It seems like a strange thing, to fall out of love with something you were once obsessed with. But, just as we can grow tired of our favourite sandwich filling, we can also lose enthusiasm for the worlds we’ve created. Especially if we’ve been building them for a very long time.

Perhaps you got stuck, or made it too complicated. Maybe real life interrupted it, or your skills or tastes changed. Or maybe another shiny idea wandered past and stole your attention. (I’m often guilty of that one!) Whatever the reason, there are ways to rekindle your love for an abandoned project, and here’s just a few of them.

1. Go Back to the Bit You Loved Most

Rather than trying to step back in exactly where you stopped, try looking for the thing that used to make you giddy and excited.

It might be:

• A favourite character or relationship.

• A scene you still think is bloody brilliant.

• A location you loved creating.

• A piece of lore you went completely overboard on.

• The ending you’ve always wanted to reach.

• An illustration, map, playlist, or Pinterest board you made for it.

Simply spend some time with that exciting part without any pressure to actually produce anything. Just reclaim that feeling, and remind yourself why you wanted to make it in the first place.

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2. Make Something That Isn’t the Next Thing

Don’t think about what comes next, or finding the next most logical puzzle piece, just allow yourself to play.

You could:

• Write a scene that might never appear in the book.

• Map somewhere you’ve mentioned but never developed.

• Create a festival.

• Design a tavern menu.

• Write a legend people tell.

• Jump ahead and write the scene you’re desperate to reach.

None of it even needs to be ultimately useful. That’s just not the goal. Just finding enjoyment in your project again is the aim.

3. Look at It as the Creator You Are Now

If you started this project two, five, or ten years ago, you’ll have evolved as a writer and worldbuilder. Your interests may have changed too. Rather than trying to recover exactly how you felt when you started it, ask what current you would do with the idea.

Perhaps:

• A side character is far more interesting to you now.

• You’d rather make the story funnier, darker or cosier.

• The main plotline no longer interests you.

• You can finally see why a piece of worldbuilding never worked.

• The idea you originally centred isn’t what the project is about anymore.

You can change the project instead of trying to change yourself back into the person who created it.

4. Find the Thing That’s Making You Avoid It

It might be time for a bit of tough love. You may think you’ve lost interest when actually there’s a solveable problem in your way. Maybe you don’t know what happens next, or a character just isn’t working. You may have written yourself into a corner, or just got lost in the muddy middle.

If you can identify the specific pain point, you can tackle it head on. It’s unlikely you need to fix the entire project, you just need to deal with the thing stopping you from wanting to work on it.

5. Give Yourself Something New to Discover

Sometimes, familiarity itself is the problem. You’ve spent so long thinking about the same places, characters, and plot that there’s nothing left that feels fresh. So try opening a door you haven’t opened yet.

• Explore somewhere in the world you’ve barely considered.

• Follow a minor character for a while.

• Ask what happened before one of your established historical events.

• Work out what lies beyond an established border.

• Ask a question about the world you genuinely don’t know the answer to yet.

If you haven’t seen it already, check out last week’s article: Five Ways to Get More Story From an Idea You Already Have. Because you don’t need to start a whole new project to experience the joy of discovery again.

And if you’re still feeling a bit lost, I might have just the thing you need…

You can get the Untangle Your World worksheet pack completely free with any purchase from my webstore. Because your world doesn’t need more notes. It needs a system.

Trade creates a web of travel and connections across your world, allowing you to link two distant places together. Even making them entirely reliant upon one another. A cup of tea, a silk dress, a steel sword, or a bottle of wine has a whole chain of places and people behind it.

Choose one thing that people buy in your world, and then trace its journey backwards. Where did it come from? How did it travel? Which people and places depend on this trade? Following one item’s journey can teach you a lot about your world.

Where Does it Come From?

Start with the raw materials. What makes up this item, and where are those materials sourced? It may contain elements that are rare, dangerous to harvest, or particular to a single region.

• Maybe a blue dye requires flowers that only grow in one particular valley.

• Perhaps fine paper is made from reeds grown along a major river.

• A famous sword-making city may have no nearby iron deposits, so it has to source its metal from elsewhere.

• A magical potion might require salt harvested on the opposite side of the continent.

• Perhaps a northern kingdom can’t grow the spices its cuisine has become famous for.

What makes that place the only place to source this material? Perhaps it’s the unique climate, geology, magical conditions, access to water, specialist knowledge, domesticated creatures, or fertile soil.

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Whether you’re turning a one-shot into a full campaign, writing a sequel, creating subplots to enrich a story, or writing a spin-off for a great side-character, when you’re looking to get more story out of your world, it can be tempting to add new things to it. New locations, new lore, new history, new characters. But often, the best solutions are waiting for you in what you’ve already built.

Even a very simple idea can contain several stories once you start looking at the wider-reaching consequences and connections, and the ways in which it impacts or is viewed by different people. Nothing in your world is singular and independent.

