If it wasn’t obvious enough from my previous post, I decided to go with a third-person perspective for my novel. Third-person seems to fit the high fantasy genre almost too well, allowing the writer to write from varying points of view, and even allowing usage of an omniscient voice if the need should ever arise. Plus, it allows the writer to portray scenarios from varying distances and degrees of emotional pitch. It is not illegal to switch into second or first-person, either (But it’s usually a bad idea to do that unless it is intrinsic to the story).

I’m sure you’ve read that audiences typically identify with the characters that populate your world on a much more intimate level than they ever could with the scenarios you create for them, but that doesn’t mean you should short-change great characters with a mediocre plot. I decided I wanted to try and create a story worthy of my characters - one that would plunge each character into the sheer heights and morbid depths of their emotions.
Masashi Kishimoto, the (then) 19 year-old creator of Naruto said in an interview that, in order to make a plot more engaging, each event must follow its own specific set of rules. If that’s the case, the characters end up having to work within those limitations coupled with their own built-in flaws, and the plot itself becomes more identifiable.

The world also has to follow such rules.
As far as I can tell, creating a world is just a declaration of different rules. The more your list grows, the more your world transforms into something tangible and organic.

When people say world building is like ‘playing God’, they aren’t kidding. If you want your people to eat flowers around a waterfall cascading from a mysterious magical pot, suspended in midair, down a gaping hole in the center of your planet, then it becomes so. For me, weilding the power of pure unbridled creation felt like unsure footing; it was hard to just declare things about my world with any certainty. But I think the trick is, you should try to make all of your rules have a sort of synergy. Each new rule must cooperate with what you’ve already declared to reinforce the atmosphere of the world you are trying to build.

Here’s a few for my world:

Aerthai is the main continent surrounded on all sides by the Nareth Ocean, on a planet similar to Earth.
The people that populate Aerthai believe they are alone; no sailing vessel can seem to find any civilizations out in the ocean.
Due to a wide-scale phenomenon thousands of years ago, sparks can no longer artificially ignite without a giant (read: nearly impossible to produce) amount of force behind it, leaving the world largely without electronics and artillery, and fires are far more difficult to start as well.
Steam, wind, and water work as semi-reliable (non-turbine based) energy sources, leaving the main transportation as boats, trains, and horses/camels.
Hot-air balloons and zeppelins also exist but are rare.
Messenger pigeons and other ‘avians’ are used to deliver messages.
Solar energy works (through light-sensitive algae) to store energy to power dim artificial light sources during the night time, reducing a reliance on torches and lanterns.
Solar energy also works for black and white photography, during the daytime.
Cities take color photographs of every citizen for their unique ID cards they are expected to carry at all times; nearly impossible to duplicate.
The system of measurement goes ’scratch’ - like the height of a fingernail scratch, ’step’ - like a short step forward, ‘pace’ - like a broad sweeping step, and ‘kujira’ - the amount of distance you can ride a horse with a lantern full of oil before you will be in darkness.
The population is sparse; at most, 10,000 people to a city & many towns are hamlet-sized.
Over half of the continent (especially the eastern side) is unclaimed land.
Most cities are monarchies, but the southern desert region is known as the Free Country, run by various councils instead.
Much of the world’s history is lost: Some of it has been passed down through storytelling, some books survived time - thanks to diligent re-writes, the printing press was recently redeveloped and is rapidly filling the world with books again, and some trinkets almost lost to history are finally being reclaimed through excavations.
Scientists failed to explain intangibles like dreams, reactions to music, and emotions, turning to religion and metaphysics for answers.
Much more information comes to light after the theory of ‘five rings’ (will explain this later).
About 1 in 100 people have the ability to use a very weak magicks, called ‘awakened’.
Being awakened leaves the user susceptible to the spirit realm.
Most people believe magicks are a farce, are generally paranoid and heavily superstitious.
Many people are polytheistic and believe in ghosts, as the supernatural world has made itself more known after the global phenomenon ‘day of dischord’, when the ‘divided world’ suffered.
A new calender was created post-dischord, called ‘Year of Harmony’, featuring twenty-five days, fifteen months, no fractional days, and no leap-year adjustments. Weekdays rotate in observance of the neo-luminaries: Fire, Terra, Luna, Wind, and Holy.
There is no such thing as prophecy, though some people think there is.

… and don’t stop there. You need to determine what people typically wear in each city, how they would react to strangers, what they eat, what kind of sport(s) they might enjoy, what kind of money or bartering is used,what their buildings look like, what holidays they might celebrate, and countless other things. Like with any good character, you should try to get to know the personality of your world by inventing rules for it.

And don’t worry - There’s no need to mention or explain even half of your rules when you write. If you know them by heart and keep them fixed in your mind, beautiful little details will pop out in your writing when you least expect them, adding an unbelievable amount of depth and realism to your writing.

I should mention (and I hear this all the time) … you’re probably world building too much if it feels like it is hurting your novel’s progress. The most important thing you can do is finish your story. If you are losing your writing time, forego world building for a while.
On the other side of the coin, you are probably world building too little if it doesn’t sound like you are talking from personal experience when you read a scene you just wrote, hurting your story’s level of realism. So, as with most things in writing, there’s an ever-present delicate balance to worry about.

You can make similar declarations for your characters:
Cirellio is the main character. He was born in the largest city in the world (Aydomar), but raised in a smaller city (Bastin) by his mother. A cruel past left him orphaned and homeless by the age of twelve, forcing him to join a thieves’ guild just to scrape by.
Depressed, he decided to become a fatalist based on his own life observations. After murdering someone important out of revenge, he found himself unable to trust anyone who was previously close to him; desperately struggling with his own beliefs, all while being stalked by a supernatural killer; an assassin everyone thought had perished nearly 100 years ago.

It’s really easy to play the “What if” game with plot, world building, or character creation.
What if: character x lived with her grandparents?
What if: character y lost a loved one in a fire?
What if: character z was a mathematical genius?
What if: Fiddler’s Green was easily accessible from my world?
What if: I killed off character x during scenario y?

…you get the idea. When you answer questions like these, they can easily spawn more “What ifs”, giving you a whole chain reaction of possible events. By the way, I mentioned, in an earlier post, that I learned this technique from Neil Gaiman’s website, but now I know Stephen King also mentions this technique in On Writing, a book many people feel is the quintessential ‘how-to-write novels’ book.

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