Worldbuilding vs. Settings: What's the Difference Between Them?

Many writers confuse worldbuilding and settings. However, these two literary elements are slightly different from each other, as one is more detailed than the other. Let's briefly go over what these differences are and how writers can use them in their fictional stories and books.

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WORLDBUILDING: WHAT IS IT?

Worldbuilding is the creation of a story, imaginary, or physical world in which your characters live and have their being. It's the art of writers making up a make-believe earth or other exotic planet for their stories and is mostly common among fantasy novels and books.

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THE 3 FORMS OF WORLDBUILDING

There are three different forms of worldbuilding which are the following listed below:

1. THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

This form includes the climate, atmosphere, geographical features, and other environmental details that makes up the world, such as animals, plants, terrains, countries, islands, etc.

2. THE STORY WORLD

This second form is based on the society, governmental structures, systems, ways of life, belief systems, religions or cultures, history, and times/eras, etc.

3. YOUR CHARACTERS' INDIVIDUAL WORLDVIEWS

This third form includes your characters' worldviews and perceptions in how they experience the story world. As we humans do, your characters should also have different ways of self-expression, opinions, ideologies, thoughts, and feelings during their interactions with other characters and in their environment.

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SETTINGS: WHAT ARE THEY?

Settings are the places that set the scenes in stories, which helps to create a believable, fictional world or environment. There are many different kinds of settings, but typically there are two different types of settings, which are exterior settings and interior settings.

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THE 2 TYPES OF SETTINGS

1. INTERIOR

This type of setting is obviously all of the inside places that characters can actually enter into, such as buildings, restaurants, hospitals, movie theaters, schools, and banks.

2. EXTERIOR

This type of setting is obviously all of the outside places where characters interact within the great outdoors, such as jungles, city parks, cemeteries, football stadiums, and beaches.

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CLOSING REMARKS

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Worldbuilding and settings are sometimes story elements that writers blend together. From this blog post, I hope you've gained a clearer perspective in how these are actually two different things. The simplest way to distinguish between settings and worldbuilding is to remember the fact that settings "set the scene," while worldbuilding "creates the world." If you can remember that you should be able to easily tell the difference between these two similar, literary terms. All right, this ends this post. If you found it helpful to you, please, give it a (heart❤️), take part in the poll 🤔, and share your thoughts or comments 💬 below.)

Happy Writing! 😊✍🏽💻

🤔Hey, writers, are worldbuilding and settings two different things to you?

• 👍Yes
• 👎No