Worldbuilding Template: Questions to Build the World of Your Novel

Worldbuilding is deciding the era, the setting, the social order, and the rules of the world your story takes place in. Those decisions set what your characters can do and what stops them, so when the world wobbles, their choices in each scene wobble with it.

This guide is for writers of novels and web novels. It covers how much of your world to decide and what to decide first. The example is the Kingdom of Ravien from They Say I'm a Dark Mage, but All I'm Good At Is Digging Dirt, the web novel from TypeTak's Write a Web Novel, Step by Step course, plus one example that isn't fantasy.

At a glance

Decide only as much of the world as the story uses. Once something shows up in two or more scenes, it's time to decide it
What you decide falls into three kinds: things like characters and places, a backdrop like the era and the rules, and events
Work in this order: the rules the story depends on, then the places where characters run into trouble, then everything else
Don't explain your world all at once in the manuscript. Bring out what each scene needs

How much worldbuilding is enough?

Once you start building a world, you'll want to decide the currency, the calendar, and the royal line of the country next door. Deciding these things is fun. But lore that never reaches the page never reaches the reader, and it takes time away from writing. Writers call it worldbuilder's disease: the lore keeps growing while the manuscript stays where it was.

Knowing where to stop makes it easier to avoid.

Decide it once it's used in two or more scenes. A place name that comes up once only needs a name. If the story keeps coming back to a place, that's when you work out the details.
Rules no character runs into can wait. Whether magic has a cost can be settled the moment your lead uses magic. While nobody casts a spell, you can leave it blank.
Mark what you haven't decided as “Not decided yet.” Keep undecided fields distinct from empty ones, and when you reach one mid-draft, you can decide it right there.

The three kinds of worldbuilding lore

What goes into a world falls into three broad kinds. Write each kind down in its own format, and it's easier to find later.

Kind	What goes in	How to write it down	Example from the Kingdom of Ravien
Things	Anything with a name, like characters, places, factions, and objects	One entry each, with the same fields for the same kind	Belkadia Royal Academy of Magic, the judging stone
Backdrop	The era, the main setting, the social order, and rules that apply to everyone	All in one document	A country where your magic decides your class and your job
Events	History from before the story, and events within it	In order	Early misunderstanding and admission → Settling in and rising status → Traces of real dark magic

In the backdrop document, write only what belongs to no single thing. If you write a long history of the magic academy there, it tends to split away from what the academy's own entry says. How this three-way split came about is in the devlog post Three Kinds of Worldbuilding Lore.

How to build a world for a novel, step by step

Drawing a map and writing a history first is one way in. Starting with what the story depends on gets you to the manuscript faster.

Write the story in one line. In one sentence, say who is trying to do what, and what's in the way. Everything you decide about the world should support this sentence.
Decide the rules the story depends on. These are the rules without which the story falls apart. In They Say I'm a Dark Mage, but All I'm Good At Is Digging Dirt, it's this: the judging stone speaks its results aloud, and an old judging stone blurs final consonants. The misunderstanding in chapter 1 comes from this one rule.
Decide where characters run into trouble. This means the reason your lead gets looked down on, the door they have to get through, and the thing they have to protect. In the Kingdom of Ravien, your magic decides your class and your job, and earth magic sits at the bottom of the hierarchy. That's why Clay Rowen, a commoner boy, gets looked down on.
Pick the main location. Choose the one place where most of the story happens, and write down what happens there before what it looks like. Belkadia Royal Academy of Magic is split into five towers, and none of them teaches earth magic.
Fill in the rest as you write. Neighboring countries, old wars, and currency can wait until a scene calls for them.

Working in this order means everything you decide gets used in a scene. Once you've done steps 1 to 4, you have enough to write chapter 1.

What to decide about your world

Here's what to decide, split into six fields. Each field comes with what it does in a scene and when you can leave it blank.

Field	What to write	What it does in a scene	When you can leave it blank
Era	Level of technology, and roughly when the story's present is	Sets which objects and ways of getting in touch your characters have	The story is set in the present day and readers already know the world
Place	Where most of the story happens, and what's around it	Sets where scenes start and where they move to	A short story with a single location
Social order	Class, rank, and who stands above whom	Sets who looks down on your characters and who they bow to	Rank never comes into the story
Rules (magic, technology, powers)	What's possible, what it costs, and what's impossible	Sets how characters get through a crisis, and what they can't get through with it	The story has nothing supernatural in it
Factions	Countries, schools, organizations, and families, and what each one wants	Sets which side characters take and who they clash with	All the conflict happens between individual characters
Major historical events	What happened before the story and still lingers	Sets where characters' grudges, prejudices, and taboos come from	The past has no effect on the scenes in the present

In the Rules field, what's impossible and what it costs matter more than what's possible. Magic that can do anything solves every crisis too easily, and there's no tension left.

