Microscale Worldbuilding
This article is part of a series. Check out the rest!
Recently, I’ve been writing a series of articles on worldbuilding. So far, I’ve covered the basics and gone into more depth on worldbuilding at the macroscale. Now I’m going to dive into microscale worldbuilding a bit more.
Full disclosure here though, I generally don’t favour worldbuilding from a microscale starting point. I also don’t think worldbuilding on such a small scale leaves as much room for breaking parts down into different classifiable elements. As a result, I’m not going to have quite as much to say on the subject as I did for worldbuilding at the larger scale.
What Is Microscale Worldbuilding
Microscale worldbuilding is, unsurprisingly, the opposite of macroscale worldbuilding. Where the latter is building out the larger scale elements of a setting, the former is about smaller areas and finer details. Where macroscale worldbuilding is the broad strokes of nations, landmasses and planets, Microscale is focusing on the specifics of cities, towns or even buildings and families.
In my mind, this type of worldbuilding comes primarily in three flavours: places and people. These two elements together then create a setting’s past and present.
Places
This is similar to talking about the broader strokes of a larger scale setting’s geography and ecology. Just like with a wider geographic area such as a country or continent, the general landscape and climate of a city is also important to keep in mind. The environment people live in impacts a lot of how they live. A city in a cold climate might have frequent snow and have to take measures to keep its inhabitants warm and its streets clear. A town in a hot, tropical place might have to contend with heavy rainfall and frequent floods or storms. The environment also has an impact on what industries are prevalent in any given location and the economic status of those who live there. If that cold city is located near rich coal and iron deposits, it might have a history of early prosperity brought on by nearby mines and now be collapsing economically as those resources dwindle and jobs become harder to come by. Crime rates are probably climbing as a result. That rainy village might be located near a sporadically active volcano. Between the wet climate and nutrient rich, volcanic soil, that village probably has a lot of agriculture and farming going on. It might flourish during some parts of the year and struggle a lot when the floods start.
At this scale, it’s a good idea to keep in mind at least the general layout of your setting as well. How big is the town or city? What are the landmarks important to its history and functionality and those important to your story? Consider the rough layout of your setting and where these locations are relative to each other.
Remember as well that, as a general rule, the smaller your setting the more detail you will generally want to be present. The less detail you have in a small location, the more dead and empty it is going to feel. Of course, you can also play with this and intentionally leave out detail if you intend to make a small setting feel less alive.
People
This might seem a bit misleading as a heading. Surely, coming up with people is about crafting characters, not building the world. Right? Sort of. However, places tend to have people in them. So, to an extent, knowing who lives in a location is also part of your worldbuilding.
I’m not talking about the intricacies of a character’s background here though. I’m talking about demographics and genealogy. What cultures and races make up the general populace of your setting? Who holds power and who doesn’t? Are the people in the city doing well economically in general, or is the population largely poor? These factors contribute a lot to the general atmosphere of your setting and make it feel more kinetic and alive. Besides, your characters probably have a general idea about who the people in their immediate circles are - what they like and dislike, what they do with their time and what their general personalities are. The more familiar a character is or becomes with their surroundings, the more they will know both about the broader strokes of the population and the specific individuals they encounter regularly.
On the note of people your characters have familiarity with; consider families and genealogies. A town or city can be broken down into districts, suburbs and neighbourhoods but those are broken down into families units. The people a character shares a home with will influence a lot about how they see the world and how the world sees them. This is something to consider when character building, but it is also worth keeping in mind as the social construction element of a setting. How different people influence and view each other can play a big role in the atmosphere of a household and the dynamics of a neighbourhood. Even the way places look are affected by this - homes filled with clutter (or not), frequent community gatherings or silent neighbourhoods with tall fences.
Similarly, entire bloodlines can have complicated social dynamics at play within themselves as well as being part of a large complicated web of socio-economic relationships. A well-established family might play a prominent role in the culture, history and politics of a community while a more newly introduced family might be viewed as other by the community. A rich dynasty of a family with a lot of economic and political sway fracturing and dividing into fractions might have an impact that ripples out and affects a city at large. These dynamics colour the everyday interactions of a setting and likely have an influence on your characters and plot as well.
When to Use Microscale Worldbuilding
To reiterate what I said in the last article, the idea that you have to choose between macro and micro is a bit misleading. In reality, most settings will probably have some combination of the two and simply swing more in one direction or the other depending on the scope of the story.
I don’t want to parrot myself too much here, since I touched on this in the previous article anyway. However, the general idea is that the smaller your setting is, the more focus you should put on the microscale. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you should ignore the macroscale entirely, but I would definitely suggest starting at the smaller, detailed scale and then build outwards until you hit the broader details where relevant. The geography of the west of the country probably won’t matter if your story never leaves a single city in the east. It probably doesn’t matter who the neighbouring nations are to your worldbuilding if your story is set entirely within the confines of one small town in the middle of nowhere. Granted, that might change if your small town is on the border. Then, it might actually be very important.
One thing I do want to remind you of though is that the worldbuilding you do behind the scenes does not necessarily have to explicitly appear in your story. Your audience is most likely going to be a lot more invested in your characters and your world than in your worldbuilding. Don’t delve into things that don’t matter to your characters or story.
This is one of the issues I have with J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin. They both wrote (or are writing) incredible stories. They both crafted amazing worlds that stand as a work of art on their own even before factoring in their books. They are regarded as the best of the best at what they do for a reason and I wouldn’t dream of even pretending I was in their arena. But their prose frequently starts to feel like reading a textbook because they are intent on telling you every little detail about the beautiful worlds they have crafted even when it really doesn’t contribute that much to the story they are telling. No matter how much you (rightfully) look up to either of them, this is something I wouldn’t recommend emulating.
My fellow geeks likely would want me drawn and quartered for saying that, but it is something I will continue to go on record with any time it is relevant. Focus on the incredible things they do with the stories they are telling, don’t fall into the trap of turning your novel into an encyclopaedia.
Conclusion
I think that likely wraps things up on this little series of articles about worldbuilding for now. Constructing a new world is one of the most exciting and fun aspects of writing, but it can also be one of the most daunting. Knowing where to start or where to focus your attention can be overwhelming when there is so much that makes up a setting.
I’ll leave you with a reminder that the goal here isn’t to provide a steadfast set of rules. I don’t even exactly follow all this myself a lot of the time. I intentionally left a lot of Domino and Marble’s worldbuilding at the macroscale despite the small setting specifically because of the requirements of the story and because I wanted to highlight how empty the city of Kudin had become. But the idea is to provide some insight that might make the task feel a little less daunting to those of you who shudder at getting started.
Remember, build the world you need.
