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The World Building Workbook, print edition, a worldbuilding workbook for novelists
The World Building Workbook, print edition
Interior pages from The World Building Workbook
Interior pages from The World Building Workbook
The World Building Workbook in use
The World Building Workbook, print edition
The World Building Workbook, print edition
The World Building Workbook, print edition
The World Building Workbook, print edition
The World Building Workbook, print edition
The World Building Workbook, printable pages, included with the instant download
The World Building Workbook, the digital edition on a tablet, included with the print edition
The World Building Workbook, digital edition on a tablet
The World Building Workbook, digital edition on a tablet
The World Building Workbook, digital edition on a tablet
The World Building Workbook, digital edition on a tablet
The World Building Workbook, digital edition on a tablet
The World Building Workbook, digital edition on a tablet
Close-up of an interior page from The World Building Workbook
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The World Building Workbook

Every novel has a world: the place, the arrangements people have made with one another, and the rules, written and unwritten, that decide what can happen. The World Building Workbook helps you build that world on purpose and make it press on the people inside it, whether your book is set in a real town, a historical period, an invented city, or a secondary world. You decide who holds power and what is scarce, give the world a land, a history, and a calendar, build its systems with real limits and costs, and plan how the reader learns it all without the story stopping to explain.

Two running examples carry the book, one realist and one speculative: a hospital at night, and a port city where the dead can speak for one tide. Six real novels supply the case studies. Use it while planning, drafting, or revising a book whose setting feels thin.

$15.00
Instant download (digital + printables)

Digital edition: a 174-page PDF with the full-color cover. The index is linked, so you can tap any section or worksheet to jump to it, and every section is bookmarked. The worksheets are fillable, and the file works in GoodNotes, Notability, and other PDF annotation apps.

Printables: the full workbook set up for printing at home (174 pages, with printer-friendly section dividers), and the Worksheets Bundle: all 40 worksheets and tools plus the 6 reference pages, in the order they appear in the book. Both come in US Letter, A4, and A5. Print as many copies of each worksheet as your world needs.

Core concepts

What a world is in every kind of novel; the world as pressure, cause, and history; written and unwritten rules; the people inside a world; what a place means; scale; and a working vocabulary.

The social world

Power, law, and institutions; money and work; belief and the sacred; custom and daily life; kinship and gender; language and names; borders; and building cultures not your own with care.

Place and time

Land and climate, the built world, maps, place as character, history and memory, change over time, calendars, research for real places and periods, and anachronism.

Rules, technology, and magic

The rules every world has; access, limits, and cost; hard and soft systems; the speculative premise; following consequences; and testing a world under strain.

The world on the page

Exposition at the moment of need, viewpoint as filter, the world inside the scene, layers of revelation, invented words, and maps, glossaries, and documents.

The world across the book

A world the story changes, the world bible, worlds across a series, the world in revision, and the master tools, from World Bible Setup to a final World Integrity Check.

Also inside

40 worksheets and tools, and six reference pages, including a working vocabulary, questions every society answers, research sources, and two troubleshooting tables.

Six case studies: Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, Louise Erdrich's The Round House, Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, and Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.

All items are shipped within 48 hours unless otherwise noted.

We accept returns of unused products within 30 days of delivery. To initiate a return, contact us at help@saintvioletcreative.com.

Digital items are non-refundable.

Saint Violet is an independent creative studio for artists and writers building a more durable creative practice through tools, publications, workshops, and systems for attention, experimentation, and actual follow-through.

The World Building Workbook

$15.00

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