A Worldbuilder’s Tool Kit
In this article I’m going to introduce you to the basic tools that I use to build my fantasy world. I’ve included some screenshots of my actual work so you can gain some insight into how I use these tools.
- Note Books
That’s right, trusty pen and paper note books are still relevant. Maybe that’s because I didn’t have a computer, and smart phones hadn’t even been invented, when I was growing up. Personally, I find traditional note books invaluable. There’s something about jotting down ideas on paper that helps facilitate a flow state. The draw back of note books is digitalizing them. To be honest, I’ve yet to explore ways I can do this with software, and instead have had to manually type up my notes. It does also mean that, should I lose my digital files, I still have a hardcopy backup. Another drawback is indexing. To get around this I have the contents of each note book written in the front, and try (but also fail) to keep all my notes on a particular topic together.
2. World Anvil
World Anvil is a personal wiki service, that offers both free (how I got started on the site) and paid memberships. This is the site that I use to type up and organize all my notes. You could easily skip pen and paper note taking, and use the extensive world building prompts that World Anvil provides. For me, the greatest benefit of World Anvil is the ease of accessing your notes on any device with an internet connection. Assuming that you’ve taken the time to upload all your notes into the platform and inserted hyperlinks in your articles, World Anvil makes it exceptionally easy to find your notes.
The draw back is the time it takes to set up. I spent a few months initially setting up mine. However, the initial investment of your time will save you time later when you are writing in your flow state and need to quickly access a particular detail. I had an editor criticize the time I put into setting up my wiki as a waste of time that I should’ve spent writing. But what he didn’t recognize is that now that it’s set up I don’t have invest much time into it at all, except occasionally updating it with new details.
- quick tip: to avoid wasting valuable writing time, if you find that you need to include a specific detail in your writing, note it down to figure out later. Don’t interrupt your flow state fussing over the details.
3. Wonderdraft
Any serious world builder is going to want to create their own maps (even just drafts they can then pass on to a professional to work from). Wonderdraft is my preferred map making software. In my opinion it is superior to the free alternatives that I’ve tried. It’s a one time investment, and involves a bit of a learning curve, but it’s well worth the investment. It allows you to easily do anything you might want to do with your maps: measure distances, create detail maps, expand a map, maintain universal scale across different maps, add rivers and pathways, import images, etc. You could also theoretically print out a finely detailed map as a poster from your designs (how freaken epic would that be!).
4. Miro
There’s a point in every world builder’s journey when you need to visualize your complex ideas to even begin to make sense of them. For me it was a dynasty spanning >12 generations over ~500 years. I started with a cork board and post it notes, but quickly ran out of room, even following just one line of the family (ignoring branches). Fortunately a friend recommended virtual note boards.
Miro is a virtual work space, that allows you to create sticky notes, diagrams, upload images, etc. It’s not the ideal tool for something like a family tree, but it suffices, and allows me to add a lot of extra information in one place. For example: I started with the dynasty, but I’ve since added historical events, the crowning of kings, etc. This helps put everything into context.
Those are my top 4 invaluable world building tools. Please feel free to share your experience with these tools, ask questions, and discuss any other tools that you think are useful to worldbuilders.