Favorite and Least Favorite Parts of World Building

[Thiswriterinme]

As fantasy and science fiction writers, I imagine that a lot of us spend a good deal of time worldbuilding. Regardless of how minimalistic, complex, or middle of the road, I bet other writers have favorite parts of worldbuilding and least favorite parts of worldbuilding like me!

I'm a complex world builder. I mean I design everything - terrain, weather conditions, astrological events and constellations, plant life, animal life, religions, governments, militaries, customs, taboos, holidays, diseases/sicknesses, hundreds of years of history - literally everything. Obviously, most of that doesn't make it into the story. Readers probably don't care that the people of one nation use oil rendered from sheep wool for their oil lamps while another nation uses candles made from a really dense butter from their dairy livestock.

My favorite part of worldbuilding is the "Aha!" moment I get when suddenly all the pieces of my world come together to support the direction of my story. As a plantser, I do a mix of writing and planning simultaneously. I always hit a point in worldbuilding where suddenly the trajectory of my story is clear and I know exactly where it is going. It is like putting the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle, a moment of complete triumph!

My least favorite part of worldbuilding is the process of creating my character profiles. Like my world building, I go into incredible depth with my characters to really bring them to life. It is so strange because I absolutely love my characters and I love having detailed characters. Somehow, the action of going through page after page of the same questions for different characters gets monotonous, even though each one is so different.

I have different character sheet templates for different kinds of characters, based on D&D character creation guides actually. Scrivner makes it really easy to upload templates and then make new documents that are prefilled with the template outline. Still, my novels have upwards of 10 major characters and usually twice as many minor characters. I'm that writer that will make a character profile for any living character that is mentioned, even if just once. Sometimes I make profiles for deceased characters too, depending on how influential they are to the story, or historical characters if they are relevant.

So, now that you all know how insane I am, what are some of your favorite and/or least favorite aspects of worldbuilding?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Really I only do it cos I have to. I do quite like destroying places though

 

[Steve Harrison]

I have only done this in one novel, where I had to create an entire universe hidden from contemporary human eyes (as you do). I had no idea what I was going to do until I started writing and I created history, technology, politics, myth and assorted background details as I needed them.

The most enjoyable aspect of this was that during each writing session I discovered this universe at the same time as my human characters, which added considerably to the pleasure of writing this novel when compared to my other work based in a 'known' world.

 

[Wayne Mack]

For me, I enjoy making improbably circumstances seem logical. My least favorite part is not putting all of (or even most of) the details into the story.

 

[Biskit]

I avoid it unless absolutely necessary, and then tend to the minimalist. What world-building I do tends to happen as I write, with bit of back-tracking to make things line up if needed.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think the worst thing about world-building is that it takes up time that could be used in writing the story.

I'm fast developing a theory that, when many people read SFF, they look for things to latch on to make sense of what they're reading. Part of that involves recognising familiar things. So they might look at the author's League of Democratic Planets, with its enormous backstory and carefully-designed uniforms and traditions, and just think "So it's like the Federation from Star Trek. OK then". That does mean that the enormous backstory is somewhat unnecessary, but that will depend on the circumstances, and of course it's better if the author's version does stand out in some way, but if "a bit like the Federation" is all that's really required, so be it. Neither the writer nor the reader needs to know who the first president was and how you vote for him, unless it's actually in the story.

While big monsters are fun to design and include, I tend to spend most of the thinking time working out the characters. Often, they "bring" a lot of the setting with them: if all the characters are wealthy lawyers, you might have to work out how a courtroom works, but you won't need to explain how tribesmen on the far side of the planet live unless they're involved in a legal case somehow. The characters can help set the limits of the story.

 

[Phyrebrat]

No interest in world building at all. But then I don’t have to because I don’t write in those genres.

<vile smugness>

 

[Thiswriterinme]

I have noticed that the complexity of my worldbuilding varies from book to book.

Like, one of the series I'm working on is eventually - hopefully - going to include 14 books (technically two series of 7 books each that both take place in the same "universe"). It has interdimensional travel, but I'm not going deep into depth for every dimension that I mention. I've greatly skimped on the details for the 2 main dimensions this universe covers too, at least compared to some of my other works. This project definitely has more of a focus on the characters - allowing them to bring the setting to the story - rather than deeply detailed worldbuilding.

I guess I like to try different theories of worldbuilding for different projects. Although whichever way I do it, character profiles are still my least favorite. They are, unfortunately, a necessity for the volume of characters in each story. I'd never be able to keep it all straight in my head, even their basic physical features.

