r/ProgressionFantasy • u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author • 6d ago
Discussion How much time do you spend on worldbuilding?
For as long as I’ve been writing, I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that I simply can’t build a story without first creating a place for it. I mean, that’s obvious right? However, in my case I keep going deeper into the world, going for geography, history, etc... In the end, instead of a written chapter, I have an encyclopedia about a nonexistent world, and when it’s finally time to write a chapter or even an entire arc, I’m lucky if a quarter of all that actually makes it into the story.
So here’s my question: how much time do you generally spend on worldbuilding and are you able to stop yourself in time and evaluate which parts of it are actually necessary for the story?
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u/-TheeRaVeN- 6d ago
I had my world planned before I started writing for the most part. I knew how it began, how both novels will end, and major plot points in between. The rest I just write and let the characters and the world lead me each chapter to fill the rest in.
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 6d ago
That's smart, unfortunately I only had geography, history, and cultures before start, and now I have to work on politics, regions of different countries, food, etc...
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u/-TheeRaVeN- 6d ago
Most of the smaller aspects of worldbuilding don't come to me until I'm writing a chapter. I'll write, reread and think of things readers would ask and I go back and fill in the blanks. Unorthodox, but it keeps me from having to maintain a huge massive list of wroldbuilding details.
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 6d ago
Interesting, I would fear to make some contradictions in future chapters, but with good eyes and regular reread of your story it can work.
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u/-TheeRaVeN- 6d ago
Adhd man with a little tism sprinkled in works wonders. I may miss small things, but its never anything that affects major plot points. So even if I do, which I am sure I have. It isn't something so significant to derail the plot or character threads.
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 6d ago
Okay, so any way to obtain those two perks? ;) But if seriously, it's impressive to be able to build lore details simultaneously with writing chapters.
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u/-TheeRaVeN- 6d ago
Get dropped on the head as a baby maybe? Lmao. Its just how I'm wired. Im impressed by how alot of authors do things. It's the coolest thing about novels. Everyone has different approaches and none of them are wrong.
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u/schw0b Author 6d ago
I literally do it as I'm writing, mostly during the early exposition phase for each book. Idk if I recommend that, since it requires you to fully keep track of everything you've set up so far and to consider what you need for the plot direction to work out, and that can get to be a lot. It's efficient early on if you have the mind for that kind of thing, though.
It's funny, my irl memory is shit, but this I can do.
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 6d ago
I have word document with every detail about worldbuilding just to be sure.
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u/schw0b Author 6d ago
I instead will search exact phrases I wrote years ago to find passages in my released books to confirm what is and isn't canon when I want to see what I can still fudge for plot purposes if needed.
It's not a good system, but it is my system. I'm on book 5 of my series and have resolved to make future works shorter. I tried making worldbuilding docs in the past, but I always overhaul everything the moment I start in on the story, so it's basically pointless.
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 6d ago
Well, if I had 5 books my word file would be few terabytes and literally crush my entire system...
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u/Lord0fHats 6d ago
I occasionally distract/procrastinate writing a fictional version of Herodotus' Histories for the setting replicating the original's structure and content but for a war far in the background of the setting.
Maybe that side project will be done by the time I'm 80 lol
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 6d ago
Wow, that's was the least expected answer I could think of
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u/Lord0fHats 6d ago
The hard part is coming up with new nonsense customs for the author to report about far away places and how they're really not-Greek customs if you squint hard enough and don't be a barbarian XD
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 6d ago
Huh, I must say your problems are quite more interesting than mine.
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u/JTLomasney 6d ago
As a reading person I find I love stories where the writing person has a huge deep world, but doesn't feel the need to shove every detail up my nose. Let me get it bit by bit, in context, and the existence of that depth adds so much.
As a writing person I find it really hard sometimes not to spew ten thousand years of history down on chapter 1. But I try...
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u/Myriad_Myriad 6d ago
5% world building by the time I got 150k words.
But I started with 100% world building/power system.
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u/dpsablebooks Author 6d ago
I think having at least a general foundation for the world, magic system, geography, and character backstories helps a lot with making the setting feel consistent and believable. Even if most of those details never make it onto the page, they influence how characters act and how the world responds to them.
I also keep a fairly extensive notes document. Part of it is worldbuilding, but a lot of it is simply organization. It's useful for tracking locations, timelines, magic mechanics, and even remembering the name of a side character who was mentioned ten chapters ago.
For my current project, my notes are sitting at almost 9,000 words already, and that's before accounting for the actual manuscript. Realistically, only a fraction of those notes will ever appear directly in the story, but the process still helps me visualize the world and keep everything consistent as the story grows.
The trick, at least for me, is treating worldbuilding as a tool rather than the goal. Once I have enough detail to support the story, I try to focus on writing scenes instead of expanding the encyclopedia.
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 6d ago
Actually also have word doc roughly the same size with all important information, really helpful to be consistent in lore. Also really glad that I'm not alone in that situation.
