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Worldbuilding Workshop: Writing Great Fantasy (Udemy.com)

Writing fantasy: The step-by-step method to writing a believable and compelling world that will enchant your readers

Created by: Jason Link

Last updated June 2024

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What you will learn

  • Build a believable and compelling world for a fantasy story
  • Map out your world -- natural features (mountains, rivers, forests, etc.) and people made features (countries, cities, and roads)
  • Create fantastic creatures that survive in your world's habitats
  • Develop peoples and races and establish their societies and cultures
  • Plan out your world's timeline to get the big picture of your world's story
  • Form a healthy relationship between your world and your story
  • Learn crucial concepts used all throughout the world building process
  • Learn how to establish rules for your world so your world is more believable
  • Learn how to create a world of depth so your world is more compelling
  • Learn how to create meaningful names for the various people, places, and things in your world

How it compares

Against the other 503 rated Udemy courses in Teaching & Academics on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.3 out of 5higher than 16% of them
  • Reviews1,344#122 of 504 by number of reviews
  • Length4.4 hourslonger than 57% of them
  • Last updatedJune 2024more recently than 58% of them

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Course Description

As a fantasy writer, you want to take your readers to exotic places like they’ve never seen before, a world of wonder that they want to get lost in.

Here at the Worldbuilding Workshop for Fantasy Writing, that’s my aim. By the end of this course, you will have created a believable and compelling world that your readers will want to get lost in again and again.   

The World Building Workshop for Fantasy Writing is taught by me, Jason Link, the author of the Legender series, an epic adventure that Publishers Weekly calls a grand fairytale.   

For the last 25 years I have been practicing the art of worldbuilding in fantasy literature, and in this course, I share with you the insights I've gained on that journey. Years and years of research compiled in one place.

The massive task of worldbuilding has been broken down into manageable chunks and follows a logical flow.

In this course, you will

  • map out your world with natural features (mountains, rivers, forests, etc.) and people-made features (countries, cities, and roads)

  • plan out your world's timeline to get the big picture of your world's story

  • create fantastic creatures that survive in your world's habitats 

  • develop peoples and races and establish their societies and cultures

  • form a healthy relationship between your world and your story

  • learn crucial concepts used all throughout the worldbuilding process

  • learn how to establish rules for your world so your world is more believable

  • learn how to create a world of depth so your world is more compelling

  • learn how to create meaningful names for the various people, places, and things in your world

By the end of this course, you will have a believable and compelling world that will enchant your readers.

Praise for Jason's course "World Building for Beginners":

  • "This was a great course! I wrote so many notes down. Each video in each section had so many helpful tips, examples and resources. Well made! This was very motivating. You are very supportive! Thank you!"

  • "This course has gone over in a brief time what I spent the last year learning. Great stuff!"

  • "A good introduction to understanding, developing, and leveraging the relationship of your invented world to the story you write. There are interesting and insightful references in the course that help you develop your new world and story."

Praise for the worldbuilding done by Jason Link:

  • "I am not one to lightly compare a fantasy author to Tolkien, for so few have succeeded in creating such vast worlds and peoples as Tolkien did, and even fewer have produced Tolkien's world-spanning mythology. Jason Link has created a vast and beautiful world, peopling it with fantastic creatures and races, while deeply respecting the spiritual underpinnings of the world he has created."

  • "Perhaps the best part of reading was that feeling you get when you are immersed into a different world, which is exactly what Link has built. There are cultures, geographies, languages, and creatures that come together to make a fun yet deeply sophisticated world. In this way, The Legender reminded me of the greats like Tolkien."

  • "The author did a wonderful job of painting a captivating picture of the world of The Legender for us. Although it is a world totally different from our own, I felt connected to it and completely intrigued by the characters, scenery, creatures and story."

  • "The fantasy world that the author draws you into is described in such beautiful detail that it is both believable and compelling. The characters are well-developed and intriguing, and the story definitely picks up the pace as you move along. I will admit that the new creatures are very different from what is seen in other fantasy novels, but the author does a wonderful job of describing these creatures in such a way that your imagination easily fills in the picture."

  • "Jason Link has a gift for not only creating a captivating new world, filled with creatures and cultural practices a reader has never thought of, but also maintaining a consistent and believable voice throughout the twists and turns of the story."

