Why the narrative world building?

[EldritchCoomer]

I'm serious I've started reading even more than I usually did before dropping reading to focus more on anime and manga and now that I'm back, can I just say WTH

Why are there so many stories with world building littered all over the place, especially in fantasy and Isekai genre's. It's just brought up out of nowhere sometimes it would about a character in POV and out nowhere there is world building.

What happened to the intrigue, the subtlety, using character interaction or them exploring the world itself to look to explain the world building aspect of it.

It's not a problem persay just a personal pet peeve that I have with this specific style of writing stories.

If you write like this please tell me you would feel to do this? It's currently 2am and this hyper fixation is driving me insane.

 

[Gryphon]

I think I know what you mean. You mean when the author suddenly stops a story to explain a piece of the world that has nothing to do with whats currently happening, or its a piece of information that is rather unimportant as a whole, right? If that's the case, then its just general bad writing.

Like say the country the MC lives in prefers food high in spices, they stop the story to explain it rather than just describing the taste of the food, and the reader pieces together that every piece of food that the MC ate has a lot of spices, leading to the reader to figure out the culinary taste of the people.

If you want the better, much more thoughtful option, take the latter half. As for why more author's take the former, it's again just lazy writing.

 

[J_Chemist]

From what I've come to understand there are three types of world building.

1: Exo-Building where the Author writes the information in a sort of descriptive block of text. It's not through a POV or inline with any action. Just a blurb of detail about something pertaining to the world.

2: Inline-Building where the Character perceives, interacts, or describes something through their POV.

3: Inert Building where it's not described explicitly in such a way where you can point to it in a block of text or even in a POV. It just fucking shows up and now you, as the Reader, have to remember it. It's kind of like a ghost detail that just appears and you're like "what? excuse me?" and then it's gone, likely to never be described again.

All three of these can be utilized by an Author to get you, the Reader, the information you need for the World so you can envision what they are trying to get you to look at and understand. How the Author does it will largely be a personal preference and also, oddly enough, a skill issue. Holy shit I used it in context of something. What I mean by this is that the Author may just not be skilled enough in their writing to perform all three, but they are damn good at doing one or two of them so that's the method they use to get you the information. It may be blocky, lack subtlety, and honestly ruin the immersion, but it's the best they've got.

Or they failed to utilize their creative guns well enough and just dropped the ball. Can't really give you a straight answer as to the "why" as everyone is different. But, as an author, we should strive to utilize all three if possible. More #2 if possible to add context and weight to what we're describing, but #1 is definitely necessary when the Cast arrives at a new location or area. Fuck whoever uses #3. It's on sight when I see that.

I think I know what you mean. You mean when the author suddenly stops a story to explain a piece of the world that has nothing to do with whats currently happening, or its a piece of information that is rather unimportant as a whole, right? If that's the case, then its just general bad writing.

Like say the country the MC lives in prefers food high in spices, they stop the story to explain it rather than just describing the taste of the food, and the reader pieces together that every piece of food that the MC ate has a lot of spices, leading to the reader to figure out the culinary taste of the people.

If you want the better, much more thoughtful option, take the latter half. As for why more author's take the former, it's again just lazy writing.

I agree with this as well. It's definitely bad writing when an author detaches from a scene just to describe some random information you really don't need in the moment. It's a difference of writing ability and also personal poor decision making as the author. Happens from time to time.

 

[Empyrea]

Some readers want to know everything about a world and don't like exploration or surprises. So I can see why some authors just throw it all out there.

 

[Anon2024]

I agree. It's why I have a hard time reading most novels.
I've also decided to stop world building as much and focus on story while finishing my project.
Also... if I write in the future I won't bother with hard world building as much.

I'm not creating a game world, I want to write a good story. I might establish background rules that don't break but for the most part... the reader doesn't have to know those rules.

 

[Cipiteca396]

This goes back to the Lord of the Rings (for most modern readers anyway). Tolkien loved his world building, and anybody who loved the world he built also loves world building. It's only natural that people want to share random tidbits of their world with the reader. And readers like me are there for it. Without it, the story is just some cliché quest to fight princesses and save dragons.

 

[Agentt]

Sir, you are on a site for fucking amateur authors.


Secondly,

What happened to the intrigue, the subtlety, using character interaction or them exploring the world itself to look to explain the world building aspect of it.

This is great in a more slice of life slow novel which lasts for like a billion pages and makes the reader want a copy to keep in their wooden shelf;

But there are many genres where this won't work.
Many a times, you want to be done with world building quickly and move on to the juicy part.
That's what happens in fantasy novels or pulp fiction.
People just need enough world building to know why A is angry at B.
After that, both readers and author wants to move onto the fun action scenes

 

[Missivist]

I loved the LOTR books, and the picture they painted of another strange and beautiful world. World building is essential to a good fantasy science fiction / adventure novel, but it must be done properly. Build the relevant scene. Scatter it in the clever dialogue. Tuck it into an interesting side-story. Provide the important context of the actions going on. No need for any info-dump text-blocks, please - admittedly hard in a LitRPG where the author kind of needs you to learn their unique System right now.
On the other hand, trying to progress a storyline without world-building, without context, without a sense of personal involvement, without any reason to care, can devolve into a session of number-go-up. It is not so entertaining after the first few times, and we have all probably seen it more than a few times.
tl;dr Reveal your world subtly, and with feeling.

