A fanfictioneer's guide on how to build worlds
Before going any further, let me get it clear that this is largely concerned to the construction of an entirely new country, empire, or other group facing a canon one, but it could also apply to people constructing planets or towns in canon worlds.
Now, welcome to the art of building worlds. You seem to have ambition, which is good- you intend to construct the most convincing, most original, most incredible world ever to hit not just the site, but in all of fan fiction! Perfectly noble desires, all of them. We remember the Lord of the Rings, for Middle Earth as much as anything else, and Warhammer 40,000 for the incredible coolness that is the Imperium. (Which is as big an inspiration for my own world building as anything.) You have ideas for races, cultures, technology, art, buildings and settings beyond anything yet seen on Earth- and why shouldn't you? This is , after all, never really home to gritty urban stories. We all want to see them!
You will note, however, the crucial point missing from my list of perceived ideas as to what you want in your world: that of weaponry. I will be getting to this later, so please humour me.
Anyway, this article has came about mostly because, upon trawling through , I have seen a certain paucity of anything that can be described as effective world building. So, here are my potted instructions as to how to do this.
Be plausible.
At least in the context of general laws of physics, politics and evolution. Having creatures using "Uncurable poisons" does not make any sense in the context of nature. Animals gain immunities to these things. (Ditto in political systems. Dictatorships often do not make for great innovation without lots of money being poured into it, or something else going on, e.g. foreign intervention, or loads of resources being poured into one particular branch.)
(This is one reason why the Imperium has spent ten thousand years slowly stagnating- its ill educated work force cannot innovate. They haven't got the time, when working their heads off in often hostile environments, or indeed the intelligence, after dogma being poured into them about obeying the Emperor above all, and having very little education. This has the advantage of making immensely loyal servants- they probably couldn't have withstood their numerous enemies without it, even with bigger guns- but they are not really changing their methods of war. Indeed, they are often going backwards, e.g. the Baneblades becoming rarer.)
As a result, having a huge, militaristic dictatorship take on the Imperium with all guns blazing and smacking down the finest that the Guard has to offer is not a realistic proposition. (Unless psychic powers are involved, or sheer numbers.)
With regards to politics, remember that most people simply want comfort and security. If they do not have this, and there is another, well known system that offers it with relatively little sacrifice, they flock to it. (Hence the Chaos Gods being popular.) This is when the method of keeping power comes in for the politician: if he has an enormous, loyal army, or a secret police, or is himself personally enormously dangerous, he can keep it. If the author just thinks that the people will let themselves be downtrodden, then the author is utterly wrong; sooner or later, someone will rebel. Especially if it's an enormous multinational confederation, with each race possessed of enormous firepower and its own very distinct national identity. (Look at the Russian Empire, Vex Master.) On the other hand, utopias (especially with small farm worlds- look at Earth! Is it small or vulnerable to raids?-) are equally unlikely. People argue. People have nasty sides. Perfect governments are extremely rare.
Finally, please don't make another master race of psychically controlled mutants who just march in and kill people. Seriously, it's getting dull: especially as the battle scenes are:
Grunt: We'll hold them off, Brother Captain, while you get to the space ship and blow it up with the deus ex machina bomb.
Captain Heroic: Aye. Good luck, Trooper Downtrodden.
Last stand ensues as Thunderhawk takes off. This involved guardsmen pouring bullets into the enemy until their ammo runs out, and then taking them with bayonets until they all die. Then, the last man looks up to see the Space Marine strike force blowing up the mothership. He cheers, watches aliens run around in confusion/self destruct/kill each other. Story ends.
Stick to Canon.
All the factions must act in character, have appropriate arms and technology, and react in character to these newcomers. The Imperium, to use one off used example, is not going to randomly let people walk into the Golden Throne Room and heal the Emperor just because they wave around some shiny medical technology. They would probably shoot the blighters, or burn them at the stake, for merely trying to get into the throne room. (And please, please, please don't have the aliens as part of a great Eldar Prophecy that brings back all the Primachs for one enormous battle at the end. That's just boring.)
