What To Remember When Creating Your Fictional Setting

Creating your own world as a setting for your story has its own pros and cons. Although no one can say you got the setting wrong or it didn’t match their opinion of the place they had lived, creating a world means not only creating the planet and its resources but also creating its history and that of any races or countries on the planet. Almost everyone will agree that J. R. R. Tolkien was most likely the best at creating a setting, just look at the in-depth histories he created in Middle Earth and the languages he created for his books, but think also about the creators of Star Trek and the Star Wars movies. Since this blog is written by a sci-fi writer, let’s think about how much thought can go into creating a sci-fi series. If any of you have looked into role-playing in the Star Trek universe you already know of the hundreds of planets and species with set backgrounds there are. Feuds are all planned out and explained by a history of wars. (Think of the Romulans and Vulcans or the Klingons and their family feuds over honor.) In order to create a believable world for your story, you have to know the history, not only of your characters but also of your setting and those around the main characters. Why are the natives unwilling to feed the crashed main characters? Was there a war? Did aliens once come and enslave a large population of the ancestors of the natives? Are the natives hiding a deep secret like an expensive mineral or an important hostage? Is one of your characters carrying a special cultural artifact that will convince the natives to be nice to the nice to the travelers?
So many questions, but the important thing is how you answer each one to create the unique history of each setting and race you create. One last thing to remember is that as soon as two groups meet, history begins. How they meet can be significant as can who they first met. Also, some groups have more history together. For example, in the real world, England and America has a longer history than England and people from Mars will have (if we ever meet them). Longer history can be good and bad. If you’re dealing with a new relationship between races you have fewer prejudices but possibly more assumptions whereas dealing with a long relationship between species can have people fighting to prove they aren’t as bad as the people before them.