 

[HareBrain]

The only part of it I like is coming up with the Big Secret that lies deep at the rotten core of everything.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

In most of my novels I try to do the minimum required amount of world building. That's so I can allow my imagination free reign within the basic scenario I've devised. I've found over the years that genre writers in particular do over-attend to and over-detail world building. Over-attention leads to inflexibility. For my Factory Girl trilogy for instance I did a little research (one book) into Edwardian Britain, jotted down a couple of pages of notes on clockwork, watched a documentary on automata and the film Hugo, then began work.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

While big monsters are fun to design and include, I tend to spend most of the thinking time working out the characters. Often, they "bring" a lot of the setting with them:

This.

 

[Dragonlady]

I'm exactly the opposite @Stephen Palmer , my brain can't handle a lot of detail, so I live in fear that my worldbuilding will be inconsistent, or insufficuent, or there will be things I haven't thought about or don't really work, or implications of things I've missed. I do the minimum I can and have been world building by writing sketches with characters in as I think/research about it

 

[Thiswriterinme]

I've always seen worldbuilding as a template, even when I get really detailed. As I write, I like to leave room for changes to come and for characters to adapt, or little details to develop over the course of the book. Generally, I don't even start worldbuilding until I reach a point in my writing where I have to because I can't keep things straight in my head anymore.

At that point, as I world build, I get renewed inspiration for the story and characters, which helps me finish the project off. As a planster, I kind of do everything at once, or alternate back and forth, pretty much anything goes. Nothing is ever set in stone. New ideas are always popping up and concepts are changing, and I don't let detailed worldbuilding or character creation prevent me from taking a new direction or changing/adding more.

Honestly, I've never understood how writers can world build, or create a character, and not leave it open-ended in some way. It would be far too limiting for me in my writing to think that once something is in my notes, there is no going back or changing it.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I'm exactly the opposite @Stephen Palmer , my brain can't handle a lot of detail, so I live in fear that my worldbuilding will be inconsistent, or insufficuent, or there will be things I haven't thought about or don't really work, or implications of things I've missed. I do the minimum I can and have been world building by writing sketches with characters in as I think/research about it

China Mieville does this too, so you're in good company!

 

[Robert Zwilling]

I like building worlds and connecting everything together in them. The least favorite parts are trying to make the characters likeable and trying to bring the entire world into focus without resorting to info dumps.

 

[sknox]

I enjoy developing characters best. I don't make character sheets; instead, I make notes, sketches, sometimes whole scenes. Characters come alive for me most especially through dialog. The process is meandering and never even comes close to being repetetive. Along the way, though, there starts to appear turns of phrase, tics, attitudes, and the character becomes more solid. And in there somewhere, if it's a good character, I get a moment where I really believe in the character and feel like they're firmly in the story.

This happens far less with plot, setting, theme. With plot it's usually finding a way out of some corner into which I've painted myself. With setting, it's usually dealing with logistics. In both, it can be satisfying to hit on a solution. This rarely compensates for the many hours of frustration leading up to it!

What do I like least? Retconning. Because I write stories set in Altearth, which has a millenia-long history and a whole continent, I have to pay attention that if I say a people or place or monster is thus-and-so in this book, now it has to be the same in another. So far I haven't had to retcon anything, but I dread the day it will inevitably happen.

 

[The Big Peat]

I really like worldbuilding.

I'm also a big believer that part of what makes certain SFF stories really big is having a world that contains a lot of lore that sparks imaginations and sends its fans off into rabbit holes. So I guess that's my favourite part. The Lore. The little details that sprout off the tree and can give a sense of a living breathing word.

My least favourite part is keeping the logistics realistic(ish), which I increasingly think often run counter to a work's fantasy anyway. Not that it stops me from having a look at them...

 

[Guttersnipe]

I love building languages and the characters' own mythology the most by far. I like Tolkien as a linguistic inventor. Politics tend to be mostly dull for me.

 

[Capricorn42]

Least favourite is trying to sketch an outline before writing the story, while the best part is letting the characters talk to each other and inferring their world from their dialogue. The latter feels much more natural and easy for me, almost as if I'm letting the characters do all the heavy lifting while I just note down what they're saying.

 

[DLCroix]

Ah, well, I use image folders and a random system, so the appearance of a character is sometimes born from the day we are, for example, today is March 2, the number two would be the letter B: that me guide to consult folder B; March is the third month, that would be a three; therefore I am looking for a photo that begins with BC. It's like making blind dates; but that gives me a physical location if we assume that the 28 folders correspond to the environment of the story. Therefore, it sometimes happens that this character is located close to others who may or may not be friends; that is, I don't need to imagine anything, just I look at the folder where that search directed me.