Worldbuilding is about making places and people! Whether you worldbuild to write, for an RPG, or just for fun, welcome!
What do you think the most untapped source of worldbuilding inspiration?
I'm talking works of fiction, real-world cultures, even underutilized mediums. For me, it has to be travel guides; they offer unique snippets of history and culture but leave much unsaid, prompting you to fill in the blanks, not to mention that they get you thinking about things that are otherwise off of your own personal radar.
So, what do you think needs more love from all the writer's-blocked worldbuilders?




cookbooks, e.g. http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-the-1800s-sick-people-would-consult-cookbooks-before-doctors
That's a fabulous suggestion!
Thanks!
For a snippet in a larger creative writing assignment, I tried to present exposition in the form of a recipe.
In the same way that a festival may re-enact an event in cultural history, I essayed the same with a recipe. In places I outright linked recipe steps to ritual, or a character in my lore, but in others I tried to leave it as subtext.
Can't say whether I succeeded or failed. But I do recommended switching up the medium every now and again.
Sounds very interesting!
Old journals and older novels. We sometimes don't realise how much the world has changed in just the last hundred years, until we read something from that era. Many of the journals from and books by and about the early pioneers and thier experiences during the US's Western Expansion (when Iowa and Kansas -were- the West) give a feeling of almost a different world entirely.
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I started with what I knew, which was Willa Cather, but looking more in to it, given that these were people for whom travel was not easy and therefore -had- to be very descriptive for thier readers, I went to Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg to find more. Here's the short list.
Bell Wright, Harold
Bleecker, Ann
Bradstreet, Anne
Brockden Brown, Charles
Byrd, William
Cather, Willa
Chestnut, Charles
Colden, Cadwallader
Cooper, James Fenimore
Crafts, Hannah
Fox Jr., John
Granger, Maritn
Grey, Zane
Harris, Corra May
Ilgenfritz, Alice
Jewett, Sarah
Kemble Knight, Sarah
Merchant, Ella
Noguchi, Yone
Shinn Mercer, Asa
Stratton-Porter, Gene
Tappan Wright, Mary
Weldon Johnson, James
Winthrop, Theodore
Wister, Owen
(Any mispellings are my fault, sorry! But a good librarian should be able to sort even those out.)
Brandon Sanderson is a huge worldbuilding inspiration as a fantasy author. Many of his worldbuiding changes come from weather. How about weather patterns as a source?
Weather plays a huge role in culture and geography; definitely a less-considered but very useful source for inspiration.
My major source of inspiration are the ideas and even more the outlook and temperament towards worldbuilding of Ursula K. Le Guin. No-one else is as good at not only telling a great story, but also giving me new perspectives on the world and making me think "Oh, things could be that way! And what if they were a little bit like this and a little bit like that? Or if they were this other way entirely?" She's the best. ♥
Agree about travel guides --- an excellent source of one's daily requirement of vitamin I.
I also like travelogues (kind of like travel guides, but more narrative). I did a Short Primer on the Making of Invented Cultures and found that good sources of inspiration can easily come from the strangest and most wonderful of ordinary places.
Like travel guides.
I've found much inspiration in old recipe books (old style recipe books that were more like complete practical home encyclopaedias of the 19th century); old literary journals; almanacs; encyclopaedias; old nostalgic books about 'the good old days'. It's one thing to read about the late 18th century from the perspective of an early 21st century historian, but it's quite another to read about it from the perspective of a late 19th century scholar!
Don't neglect ordinary story books, music and pictures of bygone eras and far distant places. Just looking at images of people and places far removed from us can engender a great flow of ideas.
Oh, and catalogs. Great windows in to past worlds that were before the one we live in now! Old newspaper archives --- just revel in the late 19th and early 20th century style of journalistic writing!
Inspiration is, quite literally, everywhere. Just have to reach out and scoop up the goodness!