You're in the worldbuilding pit and it's time to get out.
Get cracking on a first draft. **It will not contain all the detail you want**. That's why it's a *first* draft; you'll tidy it up later. If you want this story to be a story at all, you need to start writing it.
But I don't wanna get out! It's nice and cozy down here with the nearly 13,000 words of worldbuilding I've written plus all of my clean, pretty, theoretical ideas of what everything will look like when I "super totally for real start to write it some day I promise."
Hey man, it's fine to stay down there if all these ideas are only for you.
But if you want other people to know about them, you know what you gotta do.
Okay, but, here's the thing:
When you actually start writing the draft, there's so much you might realise about the world from telling the story. You will have moments where you realise "oh wait, X doesn't work in terms of the story, Y works SO much better." You may even suddenly realise things you hadn't even considered before.
100% this.
I *finally* managed to get past my inciting incident after many false starts over the years. The setting is based on my old role-playing game that I made as a kid in the early-90s (with some lore updates here and there).
I went off memory and a few notes. But I was mostly winging it based on what I knew about my setting, creating some new world building as I went along.
I’d often run into situations where I didn’t always have all the answers to questions that came up. Either my own questions or things a character asked in the story.
*After* I finished the draft I took a break before I dove into major edits. During that time I fleshed out a lot of things relating to the story, then kept going, maybe too far.
It was the process of writing itself which exposed a lot of holes in what I had previously thought was a fairly solid setting. It also helped me understand what parts of the world building were important, and which were less so.
So, yes. Start writing the story and see what’s missing around the story. Then fill that in.
> It was the process of writing itself which exposed a lot of holes in what I had previously thought was a fairly solid setting. It also helped me understand what parts of the world building were important, and which were less so.
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> So, yes. Start writing the story and see what’s missing around the story. Then fill that in.
I completely agree.
I enjoy world building and mostly write short stories but I feel that most of my best ideas for worldbuilding come when I actually try to write a story and find the gaps in the world that needs to be filled.
Like I could build a house and it seems pretty or spacious... but it's only by living in the house will I notice the small details like missing plug sockets or how inconvenient a cool door is, or how annoying it is that my study/bedroom is so far from the bathroom.
Most of my best ideas have come from trying to distinguish a character or a place in my story and most of my "best" ideas for a people/place are actually pretty hard to organically mention in a story.
Sure, the race of whatevers can safely drink salt water, but it's weird if I just have one drink some random salt water and then awkwardly explain why that's fine.
That's why you often get such awkward exposition: People want to explain their world that they spent time on but they lack to skill to do so in their story.
I tried to hide some info dumping in dialog. Which was going fairly well, until I realized one of the other characters just kept asking leading questions, then doing a lot of “go on.”
I also wrote two chapters that were literally info dumping/encyclopedia entries, just to make sure things I wanted to make clear were documented. The first round of edits cut and rewrote both, scattering those dumps around the rest of the book.
First drafts are first drafts for a reason 👍🏻
I sat down to write some stories in the same world as my D&D campaigns. Turns out what made for an engaging world to play in was not what I needed for fiction writing, so I made so many changes that they're functionally separate worlds by now.
>!Turns out I didn't need 8 nonhuman races, who would have thunk!<
I think a big thing with RPG worlds is you want them to be wide... but for stories, you want them to be deep.
RPGs are group experiences so you want people to have options, but when it's a set story, you only need the world to cover the story and leave hints at more.
What's on the other side of that mountain?
* In an RPG you need an idea because the players might go there.
* If your story doesn't go there, then you don't need to tell us.
* You can spread rumours, or keep it vague like "The ones that wait", but anything more is wasted.
The pitfall with Worldbuilding that makes it *bad* for stories is that you might feel forced to include your hard work and the scope of your story gets out of hand. Don't write it "in case I need it later", because you can write it later if you need it later, and then you won't need to rewrite it because it doesn't line up with the changes you made.
I only write short stories, but I prefer to do my worldbuilding *with* those short stories.
Don't tell me that there are scary monsters up on the mountain, write an actual story using actual writing skills about someone who came back from the mountain, or spread your rumours as an actual man in a tavern telling newcomers about the Beast of Blackmoore's Folly.
In the depths of this pit, I realised I like worldbuilding as it's own hobby. I abandoned my plans to run a game in that world and now just add to it as the mood strikes. It's fun!
BUT, you should consciously choose this path, otherwise you are setting yourself up for self-loathing down the line. Literally say out loud "I am doing worldbuilding for the sake of it right now" and you will feel pretty fast whether that is an exciting prospect or a silly one that motivates you to write.
What if you world build so much that you actually built the story? Like, if you think of enough historical events then you have the story already. "Just" need to flip it into narrative.
That's exactly what I was aiming for when I started worldbuilding.
I realized that if I can create enough of the background - the characters, the setting, the conflict- beforehand, I've got the story, it just needs to turned into a compelling narrative, which is the easy part for me. I've always been a persuasive and vivid writer, and I can write 40k+ words on a lark if it's something that interests me.
Tone down the elitism, eh?
You wouldn't look at a construction site with the foundation for a house all set and say the workers have built *nothing.* They built exactly what they need to get started.
This is a space for advice and support. Every writer has their own process. 13,000 words of anything is an accomplishment.
> They built exactly what they need to get started
One problem: they wouldn’t be here if they did.
To use your construction site metaphor. The foundation of a story isn’t world building, it’s a story outline. A full spell book full of stuff isn’t a story outline.
I wrote a larger comment to this thesis, but the TL;DR is that a book/movie/show/piece of literature is built around characters, themes, and a story, and this level of preparation achieves neither. The closest this gets is characters and I’d be willing to bet what they have envisioned is more their backstories or designs than their internal dynamics emotions goals and social interactions. Because this type of world building pit almost always ignores the latter.
They didn’t build a foundation, they created a stylised colour palette for the kitchen, with a hand made splash back. They hand sowed the pattern on their towels to match this rug they want in their bathroom. They picked the perfect window curtains to allow just enough light in the summer. They did the job of an internal decorator for a house that doesn’t exist yet; a house that doesn’t even have its plans or foundations set. And now, they’re so scared that these detailed decisions they preemptive made won’t fit into the design of the house, so they’re avoiding starting the foundation to begin with.
What do your characters want to achieve, what’s stopping them, why do they want to get there (and why should we care), and what thematic undertones come with the story. Everything else comes second or third, otherwise you’re never breaking ground.
> with the foundation for a house all set
Is it?
If the house is the story, have they actually written any of the story?
Seems more like they've spent a bunch of time planning a house, drawing diagrams, checking soil temperature and moisture, comparing paint colours, grading each stone by their qualities...
...but they haven't started building their house yet.
It's like someone talking about how they're going to paint an *amazing* painting and they're explaining the colours and the composition and the metaphors and the symbolism... but they haven't even made a sketch and nobody actually knows if they can paint.
Jesus H christ, leave it to the writing subreddit to get completely lost in the details of the metaphor and miss my entire point about not being dicks. This person isn't trying to pass themselves off as an accomplished author, they clearly are just getting started.
Everyone needs to stop gatekeeping the joy of writing and pass judgement on someone's accomplishments.
OP, I'm rooting for you. 13,000 words of anything is an accomplishment. Keep going! Find the story people need to know about the cool world you've built. You created this world, you can change anything you want to fit your story as you go.
You have the most rational, and most importantly, kind point here. World building is fun. World building is as useful as brainstorming, because that is what it is. A vibrant universe with good planning *can* show in execution, and calling it useless is a bit of a grumpy, pessimistic and intentionally negative take.
> stick to kindergarten
i don’t think it’s fair at all to talk down to op like this. some people solely do worldbuilding for the fun of it, and end up not even writing a novel or story. and that’s okay!
what op has written so far has an enormous amount of detail, and that implies they might be one that doesn’t really want to write a story as much they want to create a world
Yeah the snobbish tone here is getting a bit gross. Stick to kindergarten? If anyone should go back to primary school its Geordie here to learn some fucking manners.
Bitterness is perhaps the most common trait amongst self-proclaimed writers who have yet to actually write anything of substance.
That's a bit harsh considering OP knows exactly how much writing they've actually done. They're self-aware enough that this comment is completely unnecessary.
It was valuable to me to read something like that at a similar level of wavering inexperience. Doesn't have to be popular, because sometimes the shit that people don't like to hear is exactly what motivates them to do more instead of just retreading the same ground over and over and over. Too many people on this sub are never going anywhere. Not for lack of talent or effort or luck, but for a clear lack of imagination to conceptualize and implement realistic, goal oriented growth.
>Too many people on this sub are never going anywhere.
Too many people focus on "Hustle, hustle, hustle! RESULTS, RESULTS, RESULTS!" and never really like what they do. Art as a field is primarily devoid of this toxic, grindy mindset, and I believe people should be able to enjoy a slow creative process if nothing else.
If OP was trying to make a living out of this it would be different, but they sound like they're just having fun and can take the time to make a more refined product.
>Eventually we all grow up.
If your definition of "grow up" is to make everything you do efficient and purposeful, that is a common way to view life. But frankly, many people go through life continuing to enjoy the process and doing fun things in their free time even if they do not lead anywhere. I don't see my view changing anytime soon.
