Macroscale Worldbuilding

I recently wrote an article scratching the surface of worldbuilding. In that article, I identified two major types of worldbuilding and expressed that you should take the approach that makes sense for the story you are writing. 

In this article, I’m going to expand upon macroscale worldbuilding further.

What is Macroscale Worldbuilding?

As I touched on before, macroscale worldbuilding is creation of the large scale elements of your setting. It is the worldbuilding applied to the vast and sprawling parts of a setting - nations, continents, planets, solar systems and so on and so forth.

As a general rule, there are four components to macroscale worldbuilding: geography, ecology, culture and history.

Geography

Geography can be defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the nature and relative placement of places and physical features.” Essentially, what does a place look like and who lives there? 

Let’s use a fantasy continent as an example. The first step is simply to determine the general size and shape of the landmass (and any islands off its coast) and its relative location on its planet.

From there, you can start thinking about climate and biomes. If this continent’s lower part is near the equator and the top is a little below the arctic, the lower half is probably going to be warm and wet with frequent storms. The north, by contrast, will be a lot colder with less rain but the potential for snowy winters. The biomes you get will then largely reflect the climate with the sorts of plants and animals that show up being those that are adapted for those climates. Of course, chances are that a landmass will be a lot more varied than just cold and dry at the top and warm and rainy at the bottom. Consider other prominent features like mountains, volcanoes, deserts, particularly large rivers or inland seas and so forth. Such features will likely also have an impact on, and be impacted by, the climate. The people who live on your landmass will also have an influence on their surroundings.

Of course, the last part of geography is who lives on your landmass. Not so much their history or culture, but political boundaries and the locations of cities and villages. Where does one country start and their neighbours begin? Is there a sprawling empire on your continent? Or is it dotted with city states with a sparse population. Maybe it’s somewhere in the middle? Just keep in mind that, generally, cities and towns spring up in places with abundant resources and nations typically make a point of claiming nature’s bounties for themselves.

Ecology

Ecology could arguably be lumped in with geology - there’s certainly a strong link between the two - but I wanted to touch on it a bit as its own thing. Ecology is the creatures that live in any given location and their relationship with their surroundings - with the geography and with each other.

As a general rule, the creatures that live in any given place are adapted to that location. The rainy part of the continent will likely produce a lot of creatures who are capable of surviving regular floods - aquatic, amphibious or capable of climbing. The colder region in the north likely produces animals that are heavily furred, warm-blooded and capable of surviving with less regular feeding. Deserts are liable to have a higher percentage of cold-blooded creatures but they too would need to contend with fewer readily available resources. That sort of thing.

Keep in mind as well that everything eats something else to survive. What are the major food sources in any given area? What are the large herbivores? What are the prominent carnivores? Essentially, who eats what and who? 

How do your people interact with this ecological network? Are any of these creatures domesticated? Are any hunted? Are any particularly dangerous to people?

You don’t have to get into the weeds with this stuff. That would become microscale worldbuilding very easily and could easily get excessive even for that. But it’s a good idea to consider the basics - especially if your characters are going to travel through the wilderness a lot.

Culture

Now you know what kind of a place your setting is and who lives there, you can delve more into the inhabitants of your setting. Cultures are multifaceted and complicated and I could probably write an article on creating cultures all on its own. However, there are a few general things you can consider when creating the civilisations that dwell in your setting. Culture can be broken down into core elements:

Social Order

What are the politics of your culture? Is it a democracy? Monarchy? Meritocracy? How does your society function? People don’t often like to delve too deeply into politics but it is arguably the most important facet of any given civilisation - the people in charge, how those people are chosen and how that power is arranged and structured.

Consider as well how different demographics are placed within your society. Do any groups have more or less power by default? What are the social expectations and stigmas in this society that influence who holds (or does not hold) social power and respect.

Technology

The degree of technological advancement of a culture is also important. A lot of a culture is determined by its technology. Just think about the different jobs and hobbies that have been prevalent in any given time period in your own country’s history. Consider how big an impact the advent of the internet has had culturally both in your own culture and globally.

If your setting is a fantasy setting, I would also consider magic a part of this as its influence would be similar. I will have more to say on this in a different article.

