During the week I presented ed.ted.com/ as a resource for teachers. Here I have selected a great resource – How to build a 
fictional world created by Kate Messner.
It is a high quality resource that within the context of ed.ted, 462 teachers have taken and created a lesson out of it – personalising its application for their students.
The resource itself asks:
Why is J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy so compelling? How about The Matrix or Harry Potter? What makes these disparate worlds come alive are clear, consistent rules for how people, societies — and even the laws of physics — function in these fictional universes.
Author Kate Messner offers a few tricks for you, too, to create a world worth exploring in your own words.
This is one resource available in the The Writer’s Workshop a section of ed.ted.com and a valuable resource in any English classroom.