I am putting this here, it is part of a series I am doing with my fantasy and sci-fi writers group to help new writers build a solid world foundation for their stories to take place in. 

I: Oceans, Rivers and Mountains…Oh my!

When designing a fantasy, sci-fi or even a modern world setting you need to have a foundation from which all else comes from, and that is starting with a map. You can draw this basic world map on anything, but remember that our world is not some neatly regular place. Fjords, islands, bays, inlets and peninsulas all define coastlines around the world.

Mountain ranges, deserts, plains, rolling hills and deep vales fill are part of the menagerie that is Earth. These features are topography, which originated in ancient Greece and continued in ancient Rome, and means the detailed description of a place.

Topography in the modern era concerns itself with determining the position of any feature or more generally, any point in terms of both a horizontal coordinate system such as latitude, longitude, and altitude,  it also helps in the identifying (naming) of features and recognizing typical landform patterns.

Looking at a USGS  maps, they show not only the contours, but also any significant streams or other bodies of water, forest cover, built-up areas or individual buildings (depending on scale), and other features and points of interest. When building a world, I suggest looking at these maps to see how nature places features. The more real you can design your world, the more believable you can make it for the reader.

II: Technology; Or how advanced is my world anyways?

What is technology anyways? Well technology (from the Greek τέχνη, techne, "art, skill, cunning of hand"; and -λογία, -logia). It in effect means the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, and methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve the solution to an existing problem, achieve a goal or a specific function. It also refers to the collection of these tools, including the machinery, any modifications or arrangements and procedures.

Whew, that is quite a mouthful isn’t it?

So what does that mean for you? Well, this is where your vision for your world begins to gain its structure. It will help define your characters and their place in the world. Logically give you the foundation to build empires and kingdoms, with a reasonable degree of authenticity that goes beyond the lame, “Uh, because I wrote it that way.”

This technological basis is how you will be able to differentiate between kingdoms, empires and civilizations. If you have an Empire based off the Romans, and they encounter a nomadic people based off the Celts, you have a significant technological difference. The organizational ability to build structures and field a standing army well trained and equipped with standard weaponry gave them a great advantage over the chaotic warrior cultures they faced. That is until those cultures learned the secrets of their enemy.

These technological developments are seen in settlements, towns and villages. Most of these places grew up organically in meandering ways. In our world roadways where in use long before and villages and towns grew around them haphazardly, where often they offered simple services such as a smith, a tanner, perhaps lodging and food, all near a fresh water oasis. Larger towns are built near waterways to facilitate trade with other far off towns or villages, or even the homeland of the conquering peoples who founded or took over an existing town.

Larger towns and cities have walls up to 60-feet tall. Grand temples and statues craved out of hard marble and granite. Perhaps pyramids and sphinxes abound, all these things take technology to measure, cut, haul and dress the stones before placing them in their final position. The Great Wall of China wasn’t done by two guys and a donkey, it took planning and organization, in effect technology to build it.

However, they all have some basic degree of technology in them. Smiths who construct plows and farming tools, leather crafters who make shoes and clothing, weavers who process wool and perhaps cotton to make the clothes the people in your world wear. The stereotypical tavern has a degree of technology as well; alcohol is not something that just happens. There is a process involved and that means a level of technology.

Now do you want your world to have guns? Perhaps not but remember fireworks were around for a long time before cannon and firearms were developed.