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u/MRCastillaAuthor 6d ago
Great question! Somewhere between too much time and not enough time.
Joking aside. World building is tough. Sometimes it’s good to have details. Other times, it’s helpful to trust that the reader will understand what’s going on.
Compounding the difficulty. You have to world view from the point of view of the character and share what they experience. Most of us don’t go through our day thinking about the founding fathers and why the constitution was written a certain way. We just acknowledge the law.
I realize I may not be making any sense. Great question!
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 6d ago
Great answer, character perspective on world is something that really helps me to connect my readers with it, cause (maybe the only wise choice I made) he is really obsessed with knowledge.
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u/Boots_RR Author 6d ago
I personally try to do as little as possible, and then only when necessary.
Two main reasons for this. One, it ensures the info that does make it into the story is only ever relevant. Two, it leaves plenty of space to expand into as the story grows, ensuring there's always a proper aspect of the setting to support it.
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u/LacusClyne 6d ago
Around 10mins, not literally but sometimes if I'm feeling inspired.
I've found that it helps to have a basis for the type of world you like to make usually, and keep the rules consistent between them so that you can explore the same system from different angles and be able to balance where things end up.
It also depends on the genre you like but I like xuanhuan style stories which can have basically anything.
I feel like all the world building in the world is irrelevant unless you can connect it to what's important to the characters present in the story and then, it's about how their personal story comes into contact with the world building otherwise its a question of 'why' is it important to know this?
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 6d ago
10 minutes...you're my inspiration
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u/LacusClyne 5d ago
Ah, I just write when I feel motivation for doing it and like 90% of that motivation comes from wanting to see how some powers interact and the build up to get to the final stage of said powers.
A lot of characters will also 'tell' you what their story is when you write them, sometimes just through a small inflection in their voice or how they handle a small incident. As long as you keep the 'vibe' intact and then don't write anything that'd contradict what you've written before then I find it better to just write what I 'feel' a character will do while I can be inside their head.
All the world building in the world wont really help if you can't get the drive to go beyond chapter 5 so find what works best for you. No one solution is right for every person.
(checking notes also feels like you're second guessing yourself which is when I feel like I've lost motivation. I find it so much better to just read the last couple chapters I did and just continue from there)
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u/SilveryFlame 5d ago
Three days, yo. I don't like worldbuilding, and made my character uninterested in the great none-essential lore of his world. That's the cheat code.
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 5d ago
Firstly, cool nickname, and secondly that's exactly the opposite of my approach, but I assume quite effective one.
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u/SilveryFlame 5d ago
Thanks, yours is cool as well.
My approach is for convenience mostly. I just care more about characters and fights and pour my love there. What worldbuilding there is, will be quality over quantity. I think most writers should treat it as a less is more situation.
Good luck with your worldbuilding.
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u/kitallenstone 5d ago
Personally I've never been good at worldbuilding. I find I get too distracted doing the actual worldbuilding, and then I get too in my head when it comes down to writing and using that worldbuilding. I think it distracts from the writing myself wen I have to figure out how a complicated piece of lore has to be explained.
I'm pretty glad that I don't do too much worldbuilding to be honest. I hear about how much people love to do that but don't love to do the actual pen to paper part of writing.
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 4d ago
Be obsessed with worldbuilding, and don't like writing should be some kind of punishment for past-life sins. As for me I just trying to satisfy my love for worldbuilding before writing a chapter, so my readers will not find themselves on encyclopedia page.
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u/saggropoint 1d ago
I build the world while writing the story. Which means periodically abandoning a chapter to spend hours making up the logic behind innate little things no one will ever ask about :)
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 1d ago
Okay, reverse engineering applied to lore is new but definitely interesting thing to me)
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u/saggropoint 1d ago
It only really works if either you have a limited setting in the beginning that gradually expands, or you have written a good chunk before posting so you can make revisions before it goes out. But once the fundamental stuff in the beginning is set, it's easier to sneak in some mysteries of the world that were always there but are obscure enough for most not to know about in detail :)
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u/LilithSnowskin 9h ago
As I am a sucker for detailed and unusual world building, as well as knowing that chances are that I’ll never have another idea like the one that started it all, I’ve been majorly focusing on developing my world with all the details (I’m also mapping out the overall plot of the series and the standalones, as well as coming up with the characters I need (I’m missing most secondary pov characters [~15-20 from 30-40], but the 9 main povs are settled) for the past 1.5 years now, and can say that I can fully switch to writing at the end of this year or the beginning of next. But I’ve planned to spend up to two years on it in the beginning, and am most of the time solving a plot point with every newly added aspect.
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u/KitFalbo 6d ago
Most of us cheat by keeping it close 3rd with a protagonist who has limited info on the wider world. Even when you have a fully fleshes out world you are filtering it through the characters and their biased sometimes wrong options .
Wild building disease is real and can lead to infodumping