Worldbuilding Questions That Drive Story
Build only the setting details the story needs.
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Help me build a world through story-driven questions. Genre and premise: [GENRE_PREMISE]. What is different about this world: [WORLD_DIFFERENCE]. The main character's daily life: [DAILY_LIFE]. Ask me up to ten questions, one at a time, that connect the world to conflict: what does ordinary life cost, who has power and how do they keep it, what is forbidden, what does everyone fear, how do people travel and eat, what do children learn, where does the system break. After each answer, state the consequence for plot in one sentence. At the end, produce a world bible summary of one page: rules, power structure, daily life, history in five events, and three story-generating tensions. Mark any gaps as [OPEN QUESTION]. Quality bar: every item must affect a character's choices. Add a limit rule: stop worldbuilding when you have enough to write the next three scenes, and record the questions that remain. Provide a short method to show the world through character experience in the first chapter without an information dump, with three techniques and a sample opening paragraph in 100 words.
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Q1: What does ordinary life cost? A: Light. Cities buy daylight in measured hours. Consequence: Night work is crime or privilege, so every theft and every romance has a clock. Q2: Who profits? A: The Lamp Guild, who own the measuring towers. Consequence: A character who can cheat the measure becomes a revolutionary or a smuggler. Q3: What is forbidden? A: Selling dark. Consequence: A hero who needs hidden hours must break the one law the guild enforces hardest. World bible, tensions: 1) the guild's monopoly, 2) the poor who live in unmetered cellars, 3) a clerk who finds the tower readings are inflated. [OPEN QUESTION] Who audits the guild?
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