Develop a film idea · Part 4 of 6
Building a World
Set the rules, places, and texture your story lives in.
A world is the set of rules that make your logline expensive. Write a short constitution for the place and the moment: what is true, what is forbidden, what it costs to move, and what people pretend not to see. If the same plot could happen in any city in any year, you do not have a world yet. You have a backdrop.
What is a world constitution?
Four lists. One page if you can keep it to one page.
- Facts you refuse to fake (period, city, job, institution)
- Laws of pressure (what is illegal, expensive, shameful, or holy)
- Limits (travel, tech, money, time of day, who can enter which room)
- Tone law (jokes you will allow, sentiment you will not)
Objects belong here too. Name the things that will come back: a wristband, a black SUV, a dressing-room lock. If an object does not change a choice or a lie, cut it.
The Godfather
Facts: 1945 to 1955, New York families, Sicily as exile.
Pressure: omertà is holier than the state. A wedding is business. A hospital hallway can be a battlefield.
Limits: Michael cannot go home after the restaurant. The chair only passes through blood and murder.
Tone law: no winking at the audience. Violence is procedure.
Objects: the wedding purse, the orange, the hospital stairs, the office door that shuts on Kay.
Star Wars: A New Hope
Facts: an Empire that already won, a Rebellion that has not.
Pressure: a planet can be deleted in one shot. That is policy, not a twist.
Limits: moisture farming is a trap. Stormtroopers are everywhere and still miss what matters. The Force is rumor until it is not.
Tone law: awe is allowed. Cool for its own sake is not the point.
Objects: the droids, the message, the lightsaber, the station trench.
Both worlds make the logline harder. Change the rules and you change the movie.
What to start with
- The locked logline
- Want, need, and lie for the people who live here
- The beat sheet so you know which turns the world must support
- Hard limits you already set (runtime, rating, what you can shoot or generate)
Do not start with a map, a conlang, or a thousand years of kings. Start with a Tuesday in this place, under these rules.
Three research layers
Work in this order. Stop when the constitution is stable.
- Ten facts a tourist would get wrong. Not the postcard. The line at the permit office. Who gets searched. What the radio plays in the van.
- How a pro spends a Tuesday. Bodyguard, publicist, union stagehand, night nurse. The job is the world in motion.
- Three real incidents that could be your Catalyst. Then fictionalize. Steal pressure, not names.
Write the laws of pressure
For this arena, fill in the blanks.
- Illegal:
- Expensive:
- Shameful:
- Holy:
Then add time. What can happen in an hour. What cannot happen overnight. A 48-hour press tour is a different planet from a month in a safe house, even if the murder is the same.
If you will generate picture later, write production limits into the world now. Fewer bodies in a frame. No flashlight lighting. No score that the scene did not earn. Those are not only camera notes. They decide what kind of scenes this world can hold. Jay
Worked swap (keep the engine, change the arena)
Base logline: After a pop star’s bodyguard witnesses a murder, he must keep her alive long enough to testify, or the syndicate erases them both.
World A: the tour
- Facts: 48 hours of press. Airports, ballrooms, live hits.
- Pressure: a missed appearance is a scandal. Scandal is how the syndicate finds them.
- Limits: they cannot vanish. Her face is the product.
- Holy: the show goes on.
- Shameful: looking scared on camera.
- Objects: laminate, in-ear pack, the SUV with the wrong plates.
World B: off the grid (same plot, different movie)
- Facts: a rented house, a dead phone, a town that sells them out for a photo.
- Pressure: silence is expensive. Every stranger is a leak.
- Limits: no staff, no convoy, no alibi that matches the tour.
- Holy: the testimony date.
- Shameful: she needs him and hates that.
- Objects: a burner phone, a grocery receipt, a dog that will not stop barking.
Point at the cell you changed: the arena. If you also changed the murder, the lead, and the ending, you started a new pile.
Kill test
Make the model argue against the constitution.
- Could this story move to another city and another year with only new street names? Then the world is paint.
- Which rule never creates a problem on the beat sheet?
- Which “fact” is actually a cliche of this setting?
- What would a person with this job laugh at in your list?
- Are invented facts doing the work that research should do?
If you cannot say what is shameful and what is holy in one breath, the world is not locked.
Using AI as a writing partner
Use it as a researcher and a skeptic. Do not let it invent a new city to save a weak turn.
Paste into your AI chat