Monica Leonelle walks through world-building questions for your novel: what government, military, and institutions shape your story? What wars or historical events matter? Make sure your technology, weapons, and transportation fit your timeline. Skip details that don't move the plot.
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Hey there, Igniter! Monica Leonelle from theworldneedsyourbook.com. Today is day 24 of the challenge, and we are talking about setting and world, specifically history, technology, and law.
Today is day 24, and we are doing settings and world, history, technology, and law. And so, as I've said in the other two days, settings and world building is very specific to your genre, to your novel, and there's a wide variety of need for how deep to go into that depending on your novel. So we're trying to hit the middle of the road and just ask some simple questions so that we get the wheels turning around some of these worldbuilding pieces and around the setting. So I have a couple more questions about this. What systems are gonna be important to your story? So, you know, government, another large organization, military, church, a magical community, a school. These— this is going to be important, and you're going to need to know how that system works. And so this is stuff you can— you can definitely do it as needed and write it as needed. So I tend to do that a bit more where I, um, I kind of come up with the rules as I go, but definitely think about like how are you going to track that type of stuff because it's going to be important. What are the rules your character will need to know to survive in the communities? What wars and other historical events or markers are important to your story? So a lot of times we look at the present day and what's going on right now, but, you know, a lot of your story is going to be colored by history, and your character is going to be, you know, characters are going to be built on historical events. So how, you know, depending on how far back you need to go, it's, it could be helpful to know this. What is your character experience? So as you figure out those timelines of historical events and wars then how is— how does that shape your character's worldview? And then you can look at like groups in your story as well, and you can look at the protagonist, the antagonist, you can look at any of your main characters. What weapons, transportation, and other technology are important to your story? These typically play a huge role in war, so keep that in mind and make sure that it makes sense, and that, you know, that the science kind of matches up with the equipment, which matches up with the historical events. Like, you just want to keep it all really aligned, especially if you're doing some deep work here. So this is still relevant if you're doing like a small town romance. Maybe they have like a county fair or something, or, you know, maybe the mayor has been the mayor for so many years and it was dad before that. Even stuff like that is, you know, that's still important to know, and that's still building your setting and building your world. So how does the history of the climate in your world factor into any of these topics? So it could be the climate, it could be natural disasters. How, how does that change, you you know, any historical events, any wars, how does even like the landscape of the terrain can be important to this. And don't, don't go deep into this unless it's relevant or important to your story. So that's, that's very important. I think people sometimes go way overboard and it can be more of a procrastination exercise than, you know, building your novel. So really think about like, what do I actually need to know versus what do I not? And then realize that you are gonna build that as your novel goes along. Like even if you do some of this ahead of time.
Thank you so much for watching and listening. And if you have a question, make sure you leave a comment in the comment section. I am happy to answer all of your questions. So please leave a comment. I would love to hear from you. Additionally, although we are already on day 24 of the challenge, there is still time to catch up. So definitely feel free to sign up for the challenge if you're interested in it.
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Hope that this has been helpful to you. Have a wonderful day.
