Definition
A secondary world is a setting that exists independently of our real world. It has its own geography, history, cultures, and (usually) its own rules of physics or magic. Characters in a secondary world don't know about Earth; there's no portal, no crossover, no winking at the reader. The term was coined by J.R.R. Tolkien, who called the act of building such a world "sub-creation." Secondary worlds demand the most worldbuilding investment, but they also give you the most creative freedom.
Why It Matters
When you build a secondary world, you control everything. That's liberating, but it also means you can't lean on the reader's real-world knowledge to fill in gaps. Every assumption about how society works, what people eat, or why wars happen needs to be built (or at least implied) from scratch. The payoff is a setting that feels uniquely yours.
Famous Examples
Middle-earth is the archetypal secondary world: its own continents, languages, thousands of years of history, and no connection to our Earth.
Roshar is radically alien, with its own ecology shaped by highstorms, flora that retracts into the ground, and no mammals beyond humans.
The Stillness is a single supercontinent shaped by seismic apocalypse, with cultures entirely structured around surviving the next catastrophe.
Common Mistakes
Push beyond familiar templates. Ask what climate, magic, and history would actually do to a society. Let your world's unique conditions shape its cultures.
Trust your readers. Mention things casually and let context do the work. People figure out 'highstorm season' from how characters react to it.
You don't need a spreadsheet, but you should have a rough sense of how your world's economy and geography work. Inconsistent travel times break immersion fast.
Try It Yourself
Start with a single geographic feature that doesn't exist on Earth (a sea that freezes from the bottom up, a forest where trees migrate, a desert of glass). Spend 15 minutes writing notes about how people living near this feature would build their homes, grow their food, and structure their calendar around it. Let the setting's weirdness drive the culture.
Organize your secondary world
Novelium helps you map out the cultures, geography, and systems of your invented world so every detail stays consistent across your manuscript.