“World-building” often seems to carry itself with an ostentatious tone. It implies that one has the audacity to stand before God with narrowed eyes and say, “I can do better.”
Well, the reality is much less pretentious than that. World-building, at its core, is an escape. It is intended to take the creator to a universe where reality is bound only by desire and imagination. That may sound like a tagline for Disney, but it’s the driving force that encourages people to daydream. Sometimes, the illusion of fantasy and adventure that often treads alongside world-building attracts interest outside the creator’s mind. If the universe is enticing enough, others see it as a viable medium to explore and indulge. Of course, that is under the assumption that a creator wishes to make his world public.
However, science fiction and fantasy are not the only offspring of world-building. While fictional realms ripe with dragons and aliens and dystopias might be the most recognized form of world-building, the truth is the spectrum is much broader.
All that is truly required to become a “world-builder” is to conjure up fiction, to imagine a world that doesn’t exist. By these standards, anything from dreams to ambitions can fall under the category. Desire and wishes, as they have yet to be fulfilled, can also be labeled as characteristics of world-building. Humanity has literally been built upon on the shoulders of these concepts, which crowns every person to have ever walked this globe as a world-builder. It is an essential piece of being human to imagine and aspire. It is a coping mechanism to escape harsh realities and bitter limitations.
It is perhaps this very idea that makes fiction such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, DC and Marvel Comics, and countless other imaginary universes so popular among the masses. It is dreaming on a global scale.
It is selecting a small, isolated event and pumping it with fictional cultures, religions, histories, conflicts, countries and cities, flora and fauna, natural wonders and just about anything the mind can design. World-building is a testament to human ambition. To mold an entire universe, albeit fictional, is a monument toward humanity’s innate impulse to create. Whether our creations are physical objects, scientific and philosophical theorems, or realities that have yet to come, world-building courses through our veins.
There is a simple joy in testing the limits of your imagination.
Excitement churns in creating a bland character, then assigning them a past, present, and future, all of which will construct their personality. Curiosity bubbles at the thought of the people your character will meet and the place they’ll visit. Intrigue and introspection loom around what cultures these people and places will bear. Soon enough, an entire world has been built from literal nothingness. What it was, is, and will be is entirely up to the creator, and there are no wrong answers. In the same way, people’s illustrious addiction to building and constructing is the force that wills them forward.
The reality we want to create for ourselves is the sole reason that pushes us through several years of education and endless weeks of 9:00-5:00 jobs. It is why we work tirelessly year after year.
We pursue innovation and unknown worlds, and we all bear a persistent fascination with discovery, whether they be objects, people, places, or cultures, so that our reality inches ever so closer to that which we had in mind. And, for the lucky ones that manage to build their desired world, they will only find that there is the potential to construct an even better one. World-building is an unending pursuit.
With the infinite power of imagination, there will always be more to see and there will always be more to create. That maxim holds true in fiction as well as it does in real life.
