Activity

Most of the time when I’ve written in historical fiction the stories are set in the real world, so more research and less world building was needed.

The one that I did create from scratch I didn’t do a lot of planning to begin with, as I was writing a bunch of short stories that didn’t all fit together in a coherent form. After those stories were finished I began to flesh out the world a little more, mostly focusing on the politics since I wanted to write a novel about one of the rulers. So I developed this age-old feud between two of the governors of the different regions. The feud set the stage for the overthrow I planned to take place in the novel.

I never actually returned to that world however so I don’t know how much I would have added, but that’s the main practical world-building experience I have in shaping that world’s history. That doesn’t include the dozens of worlds I’ve created in my imagination that have never seen the light of day, but that’s another thing all together!