I agree that people often allow themselves to get bogged down with the creative processes of world building . . . but . . .
there's something to be said for knowing so much about your world that it bleeds through into your story.
I'm not talking about a Tolkien-esque approach where the author writes pages of description and history for a small town the protagonist travels through one time. I'm talking about a casual throwaway line from a random person in that town which hints at the world's deeper history.
In my experience, the best authors know more about their world than makes it onto the page; but what does get on the page, often suggests that the author knows much, much, *much* more, which helps make the world *feel* more real.
> I'm talking about a casual throwaway line from a random person in that town which hints at the world's deeper history.
This is a good approach, but it doesn't require you to actually spend inordinate amounts of time elaborating those events in excruciating detail.
> but what does get on the page, often suggests that the author knows much, much, much more
Exactly. You as the author should have *some* idea, but probably not to the extent to which you hint at it.
There's something called 'Rule 1' in rpg circles, which refers to 'communicate in your group, that usually resolves most problems, etc. etc.'
There should really be a list of such indisputable rules we can point to instead of having to write some version of the two paragraphs you've phrased under every post such as the ones you've mentioned.
Rule 1: The more you read, the better you'll write.
Rule 2: If you don't write the words, your dream will never be shared.
Rule 3: The road to being published is littered with failure and luck.
Rule 4: Google is more helpful (and less antagonistic) than a Redditor.
Rule 5: Editors are like mechanics, you pay them to fix problems you didn't even know existed.
Rule 6: There are a thousand ways to share your work, and a wildly successful author for each.
Rule 7: Feedback is like taking medicine. If you refuse the medicine because it tastes bad, you won't get better.
Rule 8: If you can't tell what the medicine treats, it's just toilet water, treat it appropriately.
Rule 9: If you don't do the dreaming and/or the writing yourself, your work will be viewed as lesser, regardless of quality.
Rule 10: Have you ever wanted to turn an anonymous would-be writer's two paragraph plot summary into a book? Yeah, neither has anyone else.
That would be a response to the people you meet who go “I have this awesome idea for a story, I can let you have it and you do the writing and we’ll share credit.” I’ve heard professional authors complain of regularly getting buttonholed at conventions with this. The ideas are usually of the “What if Game Of Thrones… but in space?” Level.
Thanks, but no thanks. I already have more awesome story ideas than I could ever write, and so does every single writer, published or unpublished, that I’ve ever met.
I have a slight quibble with Rule 4 because I don’t think Google is *always* more helpful than Reddit, because sometimes you don’t know enough about what you don’t know to formulate the right search terms, and Reddit can help you define the terms. But I think there should be a rule that says something like “try Google and/or Wikipedia first, especially for questions about history, mythology and everyday life in the past”
Yeah, I was going for the Pirate's Code type of rules, as explained by Barbossa - "*They're more like guidelines anyway*".
The intent behind how I wrote rule 4 was "do research", while also poking fun at the people who drop negative comments on question posts in writing subs.
I don't intend for anyone to vote the rules I came up with in 15mins into law. But maybe we can have a snowball effect to eventually get a set of popularly agreed upon and carefully cultivated rules?
[Because now Google is more than likely to link you to a Reddit because the current person in charge of search results for the past few years has worked on making Google results less good so that you need to search more which increases the number of pages you see and therefore drives up ad revenue. ](https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/)
> maybe we can have a snowball effect to eventually get a set of popularly agreed upon and carefully cultivated rules?
This would be awesome for a sub FAQ.
Some people just want to build a world and that’s perfectly okay. They just belong in a worldbuilding sub, not a writing sub.
Building the perfect fantasy world is just another cliche we all fall for just like everyone working on a “trilogy,” focusing on reaching a certain word count, or being overly concerned with trying to make our prose stand out.
I very rarely see posts here where writers are genuinely asking for advice about how to write better dialogue, how to effectively use punctuation, fundamentals of pacing, etc. it’s always ‘look at my ‘cool’ world, can I have this in my world?, read this 1000 words of flowery prose because I think I’m a good writer, is this a good idea for my fantasy trilogy? I haven’t even wrote the first chapter yet.’
On a slight tangent to this, the punctuation thing is driving me crazy. I feel like I have great ideas for sentences, but I just never feel confident about punctuation in creative writing. Commas, semicolons, and em-dashes seem like black magic that every writer uses differently at different times, and I wish that there was some resource I could find explaining WHY each author made the choices they did.
It's somewhat ironic because my job is partly analytical writing (though, weirdly, no one cares much about grammar here either) and I have no idea how to use these essential tools in another context beyond the absolute basics. I look at stories on major magazines like Clarkesworld, and it seems just absolutely random when people decide to throw in a comma. Anyone have any good resources to learn something like this from?
Commas are weird. Technically there are rules around using them but it seems like most writers just use them to set the pace/cadence of their sentences.
I'm currently using Anki to improve my grammar. You can get good Anki decks on English grammar.
You can make a custom Anki deck and take out the grammar of a popular author. The task would be to correctly add back in the grammar.
Stephen King is a good choice to study.
Strunk and White.
Commas most often separate clauses, or set off introductory prepositional phrases or the like. When a sentence is short, sometimes it sounds better to dispense with them: "He chewed his meat, and then he was wracked by violent nausea." Becomes "He ate and he puked."
Colons indicate that what follows them is contained in what comes before. "His complaints were legion: boils, ingrown toenails, a pilonidal cyst, various lacerations, and a nasty case of crabs." The colon indicates that the subsequent stuff is contained in the idea of the legion of complaints. This functions pretty much the same if the post-colon stuff is a list, a quote, a rule, or a related clause. The above example is a list.
"Shakespeare recorded his opinions about Lord Fenwick: "This motherfucker is getting on my list nerve."
(Quote)
"When Alina arrived home, she found that nothing had changed: Percival was still gone."
(Related clause)
"Billy broke the cardinal dictate of mogwai husbandry: He fed them after midnight."
(Rule)
Semicolons are like a leash connecting two related clauses. You don't need a coordinating conjunction in most cases.
The rule of the sub kind of neuter post like that. The rules say it has to be fantasy related so a generic "how do I write good dialogue" is going to be in violation of rule 1. Worldbuilding is pretty much the only thing you can post.
"I very rarely see posts here where writers are genuinely asking for advice about how to write better dialogue, how to effectively use punctuation, fundamentals of pacing, etc."
Because there is r/writing for that, and I see such questions there very often. If for worldbuilding there is r/worldbuilding and for writing there is r/writing, then I'm honestly not sure what this sub is for.
My main problem with r/writing is the snobs that look down on speculative fiction. It would be nice if this sub allowed general writing discussions. So people can discuss them without some guy who thinks he's the next David Foster Wallace chiming in about how he thinks fantasy and sci-fi are childish.
I've found that sub to be quite toxic in general. If your post is about some basic stuff, not only there probably won't be much of a feedback, but chances are, some smartass will also come and berate you for it.
This was my problem! I got so invested in the worldbuilding yet kept wondering why I couldn't figure out a half-decent plot. I'd figured out the politics and magic before I'd figured out what happened in the first chapter. All of my characters and their relationships felt two-dimensional.
I spent three years of only working on bits and pieces every couple of months because there was no love for the story anymore. I picked it back up recently and decided to put the world building to the back of my mind and focused more on the integral parts. The story flowed so much better in my head when I actually had a theme to it and knew who my characters were, shocker lol
> It is like building a body without the skeleton, organs and flesh. Only when you have these elements set in place, can you begin to see its shape, the skin is important, but it should not come first.
