Placing the wrong building blocks | World building part 3

Last week, I expanded further on world building basics and what better way to end the trilogy than with a “what not to do!”. So here are some tips on what to avoid when building and writing your comic world.

Avoid the infodump
You’ve spent an age crafting the land, the law and the people of your world and you can’t wait for readers to get involved! You have every right to be excited. You should be! You made a world! However, nothing turns people off than a heap of lore and bore right at the beginning of a story. Try and avoid overloading your reader with all the nitty gritty of your world. Rather, weave it into the story through your characters and how they interact with it. Let the world flow through your characters.

Don’t forget that travel and time still exists
If your characters have to go somewhere, be it down the road or to another city, don’t forget that that takes time! Take into account how big the world is that your characters travel through and how much time it will take to get from A to B. Nothing breaks immersion more than your characters fast travelling around the world, but also keep in mind, they’ll get tired if it takes too long for your them to get to their destination.

Speaking of direction, where are your characters headed?
You’ve spent years crafting your planet/world, the territories, the law system, the society all the way down the type of plumbing under the city streets, only to have the characters never leave their village. Whilst it is important for your world to feel rich and diverse, it isn’t very time efficient to overcraft it if you’re only going to use a few locations. Consider the direction of your story and craft accordingly.

Societies aren’t a monolith
People are complicated and, thusly, so is society. Factions will oppose governments, religious institutions and laws. Not everyone will be happy to go along with the flow. Even a local farmer may support a local council generally but disagree with specific policies. Creating a society/world that follows blindly can be boring, (unless that is an intentional point of conflict for your character), so try to keep that in mind when building your world.

What are some common world building mistakes that you see people make? Let us know in the comment section below! And join us on Sunday evening for our Quackchat at 5:30PM(EST)!

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