Worldbuilding - How much is enough?

Leslie, I'm working on a series that faces that problem. My solution was to keep track of important things in a separate file segregated into categories with each in alphabetic order. This allowed me to easily find things for that world as I listed any city or country mentioned or encountered. Inventions were in their own category. So was food and drinks. Weapons and clothing, too. If a battle is mentioned in a song, then those get listed as well. Then if I was unsure how someone might be dressed, I could go to my notes and it would be there.

Mind you, it does take a few seconds to do this and you have to be prompt and always do it. You can't put something off because anything you forget to list might be contradicted later because the list becomes your master list of anything that happens or is in your new world.

But your question was how much? What I give out is only enough to make the scene possible. I don't see any need to tell the reader how many trees or buildings are visible unless it's critical. Likewise, I don't mention how many people are in a crowd unless that's similarly needed. Also, I don't list every dead or wounded character's name in a battle. That one of the supporting characters was wounded or killed might be mentioned, but it doesn't always have to be stated by name, but if it is, then you have to keep track of that in case it becomes important later on.

I also have a book that I would like to be a series. But I let the world just flow and I wrote things in as I thought of them (you must do a careful edit when you are done though, to make sure all the details match.) The first book then becomes my textbook for the rest of the series. If I think of something I want to add that isn't in the first book, then i do write it down, of course. But I just don't spend too much time on that. I guess we are all just way different.

I've two different opinions on this (typical dithering writer).

I used to be very much of the opinion that in-depth world building was a waste of time, and that characters and plot were far more important. But now I'm moving away from that rather rigid way of thinking, and toying with the idea of concentrating on world building instead of plot development. I'll explain. If I had the stamina, I'd like to create a really detailed world, place a well developed cast of characters in there (protagonists and antagonists), give them a goal, and let them decide how best to achieve it using the resources available. Creating the world would be a massive undertaking though, because I'd want to include religion, economics, politics, a sociological frame work and an in-depth history for each of those things. I could imagine myself becoming obsessed with it, and never writing the story.

The other consideration that stops me going down the world building path, is the fear that once I'd created such a detailed environment I wouldn't be able to leave it (from a story telling point of view), and I don't want to fall into the trap of writing an endless series of novels all taking place in the same setting. And there's also the temptation to want to show just how detailed the world is, swamping the story with unnecessary elements that distract from the plot and characters. I've noticed this type of self-indulgent writing happens quite a lot in Fantasy novels.

In answer to your question, I think you've already realised that enough is enough. You can see that your world is becoming too detailed, so perhaps now is the time to put the world building aside and start writing the story.

I write science fiction, so I do extensive worldbuilding. However, I don't use all what I have in my files, just enough to make the scenes possible.

I think extensive worldbuilding is essential to a successful story but that doesn't mean that all of the information has to be crammed in either.

Now this is of course opinion based on my own personal tastes, but the spec fiction books I've always enjoyed the most were those where the author shows throughout the telling of the tale, that there is an actual big wide world out there besides just what the character is seeing and experiencing.

Two examples that come immediately to mind that I enjoyed immmensely are Frank Herbert's Dune series (SF) and George R.R. Martin's Game Of Thrones series (fantasy).

Both author's obviously spent a lot of time and thought developing their respective worlds and their stories were that much richer for it.

Of course, this may not lend itself to every book, genre or writer - but it is how I am going about my own project.

If you have to ask, it's probably too much!


Story trumps all. The characters matter more than the history of the clothes they wear.

You don't have to use all the details and at a certain point and time, you don't have to have all the details fleshed out, but you need to know they exist. It's part of what makes a world rich and a story seem to be real. When you know your world that well, it becomes background as you write, even when you're not directly using the information. It lends texture and adds that third dimension to the two dimensional words on the page.

This is not unique to science fiction or fantasy writing. I remember reading about a creative writing student who turned in a story to his professor. It was not science fiction or fantasy; the main character was a detective. The professor read it and asked the student, "What kind of shoe polish does your PI use?" The student didn't know. The professor returned the story and told the student he didn't know his main character well enough yet.

Never in the entire story did the main character need to polish his shoes. Polishing shoes was never discussed. The point was, as a writer, the student needed to understand his characters outside of the context of the story, to know who and what they were, in order to make them believable within the context of the story.

To me, that explains how you should approach world-building, too. You need to know the details even if they're not integral to the story.

But, there is a point where you're no longer conducting research or building your world and are just procrastinating. Take the linguistics you mentioned as an example. Do you have to completely design the languages and figure out the syntax and the lexicon or is it just more important to know who uses different languages, who can communicate with whom, and under what circumstances?

Figuring out where the tipping point is between useful pre-writing activity and procrastination is not something anyone can teach you. You have to figure that out for yourself.

Just remember to keep track of what features of your constructed world you use because you don't want the reader throwing your book against the wall when you reveal there was a something or other that they knew about and could have used all along to escape or reach the goal.

Sounds like it's time to sit down and write. If you come up with something you need to know more about, insert a placeholder and continue on. You can research to fill in those places during your downtime when writing isn't feasible or after the first draft is finished.

I usually do what Birol suggested with placeholders. I'll write "RESEARCH" smack dab in the middle of a sentence or paragraph, and just keep writing the main story.

It sounds like you enjoy worldbuilding, but remember that none of those details "come to life" until you write the story. As long as you know those details that would matter to your characters, you're good to go. I wouldn't worry about what's going to happen in the sequels until I'm actually writing the sequels.

Now go have some fun writing

sacredmime said:

I usually do what Birol suggested with placeholders. I'll write "RESEARCH" smack dab in the middle of a sentence or paragraph, and just keep writing the main story.