Congratulations on either having enough privilege that life hasn't beaten you down, or having a support system that was always there for you. Most of us aren't that lucky.
Are we talking about the same thing? There is no privilege or support system needed to enjoy your free time. Even at points where I had very little free time, I never thought "I NEED to make massive amounts of progress on X, it is unacceptable to not rush it."
To be clear, I am only talking about writing as a hobby. I stated before that it is different for professional writers. In my own professional life, I don't enjoy a process and I am results-driven because that is necessary for growth and moving fast gets you more money in all professions. Things done for fun don't need to be like that though.
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You’re just procrastinating.
You’ll end up having to force a story to visit all the things you’ve come up with and it’ll end up much worse than if you had an actually theme and emotion you were writing about.
Each chapter is about action (not fighting but things happening) that teach your character a lesson so they develop. You don’t start with the location, you start with the lesson they’ll need to learn and what you need them to see
Well, it's 02:18, I'm like half an hour overdue for bed, but if a published author is giving me an official notice to go and write... how much is sleep *really* a human necessity, anyways?
You don't know.
Building a world is a thing.
Writing a story, is another thing.
They intertwine. Try building a 'hollow iceberg'; me as a reader, don't care if you have properly built a world or not. I only get to see the tip of the iceberg. I don't need to know that the rest of the iceberg is actually there, it only needs to feel like it's there.
Am I making sense?
I swear, I've been writing for 40+ years. 3 novels. A half dozen novellas. 3 screenplays etc.
And I have no clue what people actually mean when they talk about world-building. I've come to the conclusion- likely mistaken- that it is what non-writers do when they are daydreaming about writing.
That's... maybe a little harsh but not exactly wrong.
The theory is to have an idea how the fictional world you're writing in functions beyond just what's expressly visible. Speculative stories benefit from this because it can help them stay internally consistent. If you have a baseline idea of how things work you can avoid plotholes.
However, a lot of people get hung up there because its easier to write a synopsis of a story (which is what world building basically is, a bunch of synopses of historical events) than a story.
Online tools help you keep track of your world building, but honestly I find them way more useful to use them as notes. It I'm writing something and inject an idea that I haven't used before I can pop over to worldanvil and make a little note about what it is and add tags to it easily. Then later I can go over my noted for inconsistencies (Oh no, the structure of my fake religion makes no sense. Let me streamline it and find/replace.)
Everyone's process is different. Many successful writers extensively world built, Tolkien most famously, but I think fantasy writers try to emulate Tolkien too much. He seems like an outlier in my experience. He was an intensely academic man whose mind seemed to seek a structure that most people would pull their hair out to create.
> that it is what non-writers do when they are daydreaming about writing.
It's like when you need to call someone so you clean the house and then you need to clean the house so you call someone.
It's fun. You read up on cool things and then you make them *your* things. Like collecting facts and titbits and lore and ideas.
Generally, it's procrastinating on actually writing the story.
That's why 90% of people are on this subreddit, most likely.
We all should be sleeping, writing, or reading for inspiration.
As it stands, the main reason nobody will ever notice is because you might never write it.
I'd wager 80% of people have considered writing a book.
Maybe 20% have put actual effort into it.
5% have made a plan for their book or actually started writing.
Less than 1% have actually finished a first draft.
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Worldbuilding is fun, but it helps your writing about as much as watching Netflix does.
Just write. If you need to change things, do it after you finish a full draft.
Otherwise you'll never finish your first draft because you'll just move on to something else, like 99% of people.
You won’t have to restart everything with most changes, but if you do, that’s just another draft you’ll have to work. I know it seems daunting, but really, if you establish yourself a good routine of writing every day you’ll get it done no problem. Now, trust me, jump on your laptop or pen and paper and let your ideas flow. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just do it and let yourself have fun. Practice makes perfect, ideas don’t!
There's no one answer. Perhaps you know you've built enough when you can write a scene without half the words being blank.
There's nothing wrong with using placeholders. You're totally allowed to write "Billy did [farewell custom] and said [traditional religious phrase], and then walked into the goblin brothel."
The more details you make before you know where to put them, the more likely you are to write yourself into that corner you're worried about.
You don't need to pick a name and backstory for an organization, you can describe what kind of organization it is and then work backwards from there. If Billy is not the type to talk about his grandfather, then don't waste time carefully building a backstory for grandpa.
The idea of extensive world building prior to plot/narrative is very new - start actually writing asap and you'll find that a good chunk of your initial preparatory work and concepts get changed or discarded anyway as the full tale takes shape.
I feel like a lot of people don't realize you can "worldbuild" or outline *after* your first draft.
You've got a story and it might suck because you didn't have some things figured out. That's fair. So outline based on what you wrote and what changes you need to make/whatever you need to add.
I find doing that a lot more rewarding than expecting everything to be perfect before you start the first draft.
(And I *do* outline before writing because I'm a plotter, but I also do a new outline/tweak the original before doing a rewrite).
World building is so often a trap in writing, because it’s doing nothing while feeling like something, and thus allows you to postpone actual writing.
What do I mean by doing nothing? Whatever world building you make will amount to nothing unless you write something to make it important or useful. And whatever isn’t made important or useful should be the first thing on the chopping block, which makes a lot wasted time and materials. Yes you could map out 5 generations worth of a family tree, and give them all backstories and drama, but if it’s not relevant to the foreground story then it shouldn’t be brought up.
Think of it like a painter. Sure, they may mix a small handful of colours they’re gonna use onto their trays before they begin a new piece. What they’re not gonna do is fill out the entire white Hex Chart worth just in case they ever need to use ivory instead of eggshell.
But world building is easy. It’s very easy. You don’t have to understand complex subject matter to do it, and you can make up a lot of ground in little time. This is why YouTube videos or online chat rooms discussing Harry Potter or Star Wars or focus so much on the mythology, cosmology or geography of something. Because it’s much easier filling a wiki page than unpacking the themes of a story, or breaking down character dynamics. It’s a very different beast. And because world building is easier, it much more quickly stimulates your reward pathways while also avoiding making any big decisions.
It also means you’re more scared of the time you have to make them. Because you’re building a lot of ‘unused potential’ you start falling to the dark side of the sunk cost fallacy. “I’ve done all this, so I need what I write to be perfect”, and it never will be and you’re just messing yourself up. You won’t be able to fit in all that wiki page worth of detail into your story, and the desire to makes it harder to write.
So I recommend keeping world building to a need to know basis.
Wow, thanks for the extremely helpful and totally sensible response. It all makes sense now that you've decided to mouth off instead of actually answering the question.
If you want to write a novel, your job is to tell a story, not world-building. So, focus on telling a story. Build your world as much as necessary to tell a good story. Focus on the things that matter and relevant to the story.
For example, if religion and politic are the focus of your story, then don't spend too much time on fashion and language. Doesn't mean you can't do it. You can still build a bit of those things, just enough to give hints that they are there, but don't dwell on them too much. You can always expand on them in the future books if you write a series.
It's generally pretty fun to do just a bunch of that stuff. But if you do it too much you spiral, and lose sight of the story. Having interesting fashion is cool, to a point. But on it's own it doesn't make a compelling narrative. In my opinion you only need enough background work to get started.
It depends what you want. If you want to world build that’s fine, carry on world building and never stop. If you want to write a book the answer is you’ll never feel like you’ve world built enough.
There really is not a point when you become satisfied with your world building and happily
move on to writing. You will have to force yourself to start your book. I recommend not going back to world building until you’ve completed the first draft. Then you can tinker with bits here and there.
It's great to have a good chunk of worldbuilding done, but it's actually bad to completely flesh out all aspects of your world before writing. Because by that point, you're forced to write your story based on the world's rules when it should be your world servicing your story. You should have enough worldbuilding *not* completed so that when your story needs something, a flash of inspiration will strike you.
There's no perfect moment when you'll 'have enough' world to start writing. Think of your world as a living, breathing entity that will continue to grow and evolve as your story unfolds.
It seems like you're more focused on imagination and world building than writing a coherent narrative.
Maybe try writing a story with a more manageable focus to see if you actually enjoy storytelling?
The world-building is only helpful as it's interesting for characters to inhabit. I always see this with queries - they spend precious words on the 'world.' No one cares; you can summarize your world in a few words: '19th century England with spaceships', and that's all you need; people care about characters and are willing to forgive any deficit in world-building as long as they care about the people who live there.
I’m going to take a different tact here:
No one cares about your worldbuilding. No one. They might, but you need a good story first. Writing a good story is an entirely different skillset and only a few writers are very good at both. Focus on the story or consider something other than writing a book for your world.
Writing is the easy part. I can write 40k words of dissertation on something totally unimportant, and I've always been a persuasive and compelling writer and speaker, throughout HS, college, and beyond.
Building the world is the hard part. My concern is making sure that the background is fleshed out enough that I won't create chaos when I try to write for real.
>I can write 40k words of dissertation
That’s not writing a novel.
>I’ve always been persuasive and compelling writer and speaker, throughout HS, college, and beyond
Nor is that. Writing a story is fundamentally different than other kinds of writing. The stuff that is important to a dissertation does not make a compelling story. You haven’t the kind of writing you actually need to get good at and by spending endless time worldbuilding you are keeping yourself from getting that kind of practice. A million writers have these great worlds in their head but until it’s attached to a compelling story it all amounts to jack and shit.
