I do a fair amount of worldbuilding by necessity. Left to my own devices, I am a terrible thief — meaning both that I steal too much, and that I’m bad at it, with a tendency to take whatever cultural flotsam is at the top of my brain, chuck it at the dartboard without looking, and trot merrily on assuming it’ll hit bullseye. It does not hit bullseye. (Or as my brother put it after reading an early draft of my first novel: “This is like a bad Star Wars ripoff, only more boring.” Cheers, bro.)
These days developing a story idea looks a lot more like ping-pong. I’ll think something like (ping) okay, this character is a fighter pilot and that one’s a war orphan, who was the war with? NO NOT THE SHADOWS DAMMIT *shoves Babylon5 back in the closet*. And then after discarding ideas until I hit on something I like, it’s (pong) back to the characters: so he lost his parents to the aliens he’s now in charge of making peace with; what does that say about him?
Or (ping) I want to use the Rich Old Fart murder plot, what does that tell me about the culture? (pong) Now that I’ve got the basics of the culture, who’s my suspect pool for the murder?
I have learned not to let myself play paddleball. At the point where my worldbuilding pings are generating not character or plot details but just more worldbuilding pings, it’s time to stop. My goal — especially when prewriting — is not to get all the details, it’s to get enough detail that sloppy borrowed ideas aren’t setting up in my story like cement.
I do as little worldbuilding as possible during drafting. At that point I’m not even playing paddleball, I’m Elmer Fudd on a rabbit hunt, and oh boy is that rabbit hole deep. If inspiration strikes, awesome, but if I hit a snag I use my old friend [thing] and fix it on my next developmental pass. “Don’t spend six hours researching the wallpaper for a scene you’ll toss on revision” is a lesson hard but well-learned. Likewise it’s only now, with the first round of revisions on my zero draft done and reasonable certainty that most of those scenes will survive in some form, that I am allowing myself to draw a map. I love drawing maps. I can draw maps all day. And the number of beautiful, lovingly measured, days-in-the-making maps I have sitting around gathering dust because the characters decided in Chapter 2 they were gonna take off for the map next door....
The tl;dr version... I worldbuild as much as I need to, and when I need to, to make the best story I can. Which I suspect is everyone’s answer in the end.
These days developing a story idea looks a lot more like ping-pong. I’ll think something like (ping) okay, this character is a fighter pilot and that one’s a war orphan, who was the war with? NO NOT THE SHADOWS DAMMIT *shoves Babylon5 back in the closet*. And then after discarding ideas until I hit on something I like, it’s (pong) back to the characters: so he lost his parents to the aliens he’s now in charge of making peace with; what does that say about him?
Or (ping) I want to use the Rich Old Fart murder plot, what does that tell me about the culture? (pong) Now that I’ve got the basics of the culture, who’s my suspect pool for the murder?
I have learned not to let myself play paddleball. At the point where my worldbuilding pings are generating not character or plot details but just more worldbuilding pings, it’s time to stop. My goal — especially when prewriting — is not to get all the details, it’s to get enough detail that sloppy borrowed ideas aren’t setting up in my story like cement.
I do as little worldbuilding as possible during drafting. At that point I’m not even playing paddleball, I’m Elmer Fudd on a rabbit hunt, and oh boy is that rabbit hole deep. If inspiration strikes, awesome, but if I hit a snag I use my old friend [thing] and fix it on my next developmental pass. “Don’t spend six hours researching the wallpaper for a scene you’ll toss on revision” is a lesson hard but well-learned. Likewise it’s only now, with the first round of revisions on my zero draft done and reasonable certainty that most of those scenes will survive in some form, that I am allowing myself to draw a map. I love drawing maps. I can draw maps all day. And the number of beautiful, lovingly measured, days-in-the-making maps I have sitting around gathering dust because the characters decided in Chapter 2 they were gonna take off for the map next door....
The tl;dr version... I worldbuild as much as I need to, and when I need to, to make the best story I can. Which I suspect is everyone’s answer in the end.
Last edited: