Writer's Blog: Urban Sprawl Worldbuilding

A note: This is a Goblin Vault series I plan to keep updated on a roughly monthly or twice-a-monthly basis, in which I... basically talk about my writing style and methods and practices. I thought it'd be fun, and it makes a good thing to write about when I can't get myself to write actual smut.

What are the Cloistered Lands?

Well, I thought of the name "Cloistered Lands" one morning when I was on the porcelain, thinking about what I'd been writing the night before. It came from a central idea I'd been playing with for a while now: That the world I was working with had gods that were dead, and nobody knew why. And nobody wanted to know why.

The concept of the missing gods had been around since the first chapter, in which Esca swore "by the Reality" and truly meant it. I had already been writing these stories for about a year before I even thought to name the world they were set in.

So, let's talk about worldbuilding.

There are more than a few ways to construct a fantasy (or sci-fi) setting. Arguably the most popular technique for worldbuilding is what we'll be pretentious and call "Indus Valley worldbuilding".

The Indus Valley Civilization (aka, the Harappan Civilization, named for their largest city) was one of the first urban centers of humanity, erected by residents of the Afghan-Pakistani-Indian area. We know very little about them, as the script has never been deciphered, but we do know that this city was meticulously planned.

Rather than, say, build a couple critical houses and expand from there, as we did with many American cities, the city of Harappa conformed to clear grids, centering around key locations such as the bath and the grain stores. This made it one of the first examples of true city planning. They thought, and then built.



In the Indus Valley method of worldbuilding, a world is constructed from foundations, then explored in the story proper. I list the key countries, the key races, the key conflicts, the magic system, the history, and only then start writing. This method is highly organized, and leads to very tidy and ornate worlds.

And then there's the urban sprawl method.

In urban sprawl worldbuilding, you just start writing. At most, you have a very basic baseline—"this is a world with humans, some fantasy races, and a lot of D&D-type magic systems". You have a story concept, such as "man tries to travel through fey-infested forest", and you roll with it. You decide, "I think the lady he meets is an elf alchemist", and boom, now elves and alchemists exist. What are they? We'll find out together.

Essentially, you build your world like a rather poorly-planned city—first you have a couple houses and a church, then you think, "oh, we need a school", then you have to demolish some houses to make way for a park, and, whoops, we should probably stick a water tower somewhere, and so on.

Urban sprawl worldbuilding can also be called "spiral worldbuilding", though the latter is designed primarily for running D&D games. The term "spiral worldbuilding" comes from an RPGs writer known as Hannah L., whose explanation of it can be found here.

So, this is the method I use. Why do I use it? Why don't I build my setting like the Indus Valley Civilization, taking care not to contradict myself? To be sure, my method is a mess at times. Building a world like this means you're bound to encounter contradictions, or forget key details, unless you keep fastidious notes. For example:

I accidentally ended up creating three different species of "goblin"—fey goblins, goblin maids, and skittergoblins.I frequently forget how old the Evergreen Forest is actually supposed to be—does it predate the Kingdom?I am very careful when talking about Hell because I literally can't remember if I said it has seven layers, 666 layers, or infinite layers. I think seven, but I take pains to not contradict myself, just in case.

So why put myself through all this?

Well, it's more fun.

The product of urban sprawl worldbuilding is a vibrant, living world, where I can add things in at any time. Worldbuilding can involve Alrek and Larya visiting an elf town and being like, "oh, elves exist and they're the Mafia", or it can just involve Alrek mentioning offhandedly how "bitterbrew" (it's coffee) comes from the Northern Jungles (oh, and now there's another continent, whoops!).

For me, it can also involve answering questions from readers, though I tried to be careful about this—again, I don't want to risk contradicting myself on matters I'm rustier on.

Urban sprawl worldbuilding is a perfect fit for my style of story, in which there is much yet unexplored—and thousands of creatures yet undiscovered. Particularly with my decision to tell the story of Alrek and Larya somewhat jumbled up, this style of worldbuilding lets me tinker with the world as much as I need to as I go.