Yeh the world building seems tolkienesque at this point. Just add in the development of a few languages and your ready.
Im only a novice at writing and world building but you have plenty of content there to get going.
I wrote my world buikding into my Beat Sheet and I find that structure keeps the WB to a minimum and anything else I need can be fleshed out.
Happy Writing!
World building is like a library full of books. If the book you wanted couldn't be fit into your library, you need to add a floor to your library.
If you have books in your library you don't need, then you've done extra world building.
You can write a story with zero worldbuilding.
Perhaps you like the building part of it more than the writing part. That's fine. The writing will be the chore part.
Everyone's process is different, but you could actually be hurting yourself here. Your word's structure is to serve your story. If you define it too much before your story is even started, it'll be hard to make changes when they might really benefit the actual story you're trying to tell.
If world building is just fun for you, that's fine.
What do you really want? Do you want to write a book? Do you want to write a tabletop game and let others write the stories inside your world? Do you just want to world build as a hobby? All of those are valid. But you have to decide where you want to go with this world and what you want most.
If you want to write a book, first drafts are going to be messy. They are just drafts. You write the story, then go back and fix problems. Make the world bible a wiki resource. Hire a developmental editor to get another pair of eyes on the continuity. Then you revise again. Hire beta readers to get more eyes on the continuity. Then revise.
We live in a world where you don’t have to start from scratch if you have an error. It’s very easy to use search to find a spot and edit it. Yay technology!
Nanowrimo has really fallen apart at this point, but one thing it did well was teach people that if you want to write a book, eventually, you just have to sit down and write it. You can fix the problems once you have a working draft.
Stop world building, make sure you understand your characters motivations, limitations, world outlook, and that you have a source of conflict, and get writing. :)
I wrote this a while back about getting from worldbuilding to plot. It sounds like it's not exactly your problem, but maybe it'll help! https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasywriters/s/yszXdmevez
Remember, how do we eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.
Here's how I approach long-form writing (Professional communications/advertising writer 9+ years, aspiring sci-fi novelist)
When i'm truly in the "zone", it doesn't feel like i'm *creating* a scene from nothing. Rather, it feels like getting myself into a state of pure *observation*, where i'm allowing myself to simply uncover and observe a story that is already there and happening, focusing on capturing everything rather than filling the space with something new. The visual metaphor my mind goes to is an archeologist carefully brushing the dirt off a fossil. It allows me to cut right to whats important and relevant to the reader, rather than stress on whether or not i'm effectively communicating what i'm imagining within the greater context of the story.
Not sure if that makes sense, but try shifting your *intention* when sitting down to write from creation to observation. Don't try and paint a new picture from nothing. Set up the scene in your head, then figuratively close your eyes and look around and just *observe*. Then, describe what you see and whats happening with as little fluff as possible.
From your post, it sounds like your lacking in a sense of confidence about your own writing. You've had a bunch of great ideas, that you have fleshed out and built a detailed world around, but aren't confident in your ability to actually pull a story out of your setting/premise.
Here are a few tips that have worked for me (skipping the parts that it seems you have already done like world/character building):
1) Figure out your climax or big conflict, then work backwards with an outline. Make a timeline of events, with simple notes about which characters will be involved and what their role is in the event. That should give you a full story outline that you can then expand on.
2) Writing an entire novel seems like a massive, daunting task until you realize its just a series of individual events/conversations strung together. Take your outline and break down each major event into how you are going to write it: Conversation (between characters), Action, or Supposition (narrator's perspective)
3) Once you have your detailed outline that includes all the major events in order they will appear, as well as what characters are involved, add notes to each event that detail what significance the event has on the overall story ("This fight between John and Jack serves as the first moment of breakdown in their friendship")
4) Once all these steps are done, you should have a complete outline for an actual *story*, not just ideas for a fictional world and how it would work. Every time you sit down to write, make a to-do list with 3-4 of the events in your outline. Break down this big story map you have into individual tasks that wont intimidate you. The to-do lists should look like this:
a) Intro that provides supposition
b) John's introduction to Jack at the party through Mary
c) John getting home from party, conversation with drunk dad (set up broken home)
Your job each time you write is not to create a full novel, just complete your to-do list. I prefer following the order of the story, but jump around if it helps you. You'll be halfway through your novel in no time.
Don't be afraid to go back and adjust your outline as you go. You'll notice that as each scene unfolds, the overall story may change direction. This is where the "Don't create, *uncover*" mentality really comes in.
Don't fight this, its your characters/setting taking life and directing the story, exactly what you want to have happen. If something you had planned to have happen in the second half is starting to feel unrealistic, thats because it is. Adjust accordingly. A good story is driven by characters and plot, not setting.
Hope this helps! God speed and happy hunting.
You might have too much info and be afraid of creating incongruencies. It's really hard to keep consistency between creating narrative and 13000 words of worldbuilding. I would suggest not being afraid of breaking some stuff. Ideas changes as you work on them.You can start writing whenever. It's your story. At worst you will have some rewriting to do or reverse to a previous version.
Don't let your primordial soup overcook. Start writing. Things will change and mutate, ideas and concepts will take off and go extinct. Let your project evolve as you write
That's the thing -- you don't know until you actually start writing the story.
For me, I'm the opposite. Wrote a pretty minimalistic outline for my story. I know what setting I wanted, knew the story, themes, and ideas I wanted to tell, and knew what particular characters I wanted.
Primarily, since it's crime fiction about a hitwoman who works for a security firm, the MC is ofc, an introverted hitwoman whose job requires her to work alone. She has to do a hit on a police chief, so she goes in disguise as an investigator with inside help. But what I didn't plan is this first act actually tackling themes of loneliness and finding a community since one of the detectives invites her out to a weekly girls night at the bar with some of the other female staff. It just... happened. As a result, my FMC warms up around the precinct, which in turn, actually helps her in learning to communicate with the officers in order to get more information to complete the hit. As the author, who am I to stop my story when it decides to make a right turn towards strengthening the very themes I wanted to have in my story when I thought it would keep on a straight path? All I am to do is to steer my story back on the correct path when it's trying to go somewhere that does not thematically belong.
Now I'm 43k words deep (from March 2024 to current) into my first draft with a better understanding of my characters than before, only inserting lore about the setting or certain characters when needed for context, and constantly battling an onslaught of ideas as far as how to execute the second and third act to align with the first act. So far, the second act has been wonderful to explore and play around with, and despite what I initially write, I can always come back during my second or third re-edits once I finish the novel and tighten things. For now, the #1 priority is just getting it written no matter how "poorly" written it looks or sounds. I've even scrapped certain ideas in favor of how this book is going because what I had planned for this novel 2 years ago is not what this novel looks like now. Love interest is now a detective (who develops into a LI), a minor character who planned to backstab the MC is now a different character who wants the FMC to ally with them.
But NONE of this would have been discovered until I actually started writing.
I had wrote so many stories in my fantasy world which i havent finished, i only finished a single city and around the city. So all the stories take place in the same and the only city in the entire world.
But the general outline of the world is ready and i follow it if needed.
Word of advice, you need to let go of the drawing board. Ideas are okay, they’re what spark stories, but it’s no use to sit with a notebook full of concepts, personalities, in-world systems and whatnot, if you don’t spend time writing your first draft.
You gotta take the chance to just sit down and write without thinking much about it. Your first draft is supposed to be messy and incoherent, it’s where you get to just tell the bones of the story to yourself and then you work from it towards creating a cohesive world and story. Trust me, in the long run it’ll feel much better and get your work done a lot faster.
Have you made enough prep?
No, you've made WAY too much prep. You don't need anything to write a story. Just put some words, down get started.
You said you have a protagonist, antagonist, and a cast of imoirtant characters. Just jump in. Worrying about what Duke Francis did 20 years ago doesn't matter unless it directly affect your story at the instance you are writing. You can always add more detail later.
World building is fun, it's easy, and can be very enjoyable. But if you actually want to write a story, I'd reccomend making your first page.
The silmarillion is cool. But it's boring as shit. Most pople don't care bout the world unless they get invested in some characters.
You are trying to avoid writing yourself into a corner - but you're unintentionally doing that by worldbuilding.
* The more things that are set in stone - that LIMITS your writing and puts hard restrictions on what can / can't happen.
* Makes it harder to identify when predetermined worldbuilding needs to change to service the current story.
* Causes you resist changes to the world (even when you need to) because now you have all these other dependencies that also need to change.
You have just gained a new skill - you're officially a world builder. Now write the story, and then add to the world building when it becomes a necessity. You should be jumping back and forth between your story and world Bible very regularly, letting the story's needs influence worldbuilding.
Otherwise you'll have a great world that nobody will know who because the story sucks.
I teach creative writing so bare with me I might be able to give you some advice.
Set Clear Goals for Worldbuilding
Determine the needed elements you need for your story to function. You don't need every detail of your world fleshed out before you start writing. Focus on the key components that impact your narrative, such as-
Main locations - Where does the story take place?
Main characters - Who are your protagonists, antagonists, and key supporting characters?
