177: 4 Common Worldbuilding Mistakes

 

If you're writing fantasy or science fiction or any genre that requires worldbuilding, this episode is for you! Learn what to avoid when it comes to worldbuilding and your magic system. 

------

- Click here for ways to work with me + a free character profile template: www.thekatiewolf.com/info

- The last Tuesday of the month is a Q&A episode! Submit your questions for me HERE.


- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@katiewolfwrites

- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiewolfwrites

 

 

4 Common Worldbuilding Mistakes

Hello and welcome to your big creative life podcast. Thanks y'all for listening and being here. I have a little bit of a cold that I'm getting. I managed. I was basically sick all winter because I have a daughter. I have a toddler in daycare, and she just caught everything under the sun. And then I had like a magical one month stretch where no one was sick, and it was lovely. And now I'm getting a cold, but that's okay, because it's been a whole month, and I feel like I can handle a cold. Now there's also a pollen I don't know y'all. I feel like the pollen is worse this year. I live in Charleston, South Carolina, and I feel like the spring has just the last month there's been just inches of pollen on everything. It's disgusting. And I just know there's so many allergens floating around. It makes my skin crawl to think about it. Like my car even is disgusting.

 

I got a car wash last week, and it's like, already to the point where I'm like, Okay, I think I need to wash it again, because it's gross. It's gross. Um, but that's the price we pay. Spring is here. I'm so happy. I'm so relieved, despite the pollen, despite the allergens, so freaking happy to have some warm weather. We've even said had some like, hot days here, which just makes my heart so happy, and I feel like I'm coming alive again after the winter. Oh, man. Also, I'm gonna record an episode about this that'll come out in a couple weeks, but I finished edits to my book, which is very exciting. I had notes from my agent on my thriller that I wrote, and this is the book. If you've been listening to the podcast, you probably have heard me talk about this, or I recorded an episode about this, but I basically wrote a book in 30 days. It was very rough.

 

I dictated most of the book, and so I went through some edits for that took a couple of months, and then sent it to my agent, and then she gave me notes on that book, and I finished them, and it was a big edit. I'll talk more about this in that episode, but I basically took it from three point of view characters to two point of view characters, and so that was a massive change, and but I'm really happy with it. I think the story is a lot stronger, and so now I just kind of have to sit tight and wait for her notes, where we're going to go through one more round of edits, for sure, just to kind of Polish things, because I did write a number of new scenes and and re configured some things because had to switch point of view characters for some of the things that happen in the book. So once that's done and everything's good, then we'll be on submission in the next couple months, which is very exciting. So that's my big writing update.

 

What else do I have to share? Coaching if you're interested in my six month program. As of the time that I'm recording this, I have one opening available. This is where I get to work with you, one on one for six months. There's editing, there's coaching calls, there's Monday through Friday check ins with me, where you can ask questions, get support, talk through mindset stuff, whatever you need. There's a lot of good stuff that's included, and this is customizable, so if you've already started writing, you're like, maybe, I don't know, 20, 30,000 words in awesome, this can still work for you. And if you have not even started writing a word yet, this can also still work for you. So there's a link in the show notes you can go to to find out how you can work with me and more about what's included in that coaching program. And just a heads up that I am all analysis on social media when I do this, but this summer, I'm going to raise my rates for the coaching program.

 

So it's $4,500 for the six months right now, which works out to 750 a month. I do not charge extra for payment plans. 95% of my clients do payment plans. That's totally fine. So it's 750 a month for six months. And I have not changed that rate for years. It has been that rate, and I decided I was thinking about raising my rates across the board, but I'm going to keep my editing rates the same for now and just raise my coaching rates, since I have not changed those in several years. So if you'd like to get in at that price before it changes, definitely look into the coaching program, okay, I wanted to do a world building episode and talk about some common kind of world building mistakes that I see because when I look at the clients that I work with in my business, coaching and editing, the most common genre... most common authors... What am I trying to say?

 

The most common genre I work on is fantasy. There we go. It's the top genre. It's most common. And so I just work with a lot of adult fantasy authors, new adult fantasy authors, young adult fantasy authors, across the board. And look, when we talk about world building. Technically, there's a there's an element of world building that you are doing no matter what genre you write, even if you are writing just like contemporary general fiction, if your book takes place in New York City in the present day, you are still going to have to do some work to develop that setting, to create a New York City in the present day in your book, like, Where does your character live? What neighborhoods are they walking around? What coffee shops are they going to? Where do they work? If you show their workplace like, you're still going to have to construct a world in your book.

