Last week we talked about when you have characters that need a story. What if you have a setting in need of characters and a plot? Well, you might write Dune. OK, that’s not exactly how Frank Herbert created the novel, but not so far off. Or you might do like David Weber, who was accused of writing a series just so he could have a sea battle.

One of the easiest things is to have someone explore it. Now, this could be just that, a character sent to a new place to study it, reporting back what he observes and the different challenges he encounters. This can work for a novella, and there are some older works that are exactly this, where the plot is “Will they make it to the pick-up point without being eaten” and “What strange thing will they find on the way?” If you do it well enough, you could probably find a market for it. Especially if you want to show readers your world, then think about what sort of person would be walking through it, and try. You might begin with a short story, so you don’t have to worry about all the details of “Why was Jake sent here in the first place?” and just go in media res. Lovecraft’s The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath has been categorized as this kind of story, although there’s a lot of argument over that.

Another possibility is to ask “OK, what is the sort of person who would be here, and what are they doing?” You have a city, ancient and prosperous, on the border between a steppe and a coastal forest region. How does it survive? What sort of people are there? Who is doing what, and what difficulties does she encounter?

In a way, you are a GM (Game Master) using a “canned” world, and tossing guinea pig—, er, players and non-player-characters into it. If you are like me, your “players” will go their own way, even though supposedly you created them. So you have this city, and it survives on trade between the steppe peoples and river traders, and the usual sort of merchants, farmers, craftsmen, and so on populate the city. What happens if … Or you have a craftsman’s apprentice who really wants to travel the river and see if a story is true, or you have a river trader’s indentured sailor who wants to gain freedom by staying in the city for a year and a day. What will he see, do, learn, have to avoid …? In the process, you will explore the city for your readers.

I tend to build worlds within scenarios, then add characters of the sort that seem to fit the story that wants to be told. I haven’t yet had a world appear and then demand a story to go with it.

Yet.

Yet …