WORLD BUILDING

SERIF AYDIN

Worldbuilding is the part of the writing process that sets up where your story takes place. When you build a world, you include the landscape that your characters will inhabit, the tone of your story, its major preoccupations and themes, as well as the nature of its morality. 

 

Worldbuilding is an essential step in fictional works. Whether you’re writing a book, a film, or a video game, the imagined world you build should still feel like a real-world, which means it must function with its own set of rules. Figuring out these rules takes time and attention to detail, but they will ultimately establish the basic structure of your universe.

What Is Worldbuilding?

Worldbuilding is the part of the writing process that sets up where your story takes place. When you build a world, you include the landscape that your characters will inhabit, the tone of your story, its major preoccupations and themes, as well as the nature of its morality. Worldbuilding lays the groundwork for your characters to develop, providing the stage for where your creations will perform. It’s okay if you can’t answer every question there is about your world, but setting down the basics will help you start writing and building. 

So here is a sample I created when I was a student in the Professional Writing Course.

ABSTRACT

The year is 2030; though COVID is over, there is still no vaccine for it, and countries are scrambling to find a cure for it before it happens again. There is big money involved; Russian spies discover that Canada is very close to finding a cure, and if they do, Canada will be rich. And Mother Russia does not want anyone but itself to find the cure. Once Canada learned that Russian spies were trying to sneak into the country and steal the treatment. They have one option: Acadia, a small Canadian mars colony with just enough of a budget to keep itself afloat. When Commander Hadfield learns about Canada’s plans to give the vaccine research to Acadia, he and his robotic helper Daniel embarks on a journey to stop Russian spies from getting their hands on the study. Still, along the way, Commander Hadfield learns something about Daniel that will change everything. 

Geography & scope: 

The occupied universe.

Galaxy: Milky Way, the Galaxy has a blue mist around the outside; it gets more purple; the closer it gets to the center in the center, there is a black whole holding everything. Also, there are stars scattered all over the galaxy.   

Galactic Neighbourhood: Andromeda

Star and Planetary systems: our solar system

GOV 1

Yekaterinburg is 1,274 KM wide on Mars. It is 40 clicks North-West of the Valles Marineris (AKA, the valley of many secrets). Also, not terraformed; it looks like environmental.

There is a giant dome made of thousands upon thousands of hexagons; the dome is the strongest thing ever made; it could stop an asteroid. Only one way in and out; once you pass the massive steel door, you are greeted by a massive arch that has the words. 

Добро пожаловать в Екатеринбург (welcome to Yekaterinburg)written in and Russian. The streets resemble Moscow’s streets; every house is different; some look like palaces while some look like skyscrapers. The reason for this is that it helps with homesickness. After you walk 30 meters from the gate, you can see the park. It has a hedge that is perfectly trimmed around the perimeter of the park. There are trees here and there; furthermore, the trees are around the west and the east of the park, is a beautiful stone path that looks like the one leading to a fancy castle; it goes through the mouth of the park and ends at the south. There is a beautiful gate on the north and south of the park with rose vines around it. The rest of the city is basically like that, but there are trees in front of every building. 

GOV 2:

 right in the middle of the Orcus Patera. The habitat modules are cylindrical objects with stabilizing legs at the bottom. They have stairs on the right-hand side of the module with airlocked doors with large airplane windows on the right side. And four on the left side. At the ends of the cylinders are connectors and doors to expand the size of the habitat modules. The agriculture modules are glass domes with a cylinder coming out of one side and an airlock door at its end. There are 16 habitat modules, and they are all Arranged in a suburban house style. Each pod has a gate that connects each pod, allowing the crew to go to different pods without going outside. All of the habitat modules have a rectangular box on the outside called an Oxygen scrubber, removing carbon dioxide from the pods and taking it to the agriculture pod. The Agriculture modules are very important to Acadia because they produce Oxygen, food and medicine. On the outside of this “suburban complex” is a dome-shaped building with a tower on its side.

The building is called the M9. This building is where the MRARV stay and gets their maintenance. M9 is also where the SR – the 80s and 90s remain, Land, take-off, refuel, and restock. The building extends down underground, where all of the resources that the MRARVs bring back are used to produce something usable such as iron and uranium. There is a towner in the middle of Acadia that is the command center. It also has a dome on the bottom of the tower. The whole of Acadia is surrounded by a supermassive building they like to call the spaceship, but its actual name is called the infinity belt. It contains all of the necessary scientific equipment that they need to do their work, such as investigating rocks. Build and test things, Heavy Machines such as CNC, Laser Cutters, Sand Blasters, 3D printers and a Daniel. But it also includes things like a cafeteria, 24/7 cafeteria, GYM, sports fields for soccer and hockey and basketball and repair areas.

