Creating a Cosmos
- theworldofkolgenno
- Mar 1
- 2 min read
Creating a Cosmos is a hard thing to do, it is not something you can really design or develop, it needs to grow organically, like a great tree stretching its branches throughout your world. It is not visible or tangible but its presence within a created world is constant.
What is a Cosmos?
A cosmos can be conceived in many ways, but broadly I believe it breaks down into two distinct forms. A physical space and a mental space.
The physical space of any cosmos are those elements that we can touch and feel, the trees, the seas, the mountains. But taking a wider step back, it is the plane (or planes) upon which a world exists. Having a keen understanding of its shape, its construction and its flows, these will inform the way your world works, how history unfolds and ultimately how cultures develop.
When developing Kolgennon, having a clear idea of the shape I wanted my world to take was very important, for a map of course, but I wanted it clear in my own mind how my universe was constructed and formed. This was not a clean overnight process, but one that has informed my writing and in turn been informed by what I write.
By necessity, for us as thinking beings, a cosmos is of course what we conceive of it to be, informed by its physical manifestation but only from the viewpoint of the observer as we are unable to step out and view the whole like an author can. Therefore, anyone existing within the physical cosmos will have a view that is morphed through the lens of their own experience and that of the culture they belong to. Such a thought exercise is a great tool for grounding your characters and creating ‘multiple’ cosmos’ to be explored through different cultural and individual lens. And who can say that within the physical grounding of the cosmos, each of these multiple mental cosmoses don’t exist?
Culture and Cosmos
Ultimately this is what I am pursuing in my worldbuilding, a culture that has a coherent and consistent conception of a cosmos. This is the tool and the building block off which to hang my stories. For it is how the world is conceived that drives our sense of drama and action, destiny and reason.
Why create one?
Creating a cosmos separate from our own is therefore a practice in developing a new lens through which we can view the world, a new mold into which we can pour our challenges and see what shape they take.
As the branches of my cosmos have slowly unfolded before me, I have tried my best to prune them and guide them in a way that makes sense. Now I am presenting them to you as that cohesive whole front and centre, through the eyes of Yusukol Kosua in the next installation of his book on the lands and peoples of Kolgennon.
