Worldbuilding: A Necessary Waste of Time

4–6 minutes

[This is a continuance of the post: “Relentless Filler: Thoughts and Actions Surrounding What is and isn’t Important to Feature”.]

Fiction gives the ability to tell stories through make-believe.

And unless the creator of the fictional story mirrors the real world, the need for worldbuilding is necessary to gain the ability to convey a feeling of grounded realism the reader can attach themselves onto. Though it does not need to simulate the real world entirely. But it does, however, need to have grounded worldbuilding elements the reader are able to use to gain the ability to feel a sense of tension and suspense within the storytelling.

If the fictional world lacks the concept of grounded reality: the ludicrous environment and disbelief of the events and actions of the characters make the world itself senseless. And the ability to view the made-up world to be something which has genuine emotions put into it then becomes impossible. Regardless of if it is a Fantasy world, a murder mystery detective story or any other type of make believe: the need to feature grounded worldbuilding elements are vital for the reader to take the world, characters and storyline in any semblance of serious regard at all.

Yet the issue does not stem in the worldbuilding itself, but in the way it is being presented.

Creating v. Presenting: An Onslaught of Unnecessary Information

The creator of the Fantasy world spends a larger portion of their time building, outlining and structuring the make-belief world then they do writing the actual books themselves that the world is being used and presented in.

This is necessary to do since Fantasy worlds are massive and require the creator to consider concepts and factors other writers don’t need to think about. A person writing a fictional detective story based in the real world do not need to consider the habitats of mythical creatures or living conditions of civilizations where multiple different intelligent species reside together within.

But when it comes to presenting the created fictional world, there is a major gap of care between the writer and the reader.

The writer has spent a major portion of their time creating a made-up world. And because they have spent such a long time in the background working on a believable world: the wanting for that fictional world to be shown off is quite high for the writer who have a personal reason to do so.

But for the reader, there is no reason to care for the fictional world at first glance. And it’s not until way later within the reader’s time spent reading about the made-up world where they can begin to care about the events that are going on and for the characters within the storytelling.

Time spent equal emotional interest, no matter what it is about. And the more time a person spends on something, the more emotionally invested they are about it.

Forming the books and storytelling to fit the wants of the reader and the writer alike is then of great importance. And too is it of importance to make something which is worth reading since books takes way longer to read then it takes for a person to watch a movie or read a comic book.

The Mentality Behind the Creation of “The Eferian Day” Series

Sagen is a massive continent with a lot of events happening within it.

It is then necessary to know what to feature and what to focus on. In theory: there is no reason not to make every book 800+ pages each with major amounts of the content being lore and worldbuilding. And too is it somewhat expected of Epic Fantasy books to be that enormous of scale as well. Yet the issue is that writers and readers alike don’t have an infinite amount of time to read and enjoy creative work. It is then of greater importance to focus on what matters and present a massive world to a scale which is necessary to evoke interest and care amongst the reader.

Time is valuable and finite.

Lore and backstory can be read on a second turn. To be enjoyed by people who have already read through the books themselves and have gained an interest in the Sagen world itself.

It should not be that every reader has the need to read through endless pages of information which is not prevalent to what is happening in the story. The knowledge surrounding the king and his family is vital to understand the events taking place in the chapter. But the knowledge of memorizing the entire royal family tree with every name of every king before him is not necessary to follow the story in the chapter.

So said family tree can be saved to a separate text that can be read by the people who care about it.

Large books are only a bragging right showing off to other people that you as the writer has made it or you as the reader have read it. It is not of importance for the storytelling itself. Who cares if the book is large if most readers are just going to skip 100+ pages to get to the interesting parts of it anyway. It is not of relevance nor of anyone’s interest other then to serve as bragging rights.

In Conclusion

While worldbuilding is a necessary component of Fantasy books, it is important to make a distinction between personal interest of the writer and the interest of the reader surrounding the aspects of worldbuilding that needs to be included. Books take massive amounts of time to read, so it is then necessary to create books that are fun and interesting all the way through it.

For it is all entertainment after all.