Detailing a Fictional Multiverse A few of you may be aware that in 'real life' I am actually trying to write a fictional book series, and it turns out I need a little creative help. The setting for this series takes place within 3 different, parallel Dimensions: A Positive Dimension (A realm ruled by positive energy) A Balanced Dimension (A realm where both positive and negative energy exists {the 'real' world}) A Negative Dimension (A realm ruled by negative energy) Problem is, imaging a location and heritage that has only ever known 'positive' energy, or 'negative' energy is pretty difficult considering you and I exist in a world where neither energy can exist without the other. For instance, in our world, most of us can eat and have a roof over our heads (positive), while there are others who struggle to eat, and don't have a roof over their head (negative). That's where I need some imaginative help- I'm great at coming up with a story and vision (which I won't be spoiling here) but apparently not at world building. This series is based in fantasy, so the speculation doesn't necessarily need to be scientifically sound- just interesting, perhaps a bit mysterious, but not so overzealous that is it borderline un-explainable. Think 'Star Wars' like fantasy, rather than stereotypical Dungeons and Dragons like fantasy. The Positive and Negative dimensions are essentially suppose to be 'what would have happened if the Earth had evolved in a way where only good things happened?' / 'what would have happened if the Earth had evolved in a way where only bad things happened?' I'm curious to see the things the rest of you can come up with, for I hope to one day create a rich, interesting, and believable (fantasy-wise) multi-verse that will suck everyone in for the story that occurs within it. Feel free to let your imagination run wild, within the boundaries of this post. "Everyone can fly!!! And the earth is no longer a planet, but a bunch of massive floating islands!!!!" "No, however, perhaps in an all Positive world, science was able to excel to a point in which we were able to create floating additions of land to the Earth on order to compensate of over-population." --- Double Post Merged, Dec 8, 2015 --- I'm really not great at naming forum posts, therefore if the staff would like to change the name of this post to something less ominous, by all means go ahead.
This reminds me of the worldbuilding aspects of the Shards of Alara block in Magic the Gathering. There were five shards of this world that were split off from each other, each one having access to 3 of the five colors of "mana". Each shard was created to reflect, not necesarilly the colors of mana that they had access to, but rather the colors they didn't. The Grixis shard, which had access to red (passion, earth, fury), black (death, greed, power at all costs), and blue (trickery, manipulation, wit, knowledge) mana was created to reflect a world without life, bounty, order, and natural growth, aspects of white and green mana, the two missing colors. Maybe that's not much help. If you're into fantasy settings or MtG already, you might look up some of the design articles for the Shards block. They go into pretty good detail of the thought process behind building each of the shards, and it might give you some ideas.
definition of good and evil varies from person to person. Be careful with your choices to show off in these dimensions.
Alas, positive does not necessarily mean good, nor does negative necessarily mean evil. A theme I've been playing with is exposing to the Positive realm first. Those whom live in the positive realm are great and all, but do their best to keep their distance from those in the Negative realm, believing them to be 'evil'. However, when the reader is finally exposed to the Negative realm, one comes to learn that the 'evil' things that realm has been forced to do, has been out of the sheer fact that the Positive's have refused a helping hand. A Earth born out of negativity surely would not be lush in health or resources, and with their negative attitude causing the Positive's to cut off any communications with them, this would force the Negatives into doing some very shifty stuff in a desperate attempt just to stay alive. The theme riding with this in the misunderstandings of Mental Illness in today's society. The negative dimension is 'depressed', and therefor the general public (the positive realm) struggles to communicate with them, or understand the situation they face everyday. They ultimately 'give up' on them, choosing to go on about their life, cornering the Negative realm to feel mistreated and swept aside, something I've unfortunately seen all to often in my own life. That's the general consensuses of 'the world'. What I need help with is detailing it. What does negative terrain look like? Surly more weathered and dead, rather than the lush overgrowth of the Positive realm. What do Positive's do for fun, with so much energy at their grasps? Surly something as simple as surfing on water, or riding a simple motorcycle must seem arbitrary when they have the science to create entire floating, artificial plateaus high above the earth? That kind of stuff.