Worldbuilding--Is there such thing as too much?

How much world building do you do before you begin?

Enough to get a good idea of the story, much more if part of the world ie. a magical object or race is key to the plot.

How much do you include in your writing?

As much as is needed to get the reader comfortable in the setting and whatever moves the story forward. Some writers can make a world so cool people will read just about anything about it (Tolkien, Frank Herbert) but a world really is little more than background for a story.

Is there such thing as including TOO much information about the world?

Yes, whatever doesn't give the reader some helpful insight or move the story forward. Rowling has tons of information on her characters and world she never used.


How often does your reader know something your MC does not about the world?

That depends on how you tell the story and has more to do with POV.

I have struggled with the same question of how much to dwell on in creating my world. bluejester12 makes some good points. Trying to deal with every aspect of a new world culture can be overwhelming. In my WIP I've tried to include enough to make the story believable and the characters 3D, and have avoided boring the reader with too many details. I think establishing basic principles (language, beliefs, dress, etc.) is enough for them to buy into what you've created. Too much can draw someone away from the story.

Most of my world building is behind the scenes, for my benefit only. One novel I created a whole family tree for a minor character that went back 160 years complete with husbands, wives, their children, and so on.

I only mention the first sire and the latest. The reader never knows about any of the others. They don't need to.

Worldbuilding should be as extensive as you need it so you can write with authority. You don't however, need to explain any of it to the reader unless it's absolutely necessary -- and doesn't bore the hell out of them.

You can have of course your notes and some of them you may never use it (like J.K. Rowling and the homosexuality of Dumbledore) but just use what is useful for you. When I started to write my first attempt to do a novel I spent several days thinking in the name of a stake that my MC would order in a fancy restaurant and that didn't have any relevance to the story

I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to worldbuilding as that's one part of fantasy that I really enjoy. Right now I have four notebooks with information on the world I'm using for my fantasy series. Hardly any of that is going to end up in any of the books but I find that sitting scribbling down details about some aspect of the world often sparks ideas.

I tend to draw maps a lot too and quite often they're far more detailled than I actually need, but it helps to get a picture of the place in my mind, and keeps the layout consistent if I revisit the same building. Yesterday, for example, I mapped out the Palace of Justice (my MC is the equivalent of the district attorney), and one important feature is an old courtroom that hasn't been used in over a century, as it's for a specific area of law that hasn't really been relevant for years (but now has to be re-opened). Just by plotting out where the courtroom actually was in relation to the active part of the building, I could suddenly see what it looked like, and had a whole lot of details come to me. Those details might end up in the book, but I'm not going to describe the place room by room or anything.

I'm planning on writing a lot of stories in this world, not necessarily with the same MC either, so worldbuilding I don't use for one book might well end up in another too.

JessRamage said:

I'm planning on writing a lot of stories in this world, not necessarily with the same MC either, so worldbuilding I don't use for one book might well end up in another too.

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Yes, same here. I have a story that happens to an office clerk in one country and another one in the same world 50 years before and on the other side of the world and another one in a undefined time between the country of the first story in yet another side of the world

You might find the following article by Holly Lisle helpful:

http://hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/how-much-do-i-build-workshop.html

She has a lot of great articles on her site - and her e-books are excellent as well.

maxmordon said:

Yes, same here. I have a story that happens to an office clerk in one country and another one in the same world 50 years before and on the other side of the world and another one in a undefined time between the country of the first story in yet another side of the world

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Yes, that sounds similar to my plan. My world is divided in to the eastern and western empire - my current WIP takes place on an island in the western half, I have another story set in the same place about two hundred years earlier, featuring the ancestor of the MC in the first story, and then I have another story set primarily in the eastern empire, but that one might spill into different countries as it's more of a quest type thing.

Just on the worldbuilding thing, I spent the last few minutes working out legal terminology for three countries that don't even exist. And it was fun

I have a very elaborate world, I love it, have been living in it for years, and I keep developing it as I write. How much of the world goes into the story? Lots and lots. It gives my work flavor. After all, this is why I write fantasy, and not mainstream or thrillers.

Yes, there is, especially when it gets plastered up front as a pseudo-encyclopedia of fantasy world characteristics.

Write the dam story. Let the world be built as necessary for it, as you go. This is what Ursula LeGuin did in the Earthsea saga, which I regard as the finest sustained piece of fantasy fiction I know of, even better than Tolkien.

