What Grinds My Gears: Worldbuilding

So I talked in a recent post about attempting to resume commentary posts, particularly with book releases few and far between. Let me know if this is your style or if you’d rather I focused on something else.

This commentary series (if people like it) will focus on elements of writing or tropes that I can ramble about. Despite the title, it’s not just me whining about things. I’ll try to provide insight into how I approach writing. In this case, I’ll talk about how I worldbuild, why, and the annoying parts of worldbuilding (including the attitude toward worldbuilding).

With that said, let’s get on with it.

Worldbuilding is a Naughty Word

I’m often described as a good worldbuilder. It pops up in recommendations and reviews, and I suspect people are sincere about it. Particularly in harem, where the world is often non-existent, I imagine my creations seem Tolkien-esque. To many, that’s not a compliment and they probably avoid my books because they have to remember things (the horror). On the flipside, I get criticised for reminding people of things because of the skim readers who barely remember what happened five pages ago.

But when people say I’m a good worldbuilder, it sounds a lot like when my old high school teachers said I was “good at maths.” The implication is that being good at worldbuilding means I’m worse at other things, as if it’s mutually exclusive, in much the same way my old teachers assumed I was terrible at “softer” subjects. There’s an in-built connotation to worldbuilding.

In fact, worldbuilding has a bad rap in general. Which is funny given some of the biggest and best scifi and fantasy series are about the amazing worldbuilding. LotR, Dune, Blade Runner, the Black Company, everything Warhammer 40K related, Discworld, even Game of Thrones (it was rich enough to get a prequel TV series). The worlds are memorable, and that helps make them memorable.

But if you bring up worldbuilding in an author group or in broader fantasy reader circles, it’ll mostly be rubbished.

To readers, worldbuilding conjures up the image of the guy who has extensive, detailed notes on a world, fake languages, family trees etc but can’t write a decent story. Instead it’s just huge infodumps with no relevance to what’s happening.

This has some truth to it. I try to avoid spending too much time taking notes on my own settings, as I feel that’s a sophisticated form of procrastination. There are definitely people I know of who spend all their time worldbuilding instead of writing (and then can’t find the time to write). But not every author magically falls into this trap, and the way this topic is sometimes discussed reflects broader problems. Authors like Tolkien or Pratchett are presented as exceptions, and their very existence is a reason “lesser” authors shouldn’t try worldbuilding. Don’t try to get above your station, so to speak.

To authors (at least in selfpublishing circles), worldbuilding is one of those elements that authors should minimize. It’s a distraction for readers. One of the most common pieces of writing advice is to only worldbuild as much as necessary for plot points, and leave everything else vague. If you see an author talking about “word padding,” they probably fall into this camp. I tend to bundle this advice with the idea of “don’t worry about craft” (craft is a term for how good your writing actually is), as it comes from the same authors. It’s very much a “writing is entirely a business” approach.

Again, I don’t think the advice is entirely wrong. But there are obvious pitfalls. There are even tropes about it. “World Limited to the Plot” and “Always a Bigger Fish”. It’s sometimes obvious that the world is only as big as the plot requires, and sometimes contradicts itself. Shounen series like Dragon Ball are the seminal example of this, with a villain who was the strongest in the universe being orders of magnitude weaker than an android created by some random scientist. It’s omnipresent in harem, litrpg, and progression fantasy series.

That’s not to say these approaches aren’t popular or received poorly, but it’s strange how they’re often seen as the only approach to take. If books only ever delivered the exact same thing, people would stop reading. There’s a reason trends die hard when they become oversaturated. Hell, a recent epic fantasy success story depended heavily on its African-inspired fantasy worldbuilding (The Rage of Dragons).

So let’s talk about what I think worldbuilding is good at, and what bothers me.

Character-Centric Worldbuilding

This is easily the most overlooked aspect of worldbuilding. It’s also the reason I take umbrage when people criticise my characters while praising the worldbuilding.

To me, if a character has no relation to the world, then that’s a pretty obvious failure on the part of the author. What do I mean by that?

