Now obviously this is not the only type of worldbuilding; everything I talked about here is “hard worldbuilding” because everything has a reason and consistency. Soft worldbuilding is what I like to call “feeling”. It's a lot more akin to fairy tales because it's very thematic and focused on emotions, mood, and atmosphere. I actively dislike soft worldbuilding, so I don’t do it, nor do I know enough about it to teach it, so my lesson is gonna focus on hard worldbuilding.

Simply put, there is no singular way to worldbuild. I don’t even worldbuild the same way for every story I write. I’m gonna use the world of Rizanor because that is my excerpt. Of course, if you want to know different styles of writing, that is also a future possibility. This worldbuilding strategy is called “growing a seed,” and it's exactly what it sounds like. Growing a seed is where you take a specific, small, or single detail and expand everything out from that one “seed”. For Rizanor, the first idea that started the whole thing was that I wanted a character that could funnel the power of stars dotted in the sky to gain practically unlimited power. That led to the idea of linking, which directly led to the creation of the “threads of reality” that make up the core theme of my power system of Resonance. The creation of this power system led me to imagine how it would shape society, which created the different nations that inhabit my world. The idea that certain threads of reality were stronger than others led to my creating “living threads,” which were the godlike beings of my story. It's a real cause-and-effect situation that all grew from a single detail about my world. This type of worldbuilding is useful to try at least once because it really helps make the world you build feel more organic and natural. Cause and effect, logical continuity, is one of the biggest things I value in worldbuilding. If something happened, then why? Has the world previously hinted or established this as a possibility?

In worldbuilding, one good way to check if it has been done properly is asking this question: “Does my world create new stories on its own?” What this means is that if the world doesn't really work for a new hypothetical story, it is lacking. The world should be alive, and in an alive environment, activity should be happening even without the main story. An example of a good world creating its own stories is the Star Wars galaxy. The Star Wars universe already has a very established history, but it still manages to create new stories. The Mandalorian TV series was created completely independently of the main story of the original trilogy. This obviously also serves the value that if you ever wish to return to this world, a new story can just as easily be created.