I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment. It is, however, getting to the stage where it's rather silly to link posts individually, so I'm just going to link to the tag lookup result here.

I'm making fairly random decisions as I go about what to create and which way to take the world. That's part of the process, for me - just riding along, following the trail of each piece I create, being inspired by the previous ideas to build the next. That doesn't mean anything I decide is iron-cast - a better, more suitable or more interesting idea may well (and probably will) supercede it along the way. The important thing is to keep a hold of which things each decision influences, so I know that areas I need to rethink, should I change an idea. You can do this a number of ways (of course). Some people like making lists - lists of what influences what, of things that connect. Others prefer grids.

Personally, I'm an extremely visual person. I like to be able to see connections between things, so concept mapping is my tool of choice. There are two important caveats in the process, though:

Interconnectivity

A big problem with 90% of the concept mapping software out there is that it limits what nodes can connect to what. You can create branching trees, but you can't link two branches back together, or link a node back to its parent, or grandparent, or sibling. Freemind - a program I otherwise adore - has this problem, forcing me constantly back to my near-ten-year-old software package Inspiration, instead, which lets me connect a node to any other node that I feel like.

You need to be able to connect things everywhere because that's how the facts are connected. Even the few decisions that have built up in the ice world so far are interconnected, and if you're limited to just a one-way this-leads-to-this process, you're going to both miss things that don't fit together, or miss ideas that could have been brilliant.

Organic growth

A big mistake I used to make was to try to plan out the world creation before I'd created it. I'd list areas that had to be covered, and how they connected ('government', 'religion', laws' etc). The result was a giant mess of interconnected concepts that was far too intimidating to allow me anywhere near it.

Tracking what you're doing is not a prescriptive process - you're not trying to ensure you haven't forgotten anything. The creation process here is inspirational rather than perspirational, and plugging ideas into gaps like that will give you a very clunky, formulaic feeling to your building.

Furthermore, you just can't predict connections. Supposing you came up with a notion that connected your planet's form of government closely with the phases of the moon, or with the fathering of children? That's not a connection you can predict, but anything that changes children or the lunar cycle will now affect your government.

So, the point is to track not where you're going, but each idea as it's built in. Add it to the map, look at things it could influence, where it fits and connects, and make those connections. Maybe sketch in a few notes of inspiration for other aspects this idea or these connections spark, but don't plan out what you're going to design before your design it - you'll sap your own originality and freedom.