Write the dam story.

caw

Worldbuilding and theme

blacbird said:

Yes, there is, especially when it gets plastered up front as a pseudo-encyclopedia of fantasy world characteristics.

Write the dam story. Let the world be built as necessary for it, as you go. This is what Ursula LeGuin did in the Earthsea saga, which I regard as the finest sustained piece of fantasy fiction I know of, even better than Tolkien.

Write the dam story.

caw

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Blacbird's right. (With the caveat that LeGuin isn't a good example, because she wrote at least a couple of short stories before the series - The Word of Unbinding and The Rule of Names - and used her family background in anthropology to develop the system of magic.)

But hell yeah, there's such a thing as too much worldbuilding. If I pick up a fantasy novel and there are maps in the front and appendices in the back, I know I'm in trouble. You can create a world in obsessive detail, give it myths and mountains and bestiaries - but unless there's some point to all the detail, some reason for it being the way it is, it's a waste.

Maybe it boils down to theme - yeah, the English Major's talking. Maybe the great worlds, the ones that stick with you and that you want to visit - are worlds that support the themes of the novel.

How much world building do you do before you begin?
Tons, because how the world works and what the people are like is how I determine a lot of the obstacles my characters will face. Not everything needs to be end of the world good vs evil status. Sometimes simple cultural issues can be way more fun to work around that a horde of orcs or whatever standing in the way. The more real the world the deeper I can go into the story, which is never just about the premise.

How much do you include in your writing?
A fraction of what I create. And most of it is simply "known" information by my characters. Nobody thinks about the religion and how it came to be, they just have it. Social norms, taboos, traits etc. just happen and I don't feel the need to explain it all. The reader can get it in context and it adds a layer of realism to the story. As soon as you start describing it you turn the reader off. (Exception here is something mechanical like magic that's critical to the plot and needs to be explained) It's important for me to know how people would react to X situation based on the culture and that society. Otherwise the world is just window dressing and doesn't feel real. I treat it the same way I'd treat a real world setting. Someone picks up a phone. They go to chuch. They worry about breaking little laws or crossing moral lines. Whatever the fantasy world equivilent of this is, I treat it just as commonly as a non-genre writer does with what's known.

Is there such thing as including TOO much information about the world?
Gads yes. We all love the worlds we've created, but our readers couldn't care less. They want the story. The want to see interesting characters facing interesting problems and solving them in interesting ways.

How often does your reader know something your MC does not about the world?
Never. But I like very tight POVs. If you're writing omniscient third you could do this, but in my opinion, that just distances your reader from the story and is a big red flag saying "infodump." If you need to keep your MC in the dark, have a plausible reason for it that fits the rules of your world and find a plausible way to clue the reader in. You want themn to feel a part of your world, not like someone forced to watch home movies about it

The answer is pretty obvious. Of course worldbuilding can be overdone.

Anything can be overdone.

Add too much salt to a recipe? Tastes not too good.

Drink too much water? You'll die.

Sunbathe too long? Sunburn.

Sleep too long? You'll feel groggy.

I guess the key is knowing when something is becoming overdone. It kind of depends on the story you're writing.

Colin McHale said:

The answer is pretty obvious. Of course worldbuilding can be overdone.

Anything can be overdone.

Add too much salt to a recipe? Tastes not too good.

Drink too much water? You'll die.

Sunbathe too long? Sunburn.

Sleep too long? You'll feel groggy.

I guess the key is knowing when something is becoming overdone. It kind of depends on the story you're writing.

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I'd be more inclined to agree with this kind of reasoning than the blanket 'never do any worldbuilding' statement to be honest. I mean, if I enjoy worldbuilding and I have enough sense to include only the relevant, story-enhancing details and keep the rest for possible later works, then it isn't a waste, IMO.

Yes, worldbuilding can be overdone if there are too many details in the book (personally I like the maps to refer to in fantasy, though I'm not fussed if there isn't one), but another thing is it can be done badly I think.

One thing that really turns me off a fantasy is if I can't believe the world would actually exist given the rules the author's set down. The ones I prefer are those worlds that have a feeling of 'reality' and that is really hard (though not impossible, as leGuin proves) to pull off.

Obviously everyone is different and likes different things from a fantasy book, but I just don't get that worldbuilding is a waste - but then I'm also an outliner whereas I know a lot of people swear by just writing it and letting it flow. I can't work like that. I've tried and it's always been a disaster I'm the same if I don't create my world before I start writing. The worldbuilding sets it in my head so that when it comes to writing the story I can worry about character, theme, good writing rather than the technical details, as well as prompting ideas in the initial planning stages as well.