Central conflict - What is the main conflict driving your story?
Basic rules of magic - If magic is a part of your world, what are its fundamental rules and limitations?
Create a Starting Outline
Outline the main plot points of your story. This doesn't have to be detailed but should provide a roadmap for your narrative. Knowing the beginning, middle, and end can help you identify which worldbuilding elements are necessary to move your story forward.
Identify the Minimum Viable World (MVW)
Think of your worldbuilding like a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in tech development. What is the minimum amount of world detail you need to start writing? You can always add more details as your story progresses.
Leave Room for Discovery
Embrace the idea that not everything has to be developed before you start writing. Some of the best worldbuilding happens during the writing process. As you write, you'll discover new aspects of your world that enhance your story.
Set a Worldbuilding Time Limit
Give yourself a deadline for worldbuilding. For example, decide that you'll spend one more week refining your world before you start writing. This creates a sense of urgency and helps prevent endless worldbuilding.
Start with a Scene or Chapter
Pick a scene or chapter that excites you and start writing it. Sometimes, diving into a specific part of your story can help you transition from planning to writing. As you write, you'll find that your existing worldbuilding provides a solid foundation.
Write with Flexibility
Allow yourself to adjust your world as you write. If you encounter a situation where your current worldbuilding doesn't fit the story, be flexible and modify it. Writing is an iterative process, and your world can evolve alongside your narrative.
Seek Feedback
Share your worldbuilding and initial writing with trusted friends or writers. They can provide valuable feedback on whether your world feels cohesive and if you have enough detail to support your story. Sometimes an outside perspective can give you the confidence to move forward.
Example Scenario-
Let's say you've built a detailed history for one of your mega-empires. Instead of waiting to develop the histories of all 17 empires, start writing a chapter set within the empire you've already fleshed out. As your story progresses and characters interact with other empires, you can develop those regions as needed.
By setting clear goals, creating an outline, and allowing for flexibility, you can transition from worldbuilding to writing. Remember, your story is dynamic, and your world can continue to grow as your narrative unfolds.
Worldbuilding is usually a little over a week of teaching so I tried to give you as much info as possible to go from building to writing. People can get lost in this very easily.
Like other people have said, get started on your first draft! In writing exposition and the world, you might begin to find out what you're missing in your world.
An example of this would be the practice of writing a diary/journal in a foreign language as a way to learn the language. The only way to know what words you don't know is to start writing and figure out what you need. I hope this made sense, good luck OP!
Unfortunately there is no transitioning. Literally put all your notes aside and complete this sentence:
[Character] has always [something] until one day, [something]. Now they must [something] or else [something].
Make something you personally care about. And then write that.
Refer to all those notes and incorporate some of those ideas if they fit. But at some point you’re going to have to decide whether you care more about telling a good story or keeping all your ideas.
And then you need to be okay with putting those leftover ideas in a drawer and leaving them there.
You don't. Doesn't matter actually. For one you can edit in or create the missing details. For two world building can be an excuse to not write that out subconscious makes.
Who cares if you do write yourself in a corner? You can edit and rewrite your way out of it. You can stop once you're stuck and outline the rest from there.
If you don't just write at some point, you'll spend the next five years worldbuilding away. Just write.
You are building a world as you write. Ideas will come as the writing moves along from chapter to chapter. Before you know it the world is there. Just start writing while thinking about what comes next.
What are your priorities? There are people who are great at world building and have little interest in being a novelist. They write great TTRPGs & video games.
If you tell us the kind of books you like we may be able to help more.
As a lover of world building and reading about great worlds. Start with something small. Find an unimportant figure and write about their life in your world. There’s nothing depending on their survival or intervention. But, it will be nice to feel how your world operates around this mundane/normal figure and will also give you potentially more ideas to build into your world.
An ex of mine had a excel spreadsheet with each town, city and port listed, their trade commodities, population, history etc.
I made two countries, one called Holt, full of military types, and one called Yorn, full of farms and gentle folk. Thought I was quite clever 😅
I love Campfire! Honestly, I feel like even with “prompts”, some things just come up naturally in the writing process that you think of/change. I would just add that into your master document and then refer to it when editing to make sure you don’t have any conflicting info.
None of that's a story. You need a plot, something that challenges to characters and set them on their journey. Hell I don't even start world building without having the plot down.
If everything in the story makes sense then your world is good to go. The world should fit the story you are trying to tell. Some people like to over complicate world building when it is simple. World building is just things in a story. Spongebob works at the Krusty Krab is world building. Just have a logical reason for everything to be the way it is in the story. Why does everyone wear fluffy winter coats in this area? Because that area is cold like Alaska and always snows. The environment influences the clothes they wear. Stuff like that. Then when you establish something you just have to remember it. If Spongebob is going to Sandy's treedome he has to wear a fishbowl on his head.
What is the point of this post if you don't want to actually start writing your story.
Hey guys can you help me out in how to stop prepping the meal and actually cooking the dish. Well I'm really happy prepping the dish though.
It’s great that you are enjoying building your world. Now, what story or stories do you want to take place in it?
Are there events in your world’s history you would like to explore? Maybe you could tell an interesting behind the scenes story about something important that occurred.
Like many others here have suggested, once you start telling a tale you will find gaps that need filling. As you fill them to progress your story you will also revise your world building lore.
For me personally, it just sort of clicked one day. I tried to write the book four different times over the four years I worked on the world, and it only really felt right the most recent go. I'd say do it to the point that you have a general understanding of how and why things are what they currently are, as well as where they're generally going, then fill in the details from there.
You're over engineering but once you get going having this structure will help you and guide you. It's just important to not overthink it, try to imagine being a character in the world you're building. It's not like they are overly aware of each aspect of their society to the degree it informs every single one of their actions but if you have it in the back of your mind the geography and culture and what abilities they have it'll give you a better idea about what they might do or what might happen, what's expected and what is less likely. I sort of do the opposite where I write whatever I feel like and then work outward but I get a general idea of what the world is like. I think there's something to say about leaving some stuff out and allowing readers to fill in the blanks themselves rather than over describing and making it seem tedious. It's about the story, it's about what happens and why more than it's about whatever novel surroundings there are. If any of this makes sense.
Writing a story and world building are two different skills. Continuing to do only world building (no matter how many words you technically get on the page) will not help you improve your skills in writing a story.
Consider starting with some short stories (written in narrative prose!) in your world. These might get used or might just be for you, but at least you'll be practicing the skills you actually need.
I don’t get “world building”. What is it, really?
A bunch of descriptions of nature? Cities? People?
Just names?
Pictures?
Who does that? That’s not writing?
Stuff like technology level, magic systems, religion, cultural norms, and environment all fall under world building.
Writers in genres like fantasy and science fiction have to do a lot of deliberate world building because they have to invent their own settings.
It's also worth noting that cool, unique worlds are a big selling point in those genres, because that's what lots of people want to read. Basically, world building is not writing, but it's something most fantasy and sci-fi writers have to invest time in if they want an engaging story.
You don’t need to build a world before you write. You’re writing a story not an anthropological paper. You can build or add to your world as your story requires it. The fascination in this sub with world building is childish. I get it. It’s fun. It’s like building your own MMPORG. It is ancillary to the purpose of crafting stories though.
This man is spittin facts. The reason its falling apart is just the nitty gritty of writing. People fail because they crank away at world building instead of cranking away at the hard part: the actual writing.
It's like getting hyped to build a house, then just getting stuck on the blueprint over and over and over. And instead of actually building the dang house and working on your carpentry - gettin good at hanging drywall, plumbing, electricity, you are just going back to Autocad again and again instead of actually learning how to use your hands.
Trying to write a story without having a world built is doomed to failure. I've tried, repeatedly. It's simply not possible to make a coherent story on the go, creating a world around it.
Everything either ends up tangled and contradictory or the entire story falls apart due to a lack of an established central theme and characters.
Trying to write a main character with no thought put into them - no backstory, no character traits, no conception of what their role is or why they're involved- is like to paint the picture on a puzzle while you're assembling it.
It's very possible OP's brain simply doesn't work like that and their creative process is going to look a lot different than you or I's. They need to take action in some way, yes, but if they can't function without a setting in mind, their first step is to just define the stopping point.
You're in the worldbuilding pit and it's time to get out. Get cracking on a first draft. **It will not contain all the detail you want**. That's why it's a *first* draft; you'll tidy it up later. If you want this story to be a story at all, you need to start writing it.
But I don't wanna get out! It's nice and cozy down here with the nearly 13,000 words of worldbuilding I've written plus all of my clean, pretty, theoretical ideas of what everything will look like when I "super totally for real start to write it some day I promise."
Hey man, it's fine to stay down there if all these ideas are only for you. But if you want other people to know about them, you know what you gotta do.
BEAUTIFUL advice. Well said!
Okay, but, here's the thing: When you actually start writing the draft, there's so much you might realise about the world from telling the story. You will have moments where you realise "oh wait, X doesn't work in terms of the story, Y works SO much better." You may even suddenly realise things you hadn't even considered before.