  • "A created world such as this has room for tomes and tomes of adventures and histories for its readers."


Do you wish readers to have a similar reaction to the world of your story?

If so, join me in this course so I can show you how to create a believable and compelling world that will enchant your readers--a world your readers will want to get lost in again and again. 

Check out the free previews to get a sample of what you'll learn and then enroll to get started worldbuilding today!


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Instructor Details

Jason Link

I’m Jason Link, a published writer and a former English instructor. For over 20 years I’ve been practicing the art of writing and storytelling.

One of my passions is sharing the craft of story with those who want to learn. I have taught students from all over the world and have had the opportunity to teach in the US and outside the US.

For over five years, I lived in Nicaragua and during that time, I taught English and writing to students from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, many of whom did not have English as their first language.

I’m also the author of the Legender series, an epic adventure that Publishers Weekly calls a grand fairytale.

My readers tell me time and time again how fascinating they find the world of my story to be. Some even say that it has the complexity and intrigue of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

It is my privilege to share my experience with you in my courses.

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Reviews

4.3

1,344 ratings on Udemy

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By Brett Gonta on 8/14/2024

Wonderful introduction to fantasy worldbuilding! Jason Link is able to help take the viewer step-by-step regarding the creation of a world for fantasy writers! Admittedly, it's largely more about geographical elements in a fairly standard/generic setting, and I'd argue that things like history, geopolitics, and deeper culture (architecture, customs, sayings, etc.) aren't discussed as much, but it still helped me to get a general feel for what worldbuilding a (standard) fantasy setting is like, and this will make a good "base resource" for worldbuilding.

By Abdelkader Ali Khoudja on 8/17/2021

The experience was overall satisfactory. The instructor did well to bring to our attention a variety of details otherwise ignored or overlooked. There clearly was considerable hard work put into this, and for that I salute the instructor. What I expected and didn't find, however, are clear analogies with other prominent fantasy works - GoT, Harry Potter, the Handmaid's Tale, Lord of the Rings. I know that some were mentioned but what I needed was a model passage - or path - to follow. Something similar to the first course in Creative Writing specialty on Coursera.

By Stelios Papathakis on 5/20/2021

Pretty good overall, I recommend it. You will get a lot of info to help you in world building, from the land of the world itself to the creatures inhabiting it. However, there are two major points of concern you need to know about, which are also the reason I cut out the fifth star from my rating: 1) there is a major mistake about rivers in the example map created in this course, as rivers join but don't split, a piece of info totally missing here. This negligence was a negative surprise to me in such an otherwise informative program. And 2) it encourages what's known to authors as "world builder's disease", which may be great for your own personal amusement but very detrimental to someone who wants to be a professional author. Overall though, very informative program, with some good ideas. Once again, I recommend it.

By Emily Richardson on 2/23/2021

This course was quite good. Jason was an enthusiastic trainer and the course definitely helped me to develop my map and world. However, there was lots of repetition, Jason saying the same thing in different ways or using a quotation from someone (e.g. JK Rowling) and then reiterating the quotation even though it didn't need explaining. I got the impression that he was just trying to drag out the sessions so that people felt that they got their money's worth. Personally, I would have been happy to pay the same amount for a course that was half the time without the repetition, as I think I would have still achieved the outcome.

By Deborah Mullane on 11/8/2020

So much information. As I write I will use this over and over again. Wow.

By Janet Moule on 10/23/2020

So far, the course is definitely giving me a multitude of ideas to begin thinking of creating a world existing outside my mind, and making sure I leave nothing out of its cosmos.

By John Paul Nakitare on 10/11/2020

Really helped build my understanding of fantasy and improved my current work.

By June Pearl on 9/26/2020

Such a fabulous course! It's well-narrated, easy-to-follow, and very helpful. How ingenius of the instructor to cover geographic features well as etymology of names! Definitely a course I'd return to again and again before planning any new fantasy novel.

By Aaron Fisher on 9/24/2020

Great and fun class

By Vrushasen Vinayak Dhere on 9/9/2020

great information

By Rashmi Sundaram on 9/8/2020

Enjoying it so far. Explained well and in simple terms.

By Ajanta Sinha on 9/8/2020

I like this course. One suggestion- examples & citation from some good books will make the course even more interesting

Showing 12 of 215 reviews

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Overall Score : 86 / 100