If you pick up a random anime, manga, or light novel (typically an isekai) then the characters are often just a particular archetype or collection of tropes. They might be a fantastically written character. But, more often than not, you can’t connect any of their behaviours or tropes to the world. The exact same character could be transported to a completely different setting, change their outfit, and they’d fit right in.

A great example of this are the characters from KonoSuba, and it’s almost certainly intentional (as it’s a series that parodies isekais, particularly the first wave inspired by Familiar of Zero fanfiction). While the author eventually tried to fill in some of the blanks, the characters are obviously just archetypes with no relation to the world. These types of characters are very popular in selfpubbed works, because familiar archetypes make it easy for readers to latch onto them and project depth that isn’t there (and is often never added before the character is shuffled out of sight, particularly in harem works).

Contrast this with a series like Re:Zero, even if you don’t like it. Every character’s behaviours and motivations are deeply coloured by their background. Even Subaru, who is often just the author surrogate for dipshit isekai protagonists. The characters still exhibit tropes, but often their actions make more sense in retrospect as you discover more about them (especially Emilia).

Hell, even series like Bleach and One Piece understand this well enough, and it makes some characters more memorable (e.g. Kenpachi).

Worldbuilding around characters needs to go both ways, however. If I want to include a specific character archetype, then I ensure the building blocks for the world are in place.

Astra talks in clipped sentences. Well, it’s because she’s ancient and language has changed in her lifetime. Fei’s big eating lifestyle caused her trouble in her village and the fate of her village drastically affected her personality in Nathan’s original timeline. Seraph’s jaded approach to the world and adoration of Nathan are due in large part to failing to become a Bastion, serving a corrupt country, and being taken in by somebody who strives to achieve what she once believed in. Nurevia became frustrated with the weakness of dark elf Bastions and the fear of Champions, fled, and became enamored with Tharban’s brutishness (and later Nathan’s drive and inner strength).

I could go on, but if you’ve read Spellblade, you should be aware of how each character has an intricate backstory that ties in to how they behave.

But I had to tweak the worldbuilding to achieve some of these aspects. This dynamically adjusts the world as you write each character, and gives you more to work with.

It’s an alternate form of the “but what do they eat?” question that crops up in worldbuilding. “Why is this character the way they are?” is a vital question that needs to be answered to give that character depth. It also helps keep characters consistent, as their actions are grounded on principles related to their background, not tropes.

Speaking of which…

But What Do They Eat?

If you’ve ever seen somebody critique worldbuilding or a shallow piece of media, the question of “what do they eat?” has come up. If it hasn’t, then they probably sucked at critique (or food wasn’t important).

There’s a reason I often bring up the farms and villages in my fantasy settings. In medieval times, over 90% of the population were rural and lived through subsistence farming. Urbanization only took place in the past few centuries.

This question is focused on setting consistency. It doesn’t need to literally be about food, but the question is good for a lot of things. If your cast is trapped in space, what are they eating for survival? Post-apocalypse, where’s the food? Survival story, well, time to grow food. These are easy plot points and drivers.

But even when the plot doesn’t need a food driver, leaving out the food question is often a sign of weak worldbuilding. When overlooked, it can vary from a reader thinking “this is dumb” to a massive break with immersion.

A non-food related example are LitRPG economies. Quite often, the author will make up some monetary figures early on in a story for loot and purchases. These often have no real basis. Bonus points if the author has adventurers earn drastically more than any common villager can right from the get go, but they still sell all their crap to random merchants. At first, this isn’t a problem.

Eventually, the issue grows more and more severe. As the adventurer grows in power, the numbers get stupidly huge. The protag might be carrying around literal millions of gold pieces in a setting where you can stay at an inn for a week for a single GP. Even beyond the ludicrousness of carrying that much money, it also makes them billionaires, relatively speaking. They’re likely among the richest and most influential people in the setting by default. And that’s leaving aside all the problems they’ve likely caused splashing their cash everywhere.

The idea behind handling basic questions like this and ensuring long-term consistency is to avoid these problems, or for the author and readers to tell others “don’t take it so seriously lol.” Hell, the money problem is part of the reason I rarely mention exact figures in my series. I worked with exact figures in a really old online work a decade ago and even with tons of research and comprehensive spreadsheets I still had issues.

Finally, understanding these aspects can help with future problems. Major wars in Spellblade often focus heavily on the seasons and logistics, because those impact actual campaigns, and they provide an imperative to the plot. Book 4 had a fixed timespan due to the proximity of winter, but other countries couldn’t invade the Empire for the same reason (or else be caught in foreign territory in bitter snowstorms). In Demon’s Throne, the archipelago relies heavily on international trade, which makes Tarmouth a major diplomatic player and plot driver. This also forced the Malus League to find alternative trade routes (and partners to work with).

This is also the reason I’m wary of settings with large amounts of roaming monsters. If orcs are pillaging the countryside every week, how does the country survive at all? Why would it rely on a questionable adventurers’ guild to protect the food bowl instead of creating a professional military? Presumably, somebody owns the land being threatened, and I imagine they want to protect their tax income.

I don’t think every author needs to be creating demographics or intricate political systems. But every time an author gets basic stuff wrong, like claiming a single farmer can feed a city or spawning armies in the hundreds of thousands from tiny city-states, it does make me interested in books that don’t do that. Some of them at least gloss over the aspects they don’t understand.

Deepest Lore

Okay, that heading is a joke. But I want to talk about the way worldbuilding can build anticipation in readers.

In much the same way that a gamer loads up an open world game, sees a mountain, and thinks “can I go there?” I believe readers want to see things brought up that will eventually be visited or resolved. Or at least feel that there’s a world outside the view of protagonist.

This ties back to my earlier point about only worldbuilding as necessary. If every new character, faction, continent, love interest etc are introduced in the book they show up in, it’s rather transparent that the author is just painting in the rest of the world as they go.

Authors don’t even need to plan ahead, which is a common criticism of doing this (many authors do minimal planning, or claim to). It’s rather ironic that this became such a popular approach, given two huge franchises are built around pretending to plan ahead while the author makes shit up on the fly.

The first is Harry Potter. Rowling infamously created Grimmauld Place and stuffed it full of random shit with a huge family tree of dark wizards that she then used for future plot points. Not to mention all the other random shit she brought back in Deathly Hallows, like Harry’s snitch.

I believe TV Tropes calls this Chekhov’s Armory. The related trope is “Cow Tools,” where lots of seemingly relevant stuff turns out to be junk (often to hide the true Chekhov’s Gun).

Whether you have a plan for these things or not, introducing extra elements gives you freedom in future entries. My greatest example of this is Fyre, who was an unnamed Champion in Book 2 (and if I’d genuinely planned ahead, I’d have namedropped her in that book) and is one of the most important characters in Spellblade.

The other example is Five Nights at Freddy’s. No, don’t close the tab. I have a point here.

FNaF, for all it’s weirdness, is a great example of a creator constantly building on random lore drops in previous entries in the series. Unresolved mysteries, lore, and plot arcs are brought back in a future entry.

This is rather comparable to JJ Abrams’ “mystery box” approach to writing, and can go very poorly if you write yourself into a corner.

I’ve had a couple of these that needed tying off in Spellblade. Book 1 was full of random stuff that I forget about and needed to resolve. Nathan’s casual mention that Fei was his fourth trigem, when he only had three when Kadria defeated him (FYI, I’m pretty sure I intended to create a character like Astra, in terms of a tragic Champion that Nathan failed to save. She’s Nathan’s Bismarck, for those who understand that reference). The “Sister Kadria” mention was another that took much longer to resolve.

Naturally, planning these out is often better and readers feel rewarded. It also adds to reread value. Especially as you have no clue what I’ve planned long in advance and what I haven’t. Stuff like Sofia was in the works from the word “go,” even though I know some people only started cottoning on in Book 3 or 4 due to Astra.

Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t reward authors for being read multiple times. I also don’t think there’s much of a correlation between people buying a book (versus just borrowing) given the purchase numbers I’ve heard from authors who write shallow fare.

But it does make the series better, instead of forgettable.

Frozen World Syndrome

A book should never feel that the world unloads when the protag isn’t looking at it. There should always be a sense that there are other things happening and that time is passing.

Again, this is related to the problem where the world only exists only the protagonist.

One of the easiest ways to fix this problem is to introduce broader elements of the world, such as other countries, cities, or factions, that can have their own events take place. Again, these don’t have to be planned out. If an author doesn’t want to use them, they can just be written off as “immersive filler.” But, as I said in the previous section, it’s always nice when I read a book and events taking place outside the protag’s area become important.

A great example of this is LA Noire, with the story being told in the newspapers simultaneous to the main game. Eventually, the two storylines collide in dramatic fashion.

If you’ve read my books, then you can think of a bunch of examples of this occurring. Spellblade is chock full of them, such as the war with Trafaumh and its nationalist roots. In Neural Wraith, there’s the ongoing legal battle with Aesir over their new implants, which became a major plot point in Book 3. Demon’s Throne has all the stuff involving the main continents and the Kinadain Sages.

Mostly this just aids in immersion. Anything else is gravy.

The opposite problem sometimes occurs, with the rest of the world magically keeping up with the protag. One of the most obnoxious examples is when the rival character somehow keeps up with the protag (or become stronger, despite all the bullshit the protag goes through). I remember an interactive story that basically committed suicide when the author randomly made the rival drastically stronger than the MC and had the MC publicly humiliated.

I like to think of this as the MC being on a treadmill, where no matter what he does, he’s effectively running in place no matter what the author tells us is happening.

I feel this happens because the author struggles to challenge the MC. LitRPGs and progfantasy novels frequently have the issue where the MC goes through some massive power-up, but he’s still being challenged by random thugs. Just as gamers hate enemy scaling because it denies them the chance to feel like they’ve progressed in power, authors need to scale up the threats and remove speedbumps as time goes on.

Scale, or “Isn’t a 700 foot wall pretty fucking ridiculous?”

I alluded to this problem earlier with the points on food and money, but authors are really bad at scale. Game of Thrones infamously has a bunch of mistakes, such as the 700-foot tall wall in the north or the tournament prize of 40,000 gold coins (in a setting where one gold coin buys a horse and 4 buy a set of steel armor).

This is both a research problem and a writing problem.

It’s often said that authors should write what they know, but this is kind of hard at times. Research is necessary if an author wants to show stuff off. There’s a limit, mind you, but if something isn’t relevant and you don’t understand it, try not to focus on it.

And, yes, I commit this error. I’m fairly happy with most of what I include in Neural Wraith, but I did get criticised over the depiction of guns (although I’m still not sure exactly what’s so unrealistic there given how little detail I went into, but I live in Australia so guns aren’t my specialty). It’s kind of the opposite of worldbuilding too little, as it’s easy to exposit on some cool detail that is wildly inaccurate.

I’ve seen authors and fans state that nobody actually nitpicks over this stuff, but it really depends. Romance often takes place in all sorts of settings, and if you check out romance reader groups you’ll frequently find people complaining basic errors. British-isms in American settings is a common one (again, I’m guilty of this at times, but I blame America for being the Japan of the English-speaking world in terms of doing everything differently). Poor depictions of sports. Mafia romance has been popular for a while and it gets criticised for how it depicts criminality etc.

But scale and numbers are common mistakes. Ironically, this plagues LitRPGs quite heavily despite being a genre based on stats and numbers.

Money is the big one. I doubt many authors have done any actual research into medieval prices and the economy. Inequality was batshit back then, but we have a good source of prices and salaries from direct sources (there’s a well-known price list you can find by Googling “medieval prices and wages”). I actually rely on this for some of the relative money claims in Spellblade, primarily the wages for the beastkin soldiers in the early books.

The easiest thing to do is just not mention actual numbers. But authors and readers like specifics, so often fuck this up and it can cause friction.