1. Follow the Consequences

Choose something you’vce already built, and look at what else must be true because of its existence. Look for the connections of cause and effect far beyond its original purpose.

Perhaps you’ve established that dragons regularly attack livestock. How does that impact farming, insurance, and the price of meat? Maybe resurrection magic exists in your world. How does this effect murder investigations, inheritance, or funeral rites? Or perhaps your protagonist exposed a corrupt noble in book one. Who else lost money, livelihood, or influence when that noble fell? Who is out for revenge?

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2. Find Someone Else Who Cares

When something happens, it’s not just your protagonists who are paying attention. Look to the wider society and find someone else who has a stake in it.

An ancient magical artefact may be valuable to a scholar for what they can learn, to a ruler for the legitimacy it gives them, and to a thief because someone will pay handsomely for it. A new road might be a blessing to merchants, but a curse for the innkeeper whose village it now bypasses. Or perhaps that monster your protagonists killed was vital to someone else. Perhaps they worshipped it, depended on it, or had devoted their life to being the one who destroyed it.

3. Connect Two Things You Already Have

Go through your notes and connect two things you’ve already built. They might be nearby and related to one another, or they may be several kingdoms apart with no apparent similarities at all.

Maybe you connect a religious order to a magical ingredient, even if they’re on opposite sides of the world. Perhaps you connect a monster species with a major trade route, either through disruption or monster trafficking. Maybe a minor character from several chapters back can offer the solution your protagonist needs to succeed.

4. Find the Competing Interests

Choose something you’ve already established, and look at who wants it to stay the same and who desperately wants it to change. This is where your worldbuilding can start creating new stories through conflict.

Perhaps a religious order protects a sacred forest. But the villagers need firewood, and the king wants timber to build his armada. Maybe a town economically relies on visiting adventurers. Business owners need the money, but residents are fed up of drunken brawls destroying their town. Maybe your protagonists defeated a tyrant. While some people celebrate their freedom, others’ livelihoods depended on his regime.

5. Ask What Happens Next

Instead of looking back, push an idea forward. Take something stable in your world and introduce change. It doesn’t need to be destruction or danger, it could be progress and innovation.

Two nations may have held an uneasy peace for generations. Perhaps new leadership seeks to turn that peace into a genuine alliance. Magic may be disappearing, until someone finds a new, powerful source for it. A valuable resource may have kept a nation prosperous for centuries, until its depletion brings war to its lands. A powerful and cruel family line may have thought to have been eradicated, until an heir comes out of hiding.

More story doesn’t have to mean creating a new continent, fifty pages of new history, a whole new army, or even crowning a new king. Your existing ideas have consequences, interested parties, connections, conflicts of interests, and developments yet to be found.

Pick one thing you’ve already created and spend ten minutes looking for the stories you haven’t told about it yet.

Every black market begins with a need. A gap. They are created when there is something people want that they cannot obtain through legitimate means. Their very existence in your world tells your reader something about the laws in that place, about scarcity, power, and the desires of ordinary people.

Your black market doesn’t need to be clandestine deals with hooded figures in dark alleys or taverns with a nasty reputation. It could be a bright cafe with a back room for trusted customers. It may be a group of mothers who share resources between them. It might be an innocent child sitting at a crossroads. And the trade may be medicine, magical ingredients, books, forged documents, passage across a closed border, food during rationing, luxury fabrics, or simply a service that’s legal elsewhere.

What Can’t People Get?

Start with what is being illegally traded. What do people want that might be difficult to obtain via official channels?

The items might not be illegal. They could be rationed, heavily taxed, culturally forbidden, reserved for certain groups, or simply too expensive. So don’t just think about black magic or stolen jewels.

Maybe it’s healing spells reserved for nobility, grain during a famine, banned books, or salt which is usually heavily taxed. It doesn’t need to be a luxury product, in fact, it’s probably going to be more interesting if it’s something people need for the everyday.

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By the time your story begins, your world has likely already existed for many eras. Kingdoms have risen and fallen, borders have been fought over, beliefs have changed, discoveries have been made, and people have fought, travelled, built, and destroyed.

And all of those events have left their mark. The world your characters inhabit exists because of what came before.

Creating a timeline of your world’s history is a useful way to visually lay out that history. It helps you to clearly see what happened, what caused it, what came next, and what consequences still remain.

But, fear not, you don’t need to nail down every year of a ten-thousand-year history. A timeline can begin with just a handful of the most important events.

1. Start With the Big Events

Begin with the moments that have had the biggest impact on your world. It could be wars, invasions, rebellions, or natural disasters. Maybe the rise and fall of rulers, dynasties, and nations. Or it could be major changes in religion or magic, important discoveries, or inventions.

Think about the events that divide history into a ‘before’ and an ‘after’.

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2. Put Them in Order

Once you have your major events, arrange them chronologically so you can see how the history of your world has unfolded over time.