Also my opinion is possibly different as worldbuilding was how I really got into writing in the first place. I read Tolkien when I was 10 or 11 and the idea of a whole fantasy world intrigued me, so I started fiddling with one of my own, originally a complete Middle earth rip-off, but then as I got older I started adding my own characters and putting my own spin on it, and it developed into something more original. I wrote a lot of little short stories with it and then eventually a novel. Even if I'm not using that any more, having the notes is always a good store for ideas too and I quite often dip into it to look for inspiration for other projects.

JessRamage said:

Yes, that sounds similar to my plan. My world is divided in to the eastern and western empire - my current WIP takes place on an island in the western half, I have another story set in the same place about two hundred years earlier, featuring the ancestor of the MC in the first story, and then I have another story set primarily in the eastern empire, but that one might spill into different countries as it's more of a quest type thing.

Just on the worldbuilding thing, I spent the last few minutes working out legal terminology for three countries that don't even exist. And it was fun

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Indeed I have spent several hours designing the uniforms of the armies where most of my stories takes place. Even though they are barely descripted...

I would love to continue this coversation about our own worlds by PM and some suggestions of how and what to do...

maxmordon said:

Indeed I have spent several hours designing the uniforms of the armies where most of my stories takes place. Even though they are barely descripted...

I would love to continue this coversation about our own worlds by PM and some suggestions of how and what to do...

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Sure

The thing to remember, no matter how you handle it, is that world-building is secondary to story-telling. A long ways secondary. My local writers group has one member fascinated with fantasy fiction, who spends almost all his writing energy in world-building. Story is so vaporous and evanescent as to be inconsequential.

And unreadable. Yawn City.

caw

blacbird said:

The thing to remember, no matter how you handle it, is that world-building is secondary to story-telling. A long ways secondary. My local writers group has one member fascinated with fantasy fiction, who spends almost all his writing energy in world-building. Story is so vaporous and evanescent as to be inconsequential.

And unreadable. Yawn City.

caw

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Quite, but that's what I was saying about having to keep the details relevant to the story. I don't believe it hurts to have a store of information on a made up world. As I said, I've given up on books where the author obviously hasn't put any effort into creating a realistic world but is just shoving stuff in for no reason, forgetting about it the next chapter even though it would have helped the plot, things like that. To me, world-building's like anything else - it has to be done well in order to be successful. Like everything else it can be done badly, like the example you've given. It's a question of getting the balance.

Me personally, I started out with the concept for this story, the general, vague premise that I would have this sort of character going through this sort of situation, then I bult a world for that to take place in. The two elements, the story and the setting, were complimentary IMO, as the story told me what things I needed to have in the world, and in developing that, I also got ideas to enrich the story.

Hopefully it's not vaporous or yawn city but I won't know that 'til I have something ready to put on SYW

All you have to do to see examples of world building gone wrong is take a look at two of the best selling series that spiraled out of control and are unfinished after more than 10 years.

I come from the idea that less is more. I don't care how your magic works, where it comes from, or how many countries there are in your world. As a reader tell me what I need to know and let me be intrigued by the rest.

I think Wolverine was a lot more interesting before I knew his entire background. I think The Others on Lost, and the Cylons on Battlestar Galactica were more scary before we knew their first names and they got their own flashbacks. Its great if you know all the details, but I think as a writer you have to hold back enough to keep the reader interested, but give enough so they know, or at least think they know, what is going on.

If you've written four books worth of detail do what J.K. Rowling is planning on doing and release a dictionary about your world if you have the fan base to support it once your series has run its course.

A little non-technical worldbuilding

Roger Zelazny (Hugo and Nebula winner, Lord of Light, Nine Princes in Amber, etc.) used to write a short story, just for himself, about his protagonist before starting work on the novel.

Smiling Ted said:

Roger Zelazny (Hugo and Nebula winner, Lord of Light, Nine Princes in Amber, etc.) used to write a short story, just for himself, about his protagonist before starting work on the novel.

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I do that - I have a few shorts about my MCs childhood that won't see the light of day, but that were useful to me in understanding him a bit better.

I'm also in favour of the view that there is no such thing as too much worldbuilding, but there is such a thing as including too much in the story. If you enjoy it, as Jess does (and I do), then why not do it? So long as you don't drown the reader in all of the information that's superfluous to the story, I see no harm in it.

George R.R. Martin is a master of world-building, and he does most of it in his present narrative rather than relying on back-story.