Demographics are another huge problem. Especially because we don’t have fantastic sources for these. I once relied on an old source that utilized demographic data from Medieval France, but later learned that these figures were based on highly populous and arable regions of France (pre-Black Death, IIRC) and weren’t applicable to a more diverse setting or terrain.

Cities are probably where I see the most mistakes. They tend to be absurdly large. Like, there were almost no examples of gargantuan million-plus people cities prior to the Industrial Era (historians still argue over Rome’s size and population). The reason goes back to the “What Do The Eat?” question. If almost the entire population is growing food, how many farmers are needed to sustain cities with over a million people?

Demographics is shit hard, so I just avoid too much detail here. Especially in settings like Demon’s Throne’s archipelago, where the colonial nature mixed with magic means I’d basically just make shit up.

Another point of scale that is often wrong are distances. That, and travel times. Tolkien infamously had the Fellowship move at an impossible pace in LotR. So I don’t think this is a big deal, so long as you’re avoiding people crossing continents overnight without teleportation.

I’ve personally developed some short-hands for travel in my fantasy stories which I combine with my maps. People can’t travel more than 10-30 miles a day, depending on their numbers and the roads. Small groups can move 40-50 miles if they’re efficient and using roads. Riders can go 100 miles or more if they’re able to switch horses (no, they can’t gallop 100 miles, or they’ll die) or have some sort of magical or automated steed. I forget what estimate I used for the horseless carriages in Spellblade as it hasn’t been important for ages.

Although Doumahr probably is a bit too small. I chose a smaller size to allow for reasonably fast travel, even if it results in a continent that is maybe a bit too small for the countries on it.

Sufficiently Advanced Magic is Indistinguishable from Technology

This is the corollary to the famous Arthur C. Clarke quote and is quite old.

In this case, I’m referring to the opposite. A setting loaded with magic, super-powered adventurers, potentially even stat systems etc but everything functions like a bog-standard medieval setting outside of the wizard tower or adventurers’ guild. Does magic only have combat uses? Why hasn’t anybody tried to improve crop yields, remove plagues, establish magic phone lines etc?

The answer to this one is frustratingly obvious: there are a lot of people who dislike the appearance of any technology in their fantasy setting. Even when there is loads of magic. It’s one of the things that East Asian worldbuilding (particularly Japanese) is frequently superior to mainstream fantasy, although I’ll note there are a lot of selfpub authors these days who reject mundane worlds.

You’ve probably seen a lot of “magical technology” in my fantasy settings. My personal view is that magic, unless it is strictly combat-focused, effectively replaces industrial revolutions. Much of history has been troubled by terrible food production (resulting in famines in lean years), poor metallurgical capability (modern steel is mostly better than ancient steel due to consistency and volume of production), plagues and poor medicine, heavily restricted communications, the list goes on.

In Spellblade, there’s a pretty huge presence of magical technology and it’s even segregated by wealth. The wireless is limited primarily to nobles, because it’s closer to a phone line with huge magical receivers and senders required. Horseless carriages provide some benefits to the general public. I avoid talk of famine in general, because random hedge wizards can probably limit the impact of drought. And, of course, the plot-relevant use of gateways and barrier shields.

As with all worldbuilding, it’s easy to create plot points or dangers with it. Nathan’s knowledge of how Messengers use gateways against humans and weaponize cascades as a distraction gives him a huge leg-up. He’s also been working around that problem in Book 5 with his new teleportation network. The barrier shields will become increasingly relevant as breaches and invasions take place during cascades. By establishing these facts in the past, they don’t feel like asspulls when I use them in the plot to increase tension.

However, not every setting needs magical technology. There are legitimate reasons for magic to be limited. Urban fantasy settings often have a masquerade. Perhaps the number of magic users is rather small, to the point where there’s little reason for them to focus on villages. What is frustrating is that even when an author rejects magic for mundane benefits, they often don’t build this into the plot or setting.

