Fantasy Readers, how much is worldbuilding important for you?

Fantasy Readers, how much is worldbuilding important for you?


  • Total voters
    36

HelloHound

Hound of hell, lover of girls (she/her)
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I like it decently enough until the point where it's more burdensome to read than to go without
 

NotaNuffian

This does spark joy.
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I monke, the only thing I like is when the worldbuilding can be used to beat up people.
 

Jayrayme6

Active member
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Oct 7, 2021
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Very important, insofar that it is done right and serves an important part of the story and protagonist. This seems like an obvious take, but a lot of writers don't do world building right.
:unsure: Hope I will do it right, I'm starting to understand more how to create worlds, however, how to infuse it into the story and convey it to the reader is still hard to gauge.
 
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I monke, the only thing I like is when the worldbuilding can be used to beat up people.


that aside, i do love world building in general, especially if they're delivered in a casual and easy to understand manner. like you're actually there in the world and they're being a nice and homely tour guide to make yourselves at home there.

what i hate the most about world building was their boring exposition and the world that ain't even that interesting or immersive.
 

Daitengu

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Depends. Like, I don't need to know all the nations of a continent if the story only happens in one city. I also don't need to know all the races or cultures until it's relevant. I'm also tired of systems and what not telling the power of people. Show me through action.
 

Southdog

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IMO, worldbuilding exists on a spectrum of importance; the closer the setting is to what the reader is familiar with, the less important that worldbuilding is. Explaining stuff to your reader that they already know about is just padding the story. I don't need to know what a smartphone is. Conversely, the more distant the story is the more important it becomes- and the more you can play around with it. Flatland is a book about a square and a good chunk of it is just explaining how polygons and line segments form a society. But the way it is written, it's to take the piss out of Victorian England at the time.

I like worldbuilding but only so much as I like seeing creative takes on things. I don't need the tax structure of whatever kingdom you've come up with explained to me if it ends up just being Britain's tax law by another name.
 

Greyman

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Fantasy without AT LEAST a bit of good worldbuilding is like an uncooked cake without sugar. You can only imagine how that would have tasted like while being already unappealling. (That is if your story is serious. Otherwise, don't think about this)
 

Kenjona

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Now, I voted a lot.
But it really "Depends" on what and how much your story needs it. If the story is completely set in one room of a barn in rural Kansas in 1922 and you describe the territory of the Danes from 1800 to 1872 just for "world building purposes" and it does not enhance the plot or helps with the immersion into the story. it just fills up word count, then it is a waste of time for me.

It is that Dragon Ball Z moment when the Superduperexplodopupper power that takes up 10 minutes of a 30 minute show that already has 10 minutes of commercials. It makes me annoyed, even if I like the story itself.

FYI I loved the "Lord of the Rings" books and all its iterations, except "The Silmarillion" for that very reason.
 

BearlyAlive

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I voted "a bit" since I don't tend to care about bad or boring worldbuilding unless it makes no sense or is just there to glorify something/someone or takes too much time and focus away from the plot.

Like how in most of those chinese novels 99% of the world just seems to exist for the MC to roflstomp them and collect Loot from mythical places everyone knows has those loot thingies but nobody ever tries anything until MC looted the loot. Unless they roflstomp and loot the Looter.

Or people that spend 90% of the chapter to infodump something that has the plot relevance of a filler text. Nobody cares about the reign of Grimdark the Edgy, Killer of the Unkillable if the story is about Little Lilly and her Lovely Locusts.
 

Amok

grblbrbl
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if the world is fresh i can dig mediocre characters. i'd say it's quite important to me, the moment things get ultra generic i quickly lose interest. most of the stuff I like are unique world-building wise I'd say, or add enough off a twist on familiar tropes to make them engaging(Joe Abercrombie's First law series)
 

AliceShiki

Magical Girl of Love and Justice
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The only parts of worldbuilding I care about are the ones I need to know about.

If you're showcasing parts of your world that are of no relevance to your story, I'll just be bored of it. Make sure all your worldbuilding is important while you write your story, otherwise you're just wasting the time of your readers.

You can build as much of the world as you want in your head, but don't put it within the story if it doesn't serve a purpose.
 

Nirokuro

*Slaying tigers*
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As a fantasy writer (although i am transferring my novel now) in my prospective, world building shall be in a moderate rate so you can not only explain how the world work but also to make the reader feel how it works, for example if i said "every magic affinity depends heavily on the personality of a character until he is 6 years old" so the reader can know what magic will a character receive, which gives more information for the reader. As u said you world building shall be written so that the reader can get what can and can't be done and when and where, but not too complex that a reader can't understand easily
Hope this help you
 
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