Categories are the fundamental way you organize your articles on World Anvil—but they’re so much more than that! Combining a solid category tree with good content in the category pages themselves will make your world much easier to navigate for readers (and for yourself). We’ve collected some examples from the community in this post so you can learn from your fellow Anvilites. Let’s take a look!
Using categories as content pages
Categories aren’t just tables of contents, they’re also fully fledged pages that can hold just as much worldbuilding content as an article! Some Anvilites use them as “mini homepages”: overviews of the content you can find within that category. For example, Catoblepon, author of Shattered, used the Fauna category to explain how fauna is defined within the context of their world. Similarly, Dimitris, author of Solspire Chronicles, introduces the basics of engineering in the Engineering category:
Check out Shattered, a fantasy setting of floating islands in space. |
Check out Solspire Chronicles, a steampunk world in a flooded planet. |
Embed content blocks & interactive elements
Since category pages have full formatting support, you can also use interactive features—like a family tree for a family’s category, or a diplomacy web for the factions category. Blue Fairy 74, creator of Elaqitan, includes an in-world quote and a map in this category:
Check out Elaqitan, a portal fantasy world where impending doom threatens the real world too.
Create your own navigation layout
By default, category pages include a table of contents and other navigation features. But you can remove all of them and create your own structure too! For example, nnie, author of Solaris, highlights the core articles in the category at the top and then manually embeds horizontal tables of contents for each sub-category for more precise control over the category’s look and feel:
Check out Solaris, a sci-fi setting that reimagines our solar system full of alien civilizations!
Editing categories is as easy as editing articles: select a category in the Articles & World Manager, and start writing! Check the Guide to Categories for more information about the feature and how to customize category layouts for help with creating advanced layouts.
How to structure your category tree
Categories are primarily an organization method, so let’s quickly look at the two main ways you can structure your tree.
Location-based trees
In these category trees, the top-level categories are geographical locations, each of them filled with sub-categories for specific topics. This system works great when your world’s locations are relatively isolated or very distinct from each other. For example, in many sci-fi universes, each planet is often its own self-contained world, even if there’s inter-planetary travel. In fantasy, planes of existence are a very clear example of this, although you could also use it for continents and other large regions of the world with their own identity.
In Those2Nerds’ Talos Sector (aka. wow that’s a lot of stars), most top-level categories are location-based: one for each cluster. And then, within each cluster category, there are more location-based categories for each planet in the cluster. This makes the massive geographical scope of a sci-fi setting much easier to digest for a first-time reader! In this case, there’s even this very useful panel in the homepage that lets you quickly jump to the planet you want to visit:
Check out the Talos Sector, a post-post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting where tensions are rising high.
Topic-based category trees
Another common way to organize your categories is by general topic (e.g. Characters, Places, Factions, Species, etc), which can then become more specific (e.g. Characters can be subdivided into their role in the story, their job, their rank, etc). The amount of top-level categories you use, as well as what they’re about, will depend on what you want to focus on when writing, as well as your personal preference. For example, these two category trees are quite similar, but the one on the right has separate top-level categories for people, cultures, and organizations:
 |
 |
| Check out the Yonderverse, Mochimanoban’s sci-fantasy universe. | Check out Astra Planeta, SpyglassRealms’ sci-fi setting. |
In-world categories
You can also get a bit creative with how you use your categories! For example in Hatwolf’s world of After Silence, categories are presented as in-world books about specific topics. Although it loses some clarity, this makes the world tree immediately immersive!
Check out Hatwolf’s dark fantasy world of After Silence!
Check out our tips to create a great category tree for more details.
Meta categories & other uses
As you develop your world, you’ll probably end up with a collection of articles that aren’t worldbuilding but you still want as part of your world. Here’s a quick run-down of some examples!
- Bilingual worlds: If you want to write your world in two different languages, the easiest way to do so is having two separate category structures, one for each language. For example, Blue Fairy 74’s world Elaquitan has all of its worldbuilding in German under a “German” category.
- RPG rules: If your world has its own RPG system, or if you use a third-party system but want to create special player options, you can have all of this under a specific category. This is what RiverFang and Shiftrex do for their custom Storybook System in their world Isekai.
- World Anvil challenges: Some challenges organized by World Anvil require the submission of meta articles (such as WorldEmber prep). Having a specific category for this is a great way to organize them! Check the Meta category in Alana, Tillerz’ fantasy world.
How do you organize your world? Let us know in the comments!
This is super handy, I bookmarked it for the next time someone asks about categories. It was extra fun to see my own world here too!
Would it maybe be possible to add links to the pages in each screenshot?