Definition
A faction is any organized group within your story's world that is defined by what it believes, who it follows, or what it wants. Unlike guilds (which are organized around a shared trade or skill), factions are organized around ideology, loyalty, or political alignment. Factions create natural conflict because their goals inevitably clash with other factions' goals. They're the teams on your world's chessboard.
Why It Matters
Factions give your story structure without you having to manufacture conflict from scratch. When your world has competing groups with incompatible goals, every character's faction loyalty becomes a source of tension: who they can trust, who they're expected to fight, and what happens when personal loyalty conflicts with the group's agenda. Factions turn your world into a web of competing interests that your characters have to navigate.
Types of Faction
Famous Examples
The great houses (Stark, Lannister, Targaryen) are factions with distinct values, territories, and goals. The interplay between them drives the entire series.
Society is literally divided into factions based on virtues (Abnegation, Dauntless, Erudite, Amity, Candor), making faction identity the story's central conflict.
The great houses, the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, and the Fremen are all factions with overlapping interests that create a web of political intrigue.
Common Mistakes
Give every faction a legitimate grievance or reasonable worldview. Readers should be able to understand (if not agree with) each faction's position.
People within the same faction should disagree about methods, priorities, and leadership. Monolithic factions feel like sports teams, not real groups.
Start with two or three factions and let others emerge as the story grows. If your reader needs a chart to remember who's who, you've got too many.
Try It Yourself
Create two factions in your world that want the same resource but for completely different reasons. Write a scene where a character from each faction meets at a negotiation table. Neither is wrong. Neither is willing to back down. End the scene before anyone wins.
Map your world's power players
Novelium's worldbuilding tools let you track every faction's goals, members, alliances, and rivalries so you never lose sight of who wants what and why.