Overthinking Worldbuilding?

[D. Gray Warrior]

So, I have this tendency to overthink everything when it comes to creative activities like writing, worldbuilding, conlanging, etc, and it's really holding me back.

For instance, I put way too much thought into whether the leader of fictional monarchy of my setting should be a "king," ,"emperor" or something more original, when in actuality, it probably doesn't matter either way.

I think I've set my standards too high for my own stuff. I can shut my brain off and enjoy a Star Wars movie and not think about how the logic in that universe makes no sense, but with my own writing, I feel the need for my own stuff be logical . Like, I will go out of my way to explain why a dragon can fly in this fictional world despite that the fact it shouldn't be able to if it existed IRL because, like the real world, the fictional world is like earth is size, shape, gravity, etc, so why shouldn't I apply real world physics to dragons?

See what I mean? How can I stop fretting over silly stuff and not overthink things?

 

[pmmg]

Here are some mantras i have adopted to get it done:

• There is no such thing as perfect
• Write it ugly (fix later)
• Write at least one sentence a day (and do not promise yourself more).

Those three will get you going.

One other thing i find useful, go for a long drive and think about the story then.

Last, all that stuff you fret over, its good. Maybe someday a fan base will appreciate it. But what good is that if you never get it written. To that aim… see rules below.

 

[FatCat]

Stories containing too much World-building

Inspired by the 'why world-building matters' thread-- I was honestly wondering if too much world-building is an actual problem, or really only a theoretical one. I'm a slow, slow reader, but steady. I've read at least a couple hundred fantasy books in my time, and I can't recall that this...

mythicscribes.com

 

[skip.knox]

>How can I stop fretting over silly stuff and not overthink things?

Start thinking about stories and stop thinking about things.

So, for example, stop thinking about dragons and magic systems, etc. You have a dwarf who leaves home to find work elsewhere. Along the way he encounters a dragon bound in elaborate chains. Using dwarf skills, your MC frees the dragon. You can keep the story going from there.

What you're doing there is focusing your attention on what-happens-next. From there you can build out. Why does the dwarf stop at all rather than runs away? Why stop to help? What sort of person is this dwarf? What kind of job was your MC looking for in the first place? Where were they headed? When you are narrating the scene, what does the MC look like? How do they speak? Does the dragon speak?

And so on.

At some point, you'll find yourself having to work out logistics, geography, and so on, but only as needed. And yeah, maybe the dwarf goes to work for the king. At which point, maybe you'll wrestle with you want king or duke or emperor or maybe just monarch or war chief. I can't promise the question will be any easier to wrestle at that point, but it's likely. You'll have perspective. Even more importantly, you'll have a story *and* a question, whereas now you have only the question.

 

[Mad Swede]

Just write the story. The setting, the backgorund details, these you can fill in as and when you need to. The key thing is the story, get that right and the readers won't worry too much about how plausible some of those details are.

 

[skip.knox]

Yep. When was the last time you (or anyone) dinged Homer because he didn't explain Scylla and Charybdis, or because Polyphemus was unrealistic?

 

[Devor]

For instance, I put way too much thought into whether the leader of fictional monarchy of my setting should be a "king," ,"emperor" or something more original, when in actuality, it probably doesn't matter either way.

......

Okay, here is the problem as I've come to see it, both for my own writing and in what I read and in the discussions I've seen happening here.

It's not that it doesn't matter. It does. A king, emperor, and custom creation all evoke slightly different tones, have different politics that can affect the plot, and bring to mind different connotations that the readers will bring with them. It does matter.

The problem is, there are thousands of things that all matter in a book. Every sentence is an idea, and a 100k word novel has more than 5,000 of them. That's a lot of ideas.

And that's lot of decisions to make.

It's not about what does or doesn't matter. It's about learning to have those ideas, and make those decisions, and to keep moving forward. You've got to train yourself to think creatively and quickly. There's no other way.

 

[Mad Swede]

......

Okay, here is the problem as I've come to see it, both for my own writing and in what I read and in the discussions I've seen happening here.

It's not that it doesn't matter. It does. A king, emperor, and custom creation all evoke slightly different tones, have different politics that can affect the plot, and bring to mind different connotations that the readers will bring with them. It does matter.

The problem is, there are thousands of things that all matter in a book. Every sentence is an idea, and a 100k word novel has more than 5,000 of them. That's a lot of ideas.

And that's lot of decisions to make.

It's not about what does or doesn't matter. It's about learning to have those ideas, and make those decisions, and to keep moving forward. You've got to train yourself to think creatively and quickly. There's no other way.

