Throughout my life, I have often found myself envious of a particular kind of person. They always seemed to be creating something new, or just finishing off the details on another amazing piece of work. Sometimes it was just a doodle in a prep book (that’s fancy English school speak for a homework book or schedule we had to carry around), sometimes it was a landscape they had speed painted digitally that afternoon, sometimes it was graphics coursework they had spent 6 months on. The worst part was that they could never explain to my vaguely analytical mind how they had actually made those things. It always seemed like they had just had an idea and, with a flick of the wrist, created something wonderful.

Now, you might reasonably think that I was envious of their talent and work ethic, which I sometimes was, but that’s not what really struck me as impressive. These people, it seemed, could simply imagine a whole, and then construct that as a piece. To me, this was the greatest skill I could imagine. People just think of this stuff? No way. Holy crap. Other such noises envious people make when struck with awe. Never having seen the process for the finished work, I assumed that they had blinked once and then totally envisioned their art. Because all brilliance is sudden and all-encompassing, right?

Until recently, it wouldn’t have surprised me if Isambard Kingdom Brunel (incidentally, one of the greatest names in history) had designed the SS Great Western on the back of a napkin, in about 15 minutes, whilst slightly inebriated.

However, thanks largely to the literary genius of Alastair Reynolds (Revelation Space), Patrick Rothfuss (The Kingkiller Chronicle) and David Eddings (The Belgariad, The Mallorean), I have since been corrected. What I discovered, and am slightly ashamed to admit I probably should have learned from the master himself years earlier, is that those people probably didn’t stumble upon greatness like a rambler in the lake district, or emit a blinding flash of white-hot creativity that they merely had to focus for a few seconds.

It turns out, they probably had to build those ideas piece by piece, which is no more evident than in the realms of fantasy and science fiction. In these created worlds, a surprising depth of frankly everything tends to be defined. So naturally it only took me several years of reading these genres to pick up on this process (and reading several essays and commentaries specifically explaining it, by authors like Eddings and Brandon Sanderson, certainly helped). I am, as they say, sharp as talc.

Thus, with such glorious information in mind, I decided that I too could put the work in to create such a brilliant and knowable world. A year or so later and it’s the longest project I have ever concentrated on, and I love it.

Perhaps you remember the fun of painting your favourite Disney characters, using only blue paint and your fingers, as a child with no real supervision. The walls looked better for it anyway. Maybe you remember the feeling of completion when you finally handed in that thousand word essay for that subject you loved (or hated, no one’s really ambivalent about academic subjects) at school. You probably remember how badass you were when you were building your  ninth castle entirely out of diamond and glowstone in minecraft. That was awesome. Those are precisely the feelings that worldbuilding inspires in me. All at once, it is childish joy, hard work completed, and a slightly ridiculous pride in your largely imaginary accomplishment.

Each step, random though they often are (at least, my thought process is fairly random. Gold fish, superclusters, trains.), adds another layer of awesome complexity and reality to your little universe; with each step it becomes more real in your mind. I hate to use such a clichéd example, but it really is like finding the statue after slowly tapping away the excess marble. Except instead of a slightly oddly proportioned nude male, you have as your result a realm of intense possibility, begging to be put to paper with ink and pen.

A particularly strange and compelling little chunk of the process, is trying to define the mundane. Have you ever asked yourself why a week is seven days? No? I hadn’t either, but it’s exactly that sort of thing that is fascinating to work out. How many days are in a week, is that even what it’s called? Months, years? Hmm. Even such strangely simple things can lead to far greater discoveries. The mythology, religion, and philosophy of the world I’m building were opened up to me by that pair of questions, which bloomed into a million other little details and ideas. It’s like tripping over a solitary domino, only to discover that it’s but the first in an increasingly prodigious series with a thousand branching paths.

Plus hey, it’s fun trying to find fitting names in truly strange places.

Anyway, I haven’t finished creating this world and it may be some time yet (yearish and counting), but it has been an eye opening experience. I’m still not certain that I can see all of the steps between inspiration and art, or epiphany and manifesto. However, I’m quite convinced that it’s this journey and the discovery involved that make the whole thing so valuable. The work is worth the joy alone, one could almost say. Hell, one day, my envy might even subside and be replaced by camaraderie (although if you can do stuff like this, chances are I still don’t like you, you talented bastard). We may never know.

*insert clichéd exit line here*