In case you haven’t heard, NaNoWriMo — the event known as National Novel Writing Month — is dead. But horror novels tell us that death can be, through science or magic, undone. The month long writing sprint has been resurrected in several shiny new incarnations listed here for your perusal.

If you’re not throwing yourself into a 50,000 word project, consider sharing a few thousand with Worldbuilding Wednesday.

From our worldbuilders and from around the internet:

Editor’s Picks 🖋️

Is Novel November the new NaNoWriMo? by Daley W.

“… the spirit of the movement lives on: the idea of writing a novel (approximately 50,000 words or 1,667 words per day) during the month of November isn’t going anywhere. In fact, new communities and platforms have taken up the cause in the wake of the NaNoWriMo shutdown.”

The Mythology Of The Batman by Ben Copeland

“Batman at his core is fundamentally one of the most unique superhero stories out there. The average superhero has some sort of super power which let them stand up to super villains. Not this one. When you think of superheroes, you think of rays of sunshine, who serve as beacons of hope for the populace of the cities they live in. Bruce Wayne is not a symbol of hope, but a symbol of fear for the villains stupid enough to cross him.”

Writing Challenges 🌐

Several (free!) writing challenges in the spirit of NaNoWriMo.

Novel November by ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid, an editing tool for creative writers, has taken the helm on National Novel Writing Month by introducing the Novel November Challenge. It’s also simple and familiar: write 50,000 words during the month of November.

WorldEmber by World Anvil

December is WorldEmber according to the worldbuilding platform World Anvil. The challenge is to write 10,000 words of worldbuilding. Anything written in a public article on their platform counts. For specific categories, there are sponsor-provided prizes involved as well as community live streams and resources posted throughout the month.

November Novel Challenge by WritingHabit

The 50,000 word challenge is alive… but entirely optional. WritingHabit’s challenge allows for participants to create a custom goal. Their free Story Planner can help calculate exactly how many words and hours you have to put in each day to meet whatever that goal is, but participants can put their words into whatever software (or hardware!) works best for them.

(Spooky) Recommended Reading 📚

Let us know (comments, responses, social media, etc.) what you think we should add to our too tall TBR.

• Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark (dark historical southern gothic fantasy novella about killing demons summoned by the Ku Klux Klan)
• The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling (a medieval castle under siege’s rescue devolves into a cannibalistic bacchanal)
• Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay (a former pro-gamer pilots a man with a proprietary AI for brains in a cross country journey)

From our monstrous friends 🧛

Inspiration comes from much more than just the written word. The Ugly Monster is a haven for those appreciative of all sorts of vile media.

Modern Monsters | From Witches to Backrooms by "Penguin" Pete Trbovich

“What a pivot we have had from the horror of the 20th century! No more vampires and werewolves these days, at least not in movies that take them seriously anymore. No more moral lesson either. Baked into typical horror movies of the past are the implication that these things only happen to bad people — meddlers in the occult reaping Satan’s wrath, mad scientists brought to doom by their own creations, archaeologists disturbing ancient cursed tombs, and so on. Now you’re just sitting at home minding your own business, or driving on vacation, or trying to buy a house, and BAM!: Instant existential hell, psychological breakdown and madness to follow.”

‘Clayface’ Should Include These 7 Non-superpowered Cameos by Victor Eruwoje

“In spite of the movie being a Clayface origin story, a few prominent non-superpowered DC characters could make an appearance to ground the tone and elevate the overall worldbuilding — the film has quite a few cast members with unrevealed roles.”

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Worldbuilding Wednesday | BlueSky

The Ugly Monster | BlueSky

✨NaNoWriMo, Novel November, and WorldEmber✨ was originally published in Worldbuilding Wednesday on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Autumn has fallen upon us and with it a craving for stories with a special emphasis on the spooky. There’s even a whole call for papers posted about it. We want to hear your thoughts about…

• Werewolves
• Urban fantasy
• Eldritch horrors
• LitRPGs (like Dungeon Crawler Carl)
• The Legend of Zelda
• Romantic takes on science fiction

…And, as always, know that we would love to hear about your worldbuilding, the worldbuilding you love, and the worldbuilding you hate here at Worldbuilding Wednesday.

From our worldbuilders and from around the internet:

Editor’s Picks 🖋️

I Miss the Despair of DELTARUNE Chapter One by Ben Copeland

“We are now five chapters into DELTARUNE’s episodic release strategy, with Chapter Five releasing June of 2026, and I cannot help but feel I have been horribly misled.