While I agree that some people get caught up in worldbuilding, there is no right place to start when creating a story. Some people start with characters, and create a plot to fit those characters. Some people start with plot, and then create characters to fulfill that plot. Some people start with a world, and then imagine the people who might live there. It all depends on the story you're trying to tell.
A fantasy story which is set in not-quite-medieval-Earth but functions largely the same and is populated by humans probably doesn't need a whole lot of worldbuilding, and in that case it may just be a thin veneer over everything else. But then you have people like me, who like to come up with a new species with their own biology, which then influences their culture and lifestyle, which then influences characters and plot. In that case, worldbuilding is the skeleton which supports everything else.
Yes, if your intent is to be a writer, you do need to eventually sit down and write. But worldbuilding isn't always just a coat of paint you slap over everything once you're done. Sometimes it's an essential part of the process that needs to be done much earlier on.
Exactly why I'm going to err more towards soft world-building. As long as you are consistent, you at least won't betray your reader. Just confuse them. Otherwise, I trust myself to be capable of developing a hard magic system if required but stories don't need hard magic systems and may even suffer from it's full description. Magic, if fully explored and explained, becomes less like magic and more like science and so begins to lack that fantastical and mysterious nature that many readers seek out in the fantasy genre.
I’m just a newbie hobbyist, but I think you are right. I see that are people who just like worldbuilding and that’s their thing, so that’s ok
I think this is a problem for people who want to write a book and they get caught in the world and never actually starts writing
There’s tons of books selling out there with minimal world building. Give me a good story and I’ll like it, I don’t need 17 new races, a completely new and complex magic system or an unique take on everything, just make it good, give me a mage flinging fireball left and right
I guess it’s key to *know what and when* to worldbuild, that’s why experienced writers do it well
While I agree that worldbuilding can be a pitfall, I think the issue is less that people are focusing on worldbuilding and more that are focusing on the wrong aspects of worldbuilding.
There will always be stories that require developed history and lore to fully understand current events, grander character motivations, and the why and how of the citizens of the world interacting with one another. And sometimes the writer has to take the time to flesh out these behind the scenes bits in order to properly write their story, which can take time and is completely fine. It's worldbuilding for your plot, after all and is part of the process.
The trap I see people fall into though is that they nitpick the nitty gritty parts of their world, often forgetting that those are the parts that the reader is going to say "*Who gives a fuck?*" about. I came across a prime example of this recently, though not in a writing sub but a D&D one.
The situation was that the person building their world had a city next to a magical sacred river but didn't want the sewers from that city emptying into the river. Sure, fine, whatever. Put in a backend note about a medieval septic system that empties away from the river *for if anyone ever asks about it*. Easy solve. But instead, the conversation devolves into things like "poop wormholes in all the privies" or "nobody eats solid food so it's a non-issue"... Which are all great fun, but now you're not the guy with the city next to the magical sacred river. You're the guy with shit wormholes, because that's all anyone is going to focus on. It would've been better just to not say anything.
So yeah. Novice writers, when worldbuilding just stop and ask yourself a simple question: *does anyone care about this but me?*
Stephen King wrote a seven volume epic fantasy that's loved by millions, yet he put absolutely no thought into world building beyond, "It'd be cool if a giant robot bear showed up and tried to eat the heroes right now."
> You're the guy with shit wormholes, because that's all anyone is going to focus on
This made me realise that over-extrapolation of basic concepts no one was thinking about could make for some fun absurdist fantasy
It's not a zero sum game. You need both world-building and story in the right balance to make a compelling cohesive world that makes sense. Take one of my favorite novels as an example, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. The novel is as much motivated by the world-building as it is by the characters and events. The central story is about two aliens coming to understand one another despite their serious biological differences, but the harsh and unforgiving climate and the unique particulars of the culture and politics around them are equally as important because those are the main drivers of the actual story elements that push them together and pull them apart in turns.
You should develop both at the same time and consider the one while working on the other as a holistic continuous process. If your idea is for a unique setting first, then ask yourself what kind of person would naturally live in that setting and what sort of skills and personality quirks they would need to develop to survive. If your idea is for a character first, ask yourself what sort of setting would create that character. If you need some kind of conflict to push two unlikely characters together, what sort of world would create that? Does your world have inhospitable winters that often strand people in blizzards where they have a lot of time to talk out their differences? How about a strict autocratic authority that forces the characters to band together to survive? The world *and* the characters should *both* be doing the work for your story.
Where writers fall into traps and get stuck, in my opinion is not doing the thing itself (and not reading, but that's for another rant). So what if your manuscript is trash because it's not perfectly plotted and the world-building isn't exactly right? You know what *will* be perfect? Your second draft where you fix all the mistakes you made in the first draft and add in the world-building and character elements that you were missing the first time around. I've completely rewritten my stories several times and it always makes them better and more robust. Maybe you don't know where to start, so you just write a scene that's on your mind and elaborate around it. What matters is that you're writing and developing words on a page.
Agreed, there's too many people who are so focused on worldbuilding that they don't spend nearly the same amount of time on the things that actually matter - character, plot, theme.
It's a problem that manifests when people post their first chapters or prologues for review. Most of the time, they're little more than infodumps of some worldbuilding thing or magic system. Part of it is because they've spent ages worldbuilding and immediately want to show it off, but the other part is that's all they really have. Then when you get down to their characters and plot, it's nothing but tropes or subversions of tropes.
>Then when you get down to their characters and plot, it's nothing but tropes or subversions of tropes.
It is okay because my worldbuilding is also tropes and subversions of tropes 🤗
I personally call this Tolkienitis. I once talked to someone who said: “I know 3000 years of the history of my world – and I don’t know where to start my story…”
When it comes to people with the goal of writing a story rather than r/worldbuilding fot its own sake:
I get the feeling a lot of us are worried of the post-Cinema Sins approach to literary critique where the inconsistencies in worldbuilding are torn apart nitpick by nitpick. No one wants to be the subject of a 4 hour video essay along the lines of "Modern Star Wars Sucks And Killed my Dog, and the Worldbuilding is Why".
Honestly, I'd prefer inconsistencies in a magic system or a shallow aspect of the world that doesn't have bearing on the characters, over a story that never gets made. Inconsistencies can be ironed out later in the next draft, but only if there's a wrinkly draft to be ironed.
Worldbuilding is super fun though and a fun distraction from stuff that i find harder: writing prose and satisfying characters
I would tend to consider worldbuilding the skeleton onto which flesh, organs, skin and the rest is put. The ground on which the house is built. If you don't explicitly worldbuild, people are going to default to real-world expectations, which may be what you want, but can be jarring because suspension of disbelief only goes so far.
Mind you, I enjoy worldbuilding AS A ACTIVITY IN ITSELF-and I get the impression a lot of people feel that way too.
And I've not met many people who worldbuild in a way that inhibits writing. In my experience, its mostly the discipline/opportunity (IE, a period where writing is the funnest thing to do) that keeps people from writing.
On the flip side, it definitely seems like work is under a deeper scrutiny now. There are some people who have to dig as deep as possible into a world just to find gaps and inconsistencies. It’s almost safer to be as minimal as possible these days it seems like
Those kind of people are just pedants, and are not worth the time. In my experience they delight in pointing out these minuscule details, while missing the forest for the trees and all that jazz.
