For anyone who has ever read fiction, most of it will take place in a world that is not our own, and any event that happens there will (by definition) never have happened here. The possibilities for creating and expanding these settings are therefore endless, and entire online communities have been based around the core concept of how to properly build out these worlds.
I’ve personally found great success on this front. Between my own writing, acting as a DM in Dungeons & Dragons, or the informal assistance I’ve given to game developers when requested, if there is any type of praise that I’ve received, it is my ability to flesh out a world from the ground up. But, for the sake of limiting the length of this post, I am going to sidestep the many, many great tactics out there and only focus on a single point.
Writers often ask themselves: how much worldbuilding is too much worldbuilding? You don’t want to have this barebones empty husk of a planet that can be summed up by a single post-it note labeled “Magical bird-people called ‘The Avianox Empire’.” Yeah, cool. You can have an awesome hack-and-slash adventure with your loveable cast of bird wizards, but if they’re just going from unnamed Hamlet to City, you’re not getting anyone immersed. On the other hand, coming up with a year-by-year history of The Avianox Empire, from the first inception from the Airweave to the rise of the Sparrowmeres and the fall of the Hawkytes, along with the Great Royal Houses for each, and of course their familial lines, tracing back to the Cloudfallen at the start of recorded history… That is just gratuitous. If the Cloudfallen lost stature and devolved into other civilizations at some vague point in history, do you as a writer need to waste time coming up with their family trees? Better yet, will I as a reader ever learn any of this? Probably not.
So we thus return to our original question. How much is too much? To this, I say: Build your world exactly one step deeper than the plot takes it. No more. No less.
If you know what your story is going to be and what your characters are going to do, then the world can conform to your wishes. Don’t forget that you’re the one who made it all up. You have full control over how it works out. The only details that you need to come up with are those that will enrich the story you’re telling. Doing the bare minimum will lose a lot of the nuance that makes readers want to know more, but too much is just wasting energy for the sake of wasting energy.
Let’s have ourselves an example. We’ll go back to The Avianox Empire, where our main character is marching through the wartorn city of Wingsworth to meet up with a Sparrowmere wizard just as there’s been a ceasefire declared between the native Hawkyte population and the occupying Sparrowmere forces. Little does our MC know that the weakened Hawkyte city has been infiltrated by Vulturian bandits who have set up an ever-shifting landscape of gangs and cartels, recruiting disillusioned Hawkytes as needed to prolong the chaos. The result of this third party’s intervention is that any attempt of relief for the citizens of Wingsworth ends up in the hands of the Vulturians instead, further fomenting tensions against the Sparrowmeres and ensuring that this bloodied occupation has no end in sight.
But our MC doesn’t know any of these frivolous background details. They’re just there to see a wizard.
Until, of course, the MC and their guide walk by a dead body with some Vulturian graffiti on a broken wall behind. It’s noteworthy, so it gets pointed out. The guide then shakes their head and says that “foreign Vulturians are exploiting the war” before returning to the main quest.
That’s it. That was all you needed. Readers aren’t stupid. They know what wars are, they know how exploiting works, and while they may never have heard of Vulturians until this moment, they can reasonably infer that they’re doing something below board. While this detail has nothing to do with the plot or the main characters involved, the experience of being in a random city has been been made that much more enticing. It isn’t just Faction A vs. Faction B. There’s this whole other Faction C at play, which makes perfect sense. Why would this city be operating in a bubble if The Avianox Empire is as rich and immersive as we want it to be? This is a bountiful land of history and culture, is it not?
Except that it’s not. I made all of this up in the pace of me typing it out. Presumably this bird-world has a war in it, and that war has some relevance to the plot. In order to add extra nuance though, all I did was look exactly one step deeper than the plot landed. If there’s a war, then there’s probably someone exploiting it. If they’re exploiting it, then the war drags on. I don’t have to come up with a dozen gang leaders with their own unique personalities, or some intricate cultural conflicts between foreign nations. I just had to think of “something more than war happens here” and logically tie the pieces back in a way that is easy to consume. Now, whenever readers see “Vulturians” in the future, they’ll have a frame of reference to lock onto, and that can only influence their interaction with our world positively.
Worldbuilding is a science in and of itself, and while there are so many great tools, resources, and guides out there, few will ever tell you when to stop. “How can I make my world deeper?” is a maw that’ll never be sated because depth can be added to any story infinitely. Listen to that instinct. Trust that instinct. But don’t let it dominate you. You should only ever give it as much credence as necessary, and not an ounce more.
