Kaez, you've done a fantastic job with this project. I've been wanting to do something along these lines myself, but haven't. I would love to see a list of step by step how you started to where you are now.
Like, started with geography, maps, then moved on to the civilizations, or maybe the history of the the world, or what have you. I've had a hard time creating a world like this, because it seems to me like you need to know everything else in order to create what civilization 1 would be, and how they reacted with civilization 2, even though you don't have the faintest idea of how civilization 2 has interacted with them yet.
So, if you could let your readers know how you went about accomplishing this, it would be awesome.
1. Well, first you need a map. It always starts with a map. I, personally, prefer single-continent worlds for the sake of story-telling, because cross-ocean travel just takes up too much time. So you draw yourself out a continent. It's one of the most fun things in the world, to me, and I do it all the time just for shits and giggles. You want to fill it in with swamps and rivers and mountains and when you're doing that, you're going to be developing your scale -- just how big is this world? That'll tell you how big any given mountain chain is, etc.
2. You need to decide how your world works. Is it tribal? Are their organized governments? Are they everywhere, or is there a place that no one has a claim to? Is their magic? Who can use magic? What are lifespans? Are there races other than humans? -- This is easily the longest step, but it is also very fun, and it is where the core of your creativity comes from. Making this good makes your entire project good. Making this generic makes your entire project generic.
3. Draw out your borders according to the geography and what you decided in step 2. Mountains and rivers make typical borders, but sometimes a border may be in an open field. If it is, you need to jot that down in a notebook. Remind yourself that you need to explain WHY there is a border there. Clearly some interaction between those nations has gone on.
4. Decide, vaguely, your continent's position on a globe. This will tell you which nations are arctic, which are tropical, and which are right in between. This decides wildlife, geography, and culture for the region.
5. Pick a civilization and create a spreadsheet (or use mine!). I find my own spreadsheets (every civilization page in my project uses the same list of cultural aspects) to be as in-depth as is reasonable, but you might not want to go so far, or you might want to go even further in mapping out your civilization's culture.
6. Start mapping out the details. Who rules it? What's the geography like? Etc, etc, etc. Now, for me at least, I find it easiest to make a civilization and decide, "Hmm... how did it get to be where it is?" Most people, however, find it easier to start with the history, and then work into the future. In any case, you need to imagine all of the conflicts, relations, connections, and migrations from or to other nations.
Label each of your nations on your map "civ 1", "civ 2", etc, and whenever you're talking about interactions, note that "The War of the Wolves with [Civ 2] lasted for twelve years", etc. And make sure to write that down somewhere else as well, so when you do go to map out Civ 2, you include that correspondingly in their history.
7. Once you've got one civilization mapped out, figure out which civilization they dealt most with (probably the one they share most border with). So lets say your first civilization shares a lost of history with Civ 6. Well, next, map out Civ 6 while the interactions they had with the first civilization are still fresh in your mind, more-or-less.
8. Continue this process until you find that all of your civilizations have been mapped out, and you'll certainly be going back and editing them and adding new things and adjust stuff as ideas come into your head or you decide that you're going to have the people of that nation descend from another, etc, etc.
9. Besides just nations, you want some other cool things that are going on internationally. I, for example, have XOXO. It was a refreshing break from doing civilization after civilization and gave me a chance to show though they're all very different, they all share a similar enemy. Things like this really make your world seem more realistic.
10. Map out a history. Go hunt in the histories of each civilization and organize them all, by date, in a single history. Are there century-long caps in that history? What was going on at those times? Fill in some new information.
11. Refurbish, repolish, spit, and shine. Go back and smooth everything out. Any contradictions, any historical updates, anything that says [Civ 2] or [Civ 9] and you've now got names for those civilizations. Clean up everything and get it ready for a story to take place in it.
12. I'm sure you've already described many-a-beast in the wildlife sections of the nations. Find out exactly who they are, and map out some other interesting creatures or races in your world more in-depth. Dedicate a page just to such things. Especially with races, you need to deal with how they interact with eachother -- and in fact, if you do have multiple races, this step should be taken much earlier on in the process.
13. Find your story. Is there some event you've written up in the past that you really thought was interesting and ended up expanding the nation's history sections to a few dozen paragraphs talking about?! Write a story about that. Or if you think all of your nation's histories have built up to a climactic present, write your story in the now. Wherever you choose to put it, your story is the reason that your world is created, and I strongly recommend showing off your world and not basing the entire story in the small town of Xenophobia.
That is, more or less, the process I went about doing this. I'm really quite sorry, I'm not good at describing the method because I went into this without one -- I just did things in the order they felt natural. But my recollection organized the way I did things exactly as I described (however poorly), so I hope that will be some help to you.
