World Building

I write space opera, myself...
In my own stories, I build the world as deep as I normally do for novels and such. The reader, on the other hand, only sees as much as they need to for the story. If it doesn't move the story along, it needs to be cut.

I agree with AW. Build only to the point of what's necessary for the reader to know. If the exploding cherry tree is a fascinating part of your world but doesn't hold any value to the piece itself, it's unnecessary bulk.

With short fiction. You want to get to the point and fast. All the fat needs to be trimmed. That doesn't equate to a bare bones story but where you have the liberty to, say, ramble in a novel, you don't have that in a short piece. Decide just what your story is going to be about. Place the action, the conflict and whatever else you need and place the world around that and only include what will influence and further your story. Anything else can't be scrapped or written into a different piece.

Create as much of the world as you need to feel comfortable with it. Just don't make the error to try to fit every creation into the short story -- that is something you shouldn't do with a novel either by the way.

Certainly not as much as for the novel. I wrote a short story set in my world before I started working on the novel, and while there was a lot of worldbuilding, it didn't even come close to what I am doing now. The heroine of the short only visits two places, and journeys between two cultures; there is so much more in the book.

For my space opera novelette I did quite a lot of world-building, but then promptly hid everything including the name of the homeworld and the exact details of the three last wars; this info wasn't relevant to the story and would only detract. My readers liked how the novelette gave them a feeling of a larger world beyond what I've shown.

Hope this helps,
Rose

New to the board...
I tend to use the story to explore the world, to build it as it were. I send the character out into it and watch through those eyes. That keeps me engaged, keeps the focus on the character and events, and gets something on the page. I know that any ideas I have are still there in the story and I can come back later and sift them out.

World building? For a short story? Hmm. I just make it up as I go. Not sure where it all comes from, but here's what seems to be going on:

Whatever I need in a short story in terms of world building seems to show up whenever I need it, but not because I spent a lot of time thinking it up before I started writing. Instead, it seems to bubble up in response to the kind of story I'm telling, a byproduct of it, as it were. This byproduct, then, is the least of my concerns.

The main concern seems to be this: I want a story to evoke a mood. One that reinforces whatever the primary action happens to be, whatever the story is about.

World-building thingies are just tools in the kit to help make this happen.

NicoleMD said:

So I'm writing a fantasy short story. I'm used to doing world building in my novels, usually around 15-20 pages worth of notes/maps etc., but how much should I do for a short story?

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None. Tell your story. Whatever is relevant about the world necessary should be an organic part of the story.

caw

All or nothing? Hmmm...

Bird is right about telling the story but certain genres demand that the author have a strong grasp as to what their world is that the story exists within. Take for instance Bentley Little's the Washingtonians. It's a clever horror piece that turns our notions about the fonding father upside down. (George Washington was a vile cannibal and a whole society of followers work feverishly to protect, and live, his legacy.)

Certainly he had help through a solid history already available to alter and abuse, but he did have to create changes in the "reality" to give the story that willing suspension of disbelief. I'm certain that there were aspects of the story he crafted that never made it to the page but aided in shaping it.

The best advice I would give is do what you feel is necessary to tell the story. If you feel you're going overboard, you probably are. But seeing how you're writing a short, you don't want to put too much time into it or you'll be writing a novel with all the extra details.

Pike

For me, it depends on the story.

Most of my short stories don't need much in the way of world building. I may make a handful of notes for the sake of consistency.

A few stories have a much richer world, one I plan to write multiple stories in. For these I tend to make detailed notes and background information.

I have tried some world building before. . . it was actually creating a thousand years of history from today on. . . it is tough and kudos if you can do it effectively. In terms of a short story I think something you might want to explore would be magical realism. It adds the fantasy aspect without having to explain too much and can be entertaining.

I'd say develop your world how you feel comfortable developing it.

Then cut everything that isn't absolutely essential to the plot.

For example, I spent last year developing an entire history and setting for an urban fantasy piece that I thought would turn into a 30k novella.

As it turned out, I was wrong about the length. It wanted to be a short story. So, I set to it, weeding out what I didn't need. By the time I finished, I had a little over 8k on the page, and it was fantastic.

At the time, I was a tad bummed though, because I thought I'd wasted nine months working on backstory for nothing. However, the thing was, if I hadn't done all the background work, I wouldn't have been able to really understand my characters and their motives.

So go ahead and develop what you need to. Don't worry about it being too long until you've done all the cutting you can.

NicoleMD said:

Wow. There's a lot of variation here. Doing no world building would feel like cheating to me, well, for a longer pieces. Plus I think it's sort of a fun thing to do anyway.

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As long as the reader doesn't feel cheated it's fine. The reader only gets to see what's on the page. It doesn't matter if you have fifty pages of notes or none. If it's real on the page that's all that matters. IMHO

sorry for my ignorance what is world building
in short stories . All I know about Readers Digest word building
padma

Couldn't you use the same, "world" for multiple stories? It cuts down on some of the work. I have a world that I have used for a number of short pieces and have a couple of ideas for novels. Many of the stories are with different characters in different locations but with shared things like religion, timekeeping, world histories, etc...

NicoleMD said:

I'm used to doing world building in my novels, usually around 15-20 pages worth of notes/maps etc., but how much should I do for a short story?
Nicole

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Personally, I usually start with a few pages of info. You know, just some notes on geography, politics, and all those biggies, plus a few little details I can throw in for flavor. Then I just start writing and go from there. Often, I'll go back to my notes and tweak them a bit or jot down other random tidbits that came to me while I was writing.

Lawfire said:

Couldn't you use the same, "world" for multiple stories?

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I do this sometimes, too, but it's not nearly as much fun .

I am a novelist naturally -- give me any old spindly idea, and I can work it up to 120,000 words plus. For short stories, I tend to use one of the three milieus I've developed for novels and try to find a tiny little window into it and into the ongoing story of one of its denizens, a snippet that can stand alone at 3000-8000 words.

A well-developed milieu or world is a plus -- it should yield you endless stories of varying lengths. So develop away. Do a few (or many) pages for this story. Then, if you like the world, add onto your background material as you get ideas for it. Your worlds are your idea hoards and story generators.

What I find hard about fantasy/SF short stories is not so much developing a world as using it once you've got it. At short lengths, you have to quickly immerse the reader both in your setting and in your story, and you have to do it without jarring her out again with infodumps. How hard this is depends on a couple things:

1. Is your POV character familiar with the story world?

2. How idiosyncratic is your story vocabulary?

A POV character familiar with or native to a world will not observe it the way the reader does, as a stranger needing explanations; the outsider as POV character is a way around this, but that trick can't work in a story without outsiders.

If your world is full of elves, dragons, knights and orcs, your reader will have an easier time settling in than if your world is full of Gols, Pikhs, ranyi, and jormin'ghats -- he has some idea what the elves and dragons are, however different yours may be from the norm. But what are these other things? Yikes!

Is a well-developed world a solution to these problems? I'm thinking no, not directly. But a writer confused about her world will have a harder time keeping the reader from getting confused.