Worldbuilding

[Gaming4Hearts]

Most of the VN's I've seen are usually set in some kind of Science Fiction or Fantasy universe. And this comes with the issue of worldbuilding.

I'm personally working on both sci-fi and fantasy and I find it fascinating to read up on what kind of worldbuilding others are doing and what kind of experiences and problems they're encountering.

So what's the thing you find most interesting regarding worldbuilding? Do you love to create a unique universe? What are some pitfalls that you encountered and would recommend others to avoid?
Do you prefer to work in Sci-Fi or fantasy? or a bit of both?

Where do you look to inspiration? For example are there good sources that you use?

[firecat]

So what's the thing you find most interesting regarding worldbuilding?

i find that since the world you build can be anything, any rules everyone knows could be opposite of your world. think about star wars, it has many different worlds with many things that doesn't obey our world.

Do you love to create a unique universe? What are some pitfalls that you encountered and would recommend others to avoid?

yes i create many worlds from the afterlife to current earth. the pitfalls i seen always comes from people copying the same settings, examples include aliens always being high tech, anything magic goes with medieval style, zombies dying from headshots, and my most hated clichite setting, people thinking that every high school has a dress code in japan (its not).

Do you prefer to work in Sci-Fi or fantasy? or a bit of both?



final fantasy series is a great example if using both.

Where do you look to inspiration? For example are there good sources that you use?

i look for games or anime series that push the ideas that we currently know but make it into something new. sword art is one of those examples were yes it has that RPG element but inside a digital world with the possibility of dying in real life. on the gaming side, Mortal Kombat has the same fighting style like everyone else but more blood and horrible death. those are the types of games and anime you should be learning from, anything old will always be something new.

one resource i can recommend is this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQg9oJ7paS8

[Rinima]

"So what's the thing you find most interesting regarding worldbuilding?"
I like rules, when you world build, you can make your own rules for that world, you aren't constricted by real life.

"Do you love to create a unique universe?"
Who doesn't XD

"What are some pitfalls that you encountered and would recommend others to avoid?"
Avoid making it to complicated, detailed is fine, but make it to complicated and you'll struggle when implementing a story later on.

"Do you prefer to work in Sci-Fi or fantasy? or a bit of both?"
I personally prefer writing fantasy, but that's just because my writing style suits it much better. I enjoy reading both though.

"Where do you look to inspiration? For example are there good sources that you use?"
The Legend of Zelda, Rune Factory games, and Final Fantasy are my go to inspirations.

[Nylan]

The trick, I think, isn't to not build a complicated world. The trick is to only show as much of it to your readers/players as they need to know. Walls of text explaining the monetary system of such-and-such province aren't interesting to the reader. What IS interesting, however, is when the readers/players feel that the world is somehow real. Developing the world in great detail, even when you don't show it all to the audience, can add great depth. Explain what you need to in order to not lose them entirely, but no more.

I might post back later with some resources if I remember. I've been world building a lot longer than I have been involved with LSF or VNs.

[Ghost of Crux]

So what's the thing you find most interesting regarding worldbuilding?

Honestly, the sheer differences of cultures that can arise from changes in how the world is structured politically, economically and [insert other -ly s] is just really interesting. It creates new dynamics between characters, between sections, countries, and basically is just something that provides a WEALTH of things to ponder. Would the people inhabiting those worlds react and act differently compared to us? Most likely! But in what ways? What spurs them to do so? These are all such great questions to spend half your life on. 10/10 will recommend.

(On that note, don't try to imagine a world with different rules of physics. It hurts the head. We're just not made to imagine such grand things.)

Do you love to create a unique universe?

Sure, though it can be a bit hard to do it consistently well once you have several. In all honesty, when I first started out I wanted things to be unique. These days, I'm just trying to make it as believable as possible. In the end, the universes upon which your characters walk need to be, well, a world for them, instead of a unique gimmick. And really? That's the fun part, for me.

What are some pitfalls that you encountered and would recommend others to avoid?

Be careful with assuming that the world you made will have similar social dynamics to what we have. It's honestly such a great shame to have worlds that are so interesting only for it to be underutilized because its differences only lie in the technical world aspect and not the social ones. Dynamics is such a big part of storytelling that changing the dynamics itself is already a story. Having different character dynamics can make an old trope feel new.

It's also a good idea to lay down hard rules on what can and what can't happen, probably. At the very least, some guidelines. Especially when dealing with magic.