Putting everything into sequence can also expose problems. You may have dated a war before one of the fighting nations existed, or placed a revolution before its leader was born. Seeing the events together helps keep your world’s history consistent.

3. Work Out the Consequences

For every major event, ask yourself what changed because it happened. What did it leave behind? Who gained or lost power? What changed culturally, politically, religiously, or magically?

This is where your history feeds into the rest of your worldbuilding. An event that happened centuries ago might still influence institutions, beliefs, or culture.

4. Connect the Events

Now look at what happened between those major turning points. One event may have directly caused another, while others laid the groundwork for things to happen many years later.

This is where you can add smaller events to create the links you need. You don’t have to fill every gap; the aim is to understand the chains of cause and effect that run through your world’s history, so that the present feels like the result of everything that came before.

Bonus Tips

• You don’t need exact dates. Eras, reigns, generations, or approximate periods can work just as well.

• Let history get messy. Records can be lost, damaged, deliberately destroyed, or never written down at all.

• Allow people to disagree about the past. Different cultures may remember the same event very differently.

• Let some history become myth. The further back you go, the harder it may be to separate fact from storytelling.

• Your timeline doesn’t need to cover everything. It can be vague or detailed as your story needs.

• Remember that history is remembered by people. What survives isn’t necessarily complete or even accurate.

Take It Further With a Free Worksheet

Join my email mailing list and get your free Creating a Timeline worksheet. Get step-by-step guidance, and extra tips and prompts to help you plot out the events that matter. Plus, there’s a ready-to-use timeline template to bring it all together.

Join HERE.

The big events that have happened in your world shouldn’t simply exist in the history books, monuments, or royal family trees. Wars, famines, migrations, political upheavals, and natural disasters all impact everyday life for ordinary people.

Sometimes, the best way to reveal your world’s big history is through small details.

Look at Who’s Missing

Historical events can change the demographics of your world. Old wars might be seen in a lack of men of a certain age. A plague might have disproportionately affected children or the elderly. Persecution may have driven away one religious or ethnic community. Perhaps a dangerous industry left behind a town full of widows. Or a generation of young people emigrated during an economic collapse.

Ask yourself: Who should be here, but isn’t? Who is here in unusually large numbers as a result?

This can impact everything from marriage customs and inheritance to childcare and which skills are disappearing.

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Summer isn’t always a great time for heavy four-hour writing sessions. The good news is that worldbuilding doesn’t have to happen in huge chunks. Ten minutes is enough to build something meaningful.

Here are five ways to make the most of short creative sessions.

1. Give yourself one question to answer.

Instead of sitting down thinking, ‘I’m going to work on my world’, pick one specific question. How is food preserved? Who controls the ports? Why was the city built here? A single, focused question is much easier to answer than an entire world of them.

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2. Work on one small area.

You don’t have to build a whole continent every time you open your notebook. One village, one family, one trade route, or one festival is enough. Small pieces soon connect together into a full kingdom.

3. Stop while you still know what comes next.

It’s tempting to completely finish a section before you stop, but leaving yourself halfway through an idea, or writing yourself a note about your next idea, makes it much easier to pick up again tomorrow.

4. Keep an idea capture system.

Your best ideas typically arrive when you’re driving, shopping, or in the shower. Whether it’s your phone, a notebook, or the back of a receipt, make sure you have somewhere to catch those brilliant ideas before they disappear.

5. Celebrate consistency, not word count.

A dozen fifteen-minute sessions will usually take you further than waiting for the mythical ‘free weekend’. Consistency often adds up to more progress than becoming a worldbuilding hermit every now and then.

At the end of the day, your world will still be there when life settles down again. Until then, don’t feel guilty, and don’t worry about building everything. Just build one small thing at a time.

If you’re looking for quick inspiration, fast builds, and fun games, my webstore is packed full of worksheets you can download and print instantly. From zines and games, to folklore prompts and guided builds. (Plus, you’ll get the Untangle Your World worksheet pack free with any purchase.)

A world can have a deep, multi-millennial history mapped out, and still feel flat and lifeless. Because it’s not about how many years of history you create, it’s about how that past influences the present. And predicts the future.

Pages and pages of battle plans, successions and lineages, or even lore isn’t what makes your world feel ancient. It’s the mysterious ruins in the city, the weathered standing stones in the forest, and the unknown seal on an ancient coin. And it’s the flowers left at those ruins every day. It’s the tingling feel of magic that hums between the stones. It’s the strange sense of familiarity that seal rouses in one character.

Your history can come in small snippets, odd feelings, unusual phrases. It doesn’t need to be complex and worthy of a doctorate. It just needs to matter.

Build Things on Top of Other Things

History isn’t tidy. Worlds aren’t wiped clean and started over every century. They’re layered, and blended, and added onto.

Old buildings are adapted and repurposed. Libraries become taverns. Orphanages become hospitals. Cattle markets become roundabouts. Roads and bridges are abandoned or crossed with new trade routes. Ancient stones are re-used, fabrics are re-sewn, old maps drawn over.

