Worldbuilding: Consumed by Cartography

I was talking with a friend who wants to do some writing, and he said to me, “I can’t start writing until I figure out all of the worldbuilding. I still don’t know how the Fae magic works, and I need to get those details down or I can’t begin.”

Since I only had a couple of minutes to reply, I bit my tongue and didn’t get into the discussion I wanted to start. Still, it frustrated me. It was obvious from our chat that he felt he wasn’t allowed to go any farther before writing, not that he wanted to finish up all of these details before he could write. I wanted to take him by the shoulders, shake him, and say, “You don’t need to have built a complete world in order to start writing!”

Now, don’t get me wrong. Worldbuilding is awesome, and it can be tremendously fulfilling to develop a world in its unique glory, reflecting your inner vision. I love worldbuilding. I grew up on Tolkien. In my teens I worked on a world, creating a language, multiple maps (rainfall, terrain, population, etc.), created crystalline structures; plants, and animals; and wrote reams and reams of poetry for it, some of which I set to music. I even built a musical instrument from my world in school.

Now I have several primary worlds in which my stories are set, and I know each of them intimately, with their geography and geology, social structure, magic, and weather patterns. This helps to make these worlds deeper and more consistent, and create the illusion that the world was there long before the characters interacted with it.

But when it gets in the way of actually writing your story, you may be too hung up on worldbuilding.

My friend’s not the only one. I’ve seen on social media, people saying, “I’m starting my worldbuilding, so how do I do maps?” or even, “How do you start worldbuilding?”

And what I say to them is, “What story do you want to write?”

Because worldbuilding is not about having a complete technical picture of the world. It’s about supporting the story. It’s about creating believability and consistency. It’s about not accidentally saying you’re going overland to Shreedburg one page and saying Shreedburg is on an island on another. It’s about encouraging the reader to suspend their disbelief because in this world at this time, what happens in the story makes sense.

Certainly worldbuilding can be a great place to start. If it helps your story writing to know cities and mountains, rivers and fortresses, great. If you have magic or advanced technology, knowing how it works so that it enhances your story is even better – you need to be very clear on how this affects your writing. But you can also start with the story and build your world as you go. And no amount of worldbuilding will help you if you don’t compelling characters and a good story.

Because worldbuilding isn’t about how much detail you know about your world. It’s about communicating effectively to your readers how the story you are telling, and the characters who you are working with, interact within the world in a believable way.

So why build worlds at all? As I said, it’s a matter of believability and consistency, as well as mood. You’re setting your characters and story in a world that supports them, which is the reason why worldbuilding is as important as it is. If you are working in a world that doesn’t have all the recognizable features of our own, you need to make it accessible to the reader, and that means explaining everything that bears on the story and characters. If your characters live in Shreedburg, the reader needs to know whether it’s a town or city, whether it has spaceports or horse-drawn caravans, if the characters stay in inns or are quartered in tomb-sized technological coffins, and anything else which adds color and vibrancy – and consistency – to the world. Some of it is simply going to be part of the background description, and that’s fine – part of creating a mood for your story is creating a world that is fascinating and intriguing to the reader.

What you probably don’t need to know: What is the exact population of Shreedburg, down to the newest infant? Precisely how many kilometers or miles or leagues it is from Shreedburg to Othertownville? The history of trade between Shreedburg and Othertownville, and quite a number of other technical details. That is, unless they have a bearing on your story, in which case you do actually need them. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invent them, just that you don’t need to invent them.

Basically, writers do things differently from each other. If initial worldbuilding is what you need to get your creative boost, then by all means, do it! But don’t feel like there’s only one approach to writing a story in a fictional world. Because, when it comes down to it, the story is what matters.