Worldbuilding template to copy

Copy the box below as it is. There's no sign-up and no email. Don't delete the fields you aren't using yet. Leave them as “Not decided yet.”

Worldbuilding template

[The story in one line]
Who is trying to do what, and what's in the way:

[The rules the story depends on]
Rule:
What falls apart without this rule:

[Era]
Level of technology:
The story's present:

[Place]
Main location:
What happens in the main location:
Surrounding areas:

[Social order]
Who is at the top, and who is at the bottom:
Where the lead stands:

[Rules (magic, technology, powers)]
What it can do:
What it costs:
What it can't do:
Who can use it:

[Factions]
Name:
What they want:
Relationship to the lead:

[Major historical events]
What happened:
What's left of it now:

[Not decided yet]
Question:
Decide by:

Example: the world of the Kingdom of Ravien

Here's the template filled in for They Say I'm a Dark Mage, but All I'm Good At Is Digging Dirt before chapter 1 was written. The history field isn't used in the manuscript yet, so it's left undecided. (The story's joke runs on Korean, where “earth magic” and “dark magic” sound the same.)

Field	What's in it
The story in one line	A commoner boy who can only do earth magic is mistaken for a dark mage and enters the Royal Academy of Magic. He holds on, caught between the place the misunderstanding won him and the truth
The rules the story depends on	The judging stone announces results aloud instead of in writing. An old judging stone blurs final consonants, so “earth magic” comes out sounding like “dark magic”
Era	A kingdom where magic is part of everyday life and work
Place	Belkadia Royal Academy of Magic. It's split into five towers (Crimson Flame, Blue Stream, White Light, Bronze, Obsidian), and there's no tower for earth magic
Social order	In the Kingdom of Ravien, your magic decides your class and your job. Earth magic sits at the bottom of the hierarchy and is treated as little more than civil engineering
Rules	When an applicant shows dark magic aptitude, a verification procedure starts. Earth magic is everyday magic for digging and bringing soil back to life
Factions	Royal and noble applicants, and the academy leadership, who want a dark mage successor
Major historical events	Not decided yet
Not decided yet	What's making the soil near the academy rot so strangely, and when the real dark mage is revealed

The judging stone in the Rules field and the hierarchy in the Social order field work together to drive chapter 1. A commoner everyone looked down on becomes someone to fear with a single word from the stone. Decide the rule your story depends on and the order your characters run into first, and your first event comes straight out of your world, as it does here.

When it isn't fantasy: worldbuilding for a contemporary story

Contemporary school stories and workplace stories need worldbuilding too. Readers already know the world, so you can leave the era and the technology blank. The order that exists only in your story still has to be written down.

Say your story is set at a high school where dorm rooms are assigned by grades. Here's what you'd decide.

Social order. The top students get single rooms, and the bottom students share rooms for four. Rooms can change in the middle of a term.
Rules. Exam results are posted on the hallway board with names. Anyone caught cheating moves to a four-person room right away.
Factions. A study group among the students in single rooms, and the people sharing four-person rooms.

Like the rules of magic in a fantasy, this kind of order decides what stops your characters and who they clash with.

30 worldbuilding questions

If a field in the template won't fill, start with the questions below. Each one comes with the scene where the answer gets used. You don't need to answer all of them. Pick only the questions whose answers will show up in this story's scenes.

