Worldbuilding for Masochists

So: Whether it was always intended and contracted, you told the “standalone with series potential” fib, or the public has simply demanded more, you now have to write a second book in the same world. How do you expand the world while maintaining the throughline of your story? And how might you know when you've over-extended? Guest Aparna Verma joins us to discuss the perils and potential of broadening those horizons. One of the most frequent ways to grow the world you show the readers is to literally expand the setting and follow characters to new locations, encountering new cultures, learning new things. But that's not the only option: Your characters also might be staying in the same place but uncovering secret societies, joining a new economic class, discovering magic, or otherwise encountering an aspect of their own environment they didn't previously have familiarity with. And either way, how can growing the world also spur character growth?  [Transcript TK] Our Guest: Aparna Verma was born in Rajasthan, India, and grew up in the United States. She graduated from Stanford University with Honors in the Arts and a B.A. in English. In 2021, she self-published The Boy with Fire, which quickly went viral on TikTok, and was later republished by Orbit Books as The Phoenix King in 2023. When she is not writing, Aparna likes to lift heavy (arm days are her favorite), dance to Bollywood music, and find cozy cafes to read myths from ancient worlds. You can connect with Aparna on TikTok at @aparnawrites, and Twitter and Instagram at @spirited_gal.

So, you've decided it's time to turn up the heat on your worldbuilding. Maybe you're writing a full-on romantasy, or maybe it's a smaller component of your overall plot, but if your characters are getting down and dirty, how do you make sure they're getting their freak on in a way that reflects the culture they exist in? Guest Nia Davenport joins us to explore all the angles -- and positions. When we're thinking about the culture of sex (and sexy cultures), there's a lot to unpack, particularly because of our own society's various hang-ups, preconceptions, and puritanical history. So how have social forces exerted pressure on ideas about the expression (and perhaps exhibition) of desire within your invented world? How can you use your characters to challenge or subvert conceptions of promiscuity, chastity, gender roles, and power dynamics? [Transcript for Episode 167] Our Guest: Nia "N.E." Davenport is an award-winning Science Fiction/Fantasy author who writes stories that blend magic, mayhem, and deadly heroines. She attended the University of Southern California and studied Biological Sciences and Theatre Arts. She also has an M.A. in Secondary Education. She teaches English and Biology to amazing students. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys vacationing with her family, skiing, and being a huge foodie. She’s an advocate for diverse perspectives and protagonists in literature. You can find her on Twitter @nia_davenport, or on Instagram @nia.davenport, where she talks about binge-worthy TV, killer movies, and great books. She lives in Texas with her husband and kids.

We use history a lot in our worldbuilding, whether as a direct re-interpretation or as inspiration for a secondary world that we’re creating. So… why do we do that? And what choices do we need to examine as we do so? Guest Alix E. Harrow joins us to discuss weaving historical realities into our fiction. The construction of history is, itself, always the process of creating a narrative through authorial and editorial choices, and so not as wildly different from writing fiction as it may seem. That interrelation means there is an ethical component to worldbuilding, particularly when dealing with issues of imperialism, colonialism, and historically marginalized populations. How do we interrogate the stories we've received, the information our research turns up, and the assumptions both we and our readers might make based on what we think we know about history? [Transcript for Episode 166] Our Guest:  Alix E. Harrow is the NYT-bestselling author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January, The Once and Future Witches, Starling House, and various short fiction, including a duology of retold fairy tales (A Spindle Splintered and A Mirror Mended). Her work has won a Hugo and a British Fantasy Award, and been shortlisted for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, Southern Book Prize, and Goodreads Choice awards. She's from Kentucky, but now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her husband and their two semi-feral kids.

From beer to gin, from caffeine to tobacco, from mushrooms to hallucinogenic snails, a culture's options for achieving altered states of consciousness through consumables are vast! So when the people in your culture want to get blitzed -- How do they achieve that? The choices can communicate a lot to your readers about your world's technology, climate, and topography, as well as their ideas about health. Alcohol and other intoxicants also tend to accumulate lots of social apparatus around them. Unspoken rules might dictate when it's okay to get intentionally impaired and when it's unacceptable, or what forms of booze are considered high-class or low-class; actual laws might regulate both creation and consumption. You can also explore why your people partake of such things: Just for fun? Are there religious associations, like offering libations to a god or putting a prophet into a trance state? Do they think that inhaling ash is good for them? As always, we advocate both doing the research and looking for creative choices! Can you give your culture a unique intoxicant of some kind? In this episode, we also take a moment to practice what we preach and discuss the inebriating habits of the cultures in our co-built world! [Transcript for Episode 165 TK]

This episode was recorded live as a panel at ArmadilloCon 2025! We give a little history of the podcast, re-introduce ourselves for the in-room audience and any new listeners, and discuss the world of the Magical Nude Gates and our individually-cultivated cultures within it. We also discuss a bit of our general approaches to worldbuilding and our "Choose, Don't Presume" ethos. Then, we take some questions from the room!

