Worldbuilding Tips: Creating Immersive Worlds with a Wiki

World­build­ing refers to the intri­cate art of con­struct­ing the world where our sto­ry will unfold. The more fleshed out it is, the more believ­able our sto­ries will be. This is the key to cre­at­ing some­thing tru­ly immersive. 

Some­times, writ­ers cre­ate the plot first and then devel­op the rest of the sto­ry ele­ments (char­ac­ters, set­ting, etc.) around it. How­ev­er, this approach can com­pro­mise believ­abil­i­ty and immer­sion as the read­er can often dis­cern these ele­ments exist sim­ply to sat­is­fy the plot. Even worse, for read­ers, com­mu­ni­cat­ing this feed­back is dif­fi­cult because it might not be con­scious­ly iden­ti­fi­able but rather just an odd feel­ing as they advance through the sto­ry. This can lead to us writ­ers end­ing up with a big bag of unac­tion­able feed­back as a result. If you haven’t been there before, trust me, it’s not a nice place. It’s the quick­est way I can think of to get frus­trat­ed with your own story.

Worldbuilding and real life 

How does the plot-first approach com­pro­mise believ­abil­i­ty and immer­sion? For starters, real life just does­n’t work that way. Look­ing at our own lives, our per­son­al sto­ries (our “plots”) are prod­ucts of the set­tings we grew up in, not the oth­er way around. This works exact­ly the same way in fic­tion writ­ing. The plot is the prod­uct of the set­ting and the char­ac­ters that live in it. If the plot feels dis­con­nect­ed from the set­ting, the issue is not the set­ting but the plot.

I’m a strong believ­er in the world-first approach, which involves build­ing a ful­ly fleshed-out uni­verse and then throw­ing our char­ac­ters in and writ­ing about what unfolds. Although world­build­ing is usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy, its core ele­ments are applic­a­ble to vir­tu­al­ly any genre. Whether you’re writ­ing a polit­i­cal thriller or a piece of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, this approach is a great way to ensure your nar­ra­tive is immer­sive and well constructed.

The wiki approach to worldbuilding

So, how do we build our fic­tion­al world? First, we become his­to­ri­ans and doc­u­ment every­thing we know about it, every­thing we’ve craft­ed in our imag­i­na­tion. When some­one asks about our world, we should be able to describe it like talk­ing about real life. Imag­ine it’s a Wikipedia arti­cle we recent­ly read, only that such an arti­cle does­n’t exist yet. And that’s a good place to start: cre­ate a wiki.

In this day and age, Wikipedia has become a pri­ma­ry ref­er­ence tool to source infor­ma­tion for any giv­en sub­ject in the real world. Why not do the same for our fic­tion­al world too? By def­i­n­i­tion, a wiki is a com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven knowl­edge base. But, if nobody except us is writ­ing and con­tribut­ing to it, would it still be con­sid­ered a wiki? Well, to be hon­est, I haven’t thought about that too much. I sim­ply pre­fer to use “wiki” because it’s catch­i­er than “knowl­edge base.” Also, it’s a short­er word and eas­i­er to write.

Regard­less of what you call it, the end goal is to have our world as fleshed out as pos­si­ble by the time we sit down to begin writ­ing our sto­ry. In oth­er words, it will be like we’re writ­ing fan­fic­tion of our own world. If we need to add some­thing lat­er, it will have to fit into the estab­lished lore, which will keep things believ­able and immersive.

While I’m par­tial to world­build­ing with a wiki, I rec­og­nize that it isn’t the best approach for every­one. Before decid­ing what works for you, let’s exam­ine some pros and cons.

Pros

• Lim­it­less sto­ry poten­tial — instead of craft­ing one sto­ry­line, we’re build­ing a world in which end­less sto­ries can take place. All it takes is ask­ing “what if?” Just look at how the cre­ators of Dun­geons & Drag­ons devel­oped a ful­ly real­ized world that has pro­duced count­less books, games, mer­chan­dise, and more.
• Fool­proof believ­abil­i­ty and immer­sion — throw­ing a read­er off would take some seri­ous effort. When we know the laws gov­ern­ing our world, we can tell when some­thing feels off or stretch­es “real­i­ty.” By under­stand­ing what tru­ly fits into our world, we can cre­ate an over­all clear­er nar­ra­tive that our read­ers will not only believe but enjoy.
• Less expos­i­to­ry and stronger dia­logue — when we have a clear­er pic­ture of our char­ac­ters and the set­ting, dia­logue devel­op­ment flows more nat­u­ral­ly. Dia­logue is also a pow­er­ful expos­i­to­ry device when done right, allow­ing us to bet­ter explain the sto­ry through our char­ac­ters rather than fluff.
• Slim chance of writ­ing our­selves into a cor­ner — knowl­edge is pow­er. How would we, if we were our char­ac­ters, han­dle a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion if we lived in this fic­tion­al uni­verse? Spend­ing less time stuck fig­ur­ing out a prob­lem means the book will flow more eas­i­ly from our key­board. Devel­op­ing our world ahead of time gives us that knowledge.
• Hype build­ing and fan­dom — if we decide to make the wiki pub­lic, we can use it to cre­ate hype among our poten­tial fan­base. Releas­ing the wiki before launch or even dur­ing the writ­ing process can also allow for ear­ly feed­back from inter­est­ed readers.

