Building Characters and Worlds 🌎

The Misfits & Daydreamers Primer Series, part 2

An assortment of maps for some of my works in progress and upcoming books. I make these for myself before I start writing.

I’m headed home from North Texas Teen Book Festival, and ah!! It was such a wonderful time. Thank you to all who came to see me! I had an absolutely blast meeting uber fans and new readers alike. 😊

(Side note: I was genuinely surprised and delighted by how many of you had the entire Luminaries series with you and were devoted fans?! I’ll admit, I completely forgot about that series, since I was so focused on TE3 and Witchlight last year. So THANK YOU for loving my dear Winnie Wednesday!!)

Also: I’ll be at the Tucson Festival of Books next weekend! So come see me there!

Also, also: don’t miss the latest Great Critique Partner Meetup, if you’re looking for a critique partner, beta reader, or general writing cheerleader. This is a great place to find someone, and I’ve met multiple people over the years who got their writing friendship start in the M&D comments section.

Now onward to building characters and worlds!

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The Misfits & Daydreamers Primer Series

In case you missed it, a few weeks ago, I started an organized primer series that hits on all the many topics I’ve taught and explored over the years on this Substack. This is a planned 7-part series, and the topics are:

1. Following the “Right” Story — Shared Feb. 16, 2026.

2. Building Characters & Worlds — We are HERE!

3. The Craft of Sentences & Scenes

4. Revisions & Editing

5. Finding Your Unique Process

6. When Things Get Hard

7. Publishing: the Honest Truth

This week, we’re diving #2: the people the world that actually make a story into a story.

Note: this is separate from my much more robust Susan Dennard Writing Academy! If you want truly deep dives on all these topics spanning back to the early aughts of my writing advice, then the Academy is the place to explore.

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2. Building Characters and Worlds

As many of you know, my approach to character development and worldbuilding is fully intuitive. (If you saw me just this weekend at NTTBF, I talked about my “pantsing” approach a lot!)

But it’s not as if I dive into a book with no idea what’s coming. Instead, I always know my character and their world.

No, I don’t fill out character questionnaires, and my worldbuilding is less “create a detailed wiki”¹ and more “let’s draw a map and build a new magic!”² But I did use the word system, and system means I have a methodology, messy and fluid as it may be.

On top of that, there are many “lessons” I’ve learned over my seventeens years (!) of writing that I apply while drafting for characters and worlds.

So let’s get started, shall we?

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Before I Draft

What I Need to Know Before I Draft: This is the post that lays out why character and world are so critical to me. Without them, I simply have no story! There is literally nothing for me to write until I hear my character’s voice and see the world around them.

How I Create Characters: It begins with a lot of questions. Not a personality quiz so much as an interrogation of the feelings I want to come out of a story. Both feelings for the characters and feelings for the reader.

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Character Arcs & Growth

Audio: Crafting Character Arcs Over a Series: This audio (with transcript!) post is about how I handle character growth across many books. This is relevant whether you’re writing a duology or a sprawling multi-POV epic. (Ask me how I know! 😅)

When Character and Voice Go Wrong This happens so often for me. And frankly, it’s terrifying every time because I always convince myself you’ll never figure it out and let everyone down! WOE! But I always do figure it out, and I call it my Circling Process: how I orbit around a character until I find my way back inside their feelings and can proceed onward.

Writing Romance Intuitively: Each of my romantic pairings in my books is distinct—but how? It comes back to ye olde character voice, magical cookies, and earned payoffs. 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨

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Setting & Worldbuilding

How I Build Worlds: From logistics to maps, if you’re new to worldbuilding and intimidated by it, this is a good place to start! Worldbuilding is often one of the most fun parts of the brainstorming process for me. (To the point that I will absolutely use it to procrastinate, lol. Don’t do that.)

Audio: An Intro on How I Build Worlds: We think of worldbuilding as only applying to fantasy or sci-fi, but that’s not true. Historical, contemporary—those tales also exist in worlds, and so they require worldbuilding too! This post is a deep dive into how I tackle it.

How to Level Up Your Settings, Part 1: As huge gamer (you all know that), video games are probably the number one source of inspiration for my writing and worlds.³ So I like to also use game development’s approach to “environmental storytelling” for fleshing out settings in each scene.

How to Level Up Your Settings, Part 2: This is how I use character as the key element that takes a setting from “interesting enough” to “downright fascinating.”

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I realize there are probably more character + world posts here on Substack, but a lot of my posts straddle the 7 topic lines listed above—so I had to pick which bucket I felt was a better fit.

There are also so many more craft-focused posts on the Susan Dennard Writing Academy. Even just on the free resources page! So head there if you want more!

That said, if there are any posts from my Substack archives you think should be on this list about character and voice, PLEASE SHARE!!! I will add them. 🥰

Also, stay tuned for the upcoming part 3: Constructing Scenes & Sentences. And thanks for reading Part 2 in the Misfits & Daydreamers Primer Series!

💚 - Sooz

1. Oh my god, I WISH I were this organized!! It would make my life so much easier when writing sequels!

2. And spread it over six different notebooks and apps so that when I do want any information, I can’t find it! See footnote #1 about how I wish I weren’t like this!

3. I’m pretty sure Arkane Studios’ Prey has inspired more elements across my books than any other game in existence.