Much of DELTARUNE now is a happy-go-lucky adventure with friends into wacky and wonderful worlds, which I have enjoyed very much, but I don’t love DELTARUNE the same way I did when the first chapter launched back in 2018.”

Call Of The Night Remains A Romance-First Vampire Romance by Connlyn Sinclair

“What made it stand out for the most part was the worldbuilding around the vampires. The vampires in Call of the Night are all attractive, young-looking people who care mostly about looking cute, having fun, and gossiping about their love lives since vampires mainly feed by seducing people into willingly giving up blood instead of hunting and killing them.

In other words, vampirism is used as a metaphor for romantic and sexual maturity, which the young protagonist is striving to achieve after turning down the confession in the first episode.”

Worldbuilding Resources 🌐

Books to add to your worldbuilding library.

Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction

Written by Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach series, this whimsically illustrated writing manual is positively dense with creative writing advice and examples from the biggest names in speculative fiction.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

Science writer Mary Roach breaks down the nitty gritty details of space travel, including those questions that are rather embarrassing to ask — showers, sex, toilets, and all else made difficult by a zero gravity environment.

Delicious in Dungeon World Guide: The Adventurer’s Bible

Specific to the worldbuilding from Ryoko Kui’s Delicious in Dungeon manga, but nonetheless a great example of thoughtful and thorough worldbuilding, The Adventurer’s Bible is a beautiful and informative text. It exemplifies how a story can benefit from thinking through the smallest of details.

(All LitRPG) Recommended Reading 📚

Let us know (comments, responses, social media, etc.) what you think we should add to our too tall TBR.

• The Wandering Inn by Pirateaba (isekai, innkeeping, goblins, cozy vibes, chess games)
• Beware of Chicken by CasualFarmer (xianxia, martial arts, mostly farming, rooster with an identity crisis)
• He Who Fights with Monsters by Shirtaloon (isekai, progression fantasy, cannibals, being pants-less)

From our monstrous friends 🧛

Inspiration comes from much more than just the written word. The Ugly Monster is a haven for those appreciative of all sorts of vile media.

Star Wars is About Betrayal by Steven Klett

“Anakin’s betrayal is an ontological question that is not so easy to disentangle: was he destined for Betrayal from the beginning? Or did he have the capacity to change?”

‘Dragon Slayers’ — What if D&D was Fun? by Oscar

“Thematically, Dragon Slayers isn’t much different from Dungeons & Dragons and its various knock-offs. You play adventurers who investigate fantasy mysteries, hunt troublesome monsters, and dethrone evil kings. That’s where the comparisons end. Dragon Slayers keeps the fantasy vibes but completely re-imagines the rules. And the art.”

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Worldbuilding Wednesday | BlueSky

The Ugly Monster | BlueSky

✨The dungeon, deepspace, and the darkness✨ was originally published in Worldbuilding Wednesday on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Worldbuilding Wednesday is primarily a resource for fantasy and science fiction writers that delight in building imaginary second worlds, or scaffolding fantastic elements onto our own.

But it is also a place where we can share lessons from and geek out about our favorite media. Building a world often means borrowing from others — remember, writers are magpies, collecting shiny things for our stories along the way.

As such, we are putting out some suggestions for articles that readers would be especially interested in checking out in the coming months. These are prompts that we believe would perform well (yay) as well as vibe with the spooky season (double yay).

This isn’t to say that Worldbuilding Wednesday will not accept stories about other things. We offer these as ideas, inspiration, and/or insight into what works here on Medium. Write what most moves you.

• LitRPGs are lit (I’m sorry) — Dungeon Crawler Carl, He Who Fights With Monsters, and The Wandering Inn are all recent examples of this burgeoning genre (a less recent example would be 1981’s Dream Park)
• Anything and everything Tolkien — we love hearing about the OG fantasy worldbuilder
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe — a huge undertaking of worldbuilding to say the least
• Urban fantasy — magic in our own time and place; think Practical Magic, Hellboy, Interview with the Vampire, Mercy Thompson, Vampire: The Masquerade, etc.
• StarCraft — this RTS sci-fi classic is getting a new game… in 2030
• The Fourth Wing books, dragons in general — Threshing Day, a companion anthology, releases September 29th
• The Legend of Zelda — the Ocarina of Time remake launches November 5th
• Werewolves — gothic horror period piece Werwulf by Robert Eggers is prowling into theaters this December
• New spins on old stories — Eggers is also working on a adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in Old English, a language that predates the Bard by at least 500 years
• Forget romantasy, let’s talk romantic sci-fi — sexy sci-fi can be a thing too, right?
• Mike Flanagan — Carrie, Midnight Mass, Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House, etc.
• Eldritch horrors and hobbies — all things Lovecraftian, like new cozy horror farming sim Welcome to Elder Field
• Dune — the third and final film is coming to theaters in December

We are eager to hear about all these topics and then some; again, these are just recommendations for rants. Worldbuilding Wednesday is open for submissions, our guidelines can be found here.