Cons

• The slow­est way to start — we have to start by cre­at­ing an entire world. It’s eas­i­er said than done, and it takes some seri­ous time, espe­cial­ly when we’re eager to get to writing.
• Lone­li­ness (maybe?) — if we decide to keep the wiki pri­vate, we’ll be writ­ing a world that nobody will read about until the first book launches. 
• Requires strict orga­ni­za­tion — a wiki is, at its core, a data­base. If we’re not dili­gent in orga­niz­ing its var­i­ous ele­ments, it can get very messy very quickly.

The easy way to create a wiki for worldbuilding

It’s under­stand­able that cre­at­ing a web­site like Wikipedia for our world­build­ing can feel like a daunt­ing and expen­sive endeav­or. But, in the sim­plest of terms, Wikipedia can be thought of as just a bunch of linked pages. There’s no need to go crazy (unless you want to) and pay for a domain and host­ing and install Medi­aWi­ki to start our wiki. Instead, we can lever­age Google Docs, which is free. All we need is a Google account and basic word pro­cess­ing skills, which most writ­ers already have.

In devel­op­ing our wiki, here are some key things we’ll want to cover:

• Places — the loca­tions with­in our world like cities, coun­tries, con­ti­nents, his­tor­i­cal sites, etc.
• Peo­ple — pro­tag­o­nists and rel­e­vant char­ac­ters like pub­lic fig­ures, artists, his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, etc.
• Events — his­tor­i­cal events, events rel­e­vant to lore (like reli­gion or pol­i­tics), etc.
• Objects — food, weapons, tools, relics, etc.

Of course, this is a very basic list. We can per­son­al­ize it as much as need­ed just like how Wikipedia has almost an infi­nite num­ber of categories.

Creating a blank document

Start by cre­at­ing a new Google doc­u­ment. Head to Google Docs and click on the blank doc­u­ment template.

I like the blank tem­plate because by start­ing sim­ple, it will be eas­i­er to keep up as we add new pages and con­tent. It’s also cru­cial to stick to basic for­mat­ting prin­ci­ples (like using head­ings) so we can nav­i­gate our wiki with the doc­u­ment out­line fea­ture of Google Docs. Unlike Wikipedia, we don’t have a search fea­ture oth­er than the nor­mal text search, so it’s best to stay orga­nized for the sake of our own sanity.

Creating pages

As writ­ers, we’re prob­a­bly already famil­iar with fact sheets that include char­ac­ters, loca­tions, and oth­er crit­i­cal nar­ra­tive ele­ments. We can think of the pages with­in our Wiki as cus­tom-fla­vored ver­sions of these fact sheets. We fill them with attrib­ut­es, back­sto­ry, and oth­er rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion. How­ev­er, the tone should be dif­fer­ent; they should be writ­ten as actu­al bio­graph­i­cal pieces. In fact, we can use actu­al Wikipedia pages as a reference—see Carl Sagan’s page for an example.

We don’t need an advanced tem­plate to mim­ic this struc­ture eas­i­ly. Sim­ply adding some head­ings and a bul­let­ed list is more than enough. Remem­ber to pri­or­i­tize writ­ing over style unless it becomes a dis­trac­tion for you.

I’m using a real per­son as an exam­ple instead of a sam­ple char­ac­ter because this is how our world­build­ing wiki pages should be writ­ten: like they’re about the real world.

Linking pages

Once we have mul­ti­ple pages writ­ten, we’ll want to ensure they’re con­nect­ed to each oth­er, just as char­ac­ters are con­nect­ed to peo­ple and places in our sto­ry. Hyper­links are the sta­ple of Wikipedi­a’s charm­ing per­son­al­i­ty, and there’s a good rea­son for them: they enable read­ers to nav­i­gate the con­tent eas­i­ly and keep things in con­text. If a page men­tions a loca­tion, it might be good to link to it. Links are what turn our bor­ing text doc­u­ment into a liv­ing wiki.

My rule of thumb is to link as much as need­ed. We also might find out along the way that there’s a top­ic that should have its own arti­cle. This is how we flesh out our world. By build­ing it first, we open our minds to its pos­si­bil­i­ties and how our sto­ry exists with­in it.

Mov­ing along, let’s cre­ate a new sec­tion for Carl Sagan’s place of birth.

