The most important worldbuilding questions?

[akitsukino]

I am actually making strides in my novel right now, but I hit a road bump and I think it's because I don't understand the world as much as I thought I did. I think there are more questions I need to look into. Here are some that I found, but what are some more you think I could look into?

TL:DR What are some important questions you think I should answer during world building?

[keii4ii]

Here's a good list of questions. I do not think you need to answer the whole thing, but they're good to think about.

Real life culture clashes are also a great resource. It can get you thinking about things you never even thought could be different. Just a few examples: Shrugging is not a universal body language. Laughters, nods and gasps may have different uses. Even something as basic as eye contact is used differently in different cultures; where I grew up, you were NOT to make eye contact when being scolded, because that was a way of saying, "I do not accept what you're saying. You are wrong here, and I do not deserve this treatment."

[Pablo.C.S]

I guess the two most important world building question are:

• Does it makes sense to be there in universe
• Does it serve any purpose being there?

I sorta answered this question in a previous thread which you can read here:

Atmosphere in fiction, has always been one of the key points in telling an engaging story, but for being such an important aspect of it, it's a relatively unspoken topic. To clarify, what I mean by atmosphere, is that feeling of being in the story, but through the lens of design elements and setting, instead of character interaction. There are plenty of good sources for how to make good charcter development, so I won't get into that too much here. The main point to take away from all this, i…

It goes more into the actual physical/visual elements to world building aka: how the world is visually represented by a change in the history, addition of a magic system etc. But quite a bit of it can be applied to non-visual elements too, aka: historiography, politics, magic systems etc.

[nostalgicroxas]

Think of the size of the realm: planet, continent, kingdom/country, city, building. Start big and work small, or start small and work to big.
It's really important to think of crops exports and imports - does the area make it's own food for its population, or do they have to import grains while they are able to export seafood or precious metals?
Look into what are things in demand in our world: gold, salt, water / water purification services.
Then match stuff for what weather patterns something is, and match it to their crops. Example, odds are mangos won't grow in a subtropical rain forest - mangos are a pain to grow in the the Pacific Northwest of the US, but not hard farther south in the continents.

[HGohwell]

I think one of the most important questions, before any worldbuilding even happens, is how important is your world to the story? For instance, it's all very well and good knowing the tiny details about trade and fruit and territory, if the story never goes outside one creepy locked murder mystery mansion. Is this relevant is always the most important question in my mind. It's easy to get carried away in tiny details, after all. And also do you need to explain this? Which is only slightly different, but if you world is full of mostly human like creatures, do you really need to give them a different type of food, do you need to explain food at all, or can your read just assume that thing they're eating is food and they don't care if its some exotic fruit and what it means for their climate? #

I know we all love a big expanded world with all the ting details but is it relevant and necessary are hugely important ones.

Beyond that, I think things like social interaction are most important, since we experience the world through characters. Who's in charge, who's respected, what jobs are respected and the opposites can say a lot about a world really quickly.