Do you prefer to work in Sci-Fi or fantasy? or a bit of both?

I'm more of a fan of more-scientific-and-realistic urban setting or fantasy and scientific-fantasy, to be honest. (Not really a fan of space operas and sci-fi, unless it's hard sci-fi. I'm far more lenient with fantasy.) Science to me as a writer is less of a genre and more as a supporting framework; I tend to create fantasy worlds where some magic is not too different from how things scientifically work (like healing magic working similar to how modern treatment do and most magic are sort of hard magic) because it gives me stricter limitations that forces me to manouver around them to make my story work. I think it makes things more interesting.

Where do you look to inspiration? For example are there good sources that you use?

Wikipedia
In all seriousness, I don't think there's any one way to look for inspiration in this regard. Sometimes it starts with a character. Sometimes it starts with a gimmick. Sometimes it starts with a plot. Sometimes it's just pure nerdiness and a blatant disregard for the actual science (cough cough of all there is and the skyfolk expanse). There are, however, good sources for more general knowledge: Wikipedia. I know, I know, everyone says that, and Wikipedia is "unreliable". But you're not searching for facts; you're searching for things you didn't know before. In general, expanding your horizons is great for world-building, because going beyond the limits of your current understanding and knowledge is a great way to add that feeling of vastness that worlds have.

There are other things too, of course. I generally like to watch Youtube anyways, and channels like Vsauce and the likes are very good on this because it introduces a lot of new ideas in one videos, allowing you to google them later for more understanding and details.

Try to find things that has the biggest amount of sweeping general information, then start focusing on finding out the details. There are many places that lets you do this.

[Kuiper]

Do you love to create a unique universe? What are some pitfalls that you encountered and would recommend others to avoid?

I think the biggest trap I see newer writers fall into is to focus on the broad details while neglecting the fine details. For example, some people's world-building will describe the geography and politics of the story, describing the different nations present in the world, and the history that those nations have with each other, sometimes dating back hundreds of years. Similarly, they'll have a map where they lay out all the continents. But when it comes to the small details, they don't really have anything.

Most stories are going to be about people. Think about what matters to an individual. Will your character care about history? Odds are, they won't. World War II feels like ancient history to me, and that happened during my grandparents' lifetime. What is going to have a greater impact on their life: the ruler of the kingdom, who lives in a castle a fifty miles away (in a time period where you can only travel 20 miles a day on foot)? Or will they care more about the village elder, who presides over a small group of thirty people, too small and insignificant to me mentioned in any history book? Think about the geography: does the individual really care about the shape of the continent they live in, and how many miles across the ocean the nearest land mass is? Or do they care more about how close the nearest river (or other source of fresh drinking water) is? All of this applies to contemporary settings as well. The distance between the city where I live and the next major city is something that I think about every couple weeks or months. The distance between my apartment and the nearest grocery store is something that is relevant to my life much more often.

That's not to say that thinking about the way that the world functions (and its history) is a waste of time, but I think a lot of people spend too much time thinking about their world in purely decade-to-decade or even century-to-century terms, when in fact most stories are told about the lives of characters on a day-to-day basis. In your story, you will get to explore a small number of big conflicts, like "is our country going to win this war?" But in the course of resolving those big conflicts, you're going to run into a lot of smaller conflicts along the way, like "how are we going to find food so that we can eat today?" and "how are we going to get across this river," and "what the heck is this local boy saying to me? I can't understand his dialect."


Another pitfall I see is people completely failing to acknowledge the consequences of the magic they've built. L.E. Modesitt is a fantasy author who does a great job of writing stories that take into account the impact that magic might have on things like city infrastructure, and how magic would impact the development of technology and society.

Where do you look to inspiration? For example are there good sources that you use?

First off, if you're only going to read one book about world-building, make it Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel." It really should be required reading for anyone writing in a historical or faux-historical setting. It won't give you all the answers, but it will give you a starting basis for beginning to ask the right questions.

I'm a big fan of stealing ideas from reality.

The first stories that people told were fictions based on reality. Now, we're several degrees removed from that, where we have fictions that are based on fictions. On one level, you have people like George R.R. Martin who write fantasy settings that are based on their knowledge of medieval Europe, and then you have a younger generation of writers below them who write fantasy settings inspired by their knowledge of GRRM novels. So you get something that's a caricature of a caricature, and that can easily start feeling disconnected from reality, accessible only to people who are already entrenched in the conventions of that genre. Some stories do this intentionally, like the many that are based on Tolkeininsh fantasy with dwarves and elves and dragons that sit atop massive piles of gold and wizards that wear pointy hats, but if you're going to do these things, make sure you're doing them intentionally and not "just because."

