All or most characters in fantasy or science fiction are going to be human or have human-like attributes, even if they are a different race. For example, in the Redwall series, there are no humans, but all of the animals talk, wear clothes, have weapons, and many of them live in an abbey. In the Wings of Fire series, the dragons have a human-like society and humans are weird little pets kept by some dragons.
We write like this because the core stories that humans like to read about are stories about humans. We can make them have purple skin, we can turn them into animals or dragons, we can take them into space; but in the end, the stories are still about people and our problems.
Each of these sub-topics is far too deep for me to cover here, so I recommend looking for books or reputable websites that delve further into each topic.
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Physical
What do your characters look like? Are they human? Are they elves that look like humans with pointy ears? Are they vaguely human-shaped aliens with tough skin and too many brow ridges? Are they mammalian, reptilian, avian, or something else? Or are they an animal or mythical creature?
When creating new species, it’s helpful to remember why a species or race might develop such an attribute. For instance, they might have camouflage that helps them blend in with their surroundings on their homeworld. A predator would probably have some kind of natural weapon like teeth or claws, while a prey creature could be really fast, have hard chitinous armor around their vulnerable parts. The Parshendi in the Stormlight Archive fit in with the other hard-shelled creatures of their world, which presumably evolved to protect these creatures from the deadly high storms.
Along with how your character looks comes the topic of clothing. Again, keep in mind the climate and general environment when designing the clothing of your characters. In my book, Muspell’s Sons, the main character wears a heavy duster coat because he’s out in the desert where sandstorms regularly destroy everything in their path. While his coat won’t save him from a storm, it will keep him relatively safe while he runs to his armored sand trawler, which is designed to withstand the storms.
Social Structure
When building your world, social structure should be something that you develop relatively early on and might have already done so without thinking about it. Establishing the structure of your society will allow you to place your characters within preset established roles in their society. How the society is set up tells the reader about what that society values, as well as orients your readers within the world. The story of a stormtroooper who was taken from his birth family when he was young and who is assigned a number in place of his name is going to have a very different story than a girl who was raised by loving parents in luxury and wealth, even if they both grow up on Coruscant.
Family Structure
Does your society have a standard family structure? Are all the younglings taken from their parents at birth and raised by a group of teachers? Perhaps the nuclear family is standard, but your main character comes from a different type of family, one with a step-father or who was adopted by their grandparents.
Social Hierarchies
Most societies have some sort of social hierarchy. In the UK, the class system rules, whereas in the US, wealth determines class. In India, a caste system arose that separated out people essentially by job and then gave each class of jobs a certain rank. In Imperial China, they established a meritocracy whereby a person’s success and social rank was determined by their skills instead of birth.
Political Structure
Political structure tends to be rather prominent in fantasy and sci-fi stories, as well as very different than our own. Authors will often use that aspect of worldbuilding to comment on real-life politics. Take Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books as an example. The city of Ankh Morpork is led by Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, who spends most of his time out-thinking the various guilds to keep them in check.
I’m not going to list all of the various forms of government here. You can read more about them on Wikipedia. There are so many different types that you could easily find a political structure that suits the needs of your story.
Language
Tolkien is famous for creating multiple languages. If you have the linguistic chops and the interest in developing a whole new language, go for it.
Keep in mind that as with all aspects of culture, the values of the people who speak a language will inevitably be reflected in that language. For example, English has many different tenses so that we can pinpoint exactly WHEN something happened or is happening or will happen. Time is very important in the English-speaking world. The standard expectation is that you know and understand when things are supposed to happen, that you’ll show up on time, and that you’ll only stay for the specified amount of time.
World View: Religion, Beliefs, Rituals, Symbolism
Much of my time studying anthropology at college was spent studying the world views of different cultures because our ability to use them to make sense of the world around us is one of the defining features of humanity.
In today’s world, many people view religion as something silly that only soft-headed fools believe in. Karl Marx famously called religion the “opiate of the masses.” But the fact is that religion and belief systems exist to explain the unexplainable. Nothing is more terrifying than the unknown, as we learned during the Covid-19 pandemic. People throughout human history have used religion to explain and give meaning and structure to their lives.
During the pandemic, many of the coming of age rituals that young people look forward to were shut down. High school graduations were held online if at all. Many young adults felt cheated and like they weren’t really adults because they didn’t have this rite of passage. Although this is not a religious example, it does show how a lack of these iconic rites of passage can leave people feeling adrift. Rites of passage are a key element in many religions that act as sign posts through this journey of life.
I encourage you to look into what religion can do for your story and your characters. If you don’t give them a specific religion to follow, make sure you develop a strong world view for them of some kind. World views do not have to follow organized religion.
World views can be fantastic at providing the opportunity for flaws. Great characters have flaws that they must overcome or at least suspend to a certain degree. A highly religious character who is extremely judgmental could learn to accept others, or someone who is passionate about saving the endangered aquasloths might come to realize that her opponent doesn’t hate the sloths, but really is just between a rock and a hard place politically.
History
A world without history is nothing more than a green screen that will flop over in the lightest breeze. History gives your characters a reason for existing. It gives the conflict a reason for existing. History provides the foundation for every religion, law, custom, language, food, everything.
My kids tell me that their history classes are boring. I tell them that history is just the story of people from the past. They are still people, with the same hopes and dreams and fears as people today. If you look at history this way, it becomes a lot less boring. You don’t have to write the Silmarillion to explain the history of your world, but you should have a pretty good idea of why things exist as they do.
Laws and Customs
Feel free to branch out from the standard Judeo-Christian laws of western Europe here. Our laws are deeply rooted in religion and history, so take the same approach with your world’s laws. How does religion impact society? How does the history of the various cultures and nations impact their values and subsequently their laws?
