I love creating fictional worlds. It's so fun. You know just how everything works, you can make up your own rules and customs, and you can show glimpses of that world to your readers. When you're reading about a fictional world, it's so cool whenever a character says "when frogs grow fur" instead of "when pigs fly". It gives the story and the world that extra bit of depth -- whereas if you just explain every thing that every character says, or use normal sayings and real-life flora and fauna, the story and the world starts to lose it's mysteriousness and appeal. The world also looses appeal and my respect if you just slap on a different animal and have your character say "when hedgehogs fly", or "oh foxdung!" (I might add that both of those sayings are from the Warriors series and utterly lame). At that point, it would probably just be better if your characters just said "oh crap" and "when pigs fly".
Moving the focus on from different sayings to different plants or dishes, it's also cool and funny if your character gags at the mention of some foreign dish that they dislike, or makes a poultice of Hertease, Bristlebloom and Icetem leaves for a burn. Your not sure what these herbs are, or maybe you've got a faint idea, and you know what these sayings mean, yes, but everything is different and strange. Just like in cultures in real life, there are different sayings, foods, animals, dress codes and styles in every part of the world. Adding this into your story really gives everything more depth and makes your readers a bit curious as to what things are.
I, personally, love making up herbs and medicinal plants -- you can get away with lazy combo-names like Paperbloom or Spinewort, and you get to make up what the plant looks like, what it does, and where it grows (and since I'm a really bad herbalist in real life, it's fun to be able to know exactly what this does and what this character would use to cover a wound without doing a ton of googling and bashing-my-head-on-my-desk-ing).
I like less, however, making up animals. It can be a bit of a pain and plus, if you really have something against squirrels or geese, don't you want your main character to be able to eat them for dinner? (That squirrel might not taste as good as that goose, though).
In my opinion, a mixture of real-life animals and made-up things is just as good or better, and a whole lot easier to invent.
Nonetheless, in order of importance according to my opinion, the best and less-best made-up things to put into an alternate universe:
Sayings and swearwords! Take various sayings from real life and re-word them, or make up new sayings for things that you think need them.
Herbs and plants! Unless you are a master herbalist yourself, or willing to go through all the work of actual research (oh god the horror D:), then I recommend making up your own plants for ease of writing and whatever else. Especially if your character is an alchemist or an herbalist or a healer. Plus, it's just fun making up plants!
Building styles and fashion styles! Now, I'm not really one of those people who's really into fashion, so I prefer to design clothing for species or climates that focus mainly on what is logical for that species or climate to have or need in their clothing. Anthropomorphic, rabbit-like, fighting species? They'll need armor for their ears, and a fairly open-faced helm to let them use their entire range of vision. A culture living in a thick pine forest surviving mainly off of game? They'll need camouflaged, warm, hard-to-snag (no fluttery capes or needless laces), hard to penetrate clothes.
Then there's the buildings, of course. That anthropomorphic, rabbit-like species? They'd live in hobbit-like houses close together and probably farm wheat and oats and carrots and the like. That pine-forest-dwelling hunter society? Big, log-cabin-like houses made of pine and cob, with underground root cellars for storing whatever food they farm and any salted or smoked meat they have. See? It's fun!
Animals, etc.! Now, I actually kind of like having real-life animals like rabbits, deer, salmon and whatever else in my stories, which is why this is so low on the list, but it can be quite cool to have a mix of real and imaginary -- or completely imaginary -- animals in a world. It is, however, also a big pain and that's another one of the reasons why I don't usually do this. I also don't know much about animals and all their bones and organs, so I'm afraid my species wouldn't come out that realist-seeming, and I could actually probably describe how to gut a rabbit better than any imaginary animal I invent, just because I don't really know what organs it would have anyway.
And there's probably some other things I'm forgetting, but that's about it.
Now, the next step (though it probably should have been the first), figuring out the very most basic basics of your world. What does it look like? What's the climate? What people or creatures inhabit it?
The answer is easy. Whatever you want. And whatever you want is generally what you like writing about.
Like cold weather? Cold planet or place.
Like rainforests? A wet, lush foresty planet or place.
Like big skies and cacti? A dry, deserty or plainsy planet or place.
Then you just narrow things down some more...
Like cold weather but hate empty, barren places? Cold planet or place with lots of cold-resistant plants and animals, or lots of stone formations, or anything, really.
Like rainforests but hate man-eating insects and spiny plants? A wet, lush foresty planet or place with tall trees, little undergrowth and very little bugs. Or, even better, a bunch of insect-eating birds, small mammals or lizards.
Like big skies and cacti but don't like empty, quiet places? A dry, deserty or plainsy planet or place with lots of unafraid and loud animals.
From there, you can narrow things down even more, and then start to flesh out your world. Is there anything you're certain you want to include in this place? Farmers, travelers, knitters, fortune tellers... it doesn't matter as long as you want to write about it.
The nice thing about creating a world from scratch, or mostly from scratch, anyway, is that you can include anything you want. Anything at all! If you don't like hackers, then there's a strong digital police force. If you don't like snakes, there are none. If you don't like horses, you never have to mention one again in all your life as a writer -- your main character could ride a pig or an aardvark back and forth throughout their journeys.
You should always write what you want to write, and in my opinion, creating your own world really helps you to do that. Unless you want to write about the real world. That's fine. But for those of you with a strange love for writing about this, that, those and the other thing (but those things don't really have that much of a connection in real life), then why not combine everything you love into one world, fully controlled by you and made custom for you, with anything you don't want edited out with the wave of your imaginary hand?
Plus, making up plants is really fun. Trust me.
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