join, why you should join. Uh, there's tons of great stuff on the other side of that signup. So definitely feel free to sign up. Thank you so much for watching and listening.
I hope that this has been helpful to you. Have a wonderful day!