 

So there's a there's an element of this that any author working in any genre has to do that's tied into setting, but world building most often applies to speculative fiction, meaning like science fiction, fantasy, etc. So that's what we're going to focus on in this episode. Is more of constructing a fictional world that does not take take place in our own there's some element of magic, etc, some things different about it. And because I work with so many fantasy authors, I've noticed some patterns in terms of the feedback that I give to clients, the pitfalls, the obstacles over the years that I've been doing this, and so I compiled four of the most common mistakes that I see, and we'll get into those four in this episode. One thing I want to say first actually, is just if you're writing your first draft right now, don't stress if you are like, Oh, I think I'm doing this. Oh, shit, I might be doing this. Like, Oh, God. The way that I teach writing and talk about writing is I would much rather you get the first draft out and let it be very messy and very rough, and then you can go back to tweak and polish and add layers of intricacy and complexity to your characters and worlds and plot when you edit.

 

So if you are early in the drafting process, I don't want you to panic about these things or stress too much about them, because these are things that you can really devote attention to in editing. Okay, so I just want to put that out there. First common world building mistake that I see a lot is one that y'all will probably be familiar with, and that's info dumping. So if you are well, if you're not familiar with this term, info dumping is just exactly what it sounds like, where the author is dumping all kinds of information on the reader, whether this is information about a character's backstory, information about the history of this fictional world that you've created, information about the magic system, whatever it is, right? And there's usually a component of, like a pacing issue too, where the action stops, so the characters not doing anything. There's no dialog. Nothing's happening. You're just stopping the action of the story and taking paragraphs after and paragraph paragraphs or pages upon page upon pages upon pages to tell us information about the world. Info dumping happens most frequently in the beginning of the novel, but this really could happen anytime.

 

So this is not limited to just your opening chapter or opening pages, but I do find that that's most often where it comes and if you read a lot of fantasy, if you read a lot of science fiction or supernatural or whatever, you probably have experienced this. You've run into this in books that you've just read where you're like, wow, okay, chapter one is, like, super dense with pages and pages and pages of backstory or history or whatever, that is something to avoid. Okay, now with fantasy specifically, there are like 1.5% of readers who love that shit, and they eat it up, and they do not care if your chapter one contains if 50% of your first chapter is just listing out a history of the world and explaining the magic system to the reader, because they love that stuff, but 99.5% of people will not connect with that. Because here's the problem, when you info dump, when you present all of this information to the reader, especially in the first chapter, it's a lot to ask for them to wade through if they have not really gotten into the story yet, if they have not had an opportunity to get to know and connect with the main character, or characters like a first chapter that opens with a bunch of.

 

A bunch of information about the world. Again, it's just going to be it's a lot to ask of the reader to wade through all of that, because they don't know this world. They don't care about this world, yet, you've got to give them that reason to care. And the way that people form connections is through characters like, yes, the world is interesting and dynamic and can be fun, but that's all there to support the story, to support the characters, and you have to remember that the other problem is something that I mentioned earlier about pacing, because if you're moving along actions happening, you've got plot points, your characters are doing things, and then all of a sudden, everything grinds to a halt and just stops for you to convey all of this information and tell the reader stuff that interrupts the momentum of the story, and that can cause a big lag in things, and that happens at any point in the book. It does not matter.

 

A much more effective way to convey information to your reader about your world is to do it through action. Is to do it through the story. So let's say there's something that you want to explain about the town that your character lives in, like what the setting is this, this town or this village, the leadership, the market that they have, etc. A much more effective way to do that, as opposed to just telling your reader paragraphs and paragraphs about this town. Have your character move through this town. Have them go somewhere. So they're traveling through this town, traveling through this village, showing us what is there, interacting, talking to people along the way, reckon, reckoning with something, wrestling with something. So there's conflict, right? It's that's a much more effective way to do it. And something you'll notice in a lot of fantasy novels, specifically, I'm not saying, I want to be clear I'm not saying this is always the correct way to do this, but I'm just saying this can be a very effective way to do this. And that's why you see this in so many fantasy novels, is your main character will have an element of being a beginner in some capacity.

 

So maybe they're training for something because they're a novice. They don't know that they have magic. They are developing their magical abilities, right? They're finding out information about this world alongside the reader. So in that case, it's, it's a very natural way to do it. And again, I'm not saying you have to do it that way. You don't have to automatically, just like, insert training sequences for your main character or have them only learn about magic in the opening chapter, but that's why you see that device so commonly used in in fantasy. Okay, mistake number two is that magic only exists to make things easier or more convenient for the character, main characters, particularly, I put reader initially. Obviously, that's not right. We don't want to make things easier for the reader. That doesn't make any sense. Okay? So what I mean by this magic, you can get as complex as you want. With regards to your magic system, it can be a hard magic system. It can be a soft magic system, meaning you can have rules and communicate those rules to the reader around magic, or you cannot. It can just be kind of vague and mysterious and never really explained.