Go to the source material. I am a big fan of reading non-fiction. Learn about major people and events by reading biographies and history books, especially those that are about ideas and subjects similar to what you want to explore in your story. If you're writing a story about a people rebelling to overthrow aristocracy, pick up a book about the French Revolution. Read about the losers of history: Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" is tremendously fascinating stuff, as is Tolands "Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire." Read about cultures that are foreign to you and that you know little or nothing about: David Wyatt's "Thailand: A Short History" engrossed me the first time I read it as a teenager. Exploring different cultures can also include historical settings as well. For example, I'm familiar with present-day Chinese culture and contemporary Chinese history, but Levathe's "When China Ruled the Seas" is about Chinese sea exploration during the 15th century, which is completely alien to me; I enjoyed learning about it quite a lot.

If you find most nonfiction books boring, try reading contemporary creative non-fiction--it's a genre of writing that applies the literary tools and sensibilities of fiction writing to reporting actual events. Good examples include anything by Michael Lewis (Moneyball, Flash Boys, The Big Short), Malcolm Gladwell (David and Goliath, What the Dog Saw), and long-form journalism.

Read old books, like Machiavelli's "The Prince," Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," and Yamamoto Tsunetomo's "Hagakure." It's fascinating to see the thoughts of people that are hundreds of years old laid out in text. Read old fiction, too; it'll give you an idea of what kind of things people cared about hundreds of years ago, and it can be an interesting lesson on just how timeless certain human conflicts and emotions are.

Outside of books, documentaries exist; I have no specific recommendations as it's not my preferred medium, but if you search around for what's acclaimed and what seems interesting to you, I'm sure it will be time well-spent. (Lately I've been hearing a lot of endorsements for Winter on Fire, which you can watch on Netflix.) Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" is also an enjoyable listen, if you're into podcasts.

It's also a good idea to lay down hard rules on what can and what can't happen, probably. At the very least, some guidelines. Especially when dealing with magic.

Brandon Sanderson did a great series of essays about certain "laws of magic" (really more rules of storytelling) that he uses when constructing magic systems. "Sanderson's Second Law" is the one that I found most interesting, I wrote up a bit of a follow-up/response on my own blog. Here also are the links to parts one and three.

[RotGtIE]

Another pitfall I see is people completely failing to acknowledge the consequences of the magic they've built. L.E. Modesitt is a fantasy author who does a great job of writing stories that take into account the impact that magic might have on things like city infrastructure, and how magic would impact the development of technology and society.

Seconding this with the force of a thousand suns. If I could only have one thing my way with regard to the way fantasy settings are written, it would be that fantasy worlds would take more account of how the presence of magic would change the way their world turns out. If people had the ability to create little dancing flames that persisted for some time, you'd think that towns and cities would be dotted with magical lamp posts populated by such magical light sources, wouldn't you? If people could control or wield electricity, don't you think they'd work out how to use it to start powering engines pretty soon? If wizards can pop food and water into existence at will, that would have a tremendous effect on the economy of the world, as your source of sustenance would be limited by the combination of agricultural limitations as well as whatever limitations were involved in the setting's magic and its users.

Think about how wars would be waged with these kinds of powers on hand. Kings would employ every kind of competent mage they could get their hands on. Diviners would be crucial for wartime intelligence, and successful armies would never leave their keeps without their battle mages on hand to swing the scales of the conflict in their favor via the fireballs and protection thereof provided by such magical adepts. Any magic that could be used to heal wounds or even bring the recently-slain back to life would revolutionize battlefield medicine. Entire military organization and battlefield formations would revolve around the presence of magic in the world.

If magic were something limited to a select few gifted with its use from birth, the world would certainly develop into a caste system dividing those capable of using magic from those who couldn't, and you'd have all societies truly being ruled over by magic-wielding god-kings in no time. If everyone could learn to use magic but had to study and practice its use to gain proficiency, you'd see "mage" become the most prestigious occupation sought by the populace, blowing modern day doctors and lawyers clear out of the water. Technology would advance in sync with magic, to the point that a significant number of inventions and household tools would rely on it in the same way that real-world creations rely on chemistry and physics.

It would be hard for a magic-infused setting not to quickly turn into a magitech setting, but I think that's rather the point.

