If you think you do, the answer is “yes.” If you are not sure, the answer is “probably yes.” If you are doing a series, then yes. One-off short story? Probably not, but be careful. Short stories have a habit of becoming a series, even a series of novels, if you are not careful. Or at least that happens to me.
My first world guide started because of keeping track of military ranks and character markings. The Azdhagi have various markings in shades of green and brown (think large lizards that can be bipedal if needed) and have neck spines. I had to do something to be sure that everyone looked the same at the end of the story as at the beginning, and was the same relative size. Then it expanded to territories, world lay out, building lay out, and … And that was my first series.
Granted, I came to fiction from academic history, and was used to making detailed notes so that I didn’t get information mixed up in articles and monographs, or in book reviews. Note taking was second nature, once I kicked myself in the rump and started doing it. I tend to use a separate Word document, and fill in things as they appear, or occur to me. That also gives me a baseline reference that I can work from later in the series, if the story turns into a series. Again, it is what I’m used to from Day Job and other things, and toggling back and forth between documents doesn’t bother me.
Some software packages like Scrivner have something similar built in, so you can make your guide as you go. I’ve not tried that package yet, but some people love it.
What needs to be in a guide? Character names and descriptions, possibly relationships to other characters. Places of import, especially if they are purely imaginary. Deities if you have more than one, and their characteristics. Words in a language if your characters use a non-English or non-earth language. (I include common phrases, so I can cut and paste if I don’t recall something off the top of my head.)
What might also be in a guide? Cultural notes, exchange rates, folklore, naming conventions, shorthand rules for magic or ranks in society, historical notes (monarchs and reigns?), government notes (who is in charge of the colony world? Is there a council that advises him/her/it/whatever or does the viceroy/vice president/governor general take orders straight from the home world and pass them straight to the local admins? Ranks?) Language history notes, wildlife names … In short, anything you might need to keep track of to be sure that you refer to it correctly in later stories, or you don’t change history and have to do major retconning on the fly. \
I’m having to back-engineer some things for the Merchant and Shakari worlds, things I should have put in the guides and didn’t because I knew them so well. Oops. Don’t be me.
Mad Genius Club 
11 responses to “World Guides – Do I Need One?”
If there was a way for me to either write world guides (for profit) or create pre-packaged worlds (for profit) to authors, I think I’d be pretty good at that.
Doing it for role-playing games is tricky because you have to keep your hands loose on the reins in places for players and GMs, and also the market has gotten rather…kitchy…the last few years.
I make lists.
I always have a character list, and frequently have others.
The trick is that the story will reveal to me what I need to have a list for. Often after I have to go hunting back through the story to find all the past references.
I most definitely required an extensive “cast” list for the Luna City series, as there were about a dozen main characters, and thrice that many secondary characters who occasionally had to move front and center. Complete names, sometimes their parents/children’s names, profession, where they lived in Luna City, what kind of car they drove… even the era in which they lived, as I have ventured into the past decades in Luna City…
I have lists for my two biggest ‘verses, but I’m getting enough stories in a couple of others that I really need to start putting together various lists for them. The real fun is the cyberpunk ‘verse, because so much of the action takes place in cyberspace, particularly in the storyscapes of various games (one of the major protagonists is a game developer with one of the biggest full-sensory-immersion VR game companies), so geography can be rather flexible. So I have to keep track of when various expansions were done on various games, when areas were redesigned or removed altogether for better game balance, etc.
Chronology has been my biggest worry for most of my series because I do a lot of multi-generational stuff. Excel is usually the tool I turn to, for that and conlangs; Scrivener for everything else. Pink and turquoise space regency parlour generated by Midjourney? Into Scrivener. Real world photo of full sized Unicorn Gundam mockup to give me some sense of scale for the steampunk mecha in Hunter Healer King series? Into Scrivener.
One I as a reader wish more authors used is a simple timeline, Who, Where and When so that the author can keep the chronology straight.
Stick it in a spreadsheet and set up some pre-configured sorts and quick selection choices so it is easy to use and data entry isn’t a chore.
Amazon’s formatting process sometimes causes problems with that. If we put character lists and timelines at the start of the book, we (authors) can get dinged for too much padding of page count. That’s not as much of a red flag for their approval process as it once was, but it can still cause difficulties. Print is a different story, yes.
Traditional publishers fall under different rules than do indie.
Ah, not for me and not in the book.
For the author, to have handy while writing so things stay in order and folks don’t need to be at two places at once.
OK. I’m sorry I misunderstood. There’s a side conversation going on at a different site about adding material to books, and that popped to mind. My bad!
Some readers really like those.
How does Amazon feel about website links (maybe off of your author page there) from inside the book to that sort of material?
I think, as long as it is in the back, it should be OK. There are a lot of nonfiction books with links to images and maps that are on websites, because of the file sizes.