Pepper your world with buildings of two contrasting architectural styles, roads that go nowhere, and old words that stubbornly remain part of an evolving vernacular.

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After a break of several years from writing fiction, I’m back in the saddle. Of course, over that time, the ideas have been simmering, and I now find myself working on several books all at once.

The typing may have ceased, but the ideas certainly didn’t.

Most of my story ideas come to me the same way: through worldbuilding. I doubt that’s going to surprise anyone. “Imagine a world where….” followed by “What kind of characters would live in this world?” ending with “What would these characters choose to do?” Sometimes, my ideas are born from a literal place. A single location that appears in my head, and slowly expands into the landscape beyond.

And so, whenever I’m writing, the first thing I do is draw the map.

I’ve talked many times about finding stories in maps, and that is exactly the way I work myself. I start with the main location, and extend the rivers, the roads, the forests, and mountain ranges outward, adding other towns, lakes, and finding all the spaces that already have stories waiting to happen.

Somehow, my maps write as much of the story as I do.

It would be reasonable to assume that I’ve only written this way since I started drawing maps in 2020. But that’s not the case. My ideas have been born from worldbuilding ever since I started writing. It’s a rare occurrence that a character speaks to me before the world does.

I do want to express that my creative process is no better or worse than anyone else’s, it is simply mine. It’s the way my brain works, and it’s the thing my imagination latches onto. Many writers begin with a character, or a scene, or a line of dialogue. There is no correct way to do this, merely the way that works for you.

While I’m asking “What might happen in this place?” another author is asking “What kind of person is this?” They are equally good questions to jump off from.

But I find that not many people start their stories from worldbuilding or, at least, they don’t realise that’s what they’re doing. When I’m teaching workshops, and I ask people to create a place from a random name on a prompt card, I love seeing that moment of realisation when they’ve invented history, lore, characters, and plot all from a simple name. Just a place name. Nothing more.

The writing world is full of ‘rules’, and you’ll find countless authors eager to tell you what they are. I believe we need more authors telling people to break those rules, bend them, reshape them, or ignore them entirely.

I still see many people asserting that plotting is the correct way to write. Assuming that discovery writers will quickly become plotters if they only learn the process. Assuming that they are only discovery writers due to their naivety, inexperience, or even stupidity. I still see many people asserting that momentum is everything, and you mustn’t ever stop writing to find the perfect name, that using a placeholder is the correct way. Likewise, that editing as you write is a progress killer, and something no writer should ever engage in.

I say this: find your own weird ways. If it works for you, it is correct. If it gets the story written, it is correct. And if you’re brave enough, be open about your weird little ways. Be open about the ‘rules’ you break.

Because sometimes we need to see someone else break the rules before we realise we can too.

When you’ve been writing and publishing for over a decade, you have a lot of time to make a lot of mistakes. And a lot of time to learn from them. One thing I’ve learnt is that it is very hard to market a genre mashup. I’ve also learnt that I love writing genre mashups.

So I’ve been thinking of a way to write cross-genre books, while somehow staying true to one genre. Hitting the tropes, meeting reader expectations, but still writing something that makes me happy.

I’m currently writing book one of a cosy fantasy series set in a post-apocalyptic setting. It shouldn’t work. I’m going to make sure it does. And here’s how.

Genre Is About Experience

When we think about genre, we often think about the bones. The setting, the characters, the plot points. But genre is mostly about the feeling it gives your reader.

Epic fantasy readers expect to feel part of something vast. Romantasy readers expect intensity. And cosy fantasy readers expect to feel comfort, warmth, and connection.

If you give your readers all the feelings they expect from your primary genre, the things you borrow from other genres won’t muddy and confuse that. It will feel true to your main genre by the way your readers experience it.

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I started self publishing in 2015. Less than a decade since the first Kindle came on the market, less than a decade since Amazon KDP was launched, and in a time when self publishers were still thought of as failed authors.

Despite that, I didn’t find myself alone. I very quickly discovered a vast community of indie authors online, who were generous with their knowledge, expertise, and time, guiding me through the process of coding my first ebook and releasing it into the world. I honestly wouldn’t have managed it without them.

But not everything I was told was helpful. Not all of it was useful. And some of it almost stopped me from writing altogether.

So, here are five things I was told about self-publishing that did not turn out to be the whole story.

1. You Have to Release Constantly

It’s often said that the best marketing you can do for book 1 is to release book 2. I agree. I do.

But rapid release is often held up as a gold standard in the indie world. Whether authors are bunching up books, only releasing when they have three ready to go, or whether they’re churning books out like a machine, rapid release maintains that ‘all-important’ momentum. Even before the dawn of GenAI, I knew authors who were publishing a book a month.