Or, phrased another way, you have to practice your writing. That means writing, not thinking about the setting. It means learning to write when you sit down to write, even when you're tired or not quite in the mood. It can be hard work, but in my experience it is the only way to get your story written.

 

[Finchbearer]

I am learning as I go along that there is a big difference between worldbuilding and actually writing a story set in that world. How much information you give the reader is up to you and has to fit into the overall narrative.

Think of it like a service, the customer can’t see what you’re doing behind the scenes - so they won’t know if what you’re doing is perfectly in-keeping with what you’ve built or not, and what you show or tell them is taken at face value.

 

[Devor]

Or, phrased another way, you have to practice your writing. That means writing, not thinking about the setting. It means learning to write when you sit down to write, even when you're tired or not quite in the mood. It can be hard work, but in my experience it is the only way to get your story written.

If that's what I meant, I would've said that. Practicing your writing can mean many different things, and if you're not careful, it can easily cement poor techniques in place.

I am talking specifically about the exercise of creative judgement, and the need to make good decisions quickly. Yes, actually writing, with this in mind, is the best way to improve. But it doesn't happen just because you write. It's a mindset behind what you're thinking as you do it.

 

[Mad Swede]

If that's what I meant, I would've said that. Practicing your writing can mean many different things, and if you're not careful, it can easily cement poor techniques in place.

I am talking specifically about the exercise of creative judgement, and the need to make good decisions quickly. Yes, actually writing, with this in mind, is the best way to improve. But it doesn't happen just because you write. It's a mindset behind what you're thinking as you do it.

Except that creative judgment isn't about making quick decisions, at least not when you're writing a story. Sure, being creative on the battllefied does involve making some quick decisions, especially when you get an unexpected opening. But unless you're a real seat of the pants writer you'll have made most of these decisions earlier or at least you'll have some idea of the direction you want to take as you write. As an example you'd probably have made a decision about whether your state is a republic or something ruled by a noble (be that a King, Emperor or Duke or Baron). You might not have nailed down whether it is a King or an Emperor who is the overall ruler, but that's a detail you can sort out later. Focus on the story arcs, the characters, and start writing. It's the writing which makes the story, not the setting. And it's the writing you have to practice, otherwise you'll never learn to identify those poor techniques, much less get rid of them.

 

[skip.knox]

To address the specific matter of monarchic titles, here are two considerations worth ... er ... considering.

One, each word has its own sound and it has to fit in with the words around it. I've had proper names, for example, that seemed perfectly fine until I got further into the story and discovered it was too close to the name of another character. Or that it was just too difficult to say smoothly in conjunction with certain other phrases. If I have a fellow with the last name of Barone, he's not going to be Baron Barone, unless I'm going for comedy. A small point, but worth, um, considering.

The second item is more substantive. You might think everyone understands a term the same way, but they do not. Even something as seemingly obvious and universal as King doesn't resonate the same way for everyone. I see this done in fantasy often, where the writer tosses out shaman or serf or knight and just assumes all the work is done--appearance, behavior, reactions of other characters, prejudices, and so on. I don't want to call that lazy writing because it is that but only sometimes. More often it's just an unwarranted assumption that everyone thinks the same way you do.

But rather than give the negative characterization, I want to emphasize the positive. A term like that is an opportunity. What you have is a character with some sort of title, which means responsibilities and duties and prerogatives and limitations. Explore those! The more central the character, the deeper you must dig. To take the example I use most often, don't just say "king" and assume the monarch has absolute power. Real kings didn't (and don't). That's where the interesting stuff begins. What theoretical rights and powers and limitations does your monarch have? How did that play out in practice? What about their personal and family life modulated all that?

Which takes me back to the overthinking bit, because the above does describe thinking more than writing. So is that overthinking? The difference as I see it is the one approach is to wonder about word choice, while the other approach is to explore a character, whether primary or secondary or even tertiary. One might spend the same number of hours with either approach, but one gets further with the second. And maybe, just maybe, is less frustrated.

 

[Prince of Spires]

A practical thing you can try is to write in sprints. Set a timer for 15 or 20 minutes (experiment a bit, and find a time that works for you). During that time you're only allowed to write. No research, no looking up stuff. Just write. If you need a bit of worldbuilding or a character name or a city or anything else, either use the first one that comes to mind, or use a placeholder, something that's easy to find at a later point. I write them as variables, like $servantsname or $cityinthedesert or whatever. I know another writer who just writes XXX. It doesn't really matter, as long as you keep writing for those 15 minutes.

