The quiet craft laws that make an invented world feel lived-in: give it rules and keep them, let power cost something, grow culture from constraint, and build only what the story will touch. Wonder is a discipline, not an accident.
6 chapters · 24 rules
This is a plain, affectionate guide to building worlds that hold their weight on the page. It is not a bestiary of orcs and airships, nor a system for generating trade routes, but the durable rules that tend to make an imagined place feel real: internal consistency, honest consequence, culture that grew from somewhere, and restraint that trusts the reader. Each law is stated simply, argued honestly, and marked with the places it bends. The aim is a world that serves the story instead of smothering it.
For anyone building a place that does not exist and wants it to feel like it could: novelists and short-story writers in fantasy and science fiction, game masters, screenwriters, and worldbuilders who keep filling notebooks and wondering why the world still feels thin. It suits beginners raising their first continent and old hands who would like a checklist to argue with.
Added the chapters on the iceberg and on the world serving the story, plus new rules on side effects, material logistics, and internal cultural variety. Rewrote the magic chapter after workshop questions about cost and limits.
Initial publication — four chapters on consistency, systems, culture, and the reader's belief.