We hope to harvest your rants, resources, and recommendations this fall.

Worldbuilding Wednesday Call for Papers was originally published in Worldbuilding Wednesday on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Writers are like magpies, collecting shiny ideas wherever they find them. And those ideas might not come from the pages of fantasy or science fiction. Movies, television, video games, and the learned halls of the Ivy League can all provide little gleams and glints of inspiration.

So we’ve linked them, and some deserving indie reads, in this newsletter for your perusal.

If you’d like to see your worldbuilding article featured here, consider writing for ✨ Worldbuilding Wednesday. ✨ We’d love to hear about your world, the worlds you love, even the worlds you hate.

From our worldbuilders and from around the internet:

Editor’s Picks 🖋️

The 40s/90s Setting by Connlyn Sinclair

“How does any of this relate back to speculative fiction? Batman. Batman: The Animated Series is the last and best known example of this kind of setting. I was actually shocked to hear this, but Batman: The Animated Series takes place in the 1940s, not the 1990s when it was produced; however, after hearing that fact, I realized the pieces all fit perfectly.

The aesthetics of Batman: TAS are all pulled from the same 40s detective tropes as all of these non-spec fiction shows: dark streets, retro clothing styles, blimps, architecture pulled from German expressionism; it’s all right there in Batman: TAS turned up to eleven.”

Getting creative with curse words by Daley W.

“The obvious benefit of conjuring new curse words is increased immersion. By adding in bespoke oaths, you show readers what is important and/or taboo in your world. It’s an easy way to introduce the powers that be outside of a religious setting.”

Worldbuilding Classes 🌐

Being a better writer means being a better worldbuilder. Here are some online (and free!) classes that can help with understanding the foundations of literature, language, and culture.

Introduction to Theory of Literature (Yale)

This is a survey of the main trends in twentieth-century literary theory. Lectures will provide background for the readings and explicate them where appropriate, while attempting to develop a coherent overall context that incorporates philosophical and social perspectives on the recurrent questions: what is literature, how is it produced, how can it be understood, and what is its purpose?

Introduction to Linguistics (MIT)

This class provides some answers to basic questions about the nature of human language. Throughout the course, we examine a number of ways in which human language is a complex but law-governed mental system. Much of the class is devoted to studying some core aspects of this system in detail; we also spend individual classes discussing a number of other issues, including how language is acquired, how languages change over time, language endangerment, and others.

Introduction to Anthropology (MIT)

Through the comparative study of different cultures, anthropology explores fundamental questions about what it means to be human. It seeks to understand how culture both shapes societies, from the smallest island in the South Pacific to the largest Asian metropolis, and affects the way institutions work, from scientific laboratories to Christian mega-churches. This course will provide a framework for analyzing diverse facets of human experience such as gender, ethnicity, language, politics, economics, and art.

(All Indie) Recommended Reading 📚

Let us know (comments, responses, social media, etc.) what you think we should add to our too tall TBR.

• Epilogue of Kings by Elisabeth G. Mark (dark fantasy romance, travel to a fantasy world on a rescue mission, five part series, three POVs)
• Raptoriva by Victoria Rivera (dinosaur Hunger Games, a race in the jungle, Spinosaurus, trilogy)
• The Emperor’s Children by T. W. Larsen (tragic fantasy, elves, hella worldbuilding, found family)

From our monstrous friends 🧛

Inspiration comes from much more than just the written word. The Ugly Monster is a haven for those appreciative of all sorts of vile media.

South of Midnight: This Brilliant African-American Folklore Game Played It Too Safe by Ben Copeland

“South Of Midnight’s wholly unique setting and adherence to the flora, fauna, and natural rocks, streams, and rivers in the area it is based on give the game a completely unique, homey, almost cozy atmosphere while still invoking urgency and danger that no other game has quite done before.”

“Bad Dad” Adaptations: Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights by Steven Klett

“That brings us to Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights, both written by women during the 1800s. In each book, the protagonist’s Father is a gentle, kind figure whose love and affection are a source of pride for the protagonist (in Wuthering Heights, the father’s love makes others jealous). However, in the most recent adaptations by Del Toro and Fennell, these adaptations turn on the Father, recasting him as an evil, generative antagonist who exploits their sons for selfish ends and inflicts terror on their families. In each, Victor and Heathcliff are driven by their Fathers’ abusive pasts, leading them to death and ruin.”

