n my final Patreon Q&A of 2020, I was asked how I know what to keep in and what to leave out when it comes to my world building. This is something that many people struggle with, particularly when getting to grips with a world building heavy genre such as fantasy or sci-fi, and it was something that I definitely took some years of practice to hone. We all want to avoid a world building info-dump if possible, and this is often one of the biggest problems that young writers have to deal with. As I see it, what it really boils down to is knowing what to include (and what to leave out), knowing how to best include it, and when to – all of these hang on relevancy.
As a naturally verbose writer, I was definitely prone to purple prose as a young writer, and it still is a part of my natural style today. Now, however, I utilise this ability with deliberation and intention to add, as my supervisor referred to them, flourishes to my work. This, combined with an ability to vividly visualise and a desire to ensure that exactly what I saw was communicated to my readers, meant that a lot of my earlier incomplete novels were extremely dense and description heavy, and as a result the pace was quite slow, and the actual plot was often obscured.
There are two important things that I had to get to grips with here, as relates to world building. First of all, I had to let go of the idea that readers had to see exactly what I saw. How a work is interpreted is something that no author can control, and the sooner we realise and accept this, the sooner we attain greater freedom in our writing. If you are busy being worried about how every single person might interpret or visualise a description, you become beholden to a behemoth that you can never know or truly satisfy. Authors can only do their best to convey what it is that they see for a scene or a setting. How that is then interpreted is not something we can control.
The second ability that I had to master was efficiency of description. There is a danger in using a hundred words to describe what fifteen might achieve with greater eloquence. Excessively padding out a novel with description, even if it is very beautifully written, generally gets in the way of the actual story you are telling. The pace will slow down, and readers may get lost in all the details and find it difficult to follow the actual story and characters. I honed my concision by writing pieces of short fiction for university essays. This was not something I consciously pursued, but rather was lucky enough that the practice was pushed into my lap. I experimented with stripping back my description to the point where it was excessive, learning to enjoy refining my description, and then finding a new middle-ground.
So much for the practices that I had to learn and let go of. You may never encounter these troubles. You may have others. Hopefully the main aspects will be covered in the following outline. We now come to the “kill your darlings” territory, or, as I think of it – just because you know, doesn’t mean they need to.
The What
At the crux of it, most writers new to genres like fantasy will experience the joys of world building and then the agonies of what to keep and what to cut. An inability to parse out what is vital, what is a nice occasional embellishment, and what is an overload is what can lead to a novel that is so thick with background detail that wading through a mud pool might be easier. To a degree, this ability will be honed over time. However, I firmly believe that intention is important here. If you are not intentionally applying yourself to improving these abilities, to a degree, simply writing may not be enough to improve your eye. Awareness really is critical with this.
“But how do I figure out what’s important?” I hear you cry. “All of it’s important!”
Firstly, if you’ve done a huge amount of world building, it’s a misnomer to say that all of it is so important that it must be included. To a degree a portion of the world building that you do will never make it to the page. And that’s OK. Do not try and force everything you’ve created to make it into the book. The unseen world building is information that helps ensure you, the author, are well informed. This will come through in how you write, and give you a tone of authority. Yes, we can all make it sound like we know everything. But having a solid knowledge of something, even if you aren’t explaining everything that you know, absolutely influences your tone and this will be communicated to readers, and it will inspire trust in them.
Figuring out what is important – what is vital – is something that takes discipline with yourself. An excess of self-indulgence could end up being more of a hindrance than a help. The three categories that I mentioned before are the best guideline.
Vital: the appearances of your characters, their surroundings, emotions that are being experienced, tracking movement
Embellishments: background action, what minor characters look like, relevant cultural aspects of society
Overload: absolutely everything you possibly can imagine, described to the nth detail
Vital pieces of world building to include will generally be things like what your main characters look like and what the world looks like. It’s also to good to remember what function description can have. Beyond illustrating what something looks like or a character’s mood, the amount of description you allot to something or someone can be taken as an indicator of importance. If you give a whole paragraph instead of a sentence to the description of a minor character who only appears once, you are drawing your reader’s attention to that character. They may assume that because you have taken the time to intricately explain what the character looks like that they are actually more important to your piece than you intend. When the character never reappears, they could then be disappointed.
