Where Am I (And When)?

One of the most important steps in worldbuilding is determining what time and where the story is taking place. Is your story set in an old western town? Does this town hide a dark secret; one that all of the residents seem to know, but won’t dare speak? Or is it next to a booming gold mine that’s overrun with bandits constantly trying to steal from it? What about a seaside kingdom in the 1300s? Do the prim and proper nobles have large properties by the water? Or is that where the poor fishermen live in cramped stilt-houses? It’s necessary to think about details when you’re deciding when and where to set your story.

What Time Is It?

Let’s go over time periods first. As I’m sure any author that has written any work of historical fiction will tell you, nailing the time period can be quite difficult. Even if you do a ton of research, there are often gaps in historical records, and the farther back you go, the less information you have. Of course, perfection isn’t a requirement, even if you’re going for realism. If you have a compelling plot and characters, any historical inaccuracies—unless they’re very obvious, like an Ancient Egyptian having a cellphone—can mostly be ignored by your readers.

Genres like fantasy and sci-fi have a bit more wiggle room in terms of time periods and timelines. A lot of historical fantasy books in particular like to set their stories in some vague period during medieval times, often with some mixed influences from other eras as well. However, most people don’t really care, as any real historical accuracy goes out the window the moment you have dragons flying around. Sci-fi tends to be even more loose than historical fantasy, since usually sci-fi stories are more “what-if” scenarios, which can be anything you imagine it to be.

Location, Location, Location

One of the most important parts of story and world building is the setting. The story’s setting can immediately tell the reader a lot about what type of tale they’re in for and gives them an idea of what your world is going to be like. Setting can also serve as a good introduction for your characters. A good example is the start of The Killing Floor by Lee Child, which opens on the main character, Jack Reacher, sitting in a small-town café. The, at first, seemingly mundane atmosphere helps introduce the reader into the world and mind of Jack, firmly grounding the audience before the story starts to ramp up with action.

Similarly, you can also use characters to flesh out a location. Imagine for a moment that you go to a museum that has a ton of perfectly preserved artifacts, beautiful paintings, amazing statues, etc., but you just sit and play on your phone the whole time that you’re there. Are you going to remember any of the fantastic displays that the museum had? Probably not, right?  The same thing happens with characters and setting. You can describe a place in as much detail as you want, but if a character just stands and does nothing, it’s likely not going to leave much of an impact on the reader. If you’re struggling to add detail to a place, a good way to help with that it to imagine a character in that place. What can they do? What do they see? How do they feel?

Consistency

Whether you’re determining where the story is taking place, or when, the most important thing is being consistent. There are exceptions, such as a time travelling story, but your reader still needs to have a sense of where and when the characters are supposed to be, otherwise they just get confused. For example, The Witcher TV show has a storyline that jumps between the past, present, and future, but the show cleverly uses the character of Jaskier, or Dandelion, as a marker for when scenes are happening in the present, helping the audience to follow along with the winding tale.

Some authors draw maps of their worlds so that they, and the audience, can remember where everything is. This is strictly necessary, but you should still have some sense of how far one place in your world is to another, if climates are different in certain areas, etc. You don’t want to say that a town is the mountains to the north, only to later say that that same town is in the middle of a jungle. Similarly, if you say that the old saloon is the town hotel and bar, if the characters pass through that same town again, it shouldn’t now only be a bar. You never want to leave your audience wondering where the characters are supposed to be.

But, no matter what type of story you’re writing, you should ask yourself: What kind of technology does my world have? What clothing do they wear? What’s their architecture like? These are just some of the many important things to consider when trying to establish when and where your story is taking place

Casey Simpson

Casey Simpson is a college student and writer living in Ottawa, Ontario. Initially, Casey wanted to be an animator, earning a diploma in Drawing Foundations - Animation & Illustration at Algonquin College in 2022, before deciding to pursue their life-long love of writing in higher education, returning to the same institution to take the Professional Writing course, which they are graduating from in 2026. They started out writing short stories, then later shifted to writing for newspapers, journals, and websites. They have a variety of works—from dark tales plagued with tragedy, to fun, punchy blog posts.