Creating Your Own Universe

Creating your own universe is draining and exhausting, but it is one thing that every writer must do. From poems to short stories to novels, every writer has to create a universe; a setting filled with life and combusting with ideas, enough to make the readers think and analyze.

Now, unlike any other topic out there, there really isn’t a guideline to create your own universe nor is there any top-10-tips-to-create-your-own-universe book or video, because you really can’t make something like that. Fiction demands something out of the ordinary and you can’t make something ordinary if you don’t think outside the box and most likely than not, your universe must be and should be fiction, unless you want it set in our world with the same mundane things, the same mundane people, living within the same mundane galaxy. That would be boring! But nonetheless, you can’t really set your story in our plane of existence right now, because you can’t really describe everything that’s here, that’s now, and that’s the paradox of the present, you can see everything but you’ll never see and describe everything for what they really are.

Anyways, may it be George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones, J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, or even Lucas’ Star wars or Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40k, a fictional universe is always vibrant and will always bring in many people into your book or movie, because everyone wants to runaway and be somewhere else for a period of time. It’s not easy, but always remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Now as I said, it isn’t easy to create your own universe and it’s even harder to create a universe that makes sense, so let me get this first point out of the way:

Your universe, does not always have to make sense: A lot of writers tend to just drone off with all details with their fictional universe, making it sound so realistic, making it sound like it adheres to all the laws of physics, making it sound all so human. Well, that shouldn’t be the case. Your universe is fiction, and it is not and should never be bound to any laws that exist within our world, I mean what’s the point of creating your own universe if it’s everything like our world? That’ll just be too boring.

Push everything out of the line if you want to, or bring some stuff from this world to the next. Lord of the Rings sounds realistic enough if you take off all the magic and that world actually exists and it's called the Game of Thrones, but there’s no such thing as White Walkers or God of Light right? Plus the world can’t be that grim dark and depressing, right? So there you go! You don’t have to completely make everything in your story sound like it makes sense cause in the end you’ll be creating a paradox within your story and every smart-ass would correct you for it. The best fantasy stories are those that detail its creation within the realm of the world itself and not in the real world we live in.

So like my story and since it’s a short story, I have to make it poetical and in that way, I could explain my fictional universe as if it makes sense. Everything isn’t really fully described and some of the details are left for the reader’s imagination. Everything in your story does not have to be real nor does it have to sound real. My story has treemen fighting the Black Legion, giant birds destroying planes, nature vs man, and possible oblivion at its inevitable end, and it exists because I think it exists and that should be the case with your universe too.

Theme/Setting: This is something I brought out from my previous guide, because it’s only essential to every story ever written. There must be a setting or a theme in your mind before you write down your story. My theme was Hubris or the eternal pride that exists within every thinking being of this world. Pride was there in the beginning of my story and it is also in the end. Pride was there in creation of that desolated world, pride also existed in the recreation of the better world. It was pride that stuck into my story and it was pride that brought upon the end of the world but it was also the same singular thing that redeemed everyone else in the story.

So we come to the sub-theme of redemption. And for me, redemption is not about correcting past mistakes, no one could ever correct past mistakes. For me, redemption is sacrifice, it is that jab you take for your friend, it is that toy you gave away when you were a kid, it is that one life that you gave away for your world. We all make mistakes and we will gradually make them continuously and effortlessly into the future and we may never correct that and we will continually destroy our world, that can’t be helped, because as human beings we’re always made to exploit everything in our path, but once in a while we will make amends, we will make sacrifices for the betterment of our world, and that is the redeeming feature of our pride and the existing virtue in my story: nothing could ever be corrected, but everything could be sacrificed.

And your theme could be anything that you can think of; it could be any word in the dictionary or any virtue that you would like to tackle in. And the theme does not always have to create your story all the time, you could also just think of a setting or the place where the story is held.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away!

It could be a cyberpunk futuristic future or a medieval world with unicorns and magic, it could be anything that you could possibly think of, because your universe is your clay and it’s up to you what figurines you want to make from it and sometimes thinking of a fictional place first, is better than to think of a fictional story. At some point, once you’ve thought of a place, then the story will create itself.

But a universe could not be built in a day. Our universe right now took centuries upon centuries before it existed, yours shouldn’t last as long, but it’ll take some time.

So be patient: A lot of writers make the mistake thinking that writing could be done within a couple of months. That’s just not possible, unless you’re Stephen King.

