World building can seem daunting, even if you have been doing it for some time. The hardest part can be just knowing where to start. Creating an entire world takes a lot longer than the seven days it was supposed to have taken that God (not-so-)dude in the bible. The role of creating everything from key characters to entire cultures, and from magic systems to the very laws of physics lies solely with you. You can create something familiar based upon the real world, or something completely alien. The key is to maintain consistency within your world. Everything you create should be explainable within the laws that govern your world.
Among the best places to start is with a good understanding of why you are world building in the first place: is it for a role playing campaign, an epic fantasy trilogy, or purely for fun. This will help inform the creative process as you forge your unique fantasy world.
You may then want to start thinking about the sort of stories you want to tell. There is little point designing continent spanning kingdoms and mountain strong holds in any detail if you want to set your stories on the high seas. Once you understand the type of stories that you want to tell, you can prioritise world building to the things that will enhance your story telling and make your life easier when you sit down to write (or host a game). For example, if magic doesn’t feature heavily in your story there may be little point in designing intricate magic systems.
Many people will start with a very rough map. Don’t spend too much time on this, as you will likely revise it many times throughout the process. Just decide where your action will take place and build out from there. It may be helpful just to start in the middle of a page and then work outwards, adding important land marks as you go. If your story/campaign will begin on a frontier of the known world (I thinking somewhere like Crydee in Feist’s Magician), you may want to mark that towards the edge of the page and place things like the capitol nearer to the middle. For example: there is no point putting a coastal village in the the middle of the page if half the page is then going to end up being empty sea. Of course, in later revisions you can reorientate your maps.
Perhaps most important of all is to begin. Start thinking about what kind of fantasy world you would want to explore, and then create it. There is likely no magic formula that will work for everyone, but it is important to prioritise the process. What ever you do, don’t give up. Sure take breaks, but SAVE EVERYTHING! I have countless loose pieces of paper in boxes and folders, as well a word docs and google docs. Keep it all and try to develop and efficient filing system (something I’m yet to master). You may feel daunted by the task or simply unhappy with what you have created, never the less, KEEP IT. With fresh eyes you may be surprised at how much you like what you have done and it will save you countless hours work in the future. Revisions are much much easier than starting over.
And remember, when you are in the Fantasy World Forge you are a god/dess who is master of time and space. Nothing need ever be set in stone until it has been published. You are the creator and destroyer of your world. It’s a difficult hurdle to get over but ultimately you can change anything in your world. Tolkien’s works went through countless revisions, there were even gnomes in some of his early histories which in the end were phased out and replaced by a race of elves (sorry I can’t remember which). But like Tolkien keep your original notes for future reference.
My world looks nothing like it did in it’s earliest forms. And even now the geography has a level of fluidity to it. Being flexible and not to precious about your creation will make the entire process run a lot smoother. For me, it was learning more about geography that forced me to rethink my maps. I had a very difficult time visualising how certain mountain ranges would have formed via plate tectonics. Sure I could have just said “It was magic,” but that would not have been consistent with how magic works in my world, nor with my vision of creating a fantasy world based on the concept of ‘natural evolution, plus magic.’ In order for my world to remain logically consistent it was imperative that I could explain natural features in terms of natural laws. So things had to change.
Okay, so I went off topic a bit. But I hope this gives you some idea on where you might start world building. Knowing the what and why of world building; keeping your creation logically consistent; and always remaining flexible to change, should give you a reasonably solid foundation upon which to forge your own fantasy world.
Some resources you that might find useful:
Fantasy World Forge 