Creating my own world... Options

[redsrock]

I was trying to decide on what NON-TES story I wanted to write next, and it donned on me that I have never actually tried to create my own personal world. So that is what I am going to do, but I need your help. Right now I am clueless as to where I want to go with story. I have the map already drawn out in "Paint", but I don't have a name for the 'world', nor do I have any idea on what the plot should be, or what creatures/species I should have.

Can anyone out there help a writer out? Have any of you all tried to create your own world? If so, what are the DOs and DONTs? What caused you to succeed/fail? I don't mean to sound offensive with the 'fail' part, but obviously there's a reason if you failed, and I want to know what it was so that I don't make the same mistake.

This project is pretty high on my list of things to accomplish right now, so I want to get things right. And even if you haven't tried to create your own world, I would still love to hear your opinions.

[MstrOfPppts]

I am not a writer myself, but just one tip of how I see things.

By creating the world, in my opinion, you should create a main land! Let land continue off the map. Let that place be undiscovered or just mention some people or even odd races coming from the other side of a group of mountains. Islands don't look good, neither do they work realisticaly especially if you wish to have a world like Earth. This is too much of an influence from games, where they take islands so they don't need to bother crating world across the oceans.

For example take the World of Warcraft, where the two "continents" are far bigger than your islands appear to be, but for my taste still far from beeing called a continent if you know what I mean ...

What I think of Islands is that world looks empty. Just the land drawn on the map and all the rest around the globe is water. If the world is round in your case at all, that is.

[kementari]

I am not a writer myself, but just one tip of how I see things.

By creating the world, in my opinion, you should create a main land! Let land continue off the map. Let that place be undiscovered or just mention some people or even odd races coming from the other side of a group of mountains. Islands don't look good, neither do they work realisticaly especially if you wish to have a world like Earth. This is too much of an influence from games, where they take islands so they don't need to bother crating world across the oceans.

You're assuming he wants a world that resembles Earth's, or even shares its ancient history. Remember, there's tectonic evidence for Pangaea on our planet - who's to say that another planet's volcanic and tectonic past might not have created a slew of islands rather than one gigantic continent that drifted over millions of years?

(PS: Even Warcraft's continent was originally a pangaea, remember. The Great Sundering caused the original continent, Kalimdor, to be ripped in half.)