Mind you, it does give way to a tendency for exposition, as you may have noticed in my work. This is because whenever I go into an aside like that, I'm actually figuring out the information for the first time, and I instinctively want to write it down somewhere. This is where clips like this come from:



I have tried Indus Valley worldbuilding, and honestly, it's a bit dull for me. I enjoy the worldbuilding itself, but when I start writing, I feel limited, constrained. I feel like I don't know when to start talking about the world, and it almost feels boring to just start explaining what I already know.

The fun of fantasy to me is to be able to just say, "Alrek hadn't seen her since the incident at the Viridian Web", and suddenly I have made a weird location that I get to play around with (not to mention another story to tell someday). It makes writing an intensely and purely creative experience.

The city of Enterprise is a great example of this technique working out for me—Intrepid Pawns went eleven chapters before I even got around to naming the city and explaining how it was governed. I decided around the eleventh chapter that I wanted it to be a company town taken to extremes—a city literally owned by shareholders making war against a kind of fey that embody imperialism and conquest. In the twelfth chapter, I got the chance to explain this in greater detail.

If I had outlined Enterprise from the start, I wouldn't have been able to work that angle in—I would've already outlined it as a much more boring kind of town. Urban sprawl worldbuilding keeps my options open.

So how does this help me write smut?

Of course, we all have our own styles. This one is mine. But how does it impact my style of erotica? Is it especially suited to smutty stories?

Well, I will say, it gives me a lot of freedom in what kinds of creatures the characters can encounter, as well as what kinds of mind control they will face. The Cloistered Lands do have consistent rules they follow, of course, but I can add in a new kind of creature without having to worry that they aren't in my notes.

If I realize, "I want there to be an island ruled by flower-dazed drones", I can just throw it in there with an aside line. If I realize, "I want to write dommes who are giggly and honey-themed", I can just introduce a distant war between a silver mining corporation and a Thriae hive. If I want someone to get hypnotized by a crystal gem, I can just make up a type of mage or mystic that uses crystals for mind control.

Smut thrives on new things, creativity, surprises, and so for me, it works really well with urban sprawl. It allows me to make even really gratuitous smutty stories useful in building the world out—I got commissioned to write Bobbin getting fucked by a snake lady? Well, I can use this to expand a bit more on how fey magic works, and how demonic portals tend to function. Hell has a very "biotech" feel for me sometimes, and I got to incorporate big metal cables in the creation of the portal. That's a setting detail I mostly made up because I thought it'd make the scene look cooler, but now it's a key detail I will use later in other stories.

Final Advice

Urban sprawl worldbuilding is ideal when you want to build a world over the course of several years, creating as you go, rather than take time beforehand to set things up. If it's not your thing, that's fine! But I encourage you to give it a try if you like writing fantasy. It can be a blast.

Some parting tips:

Do take notes. Seriously. You'll regret not taking notes in a separate section or document every time you offhandedly reference a barony. That's what kills urban sprawl worlds—sagging under the weight of half-remembered details.Try to keep track of what your world means to you (as soon as you figure it out, anyways). If you have a strong theme or rule governing the world, always keep it in mind. Nobody is happy the gods are dead in my world. That's important. Once you make up a rule, you have to stick to it, so be careful when making rules.Keep things simple when you can. For my world, all languages are just based on directions. Western, Northern, Northwestern—it's just easier. The great mountain range is just called the Mountains. Vagueness is your friend.Resist the urge to infodump. Give enough hints to tantalize, but don't go overboard. Write down the excess info elsewhere. This is something I still struggle with, honestly.When telling stories set elsewhere in the world, try to keep a vague idea of when and where in relation to your other stories the new stories are taking place. I knew that Intrepid Pawns was occurring well out of Alrek's and Larya's way. That was enough.Rereading to find setting details is sometimes necessary, but always helpful. It can be fun, too, as you recover details you'd forgotten that you can still use. The Western Plains were like this with me.

What Next?

So, if you enjoyed this what should I write about next? Leave your comments below, and let me know if this column was fun or useful to you!

Writing character-focused smutHow Larya's character evolvedWriting smutty struggles with a lesson or a themeWriting sex scenes like fight scenesWhen to break the rules