Building Worlds As Part of the Writing Process

A few years ago, I read a book by Richard Bartle, titled Designing Virtual Worlds. As an avid game designer and player, the idea of building worlds has always fascinated me. As a writer, however, designing a world has always been a process that has existed within me, and it has often made crafting a story one of the more difficult projects. In the beginning, when I first started writing, designing a world was simple. It was essentially Earth with different people in it. Oh, sure, every now and then there’d be a dragon instead of a rhino, but honestly when it came down to it…