A point-of-view character's experience of the world will shape the information that the reader gets about that world. So, a lot depends on who that character -- or characters -- might be! How can you turn their knowledge -- or lack thereof -- into a plot hook? Does the audience have information before a POV character does? How does their personality affect how information gets communicated to the reader? Guest Martin Cahill joins us to discuss! We also chat about one-off POVs, the context added by interstitial material and ephemera, and whether or not it's possible to write a story from the point of view of a dress. [Transcript for Episode 164] Our Guest:  Martin Cahill is an Ignyte Award-nominated science fiction and fantasy writer living in Hell’s Kitchen, NY and works as the Marketing and Publicity Manager for Erewhon Books. He’s a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop of 2014 and a member of the NYC-based writing group, Altered Fluid. You can find his fiction work in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Shimmer Magazine, Fireside Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. His short story, “Godmeat,” appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 anthology. He was also one of the writers on Batman: The Blind Cut from Realm Media. Martin also writes, and has written, book reviews, articles, and essays for Tor.com, Catapult, Ghostfire Gaming, Book Riot, Strange Horizons, and the Barnes and Noble Science Fiction & Fantasy Blog. You can find him online at @mcflycahill90.

Mythical and magical creatures are a staple of the fantasy genre, sometimes as obstacles for heroes to face, sometimes as healers and dispensers of wisdom, sometimes fulfilling roles both stranger and more mundane. If you decide to include such beasties in your world, what are they doing there? And how deep you delve into the biology and ecology of these creatures? Do you need to make them make some sort of scientific sense, or can everything be covered by "it's magic"? We also recap our Seattle WorldCon experience! So listen to hear about our panels, our amazing outfits, and losing a Hugo Award, again. [Transcript for Episode 163 -- With thanks to our scribes!]

Fantasy religions often feel like reskins either of ancient Greek or Norse pantheons or of the medieval Catholic church. But what more interesting choices can we make when we're building faith within an invented world? Deva Fagan joins us to explore some of the options! How your people envision deities, the afterlife, and the very bones of the universe can illuminate a lot about their overall values and how they self-mythologize their place in the world. It's not all just cosmology, either: religion can touch so many other parts of a world, from government and power structures to idiomatic language and metaphors. Religions are also things that live and change: How can cults, schisms, and syncretism not only help you create a world that feels more diverse and lived-in, but also maybe give you some plot and character hooks? [Transcript for Episode 162 -- Thank you, scribes!] Our Guest: Deva Fagan writes fantasy and science fiction for all ages. When she’s not writing, she spends her time reading, doing geometry, playing video games, hiking, and drinking copious amounts of tea. She is the author of several books, including Rival Magic, Nightingale, The Mirrorwood, A Game of Noctis, and The Delta Codex. She lives in Maine with her husband and their dog. You can find her online at DevaFagan.com. Deva's List of Cool Fantasy Religions! Dragon Age Watership Down by Richard Adams Hannah Kaner: Godkiller Lois McMaster Bujold, Curse of Chalion N. K. Jemisin: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (And Dreamblood duology) Robert Jackson Bennet: City of Stairs Little Thieves (YA) Margaret Owen A Psalm for the Wild-Built  Becky Chambers Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (Earthseed, god is change) The Burning Kingdoms by Tasha Suri  The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

In this episode, we're taking a closer look at something we refer to a lot when we're talking craft: the on-ramp. Which is to say, at the beginning of your book, as you're introducing your world, how much stuff can you throw at your reader how quickly to get them up to speed? And how much is too much and might cause a reader to get bounced right out of the story? Your readers come in with a lot of assumptions and expectations. Your job as the writer is to adjust those expectations, particularly with your ideal reader in mind. Sometimes, that means choosing which battles you're going to fight when it comes to how much worldbuilding you actually include on the page and how you introduce vocabulary and concepts. [Transcript for Episode 161 -- Thank you, scribes!]

What makes a story -- and a world -- "cozy"? What are the conflicts, challenges, and obstacles like when, instead of taking the Ring to Mordor, you heroes are trying to keep a coffee shop afloat or open a pet shop? Sarah Beth Durst joins us to discuss not just what cozy fantasy is, but how its radical joy can be a powerful act of subversion when the real world tells us to be cynical or defeatist. We also explore how cozy fantasy expands what the fantasy genre gets to be when it refocuses the lens on different kinds of protagonists and places. Often, it centers and lifts up different kinds of protagonists, ordinary people rather than Chosen Ones. The world itself might be one where things are relatively calm -- or there could be a full-on Battle for the Powers of Good happening somewhere, just not in the story's imminent proximity. A smaller story can still be important, complex, and deeply satisfying. [Transcript for Episode 160] Our Guest: Sarah Beth Durst is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over twenty-five books for adults, teens, and kids, including cozy fantasy The Spellshop. She's been awarded the American Library Association's Alex Award, the Libby Book Award for Best Fantasy, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. Several of her books have been optioned for film/television, including Drink Slay Love, which was made into a TV movie and was a question on Jeopardy! She lives in Stony Brook, New York, with her husband, her children, and her ill-mannered cat. Visit her at sarahbethdurst.com.