World building can be a great number of things. Fun, inspiring, difficult and frustrating. It all depends on the complicated nature of your world and how different it is from your normal every day world.

There are a great number of ways to world build and I’ll cover them in this space eventually. Today though, we’ll talk about what I call the Day in the Life method. It’s a simple method, that you take one of your characters and figure out what they’re doing throughout a single day. What it means and how they’re getting through it.

The method involves going through a single character’s day and figuring out things out from a ground level viewpoint. Think about your own life, where would you go for food either a restaurant or grocery store? What would you do for entertainment? For travel? What happens if you get hurt? You know the answers to this so your world is complete. Your characters need to have that same knowledge. It wouldn’t make sense for them to have to figure out where to go unless they were a fish out of water but even then they’re relying on characters who have the correct knowledge.

Okay, let’s take a character from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and go from there. Let’s say, Moist Von Lipwig, the gold suit wearing creator of paper money, a working post office, taxes and steam engines. We’re going to take him through his day and back to bed.

Moist wakes up in the greatest city on the Disc, Ankh Morpork in his bed at the post office. His breakfast is made for him by one of the golems and he eats a pretty normal breakfast of eggs, bacon and coffee. He heads out onto his day and is immediately robbed because it’s Ankh Morpork but he’s given a receipt for his taxes as the thieves’ guild are professionals. He doesn’t report that crime but he does think about picking up a book about karate to help him. He knows the nearest library is the one at Unseen University but it’s run by the Librarian, a wizard that was turned into orangutan and refuses to be changed back. He doesn’t want to deal with that, so he moves on.

Suddenly, he’s struck by a wagon being driven by a number of drunk dwarves. He’s injured and needs to inform the authorities of this. He informs Commander Vimes and the City Watch and they assist him on his way to the Lady Sybil Free Hospital where he’s assisted by some Igors. He leaves, is hungry again so he stops at Sham Harga’s House of Ribs on his way back home. Having accomplished nothing in his day. He returns home to his loving wife.

Now, in those two paragraphs, I can identify a number of things about the world that Moist lives in.

1. How he would defend himself
2. Who upholds the laws
3. Where he would go if he’s injured
4. Where he would go for knowledge
5. What kind of food exists in this world
6. What the dangers of the world are and how severe they are
7. A number of characters that can serve as focal points for most of these things

Moist is actually used somewhat to create other things for the characters to use. In Going Postal, we’re introduced to the clacks, a primitive email system, and he revitalizes the post office thus allowing for other characters to use it. Ditto, steam engines from Raising Steam. Sir Pratchett is just such an amazing writer that he’s able to turn his world building into stories in and of themselves.

Because that’s what a good writer does, turns the mundane into something extraordinary.