New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Estep serves up the first essay in her Write Your Own Cake series, which offers tips and suggestions for creating fantasy and other book worlds. Estep is the author of numerous fantasy and science-fiction series, including Galactic Bonds, Section 47, Elemental Assassin, and Crown of Shards.

When it comes to writing, worldbuilding is like making a cake. Every author starts with the same general ingredients of characters, plot, and setting, but it’s how each author combines and adds to those ingredients that makes a book an author’s own unique creation.

This essay offers a few tips and poses some questions for figuring out the things you enjoy and do best as an author, so that you can write your own cake, whether it’s a big and bold epic fantasy adventure, a subtle and nuanced mystery, an emotion-packed romance, or something else.

Note: Write Your Own Cake: A Worldbuilding Essay is a 2,000-word essay about writing and worldbuilding. It first appeared as part of the Scribbler subscription box in November 2018.