Discover types of worlds for your story
Worldbuilding can be broken down into four main types, depending on how complex the world is.
Normal World
“Normal world” worldbuilding is the kind of worldbuilding we see in contemporary romance, contemporary Young Adult, New Adult, and college stories. These stories are set in the everyday, regular world that does not require specialized knowledge to understand. In this kind of worldbuilding, we want to get a sense of the distinct details that give this place its character, because we basically already know how the world works.
If your story is set in a famous city like New York or Paris, we want a sense of the things we know about those cities. If your story is set in a high school, we want to have a particular sense of this individual high school, its social makeup, its weird traditions, etc.
Examples: high school, coffee shop, small town, college, etc.
Worldbuilding questions:
- What are some features of your setting that are particular to this place and make it different from similar kinds of places?
- What are common features of your setting that everyone there recognizes?
- Who are the background characters in your setting?
- What particular traditions, rituals, catchphrases, and shared understandings do people in your setting have?
- What’s important to the people here?
Example stories:
Niche Normal
Niche Normal describes a type of worldbuilding that is still set in our regular world, but has an added layer of specificity that informs the plot of the story. Examples of this are sports romances and workplace romances. Everything is the same as the regular world, but there’s a little bit of extra context you need to convey to the reader so that they can understand what is going on. For example, with a sports romance, the structure of the league, what it means to win or lose any given game, and how the game itself is played all matter to how the romance plays out because it sets the stage for the romance story and informs the events of the story.
Examples: sports teams, office/workplace, firefighters/medical, courtroom, niche hobbies
Worldbuilding questions:
- What particular experiences do your characters have because of their setting that they wouldn’t have outside of it? How does this shape the story?
- How does the setting shape the story’s conflict?
Example Stories:
Trope World
Trope World describes a kind of worldbuilding where the story’s setting deviates from everyday life, but it deviates in particular established ways that are grounded in subgenre. Examples of this are regency romance, mafia, and werewolf. All of these subgenres take place in worlds a bit different from our regular world, where the rules of the society are slightly different from what the reader knows from everyday life, but in each subgenre, there is a lot of shared understanding in how the worlds are “supposed” to work. The settings vary from our everyday world, but there is not a huge amount of variation in the worlds of different books. This is not a bad thing! Readers are passionate about Trope Worlds because the worlds are similar from story to story. Readers love the combined sense of familiarity and excitement that comes from a world that is different from our own, but that still plays by a knowable set of rules.
Examples: mafia, werewolf, regency romance, horror
Worldbuilding questions:
- What do you think readers like about this kind of world? What elements do they need to see to recognize the world they’re reading about?
- How does your world deliver on those reader expectations?
- What details make your world different from the regular world? How do those details shape your characters’ emotions?
- How does the setting shape the story’s conflict?
Example stories:
Alternate World
Alternate world is a type of worldbuilding where the story world is completely different from our regular world, and there’s not a lot of overlap in how the world works across different books. This can either be a fully invented different world like Middle Earth or the Star Wars “galaxy far away,” (sometimes called a Secondary World) or it can be attached to our contemporary world but with a lot of distinctive magic or tech elements, like Harry Potter or the Anita Blake series. Alternate World worldbuilding is distinguished by its complexity; the reader has to take on a lot of new information in order to understand how the story works, and there’s not a lot of overlap with other books in the same subgenre. Part of the pleasure of this kind of story is seeing how the world is different from other worlds in the same genre, whereas with a Trope World, the pleasure comes from seeing how the world is the same. Neither is better or worse, it just depends on what story you want to tell. As with all worldbuilding, the goal is to make the world feel emotionally real to the reader. With Alternate Worlds, there is an additional challenge of conveying complex information to the reader in an organic way, so that they understand what is going on but aren’t overwhelmed or bored by long passages of explanation.
Worldbuilding questions:
- What features of this world are unique? How does the magic/tech work?
- How much do the characters understand about how the world works?
- How much does the reader need to know about how the world works?
- What shared culture exists in this world? What conflicts about culture exist in this world?
- What is the history of the significant places in this world?
- How does the setting shape the events of the plot?
Example stories:
