Welcome day four of NaNoWriMo! I hope the weekend served you well with your writing goals! Today I’m getting started a bit earlier than normal, because I have a lot to do today and I don’t want to fall behind with my goals. I have a good streak going here, and I want to keep posting everyday.
So today, I’m writing about something I learn for every world I write, because it deepens the world greatly and add a whole other layer to your world building, one which deepens your storytelling as a whole.
A large part of making your story meaningful and making your readers care about your characters, is showing their daily life before you disrupt it with the plot, so you’ll need to know about their daily life anyhow. The same with their beliefs, and the beliefs held by the world they live in.
Daily Life
When building daily life, you need to focus on daily life from multiple perspectives, not just one or two, to get a full idea of what life is like all over your world. By knowing what life is like all over your world, and for different lives all throughout it, you’ll be able to give a fuller view of your world in your story, and it will shine through that you took the time to fully build your world.
Daily life is one way you can build on the details that deepen your world building in your novel, by showing glimpses of what the world is like through those lives, because each life is a snapshot of the world.
The key to creating a daily life is to place yourself in a place and role, and work out even the smallest details. From their work, to their homes, to their clothes and the foods they eat (which I’ll talk about later).
When building daily life, you’ll need to keep in mind many things. The culture they live in, because it influences every action a person makes whether they know it or not. The place they live, because climate and ecosystem change the way people live, the way they build their homes, the clothes they wear, the food they eat, every thing. The government in the world, because life would be lived differently if the government didn’t exist.
Before you start building your daily life, you have to know what the different classes or roles of life in your world are, because they will all have different types of lives.
Social Classes
For my example today, I’ll be using the Hunger Games and it’s world of Panem, because it is an excellent example of varied social classes. At the highest tier, there is the Capital, full of rich, careless people who do very little and have very little responsibility. In the middle, there are the the twelve districts. And at the very lowest level, there are the Avox, the servants who serve the people of the Capital. As we see, there are three very distinct social classes, as there normally are, although they can vary in different levels.
But the districts (the middle class) have levels too! It’s very complex, where districts one and two are higher on the chain than the lower districts, but they are all still middle class. It’s like this in real life too, where there are upper, middle, and lower classes, but there may also be multiple levels within those classes.
To determine the social classes your world needs to have, think about the different roles and jobs in the society you are building, and how they are viewed. What is more valued? What jobs are prized higher than others? In america, the upper class would be made up of politicians, businessmen/corporations, Hollywood actors, and other such people. These are the ones the rest of the society look to for inspiration, they guide culture and beliefs and influence the way people act and portray themselves.
The middle class is often made up of several layers, often the upper middle class which is more well off than the lower middle class, and there are definitely people in the middle. This class also has jobs prized by society, but not to the extent of the upper class. They are jobs that are needed as well as appreciated.
Then there is the lower class, which is comprised of people with jobs that are not high paying or appreciated, though necessary. Their jobs are often seen as low, and they are often seen as a burden to society, although society could not function without them (a pyramid is built from the bottom after all).
Each of these classes live very different lives, have very different roles, and entirely different expectations. Every class is necessary for society, and contribute to the over all function of the world (with few exceptions).
These classes show what the society values and how they treat the jobs and people they value, so be thoughtful when assigning them.
Now, back to Daily Life.
Daily Life
Now that you have your social classes all lined up, it will be much easier to determine what their life is like in those roles. How early do they wake up? What meals do they eat? What foods do they eat? Do they have to be careful about preserving food, or can they eat as much as they want? What jobs do they have to do? What does those entail? How does family life play into their every day? How do they dress? How are they expected to look? How much time do they take preparing themselves for the day? Do they have to travel a lot?
You may also want to think about stuff like education and how it plays into their lives.
How do their beliefs influence their daily lives? (And that brings us to our next topic.)
Beliefs
Beliefs! They shape actions, words, days, lives! They shape every living waking moment, whether people are aware of it or not.
I went over beliefs some in my last post, but today I’ll be going into a lot more depth with it.
Beliefs are very important, but there usually isn’t just one belief system. In the world, there are many, many, many systems of beliefs! But, for fiction, you don’t need to know every single one that may exist in your world, because you could never sort them all out.
Instead, focus on the core beliefs of your world, and the largest sects of beliefs. Flesh those beliefs out by asking yourself why they believe what they do, what gives them such faith in their beliefs, and why those beliefs formed. What influenced them forming?
What rules do their beliefs have? How much do they effect the way people live and act? Are they on the back burner, or do they take forefront in people’s lives? What requirements do those beliefs have? What are the guidelines? What is at the core of their beliefs?
How are the different beliefs in your world similar? How are they different? Did they spark from one common point, and deviate for some reason, or do were they never related? Who are the leaders in those beliefs? Are there leaders? What would it take to shake someone’s faith in their beliefs? How strongly are those beliefs drilled into people?
How to people with different beliefs interact? How to they view each other? Are they on good terms, bad terms, or do they not care?
How structured are their beliefs? Is it a way of life? How seriously are those beliefs treated?
How wide spread are those beliefs? Are the beliefs treated as a religion, a cult, a community, a family?
Obviously beliefs are very complex and should always be well thought out (because you want the reader to understand why the characters believe what they do). Take your time fleshing them out, because they will influence everything in your story and world.
Well I’m finishing this post a lot later than I meant but at least I have it out! And I’m keeping up with my word count goal, and I’m hoping all of you can do the same.
Now I’m going to go work on my fantasy novel and my Christmasy screenplay project I started! Hope you all have a great day!
Also, do you usually figure out daily life in your world while you’re world building? How do you do it? What is the best way to figure it out?
(And here are links to my other posts in this series so far, 1, 2, 3.)
Write Tricks 