[Kuiper]

After reading RotGtIE's post, I feel obliged to link to an episode of Writing Excuses where Modesitt (who I mentioned in my previous post) was a guest: Writing Practical Fantasy. (Here's a transcript for those who have trouble with audio.) Lee describing the explaining the idea of "practical fantasy":

I got really ticked off many, many years ago when I read a fantasy that had 10,000 armed knights running around on each side. Because being an economist, and having been trained in semi-practical stuff, I realized that when it takes 12 hundred acres to support one armed knight, you don't have a country that you can hold together with horses if you've got 10,000 on each side of a war. And likewise, I always wonder about all these people running off on crusades with no money. The only time that ever happened in history was the Children's Crusade and they all got killed or enslaved. Yet these were fantasy tropes that people were using. I thought, "You know, in this writing business, you really ought to stick close to at least some what I would call human practicality -- the way people actually operate if they're at all human."

In the same episode, Dan Wells also points out:

If you actually do have a society where it costs five gold coins to buy a dagger, then that means that steel is more valuable than gold, and you have probably just screwed up your economy. Video games have to do that, because they need some system of showing money. You shouldn't do that in writing. You need to actually figure out how much would it cost... you don't necessarily have to go that deep, but make sure that you don't have these kind of wildly ridiculous imbalances.

It's worth noting that even video games can get things right (or at least a little closer to reality) with just a little effort put into considering a currency system. For example, in Dragon Age, the currency system had copper coins, silver coins (each equivalent to 100 coppers), and gold coins (each equivalent to 100 silvers)--one gold coin actually felt like a substantial amount of money.

You could also go the other way with it, and create a world where gold actually is more abundant than iron, making it less valuable. (This was actually the case in Mesoamerica--they had no iron, and hence no steel, but gold was plentiful.) Sometimes, certain resources are present, but not in a usable form--aluminum is one of the most abundant metals on the planet, but extracting aluminum from ore is incredibly difficult, and practices for extracting aluminum weren't developed until the 1800's. Even after we figured out how to do it, the process required to refine aluminum was incredibly costly, making refined aluminum the most valuable metal on earth (more valuable than gold) for a brief period of history. Since then, we've developed cheaper methods for refining aluminum, and that combined with its abundance has made it incredibly cheap--so cheap, in fact, that many people routinely toss aluminum drinking cans into the trash. (That said, the costs associated with extracting aluminum from ore are still high enough to make aluminum recycling an economically sensible endeavor.)

This leads to another point, which relates to the term "technology"--people often only think about the kinds of technology that they can see in their daily lives (things like tools, vehicles, and so on), but technologies like mining practices and farming practices like irrigation can have a huge influence on the evolution of a society.

[Hijiri]

So what's the thing you find most interesting regarding worldbuilding?

That I can set my own rules and history. Of course, even with this I still have to play fair with my rules and enforce them as nature enforces the rules of our word. After all, even something as fantastical as magic should still function within it's own logic.

Do you love to create a unique universe?

Well, unique-ish. Some things in my main universe are based heavily on this word, just with a few alterations. I love being able to tweak and pull our own laws just to see how things might work in my world. It's like a lite version of worldbuilding by working with what I know.

What are some pitfalls that you encountered and would recommend others to avoid?

If you're gonna make a world, be consistent. Write EVERYTHING you come up with down onto some sheet, and constantly look over it. Eliminate any contradictions, unless you're capable of explaining how those contradictions don't break the rules.

Do you prefer to work in Sci-Fi or fantasy? or a bit of both?

My current universe is a mix of both, and I honestly like what both bring to the table. But to be honest, they're essentially one and the same except one is typically in SPACE and the other is typically in Middle Zealand.

Where do you look to inspiration? For example are there good sources that you use?

I consume all types of media and try and take bits and pieces that I like. Personally, i recommend you look at things you like and try and pick out the world building in those places.

[Kuiper]

If you're gonna make a world, be consistent. Write EVERYTHING you come up with down onto some sheet, and constantly look over it. Eliminate any contradictions, unless you're capable of explaining how those contradictions don't break the rules.

In cases where a single sheet isn't sufficient, it may be worthwhile to create your own wiki-style reference to keep track of all of the various facts and details of your world. WikidPad seems to be a popular tool for this; it allows you to create a local wiki-style notebook.

