In a post on Writers in the Storm, Janet Forbes says that too much worldbuilding can be a bad thing. “Worldbuilding gets a bad rap because authors don’t know how to handle it,” she says. “If it’s well balanced, well-mixed, it makes everything work better. If it goes wrong, it leaves everything smelling of farts.”
This is especially true in fantasy and science fiction, which evolved with a tradition of opening with lengthy prologues that established the story world. Unfortunately, much of the information is unnecessary, not to mention poorly written. So, how can you avoid this? Forbes offers two suggestions:
- Bake the worldbuilding into your core elements. Your world should be woven through your setting, characters, and plot. It shouldn’t be merely backdrop to a series of events. Use your characters’ backstory to reveal your story world. Create unique settings that could only appear here and show various aspects of your world without you needing to describe them in detail.
- Ensure your exposition is in motion and emotional. You need exposition, but your exposition needs a reason to be there, Forbes says. Ask yourself if various facts need to be where you’ve placed them. Are they important to the plot, adding to the mood, or leading to a deeper understanding of the character? If not, try removing it and see if your story is changed. If you find the fact does belong, ask how you can make your readers care about it. That’s where motion and emotion come in.
Don’t merely drop a fact into your exposition. Put it in motion by having your characters interact with it. Don’t tell your reader that owls deliver messages; show an owl delivering an important letter. Also, you can imbue the worldbuilding fact with some emotional resonance. Show your characters’ reaction to this element of their world.