But not everyone is capable of that. And not every genre requires that. And your readers might not want that. It’s far better, far more important, to find a pace that works for you. Don’t burn yourself out trying to keep up with someone else’s schedule.

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2. You Need to Be Everywhere Online

There are endless places you can have an author presence online. There are countless social media platforms. There are places like Goodreads, your mailing list, your website, blogs, podcasts, videos, articles, interviews…

Being everywhere all at once is a great way to get overwhelmed. It’s a great way to pour your time into something that doesn’t always give back. It’s far better to be in fewer places, and to do those places well, than try to spread yourself too thin.

• Where are your target readers?

• Which platforms do you enjoy?

• What kind of content do you enjoy producing?

These are far more important considerations than which social media platform is the shiny new one.

3. If It Doesn’t Sell Immediately, It’s Failed

Authors put a lot of emphasis on release day. They have spent months planning it, from ARC readers and paid ads to signed copies and book tours.

But the truth is, that release day is just one day in the life of your book. All it really needs to do on day one is exist.

As an indie author you have the freedom to re-release your books with new covers, update the interiors, run sales and offers, release special editions. And you can do these things at any point. Not everything hinges on one day. Get busy writing your next book instead of worrying that release day wasn’t what you’d hoped for.

4. You Need to Do Everything Properly

No one knows how to be the perfect indie author with their first book. In fact, no one even knows by their 17th or 100th book, because the market is constantly changing. There is no ‘perfect’ book, just like there is no ‘perfect’ author.

Much of publishing is on-the-job-learning. And, as an indie, you have the freedom to go back and rectify the mistakes at any point. Can’t afford the best covers right now? Re-cover your books at a later date. Made a formatting mistake? Fix it any time.

Don’t let a need for perfection stop you from publishing. Done is better than perfect. You can make improvements further down the line.

5. You Have to Treat it Like a Business From Day One

This is the one that almost killed my writing career before it even started. An insistence that, if you’re not writing from 9-5 every day and treating it like a real job, you’ll never be a ‘serious’ writer. The truth is, that just isn’t possible for most people.

And treating your writing like a business isn’t the goal for a lot of authors. You might simply write for fun, for family, or just to get thoughts out of your head without any ambition to make a living from it. Which is no more or less noble than writing for income.

When writing becomes a business, there’s a risk that the fun, the passion, and the reason you started in the first place can be eaten up by deadlines, bottom lines, and the daily admin of running your own publishing house. If you’re focused on experimentation, or creation, or just enjoying the process right now, you’re not doing it ‘wrong’.

Remember: there is no single ‘correct’ way, and most advice is dependent on life circumstances, goals, and personality. What matters is building something you can keep doing, something sustainable, and something you can continue to find enjoyment in.

You can give a monster claws, teeth, unnatural movement, a disturbing appearance, and a long history, and it can still fall flat the moment it appears on the page. Readers don’t feel fear just because something looks dangerous.

They feel fear because of what that thing means for the character in front of them. A monster becomes terrifying when it threatens something that matters, and when there’s no easy way to avoid that threat.

1. Let it Interfere with What Should be Safe

A trusted road that becomes dangerous to travel, a home that no longer feels secure, a place people depend on that starts to feel unpredictable. Daily routines begin to change, not out of choice, but out of necessity.

When your character can no longer rely on the things that used to keep them safe or grounded, the threat stops being distant. It becomes part of their everyday life, something they have to think about constantly, and can’t simply ignore.

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I have started work on a folklore map, in which every location has a story to tell. And here’s the first story for you…

The Devil’s Teeth

The legend goes, that long ago, a lighthouse stood on Lighthouse Rock, safely guiding boats into the natural harbour.

But it was plagued, for months, by the devil blocking out the light with his wings, wrecking ships and claiming the souls of the crew.

The lighthouse keeper stockpiled oil until he was able to make the light so bright that he blinded the devil, causing the devil to collide with the lighthouse. The lighthouse was destroyed, and the devil’s teeth were knocked out of his gums. They fell into the water, turning the once safe harbour into a perilous labyrinth of jagged rocks.

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Why Places Gather Stories

People attach stories to places that stand out. Places that feel or look different in some way. A stretch of land that’s unusually fertile, a clearing where the light falls just right, a hill that catches the wind, or a river bend that never quite behaves as expected. Over time, those details get noticed, remembered, and passed on.

A place that provides becomes blessed. A place that feels peaceful becomes sacred. And a place that’s difficult or unpredictable becomes something people warn each other about.

The story might be born from gratitude, pride, comfort, belonging, or fear. Whatever the motivator, it all comes from the same place: people trying to understand why this part of the world feels the way it does, and why it matters.

Finding Stories in Your Own Landscape

If you want to build folklore like this, start with something physical and specific. Look at the landscape and ask what’s actually happening there.

• Is it hard to see clearly?

• Difficult to reach?

• Unstable underfoot?

• Does something important gather there, grow there, or pass through it regularly?