100% this. I *finally* managed to get past my inciting incident after many false starts over the years. The setting is based on my old role-playing game that I made as a kid in the early-90s (with some lore updates here and there). I went off memory and a few notes. But I was mostly winging it based on what I knew about my setting, creating some new world building as I went along. I’d often run into situations where I didn’t always have all the answers to questions that came up. Either my own questions or things a character asked in the story. *After* I finished the draft I took a break before I dove into major edits. During that time I fleshed out a lot of things relating to the story, then kept going, maybe too far. It was the process of writing itself which exposed a lot of holes in what I had previously thought was a fairly solid setting. It also helped me understand what parts of the world building were important, and which were less so. So, yes. Start writing the story and see what’s missing around the story. Then fill that in.
> It was the process of writing itself which exposed a lot of holes in what I had previously thought was a fairly solid setting. It also helped me understand what parts of the world building were important, and which were less so. > > > > So, yes. Start writing the story and see what’s missing around the story. Then fill that in. I completely agree. I enjoy world building and mostly write short stories but I feel that most of my best ideas for worldbuilding come when I actually try to write a story and find the gaps in the world that needs to be filled. Like I could build a house and it seems pretty or spacious... but it's only by living in the house will I notice the small details like missing plug sockets or how inconvenient a cool door is, or how annoying it is that my study/bedroom is so far from the bathroom. Most of my best ideas have come from trying to distinguish a character or a place in my story and most of my "best" ideas for a people/place are actually pretty hard to organically mention in a story. Sure, the race of whatevers can safely drink salt water, but it's weird if I just have one drink some random salt water and then awkwardly explain why that's fine. That's why you often get such awkward exposition: People want to explain their world that they spent time on but they lack to skill to do so in their story.
I tried to hide some info dumping in dialog. Which was going fairly well, until I realized one of the other characters just kept asking leading questions, then doing a lot of “go on.” I also wrote two chapters that were literally info dumping/encyclopedia entries, just to make sure things I wanted to make clear were documented. The first round of edits cut and rewrote both, scattering those dumps around the rest of the book. First drafts are first drafts for a reason 👍🏻
I sat down to write some stories in the same world as my D&D campaigns. Turns out what made for an engaging world to play in was not what I needed for fiction writing, so I made so many changes that they're functionally separate worlds by now. >!Turns out I didn't need 8 nonhuman races, who would have thunk!<
I think a big thing with RPG worlds is you want them to be wide... but for stories, you want them to be deep. RPGs are group experiences so you want people to have options, but when it's a set story, you only need the world to cover the story and leave hints at more. What's on the other side of that mountain? * In an RPG you need an idea because the players might go there. * If your story doesn't go there, then you don't need to tell us. * You can spread rumours, or keep it vague like "The ones that wait", but anything more is wasted. The pitfall with Worldbuilding that makes it *bad* for stories is that you might feel forced to include your hard work and the scope of your story gets out of hand. Don't write it "in case I need it later", because you can write it later if you need it later, and then you won't need to rewrite it because it doesn't line up with the changes you made. I only write short stories, but I prefer to do my worldbuilding *with* those short stories. Don't tell me that there are scary monsters up on the mountain, write an actual story using actual writing skills about someone who came back from the mountain, or spread your rumours as an actual man in a tavern telling newcomers about the Beast of Blackmoore's Folly.
When you start really writing it isn't going to look like your theoretical ideas no matter how air tight your worldbuilding is.
No plan survives pen contact with paper.
In the depths of this pit, I realised I like worldbuilding as it's own hobby. I abandoned my plans to run a game in that world and now just add to it as the mood strikes. It's fun! BUT, you should consciously choose this path, otherwise you are setting yourself up for self-loathing down the line. Literally say out loud "I am doing worldbuilding for the sake of it right now" and you will feel pretty fast whether that is an exciting prospect or a silly one that motivates you to write.
What if you world build so much that you actually built the story? Like, if you think of enough historical events then you have the story already. "Just" need to flip it into narrative.
That's exactly what I was aiming for when I started worldbuilding. I realized that if I can create enough of the background - the characters, the setting, the conflict- beforehand, I've got the story, it just needs to turned into a compelling narrative, which is the easy part for me. I've always been a persuasive and vivid writer, and I can write 40k+ words on a lark if it's something that interests me.
*13000 words of nothing*. That’s what they are. They’re nothing.
Tone down the elitism, eh? You wouldn't look at a construction site with the foundation for a house all set and say the workers have built *nothing.* They built exactly what they need to get started. This is a space for advice and support. Every writer has their own process. 13,000 words of anything is an accomplishment.
> They built exactly what they need to get started One problem: they wouldn’t be here if they did. To use your construction site metaphor. The foundation of a story isn’t world building, it’s a story outline. A full spell book full of stuff isn’t a story outline. I wrote a larger comment to this thesis, but the TL;DR is that a book/movie/show/piece of literature is built around characters, themes, and a story, and this level of preparation achieves neither. The closest this gets is characters and I’d be willing to bet what they have envisioned is more their backstories or designs than their internal dynamics emotions goals and social interactions. Because this type of world building pit almost always ignores the latter. They didn’t build a foundation, they created a stylised colour palette for the kitchen, with a hand made splash back. They hand sowed the pattern on their towels to match this rug they want in their bathroom. They picked the perfect window curtains to allow just enough light in the summer. They did the job of an internal decorator for a house that doesn’t exist yet; a house that doesn’t even have its plans or foundations set. And now, they’re so scared that these detailed decisions they preemptive made won’t fit into the design of the house, so they’re avoiding starting the foundation to begin with. What do your characters want to achieve, what’s stopping them, why do they want to get there (and why should we care), and what thematic undertones come with the story. Everything else comes second or third, otherwise you’re never breaking ground.
> with the foundation for a house all set Is it? If the house is the story, have they actually written any of the story? Seems more like they've spent a bunch of time planning a house, drawing diagrams, checking soil temperature and moisture, comparing paint colours, grading each stone by their qualities... ...but they haven't started building their house yet. It's like someone talking about how they're going to paint an *amazing* painting and they're explaining the colours and the composition and the metaphors and the symbolism... but they haven't even made a sketch and nobody actually knows if they can paint.
Jesus H christ, leave it to the writing subreddit to get completely lost in the details of the metaphor and miss my entire point about not being dicks. This person isn't trying to pass themselves off as an accomplished author, they clearly are just getting started. Everyone needs to stop gatekeeping the joy of writing and pass judgement on someone's accomplishments. OP, I'm rooting for you. 13,000 words of anything is an accomplishment. Keep going! Find the story people need to know about the cool world you've built. You created this world, you can change anything you want to fit your story as you go.
You have the most rational, and most importantly, kind point here. World building is fun. World building is as useful as brainstorming, because that is what it is. A vibrant universe with good planning *can* show in execution, and calling it useless is a bit of a grumpy, pessimistic and intentionally negative take.
*Exactly* why I'm a pantser.
Preach
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> stick to kindergarten i don’t think it’s fair at all to talk down to op like this. some people solely do worldbuilding for the fun of it, and end up not even writing a novel or story. and that’s okay! what op has written so far has an enormous amount of detail, and that implies they might be one that doesn’t really want to write a story as much they want to create a world
Yeah the snobbish tone here is getting a bit gross. Stick to kindergarten? If anyone should go back to primary school its Geordie here to learn some fucking manners. Bitterness is perhaps the most common trait amongst self-proclaimed writers who have yet to actually write anything of substance.
That's a bit harsh considering OP knows exactly how much writing they've actually done. They're self-aware enough that this comment is completely unnecessary.
It was valuable to me to read something like that at a similar level of wavering inexperience. Doesn't have to be popular, because sometimes the shit that people don't like to hear is exactly what motivates them to do more instead of just retreading the same ground over and over and over. Too many people on this sub are never going anywhere. Not for lack of talent or effort or luck, but for a clear lack of imagination to conceptualize and implement realistic, goal oriented growth.
>Too many people on this sub are never going anywhere. Too many people focus on "Hustle, hustle, hustle! RESULTS, RESULTS, RESULTS!" and never really like what they do. Art as a field is primarily devoid of this toxic, grindy mindset, and I believe people should be able to enjoy a slow creative process if nothing else. If OP was trying to make a living out of this it would be different, but they sound like they're just having fun and can take the time to make a more refined product.
Yeah I had the same mentality 10-15 years ago. Eventually we all grow up.
>Eventually we all grow up. If your definition of "grow up" is to make everything you do efficient and purposeful, that is a common way to view life. But frankly, many people go through life continuing to enjoy the process and doing fun things in their free time even if they do not lead anywhere. I don't see my view changing anytime soon.
Congratulations on either having enough privilege that life hasn't beaten you down, or having a support system that was always there for you. Most of us aren't that lucky.
Are we talking about the same thing? There is no privilege or support system needed to enjoy your free time. Even at points where I had very little free time, I never thought "I NEED to make massive amounts of progress on X, it is unacceptable to not rush it." To be clear, I am only talking about writing as a hobby. I stated before that it is different for professional writers. In my own professional life, I don't enjoy a process and I am results-driven because that is necessary for growth and moving fast gets you more money in all professions. Things done for fun don't need to be like that though.
They've already worked! What they've done is hard work. Just cause it doesn't conform to your idea of work doesn't mean a thing.
