I want to be able to apply tools or methodologies to help ensure consistency in my world. For example:

Burning world

Imagine a planet with a land mass around the equator on which a great fire rages East to West at a rate allowing for regrowth by the time it gets back to it's starting point, so that it never ends. It would interrupt suspension of disbelief to see buildings on such a planet that are susceptible to burning and are too big to be built quickly in the time between one passing of the fire and the next. Similarly I would not expect to see trees taller than can grow in the allowed time, unless they have some way of surviving the fire. I would expect to see either short, young trees, tall spindly fast growing but young trees, or old trees with very thick spongy fireproof bark and a shape reflecting a growth pattern of repeatedly having the smaller branches burned off and regrowing from the older, thicker branches.

Slow quiet world

Imagine a world where travel is slow and there is no electronic telecommunication. A journey of more than 100 miles cannot be completed in a single day. In such a world foods available in a market should be either local or long lasting, in order for it to be realistic that they reached the market in sufficiently good condition to sell. Similarly news of events from the previous day should only cover a maximum radius of 100 miles, and for most news much less than that.

Methodically checking for inconsistency

While I can think of these specific examples, this doesn't assure me that a world I build is free of inconsistencies that don't happen to occur to me. How can I test a world as I build it to highlight inconsistencies? Are there approaches used in other fields that can be applied to consistency in world building?

I first came across the idea of a planet with an unending circling fire in the following book, which I have hidden in a spoiler block since the planet is introduced near the end of the book, although I wouldn't expect that knowledge to detract from enjoyment of the book:

The Player of Games
Iain M Banks

posted about 10 years ago

trichoplax‭

16 reputation 11 1 2 0