 

That's fine, but the point what you don't want to do is have magic be a device that a character can turn to to get themselves out of sticky situations, and that's it. Try to think about some kind of cost or consequence for your character using magic. There has to be some kind of downside or difficulty or something. When I talk about characters generally, not in fantasy specifically, but just in any genre, and I talk about conflict, I always say, like, we don't want to make things too easy for our characters, right? We don't want to have smooth sailing for them with no conflict, because then they're not going to grow and change over the course of the book. You're gonna have the exact same character on page one that you do on at the end of the book. And that's not interesting to read about. It's not interesting to read about perfect people who don't experience any obstacles or conflict ever. And the same thing is kind of true about magic systems. It magic cannot be something that your character just pulls out when they're in a tough spot and it automatically just smooths everything over and makes things easy for them.

 

That's not interesting to read about. We want things to get messy for your main character, and part of that is around the magic system. For example, I once read a menu script where it was never quite explained how, like, who got magic, or what, how many magical abilities a person could have, which is, is something I'll talk about later. When it comes to setting up rules or consistency around your magic system. But you. That was kind of, I didn't love that. And then one character, it was explained early on in the book that this character had two magical abilities, right? This character could do this thing, and then they could also do this thing, like controlling some kind of element of nature. Then about 50% of the way through the book, this character suddenly used a different magical ability that we had not been exposed to to escape some bad guys who were chasing them through the woods. And he, like, transported himself and this other character to a beach somewhere.

 

So like, 50% of the way through, we got this new magical ability that had never been mentioned before. And the character was like, Oh yeah, I don't really like to use it. Like, I don't like people to know that I have this ability. And in that case, I got frustrated, because it's like it was so easy. It was so easy for this character to just be like, Oh yeah, I've just got this magical ability. And boom, it's now like they were transported out of the way of the baddies to this beach where they could recover and rest and heal their injuries, and everything is magical. So that's what I mean about like, that's too easy, that's too convenient, and we don't want to do that for your characters. We want things to be messy. Okay? Number three, thinking that you don't need to explain things or be consistent, because it's fantasy, it's science fiction, right? Readers can suspend disbelief. They can only do that to a certain point. They can only do that up to a certain extent, if they have faith in you as the author, if they trust the way that you're setting things up.

 

So going back to that example before, there has to be a level of consistency if you tell us that certain characters can only use magic on full moons. Let's say that their magic is tied to the full moon, so they can only use magic on the dates that there's a full moon, and then halfway through the book, you have a character who uses that magical ability, and it's not a full moon, and it's never addressed in the narrative. That's frustrating and confusing, and that's an inconsistency that is going to take the reader out of the story, because they're like, wait a second, you just said in chapter one that they have to use magic on the full moon. Why is this character doing it? Now, the way around that, I mean, if there is an explanation for it, like, oh, this character has a workaround, because they found a spell book that I don't know allows them to say to spell out loud, and then they can use this magical ability at other times. Okay, fine, that's fine, but you have to address it. You have to explain it. If you create rules for your magic like that, you have to be consistent with those rules. And if you're not consistent with them. You have to give the reader some kind of explanation for why that is, and it can't feel too easy or convenient.

 

So just be mindful of of that last thing, oh, and the suspend disbelief thing. Let me touch on that for a second. What this means, like, Okay, if the reader is enjoying the story, they're going along. They're invested in the characters. They're enjoying the world. They're they're like, locked in. They want to know how things resolved, how the conflict resolves, etc. They can buy, they can suspend disbelief, meaning that they'll buy things that just don't really make sense or aren't really explained. Like, if you have a magic system where you don't really have rules around it, it's just like, yes, some people have magic and some people don't like. This group of people does this group of people doesn't. And it comes from, like, I don't know, the stars or something. You don't have to get in depth and explain why that is the limitations around it, like you don't have to give us tons of information. The reader can buy that to a certain extent.