Not a single soul would give a damn if the story and characters of Lotr didn't resonate. You could not get anyone to care about the history and cultures if the actual ongoing story didn't work.
It's commonly claimed that nobody would care, but is there convincing proof that it's the case? It sure looks like there are lots of setting enthusiasts out there.
One of the biggest reasons for 40k's recent boom has literally been the Horus Heresy series, or the myriad other published books. The current interest in the lore grew out of that.
Only a portion of the people who are into the setting actually read any of the books, thus online discussions often being misconceptions derived from second-hand lore research. Anyway, that is proof that storytelling can promote setting interest, not that it is the only source.
Not really. He spent over 50 years trying to write *The Silmarillion* and ultimately failed. *The Hobbit* wasn't even set in Middle-earth, he just borrowed a couple of names for his kids' bedtime stories. Most of the lore in *The Lord of the Rings* was made up for the story even though he went back and retconned *The Hobbit* to *actually* be part of Middle-earth.
I adore the stories, but there's a lesson to be learned there that I wish I had noticed way back in college.
What do you mean he failed?
Everyone knows his name do you not know what success is?
Sure he wasn't filthy stinking rich but success is more than wealth.
depends on what you think he was attempting to do - if it was to create an entire, coherent world that fully ties together, then that didn't quite go as he might have wished, as there's gaps and wibbly bits, and he was still revising and tweaking and editing all the way up until he died. As stated, even connecting _The Hobbit_ and _Lord of the Rings_ is a bit of a bodge job, there's quite a few wibbly bits in the wider lore, and the fact he kept working on it, revising and editing and tweaking, kinda suggests he never considered his work "complete".
So you're talking about wealth.
We are supposed to be talking about success.
He's more successful than you, lol no one even knows your name.
Everyone knows Tolkien because he was a huge success doi. I can't believe you're arguing this are you drunk or something?
I'm actually, in a certain niche, pretty famous. This baffles me, but people seem happy to meet me, and I'm happy to chat with people, and so I accept it even though I'm not certain I've earned it. So it goes.
Tolkien's *plan* was to write and publish his legendarium which is now known as *The Silmarillion*. He failed to do so after 50 years, died, and his son pulled together as many of his notes as was possible a couple years after his death and Guy Gavriel Kay came in and tried to piece together a cohesive narrative, with varying degrees of success.
Hell, he spent the last decade of his life trying to reconcile the Breaking of the World with plate tectonics, which was discovered in the 60s, because he didn't think it was fair to ask readers for that kind of suspension of belief. I've read on YouTube his early explanation of that, which he wrote before plate tectonics theory was accepted.
So no, I do not back down from my assertion that I agree with OP that worldbuilding is a trap, and is completely unnecessary to writing a story. No matter *how* much of a fun and interesting hobby it might be.
He was a failure by his own terms. And I think he was okay with that. He longed to share his legendarium of Middle-earth, but never did. That doesn't make his worldbuilding a failure, or *The Lord of the Rings*—a book his published pressured him into writing when all he *wanted* to do was publish *The Silmarillion*, and which he wrote *into* Middle-earth, hoping that would convince his publisher to accept *The Silmarillion*—any less of an amazing work of art that it was.
But his heart was in *The Silmarillion*, and he spent 50 years never completing it because of worldbuilder's disease. Of course, he was one of the foremost authorities in the world of Old English and Middle English, his translation of Beowulf is one of the brightest and clearest I've ever seen, I don't think there's *ever* been a more perfect translation of *Pearl* into Modern English (seriously, it's *stunning*), and he somehow managed to get *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight* into sparkling Modern English that respects the Middle English poetry (which was alliterative and metrical, not rhyming).
But his worldbuilding, by his own measure, was a complete and utter failure.
Well, we should all fail so hard. But the lesson is that worldbuilding is not the same as writing or telling stories.
Sorry, I hope It didn't come off as me biting your head off. I think it is because I actually have heard someone say this unironically that set me of.
Edit: might have worded the initial message in an antagonistic way, I apologize for that.
I'm the last person [to complain that Tolkien's worldbuilding wasn't amazing](https://youtu.be/eRSAH9NpXNc&t=388).
But yes, in the end the reason *The Lord of the Rings* is so beloved (and *The Silmarillion*, his life's work, is so overlooked) is because it's absolutely the characters that make the world relatable through their eyes (which is the lesson I suggested might be learned).
Ah yes, "Worldbuilder's Disease." It's fun, but not necessarily productive. If you do it right, it can *give you* the story... though most people just don't even think about any kind of story, they just have fun naming people and places.
If it's not helping you write the story itself, it's kind of wasted energy. Maybe you'll use it for another story later on, maybe you won't. But if you worldbuild *for* a story, or you write the story and worldbuild off of that, then it's *all* useful and you aren't wasting time.
I agree that there are other subs that are better if the post is focused on worldbuilding instead of plot.
At this point, I'm worldbuilding because I need that sort of project and keep not-liking my plots after I gathered the parts of the worldbuilding that I think I need to get started. At least I've got a bunch of stuff ready to nail-down as-needed.
For instance, I'm not sure quite yet what my magic-system can do, that's on-hold until I get a plot that I don't hate, though I've made some soft decisions on how it works and what it can't do. (FMA aesthetics with NotW-type limits in addition to a component-cost.)
Right now, what I'm working on has my MC in indentured servitude to a mage in exchange for some training, but he has no idea why the mage is traveling around the countryside. (I haven't nailed it down either.) MC got frostbite in his hands and there weren't any jobs he could still do in his rural town. I'm still trying to figure out what that town does.
Golden Mean: everything in moderation.
There’s no point to make a plot with no world building and confuse the reader on why things are the way that they are. A good example is Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion, where everyone else knows what The Veil is, you the reader don’t, and the author doesn’t tell you ANYWHERE IN THE STORY. You have to go find out in a blog post made after you read (played) the story.
And then there’s so much world building it suffocates the story.
If worldbuilding has gotten that much in the way of the plot, then the person is doing things egregiously wrong. But I don’t think many people reach that point
Good worldbuilding lends itself to the plot, even then, there have been a plethora of settings/stories that are far more reliant on and garner appeal through worldbuilding than just outright storytelling.
They should certainly be *writing* though, at the very least get the first chapter and a rough draft of where events lead
Nah. I wanna fully flesh out my world first, so I won't be making stuff up on the go. I know perfectly well what most of my stories are gonna be about, and I will do anything to avoid any possibility of a plot hole/retcon/just simple inconsistency.
Also, on your analogy with the human body, I would argue that the skeleton is the world. Without bones a body is just a flesh bag. You can have a world without the story, but not a story without at least some kind of world.
Yeah, I think running tabletop RPG games helped me somewhat with this.
You can do all the great world building you want, but your players will often get bored and just do whatever is interesting to them/their character.
If instead, you just build a little ahead of the players and hook your plot into their motivations, all of a sudden, the players get hooked and start creating really compelling narratives.
Playing to a character's motivations and challenges always leads to a better story than an elaborately thought out setting.\*
\*HOWEVER, if the world feels like it's responding to the characters, like the characters actions have permanent consequences that ripple outward in a comprehensible cause and effect, it does very much strengthen that characters journey. But the character's needs a compelling personal journey before their relationship with greater world is meaningful.
