Do you find immersive and in-depth world-building tedious in written novels?

[pmmg]

I can't even pretend to understand how this statement has anything to do with a discussion on detailed worldbuilding, and I pretend at least ten things before breakfast.

Well, in fairness, it does not have much to do with detailed world building...I drifted I suppose. And it was meant more to be funny than a serious concern. But I already made my comment on the topic. I still think the same.

/drift

Back to the regularly scheduled program.

 

[Incanus]

I apologize. You're right, I was assuming and could have given less cheek and more background. More background... It's within the realms of possibility that I may someday get past my clarity issues - and my partners would be ever-so-grateful - and it's something I'm always working on improving. The first link was to the first in series of the most notoriously bloated page counts in Speculative Fiction. I started reading this series when I was 8 years-old and very much beginning that search for teachers besides my author mom. Auel starts heavy. She gets progressively worse and worse until even I, who bought her irregularly published work until I had to throw my hands up and give her up around 12 and just let the rolling grasses to their thing without me. The cheek? You can take my cheekiness when you take my freedom.

Also, I have a bad habit of speaking in movie quotes and lol cats. I should be stopped.

Second link is Anne McCaffrey. My dad handed me Dragonflight when I was 9 and by the end of the book I knew I'd write fantasy. I learned style and mechanics and emotion from her. Not much in the way of tension and the more primal urges, but it was a good foundation and I'm still building on it to this day.

Exactly.

Thanks for elaborating. I was curious what you meant.

Clan of the Cave Bear was a famous book a while back, but I never read it, or any of the others. That series' sometimes decline is all too true. I wasn't aware of any of it.

I read the first Dragonflight book, but it might have been 10 years ago or so. I didn't care for it, but it would have been pretty different if I had picked it up as a young adult.

The first non-children's book I ever picked up was Lord of the Rings, and I've never been the same since. I could see how it would look odd to someone already an adult reading it for the first time (like my first encounter with McCaffrey). But that didn't happen with me, and I can only do me.

 

[xena]

im asking this qurestion because my story I've written has a lot of in-depth world building ! its almost like a dream ! but I'm wondering is that to much for readers?

I don’t think detailed worldbuilding is too much if it feels natural and helps the story. When it’s interesting and fits with the characters, it makes the book way more fun to read.

 

[skip.knox]

Here's a woot for Clan of the Cave Bear and for Dragonflight. I fully enjoyed both and they deserve better than their later reputation. As for wordiness, I blame the reader not the author. As for me, I think the opening to Nostromo is brilliant, so there you go. Then again, you didn't like Tolkien and I've read those books a dozen times or more.

Say what we might about what constitutes great writing, there still ain't no accountin' fer taste.

 

[minta]

I think it's too much when it's irrelevant to the story.

 

[Ricconi]

I think it's too much when it's irrelevant to the story.

Elaborate further?

 

[Miles Lacey]

Some people can't visualise what they read so it tends to be those people who like more details in the worldbuildings whereas I have a very vivid imagination and can visualise a very detailed world from less than ten words.

I also have different expectations of worldbuilding when it comes to the length of the story I would expect only the barest minimum of worldbuilding if the story is about 6000 words (the standard length of a story in a pulp fiction magazine) but a lot more in-depth and immersive worldbuilding in a 100,000 worrd epic.

I love those little details that are included in worldbuilding that aren't necessarily relevant to the story itself but helps to understand the world better. I once read a book called K is for Killing about an alternative America where a fascist government under Charles Lindburgh takes office rather than Franklin D. Roosevelt. The author added details about this alternate America between certain chapters that highlighted just how vile the regime is including a fictional school textbook highlighting why black children were inferior to white children, a bureaucratic instruction requiring that place names with a hard C had to be replaced with a K (so California became Kalifornia) and a list of all the concentration and extermination camps in America. By inserting the worldbuilding stuff between chapters at certain points it didn't interfere with the flow of the story as the reader could skip those parts if they wanted.

The other thing I look at with worldbuilding is how familiar the readers would be with the setting. As a rule of thumb the further a world deviates from that of the real world or what I would expect when I read a fantasy novel the more details I would expect.

At least that's my take on the subject.

 

[minta]

Elaborate further?

I mean when it doesn’t impact the story or characters. Like if it’s cool info, but doesn’t affect what’s happening, it can feel unnecessary.