These are not hard and fast rules that everyone must abide by – these are what work for me, and are only a short list of some of the things that might fall under the headings. Just because something falls into the vital category, however, it doesn’t mean that it needs to immediately be described. All of these elements will be extremely context dependent (when) and also rely on moderation (how).
The How
So you know how to figure out what is vital information and what can be left. Now you need to know how to include that description. Moderation can take many forms and is instrumental in preventing an info-dump. For me, main characters receive the most physical description in their introductions. Naturally, I want readers to have a clear and complete understanding of what they look like. Minor characters I aim to describe just enough that they can be visualised but not in such detail that I mislead my readers.
For minor characters it’s very easy to have a sentence or even half a sentence that quickly sketches them. However, because our protagonist is important, it can be easy to accidentally info-dump about their appearance. To combat this, I often try to sprinkle the details of their appearance throughout a paragraph or a page where it seems natural to reveal it, rather than pasting in a solid block covering them from head to toe. Ensuring that your description is adding to a scene as opposed to interrupting the action and flow is key.
A good example of this is that when the reader first meets a main character, I generally don’t need to immediately describe the colour of their eyes. I want relevant details. Their physicality and general appearance is what generally would take precedence. This is again something that I would try to sketch in with broad brushstrokes of description adding a couple of key details in. If there are multiple pieces of important information about a protagonist’s appearance, these can be saved for later when drawing the reader’s attention to them will feel natural.
The When
This is where context dependent information, or the when, comes in. To continue from before, I haven’t yet mentioned the colour of my character’s eyes. But then they get into an argument, and describing their eyes becomes relevant as an indicator of their emotional state or reactions. This would be a good moment to slip in what their eye colour is. Knowing when it is natural to introduce a piece of description will ensure that it flows well rather than obstructing your narrative.
The easiest way to figure this out can be to read through the entire scene from the top – aloud, if possible. Issues with pacing will often come out when you read aloud, and making notes as you go will be helpful. If your description is impeding the action of a scene, then it will quickly become evident. Similarly, if you’re finding you’re reaching the end of a bit of description and can’t remember what was happening in the action leading into that, you know you’ve got a problem. The reason why reading aloud is so helpful in this regard is because when our brain has to slow down to match the pace of our voice and it can’t skip along sentences or speed bits up as easily.
An easy example of how shoe-horning in description in the wrong place is as follows. If your characters are out in a forest, consider whether it feels natural for there to be a sudden info-dump on the primary trade goods of the country they’re in. Description and information require segues and if it doesn’t feel like a natural progression then your readers may feel thrown and the writing very stilted and disjointed. Don’t try and push information in just because you know it – only deploy it when and if it’s relevant.
There is a flip side to this, and this is where your instincts and judgement as a writer (which can and will be honed over time) come into play. There are some pieces of information which you may wish to sprinkle in at opportune moments for later use – in a way, using them as subtle foreshadowing. Thus, when you come to a climactic moment, the reader already is aware of some piece of specialist knowledge that it then makes sense for the character to utilise in the moment. This way it will feel less like a sudden deus ex machina to readers, and should help you to avoid moments where you accidentally undercut the tension or high stakes of a critical event.
The last thing that I believe is important to remember in world building is this: credit your readers with some intelligence. It sounds like an obvious thing to do, but it can be very easy to accidentally over explain in your haste to ensure that your readers understand your vision. Generally this is not something that occurs because the author truly believes the reader doesn’t understand how wheels work, for instance, but rather a result of anxiety about sharing their vision. This was certainly something that played into my info-dumping tendencies. They know how our world works, and unless there is something markedly different in your created world, they will assume that many things will be the same. Use that to your advantage.
Bringing these things together should help you to become more mindful about how you disseminate the information that you have created about your world. Calming anxieties about understanding and interpretation will allow you to think more clearly and rationally about these decisions. As you become more mindful and intentional, it will be easier to sift through and find what must be included and how to do so in the best way. Always come back to the same questions – is it relevant and does the prose flow? At the end of the day this is all about making your writing the best vehicle for the story as possible, and sometimes that means making tough decisions about things we love.