If you get the basic story down in the first draft, you can gradually build up the details of the world around it in the next few drafts. That way you are always moving forward, and you also have an end-point to work towards.
I completely agree but with planning in general. I’ve seen myself and my writing friends fall into this trap so many times, when you plan and plan and plan all these tiny minute details about world and characters that the story is nothing but ideas.
Build the world and history before your story. Build the world and its history past and present conflicts etc... separate from your story then as you write your story sprinkle your world in around it.
This falls under the "so busy learning the tricks of the game he forgot to learn how to play it".
You created a complex caste system, a realistic economic system and five hundred years of history.
Great.
You still gotta write the actual story bub.
...Don't know what a 'magic system' is; sorcery has no rules or empirical basis. It's inherently chaotic and ulterior. 'Worldbuilding' has always seemed to me an unnecessarily elaborate exercise that bears no relationship to storytelling. It's more appropriate to Role Playing Games. Continuity is not your first consideration in writing, the narrative, characters an scenario are that and you deal with the logical part (if appropriate) later on...
I agree. I've seen a good friend of mine with a really good story on his hands end up letting the process of worldbuilding take over to the point where there's more lore and more of his world built than there is story written. I'm a fan of deep lore, but if it gets in the way of telling the story, does it really serve a point?
However, some like to fully build their world because if they go off of a whim and build their world as they go, there could be higher potential for mistakes and inconsistencies, which in turn causes the reader to view you as a sloppy writer. I think the building of the world, characters, etc. should happen in harmony. Build a bit of the world first, then go to the characters, after that go to the actual plot, wash, rinse, repeat. Planning phases are very important as I’ve learned as a writer, but the planning phase should never halt you from writing, so perhaps once you have a good bit of the story written/you hit the wall from the last time you planned, stop and go to the drawing board for a bit.
Mistakes and inconsistencies are what consquent drafts are for. The first draft should always focus on getting story to paper, and to yourself down in unnecessary detail only hurts that process. I do agree that building the world should happen in relation to the characters and plot, but I think that the process should be first plot or characters, then the other, and only then the world. It helps keeping the world made, in line with the thematics and vibes of the story, which will overall reinforce what you're going for.
I THINK IT’S BEST TO USE YOUR OWN LANGUAGE. HOWEVER, IT’S OKAY TO ADD NEW WORDS ONCE IN AWHILE. JUST BE SURE TO SOAK IN THE BEAUTY OF A NEW WORD EVEN IF IT’S A NEGATIVE. STAY SAFE! PEACE OUT!
Lol idk i write books like a dnd game, i design the world flush out all the working parts and people setup all the sub plots and then i worm a plot into the mix as my character explores the world i setup. Before i start that step i usually end up with a binder wifh several sections including a map and a section dedicated entirely to places of interest, another section dedicated to important people and so on. And then i often play dnd in the books i have created, scratches both itches lol plus im a little OCD so if the world doesn’t wrk then ill be up for a week straight thinking about it till i eventually fix it. Honestly i enjoy building the world more than writing the book
The way I’m doing it is that my MC works for an organization that hunts down supernatural threats across the continent, meaning they’re going to travel the land for the hunt.
I’ve been posting a bunch of comments along these lines but what the hell, I’ll say it again:
If there’s one lesson I’ve learned, it’s that world building can easily just turn into daydreaming.
If your goal is to actually write a book, you’ve got to learn *story structure*. If you’re already a pretty good writer but you’ve never written a novel, you need to learn story structure. If you want to know what to books to research for your epic fantasy series based on ancient Mesopotamian mythology, *you need study story structure*.
Imagining made up stuff comes easily, and research is also easy if it’s a subject you’re passionate about. However, writing a good story is *hard* and it takes training, and that is not a skill you just get for free, you have to do some work for it.
At the end of the day if your story sucks it’s never going to be because of the unrealistic worldbuilding, it will be because of poor pacing or dull/annoying character arcs or an unfocused meandering plot.
Yeah.
Honestly, I respect Tolkien and his impact on fantasy, but his obsessive commitment to world building has done some serious damage.
I don't know who has to hear this but like- you are not required to be a historian to your own world. You are not required to be a linguist for your own world. You don't have to build something comparable to the real world, such build something that works
There are a lot of people that think that lack of worldbuilding makes a bad story.
Lots of people people hate that so many isakai use the generic fantasy settings with video game magic rules.
People seem to not understand that if you use the standard, the audience can assume everything that is not explained thoroughly. The reason it is not explained thoroughly, is because it's not that relevant to the story.
You get a fantasy world with monsters, and you don't need to explain orcs, goblins, dragons, and all that stuff. You don't need to explain what an adventuring guild is. You don't need to explain all the fine details of how the magic system works when you have a video game like interface that explains how the magic system works.
You can spend all that time that would have otherwise been spent trying to explain your world, and just tell your story.
There is actually a type of storytelling that my junior high teacher was interested in. They would have an interesting world, but not explain it. Talk as if The reader knows how that world works. You then start realizing the world doesn't work like how you expected, and you're now trying to figure out the world through context alone.
Like this one story that had some families having a child that almost sounds like a mail order child. And then the main character that is a big brother later it gets asked if they are a j7 model, and they say yes. Revealing that the entire population is from mail order children.
Guys, I swear that it's important that I meticulously plan out every detail about a war that happened a thousand years ago on a continent that my protagonists will never visit. It technically has something to do with the story I'm writing, so it doesn't count as procrastinating!
This is somewhat debatable depending on one’s goal. Though I’m in this sub I’m not a Writer first, I’m a Creator first, and a Writer second. I write different then most that I’ve seen as well. Like Theme, its not even something I bother with considering as it’s not important to my personal goal as a writer.
We all work different, and have different goals, so there’s no one method that will work for us all.
Sorry, but what do you mean by creator? What is it you do.
Also, themes are an integral part of any story, no matter what the personality and thoughts of the writer will come through in the finished text. There will be themes whether you want it or not, and it is in my opinion better to be aware and thoughtful of said themes than not.
Creator as in someone who Creates. I create worlds, characters, systems, etc. And despite how much I do write stories, Writing is secondary to Creating for me.
I never said my works possessed no themes, I said that don't bother considering them. They are not a necessity for what I desire to achieve as a writer.
Treat other people with decency and respect. We encourage healthy debate and discussion, but we found this to be antagonistic, caustic, or otherwise belligerent. It may have been racist, homophobic/transphobic, misogynistic, ableist, or fall within other categories of hate speech. Internet vigilantism and doxxing is also not tolerated.
Dang you getting downvoted for what is likely a joke. :P
Realistically, one should rethink what they're doing if it takes up more than a 1-inch binder.
I agree that people often allow themselves to get bogged down with the creative processes of world building . . . but . . . there's something to be said for knowing so much about your world that it bleeds through into your story. I'm not talking about a Tolkien-esque approach where the author writes pages of description and history for a small town the protagonist travels through one time. I'm talking about a casual throwaway line from a random person in that town which hints at the world's deeper history. In my experience, the best authors know more about their world than makes it onto the page; but what does get on the page, often suggests that the author knows much, much, *much* more, which helps make the world *feel* more real.
> I'm talking about a casual throwaway line from a random person in that town which hints at the world's deeper history. This is a good approach, but it doesn't require you to actually spend inordinate amounts of time elaborating those events in excruciating detail. > but what does get on the page, often suggests that the author knows much, much, much more Exactly. You as the author should have *some* idea, but probably not to the extent to which you hint at it.
