Short Story Writing Project: Fleshing out your world
March 6, 2008 by J.C. Hewitt
In my last post I discussed the second draft and suggested that people use it to flesh out the world of their story. Here are a few areas in which you can expand upon your first draft.
Physical descriptions
- The appearance of characters
- The geography and landscape of the settings
- The general climate and the day’s weather
- Plants and animals in the area
- Descriptions of the buildings, streets and other manmade structures
- Description of decorations and other character-based changes to setting
Cultural / environmental descriptions
- Types of people
- Shared values
- Conflicting values
- Political climate
- Economic status
- Class / social status
- Educational status
- Employment status
- Religion
- Local customs and quirks
- Time of year / seasonal events
Character / psychological descriptions
- Character’s strengths
- Character’s fears
- Character’s faults
- Character’s normal behavior
- Character’s behavior under stress
- Character’s personality / quirks
- Character’s past
- Character’s values
If you can think of any additional ways in which to flesh out the world of your story, please leave a comment.
Character’s movements are always important. Read a pretty average book the other day, the only reason I finished it was because you could tell every character by the way the moved, the characters barely spoke to each other but you could tell them apart without the need of names.