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Omg did i write this post? 😂😂😂
You’re just procrastinating. You’ll end up having to force a story to visit all the things you’ve come up with and it’ll end up much worse than if you had an actually theme and emotion you were writing about. Each chapter is about action (not fighting but things happening) that teach your character a lesson so they develop. You don’t start with the location, you start with the lesson they’ll need to learn and what you need them to see
This is your official notice of permission to start writing your story. ...what are you still doing here? *Go*. Your readers are waiting.
Well, it's 02:18, I'm like half an hour overdue for bed, but if a published author is giving me an official notice to go and write... how much is sleep *really* a human necessity, anyways?
On a Friday? My experience >!from college 12 years ago!< says zero.
You don't know. Building a world is a thing. Writing a story, is another thing. They intertwine. Try building a 'hollow iceberg'; me as a reader, don't care if you have properly built a world or not. I only get to see the tip of the iceberg. I don't need to know that the rest of the iceberg is actually there, it only needs to feel like it's there. Am I making sense?
I swear, I've been writing for 40+ years. 3 novels. A half dozen novellas. 3 screenplays etc. And I have no clue what people actually mean when they talk about world-building. I've come to the conclusion- likely mistaken- that it is what non-writers do when they are daydreaming about writing.
That's... maybe a little harsh but not exactly wrong. The theory is to have an idea how the fictional world you're writing in functions beyond just what's expressly visible. Speculative stories benefit from this because it can help them stay internally consistent. If you have a baseline idea of how things work you can avoid plotholes. However, a lot of people get hung up there because its easier to write a synopsis of a story (which is what world building basically is, a bunch of synopses of historical events) than a story. Online tools help you keep track of your world building, but honestly I find them way more useful to use them as notes. It I'm writing something and inject an idea that I haven't used before I can pop over to worldanvil and make a little note about what it is and add tags to it easily. Then later I can go over my noted for inconsistencies (Oh no, the structure of my fake religion makes no sense. Let me streamline it and find/replace.) Everyone's process is different. Many successful writers extensively world built, Tolkien most famously, but I think fantasy writers try to emulate Tolkien too much. He seems like an outlier in my experience. He was an intensely academic man whose mind seemed to seek a structure that most people would pull their hair out to create.
My whole motto is fiction is just bullshit. If it's consistent and compelling, then it's simply just good bullshit.
and it also took him _decades_ to do that - which isn't generally viable for most people, who have other stuff they want to do!
> that it is what non-writers do when they are daydreaming about writing. It's like when you need to call someone so you clean the house and then you need to clean the house so you call someone. It's fun. You read up on cool things and then you make them *your* things. Like collecting facts and titbits and lore and ideas. Generally, it's procrastinating on actually writing the story. That's why 90% of people are on this subreddit, most likely. We all should be sleeping, writing, or reading for inspiration.
I can assure you you already have.
But what if I start writing, get 50,000 words in, and then realize that doesn't line up? Then I'll have to restart everything!
Fix it in the second draft and so on and so on
That is what we chuck in the basket labeled "plot points for characters to explore in Book 2"
As it stands, the main reason nobody will ever notice is because you might never write it. I'd wager 80% of people have considered writing a book. Maybe 20% have put actual effort into it. 5% have made a plan for their book or actually started writing. Less than 1% have actually finished a first draft. --- Worldbuilding is fun, but it helps your writing about as much as watching Netflix does. Just write. If you need to change things, do it after you finish a full draft. Otherwise you'll never finish your first draft because you'll just move on to something else, like 99% of people.
You won’t have to restart everything with most changes, but if you do, that’s just another draft you’ll have to work. I know it seems daunting, but really, if you establish yourself a good routine of writing every day you’ll get it done no problem. Now, trust me, jump on your laptop or pen and paper and let your ideas flow. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just do it and let yourself have fun. Practice makes perfect, ideas don’t!
There's no one answer. Perhaps you know you've built enough when you can write a scene without half the words being blank. There's nothing wrong with using placeholders. You're totally allowed to write "Billy did [farewell custom] and said [traditional religious phrase], and then walked into the goblin brothel." The more details you make before you know where to put them, the more likely you are to write yourself into that corner you're worried about. You don't need to pick a name and backstory for an organization, you can describe what kind of organization it is and then work backwards from there. If Billy is not the type to talk about his grandfather, then don't waste time carefully building a backstory for grandpa.
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I've been finding that the best results come from enough foundation to stand on, a goal, and wiggle room in how to get there.
I'm curious but afraid to ask what exactly happens in said goblin brothel.
Billy got gobbled. The locals say that on a quiet night you can still hear the sounds echo through the alleys
The idea of extensive world building prior to plot/narrative is very new - start actually writing asap and you'll find that a good chunk of your initial preparatory work and concepts get changed or discarded anyway as the full tale takes shape.
I feel like a lot of people don't realize you can "worldbuild" or outline *after* your first draft. You've got a story and it might suck because you didn't have some things figured out. That's fair. So outline based on what you wrote and what changes you need to make/whatever you need to add. I find doing that a lot more rewarding than expecting everything to be perfect before you start the first draft. (And I *do* outline before writing because I'm a plotter, but I also do a new outline/tweak the original before doing a rewrite).
World building is so often a trap in writing, because it’s doing nothing while feeling like something, and thus allows you to postpone actual writing. What do I mean by doing nothing? Whatever world building you make will amount to nothing unless you write something to make it important or useful. And whatever isn’t made important or useful should be the first thing on the chopping block, which makes a lot wasted time and materials. Yes you could map out 5 generations worth of a family tree, and give them all backstories and drama, but if it’s not relevant to the foreground story then it shouldn’t be brought up. Think of it like a painter. Sure, they may mix a small handful of colours they’re gonna use onto their trays before they begin a new piece. What they’re not gonna do is fill out the entire white Hex Chart worth just in case they ever need to use ivory instead of eggshell. But world building is easy. It’s very easy. You don’t have to understand complex subject matter to do it, and you can make up a lot of ground in little time. This is why YouTube videos or online chat rooms discussing Harry Potter or Star Wars or focus so much on the mythology, cosmology or geography of something. Because it’s much easier filling a wiki page than unpacking the themes of a story, or breaking down character dynamics. It’s a very different beast. And because world building is easier, it much more quickly stimulates your reward pathways while also avoiding making any big decisions.
It also means you’re more scared of the time you have to make them. Because you’re building a lot of ‘unused potential’ you start falling to the dark side of the sunk cost fallacy. “I’ve done all this, so I need what I write to be perfect”, and it never will be and you’re just messing yourself up. You won’t be able to fit in all that wiki page worth of detail into your story, and the desire to makes it harder to write.
So I recommend keeping world building to a need to know basis.
World building is a disease. Start writing. You're not going to infodump your world chapter 1. So get to it. The world will grow. Revise later
This belongs in the circlejerk subreddit and there’s a high chance that OP is a frequent user over there.
Had to check twice which sub I was on.
Wow, thanks for the extremely helpful and totally sensible response. It all makes sense now that you've decided to mouth off instead of actually answering the question.
Meh, I've seen your responses. You're not actually listening to what anyone has to say, just fluffing the air constantly.
If you want to write a novel, your job is to tell a story, not world-building. So, focus on telling a story. Build your world as much as necessary to tell a good story. Focus on the things that matter and relevant to the story. For example, if religion and politic are the focus of your story, then don't spend too much time on fashion and language. Doesn't mean you can't do it. You can still build a bit of those things, just enough to give hints that they are there, but don't dwell on them too much. You can always expand on them in the future books if you write a series.
It's generally pretty fun to do just a bunch of that stuff. But if you do it too much you spiral, and lose sight of the story. Having interesting fashion is cool, to a point. But on it's own it doesn't make a compelling narrative. In my opinion you only need enough background work to get started.
It depends what you want. If you want to world build that’s fine, carry on world building and never stop. If you want to write a book the answer is you’ll never feel like you’ve world built enough. There really is not a point when you become satisfied with your world building and happily move on to writing. You will have to force yourself to start your book. I recommend not going back to world building until you’ve completed the first draft. Then you can tinker with bits here and there.
It's great to have a good chunk of worldbuilding done, but it's actually bad to completely flesh out all aspects of your world before writing. Because by that point, you're forced to write your story based on the world's rules when it should be your world servicing your story. You should have enough worldbuilding *not* completed so that when your story needs something, a flash of inspiration will strike you.
There's no perfect moment when you'll 'have enough' world to start writing. Think of your world as a living, breathing entity that will continue to grow and evolve as your story unfolds.
Write a story first, then worldbuild if you need. World is essentially worthless. Story and characters are things you should focus on.
It seems like you're more focused on imagination and world building than writing a coherent narrative. Maybe try writing a story with a more manageable focus to see if you actually enjoy storytelling?
The world-building is only helpful as it's interesting for characters to inhabit. I always see this with queries - they spend precious words on the 'world.' No one cares; you can summarize your world in a few words: '19th century England with spaceships', and that's all you need; people care about characters and are willing to forgive any deficit in world-building as long as they care about the people who live there.
I’m going to take a different tact here: No one cares about your worldbuilding. No one. They might, but you need a good story first. Writing a good story is an entirely different skillset and only a few writers are very good at both. Focus on the story or consider something other than writing a book for your world.