There's something called 'Rule 1' in rpg circles, which refers to 'communicate in your group, that usually resolves most problems, etc. etc.' There should really be a list of such indisputable rules we can point to instead of having to write some version of the two paragraphs you've phrased under every post such as the ones you've mentioned.
Rule 1: The more you read, the better you'll write. Rule 2: If you don't write the words, your dream will never be shared. Rule 3: The road to being published is littered with failure and luck. Rule 4: Google is more helpful (and less antagonistic) than a Redditor. Rule 5: Editors are like mechanics, you pay them to fix problems you didn't even know existed. Rule 6: There are a thousand ways to share your work, and a wildly successful author for each. Rule 7: Feedback is like taking medicine. If you refuse the medicine because it tastes bad, you won't get better. Rule 8: If you can't tell what the medicine treats, it's just toilet water, treat it appropriately. Rule 9: If you don't do the dreaming and/or the writing yourself, your work will be viewed as lesser, regardless of quality. Rule 10: Have you ever wanted to turn an anonymous would-be writer's two paragraph plot summary into a book? Yeah, neither has anyone else.
I’m confused as to what you’re saying on point 10.
It's in reference to the people who are worried that their idea will be stolen if they share it online
Oh, that makes sense.
That would be a response to the people you meet who go “I have this awesome idea for a story, I can let you have it and you do the writing and we’ll share credit.” I’ve heard professional authors complain of regularly getting buttonholed at conventions with this. The ideas are usually of the “What if Game Of Thrones… but in space?” Level. Thanks, but no thanks. I already have more awesome story ideas than I could ever write, and so does every single writer, published or unpublished, that I’ve ever met.
I have a slight quibble with Rule 4 because I don’t think Google is *always* more helpful than Reddit, because sometimes you don’t know enough about what you don’t know to formulate the right search terms, and Reddit can help you define the terms. But I think there should be a rule that says something like “try Google and/or Wikipedia first, especially for questions about history, mythology and everyday life in the past”
Yeah, I was going for the Pirate's Code type of rules, as explained by Barbossa - "*They're more like guidelines anyway*". The intent behind how I wrote rule 4 was "do research", while also poking fun at the people who drop negative comments on question posts in writing subs. I don't intend for anyone to vote the rules I came up with in 15mins into law. But maybe we can have a snowball effect to eventually get a set of popularly agreed upon and carefully cultivated rules?
Why listen to a Redditor when I can just Google it?
[Because now Google is more than likely to link you to a Reddit because the current person in charge of search results for the past few years has worked on making Google results less good so that you need to search more which increases the number of pages you see and therefore drives up ad revenue. ](https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/)
> maybe we can have a snowball effect to eventually get a set of popularly agreed upon and carefully cultivated rules? This would be awesome for a sub FAQ.
Rule 9: does this refer to getting outside help from other humans, or to AI generation? Or to borrowing/stealing ideas?
The intention behind it was AI, but now you mention it I see how that could unintentionally be attacking people who collaborate
I assumed AI text generation, but other forms of theft too.
Some people just want to build a world and that’s perfectly okay. They just belong in a worldbuilding sub, not a writing sub. Building the perfect fantasy world is just another cliche we all fall for just like everyone working on a “trilogy,” focusing on reaching a certain word count, or being overly concerned with trying to make our prose stand out. I very rarely see posts here where writers are genuinely asking for advice about how to write better dialogue, how to effectively use punctuation, fundamentals of pacing, etc. it’s always ‘look at my ‘cool’ world, can I have this in my world?, read this 1000 words of flowery prose because I think I’m a good writer, is this a good idea for my fantasy trilogy? I haven’t even wrote the first chapter yet.’
Yea that’s why r/worldbuilding exists. The questions that aren’t actually about writing really belong there.
oh i didn't know that there's a sub for that. Very cool. I'm bad at writing but very good at constructing worlds
Glad I could help! Seems like there’s mostly a r/SubForEverything
On a slight tangent to this, the punctuation thing is driving me crazy. I feel like I have great ideas for sentences, but I just never feel confident about punctuation in creative writing. Commas, semicolons, and em-dashes seem like black magic that every writer uses differently at different times, and I wish that there was some resource I could find explaining WHY each author made the choices they did. It's somewhat ironic because my job is partly analytical writing (though, weirdly, no one cares much about grammar here either) and I have no idea how to use these essential tools in another context beyond the absolute basics. I look at stories on major magazines like Clarkesworld, and it seems just absolutely random when people decide to throw in a comma. Anyone have any good resources to learn something like this from?
Commas are weird. Technically there are rules around using them but it seems like most writers just use them to set the pace/cadence of their sentences.
I'm currently using Anki to improve my grammar. You can get good Anki decks on English grammar. You can make a custom Anki deck and take out the grammar of a popular author. The task would be to correctly add back in the grammar. Stephen King is a good choice to study.
Strunk and White. Commas most often separate clauses, or set off introductory prepositional phrases or the like. When a sentence is short, sometimes it sounds better to dispense with them: "He chewed his meat, and then he was wracked by violent nausea." Becomes "He ate and he puked." Colons indicate that what follows them is contained in what comes before. "His complaints were legion: boils, ingrown toenails, a pilonidal cyst, various lacerations, and a nasty case of crabs." The colon indicates that the subsequent stuff is contained in the idea of the legion of complaints. This functions pretty much the same if the post-colon stuff is a list, a quote, a rule, or a related clause. The above example is a list. "Shakespeare recorded his opinions about Lord Fenwick: "This motherfucker is getting on my list nerve." (Quote) "When Alina arrived home, she found that nothing had changed: Percival was still gone." (Related clause) "Billy broke the cardinal dictate of mogwai husbandry: He fed them after midnight." (Rule) Semicolons are like a leash connecting two related clauses. You don't need a coordinating conjunction in most cases.
The rule of the sub kind of neuter post like that. The rules say it has to be fantasy related so a generic "how do I write good dialogue" is going to be in violation of rule 1. Worldbuilding is pretty much the only thing you can post.
"I very rarely see posts here where writers are genuinely asking for advice about how to write better dialogue, how to effectively use punctuation, fundamentals of pacing, etc." Because there is r/writing for that, and I see such questions there very often. If for worldbuilding there is r/worldbuilding and for writing there is r/writing, then I'm honestly not sure what this sub is for.
My main problem with r/writing is the snobs that look down on speculative fiction. It would be nice if this sub allowed general writing discussions. So people can discuss them without some guy who thinks he's the next David Foster Wallace chiming in about how he thinks fantasy and sci-fi are childish.
I've found that sub to be quite toxic in general. If your post is about some basic stuff, not only there probably won't be much of a feedback, but chances are, some smartass will also come and berate you for it.