Once your timer rings, only then can you go back and fill in the placeholders. You may find that it doesn't really matter all that much if someone is a king or an emperor. After all, the British empire was never ruled by an emperor, while at the end of the Byzantine empire they still had an emperor even though they were little more than a city state. Or that you can just pick a name from a list. Or that the piece of worldbuilding you thought you needed really doesn't matter at all.

On the other hand, you could also find that you need to know what happened in that battle 50 years ago, since it turned out to be crucial to the plot and the protagonist, in which case you can work out what happened and do your worldbuilding.

Working like this you make sure you have dedicated writing and researching time. Which is a lot more efficient than trying to do it all at once. And you also make sure you're not just putting off writing by pretending to worldbuild because starting to write is hard.

 

[Finchbearer]

A practical thing you can try is to write in sprints. Set a timer for 15 or 20 minutes

I found some YouTube videos that have this set up, write for say 15 minutes, then rest for a bit and so on. Might have an ambient background of a landscape or something as background fodder.

 

[Aldarion]

So, I have this tendency to overthink everything when it comes to creative activities like writing, worldbuilding, conlanging, etc, and it's really holding me back.

For instance, I put way too much thought into whether the leader of fictional monarchy of my setting should be a "king," ,"emperor" or something more original, when in actuality, it probably doesn't matter either way.

I think I've set my standards too high for my own stuff. I can shut my brain off and enjoy a Star Wars movie and not think about how the logic in that universe makes no sense, but with my own writing, I feel the need for my own stuff be logical . Like, I will go out of my way to explain why a dragon can fly in this fictional world despite that the fact it shouldn't be able to if it existed IRL because, like the real world, the fictional world is like earth is size, shape, gravity, etc, so why shouldn't I apply real world physics to dragons?

See what I mean? How can I stop fretting over silly stuff and not overthink things?

When worldbuilding, you should probably focus on things that will be relevant within the story. Worldbuilding is important: I have literally dozens of pages of notes for potential stories that I only got the ideas for while I was building the world. Essentially, if you build the world properly, ideas for stories will come on their own. On the flip side however, it is easy to get lost in worldbuilding and never even begin writing the story. So considering that you sound like me, nitpicky and perfectionist, Tolkien-esque approach of "world first, story second" may do you well. Just make sure not to get so lost in worldbuilding that you never get to actually writing (I should probably listen to my own advice here, but in my defense, I was distracted mainly by real-world problems).

Regarding the title of ruler, you should leave that for after when you have decided on what the country will be like. Basically, kingdom is usually a single-ethnicity state. Empire is a state that has multiple ethnicities, and was likely created through conquest. Yet you had empires (e.g. British Empire) that were ruled by kings. Kings could also rule multiple kingdoms (personal union - e.g. Hungary and Croatia). So title itself isn't actually that important; what is important is what the title-holder does.

Also, considering your nickname, I assume you are fan of D.Gray Man?

 

[Finchbearer]

I would have thought that the political system, the belief system and even the history of that world will define what titles are used. Just like in real life.

 

[Aldarion]

I would have thought that the political system, the belief system and even the history of that world will define what titles are used. Just like in real life.

Yeah, that was my point: figure out everything else first, and titles will come naturally.

 

[Miles Lacey]

Knowing how dragons fly is important for dragon hunting, dragon training and dragon riding. If your main characters are unlikely to be hunting, training or flying them you don't need to explain anything. What would require more explaining is if dragons don't fly because most readers would not be expecting to read about dragons that don't fly.

Don't overthink the big picture stuff as those really don't require more than the most basic details. A king is usually a male ruler who inherited the job from their father or mother. Even in a constitutional monarchy they have some clout, such as having the power to reject laws passed by Parliament or to be able to dismiss the government.

The only time you would need to go into major details is if the king doesn't rule a country (other than one who is in exile). For example, in New Zealand our Head of State is King Charles III and he does have actual power but we also have a Maori King. The Maori King has no legal authority and rules nothing but he does speak for a sizeable number of iwi (tribes) so when he speaks the politicians pay attention.

More often than not, worldbuilders lose their credibility when they screw up on the small things so it's the small things where you should provide the most detail, especially if those small things differ from what most people would expect in a fantasy or in the real world. For example, the staple food in most east and south Asian countries is rice so if you set a story in a setting based on east and/or south Asia and you make their staple food sweet potatoes then you will need to explain why.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

So long as it matters to the story, it isn't overthinking. Part of world-building can be described as practicing being decisive, and that is a critical skill for the writer from plot to not being wishy-washy in word choice.