Professional Writing Student Explores Worldbuilding

Professional writing major Elizabeth Burzumato ’25, a rising senior from Harrisonburg, Va., has a love for storytelling that goes far back into her youth. To prepare for a career as a fantasy novelist, Burzumato is using her summer break to explore the creation of new fictional worlds by working with Associate Professor of English Dr. Sam Hamilton on a research project titled “Worldbuilding in Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Tabletop Roleplaying Games.” 

“Worldbuilding has always been on my radar,” Burzumato said of the process of constructing a fictional world for books, movies or games. “As an aspiring fantasy author and a novice Dungeons & Dragons adventurer, I began to try my hand at worldbuilding and realized it is much more complicated than books make it seem.” 

Burzumato’s project is funded by The Research Experience @ Bridgewater (TREB), a donor-funded initiative that supports Bridgewater College faculty and undergraduate student pairs in conducting summer research. She is using this funding to learn as much as she can about how fiction writers develop their imaginary settings, beginning by reading a variety of fantasy and science fiction novels and combing through articles and lectures by authors in these genres. Being an aspiring author herself, Burzumato’s excitement is, understandably, focused on this phase in the project. 

“The best part is how much reading I get to do,” Burzumato said. “This project has given me not only the time and means to read the books I want to read, but I am actually reading these books not only for leisure but for research.” 

Once enough notes on worldbuilding have been collected, the pair will build a new fictional world of their own with the help of two online worldbuilding tools: Inkarnate and World Anvil. Inkarnate is used for creating fantasy maps, while World Anvil allows users to keep track of a world’s details, such as its history, religions and myths. However, beyond simply working with these tools, Burzumato and Hamilton will also evaluate their utility and what they allow users to accomplish. 

While both Burzumato and Hamilton are writers, they also describe themselves as gamers. For the past three years, Hamilton has dedicated his time to learning about ludology, or the study of games, in preparation for the launch of Bridgewater’s new game design major in fall 2024. Having already taught classes on game design and writing, Hamilton aims to expand his knowledge on this crucial element of gaming. 

“Our goals include identifying the important elements of a lived-in world,” Hamilton said, adding that he also hopes to determine whether the same world works across mediums, namely games and novels. “How do we make it seem real? What is ‘cool’ versus what is necessary?” 

Eventually, Burzumato plans to present both her findings and the world she and Hamilton create during Bridgewater College’s ASPIRE week in 2025. She believes this experience will also prove useful when applying to graduate programs after her time at BC. Yet, in the end, the project’s purpose comes back to her passion: writing. 

“I simply want to become the best author I can be,” Burzumato said. “I want to create worlds that dazzle and inspire both myself and my readers.”

– Eli Quay ’20