Incidentally, having a wiki-like resource for keeping track of story details can be great for the non-fantastical elements of your story as well. Being internally consistent means more than just obeying the rules of the magic you create; it also means making sure that thing's like characters' biographies remain consistent throughout the story. (For example, you don't want a character who was born in Melbourne to later mention in the story that they were born in Brisbane, unless of course you're having them intentionally lie about their origin.)

[Yoface]

I feel that it's best to let your creative side just free-flow. What I do is just type 1000 words about a project. It forces me to think about what I want it to be and where I want it to go. So to create a world, just type 1000 words. Let your brain just vomit out random stuff that you're thinking. It sounds weird, but sometimes it just helps to let go and let the creative juices do their thing.
-Yoface

[Yoface]

After reading RotGtIE's post, I feel obliged to link to an episode of Writing Excuses where Modesitt (who I mentioned in my previous post) was a guest: Writing Practical Fantasy. (Here's a transcript for those who have trouble with audio.) Lee describing the explaining the idea of "practical fantasy":

I got really ticked off many, many years ago when I read a fantasy that had 10,000 armed knights running around on each side. Because being an economist, and having been trained in semi-practical stuff, I realized that when it takes 12 hundred acres to support one armed knight, you don't have a country that you can hold together with horses if you've got 10,000 on each side of a war. And likewise, I always wonder about all these people running off on crusades with no money. The only time that ever happened in history was the Children's Crusade and they all got killed or enslaved. Yet these were fantasy tropes that people were using. I thought, "You know, in this writing business, you really ought to stick close to at least some what I would call human practicality -- the way people actually operate if they're at all human."

In the same episode, Dan Wells also points out:

If you actually do have a society where it costs five gold coins to buy a dagger, then that means that steel is more valuable than gold, and you have probably just screwed up your economy. Video games have to do that, because they need some system of showing money. You shouldn't do that in writing. You need to actually figure out how much would it cost... you don't necessarily have to go that deep, but make sure that you don't have these kind of wildly ridiculous imbalances.

It's worth noting that even video games can get things right (or at least a little closer to reality) with just a little effort put into considering a currency system. For example, in Dragon Age, the currency system had copper coins, silver coins (each equivalent to 100 coppers), and gold coins (each equivalent to 100 silvers)--one gold coin actually felt like a substantial amount of money.

You could also go the other way with it, and create a world where gold actually is more abundant than iron, making it less valuable. (This was actually the case in Mesoamerica--they had no iron, and hence no steel, but gold was plentiful.) Sometimes, certain resources are present, but not in a usable form--aluminum is one of the most abundant metals on the planet, but extracting aluminum from ore is incredibly difficult, and practices for extracting aluminum weren't developed until the 1800's. Even after we figured out how to do it, the process required to refine aluminum was incredibly costly, making refined aluminum the most valuable metal on earth (more valuable than gold) for a brief period of history. Since then, we've developed cheaper methods for refining aluminum, and that combined with its abundance has made it incredibly cheap--so cheap, in fact, that many people routinely toss aluminum drinking cans into the trash. (That said, the costs associated with extracting aluminum from ore are still high enough to make aluminum recycling an economically sensible endeavor.)

This leads to another point, which relates to the term "technology"--people often only think about the kinds of technology that they can see in their daily lives (things like tools, vehicles, and so on), but technologies like mining practices and farming practices like irrigation can have a huge influence on the evolution of a society.

When talking about a narrative, rules, and consistency. Does it matter if you're dealing with comedy and drama? In comedy a writer can be non-sequitur, and for a dramatist, rules may be bent for the sake of dramatic effect. Do rules have to be so rigid in story telling?
-Yoface

[SundownKid]

Rules don't have to be rigid. At the same time, without rules there is no comedy or shock if you break the rules. But if you're trying to have drama, if you break the rules it has to be believable.

[Kuiper]

In comedy a writer can be non-sequitur, and for a dramatist, rules may be bent for the sake of dramatic effect. Do rules have to be so rigid in story telling?

I think you kind of say it yourself right here: the rules can be bent (or even broken), but that doesn't mean the rules don't exist.

Most of the time when we consider stories that have "shortcomings," they come in the form of situations where the author failed to achieve their artistic vision. If you want to tell a serious story and you write a serious story, great. If you set out to write an absurdist comedy and the result is a story that is comically absurd, great. What you really want to avoid are situations where you set out to tell a serious story, and it comes out feeling like an absurd farce.

Douglas Adams's "Hitchhiker" series is a great example of a series of stories that are filled with non-sequitur and contradictions, but they are that way on purpose. Even if you plan to break the rules, you should know what the rules are, so that when you break them, you are breaking them knowingly and consciously.