For example, TYPE-MOON works like Tsukihime and Fate have magic be the antithesis to technology. While it can do things that technology can’t, magic ultimately is a very regressive school. Maguses are often backwards-thinking and overlook technology. This was used in the character of Kiritsugu Emiya and his use of technology (with some magical help) to become the Magus Killer. It also adds to the archetype of Rin Tohsaka and her inability to use even basic technology (like the VCR scene in Carnival Phantasm).

Hell, even Harry Potter had some way to separate technology from magic and built that into the setting and characterization (even if the movies undid much of it for fashion reasons).

Again, this just comes back to basic questions. If an author doesn’t want magic to affect the feel of the setting and make it feel modern, come up with an explanation. It might have knock-on effects that can add depth to the world and characters. And not using it makes the world seem shallow, because people will think “why doesn’t he use magic to solve a problem?”

I’ve actually added a little bit to Mob Sorcery Book 1 to explain some of this. The setting intentionally feels like the modern day with some magical additions, but to some people, that might appear as if magic has no impact. So on top of stuff like the magical ash tray, or the magic food and drink, there’s an explanation about how magic is more restrictive in mass production than raw technology.

Historical Inspiration

Time for a slightly controversial topic. When I create settings, characters, places etc, I try to draw on history. This isn’t because I don’t have ideas of my own, but because utilizing historical elements can ground a setting and ensure it makes logical sense. A lot of crazy shit has happened in the past (and is happening right now). Much of that can be drawn on to create a setting.

Of course, ignoring history can sometimes create some fantastic settings. Warhammer 40K, despite its roots as a parody, is completely batshit. D&D draws heavily on its fantastical ideas and has weaved an intricate and interesting setting, complete with adventurer kings, gods falling to earth and being replaced, and the consequences of edition changes being reflected in the world (that last one is kinda whack).

But I personally like utilizing historical elements, combined with fantasy, to create interesting worlds. Demon’s Throne is a colonial setting, but the Kinadain/demihumans are closer to the Celts and Gaels of Britain. Morai isn’t a direct corollary to Boadicea, but the idea of a great warrior driving off the invaders fits in (even if Boadicea failed). It also adds a frontier-like feel, with small fries on the continental scale building fiefdoms and nations, as well as the threat of the real powers shutting down the party if they get annoyed.

In Spellblade, there are clear historical comparisons to be made. The Nationalist uprising and attempt to replace the Emperor was drawn from Holy Roman Empire history, where a dynasty of Emperors was overthrown by the nobility. Trafaumh’s issues correlate (to some extent) to the French Revolution, although Baudelaire isn’t telling anyone to eat cake.

Finally, Mob Sorcery is an alternate universe setting with a bunch of random historical stuff.

The other problem is that authors tend to selectively choose bits of history to use for “realism.” This comes up a lot in regards to stuff like slavery. It’s frequently included in a setting even when the author has no intention of doing much with it. This has resulted in the rather annoying tendency for authors to justify why their protag can’t fix the problem, which sometimes beggars belief (sure, the MC might be a literal god that everyone loves, but nobody will support ending slavery).

I have mixed feelings on this point. There’s often a tendency to avoid troublesome things in history (especially these days) if the author isn’t doing something about it. But history is full of awful things, and I don’t think authors should avoid using them when relevant. It can feel like a “hell is paved with good intentions” form of whitewashing. The issue tends to be when the author goes out of their way to justify this stuff, often because they want the protag to be sympathetic but still want slavery. It’s hard not to sideeye the author when this comes up.

Part of the reason this topic can be controversial is because of what people pick and choose to defend when it comes to historical influences. I don’t think there’s a silver bullet here. I do wish to read less selfpub works that defend slavery through some roundabout argument or parody. Particularly in settings where the MC is basically sociopathic. But there are also people who get upset when Neural Wraith criticises corporate sleaze and grifting.

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Anyway, hopefully that was interesting to read. I could probably write about worldbuilding forever, as I have a bunch of opinions on it.

Let me know if you do enjoy this sort of commentary and if you’d like more, or if I should focus my efforts elsewhere. Or if you have other topic suggestions (although I’m trying to avoid anything too targeted at harem).