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N. K. JEMISIN: As you're creating this world

that your readers understand, then you're

able to create a world that feels more plausible.

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I break worldbuilding down into macro worldbuilding

and micro worldbuilding.

Macro worldbuilding is the creation

of the physical environment in which this--

this culture developed, these characters

emerged from this story takes place.

So that can be everything from the--

the creation of the universe on down,

the laws of physics on down, because we're

dealing with fantasy and science fiction here.

Or it can-- you know, even people

who are writing stories set in the real world

do a little bit of macro worldbuilding.

Even if a story is set in New York,

you need to decide which piece of New York, which

block of New York, which neighborhood of New York,

and so forth.

So with macro worldbuilding, I normally

will start with the creation of the planet

and then work down from there.

We go to continents.

We go to environments, and then we

start to create people who fit into these environments.

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Now, we're gonna actually start going through an exercise

where we build a world.

So if you've got sheets of blank paper handy,

if you want to open a draw file on your laptop,

somehow create a space where you can

do some drawing and note taking for the next few minutes.

Then I want you to start by drawing two circles.

These are the two hemispheres of a planet.

Now, like I said, with worldbuilding,

we aren't always stuck with planets.

We can start at the level of the universe.

If you want to write a story about space wandering

clouds of people that don't have a planet, go for what you know.

But you're going to have to research that.

But in general, because your audience

is familiar with life on a planet,

and you want to try and probably sell them

on life on a different planet, it's

best if you start with something that's relatively familiar,

like a terrestrial earth-like world.

And for the sake of our exercise today, we're

going to stick with the terrestrial earth-like world.

Once you've drawn your two hemispheres of the planet,

then the next step is to draw continents onto this planet.

Keep in mind that on our own world,

continents are sort of like jigsaw puzzle pieces.

They fit together.

And because of plate tectonics, over time, our continents

pull together and draw apart and so forth.

And if you ever looked at our continents

and sort of imagined the ways that they could fit together,

that's realistically how they used to.

And how they might again at some point in the future.

So for the sake of this exercise though, draw as many continents

or as few continents as you want.

If you want to create a water world here, you can do that.

If you want to create a world with just one giant landmass

and like a small lake in the middle, you can do that.

Draw as many continents or as few continents as you

want right now.

Once you've done that, the next step

is to make this world adhere to the rules of how planets work.

Now, the truth is that most planets actually all

work wildly differently from each other,

because they're composed of different substances,

they are different kinds of planets.

You've got gas planets.

You've got terrestrial planets.

But the planet that your readers are most familiar with

is Earth.

So you want your readers to not immediately

be pulled out of the story by the ways in which this planet

does not adhere to what they think a planet should be.

So first, you want to draw an equator on this planet.

Once you've drawn your equator across each of the hemispheres,

then you need to consider the ways in which prevailing air

and wind currents typically work.

Most planets that we know of rotate--

rotate on an axis.

You want to draw air and water currents that

are being sort of effectively pulled by the equator.

As the equator is going around, the air and water currents

are going to be slanting in the direction of that pull.

However, if you draw a continent in the way of these air

and water currents, then you have

to remember that let's say that this is a continent,

and this is water currents on the planet.

They're going to hit this continent then

have to go around it.

So somewhere at the point where these air currents

or these water currents are hitting this continent,

touching the edge of it, moving around it,

if there are multiple continents flowing between them,

you're going to have areas of agitated weather.

You're going to have storms.

You're going to have floods, tsunami, in some cases,

if there are underground earthquakes.

And so based on how you've drawn your air and water

currents and your continents, you

know where the areas of strife or difficulty

or where it's going to be harder for people to live,

or where the environment is going to be unusual.

You can tell sort of generally where those

are going to happen.

You can also add mountains to your continent in chains.

Mountains don't just randomly appear.

They usually tend to be part of a chain of mountains.

They're often indicative of continental breaks.

They are also where the weather is going to change.

On one side of the mountain, the weather

is going to be one thing.

On the other side of the mountain,

the weather is going to be something else.

All of these things are what your reader

expects of a planet, because that's the planet they live on.

You're going to have some readers who live on mountains.

And they understand innately that you're

going to have to different kinds of weather on either side.

You're going to have some people who are from deserts.

And they understand how deserts are formed.

As you're creating this world that your readers understand,

then you're able to create a world that

feels more plausible.