I think it also needs to be said that "It's a wacky comedy!" is not a magical license to say that "anything goes." (In fact, I'd argue that comedy is one of the hardest genres to write.) There's a reason that improv comedy is something that people train at; it's a skill, and randomly flailing your limbs and saying random things does not always achieve the desired comedic effect. There's a reason that most comedy duos consist of both a fool and a straight man; breaking the rules isn't any fun if there aren't any rules to begin with. If you set out to make something silly but take it so far that it ends up feeling surreal rather than silly, that's also a case of an artist failing to achieve their artistic vision.

Above all, I think that it needs to be said that the things we refer to as "rules" are more often nothing more than attempts to articulate guidelines and principles in an actionable fashion; there is no "canonical" list of storytelling rules, and some of the things that are commonly accepted as "rules" are often contradictory. For example, readers like characters that are cool, capable, and competent, hence the existence of the superhero genre (which is as old as Beowulf, Hercules, and Odysseus). Readers also like characters that are like them (see most YA fiction) because it makes them more relatable. These two bits of writing advice are clearly at odds with one another. (Sometimes you try and split the difference by having both a Peter Parker and a Spider-man to balance each other out, but there's certainly a sliding scale effect where the more capable and powerful a character is, the further they stray away from being relatable, and visa versa.) Point being, any time you see someone talk about a "rule" of storytelling, take it more as a strongly-worded suggestion.

I think it also needs to be said that a lot of the time that people impose "rules" like the ones posited in this thread (based around respecting the consequences of the magic you've created) are here not to kill ideas, but to inspire the creation of new ideas. Going back to improv comedy, one of the reasons that "yes, and..." exists as a "rule" is that it's a good way to keep a scene moving and get to new and interesting places. You can do the same thing with magic systems. For example, in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series. "I've created a system where people can ingest and 'burn' pewter to increase their physical capabilities." Yes, and... "One of the physical capabilities enhanced is speed, allowing them to run faster in combat." Yes, and... "That enhanced speed is also in effect outside of combat. People can use it to run from city to city, allowing them to quickly traverse terrain without using a horse." So by starting with a premise of "this magic makes your muscles stronger" and considering the consequences of it, we've created an entirely new mode of transportation in our fantasy world. Oftentimes, new ideas are little more than fresh applications of old premises.

[Ghost of Crux]

I feel that it's best to let your creative side just free-flow. What I do is just type 1000 words about a project. It forces me to think about what I want it to be and where I want it to go. So to create a world, just type 1000 words. Let your brain just vomit out random stuff that you're thinking. It sounds weird, but sometimes it just helps to let go and let the creative juices do their thing.
-Yoface

I'm sorry, I have to really disagree with this. 1000 words is about two pages typed out, and that's not even enough to make a believable world. Unless that's your intentions, and I doubt it is. It's a good START, I have to agree, but honestly if this being a start is what you mean then I would certainly hope for a continuation. I mean, rule of thumb: first draft is always horrible.

Which reminds me of one thing: Spend some time with your world. Kuiper and RotGtIE basically said what really needed to be said on the matter. Consequence: it makes things more real, people. I would like to add another example, though: In a world (or a location) where there are no such things as families and the folks are quick to accept anything as "fate", would the dynamics stay similar to ours? Yeah, no.

(Interestingly, this world I created was out of whim and I thought it was super interesting to play with, only to find out that I CAN'T play with it-- all thanks to that second quirk. The people in there always seem to attribute any misfortune and the sort to "the law of existence" so I literally couldn't get them to do ANYTHING. Zero. I only got a plot about several years later, and it's thanks to the thought of having a character who wants to be more than that. Consider this as an anecdote in world building, I suppose? Having and creating a complex world means nothing to the art of creating a narrative if you can't actually tell a story within said world. Think about the consequences of your "quirks" carefully.)

Also important to note is READ MORE ON THIS... I find that foreign social dynamics can be really hard to imagine at times, so usually a reference is needed; social dynamics differ across the globe, and some of them can be really "weird" for people like us, thanks to our culture and what we perceive as normal. They're a really good way to broaden the pool from where you draw your "creativity", so to speak.

Also, while someone linked to a writing-help program recently and so it's still somewhat relevant... there's also Quoll Writer. It's definitely more for writers, but it's got places for you to put ideas on scenes, items, chapters, and all that, too, so if someone likes that better... (Oh, and achievements.)