Personal Limitations: Your World

Storyworld: A writing term referring to the world in which characters live, work, play, and move about.

Storyworld can be small-town America, first century Jerusalem, or a galaxy far, far away. It encompasses everything from geography to politics to economics to culture to a location’s history. In short, storyworld is any time or place to which the imagination can take you, one of the main pillars of good writing.

Why is storyworld so important? Because, quite simply, everyone lives somewhere—even if it’s in a vaccum, like astronauts and dust bunnies—and that somewhere affects who you are. This is true for fictional characters, and it is true for real people.

So during the next couple weeks we will consider our “storyworld”—specifically location and occupation—and its influence on our limitations in fiction.