 

[Temple]

When it comes to web novels, it should be set up quite fast because people can click away. This is the internet. So many thousands of webnovels out there. If a story promises an OP MC waking up in the new world, you better transport the MC over to the new world and explain the setting quickly, so he can do OP stuff asap. Hopefully, this is done in chapter 1 for maximum reader retention, probably latest chapter 3.

I don't do this, by the way, but I know many authors intentionally do this because of market demands. In fact, this strategy is usually talked about in author discords. Of course, it could also be that the writer doesn't know how to write world building, or they're copying a writer who intentionally does this.

Just think of it. If someone has a physical book, they're not going to throw it away if the story doesn't "get going" in a few chapters while it sets up the world. It's different for webnovels. Just look at the views of chapters of web novels. After the first chapter, the views drastically drop. Web novel readers usually choose based on tastes (like maybe SH likes NSFW, RR is litrpg land, etc.) Web novel readers rarely try something different from their usual, unlike a person browsing a book store, for example. If readers come for this specific thing, that thing better show up fast before they decide to drop the story.

World building then gets rushed to get to this "thing," like being OP, for example.

Most web novel writing habits are formed by the demands of the market. Same for most content creators actually, like Youtube videos copying formats from each other, even thumbnails, etc.

 

[M.G.Driver]

I needed to narrative worldbuild right from the get go because my setting was too unbelievable for most of my beta readers who were more into sci-fi than science fantasy. Can't just say 'bang, humanity is now a galactic civ now, stemming from real world Earth'

I did try one version without it and failed, so i guess it was a skill issue on my part.

 

[EldritchCoomer]

This goes back to the Lord of the Rings (for most modern readers anyway). Tolkien loved his world building, and anybody who loved the world he built also loves world building. It's only natural that people want to share random tidbits of their world with the reader. And readers like me are there for it. Without it, the story is just some cliché quest to fight princesses and save dragons.

Yeah I get that cause I too love Tolkien books, but there are better ways to sneak in world building instead of just dropping it at the readers out of nowhere or just making a huge text block of it, especially if it's not too important.

To give an example instead of saying people at the coastal towns love spicy food and explaining the intrigue and way of it or farming of it I wrote a scene that'll give an example.

Spoiler: The example

Mc1 dropped the plate of dinner on the table with a big clank and was about to sit down when they remembered something, 'Oh, right, mc2 is still watching TV in the living room,' they stand up from their seat, pulling their seat back.

'I better go and get her.' they shrugged the awkwardness off and trudged on.

In the living room mc2 was sitting upside down, her legs clinking as she continuously bumped her crystal feet against to each other.

Mc1 approached mc2 making her yelp in shock and drop on her head with a soft this. Going off on that momentum she used her hands and flexible body to roll back onto her feet and turn to mc1 with a slight annoyed scowl.

"What do you need, peasant?" She barked with folded arms. "I'm busy, hmph!"

The left eye of mc1 twitches in annoyance at her response, using hands sighs they say, {Hm, guess you don't want dinner, then. Okay, byebye.} They turned their back to her and headed for the kitchen.

Her ears sudden perked up upon seeing this, "Di-dinner...?" Her stomach growls on response to this new information.
Upon realizing her grave error mc2 leaps upon the couch, an arm stretched to mc1, "Wa-wait, I was just gidding, please I'm so hungry."

mc1 without looking back gestured for her to follow them into the kitchen where the dinning table is located.

mc2 happily obliges, but halts once she sees the nasty, small lower class dinner provided for her; a single medium sized course meal and a bottle of water.

"is that all? How do expect to satofy myself and all of this..." She jestured to her appealingly sexual and we'll defined muscular body. "To happen with tha??" She jabbed a finger at mc1's food.

Mc1 sat on the table and looked at her indifferently, {This is all my income can provide, you want more why don't you the money that you don't have.}

Grumbling and mumbling curses under her breath mc2 sits on the table and with a few seconds of looking at the food with disappointment she put one small portion on the cutlery in her mouth and immediately her eyes began to water.
She hurriedly goes for the water and take 3 mighty gulps before dropping it on the table and wheezing.

Mc1 just looked on at her amused by her reaction to the dinner.

She glared at them, snapping her head up at them, "You pranked this food didn't?"

Mc1 shook their head finding it hard to stuffle their silent giggles.

Mc2 jabs a finger at them, "Bullshit! Why is it this spicy!"

Mc1 shrugs at her quarry, {This is how we always eat our food. Got these on a great deal too. I was lucky they were in season.}

Mc2 dropped her hand and head and stared at her food the back to mc1, "We don't have anything like this at the capital. You coastal people are weird." She clenched her fist glaring at them with determination. "And the great me refuse to loose to some fancy spices." She gobbled her food with tears in her eyes.

 

[Temple]

Can't just say 'bang, humanity is now a galactic civ now, stemming from real world Earth'

You can say that. Actually, better not say it. Just get right on the plot and talk about the sci-fi stuff as if it's normal (because it is normal for the characters). What you can expo about are the problems of the MC without it looking like an info dump.

Take Dune. The start does have some exposition, but it's the MC mulling about his problems/changes in life. There's zero clue about the backstory that the setting is 20k years into the future, and a bazillion things has happened to humanity since then. This applies to fantasy as well. Like Name of the Wind just starts with a very, very tiny setting.

Readers are expected to plow through that because they'll experience the world for themselves.

But it's different for the majority of webnovel readers, as I've talked about above. So think of your audience. If you're writing sci-fi, the web novel community online for sci fi is quite small, but if you go to Kindle or get published, it is quite large.

 

[K5Rakitan]

I'd chalk it up to a simple lack of practice.