How to "show" instead of "tell" this aspect of my fantasy world?

[ClearDragon]

So my fantasy world is in a slow apocalypse. The laws of physics are breaking down, there's "patches" of the world where stuff just doesn't work right. For instance there's a place where no matter how hard you try, you just can't ignite a fire. Combustion just doesn't happen there, flammability literally doesn't exist anymore in a few square miles. Then there's another place where the freezing point of water has been tripled and there's hot snow!
The entire world is littered with these "patches".
Instead of having my characters explaining something they should already know, should I have the characters struggling with something that should be super simple but its just not working? Is that a good way to show the concept?

Next because the people are at dark ages to medieval level, they would have no concept of vacuum decay, how would I imply that's end result of the breakdown without using a modern style explanation?

 

[pmmg]

Well...the way I would approach this is just show it with the same lack of understanding as the characters. They go to light a fire, and it just does not happen. They dont know why. They may make wild guesses, but cannot explain. Maybe later in the story, they will get clued in, but if they dont know, they dont know.

I would use such scenes to reveal the characters and not try to explain the world. I would hope it would seem more immersive that way.

World building is overrated. Give me characters instead.

 

[ClearDragon]

Well...the way I would approach this is just show it with the same lack of understanding as the characters. They go to light a fire, and it just does not happen. They dont know why. They may make wild guesses, but cannot explain. Maybe later in the story, they will get clued in, but if they dont know, they dont know.

I would use such scenes to reveal the characters and not try to explain the world. I would hope it would seem more immersive that way.

World building is overrated. Give me characters instead.

Interesting idea. I might just do that, although I do like world building.
I was going for the "epic" theme where they know the world will end but there is a small chance they actually can do something about it.
Like they wouldn't specifically know the laws of physics are breaking down, but they would be aware that the world was decaying in an unnatural way.

 

[Mad Swede]

I think I'd ask you about other aspects of your world building, starting with trade and travel. If people travel for trade or other reasons then they will eventually build up a sort of verbal (maybe even written) guide to the roads, including areas where you can't light a fire or where the snow is warm. They might not know why this is so, but they would know to avoid some places or time their journey through the area so that they weren't troubled by whatever the problem was. There might be inns or hostels either side of areas like that, to provide support, hot food etc. Here your characters might learn or hear more. Maybe there are people investigating these areas who can provide some explanation (which need not be correct) to your characters?

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

Well...the way I would approach this is just show it with the same lack of understanding as the characters. They go to light a fire, and it just does not happen. They dont know why. They may make wild guesses, but cannot explain. Maybe later in the story, they will get clued in, but if they dont know, they dont know.

I would use such scenes to reveal the characters and not try to explain the world. I would hope it would seem more immersive that way.

World building is overrated. Give me characters instead.

World Building works best when it's balanced out with good characters (who also fall well into the world building) I personally feel like you can't have one without some amount of the other. World Building/lore is useless without a good amount of good characters to fill it.

There's a plot twist in Xenoblade Chronicles that doesn't happen until the last act, but there's foreshadowed barely 10% into the game. (A game that's a little over 100 hours long if you do everything)

That's all chalked up to good world building and character building.

 

[pmmg]

World Building is over-rated is not the same as dont have any.

This is a statement aimed at the number of writers who are stuck putting the energy into this and not writing their story.

Balance is a tricky word. Do you mean by that 50/50, 60/40, 80/20? I think a better statement is give the story what it needs. Characters matter more than worldbuilding. If you have a choice tell stories that lean towards showing them more.

A better way to look at it is as the world is a character. It too has a story to tell. But land scapes and trees wont make a world come alive. It has to matter to the characters as well.

 

[ClearDragon]

I think I'd ask you about other aspects of your world building, starting with trade and travel. If people travel for trade or other reasons then they will eventually build up a sort of verbal (maybe even written) guide to the roads, including areas where you can't light a fire or where the snow is warm. They might not know why this is so, but they would know to avoid some places or time their journey through the area so that they weren't troubled by whatever the problem was. There might be inns or hostels either side of areas like that, to provide support, hot food etc. Here your characters might learn or hear more. Maybe there are people investigating these areas who can provide some explanation (which need not be correct) to your characters?

Ah, thats a good idea. I imagine that the patches near major cities would be well known and also if any are near trad routes.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

World Building is over-rated is not the same as dont have any.

This is a statement aimed at the number of writers who are stuck putting the energy into this and not writing their story.

Balance is a tricky word. Do you mean by that 50/50, 60/40, 80/20? I think a better statement is give the story what it needs. Characters matter more than worldbuilding. If you have a choice tell stories that lean towards showing them more.

That's kind of what I was tryina say, I do a lot of world building myself, but like I don't waste a ton of time building an excess of the world that I'll never use. Readers won't need to know why the cheese trade routes are so risky and only certain mages know how to make it. They just need to know that cheese is a luxury and that it's very expensive. I say do the world building that fits the story, but also use the characters to do some of that for you, instead of Hmming and Harring about all the minute details of the world that might not even be featured in the story itself. (I used to be bad about that)

A better way to look at it is as the world is a character. It too has a story to tell. But land scapes and trees wont make a world come alive. It has to matter to the characters as well.

Dark Souls does exactly this, there is a TON of environmental storytelling (And it's very good at show don't tell) But the characters that are friendly are there to reinforce it. There's almost always a character dedicated to the lore. Dark souls likes to put a lot of the 'fluff' details in item descriptions, which are optional to read.