Phase 2 – World Building
World Building seems to be an often missed step in the world of comic books. People assume at times that just because a book is set in the modern world or in a fantasy world or a “hero” world that you can rely on certain conventions and just run with it. Doesn’t work that way, though! In order to be a story full of rich characters, environments, and situations, you really need to go through every step in the creation process.
World building isn’t just creating a land mass and populating it. It is more about setting the parameters of your world. Where does the story take place and where could it go. What kind of people, places, and things are in the world you build for yourself? Things like that.
With the people, what are the races if it’s a fantasy book… what kinds of creatures are around… 
what are the variations? If there are dragons, what colors, what sizes, are they large and stupid, or medium sized and smart, etc… If it’s a horror book, what kinds of creatures are around and what explanation to you have for why and how they exist. If you have vampires, do they need to sleep during the day or can they wander? Can they see their reflections? Are they afraid of crosses, holy water, and garlic? If there are zombies, are there ghosts, ghasts, poltergeists, etc…
The idea is to fill out the world to the point that you’re not afraid to go where the characters take you in later stages of the book.
What kind of socioeconomic structure do the characters live in… Sounds silly, but it makes sense when you think about it… Even if it’s a fantasy, is the world one where everyone lives in a hut or are there cities? If there’s an elven civilization, do they love or hate other races, what are their specialties, how tall are they generally, how do their ears point…
Magic, mysticism, supernatural, and superpowers… I touch on the supernatural above, but part of the world building phase is defining things out of the norm… You’ll see one common thing in a lot of comic books is that there are diverse reasons for everything under the sun and such a disparity in power levels, it’s ridiculous. You need to define how magic works in your world if there is magic and set a scope to it. Don’t make it so one guy can create and destroy worlds while the guy he’s fighting can only do cantrips. Set “levels” of power and define what those levels mean. Balance things out a bit. Same goes with superpowers, set common reasons people get them and go ahead and list out what those powers are. With spells, list out common spells and variations and define cause and effect… Do you have a set amount of “juice” or “mana” you can use per day and you have to wait for the next, does it exhaust you to use, etc…
I won’t make specific examples from pop culture, but there are plenty of examples where characters can do something amazing one issue or episode and the next they have to find some reason to dumb them down because they’ve made them too powerful. That’s why I bring up leveling the playing field.
I think I’ve given you a pretty good idea of what I mean by world building. Set up the places, structures, systems, etc…
