The Paracosm - How to Start Your Worldbuilding Within the Mind's Eye

A paracosm is an imaginary world that a person creates within their own mind. It is usually detailed, complex, and may include its own history, geography, and inhabitants. Paracosms are the places created by worldbuilding that people explore and inhabit. Paracosms are often a product of daydreaming. Sometimes a person will use a paracosm to predict or fantasize about future events, scenarios, and hypothetical social encounters. They can be used for escapism, creative expression, or as a way to better understand, engage with, and simulate the real world. Great these worlds can be shared with others, but must be constructed and organized to be shown to other people.
For many, their paracosm is a refuge away from the mundane reality of their everyday lives. It is a place where they can be anyone they want to be, do anything they can imagine, and create or manipulate anything they desire. It is a place where the impossible becomes possible, and the imaginary becomes reality. For some, their paracosm is a means to cope with or escape from traumas, stress, and negative social interactions. A place where they can go to forget about their troubles and relax. For others, their paracosm is a place where they are free to express their creativity, without boundaries, limitations, or destructive criticism.
When building a fictional world having a clear, well-defined setting is important. Without a well-grounded imaginary reality the events that unfold within it are difficult to suspend your disbelief from. A paracosm provides a detailed simulation of an imaginary reality created by the mind’s eye. This simulated worldview allows a person to test what will or should work, and what may not. A paracosm is as much an object of experimentation as it is a codified, canonical version of a fictional universe. Nobody can tell a creator what is in their paracosm, and it may differ from the world they put onto paper. Either: the creator wishes to keep the contents of their paracosm a secret, or the paracosm that is built by the consumer of the media does not match that of the creator.
Why do we as writers, roleplayers, and creatives take time to create entire fictional worlds? There are plenty of reasons to build universes of fiction. We know it is a means of escapism, but it can also be a form of self-expression; a way to flex one’s creative muscles. It can be used to explore different cultures and ideas, or create something completely new and theoretical. It can be used to connect with others who share similar interests, or to create fun between a community of like-minded people. Recently this has manifested through roleplay gaming. Regardless if you are a wordsmith or a worldsmith, building a place of your own is a great achievement and something you will always cherish. No matter what: fire, prison, war, homelessness, or anything short of amnesia. The world you build can never be taken away from you.
Worldbuilding is the process of creating that new world, or creating an alternate version of history that diverges from our own world. Worldbuilding creates a world from square one. Concultures are created to fit within that worldbuilding project. Worldbuilding can be used to create a foundational setting to tell stories in works of fiction. These can be books, short story anthologies, movies and screenplays, comics and graphic novels, or other types of literary or visual media. As well as game settings for tabletop roleplaying games or electronic games of all kinds; but mostly for AAA video games. The Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Zelda, Halo, Cyberpunk 2077, and Mass Effect series’ are just a few notable examples of games with plenty of quality worldbuilding.
Many different and diverse elements go into worldbuilding a fictional setting. The setting is a backdrop. It is where the story takes place. Without it, a story cannot move forward as it has nothing to interact with. Worldbuilding includes cultural aspects, environmental features, materials, histories, timelines of events, political interactions, geological processes, celestial objects, magical forces, mythical creatures, flora, fauna, fungi, bacteria, viruses, or some other unique forms of life that doesn’t exist in our world as we know it.
When you start building your world there are many considerations you need to make. You need to decide the scope of your world. Are you building a small town, a nation, an entire planet, a multi-planet civilization like a galactic empire, or something even larger? When it comes to details of the world itself you need to think about its climate. What is the average temperature? Does it vary from season to season? Are there any extreme weather conditions? What are the major landmasses and landforms? Where are the mountains, forests, and deserts relative to the centers of civilization or the center of your story? What bodies of water are nearby? Are these oceans, lakes, or rivers? If there are none, why? Arrakis of Dune is a good example of a setting where a lack of water is the focus.
You also need to consider the people who live in that civilization and how their environment effects their culture. A culture for a worldbuilding project is one that is built by you. This is called a ``conculture’’; short for ``constructed culture’’. What are the cultures that exist in your world? Does your world only have one major culture or many small groups of disjointed people? What languages do they speak? What are their beliefs or customs? What are the events that have shaped their history? How were those cultures founded? What wars have been fought for their way of life?
Beginning the process of worldbuilding can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. The most important thing, regardless of the method that you use, is to just start somewhere. Pick a corner of your world to start with and expand from there. As you worldbuild, you will begin to get a feel for the scale of the project and how everything fits together.
A useful tip is to join, or start, a worldbuilding community. There are many online communities dedicated to worldbuilding where you can find writing advice, and support from other worldbuilders. You can use this to get feedback on your ideas, find inspiration, and get new viewpoints on concepts you can’t see on your own. It is impossible to think of everything, and you will always miss things that are very clear to your audience that you haven’t covered. To have an FAQ, you have to have questions asked to you to see what issues frequently come up. There are also many software programs out there targeted to worldbuilders. Those we will go over in a minute.
When it comes to people already used to worldbuilding, it takes a lot of practice exploring worldbuilding concepts to move onto the next level. It can take years of experience building worlds until you get good at it. Like with writing, the first project you work on you are pretty much guaranteed to regret creating. One of the best ways you can become a worldbuilder is to read and watch as much as you can about worldbuilding. There are lots of great books out there on the subject, as well as one of my favorite resources; Worldbuilding Magazine. Worldbuilding Magazine is a professionally produced and edited publication that is available for free from its website.
For online resources, I suggest using the Worldbuilding Stack Exchange or joining one of many of World Anvil’s Worldbuilder’s Guild communities and subcommunities. Although World Anvil itself is a quality paid service, its community is a great place to ask questions and get advice from other worldbuilders for free. There is also the r/worldbuilding subreddit. To improve your worldbuilding skills, you should take part in forums and online contests. There are plenty of contests like these based on categories of entry and for various styles of maps. Forums and group chats around worldbuilding typically have a daily worldbuilding prompt for their users. These help expand some of the less touched on areas of your projects.