World Building in a Script

Is the world of your project different from the one we live in? Or that people ever lived in?

Are there special beings, powers, fantasy elements or futuristic sci-fi in it?

If so, you’re involved in “world building.”

Meaning: your job as a writer has an extra dimension. You’re not just writing a great story. First you have to decide on all the key elements that make its world different.

Then you have to make all that clear, coherent and believable to readers.

How does one do that?

First let me admit that the stuff I personally write usually doesn’t involve world building. But what I’m writing now does: it’s set in a very different future society.

And there has been a lot of world building in the hundreds of projects I’ve helped writers develop.

Along the way, I’ve seen many examples of “worlds” that were unclear, and/or hard to buy into. The “rules” of how everything works and is different are often murky.

This usually means that the writer hasn’t fully figured out all of it themselves. They only decided on what they needed for its specific scenes.

So that’s my first piece of advice:

World building first, story second

Scripts are always stronger and the reader can feel it when the writer has thought through the story and characters far beyond what appears on the page. The “iceberg below the water.”

This is especially true when there’s world building involved.

You might have an idea for what happens in the story and who the characters are, but before getting too deep into plotting that out, I suggest first “plotting out” how your world works.

Pretend the pitch of your world is its own story. With its own logline, its own 1-2 page synopsis, its own fully conceived contours that you could explain to someone to get them up to speed.

You might be thinking your world building is pretty simple, especially if it’s something we’ve seen before, like vampires, aliens, or superheroes.

While I do recommend fantasy elements like those that build on familiar references for readers, I would still say your specific version of that needs to have its own complete internal logic.

In other words, if someone asked, “How do super powers work in the world of your project,” you wouldn’t just say, “What do you mean? They’re super powers. Just like in any project that has them.”

That doesn’t tend to work so well. Because yours is going to be a fresh and original world with those elements. It’s not the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s your take on superheroes. And readers won’t just go with it and fill in the blanks mentally because they’ve seen superheroes before. They will instead want to get how all that works in this project.

And ideally, you’re bringing something fresh to that element that hasn’t quite been done before. Like Twilight did with vampires, perhaps. (Or What We Do in the Shadows.)

With my own project, I’ve spent quite a bit of time coming up with a 1-2 page pitch of “the world” that barely mentions the characters or plot. Partly because I need to fully understand it and make all the key decisions about it in a pretty detailed way before I can create a story set in it. I have a rough idea of what that will be but it’s very rough, and on pause while I “world build.”

Only when satisfied with what I’ve come up with (and a little hint: ChatGPT can help in this process!), and having written that up to my satisfaction as an explainer, do I move on.

Don’t overcomplicate

Figuring out all the details doesn’t mean your world needs to be hard to understand. Ideally, it’s pretty simple. You want a situation to put relatable humans in (or stand-ins for humans that readers will relate to), with a compelling and emotional challenge and palpable stakes.

Ultimately the reader isn’t looking to fall in love with your world, and the world isn’t the story. It’s the backdrop for a story, with elements to it that help create story, which is the whole point.

In other words: characters trying to solve problems that the reader cares about. Through a process that’s entertaining to read/watch, consistent with an established genre.

When in doubt, I always try to “start and end with the real.” Meaning primal human difficulties. Let how your world works come from a “real” place that’s easy to buy into and believe, that forces your characters to have to battle with something real and emotionally resonant.

When George Lucas came up with Star Wars, he created a lot of fun details around wookies, droids, light sabers, etc. But at its core it was a primal, human story rooted in myth. A young potential hero rising up. Rebels against a tyrannical evil. Saving a princess. Father issues.

So your story is not the droids and wookies. Your story is that other stuff. The world details are icing on the cake of that. And ideally they aren’t super complicated to explain or have twisted logic in order for you to include things you want to include.

Instead, it’s ideally a world that is simple to grasp. If you can tell someone how the world is different in a sentence or two, and then in a page or two explain that in such a way that it answers any questions that might come up, you’re on the right track.

Explain the world early

When I say “explain,” I don’t mean in dialogue. Generally speaking, you want to “show,” not tell.

My main point is to make clear to readers how the world is different at the very beginning.

If you’ve got world building in a script, you have an extra job in your opening pages. You’re not only illustrating/dramatizing your main character’s status quo life. You’re also showing how this world works, ideally with scenes of them interacting with it that make all that understandable.

So the reader very quickly gets comfortable that they know enough about the story’s world and how it works that they can then relax into the story you’re telling in it.

I don’t suggest letting key details come out over time. Or making it a bit murky. To my way of thinking, clarity is usually the writer’s (and the reader’s) friend. Especially when there are elements that might be puzzling and not relatable to them, not being from that world.

Again the key is knowing your world backwards and forwards, more than you think you need to know it to write the actual scenes. It means focusing on the “idea” longer than you might think you need to, until it’s really solid. Not just the idea of the story, as I always talk about, but the core ideas about the world the story is set in.

And this can be a process of fun discovery and exploration. I know it has been for me. First I get to create a world. How might that work? And how do I justify and make believable those elements? And have them clearly challenge characters in it?

Because that’s kind of the point: the “world” creates a built-in source of conflict once I turn to story. Just operating in it is difficult for my main character(s) because of how it functions.

And whatever their specific goal is going to be, this world is going to make that extra challenging for them — and hopefully more fun and impactful to read about and watch.