This project may be completed by the following students:
1st Year Media Arts Majors.
2nd Year Media Arts Majors.
3rd Year Media Arts Majors.
Directions
Note that this project is about making a document intended to be referenced in future projects, both by you and other students. Attention to detail will be important. If you finish this in one day, you did not provide enough detail.
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Pre-Production
- Begin your World Guide by creating a document with the following headings:
- Setting Name
- Genre
- Locations (5 minimum)
- Culture
- Power Structure
- Other Organizations (2 minimum)
- Systems
- Recurring Characters (5 minimum)
- Protagonists (1-2)
- Antagonists (1-2)
- Supporting Cast (1-3)
- With all of those headings, you might wonder where to start. The answer is "anywhere." You might already have an idea for a really interesting protagonist, or perhaps you thought of a great world-changing event after which the world you're making took a different path from our reality. You might have a concept for how a government could be run, or how a single business might be organizing its employees. Either start big and work smaller as you refine the details, or start small, with one detail, and work your way out. Or jump around between the two, that works, also.
- Warning:You may at some point be tempted to create a utopia, which is a setting where everything works well and conflicts are all minor and quickly resolved. While this is an admirable goal to aim for in reality, a true utopia in a fictional setting can tend to be boring.
Worse, under the scrutiny of literary analysis most utopian settings are revealed to be dystopian, where everything's fine for some of the inhabitants but for others things are very, very broken. It is easier and more interesting if the world you build is imperfect from the beginning. Those imperfections can be plot points that help shape and motivate the characters in your stories.
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Production
- Use the information below to fill out your World Guide.
- Genre
- You're creating a setting for use in multiple stories, but the stories should usually have something in common.
- Low drama taking place in a coffee shop doesn't usually fit in well in a setting with giant monsters destroying major cities.
- Genre examples can include: Action/Adventure, Comedy, Crime/Mystery, Fantasy, Historical, things PG, this is a school assignment), Satire, Science Fiction, Speculative (This includes alternate realities, superheroes, and weird things happening in an otherwise modern setting), and Isekai, mong others.
- This list on Wikipedia goes into more detail for many of these genres.
- Many of these can be combined
- "Modern" isn't technically considered a genre, as it's the default time frame for any genre that isn't set in the future orpast. A historical comedy is clearly meant to take place in the past. A comedy, by contrast, is expected to take place around the time it's being written.
- Locations
- A setting that's larger might have a few sentences describing what makes each town unique. A setting that's a small town or city block might have descriptions for the more important buildings. A setting that's a single building might have a description for every room. The smaller your setting, the more detailed things will seem even if you have the same word count.
- The size of your "world" can vary greatly. An action/adventure setting might span an entire globe. A sci-fi setting could include an entire solar system, multiple systems, or even galaxies. Meanwhile, multiple situational comedy (sitcom) settings focused on a single home or place of business, rarely showing scenes beyond those walls.
- Power Structure
- Who's in charge? Why are they in charge? How do they stay in charge?
- A government might be democratically elected, or they might have a monarchy. Perhaps there's an emperor? It might be that you setting is just large enough to be a duchy (ruled by a duke or duchess) that may or may not pay tribute to a more powerful leader. Are they well-liked by the citizens, or do they have to hold onto power through military force and/or rigged elections?
- If the setting is a school, is there a single administrator or are there assistants? Do they manage the school with an iron fist, bow quickly to the whims of others, or somewhere in between? Are they a scary shadow behind their office door or are they seen daily by the students?
- If the setting is a business, is the manager also the owner, or are they employed by someone higher up? Are there assistant managers?
- If it's a single family household, is there a single parent in charge? Are there two parents who make decisions together, or do they divide responsibilities into different categories? Is there an older sibling who shares some or all of the decision making responsibilities?
- Culture
- What cultural heritages exist in this setting? Were they imported from elsewhere or did they develop in your setting?
- A school might have an annual event where alumni return to talk to current students about their college and career experiences.
- A small business might throw a party every time an employee celebrates a birthday.
- A town might have certain iconography that gets reused by many of the local organizations and businesses.
- Communities of any size might have specific holidays that have historical, cultural, or religious connotations.
- Other Organizations
- These can vary greatly depending on the setting you're creating.
- Is there a team of superheroes or villains?
- Is there an organization that teaches magic?
- Is there a rival business or school?
- Does the school have after school clubs?
- How active is the school's PTO?
- Systems
- If the setting has magic, advanced technology, superheros, etc., it's often a good idea to at least briefly explain the limits/requirements of these things.
- Your setting might have magic, but maybe only certain people can use it. Perhaps anyone can use it, but they have to undergo years of specialized training. Perhaps anyone can use it but everyone is limited to different areas of power, where one person might only be able to throw lightning while another person can only get baked goods to move around.
- If your setting has superheroes, do they all get their powers through random accidents? Genetics? Lab experiments? Gifts from extra-dimensional beings?
- If your setting has advanced technology, does it mean everyone has a computer in their head, now? Can we create food from energy with a button press? Do we have a power grid able to handle all the fancy things people are plugging in?
- Consider how publicly known these systems might be. If there was a spell or device that could create infinite energy, for example, this could solve a lot of the world's problems. It could also cause a lot of problems for the people who know how to do this, as those atop current power structures might not be happy with the status quo getting flipped.
- A setting without fancy magic, tech, or superheroes might still have systems worth detailing. How is the school day structured? What are the daily tasks that must get done in the business? What work needs to be done around the home every week?
- Recurring Characters
- A setting is meaningless without characters. Don't feel the need to add details for every participant in the setting, but at least highlight a few of them.
- Protagonists
- Is there a team? Are they loosely organized or is each protagonist on their own?
- Who, if anyone, employs the protagonists?
- What motivates the protagonists?
- Who helps the protagonists?
- Antagonists
- Antagonists can be and often are just like the protagonists, only with goals that are incompatible with the goals of the protagonists.
- If the antagonist is a true villain, they will still almost always think of themselves as the hero regardless of how everyone else sees them.
- Supporting Cast
- Everyone is the protagonist of their own story, but not everyone is the protagonist or antagonist of the main story. The barista down the street, the town archivist, and even members of the local government may fit in this category.
- Review your World Guide for inconsistencies before continuing. Something that made complete sense when you wrote it might now be out of place after you removed an antagonist.
- Use the information below to create a map that includes the locations mentioned in your World Guide.
- Maps
- A map does not need to be detailed to the square inch, but you and any potential collaborators should be able to use your map as a reference to avoid continuity errors later.
- There are many online resources for map creation, many of them made to support the fantasy Table Top Role Playing Game (TTRPG) community.
- If your setting is focused on a single building, there are lots of public domain blueprints online.
- Wikimedia Commons has literally millions of public domain maps that could be modified to suit your needs.
- Searching through six million maps is a bit much, so more restrictive searches may help you out.
- Building Floor Plans
- SVG Town Maps (A search for town maps resulted in many photos of townhouses. SVG files are great for maps but not good for photos, so it removed those from the results.)
- Township Maps (Useful if you want your setting to include more than one town but not be well developed beyond that.)
- Record a 3-5 minute video that summarizes your completed World Guide and explains your reasoning for the choices you've made. (If you go over everything and your video is still not 3 minutes long, this is a sign that your World Guide is not as detailed as it needs to be.)
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Post-Production
- While your video is not the main project, it would still look good if you added a title, credits, and any other edits needed to make it look nice.
- Submit both your World Guide and your summary video for a grade.
