For example, an author may create fictional currencies and refer to fictional books to add detail to their world. The designer can subsequently enhance the description of other areas in the world. The surrounding areas are then described in a lower level of detail, with description growing more general with increasing distance from the initial location. Prominent local individuals may be described, including their relationships to each other. This location is given considerable detail, such as local geography, culture, social structure, government, politics, commerce, and history. With the bottom-up approach, the designer focuses on a small part of the world needed for their purposes. It can, however, require considerable work before enough detail is completed for the setting to be useful, such as in the setting of a story. A world constructed from the top down tends to be well-integrated, with individual components fitting together appropriately. This approach might involve creation of the world's basics, followed by levels such as continents, civilizations, nations, cities, and towns. From there, they develop the rest of the world in increasing detail. In the top-down approach, the designer first creates a general overview of the world, determining broad characteristics such as the world's inhabitants, technology level, major geographic features, climate, and history. The official worldbuilding guidelines for Dungeons and Dragons refer to these terms as 'outside-in' and 'inside-out', respectively. Worldbuilding can be designed from the top down or the bottom up, or by a combination of these approaches. Methods ДЄ rendered constructed world as seen from outer space When before, writers sought to create a character that could sustain multiple stories, now they create a world that can sustain multiple characters and stories. In the 2000s, worldbuilding in film has increased in popularity. Media franchises are similar to constructed worlds but do not necessarily rely on them for example a media franchise such as Star Wars has a constructed world, while The Beatles, as a franchise, does not. Later analysis of fantasy worlds in the 1960s contextualized them in the medium or the narrative of the works, offering an analysis of the stories in the world, but not the world itself.

Tolkien sought to make his constructed world seem real by paying careful attention to framing his world with narrators and versions of stories, like a real mythology. Tolkien addressed the issue in his essay On Fairy Stories, where he stated that the 'Secondary World' or 'Sub-Creation' (the constructed world) is substantially different from the art of play-writing: 'Very little about trees as trees can be got into a play.' Constructed worlds may sometimes shift away from storytelling, narrative, characters and figures, and may explore 'trees as trees' or aspects of the world in-and-of-themselves. The creation of literary fictional worlds was first examined by fantasy authors such as George MacDonald, J. Lupoff's Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965). :вЂЉ160 The term has been used in science fiction and fantasy criticism since appearing in R.A. Eddington's Space Time and Gravitation: An Outline of the General Relativity Theory (1920) to describe the thinking out of hypothetical worlds with different physical laws. The term 'world-building' was first used in the Edinburgh Review in December 1820 and appeared in A.S. One example of such is the Star Wars Expanded Universe. A fictional universe with works by multiple authors is known as a shared world. For example, science fiction writer Jack Vance set a number of his novels in the Gaean Reach, a fictional region of space.

:вЂЉ106 Some authors of fiction set multiple works in the same world. Prior to 1900 most worldbuilding was conducted by novelists, who could leave imagination of the fictional setting in part to the reader. :вЂЉ104 World building exists in novels, tabletop role-playing games, and visual media such as films, video games and comics. The world could encompass different planets spanning vast distances of space or be limited in scope to a single small village. This may include social customs as well as invented languages for the world. Worldbuilding often involves the creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology and often if writing speculative fiction, different races. Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers.

Worldbuilding is the process of constructing a world, originally an imaginary one, sometimes associated with a fictional universe.

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