Beliefs and Values

A culture’s traditions and beliefs shape much of its identity and behaviour. It’s important then to consider what the people of your culture believe in. Is the culture dominated by a singular religion? Are they multitheistic as a people? Perhaps they are largely secular instead or even devoted to science. Consider who or what your culture believes in and how they feel about other belief systems. What are the prominent myths and legends of your setting and do people still believe them? Consider how these beliefs influence their traditions, rituals and values.

Speaking of value, keep in mind what is important to your people and what social codes they follow. What behaviours, skills, talents and objects do they ascribe particular value or virtue to? How diverse are these values within society?

Arts and Entertainment

The way people choose to spend their time is an important part of any given culture as well. What art forms are prominent in your culture and what role do artists play in it? Art can be purely entertainment but it can also be profoundly important to religions and traditions or used as a means of commentary.

If art can be entertainment, what else is? Are there any prominent games, sports or events in your culture? How much value is ascribed to entertainment? A culture rich in wealth and resources probably has more entertainment available and more leeway to ascribe value to arts and entertainment. However, some nations place a lot more importance on productivity than enjoyment instead.

Surroundings

Culture is also typically influenced greatly by its surroundings. A nation that experiences frequent catastrophic storms and regular flooding might pray to an angry sky god to have mercy. A nomadic culture in the frosty north might place a huge cultural importance on fire or herding sheep. A nation in a desert rich in rare minerals might have a culture of miners who trade with that rainy southern people for water.

You should also keep in mind how these people feel about each other. Different cultures have different beliefs, values, situations and priorities. Cultures with a strong trade link might have mutual respect. A more advanced culture might look down on a more traditional one. A peaceful nation might fear their expansionist neighbours. These feelings towards those they share borders with would also shape and impact a culture.

History

A setting’s history can determine a lot about its current state of being. You don’t need to go crazy and write an entire fictional history book, but figure out the broad strokes. How did your civilization come to be? How ancient is it? What are the major historical events that have shaped your setting’s cultures - disasters, discoveries, wars etc.

Consider how those events have influenced how different cultures feel about themselves and each other and what changes they caused in your setting. Consider how different cultures might feel about the same events.

When to use Macroscale Worldbuilding?

In the previous article, I gave a simplified answer to this. In actuality though, this is a little bit of a trick question. The reality is that any given story and setting will probably build at both the macro and micro scale. 

Instead, it’s more a matter of where you should start, which you should prioritise and what the ratio of macro to micro should be. In truth, some of this just comes down to taste. If I’m working on creating a setting for a story, I generally just prefer to start from the macro scale and work down, getting more detailed about individual locations as I need to - to the extent that I need to. It just feels more logical to me. If you prefer to start small and work out, that’s also entirely valid.

I do think that, to an extent, the story you are trying to tell should also factor into your process though. As I have said, build the world you need. As a general rule, the grander the scale of your setting, the less detailed you need to be and the broader the strokes you can paint things in. If you’re telling a story on an interplanetary scale, you would have to spend half your life to fully detail the geography, ecology, cultures and history of every single continent on that planet from birth to the present of the story. But, if your characters spend a lot of time on one planet especially, you might put more energy into fleshing that part of the setting out.

Sticking with sci-fi, if your story takes place almost entirely on a single space station, you might want to put more focus onto the micro elements instead. Consider the internal culture of the station, its general layout and functionality and the people of note on that station. 

A similar logic can be applied to a fantasy story. If the story involves a lot of travelling through a vast world like Middle Earth or Westeros, you’ll probably want to put most of your focus onto things at the macro scale. But if your story is set almost entirely in one village, you’ll want to focus more on the details of life in that village and the people who live there. Otherwise, the village will feel empty and lifeless. Interestingly enough, a similar effect occurs to more vast settings when not enough attention is paid to things at the larger scale.

Conclusion

The general rule might be that the smaller the scale of the setting, the more detail you put into that setting. But that doesn’t mean that macroscale worldbuilding is without its detail and complexities.

There are no real set rules to building out a setting. I don’t even always one hundred percent follow my own advice since the context of the story can matter a lot. Nonetheless, it is my hope that this article can contribute to making worldbuilding a little easier to anyone who finds it a bit daunting and can help contextualise what focus makes the most sense for any given story.