Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world or setting, carried out above all in speculative fiction. The word appeared as early as 1820, in the Edinburgh Review, and has been used in science-fiction and fantasy criticism since 1974; Tolkien gave the practice its theory in "On Fairy-Stories," describing the constructed world as a Secondary World, the product of Sub-Creation.

The craft content is method plus consistency. Construction runs top-down (the broad overview first, then detail) or bottom-up (a small area in detail, expanding outward), or combines the two, and inferred worldbuilding trusts readers to extrapolate what the text leaves unstated. Consistency is named a key element because the world is the foundation the story stands on: rules that shift under pressure read as errors, not surprises. The working discipline is writing the rules down; see how to write down world rules and power systems with costs and limits.