TL;DR
Good worldbuilding questions are tied to scenes: where a character arrives, what they pay, who they obey, what they believe, what they remember and what magic or technology costs. Answer the questions your next scene needs, write the answers down, and let the rest of the world stay unbuilt until the story reaches it.
The best worldbuilding questions are the ones your next scene will bump into. If a character buys bread, you need to know what money is and who is allowed to sell at night. If she crosses a border, you need to know who guards it and why. Sort your questions by what a character is doing, answer the few the scene touches, and leave the rest of the world unbuilt until the story needs it.
Why sort questions by scene
Jericho Writers describes two established ways to build a world, defined in The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding. Outside-in builders work out the world first, with histories, languages and maps. Inside-out builders start with a character and explore the world as they go, and Jericho counts Tolkien among them: he built The Hobbit around Bilbo, and the history of Middle Earth came after. The guide says inside-out is arguably the most useful, because it keeps you from getting bogged down in the fun of worldbuilding, and it also asks for internal rules underneath the world.
Brandon Sanderson warns about the other extreme, which he calls "worldbuilder's disease": practising worldbuilding without also practising prose, characterisation and plotting. He adds that it is only a problem for writers who want to make a professional living from books, and that anyone who simply enjoys building should do what they enjoy. To expand a world he asks "what happens when" questions. What happens to warfare when magic can create food out of thin air, making armies far more mobile? Or, in another of his examples, when some people can change their skin colour at will, which he says could spawn religions, provoke wars and play havoc with caste systems?
Sorting by scene joins the two ideas: every answer grows from a cause, and you stop when the scene is covered.
The questions
Pick the group that matches the scene you are about to write.
When a character arrives somewhere
| Question | What it gives the scene |
|---|---|
| What does the place smell, sound and feel like at this hour? | Sensory detail that is specific to your world |
| What is the land like, and what does that mean for how people here live? | Reasons for work, food and travel |
| What is the weather doing, and what do people do about it? | Texture and small problems |
| Who built this, and what happened to the people before them? | A past the characters walk past |
| What would a local notice that a stranger would miss? | A point of view with knowledge |
| What do the signs, statues and street names refer to? | History without exposition |
Scroll horizontally to see all columns. Arrow keys work when the table is focused.
Philip Womack's six tips for Jericho Writers make the last point with an example: a character who runs down a square avoiding the railings around a bronze statue of the country's first monarch tells the reader more than a sentence explaining that the square was named after the first king.
When a character pays, trades or goes hungry
| Question | What it gives the scene |
|---|---|
| What do people use as money, and who controls it? | Stakes for small purchases |
| What is cheap here, what is rare, and why? | Prices that tell a story |
| Who grows, makes and carries the food? | Social roles and weak points |
| What jobs exist because of the land or the magic? | Characters with trades |
| What can't be bought, and what happens to anyone who tries? | A moral limit |
| Who profits when things go wrong? | A source of villains |
Scroll horizontally to see all columns. Arrow keys work when the table is focused.
When a character meets power
| Question | What it gives the scene |
|---|---|
| Who makes the rules, and how do ordinary people learn them? | Authority that feels real |
| Who enforces them, and with what? | Threat |
| What is the punishment for the smallest crime? | A gauge of the whole regime |
| How do people address those above and below them? | Rank in dialogue |
| What is forbidden to say? | Subtext |
| How would a person with no power change something? | Plot routes for a weak hero |
Scroll horizontally to see all columns. Arrow keys work when the table is focused.
When a character believes, swears or grieves
| Question | What it gives the scene |
|---|---|
| What do people swear by, and what do they curse by? | Dialogue flavour |
| What happens when someone dies, in the first hour and the first year? | A funeral scene with its own rules |
| Which belief would a character defend even when it costs them? | Motivation |
| Who is a believer in public and a doubter in private? | Conflict inside a group |
| What festival is coming, and what does it make people do? | A set piece with a deadline |
Scroll horizontally to see all columns. Arrow keys work when the table is focused.
When a character remembers
| Question | What it gives the scene |
|---|---|
| What event do old people refer to without explaining? | An unexplained history the reader can feel |
| What do the winners say happened, and what do the losers say? | Two versions of the past |
| Which family, house or guild still carries an old debt? | A reason for present loyalties |
| What was lost that people still look for? | A quest |
| What do children learn that adults know is false? | Irony |
Scroll horizontally to see all columns. Arrow keys work when the table is focused.