This also means that your characters should, as far as possible, be acting towards the laws of canon. They should, for Warhammer 40k, have people being taken over by the chaos gods (they shouldn't just scoff at them as Imperial Superstitions, before getting eaten by Daemons: if they have warp travel or psykers- and they will- they will know of the warp, and they will be vulnerable to it. Their psykers should get their powers from the warp. Their technology shouldn't be infinitely more advanced than everyone else's. And so on. Making them a reasonably powerful country, rather than an all conquering super state, and the story will be much more interesting than watching everyone band together in a totally unrealistic grand alliance to stop them.
Which brings me onto the third point…
IT IS NOT ALL WAR!!
Now, I can understand how this state of affairs came about. We have all watched Star Wars, Star Trek, and innumerable other Sci Fi things with war in them. We play our computer games, with the arms of factions being described in exquisite detail (although not necessarily realistic- witness battle tanks almost always having no anti infantry machine guns, for example, or AA units not being able to move their guns down and blast ground troops), and coming to the conclusion that, simply by combining all those flashy RTS units and FPS Guns (and probably dialogue drawn from cut scenes) that we can make a cool world.
WRONG!
To show you what I mean, let me introduce America if it had been designed by some of our fanfictioneers.
Name of Country: USA
Society: Democracy, led by a President. (George Bush, who declared war upon Iraq. A great military leader, former general, war hero.) Next candidates are John McCain (wants to continue war, ergo hero), and Barak Obama (wants to surrender, ergo villain.)
((Note the lack of any other qualities attached to the leader. He has no domestic policy, and very little foreign policy. Now, you may hate him, but you must agree that the real Bush is better than this guy. At least he has a domestic policy, of sorts. And most leaders in these are definitely Republican, if not even further right.))
Army
US Marine
Weapon: ((I'm not an expert here)) M16 Assault Rifle (500 yard range, 200 rounds per minute, shoots through thin metal.)
Hand Grenade
Colt Handgun
Armour: Flak Vest and "Land Warrior" System. (Contains cameras, communication links, can withstand 5 bursts from an AK 47.)
And so on, with unit after unit, in an enormous list of units and troop types, each with masterly research put into their firearms, and how much bolt shells they can withstand (usually abnormally high figures), and their special combat skills, and their running speed, (but not, oddly enough, their rations, mess kit, and other things that the soldier would probably value just as highly as all this.) And after about ten pages of this, the story begins.
Something is missing here. No, wait, a lot is missing. We have no media. We have no history. No slang. No current topical issues (apart from war.) No culture. Nothing apart from a very sketchy description of a political system, and the types of rifles everyone carries.
This does not make for anything that can be called a convincing world.
Now, don't get me wrong, if you are writing a military based story, the army is important. You need to have a vague idea of how the troops fight. But if you do this, you never have a sense that there is anything behind the guns, and this, I think, is a substantial weakness. The reader does not need precise figures of range, or anything like that. The reader wants a good story, with characters with whom sympathy can be made. And this can be made by having them act in human ways (or, at least, ways appropriate to their race.)
Make them read newspapers. Have them mention some scandal at home, or the names of towns, or slang, or curse gods, or pray to them, or smoke, or mention brands, or mockingly imitate adverts from television, or-
Do things that we do. Even the most autocratic, religious, uptight societies in our history have had these. If your societies do, they are so much more convincing. Having some idea of a home front is vital- after all, the majority of your people are probably not going to be fighting. Many of those who are would have had civilian life, or at least periods of leave.
And it can add to your characters. For example;
Sergeant Becker lowered his copy of the Releinstgrad Daily, reflected that they had only got a six month old one this time, and made a comment to his friend that the galaxy was going to the dogs.
"Bloody anti blood sportists are bloody at it again," he grumbled, tugging irritably at his tentacles. "And you know what that'll mean? Less good hunted meat for our rations! And we get papers written at the time of Emperor Grandstrum too!"
Private Rawlinsworth was about to point out that it was unlikely that they were to receive a newspaper from eight thousand years ago, and that the leader of the anti blood sports was, in the Sergeant's words "a nice piece" when the whole trench shook. "Incoming!" he cried instead, and then the whole world shook as the Imperial Guns opened fire. He grabbed his gauss rifle, cursed the damned things clumsy butt, and hurried to the parapet.
Now, isn't that better than having someone grunting generic quotes about girls and religion before going over the top and having all the high tech guns going off? With bland descriptions?
This can equally be applied to worlds with grand prophecies going on: not everything revolves around the quest being accompanied.
If there is any further advice, please add it. I think I'll do crossovers next.