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milkae
Sep '21
2

Whatever genre you’re writing in, effectively establishing your setting is a powerful way to ensure your reader feels immersed in the story. That said, certain genres require a lot of heavy lifting to make sure that's the case. For example, a fantasy story that takes place in an unknown world is going to require more in-depth thought than a Teen Fic that takes place at a high school.

Why? We're all familiar with high school. Yes, you need to set up the specifics of this high school you're writing about, but your readers will have a pre-established, general sense of what the space will look like.

This likely won't be the case for your fantasy story, where you're asking your readers to expand their imaginations and lose themselves in a world they have no previous exposure to. You need to help them understand where they are, and how this new place works.

When you're creating your own world, YOU need to fully understand it and believe in it before you can expect anyone else to.

Here are 3 quick tips on how to make your world-building process manageable and effective:

Give your world a backstory
Here's a template1 you can access while you're creating your story. Regardless of whether all these details come into play, having these questions answered can be helpful in ensuring you’ve introduced a fully developed world. If you want your world to feel believable, it shouldn’t feel like it suddenly and conveniently just came to be. And hey, you never know when there might be an opportunity to leak in some additional details (even if they’re tiny!), so doing the legwork up front to help you fully understand your setting will help ensure the reader does too.

Keep it simple
The reader wants to lose themself in your story and understand the world you’ve created for them, and it shouldn’t be a struggle for them to do that. If you have details that require pages of explanation, odds are you’ll lose the reader along the way. Making a world fantastical and unique doesn’t mean it has to be insanely complex. Keep it clear - your readers will appreciate it!

Let your characters bring your world to life
It’s easy to get caught up in thinking you need to introduce every aspect of your world right off the bat, and it’s equally easy to get so caught up in describing the setting that the pacing slows and gets overly bogged down with detail. Utilize your characters and let them discover your world on behalf of your reader. What do they see? Smell? Hear? What are they experiencing that allows details to get naturally leaked out to the reader? This will help keep your story flowing without losing any crucial details along the way.




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    Sep '21

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Questionable_Liquid
Sep '21

Very helpful for a writer who is not a reader, herpiderp!

Most story writers tend to be at best when they read a lot of books. I'm no reader; in fact, I detest reading at most times. It is very rare for me to get into a novel and read away without acknowledging that this book is a hassle.

I really hope there are people like me ;_;. I don't want to be alone

Mallory
Sep '21
1

I find that every time I read, I learn something that's useful for my writing. So... I definitely think that writers should be readers.

HOWEVER. Since I got older/crankier, I've found that I have very little patience for mediocre writing, and most writing is, well... mediocre! I work in a library so I usually have about 20 books home at any time and I find that I finish probably less than 5% of those books. The rest I only read a few chapters/pages and then decide that it hasn't caught my interest and return them without ever finishing. So I think it's fine to find reading your average book a chore, because, well... it is! But I definitely think there are books out there that are worth reading, and they add value both to your writing and your life.

Thanks for the world-building reference, I have been realizing recently that I've been really slacking off on that and it shows.

euzalea
Sep '21

Thank you so much for this! I've been struggling to write my story especially the world building part, and this just came at the right time!

thedude3445
Sep '21

Even non-fantasy stories need worldbuilding. That's the most important takeaway I've gotten from my work over the years.

Aleksei
Sep '21

This is just the material that I didn't know I needed. Thank you very much =D