Then take that one step further. What would people who live nearby say about it? In order to make sense of it, to immortalise it. What explanation would they pass down, repeat, or warn others about?

Stories might be used to explain the beauty of a place, or to protect it. They might warn of danger, be used to explain things people don’t understand, or even to monetise the space. To cement its value.

What places in your world are worthy of being mythologised in folklore and legend?

Sometimes, a story starts with a place. Not an idea, or a character, or a plot, just a specific location you can see clearly. A structure on a hill. A path that’s difficult to follow. A place that feels exposed, or enclosed, or like something important happened there long ago.

If you spend a bit of time looking at what’s there, how it sits in the landscape, and what it would be like to navigate, the story tends to follow.

Start With What Is Actually There

Before you think about story, get clear on the place itself. Where is it positioned in the landscape? Is it elevated, visible from miles away, a landmark people can orient themselves around? Or is it hidden, low, easy to miss unless you already know it’s there?

Is it intact, maintained, in use? Or is it collapsing, neglected, half-reclaimed by the environment around it?

A structure on a hill invites attention. It’s seen, approached, possibly avoided for that reason. Something tucked into a valley, or buried in woodland, creates a different experience. It has to be found. These are not just aesthetic details, they determine how people encounter the place in the first place.

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You don’t always need more ideas. Sometimes, you just need a better angle. A single question can turn a vague idea into something specific, or something generic into something that feels real.

The right questions don’t add fluff, they give you something solid to build on.

1. What Do People Need Every Day, and Where Do They Get It?

Start with the basics. What do people actually need to get through a normal day, and where do they go to get it?

Food, water, work, fuel, information. These aren’t background details, they define how a place functions. A town built around a single well behaves very differently to one with a river running through it. A city that depends on trade feels different to one that produces what it needs locally. If food has to be brought in, then transport matters. If water is limited, then control of it matters.

When you understand how people meet their daily needs, you’re not just adding detail, you’re establishing the logic of the place.

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2. Who Makes Decisions, and How Far Does That Reach?

It might be a ruler, a council, a guild, a handful of powerful families, or a loose system where influence shifts depending on the situation. But the important part isn’t just who has authority, it’s how far that authority actually extends.

Does their influence stop at the city walls, or does it stretch across regions? Do people follow those decisions because they agree with them, out of habit, or because they don’t have a choice? A system that looks powerful but only works in certain places feels very different to one that is enforced everywhere.

Power isn’t just about control, it’s also about reach, and how consistently that control holds.

3. What Happens When Someone Breaks the Rules?

Is it a fine? Imprisonment? Exile? Public punishment designed to make an example of them? Or something quieter: being shut out, losing access, disappearing without much explanation? And just as importantly, does this apply to everyone, or only to certain people?

This is where you see how the system actually works, not how it claims to work. A world where rules are strict but unevenly enforced feels very different to one where everyone is held to the same standard. And both create very different kinds of behaviour.

4. How Do People Get From One Place to Another?

How do people travel? Roads, rivers, ships, gates, footpaths? And how reliable are they? Is travel easy and expected, or slow and difficult? Are there only a few ways in and out, or many?

A place that’s easy to reach feels open, while a place that’s hard to reach feels cut off. A place where movement is limited or controlled naturally creates friction, because people can’t just go where they want when they want.

When you understand how people move, you understand how places connect, how goods travel, and how isolated or exposed a location really is.

5. What Are People Afraid Of?

Predators that make travel dangerous. Illness that spreads quickly. Spirits that don’t stay buried. An army getting closer. A dragon that doesn’t stop. Whatever it is, it affects how people live.

What do they plan around? What do they avoid? What changes how they move through the world?

Fear isn’t just background flavour, it shows up in routines, decisions, and the way people respond to risk. If something is genuinely dangerous, people adapt to it, and that adaptation tells you a lot about the world.

If you can answer these questions, your world stops feeling like a loose collection of ideas, and starts to feel like a place that actually works.

Well... this one snuck up on me! It turns out that once I started writing Worldbuilding for Plot, it came together far more quickly than I expected. So quickly, in fact, that I never got around to teasing it before it was finished!

If you’ve ever found yourself with pages of fascinating lore, detailed maps, and rich histories, but no clear idea how to turn any of it into a compelling story, this guide is for you.

And here’s a chapter to give you a taste of what it’s all about…

WORLDS THAT DEMAND A PRICE

FOR STORIES OF SACRIFICE, CONSEQUENCE, AND COST

Power moulds everything in a world, but the cost of that power defines what it’s really worth. A character might chase something they want, but find themselves forced to weigh up the sacrifice they’ll have to make to get it. These are the stories where nothing comes freely, where every gain is balanced by loss, and where success is never simple or clean.

Readers are drawn to these stories because they feel earned. Victory isn’t handed over, it’s paid for. Every decision carries weight, and every outcome leaves something behind. We don’t just want to see characters succeed, we want to see what it costs them, and whether they’re willing to pay it.

