World Building - Too much or too little? (Fantasy Genre)

[JenivereDomino]

So I'm trying to nudge myself back towards writing after a few weeks off and curious on other opinions on how much world building is too much or too little. I've been writing up character backgrounds and development using the format I posted before, but now I'm wondering if I should go further into the world building of certain aspects or if it is just making too much work for no reason.

I'm writing a fantasy world. Right now I have:
* A pantheon of 16 deities, each with their own church who follow their main tenets, cults who twist the meaning of the church's ideals, aspect (eg, Love, Time, etc), and lore as to their attitude towards each other and to the mortal realm.
* Concepts/existence of demigods and heroes
* Several main humanoid races, each with their own culture, naming traditions, abilities, physical descriptions, etc
* A couple of vague "beast"/"monster" species (similar to existing animals but with a different name and/or aspect, eg Lumber Wolves which are a larger and more aggressive form of wolf)
* A system of magic and abilities, as well as the conditions that come with the use of it (ie, some types of magic users need components to cast)

I'm not sure if I should add:
* A custom calendar, possibly with a year and month system more unique to the world. The date does have some meaning to the plot as the main character has 1 year to negate a curse before it takes effect.
* More elaborate wild creatures, as they do feature as basic adversaries to the main characters but the plot is a lot more focused on the interactions between the humanoid characters.
* Demons or some kind of antithesis to the deities
* A more specified mythology to the afterlife (currently it is more of the belief that when one dies their soul is guided by the God of Death)
* A full or at least half detailed map and kingdoms in the lands. (At the moment I have several locations planned and their vague relevance to each other, as in this place is on the South coast, that place is to the East of there, and there are islands/lands overseas from the continent that most of the story takes place in)
* More specifics of governing bodies/rulers (not planned to be heavily involved in the plot tbh so i'm not sure how much time/effort should go to this)

Input welcome, as I am quite attached to this world and do want to make it feel alive, but also don't want to do a lot more work than is needed or leave players with endless lore/exposition to get through to be able to enjoy the story.

[verysunshine]

Consider making a World Bible. You can keep all of the concepts related to the world there even if they don't get used in the game itself. If you're worried about writing too much unimportant background information, you could try using "cow tools", or bits of information that imply cultural facets without stating them outright.

[JenivereDomino]

you could try using "cow tools"

Would you mind elaborating on that one? First time I've seen the term I'm using kanka.io to keep track of a lot of my world details, as well as a variety of badly organised google doc notes (they make sense to me and I know where to look to find what I need so they work, they're just not very well sorted as they're more a brain dump I rewrite later).

For the game itself I'm using a glossary with a lot of the terms, so the player has a quick reference and some extra information on the world if they want to know more than what's in the exposition. I try not to info dump too heavily in the script but more drip bits here and there as they come up if that makes sense. Still on the common route (about 55k words in dialogue) and different romance routes will elaborate on different parts of the world. Just more of a case of what would feel lacking or undeveloped if it isn't there, and what seems like too much if it isn't directly plot relevant.

[Chronocide]

So I'm trying to nudge myself back towards writing after a few weeks off and curious on other opinions on how much world building is too much or too little.

As a general answer to your question, it depends how much it matters to the plot/game. If I can get through the game without knowing anything about the setting, then the background info should probably be kept to a minimum.

I have a played a few games where they had random encounters where an NPC would ask about setting information, and if you got the question correct, they give you bonus resources. The setting information would otherwise not matter at all. That was their method of making their setting info optional, but still useful.

And there's other games where they just have way too much information and it does matter, but not in a way that helps.

Origin stories for superheroes, in example, are usually just useless derailing of the plot. It's a throwback to a time where the idea of super powers or super heroes required more explaination to allow a very broad target audience to accept the premise. Those old vampire films/TV shows were like that too, always used to spend lots of time explaining what a vampire is. The newer films and shows barely explain the concept because the general population already understands the concept.

These days, you don't need to explain why your protagonist can shoot fire from their hands. You could, but how much does it matter to your plot? It might, it might not.

Per arc of the story, you should really only be explaining 1 or 2 new concepts to the player. Concepts that are now simple, such as zombies, can be added without being counted, but only if you are using the assumed understanding of them. For example zombies (wants to eat brains, undead, usually infects with bite, rotting bodies, usually only killed with head shot). If you wanted to change what a zombie was in your setting, you'd need to dedicate a proper arc to explaining them as it matters to the protagonist.