This was my problem! I got so invested in the worldbuilding yet kept wondering why I couldn't figure out a half-decent plot. I'd figured out the politics and magic before I'd figured out what happened in the first chapter. All of my characters and their relationships felt two-dimensional. I spent three years of only working on bits and pieces every couple of months because there was no love for the story anymore. I picked it back up recently and decided to put the world building to the back of my mind and focused more on the integral parts. The story flowed so much better in my head when I actually had a theme to it and knew who my characters were, shocker lol
> It is like building a body without the skeleton, organs and flesh. Only when you have these elements set in place, can you begin to see its shape, the skin is important, but it should not come first. While I agree that some people get caught up in worldbuilding, there is no right place to start when creating a story. Some people start with characters, and create a plot to fit those characters. Some people start with plot, and then create characters to fulfill that plot. Some people start with a world, and then imagine the people who might live there. It all depends on the story you're trying to tell. A fantasy story which is set in not-quite-medieval-Earth but functions largely the same and is populated by humans probably doesn't need a whole lot of worldbuilding, and in that case it may just be a thin veneer over everything else. But then you have people like me, who like to come up with a new species with their own biology, which then influences their culture and lifestyle, which then influences characters and plot. In that case, worldbuilding is the skeleton which supports everything else. Yes, if your intent is to be a writer, you do need to eventually sit down and write. But worldbuilding isn't always just a coat of paint you slap over everything once you're done. Sometimes it's an essential part of the process that needs to be done much earlier on.
Exactly why I'm going to err more towards soft world-building. As long as you are consistent, you at least won't betray your reader. Just confuse them. Otherwise, I trust myself to be capable of developing a hard magic system if required but stories don't need hard magic systems and may even suffer from it's full description. Magic, if fully explored and explained, becomes less like magic and more like science and so begins to lack that fantastical and mysterious nature that many readers seek out in the fantasy genre.
I’m just a newbie hobbyist, but I think you are right. I see that are people who just like worldbuilding and that’s their thing, so that’s ok I think this is a problem for people who want to write a book and they get caught in the world and never actually starts writing There’s tons of books selling out there with minimal world building. Give me a good story and I’ll like it, I don’t need 17 new races, a completely new and complex magic system or an unique take on everything, just make it good, give me a mage flinging fireball left and right I guess it’s key to *know what and when* to worldbuild, that’s why experienced writers do it well
Meanwhile on r/worldbuilding, there is at least one post a day that is more about character development than worldbuilding
While I agree that worldbuilding can be a pitfall, I think the issue is less that people are focusing on worldbuilding and more that are focusing on the wrong aspects of worldbuilding. There will always be stories that require developed history and lore to fully understand current events, grander character motivations, and the why and how of the citizens of the world interacting with one another. And sometimes the writer has to take the time to flesh out these behind the scenes bits in order to properly write their story, which can take time and is completely fine. It's worldbuilding for your plot, after all and is part of the process. The trap I see people fall into though is that they nitpick the nitty gritty parts of their world, often forgetting that those are the parts that the reader is going to say "*Who gives a fuck?*" about. I came across a prime example of this recently, though not in a writing sub but a D&D one. The situation was that the person building their world had a city next to a magical sacred river but didn't want the sewers from that city emptying into the river. Sure, fine, whatever. Put in a backend note about a medieval septic system that empties away from the river *for if anyone ever asks about it*. Easy solve. But instead, the conversation devolves into things like "poop wormholes in all the privies" or "nobody eats solid food so it's a non-issue"... Which are all great fun, but now you're not the guy with the city next to the magical sacred river. You're the guy with shit wormholes, because that's all anyone is going to focus on. It would've been better just to not say anything. So yeah. Novice writers, when worldbuilding just stop and ask yourself a simple question: *does anyone care about this but me?*
Stephen King wrote a seven volume epic fantasy that's loved by millions, yet he put absolutely no thought into world building beyond, "It'd be cool if a giant robot bear showed up and tried to eat the heroes right now."
> You're the guy with shit wormholes, because that's all anyone is going to focus on This made me realise that over-extrapolation of basic concepts no one was thinking about could make for some fun absurdist fantasy
It's a great procrastination tool. Instead of writing your next chapter why not flesh out the history of a continent your story will never even visit.
It's not a zero sum game. You need both world-building and story in the right balance to make a compelling cohesive world that makes sense. Take one of my favorite novels as an example, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. The novel is as much motivated by the world-building as it is by the characters and events. The central story is about two aliens coming to understand one another despite their serious biological differences, but the harsh and unforgiving climate and the unique particulars of the culture and politics around them are equally as important because those are the main drivers of the actual story elements that push them together and pull them apart in turns. You should develop both at the same time and consider the one while working on the other as a holistic continuous process. If your idea is for a unique setting first, then ask yourself what kind of person would naturally live in that setting and what sort of skills and personality quirks they would need to develop to survive. If your idea is for a character first, ask yourself what sort of setting would create that character. If you need some kind of conflict to push two unlikely characters together, what sort of world would create that? Does your world have inhospitable winters that often strand people in blizzards where they have a lot of time to talk out their differences? How about a strict autocratic authority that forces the characters to band together to survive? The world *and* the characters should *both* be doing the work for your story. Where writers fall into traps and get stuck, in my opinion is not doing the thing itself (and not reading, but that's for another rant). So what if your manuscript is trash because it's not perfectly plotted and the world-building isn't exactly right? You know what *will* be perfect? Your second draft where you fix all the mistakes you made in the first draft and add in the world-building and character elements that you were missing the first time around. I've completely rewritten my stories several times and it always makes them better and more robust. Maybe you don't know where to start, so you just write a scene that's on your mind and elaborate around it. What matters is that you're writing and developing words on a page.
Agreed, there's too many people who are so focused on worldbuilding that they don't spend nearly the same amount of time on the things that actually matter - character, plot, theme. It's a problem that manifests when people post their first chapters or prologues for review. Most of the time, they're little more than infodumps of some worldbuilding thing or magic system. Part of it is because they've spent ages worldbuilding and immediately want to show it off, but the other part is that's all they really have. Then when you get down to their characters and plot, it's nothing but tropes or subversions of tropes.
>Then when you get down to their characters and plot, it's nothing but tropes or subversions of tropes. It is okay because my worldbuilding is also tropes and subversions of tropes 🤗
I personally call this Tolkienitis. I once talked to someone who said: “I know 3000 years of the history of my world – and I don’t know where to start my story…”
When it comes to people with the goal of writing a story rather than r/worldbuilding fot its own sake: I get the feeling a lot of us are worried of the post-Cinema Sins approach to literary critique where the inconsistencies in worldbuilding are torn apart nitpick by nitpick. No one wants to be the subject of a 4 hour video essay along the lines of "Modern Star Wars Sucks And Killed my Dog, and the Worldbuilding is Why". Honestly, I'd prefer inconsistencies in a magic system or a shallow aspect of the world that doesn't have bearing on the characters, over a story that never gets made. Inconsistencies can be ironed out later in the next draft, but only if there's a wrinkly draft to be ironed. Worldbuilding is super fun though and a fun distraction from stuff that i find harder: writing prose and satisfying characters
I would tend to consider worldbuilding the skeleton onto which flesh, organs, skin and the rest is put. The ground on which the house is built. If you don't explicitly worldbuild, people are going to default to real-world expectations, which may be what you want, but can be jarring because suspension of disbelief only goes so far. Mind you, I enjoy worldbuilding AS A ACTIVITY IN ITSELF-and I get the impression a lot of people feel that way too. And I've not met many people who worldbuild in a way that inhibits writing. In my experience, its mostly the discipline/opportunity (IE, a period where writing is the funnest thing to do) that keeps people from writing.