Demographics:

GOV 1: 

There are 940 caretakers (take care of the habitat modules and the Life modules; such actions can include cleaning, vacuuming and wiping the desks), 9,483 Engineers(agricultural, electrical, Biohazard, architecture, software and hardware, Automotive, Interior design) and the president Cashmore Putin.  

Ranks: novice (the lowest position of a citizen), apprentice(could be the third-best class of citizen) Pro (second-best) and Master (the best) 

Culture: anything food-related has got to have toasters involved. They love the art of space dancing(Northern light), a sport that is enjoyed is called Foot hockey it is as its name suggests, it is hockey but played with feet and on ice on mars with two teams and each team has 12 players, the field is 130 yards and by 90 yards.  

GOV 2: 

There are 20 caretakers (do the laundry, clean, vacuum and wipe the desks of the pods ), 156 Engineers(agricultural, electrical, Biohazard, architecture, software and hardware, Automotive, Interior design) and 16 Drives, also Known as MCASs, 1 Inspector RQAO and 1 Commander.

Politics/governance: 

GOV 1:

Commander Chris Hadfield, since it is a colony, citizens cast their votes for Acadia’s mayor/commander. The colony is a Democratic, and everyone has got to cast their vote, even the representatives. 

GOV 2: 

Cashmore Putin, the city, is democratic with a bit of communism in it. He was elected because of his father, Vladimir Putin, and his success in Russia. The communism part of the city comes from its ties with Russia  

Resources/economics:

GOV 1:

Mines Uranium, Plutonium, iron, gold, Natural Gas and Oil

GOV 2: 

Mines Urainuim, Iron, Gold, Solar 

Language(s): 

GOV 1: 

Russain with some English phrases like Good moring and bye 

GOV 2: 

English but with a mixture of other languages and slang. such as Arabic, German, Jamaican, British phrases like Darling and bloody, Ukrainian and Spanish

Science:

GOV1 / GOV 2: 

Energy/power sources: use many solar panels that orbit the planet. they transmit the power down to mars using mirrors to reflect the sun’s light down to a heating element with gallium inside. The pad heats up as the sun’s rays are reflected onto it, and gallium goes through the heating element’s pipes. This heated galium turns into vapour and moves a turbine inside the habitat modules, making electricity.

Technology 

GOV 1: 

Holographic computers with air hand gestures.

Artificial intelligence; ATI is the name of artificial intelligence. There is one of these AI in every house and vehicle.

GOV 2: 

Computer: Brick Sized Toshiba and Lenovo Thinkpads for the scientists and engineers and the MCAS, there is an arm computer with a 9.7-inch touch screen panel connected to sensors all over the driver’s body that read life signs and the condition of the vehicle ( the reason why there is such a big difference in tech is that they had a calculation error with their money leading them to believe that why had more money than what they had) 

Artificial intelligence: A robot Called Daniel looks like a cardboard box with a coffee mug heater for ahead. He helps the crew around, he has kid-sized rollerblades for wheels and has a thirst for breaking down and burns a part of his cardboard body as he tries to heat ONE cup of Coffee( Often leading to a fire inside the habitat modules) (he is about as smart as a doorknob when it comes to war. later on in the story, Daniel is the place where the health Canada put all of the COVID research, and the reason why he was so useless was to make people dismiss him for anything useful  

Transportation:

GOV 1: 

Transport Interstellar travel luxury self-driving SUV rover that has a panoramic view and some LEDs make it look cool, to get to the base Soyuz rocket, hover cars, jet packs, state of the art no hands bathrooms(you don’t have to touch anything) 

GOV 2:

MRARV: a rectangle off-road SUV Sized 8-wheeled vehicle with floodlights on top of the vehicle like the ones on a Ford F-150. A trapezoid-shaped window on the front and commanded by a single pilot with a joystick. Adapted SR-71 Blackbird for Space travel called SR-80 Space bird.

Transports: cargo ships that look like the titanic only with rocket engines and cabins suited for space travel called Titan. They will usually use SR-80s stripped from their military components to add seats for civilians for Inter-system travel.

 

Weapons:

GOV 1: 

They have 300 starships that are named the Iron Destroyer. It is the length of 30 football fields, and it resembles the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit within ten football fields. Ii has the best engines in the market and runs on pure plutonium 25 Titan cargo ships.

GOV 2: 

40 SR 80 Space Birds, 3 Titan cargo ships and one bow and arrows that are rockets.