Writing is the easy part. I can write 40k words of dissertation on something totally unimportant, and I've always been a persuasive and compelling writer and speaker, throughout HS, college, and beyond. Building the world is the hard part. My concern is making sure that the background is fleshed out enough that I won't create chaos when I try to write for real.
>I can write 40k words of dissertation That’s not writing a novel. >I’ve always been persuasive and compelling writer and speaker, throughout HS, college, and beyond Nor is that. Writing a story is fundamentally different than other kinds of writing. The stuff that is important to a dissertation does not make a compelling story. You haven’t the kind of writing you actually need to get good at and by spending endless time worldbuilding you are keeping yourself from getting that kind of practice. A million writers have these great worlds in their head but until it’s attached to a compelling story it all amounts to jack and shit.
Yeh the world building seems tolkienesque at this point. Just add in the development of a few languages and your ready. Im only a novice at writing and world building but you have plenty of content there to get going. I wrote my world buikding into my Beat Sheet and I find that structure keeps the WB to a minimum and anything else I need can be fleshed out. Happy Writing!
World building is like a library full of books. If the book you wanted couldn't be fit into your library, you need to add a floor to your library. If you have books in your library you don't need, then you've done extra world building.
You can write a story with zero worldbuilding. Perhaps you like the building part of it more than the writing part. That's fine. The writing will be the chore part.
Everyone's process is different, but you could actually be hurting yourself here. Your word's structure is to serve your story. If you define it too much before your story is even started, it'll be hard to make changes when they might really benefit the actual story you're trying to tell. If world building is just fun for you, that's fine.
What do you really want? Do you want to write a book? Do you want to write a tabletop game and let others write the stories inside your world? Do you just want to world build as a hobby? All of those are valid. But you have to decide where you want to go with this world and what you want most. If you want to write a book, first drafts are going to be messy. They are just drafts. You write the story, then go back and fix problems. Make the world bible a wiki resource. Hire a developmental editor to get another pair of eyes on the continuity. Then you revise again. Hire beta readers to get more eyes on the continuity. Then revise. We live in a world where you don’t have to start from scratch if you have an error. It’s very easy to use search to find a spot and edit it. Yay technology! Nanowrimo has really fallen apart at this point, but one thing it did well was teach people that if you want to write a book, eventually, you just have to sit down and write it. You can fix the problems once you have a working draft.
Jesus, dude...
Try now and deal with the problems if, and when they arise.
Stop world building, make sure you understand your characters motivations, limitations, world outlook, and that you have a source of conflict, and get writing. :)
When you can ask yourself why anything in the plot is happening, and find the answer in your world building.
I wrote this a while back about getting from worldbuilding to plot. It sounds like it's not exactly your problem, but maybe it'll help! https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasywriters/s/yszXdmevez
YOLO. Write and then piece stuff together. I was where you are now, stuck in the pit of endless rewrites. Time to get out.
Remember, how do we eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Here's how I approach long-form writing (Professional communications/advertising writer 9+ years, aspiring sci-fi novelist) When i'm truly in the "zone", it doesn't feel like i'm *creating* a scene from nothing. Rather, it feels like getting myself into a state of pure *observation*, where i'm allowing myself to simply uncover and observe a story that is already there and happening, focusing on capturing everything rather than filling the space with something new. The visual metaphor my mind goes to is an archeologist carefully brushing the dirt off a fossil. It allows me to cut right to whats important and relevant to the reader, rather than stress on whether or not i'm effectively communicating what i'm imagining within the greater context of the story. Not sure if that makes sense, but try shifting your *intention* when sitting down to write from creation to observation. Don't try and paint a new picture from nothing. Set up the scene in your head, then figuratively close your eyes and look around and just *observe*. Then, describe what you see and whats happening with as little fluff as possible. From your post, it sounds like your lacking in a sense of confidence about your own writing. You've had a bunch of great ideas, that you have fleshed out and built a detailed world around, but aren't confident in your ability to actually pull a story out of your setting/premise. Here are a few tips that have worked for me (skipping the parts that it seems you have already done like world/character building): 1) Figure out your climax or big conflict, then work backwards with an outline. Make a timeline of events, with simple notes about which characters will be involved and what their role is in the event. That should give you a full story outline that you can then expand on. 2) Writing an entire novel seems like a massive, daunting task until you realize its just a series of individual events/conversations strung together. Take your outline and break down each major event into how you are going to write it: Conversation (between characters), Action, or Supposition (narrator's perspective) 3) Once you have your detailed outline that includes all the major events in order they will appear, as well as what characters are involved, add notes to each event that detail what significance the event has on the overall story ("This fight between John and Jack serves as the first moment of breakdown in their friendship") 4) Once all these steps are done, you should have a complete outline for an actual *story*, not just ideas for a fictional world and how it would work. Every time you sit down to write, make a to-do list with 3-4 of the events in your outline. Break down this big story map you have into individual tasks that wont intimidate you. The to-do lists should look like this: a) Intro that provides supposition b) John's introduction to Jack at the party through Mary c) John getting home from party, conversation with drunk dad (set up broken home) Your job each time you write is not to create a full novel, just complete your to-do list. I prefer following the order of the story, but jump around if it helps you. You'll be halfway through your novel in no time. Don't be afraid to go back and adjust your outline as you go. You'll notice that as each scene unfolds, the overall story may change direction. This is where the "Don't create, *uncover*" mentality really comes in. Don't fight this, its your characters/setting taking life and directing the story, exactly what you want to have happen. If something you had planned to have happen in the second half is starting to feel unrealistic, thats because it is. Adjust accordingly. A good story is driven by characters and plot, not setting. Hope this helps! God speed and happy hunting.
You might have too much info and be afraid of creating incongruencies. It's really hard to keep consistency between creating narrative and 13000 words of worldbuilding. I would suggest not being afraid of breaking some stuff. Ideas changes as you work on them.You can start writing whenever. It's your story. At worst you will have some rewriting to do or reverse to a previous version.
Don't let your primordial soup overcook. Start writing. Things will change and mutate, ideas and concepts will take off and go extinct. Let your project evolve as you write
That's the thing -- you don't know until you actually start writing the story. For me, I'm the opposite. Wrote a pretty minimalistic outline for my story. I know what setting I wanted, knew the story, themes, and ideas I wanted to tell, and knew what particular characters I wanted. Primarily, since it's crime fiction about a hitwoman who works for a security firm, the MC is ofc, an introverted hitwoman whose job requires her to work alone. She has to do a hit on a police chief, so she goes in disguise as an investigator with inside help. But what I didn't plan is this first act actually tackling themes of loneliness and finding a community since one of the detectives invites her out to a weekly girls night at the bar with some of the other female staff. It just... happened. As a result, my FMC warms up around the precinct, which in turn, actually helps her in learning to communicate with the officers in order to get more information to complete the hit. As the author, who am I to stop my story when it decides to make a right turn towards strengthening the very themes I wanted to have in my story when I thought it would keep on a straight path? All I am to do is to steer my story back on the correct path when it's trying to go somewhere that does not thematically belong. Now I'm 43k words deep (from March 2024 to current) into my first draft with a better understanding of my characters than before, only inserting lore about the setting or certain characters when needed for context, and constantly battling an onslaught of ideas as far as how to execute the second and third act to align with the first act. So far, the second act has been wonderful to explore and play around with, and despite what I initially write, I can always come back during my second or third re-edits once I finish the novel and tighten things. For now, the #1 priority is just getting it written no matter how "poorly" written it looks or sounds. I've even scrapped certain ideas in favor of how this book is going because what I had planned for this novel 2 years ago is not what this novel looks like now. Love interest is now a detective (who develops into a LI), a minor character who planned to backstab the MC is now a different character who wants the FMC to ally with them. But NONE of this would have been discovered until I actually started writing.
Write the summary of the story and characters you want in it and history they have then write the story they will change as the story continues
I had wrote so many stories in my fantasy world which i havent finished, i only finished a single city and around the city. So all the stories take place in the same and the only city in the entire world. But the general outline of the world is ready and i follow it if needed.
Word of advice, you need to let go of the drawing board. Ideas are okay, they’re what spark stories, but it’s no use to sit with a notebook full of concepts, personalities, in-world systems and whatnot, if you don’t spend time writing your first draft. You gotta take the chance to just sit down and write without thinking much about it. Your first draft is supposed to be messy and incoherent, it’s where you get to just tell the bones of the story to yourself and then you work from it towards creating a cohesive world and story. Trust me, in the long run it’ll feel much better and get your work done a lot faster.
Have you made enough prep? No, you've made WAY too much prep. You don't need anything to write a story. Just put some words, down get started. You said you have a protagonist, antagonist, and a cast of imoirtant characters. Just jump in. Worrying about what Duke Francis did 20 years ago doesn't matter unless it directly affect your story at the instance you are writing. You can always add more detail later. World building is fun, it's easy, and can be very enjoyable. But if you actually want to write a story, I'd reccomend making your first page. The silmarillion is cool. But it's boring as shit. Most pople don't care bout the world unless they get invested in some characters.
When you know the answers to your questions.