You can’t ship out stories upon stories within a matter of days. Writing will drain out your days and nights from you. It’ll take so much time from you that you wouldn’t even know that it’s 2am in the morning. It’ll drain your thoughts and ideas and at some point it will also take away your dreams. But sacrifices have to exist before you create your masterpiece and when the day you finish your writing, you’ll be thankful that you gave it your all.

My story took about two months before it was completed. I didn’t work on it everyday because I just can’t. Mental blocks come in my way and there were some cases, where I simply couldn’t push the story onwards. Not to mention that I haven’t really written anything that was Sci-Fi before. There were also times, where I would spend hours upon hours just staring on the screen, thinking of a damn word that I used before and that's natural to happen. Will I know that I can’t create a story within just a day, heck, most of my stories take a month or so before they’re released. But, of course, with a couple of tips and patience, it wouldn’t take you a century before you finish creating your universe (Hopefully not!)

So my suggestion for you, so it doesn't take so long for you to finish a story or to finish creating your universe is to stay organized.

And yes patience requires you to be organized. Now, what I usually do is start with a theme of a story then work from there. I would quote something and then from that quote starts the theme and the outline of the story.

“The creation of earth is by fire and by redemption.”

And from there themes of creation, salvation, and redemption now exist and then it would only be a matter of time before I could outline the entire thing.

Creating the setting of the story is the part that gets tricky. You have to think of the place, days before you write your story. So, zone out (whether you’re in a class or at work) and let your mind wander into places. This is where a writer is pushed into the nether limits of their mind. And once you’ve been pushed far enough then you will see a place, where you could place your story, in my case, it’s a desolated, mucky, and dark place, where there is only pure and utter destruction and, well, undeniably enough it fits in with the story.

Staying organized requires you to think of the beginning and the end, and usually that’s all it takes because the middle part of your story would then create itself along the way. So once you’ve thought of a theme, think of a place where you should set your story (something that would fit in with the theme too) and from there, think of a beginning and an end.

Stephen King in an interview once told his fans that when he would create his story, he would start by thinking of the last lines of his main character. Technically, the last page of the book. That just says that once you have an idea, you stick to it and from there it will grow. So may it be the end or the beginning of your book, stick with it and fight with it and you’ll have your story soon enough.

I’ll add my own personal touch to this- I stay organized in a stubborn way. I read the story I’m making almost every day. I read it over and over again. If I’ve only created a phrase or a paragraph in one day, then the next day I would read the entire paragraph then add something into it. Then the next day I would read the entire paragraph I’ve made the day before and the other paragraph that I made yesterday then I would add something new then repeat the process the next day. I know that it’ll be more efficient if I just write down notes and tell myself where I have stopped and what I would want to add, but then if I do that, I would lose intimate contact with the story itself. I would no longer immerse myself in my story if I do so. So one way I organize myself is by putting myself into the story every single day I could.

But days will come and go and staying organized at some point becomes chaotic and then you realize that you’ve lost control of your project or story or your universe and you don’t know where to go and this is where you take a break.

When you write a story, Murphy’s law always applies: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, or if you’re optimistic: Everything that could happen will happen.

Creating your own universe isn’t easy and there is not a single thing in this world that would make it any easier. It will take you days upon days before you could figure out a single part of your story or a certain planet of your universe. But nothing is ever finished in a day nor could anything be really done by sitting and typing any word you could think of in hopes of creating something that sticks. Our mind works more when it gets a spark of inspiration.

Now, inspiration comes in many shapes and sizes. Hell, it even comes within a packet nowadays. But it can’t be bought.

I can’t fully teach you how to be inspired because everyone is inspired in many different ways but I can teach you how to get there.

You have to learn to breathe in and breathe out. Breathe in from your nose then into your diaphragm. Breathe out through your mouth and take a wake outside or read a story. Have a look into the world, see people move and the sun shine. Close your eyes and feel the breeze because the world is your number one reader and it knows what you want to write.

So take a break and take a walk outside or play some video game or watch a movie because you’ll need it.

But don’t take too long. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it wasn’t built by slacking off either and your story won’t surely be done by reading this two-thousand worded guide. So pick up where you left off, or pick up that one story you’ve been wanting to finish for quite some time now. Start writing and start pushing yourself until the ink you’ve used turns into your blood, because nothing good is ever gained without sacrifice. And from there start building a universe with your mind and then build your story with your heart and let me tell you kid, you’ll go places. Maybe even to a galaxy far far away!

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