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Worldbuilding Wednesday | BlueSky

The Ugly Monster | BlueSky

✨Monsters, curse words, and writing courses✨ was originally published in Worldbuilding Wednesday on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the wake of reports on the death of reading, falling literacy rates, and attacks on higher education accessibility, picking up a book — or better yet, writing one — feels more like an act of rebellion than ever. Pick up your pen and fight off the wraith of anti-intellectualism with stories of sword and sorcery, alien stars and unexplored planets.

And, as always, know that we would love to hear about your worldbuilding, the worldbuilding you love, and the worldbuilding you hate here at Worldbuilding Wednesday. ✨

From our worldbuilders and from around the internet:

Editor’s Picks 🖋️

Magical School or Magical Club? by Connlyn Sinclair

“The magical school genre, stereotypically, is a fantasy story set at a school that trains magic users who are plucky kids about to get their first taste of fantasy adventure at a boarding school. In practice, the appeal is not the audience learning the magical system, but instead the young heroes facing challenges and conspiracies in the familiar setting of school.

In other words, you might get the same appeal without following the exact setup of everyone else’s series. As long as you capture the magic of the premise, the details might not matter much.”

Why Some Places in a Story Feel Real and Others Don’t by A. MacHaru

“Most worldbuilding advice talks about settings.

Settings are functional. They establish where the scene takes place. They provide atmosphere. They give the reader something to picture while the characters talk.

Settings are furniture.

What I was trying to build was something different: locations that had been somewhere before the story arrived. That had accumulated experience. That had a logic to them that didn’t depend on the narrative requiring it.

The difference sounds subtle. In practice it changes everything.”

Worldbuilding Books 🌐

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

If you keep Marshall’s book in mind when it comes to worldbuilding, you will realize that the geography of your world will deeply inform the civilizations and societies on your map —

• Where would cities naturally emerge?
• Which mountain passes become strategic chokepoints?
• How do rivers shape trade and cultural exchange?
• Which regions are likely to become wealthy, isolated, or frequently contested?
• What geographic barriers might preserve distinct languages, religions, or political identities?

The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer

This book was central to my research on what not to wear in medieval-inspired fantasy setting, and can further inform worldbuilders looking to get into the nitty-gritty realities of a pseudo-medieval setting. (Like how bad it stinks in a city, or what becomes of dead horses.)

The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy. What Animals on Earth Reveal about Aliens — and Ourselves by Arik Kershenbaum

This book would have come in handy for an article about whether or not aliens should look human. Kershenbaum takes the evolutionary processes of Earth and extrapolates on how that might apply on alien planets. He combines an expert understanding of biology with the as-yet speculative field of astrobiology.

(More) Recommended Reading 📚

Let us know (comments, responses, social media, etc.) what you think we should add to our too tall TBR.

• The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman (thieves’ guild, magical tattoos, death knights, goblin wars, horses are precious)
• Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao (mecha, aliens, Chinese mythology, thruple, Darling in the Franxxx but better)
• Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (highly logical dragons, interesting religion, epic fantasy, political intrigue, music)

From our monstrous friends 🧛

Inspiration comes from much more than just the written word. The Ugly Monster is a haven for those appreciative of all sorts of vile media.

Neon Genesis Evangelion — You Versus the World Versus the You Within the World by Rachel Alm

“My interpretation of Evangelion’s core components is exactly that: it is a meditation on escapism, reality, other people, discontent with your life, solipsism, kindness, destiny, and community. All within the confines of a mech-suit show with subtle school drama and post-apocalyptic sci-fi politics.”

‘Andor’ Works, ‘Daredevil’ and ‘The Boys’ Don’t by anjenü

“Despite their budgets, Daredevil and The Boys feel small, largely because their stories culminate in a mere morality struggle. Andor, on the other hand, has scale. It understands that the fight for freedom is bigger than two men hashing it out in a room; the evil is entrenched, and there’s more at stake.”

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Worldbuilding Wednesday | BlueSky

The Ugly Monster | BlueSky

✨The sword, the raygun, and the pen✨ was originally published in Worldbuilding Wednesday on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There’s a scene I’ve rewritten more times than I can count.

Everything is technically there. The setting, the dialogue, the conflict. The scene does what it’s supposed to do. It moves the story forward. It reveals something about a character. It ends in the right place.

And it’s flat.