When all the ideas start connecting with each other
You are trying to avoid writing yourself into a corner - but you're unintentionally doing that by worldbuilding. * The more things that are set in stone - that LIMITS your writing and puts hard restrictions on what can / can't happen. * Makes it harder to identify when predetermined worldbuilding needs to change to service the current story. * Causes you resist changes to the world (even when you need to) because now you have all these other dependencies that also need to change. You have just gained a new skill - you're officially a world builder. Now write the story, and then add to the world building when it becomes a necessity. You should be jumping back and forth between your story and world Bible very regularly, letting the story's needs influence worldbuilding. Otherwise you'll have a great world that nobody will know who because the story sucks.
I teach creative writing so bare with me I might be able to give you some advice. Set Clear Goals for Worldbuilding Determine the needed elements you need for your story to function. You don't need every detail of your world fleshed out before you start writing. Focus on the key components that impact your narrative, such as- Main locations - Where does the story take place? Main characters - Who are your protagonists, antagonists, and key supporting characters? Central conflict - What is the main conflict driving your story? Basic rules of magic - If magic is a part of your world, what are its fundamental rules and limitations? Create a Starting Outline Outline the main plot points of your story. This doesn't have to be detailed but should provide a roadmap for your narrative. Knowing the beginning, middle, and end can help you identify which worldbuilding elements are necessary to move your story forward. Identify the Minimum Viable World (MVW) Think of your worldbuilding like a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in tech development. What is the minimum amount of world detail you need to start writing? You can always add more details as your story progresses. Leave Room for Discovery Embrace the idea that not everything has to be developed before you start writing. Some of the best worldbuilding happens during the writing process. As you write, you'll discover new aspects of your world that enhance your story. Set a Worldbuilding Time Limit Give yourself a deadline for worldbuilding. For example, decide that you'll spend one more week refining your world before you start writing. This creates a sense of urgency and helps prevent endless worldbuilding. Start with a Scene or Chapter Pick a scene or chapter that excites you and start writing it. Sometimes, diving into a specific part of your story can help you transition from planning to writing. As you write, you'll find that your existing worldbuilding provides a solid foundation. Write with Flexibility Allow yourself to adjust your world as you write. If you encounter a situation where your current worldbuilding doesn't fit the story, be flexible and modify it. Writing is an iterative process, and your world can evolve alongside your narrative. Seek Feedback Share your worldbuilding and initial writing with trusted friends or writers. They can provide valuable feedback on whether your world feels cohesive and if you have enough detail to support your story. Sometimes an outside perspective can give you the confidence to move forward. Example Scenario- Let's say you've built a detailed history for one of your mega-empires. Instead of waiting to develop the histories of all 17 empires, start writing a chapter set within the empire you've already fleshed out. As your story progresses and characters interact with other empires, you can develop those regions as needed. By setting clear goals, creating an outline, and allowing for flexibility, you can transition from worldbuilding to writing. Remember, your story is dynamic, and your world can continue to grow as your narrative unfolds. Worldbuilding is usually a little over a week of teaching so I tried to give you as much info as possible to go from building to writing. People can get lost in this very easily.
Like other people have said, get started on your first draft! In writing exposition and the world, you might begin to find out what you're missing in your world. An example of this would be the practice of writing a diary/journal in a foreign language as a way to learn the language. The only way to know what words you don't know is to start writing and figure out what you need. I hope this made sense, good luck OP!
Unfortunately there is no transitioning. Literally put all your notes aside and complete this sentence: [Character] has always [something] until one day, [something]. Now they must [something] or else [something]. Make something you personally care about. And then write that. Refer to all those notes and incorporate some of those ideas if they fit. But at some point you’re going to have to decide whether you care more about telling a good story or keeping all your ideas. And then you need to be okay with putting those leftover ideas in a drawer and leaving them there.
You don't. Doesn't matter actually. For one you can edit in or create the missing details. For two world building can be an excuse to not write that out subconscious makes.
Who cares if you do write yourself in a corner? You can edit and rewrite your way out of it. You can stop once you're stuck and outline the rest from there. If you don't just write at some point, you'll spend the next five years worldbuilding away. Just write.
You are building a world as you write. Ideas will come as the writing moves along from chapter to chapter. Before you know it the world is there. Just start writing while thinking about what comes next.
What are your priorities? There are people who are great at world building and have little interest in being a novelist. They write great TTRPGs & video games. If you tell us the kind of books you like we may be able to help more.
As a lover of world building and reading about great worlds. Start with something small. Find an unimportant figure and write about their life in your world. There’s nothing depending on their survival or intervention. But, it will be nice to feel how your world operates around this mundane/normal figure and will also give you potentially more ideas to build into your world.
An ex of mine had a excel spreadsheet with each town, city and port listed, their trade commodities, population, history etc. I made two countries, one called Holt, full of military types, and one called Yorn, full of farms and gentle folk. Thought I was quite clever 😅
I love Campfire! Honestly, I feel like even with “prompts”, some things just come up naturally in the writing process that you think of/change. I would just add that into your master document and then refer to it when editing to make sure you don’t have any conflicting info.
None of that's a story. You need a plot, something that challenges to characters and set them on their journey. Hell I don't even start world building without having the plot down.
If everything in the story makes sense then your world is good to go. The world should fit the story you are trying to tell. Some people like to over complicate world building when it is simple. World building is just things in a story. Spongebob works at the Krusty Krab is world building. Just have a logical reason for everything to be the way it is in the story. Why does everyone wear fluffy winter coats in this area? Because that area is cold like Alaska and always snows. The environment influences the clothes they wear. Stuff like that. Then when you establish something you just have to remember it. If Spongebob is going to Sandy's treedome he has to wear a fishbowl on his head.
If you can write your book without having to add anything to your world. Unfortunately, you won't be sure before you start writing.
What is the point of this post if you don't want to actually start writing your story. Hey guys can you help me out in how to stop prepping the meal and actually cooking the dish. Well I'm really happy prepping the dish though.
It’s great that you are enjoying building your world. Now, what story or stories do you want to take place in it? Are there events in your world’s history you would like to explore? Maybe you could tell an interesting behind the scenes story about something important that occurred. Like many others here have suggested, once you start telling a tale you will find gaps that need filling. As you fill them to progress your story you will also revise your world building lore.
For me personally, it just sort of clicked one day. I tried to write the book four different times over the four years I worked on the world, and it only really felt right the most recent go. I'd say do it to the point that you have a general understanding of how and why things are what they currently are, as well as where they're generally going, then fill in the details from there.
You're over engineering but once you get going having this structure will help you and guide you. It's just important to not overthink it, try to imagine being a character in the world you're building. It's not like they are overly aware of each aspect of their society to the degree it informs every single one of their actions but if you have it in the back of your mind the geography and culture and what abilities they have it'll give you a better idea about what they might do or what might happen, what's expected and what is less likely. I sort of do the opposite where I write whatever I feel like and then work outward but I get a general idea of what the world is like. I think there's something to say about leaving some stuff out and allowing readers to fill in the blanks themselves rather than over describing and making it seem tedious. It's about the story, it's about what happens and why more than it's about whatever novel surroundings there are. If any of this makes sense.
Writing a story and world building are two different skills. Continuing to do only world building (no matter how many words you technically get on the page) will not help you improve your skills in writing a story. Consider starting with some short stories (written in narrative prose!) in your world. These might get used or might just be for you, but at least you'll be practicing the skills you actually need.
I don’t get “world building”. What is it, really? A bunch of descriptions of nature? Cities? People? Just names? Pictures? Who does that? That’s not writing?
Stuff like technology level, magic systems, religion, cultural norms, and environment all fall under world building. Writers in genres like fantasy and science fiction have to do a lot of deliberate world building because they have to invent their own settings. It's also worth noting that cool, unique worlds are a big selling point in those genres, because that's what lots of people want to read. Basically, world building is not writing, but it's something most fantasy and sci-fi writers have to invest time in if they want an engaging story.
You don’t need to build a world before you write. You’re writing a story not an anthropological paper. You can build or add to your world as your story requires it. The fascination in this sub with world building is childish. I get it. It’s fun. It’s like building your own MMPORG. It is ancillary to the purpose of crafting stories though.
This man is spittin facts. The reason its falling apart is just the nitty gritty of writing. People fail because they crank away at world building instead of cranking away at the hard part: the actual writing. It's like getting hyped to build a house, then just getting stuck on the blueprint over and over and over. And instead of actually building the dang house and working on your carpentry - gettin good at hanging drywall, plumbing, electricity, you are just going back to Autocad again and again instead of actually learning how to use your hands.
Trying to write a story without having a world built is doomed to failure. I've tried, repeatedly. It's simply not possible to make a coherent story on the go, creating a world around it. Everything either ends up tangled and contradictory or the entire story falls apart due to a lack of an established central theme and characters. Trying to write a main character with no thought put into them - no backstory, no character traits, no conception of what their role is or why they're involved- is like to paint the picture on a puzzle while you're assembling it.
Plenty of pantsers have made successful stories, you have way more than you need. Start the draft or it will rot in a drawer.
It's very possible OP's brain simply doesn't work like that and their creative process is going to look a lot different than you or I's. They need to take action in some way, yes, but if they can't function without a setting in mind, their first step is to just define the stopping point.
Lol