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I do this as well to not stop the flow of writing and "creative spew" esp. in the first draft.

For me, being a non-linear thinker, the world of my first novel fleshed out alot more after the storyline was written, which I suppose is kind of backwards to some writers.

Didn't mean to do write it that way, but it was my first time (for fantasy writing) and I didn't know what they hey I was doing, anyway. After I wrote the whole story, I worked backwards and came up with the mythology that created the whole world -- which was interesting when I revised and saw things like "his half-human, half-whatever other race he was composed of..." In revision I finally I KNEW what the "other half" was. Took me long enough!

Also, I took cues from my beta readers, who would ask me for more detail about the world; houses, clothing, religion, etc -- that I had built as background for the story, but didn't think anyone would care to know this stuff. I was surprised that they cared enough to ask!

But to build images for the reader and create that world, it is a fine balance between weaving in 'telling' and 'showing.'

Maybe think of it as flavoring, like in cooking -- just enough to make it taste delicious, but not overpowering as to any, one thing...

I tend to do obsessive worldbuilding when I can't write, for one reason or another, or when I know I'm going to see a friend who knows about, say, plate tectonics, or plant biology, or sound change laws.

And on that subject, I'm a Linguistics student, and I might be able to answer questions about language change and naming conventions and such. If that's useful, I'm happy to be helpful.

I'm all about world building (and procrastinating) but to be honest I enjoy the world building as much of the writing and I do it all as much for myself as for anyone else.

While this statement could be debated, I'm pretty sure its true: J.R.R Tolkien was the bigest world builder of them all. J.R.R Tolkien was rated by Amazon.com as the #1 fiction author of the last millenium. I don't want to debate the precise acuracy/validity of those statements as much as the fact that they have been made and I believe the rich texture of the story that is provided by the knowledge of a background of such profound depth is what makes it so appealing and is the genesis of such statements and proclamations.

Few fiction stories/series/worlds have ever achieved the depth of Tolkien's world and those (notably things like Star Wars, Star Trek, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance) took dozens of books and multitudes of authors to do so while Tolkien did it with less than half a dozen novels (not counting the miriad his son has put out). Robert Jordan, as an example, may be able to write an amazing series comprising nearly twenty books, but no one is ever going to claim that his world holds a candle to Tolkien's and what he managed to do with so few books.

I typically read an SF/F every two to three days and have read my fair share of them where it becomes very apparent that the author didn't do proper world building ahead of time. Cities and even nations (Read: Terry Goodkind) just pop into existence whenever it is convinient for the author. Its usually painfully apparent to the reader when you do that and as

Improper world building also leads to my number one peeve with F novels: Warp speed horses. These amazing horses can bend time and allow people to travel immense distances that the regular horse who traversed the same distance took significantly longer to do. Often other time dilation effects are seen as these warp speed horses cause events to occur out of order as well. They are closely related to warp speed ships and even the odd warp speed river raft.

badducky said:

Story trumps all. The characters matter more than the history of the clothes they wear.

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Quoted for truth.

For my fantasy wip Ihave a solid idea of the entire world and its history, but I haven't shown any more than the story demands. If I change my mindabout some details later on,or if later stories in the same setting (planned) demand something different, then I'm not chained by something I mentioned in the current wip just to show off my world building skill.

Whatever you build, only show what you must to serve the story.

I'm a very big proponent of JIT (Just-In-Time) worldbuilding. When I need something, I work it out.
If the story isn't about religion, and involves no religious characters, you don't need to know about the religions of your world. If you then introduce a preacher, then and only then do you need to understand the religion he preaches.

Lots of sage advice here. Some thyme and oregano advice as well...

I'm a big proponent of both comprehensive world building and liberal use of place holders. That said, I've often stopped down to research what I thought was going to a salient point, found it too mundane to have any dramatic significance and backed the narrative away from that detail.

I love researching as much as I love writing and I've found that can be dangerous. For a long time, the details could hijack a scene and turn it into an infodump. It took a conscious effort on my part to ask if X detail advanced the plot or the understanding of the character. If not, then the scene pacing became doubly critical in determining if I should keep that bit of "color."

Personally, I don't think it's possible to have "too much" world building (unless you're using it as an excuse to not write [then other issues are at work]). How much you actually use that world is the real trick. It sounds like a stock cop-out but "balance" really is the key.

I do a lot of research for world building, but a lot of it is on the fly as I'm writing.

Like DaveK, I keep a glossary of people, places, and things. I created an extensive map of the world. I hope that with these I avoid contradictions or continuity mistakes.

Listen, if Lucasfilm can rewrite Star Wars history with every movie, why should you worry about rewriting your own history with each book?


Movie 1: Darth killed your father
Movie 2: Oops, no. Darth is your father
Movie 3: Oh yeah, and you have a sister
Movie 4: Oh, and, uh, your father was birthed through immaculate conception
Movie 5: And like, your parents were married but no one ever knew that, because, oh I don't know... Jedi can't be married or something
Movie 6: Oh, and like... wipe the droid's memory of all these changes we've made so when we cycle back to movie one he just looks like a f'cking dumbass. And take the rocket boots off the squat one.

Personally, though, I love worldbuilding just for the worldbuilding part of it, and I think you have to temper that love to get to the WRITING part, if indeed it's the writing part you want to do.

I knew I was getting too deep into each nation's backstory on this continent I'd created when I realized I'd just named a man (no lie) Ararararekaru the Second.

That's a tongue twister. Imagine his mother calling him in for supper

Yes. Looking at it now she'd be like..

"Ararararekaru, you'd best Arararacheck yourself before you Arararawreck yourself, you got me, mister?"