Not wrong. Just flat. Like a photograph of a room rather than a room. The proportions are right but something is missing. The air, maybe. The sense that the space continues beyond the edges of the frame.

I’ve learned what this means.

It means I haven’t been behind the scene yet.

The circle

I think of it as a circle.

The scene is the circle, everything inside it, visible, on the page. The dialogue, the action, the described detail. When something feels flat, my first instinct used to be to add more to the inside. More description. More conflict. More movement.

It never worked.

What works is stepping outside the circle.

I stop rewriting the scene. I step back from it. I ask what was here before this moment. What happened in this location that has nothing to do with this scene. What these characters were doing an hour before, a year before, in some situation that will never appear in the story at all.

I write those things down.

Badly. Quickly. In notes that have no literary ambition whatsoever. Sometimes in fragments, sometimes in lists, sometimes in the kind of prose you write when no one will ever read it and you know it.

And then I go back to the scene.

It’s not flat anymore.

What’s behind the mountains

I want to know what’s behind the mountains in my world. Sometimes finding that answer takes far longer than I’d expect.

Not because I’ll ever write about it. Not because it’s relevant to the story I’m telling. But because a world where the mountains have nothing behind them is a world that stops at its own edges, and that stopping is something the reader can feel, even if they can’t identify it.

The mountains in my world have things behind them.

I know some of what those things are. I’ve written notes about them that will never become scenes. I’ve traced the logic of what would have to be true, given everything else that’s true about this world, for that particular geography to make sense.

None of it is in the story.

All of it is in the story.

That’s the paradox of the notes that will never appear.

It’s part of the same reason I try to build places that feel as though they exist long before the story begins.

The unseen scenes

There’s a related practice I’ve developed for characters that I’m not sure I’ve seen described exactly this way.

I put them in situations that aren’t in the story.

Not hypotheticals, actual small scenes, written out, set in moments that will never appear in any draft. How does this character behave when they’re bored? When they’re waiting for something they don’t know is coming? When they find something funny that they don’t want the person they’re with to know they find funny?

These scenes don’t go anywhere. They’re not even good writing, usually. They’re more like exercises, like the kind of thing an actor does before a performance to find the character’s body, their rhythm, the specific way they occupy space.

Once I’ve done this, the character starts making decisions I didn’t plan.

Not randomly. In ways that are consistent with who they’ve shown themselves to be in the throwaway scenes. The character has developed preferences, habits, small instincts that didn’t come from the plot.

They start to feel like they exist somewhere I can’t fully access.

That’s when I know they’re real enough to write.

What the notes actually do

The notes that will never appear in the story do something specific.

They give the scene a past.

A scene that has been written with nothing behind it exists only in the moment of its occurrence. It doesn’t have weight because weight comes from duration, from the sense that whatever is happening here has been building toward this for longer than the scene itself.

The notes create that duration.

They’re not backstory in the traditional sense. They’re not explanations of why characters are the way they are. They’re more like the existence of a past. The sense that these people were somewhere before the story found them and will be somewhere after it ends.

You don’t tell the reader this.

You don’t need to.

The reader feels it in the way the character handles a specific object. In the pause before a line of dialogue. In the decision a character makes that isn’t the obvious one, because you know , from the notes, what the obvious choice would cost them.

The notes no one will read.

I have folders of material that will never be published.

Failed scenes. Character exercises. Location notes written at four in the morning when something felt important and I didn’t know why. Fragments of dialogue between characters who never meet in the story but I needed to hear them talk to each other once.

This is not inefficiency. It’s not wasted time. It’s the work that happens before the work. It’s the excavation that makes the building stable.

The reader never sees the foundation.

But they feel it when they walk through the door.

One practical suggestion

If a scene is flat, if it has everything it’s supposed to have and still doesn’t feel alive — try this before rewriting it.

Step outside the circle.

Write one page about what happened in this location before the story began. Not relevant backstory, just what the place was doing before the scene arrived. Who was here. What they left behind. What the space looks like at a different time of day than the one in your scene.

Don’t use any of it directly.

Go back to the scene.

Something will have changed, not in the words, but in the pressure behind them. The scene will have a before now. It will have walls that extend beyond the frame.

It will stop being a photograph of a room.

It will become a room.

Perhaps every story has its invisible pages.

The Shift of Times is still unfolding shiftoftimes.carrd.co

Photography & World © 2026 A. MacHaru. All rights reserved.

From the same world

Why Some Places in a Story Feel Real and Others Don’t

The Notes That Will Never Appear in the Story was originally published in Worldbuilding Wednesday on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.