 

However, if you do start to make it too easy, if you start to have all kinds of inconsistencies, if you start to have it feel to start to make it feel too convenient, there is going to come a point where the reader just is like, okay, come on, almost like rolling their eyes a bit, sort of like I did when I shared that example of the character pulling this magical ability out of nowhere and then being like, Oh yeah, I've had this the whole time, but, like, I only just used it now. So don't assume that just because it's fantasy, you can get away with whatever you want your magic or your world to be, and that you don't have to like have it make sense to the reader. And

 

the last mistake that I see commonly is focusing so heavily on the world, building the culture, the history, the terrain, whatever magic to the point where you are are neglecting your plot, in your characters, having a dense magic system, a dense world being having everything so fleshed out, having a 300 page document that you've created. That goes into history, the history of your world, the history of different peoples of your world, creating a new language for these people, right? That's all fine and dandy, but that does not automatically equal a good story or a better story than someone who's not doing that. Okay, we can't conflate the two things. You have to remember that when you are creating a magic system, when you are creating a fictional world, you are doing so in order to support the story that you are telling, you are not world building and creating all of these things just for shits and giggles. If that's the case, you might as well just do that and like not write a book, not bother telling a story, right?

 

You have to still spend so much time and effort on your characters, making sure that your characters are solid, that they are interacting with the world that they're in, that there's conflict, that the reader is going to be invested enough to keep reading and not just put all your time and energy on these world building elements, and it's fun. I get it like some people really, really enjoy that part of the creative process, but you have to remember again, I feel like I'm just repeating this over and over, but I want to drill it into everyone's head that this is, this is all done to support the story. And so try to avoid, like, getting so caught up in all of those things that you're neglecting the other stuff. And this can also manifest in some people will spend weeks and months and possibly years doing all of this world, building stuff, creating the 200 page document of all these details about their world and the history and the culture and blah, blah, blah, and then never really start writing the actual book, like they're just stuck in the world building details.

 

Because that feels so urgent and so important that they're not they like, don't ever start writing so that it can almost be like a procrastination method for some people. So just be mindful of that, too, and remember why you're doing all this development work figuring out the world. Okay, so I think those are the world building mistakes that I see most often. And if, if this all sounds kind of vague still, and you're like, I just don't, I don't know, I don't know about this. One thing to really pay attention to is reading like a writer in fantasy specifically, and looking at the first few chapters critically. So when you pick a fantasy novel off the shelf, you begin reading it. Look at how the author is introducing elements of the world. How do they explain to you the magic system? Do they explain the magic system? How does your main character interact with the world that they are in? How do you learn what you need to know?

 

What's essential information for you to know about the world as you're reading, are there places where you feel like your eyes are glazing over and you're just not having trouble focusing and paying attention because it's so dense, and the author's just unloading all this information on you, and you're like, Why am I being told all this? I don't care yet. I haven't I haven't gotten to know the characters yet. So just pay attention to all those things and read critically, and you will start to train your eye to see examples of the things that I'm talking about, and then pay attention to what your reaction as a reader is. Now something I do actually want to make. I should mention this. You can't please every reader, and there are some readers who, again, like I mentioned earlier, some readers who enjoy all of that information about the world, and some readers will just gloss over it and skip any sort of world building that you're doing, even if you have one paragraph, like, they're just not really going to pay attention.

 

So I don't want you to get too focused on like, oh, I have to, like, I don't know, try to make everything perfect. And I can't ever give the reader any information, like, I can't tell them anything. I have to show all of it. Well, no, that's not necessarily true. I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is, like, you can't please every reader. Because even if you look at fantasy readers, specifically people who read fantasy again, some people really enjoy all the world living stuff. Some people don't. Some people don't mind having a few pages or a few paragraphs of world building stuff to open the book right away. And some readers do, and we'll skip over it. So just try to tell the story the best way that you possibly can, while also being mindful of these things that I mentioned. Because everything I mentioned in this episode, it's not like, it's my preference as a fantasy reader to not have these things. It's not like I'm telling you. Oh, well, I prefer in my books not to have magic be too easy or convenient, or I prefer not to have opening pair. I mean, yes, all of that's true, but there's a reason why, because, objectively speaking, it will weigh your story down.

 

It will now negatively impact your book if you do these things, and I've seen that time and time again with coaching clients and with editing clients. Okay, I feel like that was a bit of a tangent. But if you're world building, first of all, enjoy it, because it's really fun, like you just get to let your creativity run wild and imagine a world that you get to create, even if your world is is a version of our world of Earth, this reality where there's a layer of magic infused on top of it, like it's still really cool, because it gives you a chance to just play and have fun. So enjoy that process. But again, remember why you're doing all of that in the first place, it's to support your book, your story that you want to tell. Okay, thank you for listening, and I'll see you next week.

Katie Wolf