Once writ­ten, we can now link to this sec­tion from else­where in the wiki text. To link, sim­ply high­light the text we want to link and select Com­mand + K (or Ctrl + K on a PC). In the pop-up, select Head­ings and book­marks and pick the rel­e­vant head­ing cor­re­spond­ing to the infor­ma­tion we want to link to.

We can now click on the head­ing and appro­pri­ate­ly link to the rel­e­vant sec­tion on the page. This is why I empha­sized using head­ings; with­out them, we can’t link our pages in Google Docs.

Navigating the wiki

As our wiki grows, the doc­u­ment out­line side­bar will start fill­ing up. This out­line not only gives us a high-lev­el view of our doc­u­ment but also allows us to nav­i­gate our wiki pages. We can click on any ele­ment in the list to reach the cor­re­spond­ing page.

If you can’t see the doc­u­ment out­line, it can be dis­played by nav­i­gat­ing to View > Show doc­u­ment out­line in the main menu.

Feeling silly

By now, you might be think­ing this is very sil­ly. Maybe you were expect­ing some­thing more sophis­ti­cat­ed and are ask­ing your­self, “Why is this dude teach­ing me to use Google Docs?” Well, I don’t blame you. I felt the same way when I start­ed using this approach. How­ev­er, once my wiki con­tin­ued to grow and I looked at my world sum­ma­rized in an out­line, I start­ed see­ing its val­ue. Once I began writ­ing my sto­ry, I had an odd feel­ing that I was writ­ing a fan­f­ic of my own world. That’s how I could deter­mine my fic­tion­al uni­verse was fleshed out. 

For years, I strug­gled with cre­at­ing char­ac­ters that did­n’t feel like card­board cutouts, and this approach real­ly helped me over­come that bur­den, as my beta read­ers and cri­tique part­ners let me know. Although world­build­ing might be com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy, it real­ly does­n’t mat­ter which genre we’re writ­ing. It can be applied all the same with the same effect and benefits.

Not-so-easy alternatives to creating a wiki for worldbuilding

There are sev­er­al rea­sons why we might want to use some­thing less rudi­men­ta­ry for our wiki. Per­haps our world grew past the capa­bil­i­ties of a Google Doc, or we’ve come to miss the search fea­ture too much. Luck­i­ly, there are plen­ty of options that will allow us to cre­ate a more sophis­ti­cat­ed wiki for our worldbuilding.

Scrivener

Scriven­er is the Swiss Army Knife of writ­ing. We can cre­ate a project for our wiki in the same fash­ion as our Google Doc, except this plat­form also pro­vides tem­plates, ver­sion­ing, word-count tar­gets, and oth­er handy tools. It’s not free, how­ev­er. As for tem­plates, my rec­om­men­da­tion is to use cus­tom ones instead of the built-in Scriven­er tem­plates as they more close­ly resem­ble reg­u­lar fact sheets.

Fandom

Fan­dom (pre­vi­ous­ly known as Wikia) is a web­site that allows any­one to cre­ate a wiki for free. It’s com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven and hosts thou­sands of wikis for dif­fer­ent fan­doms such as TV shows, movies, comics, and more. The only down­side is that all the con­tent is pub­lic, includ­ing any wikis we create.

MediaWiki

Medi­aWi­ki is the open-source soft­ware that pow­ers Wikipedia and hun­dreds of oth­er sites. We can install it on any host­ing provider that sup­ports PHP (Host­ga­tor, Blue­host, Site­ground, etc.). This allows us to cre­ate our own Wikipedia with the same look and feel. How­ev­er, it also means there’s a steep learn­ing curve, and we require some tech­ni­cal knowl­edge to set it up. 

Final thoughts

Per­son­al­ly, I haven’t found a more effec­tive approach to cre­at­ing an immer­sive, believ­able world than cre­at­ing a wiki. Sure, it entails more upfront work before get­ting down to the nit­ty-grit­ty task of actu­al­ly writ­ing the book, but I can guar­an­tee read­ers will be able to tell the difference.

I’ve had more encoun­ters than I’d like with my most frus­trat­ing, unac­tion­able piece of feed­back from read­ers: “This char­ac­ter (or loca­tion, event, etc.) could be fleshed out more.” Where do we even start with that? The wiki approach to world­build­ing is how I man­aged to active­ly pre­vent this kind of feed­back while writ­ing my debut nov­el. Instead of hav­ing to spec­u­late lat­er on what exact­ly needs chang­ing, the wiki gives me the abil­i­ty to ful­ly form my char­ac­ters and set­ting at the onset. Need to flesh out some­thing? We can look at indi­vid­ual wiki pages and add more detail. Now that’s action­able. This helped me great­ly, and I real­ly hope it helps you too.

If you have any thoughts and com­ments, don’t hes­i­tate to reach out to me by email, or drop a com­ment below.

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