And then, of course, there's the question of your protagonist. If the protagonist isn't smart enough to understand your setting, then having lots of setting depth makes your setting more implausible. Likewise, unintelligent protagonists are great for simple settings. You can also combine this with age, where you setting begins simple because your protagonist is young and therefore less intelligent. As they become older, the setting becomes more logical as they are more able to see the logic in the setting.

Like, ever watch Dragonball (or Dragonball Z)? Their setting is great, but it only works because the main character isn't very intelligent. An inquisitive protagonist would ruin their setting very quickly.

[verysunshine]

you could try using "cow tools"

Would you mind elaborating on that one? First time I've seen the term I'm using kanka.io to keep track of a lot of my world details, as well as a variety of badly organised google doc notes (they make sense to me and I know where to look to find what I need so they work, they're just not very well sorted as they're more a brain dump I rewrite later).

For the game itself I'm using a glossary with a lot of the terms, so the player has a quick reference and some extra information on the world if they want to know more than what's in the exposition. I try not to info dump too heavily in the script but more drip bits here and there as they come up if that makes sense. Still on the common route (about 55k words in dialogue) and different romance routes will elaborate on different parts of the world. Just more of a case of what would feel lacking or undeveloped if it isn't there, and what seems like too much if it isn't directly plot relevant.

It's a reference to this Far Side comic. It's a shorthand for "stuff that looks cool but doesn't have a clear purpose." The term is probably niche. Sorry.

The glossary sounds wonderful. I think you're heading in the right direction with spacing the information out.

[HEXdidnt]

Personally, I'd say there's no such thing as "too much world-building"... with two caveats:

• If you're spending time world-building at the expense of actually crafting a story within the world already built, then stop. Refocus on creating the story until you reach a point where the world needs to be expanded further.
• If you've built a world with so much detail that only a tiny fraction of it will even be implied in the story, let alone become a key plot point, that could be considered too much...

...except that second point has a caveat of its own: if you know you're writing more than one story, keep building the world until it's complete and consistent enough to contain all of them without contradicting itself.

[Imperf3kt]

Avid fans crave more always.
If you keep everything to a glossary like you have been, those who don't care can ignore it and those who are hungry for more can be sated.

Even if the information has little to no bearing on the story itself, there will always be at least one group of fans who relish every detail you add, no matter how trivial.

[Lochana]

My advice is to keep the World Encyclopaedia part to do after you have written the actual story.

Since we are talking about visual novels here, show don't tell, applies to some extent here. Let the reader use the Visual part of Visual Novel to gleam details about the world instead of explicitly pointing it out.

I often compare Visual.Novels to Light Novels because they share very similar writing styles.
Check out Magdala de Nemure, Spice and Wolf, and Daybreak on Hyperion.
For stories that handle complex fantasy worlds with Elegance.

Once again though, it's best to use the Visual parts of the VN (Backgrounds, Sprites and so on) to handle world building with subtlety and elegance.

[phantmoftheomsi]

As a writer, I'm more plot-oriented than world-oriented, so I may not have the best perspective. But I agree with Lochana that the primary goal should be to finish the first draft of the story, then use that as a foundation, if only because you don't now what's missing until you know what's already there.

Like, what if your protagonist has a crisis of faith and wrestles with fatalism vs determinism? Then you know the elements of your world which reflect free will vs chaos should receive more attention. Or what if the protagonist doesn't arc? You could use elements of your world that naturally metamorphose and contrast that with the protagonist's lack of evolution.

Once you've identified a strong central narrative, you can worldbuild until you're blue in the face. Because at that point you'll know where the story is going and you'll have a clearer sense of how much is too much.

[Brightcrazystar]

In the genre of fantasy, world-building is essential. Because Fantasy is that type of fiction specifically involving things we know to not be true or having any known basis in reality. It is different because what makes it fantasy is the stuff that makes it fiction. It is not literature or speculative science (i.e. Hard Sci Fi) - these require real world knowledge, or at least the capacity to show pretense to it.

As for how deep that world-building needs to go, it needs to go at least deep enough to do three things- delight the reader, define the differences between the readers’ reality and the author’s fantasy, AND to distinguish one or main characters as having been outliers to the world norms of the authors’ fantasy.

So if your world building delights the reader (often with some social, political, or philosophical commentary), tells the reader how your world works differently than their own, AND defines how some of your main character(s) are special in that world,.. well you went as deep as you need to. Beyond that, it is all about the grey area between effective Prose and burdensome Exposition; a span some fare better at navigating than others.

For this reason, it is often a good idea to leave a lot vague for future use or even the mind of the reader(s) who may wander deeper into their own curiosities if they are suitably inspired by your work.

I felt That is the best thing for this world that a Fantasy Writer can do; inspire others to share their own creative self.