Start with the big ideas and then zoom in from there.
Worldbuilding can really feel like an endless notebook filled with cool ideas, scattered names, half-made maps, and no clean start. I'm starting this little guide to help fix that. In this blog, and future ones to come, I'll be going over genre + theme, conflict, and setting. I'll link them all back here so everything connects. For now, we're keeping it simple. I want to talk about a fast way to start building a world that's coherent, easy to explain, and easy to expand.
I've been thinking about this worldbuilding pyramid for a while now. The reason why I came up with it is because I wanted to make something that was very simple that people could follow. I find a lot of guides out there that are very comprehensive and give out a lot of detail and explanation for things, but it's easy to summarize everything that you want for a story in just a few sentences.
I don't want you to think that this is something new or something unique. A lot of people who are sharing their experiences with worldbuilding will give you something very similar to what I'm sharing with you. I'm just sharing what works most with me as I've discovered more about how I like to worldbuild, and perhaps that might help you as well. I've been worldbuilding for over 10 years for dozens of different D&D campaigns, and I've also created a handful of really unique and fun-to-play worlds on Friends & Fables.
This pyramid is what I find works best for me:
You can absolutely worldbuild in any order, but if your goal is to learn quickly and start clean, this order saves you from building “details without direction.”
The genre and theme are what everything sits on.
Genre is the category of experience your world sits in.
Theme is the lens your world looks through—the ideas it keeps returning to.
You want to write one to two sentences that summarize your world's vibe. If you struggle with formatting it, then here's a simple way that you could do it:
That's pretty much all there is to it. If the foundation is clear, everything you build later will feel like it belongs.
If your foundation isn't good, then everything above it will start to crumble. You'll find that your conflict feels random or mismatched. Sometimes your setting could become cool scenery instead of a meaningful stage. Your details also might not click together because there's no shared direction.
Once your foundation is locked in, you want to add the engine, which is also known as conflict. Conflict is the pressure that forces choices and creates motion in the world. It's the reason anything changes, the reason factions form, and the reason stories naturally appear.
What you want to do is write one clean sentence that defines the big problem. If you have trouble with the format, then it can look something like this:
It's best to keep this broad. You're defining the engine of change, not writing out the entire plot.
The reason why this sits on top of genre and theme is because you need genre and theme to know what kind of conflict fits.
If your world is harsh and grounded, then the conflict should also feel harsh and grounded. If your world is strange and hopeful, then the conflict can be dangerous without killing the sense of wonder. If your genre is Sci-Fi, then whatever conflict you build traditionally shouldn't have anything to do with magic. Conflict should reinforce your foundation and not fight it.
The next thing you want to do is choose your setting, which is the place where the conflict plays out. Setting isn't just where things are. It's the stage that makes your conflict generate the most story hooks. Your foundation, which is your genre and theme, defines what the world feels like. Your conflict will create the pressure. Your setting is where the pressure becomes the problems people can't ignore.
Where would this conflict create the most story hooks, given my genre and theme?
Pick the place first and everything else can come later.
Even though setting sits at the “top” of the pyramid, you can develop it in a clean, descending way:
This is the world frame. Don’t overbuild it.
This is the space around your core story zone.
This is where you go deep first.
“[WRITE YOUR STYLE STATEMENT HERE]”
“[WRITE YOUR BIG PROBLEM HERE]”
Worldbuilding gets easier when you build upward with intent. You want to start with the foundation that I've mentioned in this blog. That's your genre and theme, your conflict that creates the engine, and your setting that turns the conflict into real hooks. From there, you're going to develop the setting in scale: global → regional → local.
That’s the real foundation, and it’s more than enough to get started.