When a character uses magic or technology
| Question | What it gives the scene |
|---|---|
| What can it not do? | Limits that make clever solutions |
| What does it cost, and who pays? | A real choice |
| Who can use it, and who is kept from it? | Class and conflict |
| How did the people in the room learn it? | A teacher, a rival, a debt |
| What is the everyday, unglamorous use of it? | A world that is lived in |
| What happens when it fails in public? | A crisis |
Scroll horizontally to see all columns. Arrow keys work when the table is focused.
For limits and costs in depth, see how to create a magic system.
When a character leaves
| Question | What it gives the scene |
|---|---|
| How far can she go in a day, and what stops her? | Travel with friction |
| Who checks papers, and what counts as proof? | A border scene |
| What do people say about the next country? | Prejudice, rumour, fear |
| What does she carry, and what does she leave behind? | Character through things |
| Who can she write to, and how long does a letter take? | Time and distance |
| What would make her come back? | A return in the final act |
Scroll horizontally to see all columns. Arrow keys work when the table is focused.
A worked example
Suppose the next scene is this: Teo, a ropemaker's apprentice, has to buy bread after curfew.
- Who sells bread at night? Only the boatmen's bakery, because the bargemen work through the dark and are exempt from curfew.
- Why is there a curfew? The river guild fears smugglers on the bridges. So there is a guild, it controls bridges, and it has a reason to be paranoid.
- What does Teo pay with? Tokens stamped by his employer, which the bakery takes at a discount. So the apprentice is paid in credit, and credit is a leash.
- What does he risk? A night in the guild lockup, which costs the day's wages.
Four questions produced a guild, a currency, a motive and a risk, each answer growing from the one before, and nothing in it is wasted.
Where the sources disagree
How much of the answer should the reader see? Jericho's guide says you must "always leave them hungry": a world history should be fleshed out only as far as the plot and characters need. It notes that Tolkien wrote The Silmarillion but never meant it to be published. Samantha Shannon, whose essay the guide quotes, made the opposite choice in The Bone Season: she set aside a few pages early on to explain spirit combat, the London gangs and other key parts of the world, because it would save her dropping the information in later and let readers grasp the bare bones first. She calls it "a fairly big risk" that will not work for everyone, and says she would rather a reader knew too much than too little.
Write the answers down
The first of Womack's six tips is a worldbuilding document alongside the manuscript: which countries are in the world, what their systems are, what kinds of names the characters have. With it, the information can appear more naturally in the weave of the novel. Write each answer as one sentence, add the scene that first shows it, and mark an answer as open when you are not sure. The worldbuilding template gives you a layout.
Questions that usually waste time
Skip questions about places no scene will visit. If you are tempted to invent a whole language, a few names with one consistent sound will often do, as how to create fantasy names shows.
Frequently asked questions
How many worldbuilding questions should I answer before I start writing?
Enough for the first act. Answer the questions about the place, the power and the cost of the first three or four scenes, and leave the rest until the story reaches them.
What are the most important worldbuilding questions?
Those about rules and limits: who holds power, what things cost, and what magic or technology cannot do. They create conflict, and conflict creates scenes.
How do I keep track of my answers?
Write each as one sentence in a worldbuilding document beside the manuscript, as Womack suggests, and note the scene that first shows it.
Do I need worldbuilding questions for a story set in the real world?
Yes, in a smaller way. The same questions about money, power, belief and memory apply to a real town, and the answers come from research.
Should I worry about "worldbuilder's disease"?
Only if you want to finish a book. Sanderson says it matters to writers who want to make a living from books, so balance building with prose and plot.
Where Musael fits
In Musael's world and characters codex, each answer can live as an entry for a character, a place, an object or an event, with relations between them. Names in your scenes link back to their entries, and events sit on a timeline. Continuity rules turn the answers that matter into checks against your manuscript. You decide what your world is, and Musael helps you keep it that way to the last chapter.
Sources
- Jericho Writers, "How To Generate Ideas For Worldbuilding In Fiction": jerichowriters.com
- Philip Womack, "Six tips for successful world-building", Jericho Writers: jerichowriters.com
- Brandon Sanderson, "Sanderson's Third Law of Magic": brandonsanderson.com