If you want to write that kind of story, your world can’t allow anything to come without consequence.

NOTHING COMES WITHOUT COST

In some worlds, cost is obvious. Magic drains life, power corrupts, knowledge is dangerous. In others, it’s quieter, but no less present. Every decision closes one door as it opens another, and every gain shifts something else out of balance.

A healer might be able to save a life, but only by shortening their own. A warrior might win every battle, but lose their sense of self in the process. A ruler might hold a kingdom together, but at the cost of their freedom, their relationships, or their peace.

These costs don’t need to be extreme every time, but they do need to be consistent. The world has to reinforce the idea that nothing is free, and that every action carries a heavy decision. When that’s true, even small choices begin to matter.

BUILDING COST INTO YOUR WORLD

Cost works best when it isn’t added as an obstacle, but built into the structure of the world itself, so you might choose to design systems where power always takes something in return.

• Magic might demand physical or emotional sacrifice

• Technology might bring progress, but damage the world around it

• Social systems might reward success, but only through compromise or betrayal

Or you might build cost into the way people live and interact.

• Resources might be limited, forcing difficult choices about who gets what

• Traditions might require sacrifices to maintain

• Agreements might ensure that one person’s gain is always another’s loss

In these worlds, cost isn’t something characters encounter occasionally. It’s something they live with every day.

CHOICE, CONSEQUENCE, AND WEIGHT

What makes these stories compelling isn’t just the presence of cost, but the way it informs decisions. If a character can have everything, there’s no tension. But when every path asks something of them, the choice becomes meaningful.

• Do they save one person or many?

• Do they take the power they need, knowing what it will do to them?

• Do they hold onto what they value, or let it go in order to survive?

These choices don’t need to have clear answers. In fact, they’re often more interesting when they don’t. The world presents the cost, and the character has to decide whether it’s worth paying.

WHEN THE COST IS AVOIDED

Another way to use this kind of world is to explore what happens when people try to avoid the cost altogether. Someone might try to cheat the system, to gain power without paying for it, or to take without giving anything back. Sometimes it works, at least for a while. But in a world where cost is built into the structure, that imbalance rarely holds. Something shifts. Something breaks. Or the price is paid somewhere else, often in ways that are harder to predict or control.

This can create powerful story momentum. A shortcut taken early can become the source of conflict later, as the world corrects itself in ways the character didn’t expect.

BUILDING STORIES FROM COST

If you’re looking for ideas, start with the price rather than the goal. Instead of asking what your character wants, ask what it’ll cost them to get it.

• If they want power, what part of themselves do they risk losing?

• If they want safety, what freedom must they give up?

• If they want to protect someone, what are they willing to sacrifice instead?

You can also think about how different characters respond to the same cost. One might refuse to pay it while another accepts it without hesitation. A third might try to find a way around it, creating a different kind of problem entirely.

A QUICK STORY TEST

If you want to build a world that supports stories of sacrifice and consequence, ask yourself:

• What does this world demand in return for power, safety, or success?

• What can’t be gained without losing something else?

• Where do characters have to choose between two things they want?

• What happens when someone refuses to pay the cost?

You can also work backwards from the story you want to tell.

• If you want sacrifice, what makes that sacrifice necessary?

• If you want consequence, what actions carry lasting impact?

• If you want moral tension, what choices come with no easy outcome?

In a world like this, nothing comes easily. Every gain leaves a mark, every choice shifts the balance, and every character has to decide what it is that they’re willing to lose.

It’s available right now as an ebook exclusively from my webstore. Paperback and releases on other ebook retailers will be following soon.

This isn’t a post about worldbuilding. At least, not directly. It’s a post about life, and the world, and how, sometimes, especially now, finding the motivation to continue creating can be really hard.

And it’s also not a toxically positive post about pulling up your socks and getting on with carrying on because the rainbows are just around the corner.

It’s a post about getting through the times when everything takes more effort than it should. Where you’re putting things out, showing up, doing the work… and it still feels like three steps forward, two steps back. Like you’re putting energy into something that isn’t quite giving it back. And if that’s where you are right now, you’re not the only one feeling it.

This post isn’t about fixing that. It’s not about magical ways to drain yet more productivity out of yourself. It’s about getting through the days when that feeling shows up.

1. Let Yourself Feel Fed Up

You’re allowed to be annoyed about it. You’re allowed to think ‘this is hard’, ‘I don’t want to do this right now’, and ‘why does everything feel like effort?’

That doesn’t make you ungrateful or lazy. It makes you someone who has been doing a lot for a while.

Trying to skip past that feeling doesn’t make it go away, so just let it be there for a bit. Acknowledge the crappy feelings. Because they’re proof that this matters to you.

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2. Do Something Small

When motivation is gone, your usual standards don’t apply. You don’t need a full plan or a finished piece. You don’t even need momentum. You just need something.

Write a paragraph. Sketch half an idea. Create a document and name the file.