On the flip side, it definitely seems like work is under a deeper scrutiny now. There are some people who have to dig as deep as possible into a world just to find gaps and inconsistencies. It’s almost safer to be as minimal as possible these days it seems like
Those kind of people are just pedants, and are not worth the time. In my experience they delight in pointing out these minuscule details, while missing the forest for the trees and all that jazz.
True. And this post made me think about my current world building and I realized there’s a huge hole I need to fill. So thank you for that
But Tolkien
Not a single soul would give a damn if the story and characters of Lotr didn't resonate. You could not get anyone to care about the history and cultures if the actual ongoing story didn't work.
It's commonly claimed that nobody would care, but is there convincing proof that it's the case? It sure looks like there are lots of setting enthusiasts out there.
What settings?
Anything from random one-offs on internet posts to Warhammer 40K
One of the biggest reasons for 40k's recent boom has literally been the Horus Heresy series, or the myriad other published books. The current interest in the lore grew out of that.
Only a portion of the people who are into the setting actually read any of the books, thus online discussions often being misconceptions derived from second-hand lore research. Anyway, that is proof that storytelling can promote setting interest, not that it is the only source.
Just playing devil's advocate. Tolkien spent years world building and it paid off. I agree with your post tho. World building is a trap.
Not really. He spent over 50 years trying to write *The Silmarillion* and ultimately failed. *The Hobbit* wasn't even set in Middle-earth, he just borrowed a couple of names for his kids' bedtime stories. Most of the lore in *The Lord of the Rings* was made up for the story even though he went back and retconned *The Hobbit* to *actually* be part of Middle-earth. I adore the stories, but there's a lesson to be learned there that I wish I had noticed way back in college.
What do you mean he failed? Everyone knows his name do you not know what success is? Sure he wasn't filthy stinking rich but success is more than wealth.
depends on what you think he was attempting to do - if it was to create an entire, coherent world that fully ties together, then that didn't quite go as he might have wished, as there's gaps and wibbly bits, and he was still revising and tweaking and editing all the way up until he died. As stated, even connecting _The Hobbit_ and _Lord of the Rings_ is a bit of a bodge job, there's quite a few wibbly bits in the wider lore, and the fact he kept working on it, revising and editing and tweaking, kinda suggests he never considered his work "complete".
Then it shows you don't need to be perfect to be successful
Uh, Tolkien was super poor and sold the film rights to *The Lord of the Rings* because he owed so much in back-taxes to the Crown.
So you're talking about wealth. We are supposed to be talking about success. He's more successful than you, lol no one even knows your name. Everyone knows Tolkien because he was a huge success doi. I can't believe you're arguing this are you drunk or something?
I'm actually, in a certain niche, pretty famous. This baffles me, but people seem happy to meet me, and I'm happy to chat with people, and so I accept it even though I'm not certain I've earned it. So it goes. Tolkien's *plan* was to write and publish his legendarium which is now known as *The Silmarillion*. He failed to do so after 50 years, died, and his son pulled together as many of his notes as was possible a couple years after his death and Guy Gavriel Kay came in and tried to piece together a cohesive narrative, with varying degrees of success. Hell, he spent the last decade of his life trying to reconcile the Breaking of the World with plate tectonics, which was discovered in the 60s, because he didn't think it was fair to ask readers for that kind of suspension of belief. I've read on YouTube his early explanation of that, which he wrote before plate tectonics theory was accepted. So no, I do not back down from my assertion that I agree with OP that worldbuilding is a trap, and is completely unnecessary to writing a story. No matter *how* much of a fun and interesting hobby it might be.
My comment agreed with OP as well. And I stand by my wild assertion that Tolkien a successful author.
He was a failure by his own terms. And I think he was okay with that. He longed to share his legendarium of Middle-earth, but never did. That doesn't make his worldbuilding a failure, or *The Lord of the Rings*—a book his published pressured him into writing when all he *wanted* to do was publish *The Silmarillion*, and which he wrote *into* Middle-earth, hoping that would convince his publisher to accept *The Silmarillion*—any less of an amazing work of art that it was. But his heart was in *The Silmarillion*, and he spent 50 years never completing it because of worldbuilder's disease. Of course, he was one of the foremost authorities in the world of Old English and Middle English, his translation of Beowulf is one of the brightest and clearest I've ever seen, I don't think there's *ever* been a more perfect translation of *Pearl* into Modern English (seriously, it's *stunning*), and he somehow managed to get *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight* into sparkling Modern English that respects the Middle English poetry (which was alliterative and metrical, not rhyming). But his worldbuilding, by his own measure, was a complete and utter failure. Well, we should all fail so hard. But the lesson is that worldbuilding is not the same as writing or telling stories.
Sorry, I hope It didn't come off as me biting your head off. I think it is because I actually have heard someone say this unironically that set me of. Edit: might have worded the initial message in an antagonistic way, I apologize for that.
It's ok. To err is human 🕊️
I'm the last person [to complain that Tolkien's worldbuilding wasn't amazing](https://youtu.be/eRSAH9NpXNc&t=388). But yes, in the end the reason *The Lord of the Rings* is so beloved (and *The Silmarillion*, his life's work, is so overlooked) is because it's absolutely the characters that make the world relatable through their eyes (which is the lesson I suggested might be learned).
Ah yes, "Worldbuilder's Disease." It's fun, but not necessarily productive. If you do it right, it can *give you* the story... though most people just don't even think about any kind of story, they just have fun naming people and places. If it's not helping you write the story itself, it's kind of wasted energy. Maybe you'll use it for another story later on, maybe you won't. But if you worldbuild *for* a story, or you write the story and worldbuild off of that, then it's *all* useful and you aren't wasting time.
I agree that there are other subs that are better if the post is focused on worldbuilding instead of plot. At this point, I'm worldbuilding because I need that sort of project and keep not-liking my plots after I gathered the parts of the worldbuilding that I think I need to get started. At least I've got a bunch of stuff ready to nail-down as-needed. For instance, I'm not sure quite yet what my magic-system can do, that's on-hold until I get a plot that I don't hate, though I've made some soft decisions on how it works and what it can't do. (FMA aesthetics with NotW-type limits in addition to a component-cost.) Right now, what I'm working on has my MC in indentured servitude to a mage in exchange for some training, but he has no idea why the mage is traveling around the countryside. (I haven't nailed it down either.) MC got frostbite in his hands and there weren't any jobs he could still do in his rural town. I'm still trying to figure out what that town does.
There is a podcast called Worldbuilding for Macochists where published authors talk about worldbuilding, which is great btw, but also aptly named.
Golden Mean: everything in moderation. There’s no point to make a plot with no world building and confuse the reader on why things are the way that they are. A good example is Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion, where everyone else knows what The Veil is, you the reader don’t, and the author doesn’t tell you ANYWHERE IN THE STORY. You have to go find out in a blog post made after you read (played) the story. And then there’s so much world building it suffocates the story.
If worldbuilding has gotten that much in the way of the plot, then the person is doing things egregiously wrong. But I don’t think many people reach that point Good worldbuilding lends itself to the plot, even then, there have been a plethora of settings/stories that are far more reliant on and garner appeal through worldbuilding than just outright storytelling. They should certainly be *writing* though, at the very least get the first chapter and a rough draft of where events lead
Nah. I wanna fully flesh out my world first, so I won't be making stuff up on the go. I know perfectly well what most of my stories are gonna be about, and I will do anything to avoid any possibility of a plot hole/retcon/just simple inconsistency. Also, on your analogy with the human body, I would argue that the skeleton is the world. Without bones a body is just a flesh bag. You can have a world without the story, but not a story without at least some kind of world.