The same goes for customs. Many of the customs that we follow now that don’t seem to be rooted in religion actually are. The seven-day week comes directly from the Bible where God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.
Look around at different cultures for inspiration. Don’t just take a custom and stick it onto your custom like a paper dress on a paper doll, though. Learn why that custom exists and how it fits into the larger culture.
Food
I love coming up with awesome meals for my characters. Keep in mind the setting. If you’re on a ship far from fresh produce, let some of it go bad, or make sure it’s in tins or dried, which changes the flavor. If your story takes place in the far north, remember that the growing season is significantly shorter, sometimes less than two months, and that this affects crop growth. It also severely limits what crops can grow.
You can get inspiration by finding a comparable food culture in a similar environment as the one where your story takes place. If your story takes place on a tropical island, maybe look into the food culture of Samoa or Jamaica.
Also, keep in mind that food is heavily influenced by the history and politics of a region. For instance, the food in the Caribbean is heavily influenced by European food customs due to their long history of colonization, whereas modern Hawaiian food is influenced by Japanese food culture because of Hawaii’s relative proximity to Japan. Also, the fact that Hawaii is an island far out in the Pacific has had some interesting repercussions for their food.
In case you’re interested in taking a break from worldbuilding and would like to try some recipes inspired by the recipes in fantasy worlds, Fantasy Cookery: Recipes Inspired by Fantasy Worlds has a whole bunch of recipes to try out.
Art
If you’ve ever read Star Wars: Heir to the Empire, you are familiar with Grand Admiral Thrawn’s fascination with the study of his enemies’ art as a way of understanding them and outsmarting them. Art is how we express our deepest hopes, desires, fears, and love. Art is so entwined with the human experience that a study of a culture’s art can tell you much about their values and beliefs. Each culture’s art is as unique as a fingerprint that can allow archaeologist to figure out where and when a piece of art was made and for what purpose.
A lot of art throughout history has been religiously themed or created in stark rebellion against the predominant religion.
Art can be an incredible tool in conveying the history, religion, and beliefs of a culture, but also to help humanize and deepen your characters. Suppose you write about an ornate urn placed in a place of respect up on a mantle flanked by two statues of angels with wings outstretched to the urn. Whose ashes are in the urn? They were obviously important to the owner of the house, presumably one of your characters. It’s a fair bet that your character misses the deceased person a lot, maybe even to the point of depression or obsession. The angels indicate the possibility of a belief in an afterlife, so perhaps that character is quite religious.
Technology
Like art, technology can root a story within a specific time and place. If you’re not careful, an anachronism can yank a reader out of your story, though. Iphones don’t belong in classical Greece unless you’ve got a time traveler in your story. If your characters are using laser guns in medieval Europe, you’ve got some explaining to do before anyone will take your story seriously. And by seriously, I mean that they’ll go along with it, even if it’s a comedy.
Overall, there tends to be a progression of technology that you can get a decent grasp of just by flipping through a world history book. It starts with stone tools, then works its way up to bronze tools, iron tools, and then eventually through the invention of the combustion engine, computers, and nuclear power.
Economics
The economics of your world may only show up once in a while or it may end up being one of the driving forces in your story. Either way, it pays to take at least a cursory glance at how things are bought and sold in your world.
Money
Your characters can barter, or they can use fiat money, which is the use of government-issued paper money, or they can use just about anything else. Anything that has value can be used as money so long as everyone agrees that it has universal value. The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest used seashells. The Spanish and the American colonists used pieces of eight, which were basically silver coins that were broken into eight pieces to make change.
Trade Routes
The main point of having roads is to make it easy to transport material goods from one point to another. The Romans famously built an extensive road system across their empire to make trade easier and to transport their troops quickly across large distances. The Inca of South America were master road builders who managed to unite an empire over ridiculously harsh terrain with their roads.
If your characters travel on any roads, they will be traveling on trade routes. Along those trade routes will be other travelers, merchants, and plenty of stops along the way brimming with people happy to sell all manner of useful wares to your characters. It’s also very likely that they’ll run into people from disparate lands.
The same goes for science fiction worlds as well. Even though you might have spaceships, there will always be certain routes from one planet to another that is safest or shortest or has the cheapest fuel, and as such, certain routes will become common trade routes.
If your character is trying to avoid detection, though, maybe they’ll decide to avoid these trade routes.
Markets
How your characters shop is also something to consider. In Mistborn: Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson, Vin has to go get some new dresses. She goes to a dress shop to get custom dresses. She doesn’t go to an open-air marketplace to grab whatever’s on hand. This adds another layer of worldbuilding to the story and to Vin’s evolving character and place in the story.
Trade Agreements between Nations
This falls under politics as well, but I wanted to touch on this here. Trade agreements between nations, or the lack thereof, can greatly influence the prosperity of the people in a region. If a nation is at peace with its neighbors and has trade agreements with them, both nations will typically flourish. People will in general be more comfortable with their situation, more happy, more willing to engage in trade and festivals, and be healthier. On the flip side, war and a lack of trade make life much more difficult for the populace. Depending on how bad it gets, they may even choose to rebel against the rulers.
Transportation
How do your characters get around? Do they walk? Ride horses? Drive hovercraft? Ride in capsules hitched to space-faring jellyfish? However they get from Point A to Point B, make sure the speed of the transportation is suitable for the distances they are covering. Horses can’t run at a gallop for 1,000 miles without dying and spaceships need some kind of faster-than-light travel unless its passengers are in cryosleep or it will take generations to travel between star systems.