It might feel pointless, but it isn’t. Small actions keep the connection live, even when your energy isn’t playing ball.

3. Stop Trying to Be Consistent for a Moment

Consistency is useful, until it isn’t. If everything starts to feel like obligation, it drains the meaning out of the work, so it’s okay to step sideways for a bit.

Do something lighter, different. Something that doesn’t feel like part of the plan. Make something to throw away. Write something no one else will ever see. Scream into the wind and let the words blow away.

You’re not wasting time, you’re just giving yourself space to breathe.

4. Notice What’s Actually Draining You

Sometimes it’s not the work itself. It’s the heat, the state of the world, the feeling of always needing to produce something, the constant background pressure of everyday life. And that builds up.

Motivation doesn’t disappear randomly. It drops because something is wearing it down. If you can see what’s draining you, you can adjust around it. Even if only by a little. And sometimes, just naming it, acknowledging it can make things seem a whole lot better.

5. Leave Something Easy for Later

Before you stop, leave yourself something simple to come back to. Leave yourself a half-finished sentence, a rough idea, or a note that says what to do next.

Something that doesn’t require a full restart. Because coming back is easier when you’re not starting from nothing.

And One More Thing

You haven’t lost it, even if it feels like you have. Motivation comes and goes. Life happens. Some weeks are just harder than others.

That doesn’t undo everything you’ve built, it just means you’re in a part of the process that doesn’t feel good. And it passes.

Not because you force it to, but because you keep going in whatever way you can manage, even if that way is by taking time away to recharge. Because that still counts.

Last week, we looked at the kinds of characters a world naturally produces. This week, let’s actually build one. Because it’s one thing to understand that characters are shaped by their world, it’s another to sit down and create someone who clearly comes from it.

This isn’t about personality traits or backstory first, it’s about looking at the world and asking:

• What would someone raised here learn?

• What would they get used to?

• What would they struggle with?

The worksheet below walks you through that. Start with the world, then see who it creates.

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Characters don’t come out of nowhere, they’re a result of the world they live in. The rules they’ve learnt, the limits they’ve hit, and all of the things they’ve had to do to survive, belong, or get ahead.

You can tell a lot about a world just by looking at the kinds of people it creates.

1. The Survivor

In harsher worlds, people learn quickly what matters. Food, safety, timing. When to act. When to stay quiet. When to leave. These characters are practical, observant, and often cautious. They don’t waste effort on things that don’t keep them alive or stable.

It might be a trader who always travels with backup routes planned out, a farmer who knows exactly when to abandon a failing crop, or a messenger who reads danger in small changes others ignore.

They’re not dramatic. They’re prepared.

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2. The Rule-Follower

In rigid systems, survival often depends on staying within the lines. These characters understand the rules, and the consequences of breaking them. They might not agree with them, but they know how to work within them.

Perhaps a clerk who knows exactly which forms get approved, a guard who enforces the law even when it feels wrong, or a citizen who never asks the questions that would cause problems.

They don’t lack imagination. They’ve learnt when imagination gets you into trouble.

3. The Opportunist

In unstable or uneven systems, there’s always space for someone to take advantage. These characters are quick to adapt. They watch for openings. They move when something shifts.

Maybe a merchant who raises prices the moment supply drops, a fixer who knows who to talk to and when, or a smuggler who builds a business around gaps in the system.

They’re not always trustworthy. But they’re rarely unprepared.

4. The Outsider

Some people don’t fit. Whether that’s by birth, belief, ability, or choice, they sit slightly outside what the world expects. They see things differently because they’re not fully inside the system.

This might be a character who questions a tradition everyone else accepts, someone denied access to something others take for granted, or someone who crosses boundaries others won’t.

They’re often the first to notice what doesn’t make sense. And the first to challenge it.

5. The Loyalist

In worlds where survival depends on connection, loyalty matters. These characters stay. They support. They protect what they’re part of, even when it costs them.

Maybe it’s a soldier who refuses to abandon their unit, a worker who stays with a failing group because it’s their responsibility, or a friend who won’t walk away, even when they should.

They’re not blind. They’ve just decided what matters most.

You don’t need to invent characters in isolation, just look at your world. Look at what it rewards, what it denies, and what people have to do to get by. From there, the kinds of characters you’ll find aren’t random. They’re exactly what that world creates.

Characters don’t exist in isolation, they all come from somewhere.

A world doesn’t just provide a backdrop for a story, it informs how people think, what they value, what they fear, and what they believe is possible. If you want stronger characters, don’t just look at who they are. Look at where they come from.

What Your World Teaches People

Every world teaches its people something. What to expect, what to avoid, what matters. And every culture, every sub-culture, each individual place, will have its own lessons to teach.

In one place, survival might come from keeping your head down. In another, it might come from being loud, visible, and difficult to ignore. Somewhere, trust might be dangerous, while elsewhere it’s necessary.

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