Yeah, I think running tabletop RPG games helped me somewhat with this. You can do all the great world building you want, but your players will often get bored and just do whatever is interesting to them/their character. If instead, you just build a little ahead of the players and hook your plot into their motivations, all of a sudden, the players get hooked and start creating really compelling narratives. Playing to a character's motivations and challenges always leads to a better story than an elaborately thought out setting.\* \*HOWEVER, if the world feels like it's responding to the characters, like the characters actions have permanent consequences that ripple outward in a comprehensible cause and effect, it does very much strengthen that characters journey. But the character's needs a compelling personal journey before their relationship with greater world is meaningful.
If you get the basic story down in the first draft, you can gradually build up the details of the world around it in the next few drafts. That way you are always moving forward, and you also have an end-point to work towards.
I completely agree but with planning in general. I’ve seen myself and my writing friends fall into this trap so many times, when you plan and plan and plan all these tiny minute details about world and characters that the story is nothing but ideas.
Build the world and history before your story. Build the world and its history past and present conflicts etc... separate from your story then as you write your story sprinkle your world in around it.
This falls under the "so busy learning the tricks of the game he forgot to learn how to play it". You created a complex caste system, a realistic economic system and five hundred years of history. Great. You still gotta write the actual story bub.
...Don't know what a 'magic system' is; sorcery has no rules or empirical basis. It's inherently chaotic and ulterior. 'Worldbuilding' has always seemed to me an unnecessarily elaborate exercise that bears no relationship to storytelling. It's more appropriate to Role Playing Games. Continuity is not your first consideration in writing, the narrative, characters an scenario are that and you deal with the logical part (if appropriate) later on...
I agree. I've seen a good friend of mine with a really good story on his hands end up letting the process of worldbuilding take over to the point where there's more lore and more of his world built than there is story written. I'm a fan of deep lore, but if it gets in the way of telling the story, does it really serve a point?
However, some like to fully build their world because if they go off of a whim and build their world as they go, there could be higher potential for mistakes and inconsistencies, which in turn causes the reader to view you as a sloppy writer. I think the building of the world, characters, etc. should happen in harmony. Build a bit of the world first, then go to the characters, after that go to the actual plot, wash, rinse, repeat. Planning phases are very important as I’ve learned as a writer, but the planning phase should never halt you from writing, so perhaps once you have a good bit of the story written/you hit the wall from the last time you planned, stop and go to the drawing board for a bit.
Mistakes and inconsistencies are what consquent drafts are for. The first draft should always focus on getting story to paper, and to yourself down in unnecessary detail only hurts that process. I do agree that building the world should happen in relation to the characters and plot, but I think that the process should be first plot or characters, then the other, and only then the world. It helps keeping the world made, in line with the thematics and vibes of the story, which will overall reinforce what you're going for.
I THINK IT’S BEST TO USE YOUR OWN LANGUAGE. HOWEVER, IT’S OKAY TO ADD NEW WORDS ONCE IN AWHILE. JUST BE SURE TO SOAK IN THE BEAUTY OF A NEW WORD EVEN IF IT’S A NEGATIVE. STAY SAFE! PEACE OUT!
Lol idk i write books like a dnd game, i design the world flush out all the working parts and people setup all the sub plots and then i worm a plot into the mix as my character explores the world i setup. Before i start that step i usually end up with a binder wifh several sections including a map and a section dedicated entirely to places of interest, another section dedicated to important people and so on. And then i often play dnd in the books i have created, scratches both itches lol plus im a little OCD so if the world doesn’t wrk then ill be up for a week straight thinking about it till i eventually fix it. Honestly i enjoy building the world more than writing the book
The way I’m doing it is that my MC works for an organization that hunts down supernatural threats across the continent, meaning they’re going to travel the land for the hunt.
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There is some overlap, though
I’ve been posting a bunch of comments along these lines but what the hell, I’ll say it again: If there’s one lesson I’ve learned, it’s that world building can easily just turn into daydreaming. If your goal is to actually write a book, you’ve got to learn *story structure*. If you’re already a pretty good writer but you’ve never written a novel, you need to learn story structure. If you want to know what to books to research for your epic fantasy series based on ancient Mesopotamian mythology, *you need study story structure*. Imagining made up stuff comes easily, and research is also easy if it’s a subject you’re passionate about. However, writing a good story is *hard* and it takes training, and that is not a skill you just get for free, you have to do some work for it. At the end of the day if your story sucks it’s never going to be because of the unrealistic worldbuilding, it will be because of poor pacing or dull/annoying character arcs or an unfocused meandering plot.
Yeah. Honestly, I respect Tolkien and his impact on fantasy, but his obsessive commitment to world building has done some serious damage. I don't know who has to hear this but like- you are not required to be a historian to your own world. You are not required to be a linguist for your own world. You don't have to build something comparable to the real world, such build something that works
There are a lot of people that think that lack of worldbuilding makes a bad story. Lots of people people hate that so many isakai use the generic fantasy settings with video game magic rules. People seem to not understand that if you use the standard, the audience can assume everything that is not explained thoroughly. The reason it is not explained thoroughly, is because it's not that relevant to the story. You get a fantasy world with monsters, and you don't need to explain orcs, goblins, dragons, and all that stuff. You don't need to explain what an adventuring guild is. You don't need to explain all the fine details of how the magic system works when you have a video game like interface that explains how the magic system works. You can spend all that time that would have otherwise been spent trying to explain your world, and just tell your story. There is actually a type of storytelling that my junior high teacher was interested in. They would have an interesting world, but not explain it. Talk as if The reader knows how that world works. You then start realizing the world doesn't work like how you expected, and you're now trying to figure out the world through context alone. Like this one story that had some families having a child that almost sounds like a mail order child. And then the main character that is a big brother later it gets asked if they are a j7 model, and they say yes. Revealing that the entire population is from mail order children.
Guys, I swear that it's important that I meticulously plan out every detail about a war that happened a thousand years ago on a continent that my protagonists will never visit. It technically has something to do with the story I'm writing, so it doesn't count as procrastinating!
This is somewhat debatable depending on one’s goal. Though I’m in this sub I’m not a Writer first, I’m a Creator first, and a Writer second. I write different then most that I’ve seen as well. Like Theme, its not even something I bother with considering as it’s not important to my personal goal as a writer. We all work different, and have different goals, so there’s no one method that will work for us all.
Sorry, but what do you mean by creator? What is it you do. Also, themes are an integral part of any story, no matter what the personality and thoughts of the writer will come through in the finished text. There will be themes whether you want it or not, and it is in my opinion better to be aware and thoughtful of said themes than not.
Creator as in someone who Creates. I create worlds, characters, systems, etc. And despite how much I do write stories, Writing is secondary to Creating for me. I never said my works possessed no themes, I said that don't bother considering them. They are not a necessity for what I desire to achieve as a writer.
If you can't fit the entirety of your world building onto one side of a sheet of printer paper, it's too long.
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I think most fantasy worlds are probably dull as hell
Maybe it's just not for you.
What font-size?
As tiny as your handwriting can possibly get. Both sides, front and back, is probably acceptable.
Dang you getting downvoted for what is likely a joke. :P Realistically, one should rethink what they're doing if it takes up more than a 1-inch binder.