Group	Question	The scene that uses the answer
Rules	Is there something ordinary people in this world can't do, but your lead can?	The scene where the lead first reveals the ability
Rules	What does using that ability cost?	The lead hesitating over whether to use it
Rules	What can that ability never do?	A crisis the ability can't solve
Rules	Who notices when someone breaks the rule, and what happens to them?	Breaking the rule in secret, and getting caught
Rules	Who understands how the rule works?	A mentor or scholar explaining it, or the lead getting it wrong
Society	Who is at the very top, and what puts them there?	A first meeting where the difference in rank shows
Society	Where does your lead stand in that order?	The lead being looked down on, or treated with respect
Society	Is there a way to change your rank? How narrow is it?	The lead stating their goal for the first time
Society	What prejudice do people take for granted?	A character misjudging someone because of it
Society	What is taboo, and what happens if someone breaks it?	An incident that touches the taboo
Place	Where does most of the story happen?	Most scenes
Place	What does it take to get in or out?	Passing through a door, like getting into a school, the army, or a company
Place	Where do the most people gather there?	Rumors spreading, a public showdown
Place	Where does nobody go, and why?	A place hiding a secret, a secret meeting
Place	What surprises newcomers first?	The lead arriving for the first time
Factions	Which groups in this world clash with each other?	The scene where the big conflict comes out
Factions	What does each group want most?	Negotiation, betrayal, alliances
Factions	Which group does your lead belong to, or which group wants them?	A recruitment offer, picking a side
Factions	What splits a group from within?	Allies fighting among themselves
Factions	What is the most powerful group hiding?	The midpoint twist
History	When did the current order begin, and what caused it?	A character questioning “the way things have always been”
History	What major event do people still remember?	An older character bringing up the past
History	What do people get wrong about that event?	The truth coming out
History	Who still holds a grudge because of it?	An old grudge boiling over
History	What is thought to be gone but still exists?	A threat that returns late in the story
Daily life	How do people spend their day?	Quiet scenes with no incident, breaks
Daily life	What do people eat, and what is precious?	Meals, gifts, trades
Daily life	How do people address each other?	Dialogue where forms of address show the distance between people
Daily life	Is there a story or song even small children know?	Planting foreshadowing
Daily life	What smell or sound is most familiar to your lead?	Remembering home, description from the POV character

Working your world into the manuscript

The more work you put into your world, the more you'll want to explain all of it at the start. Readers want a scene before an explanation, though. A long stretch of explanation, the classic info-dump, stops the story.

Bring it out when a character runs into it. You don't need to explain the hierarchy of the Kingdom of Ravien up front. One scene of Clay being looked down on in the exam hall shows it.
Explain only what a character doesn't know. Someone who grew up in that world doesn't explain the obvious to themselves. When something needs explaining, see it through the eyes of a newcomer, or a character who has it wrong.
Bring in one or two new pieces of lore per scene. Save the rest for the scenes where they're used.

Keeping your world in step with the manuscript

Worldbuilding isn't something you finish once. As you write, new places appear and you revise rules you set at the start. If you don't update your lore each time, a rule set in chapter 3 won't match a scene in chapter 20.

Keep your world in one place, together with your character profiles, in a story bible. What goes in a story bible and how to keep it in line with the manuscript is in What Is a Story Bible? How to Create One for Your Novel, and a template for writing up one character is in Character Profile Template for Writers.

If you're looking for a tool to organize your world, see World Anvil alternatives, which compares tools made for worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding in TypeTak

TypeTak is an AI writing editor where you write alongside an agent. Your world lives in your World, your own lore dictionary that doubles as a graph. The three kinds from earlier in this post map directly onto a World.

Things become nodes. Characters, places, and factions become nodes. A node type such as Nation or Place sets the fields, so every node of that type has the same ones. How nodes relate to each other shows up in the graph.
The backdrop goes in the World Setting. The era, setting, and social order that hold for the whole work are written once in the World Setting document. An order that applies to one nation goes on that nation's node.
Events go on a board. Turn the events in your story into cards and lay them out by arc. (Board)
Lore settled in chat goes in through Organize World. When you settle something while talking your world over with the agent, press Organize World, and the agent sorts it into nodes and the World Setting.

Before it drafts or answers, the agent finds and reads the lore it needs in your World. That way, the judging stone rule set in chapter 1 carries into the draft of chapter 20. You can see how this world was settled in conversation with the agent in the course lesson From a One-Line Idea to Web Novel Worldbuilding.

FAQ

Do I have to build the world before the story?

Decide the story in one line and the rules it depends on first. The rest can wait until a scene calls for it while you write. If you try to finish the whole world before writing, you're likely to burn out before the manuscript starts.

How detailed should my worldbuilding be?

Lore used in two or more scenes gets details. For lore that comes up once, a name is enough. For rules, deciding what they cost and what they can't do before what they can do helps your scenes more.

Is worldbuilding only for fantasy?

No. Contemporary school and workplace stories have an order of their own too, like a high school that assigns dorm rooms by grades. The era and technology can stay blank because readers already know them. The social order, rules, and factions that exist only in your story still need writing down.

What's the difference between worldbuilding and a story bible?

Worldbuilding is what you decide about your story's era, setting, social order, and rules. A story bible is the document that collects the facts of the work: that world, plus characters and the order of events. Your worldbuilding is one part of the story bible. How to make one is in What Is a Story Bible? How to Create One for Your Novel.

Do I need a worldbuilding website or app?

One document is enough to start. Once you have enough entries that you want to link them to each other, or see a map and timeline alongside them, a dedicated worldbuilding tool is worth a look. How the tools differ is in World Anvil alternatives.