World-building for Every Genre

When we talk about ‘world-building’, it’s hard not to think about fantasy novels. Creating a whole world from scratch, complete with its own geography, social hierarchy, politics, magic system, perhaps even language. But world-building is essential in all novels, even those which are set in the world in which we live.

The reader needs to know the rules, and where the protagonist fits into things. This might be particularly obvious in novels where there is a speculative or magical realism element – and we need to understand what is and isn’t possible – or in historical fiction – where knowing the time period will clue us in on what cultural or societal rules the protagonist lives within. But it’s also true in a straightforward contemporary novel, where we want to know where the protagonist sits – whether they are comfortable in the world they inhabit, or feel out of place; what rules or limits they are constrained by based on their social standing.

Here’s what world-building is not: a three-page description of the protagonist’s surroundings. What it is is woven into the narrative and the protagonist’s POV. It’s how they interact with the world around them – what draws their attention and what doesn’t. How they speak and to whom.

Take The Husbands by Holly Gramazio (I’m sharing Amazon links so you can easily read a sample – but of course your lovely local bookshop will also stock all the books I talk about). We open with a man ‘waiting on the landing at the top of the stairs’ (sounds like the real world to me) but the protagonist’s immediate reaction is to ‘yelp’ and jump back. Immediately we know, then, that he’s not supposed to be there.

The rest of the descriptions are intensely everyday – cream walls, carpeted stairs, a light switch – it’s entirely obvious where we are, that we have all been in a flat just like this. We’re not in some near-future world where you only have to think to turn the lights on and there is a portal in every wardrobe where this man could have appeared from. As our protagonist goes inside the flat, the descriptions continue to sound just like the real world – her flat is a different colour and with different items in it than she expected, but none of it sounds unusual to the reader. We know that this is a normal flat – just not how it usually looks to the protagonist and with a strange man in it.