Mindfire
Istar
Pretty much exactly what the title says. How do you know when you've gone too far with worldbuilding? Is there such a thing as too much worldbuilding? Do you personally prefer more lore or less? Looking for opinions on this.
I'm not sure there's technically such a thing as too much world building. In theory you could probably go about it until the world is done, and I mean completely done, from the entire cosmos and down to the inner workings of atoms. In practice, you wouldn't be able to pull all that off within a lifetime, and probably not even several.
I think time is more important than level of detail when it comes to deciding how much world building is enough. Once the world building starts to take away from the time you could, or should, have spent working on the story set in the world, it's probably time to start thinking about slowing down.
Great answer ! I have had a similar question. How do i know when my world is ready, and when to get on with the story.
No such thing as too much lore.
The problem I see isn't too much lore, but letting lore-writing distract you from story-writing. If you're spending more time working out the trivial minutiae of your setting than you are with writing or even planning your story and characters, I would say you have the old disease.
In my opinion, there is such a thing as too much lore, but only as it applies to your writing style. Carrying all that information, and still making it compelling, requires a certain kind of skill. So to me, the question is, how much lore are you good enough to handle?
I do think there's a potential trouble sign here. It sounds like you are more interested in the backstory than you are in the story. So long as that condition holds, you run the risk of *writing* more backstory than story.
For myself, this usually means I have not invested enough of myself in the characters. They simply aren't as interesting to me as the geography or history or details of some cult. And that, in turn, often means it's because I haven't got enough conflict going on, the stakes for my characters aren't high enough. In short, it's like I started to watch a drama but it was boring so I switched over to the History Channel.
I'm not saying this is the case for you. I'm just relating my own experience, in case it sparks useful thoughts.
This might be true in some sense. I'm probably less adept than the average writer at the whole "emotional connection to the characters" thing, while I tend to more readily latch onto abstract ideas, plot, and world building details. I tend to think of my characters more as tokens I shuffle around or puzzle pieces that have to click into place to make the plot advance, rather than actual people. If this is the root of my problem I'm not sure how to fix it. I've been trying to capture more of that human element in my writing, but with little success.
An investigation of my notes reveals that my main character's personality has always been difficult for me to define beyond adjectives like "decisive, cunning, aggressive, vengeful, ruthless, impatient, uncompromising". And his motivation is mostly "because I'm supposed to" rather than anything really personal. Maybe if I make the goal more personal somehow...