So now that you've created your planet

and your-- your basic zones of you know,

kind of what this planet looks like,

where its storm locations are, where its ecologies are going

to generally develop, then you want to pick an X

and put an X somewhere on this planet.

Do that right now.

Doesn't matter where.

It can be in the middle of the water, can be at the pole,

can be at the equator, wherever you feel comfortable.

Once you've drawn that X, we're going

to treat this X as the location of the culture

that we're going to spin this story into.

And so where that culture lives and develops is--

is going to dictate how, as a culture they develop.

So let's say that you've put your X in a place where there's

a lot of storms happening at any given time.

People of this culture are going to find a way

to incorporate storms and surviving storms into their day

to day.

It may become a part of their religion.

It may become a part of how they do their building

and how they do their architecture.

On our own world, we found that cultures

that existed in very tectonically active,

seismically active places.

Those cultures developed ways of building earthquake-proof

buildings long before we had building

techniques and composite materials and things like that.

They were able to do it with a hanging frame and a wooden pole

in the middle of the building that

allows the building to kind of float

and move with the tectonics.

So if you're trying to understand what your culture is

going to be like based on the environment

that it's developing in, go and research cultures

that have developed in that environment in our own world.

And you can learn some details there that may be useful.

But once again, you don't want to rub the serial numbers

off an existing culture.

You also have to keep in mind that similar environments

in our world develop wildly different cultures.

If you've got a desert culture in the Australian Outback,

and a desert culture in the Sahara,

those are two completely different cultures,

so wildly different that it doesn't make sense

to compare them.

But you can research both and learn techniques,

or learn details from both that you

can add into your-- your created culture that you're

about to come up with.

We've created our planet.

We've got our continents.

We've got our prevailing weather patterns and general ecology.

But I want to pause here and kind of

point out that there's an element of science fiction

and fantasy that normally gets put into the novel.

It doesn't necessarily have to be put in at this point.

It can be put in at any point in this creation process.

But it's going to affect everything thereafter.

And I call it element X.

So with element X, it can be either a feature

of the environment that is unusual,

that is drastically different from our world, that may not

be something possible through the laws of physics

as far as we know.

Or it could be something as simple as just you know,

magic exists.

That can be an element X.

Or it can be just the story is set in the future.

That can be an element X. You've just created

a world that isn't earth.

That in itself is an element X.

With the "Broken Earth" series, for example,

the main element X that affected everything thereafter

was the fact that this is a highly seismically

active world, a world that's so seismically active that it

encounters-- or that it experiences

seismic winters on a regular basis

and sort of general natural disasters on a much more

frequent basis than on our world.

And that affected the ecology.

That affects the biology of the animals.

That affects the physiology of the human beings on that planet

and everything from there on.

So you need to decide what your element X is going to be.

And the sky's the limit.

It's whatever you want to imagine.

But it ideally is just one thing, one small seemingly

insignificant thing as far as these people are concerned.

So some examples of element X that I've encountered,

or that you've probably encountered too

are you know, visible in most popular science fiction.

So think of Frank Herbert's "Dune."

You've got a whole planet that's nothing but desert.

So that in and of itself is an element X.

But then on top of that, he adds in the sand worms

that produce a psychotropic drugs from their worm poop.

I think it was from the worm poop.

Anyway, so that's an example of element X

and the ways in which element X can

affect the ecology of, in that case,

the whole universe or the whole galaxy.

Another example that I encountered

in one of my previous worldbuilding classes--

I was giving a worldbuilding seminar

to a group of 12 and 13-year-olds.

And for reasons, that seminar had been set just before lunch.

And all of the students were hungry.

So when I asked them to create a world,

they drew a world that looked like 12

identical wedge-shaped slices in a circle, i.e.

pizza world, because they were thinking about pizza.

They were hungry.

And we went with that.

We mapped out what the prevailing water and wind

currents would be.

We figured out that basically, almost all of these continents

would be completely uninhabitable.

And-- but this is a culture, which

as soon as it learns how to map the world is going to realize

there is some higher power, or some more advanced power

which is actually designing their world.

Because continents don't develop in that completely unnatural

shape.

So these are people who have evidence from the point

that they begin to develop a civilization that either God

exists, or aliens that are highly interested in pizza

exist or something.

So pause.

And think about what your element X is going to be.

And if you want to write it down,

go ahead and do that right now.