Learn how to write exposition for your world and practice bringing it to life with a fantasy worldbuilding writing prompt.
Fantasy worldbuilding for fiction writers is harder than it sounds. I recently had my own fantasy worldbuilding failure when, at a recent writing getaway with two of my good friends, one of the more condemning comments I received about my opening with the main character at a crossbow competition was that it read like he was at the Renaissance Festival.
Brutal and tough to hear, but true.
I had committed some of the mistakes that many writers make when trying to bring the worlds in our heads to life.
Many contemporary Hollywood movies and other writers seem to be making similar mistakes. We have seen a resurgence in fantasy adventure and science fiction stories over the last decade, and worldbuilding seems to be a “given” – that providing detail to any degree counts. The problem is, just like everything else in the writing process, worldbuilding takes planning and tact.
What Is Worldbuilding?
Worldbuilding in fiction is the deliberate and imaginative process of building a fictional setting, whether it’s a planet, city, culture, or a magical system that is believable to your characters and to your readers. Believable means the worlds you create need to have rules and be consistent.
An Example Of Bad Fantasy Worldbuilding
Whenever I go to a Comicon or similar event, I always stop by independent author tables and buy one or two books. Most of the time, I’m impressed with what I read and the brief discussions with the authors are always inspiring.
However, one of the more recent ones has a classic example of incredibly bad worldbuilding. The following passage is from that book. I am not going to name the author or the book, so I have rewritten this passage, changing names and sentences but keeping it the same structure so the author and book isn’t identifiable but the example is still a relatively real one.
A tall, red-haired woman with intrigue in her gray eyes led two bannermen my way. Her agile walk marked her as a veteran of many battles. So did the easy way she carried my sword, which she’d retrieved from the first marauder.
“Greetings,” I said.
She eyed me. “By the looks of you, you’re from the East somewhere. Not Arnweld, but Spero or the Swampwallows.”
“The Swampwallows. Padville, if you want to be specific.”
“You wear an embroidered tunic to travel and have a red garnet hilt on that sword of yours. You’re no ceorl, and ealdormen of the Swampwallows never travel without a band, so you’re either a thegn or a successful sellsword.”
“I was an ealdorman,” I said. “I suppose I’m the latter now. I’m Andro Alistair.”
“I welcome you to the Empire of Hakara in the name of the Magistrate Darius.” She glanced up at my spear. “In any case, I appreciate your assistance. That was a well-laid ambush.”
“I’m not surprised. I’ve fought Kelsian raiders many times in the service of a captain of Merryvale.”
It continues in equal fashion but I will stop there. There are many problems with this introduction but I will only cover the exposition and worldbuilding in this article.
This author tries to hide worldbuilding and exposition within a character’s dialogue, such as descriptions and details the author wants the reader to know. Just because it’s “hidden” in dialogue doesn’t make it effective.
It could, possibly, work if a character mentioned only one or two details within a more meaningful exchange of dialogue, but instead, the characters just dump a lot of information about each other as if they are robots listing everything they see. They say out loud information and observations that most characters might think internally, but would not say out loud. They also “notice” things that might not be noticeable if some of the details are commonplace, which makes the dialogue come across even more forced than it already is.
Good Fantasy Worldbuilding Introduces Information Slowly and Over Time
Compare this introduction to one that provides just enough detail but effectively creates a full picture. The author doesn’t try to hide it in dialogue, but reveals information about the world through how a character feels about it.
You will most likely know the author already, but I’ll cite it in the footnotes.
The North went on forever.
Tyrion Lannister knew the maps as well as anyone, but a fortnight on the wild track that passed for the kingsroad up here had brought home the lesson that the map was one thing and the land quite another.
They had left Winterfell on the same day as the king, amidst all the commotion of the royal departure, riding out to the sound of men shouting and horses snorting, to the rattle of wagons and the groaning of the queen’s huge wheelhouse, as a light snow flurried about them. The kingsroad was just beyond the sprawl of castle and town. There the banners and the wagons and the columns of knights and freeriders turned south, taking the tumult with them, while Tyrion turned north with Benjen Stark and his nephew.
I’ll stop there. Even though it is shorter, George R.R. Martin succeeds where the first fails. George R.R. Martin introduces quite a lot, but he connects everything he is introducing to the kings road and uses that detail to really frame the north, or at least what his main character of that chapter thinks of the north.
He limits how many new proper nouns he introduces only to two and a couple other ideas and details.
At this point, we are 118 pages into the book and we are still learning about a part of the world through the perspective of one of the newly introduced characters. The “bad” example from the earlier unnamed author happened within the first few pages and tried to introduce everything about the world that early on all at once.
Also, in Martin’s example, a lot is implied instead of told to us outright. He balances telling us some things while implying how a character views something and it relies on our intelligence as a reader to imagine more. It is much more effective.
The first author shoved so many new names in only a few paragraphs that I’m not even going to count it or even have AI or the search function count it. We didn’t need to know all the details and names that the author crammed into one single page of a very large book.
People can only effectively follow a story so much. Even the smartest of people start to get lost if they need to start taking notes on all the new people, places, and things introduced in a short amount of time. We’re fiction writers. We aren’t writing a textbook or glossary insert.
Instead, storytellers need to introduce new things slowly and over time. Here are some additional mistakes and best practices.
Worldbuilding Common Mistakes
Information Dumping
This overwhelms the reader with excessive background details all at once, disrupting the narrative flow.
Lack of Consistency
This creates a world that feels unbelievable because its rules, history, or cultures contradict themselves.
Little Environmental Description
This results in a setting that feels flat and unengaging, failing to immerse the reader.
Purpose of Detail
This occurs when worldbuilding elements are included without serving a clear function in the story or character development.
Worldbuilding Is the Story
You aren’t writing the Silmarillion. Don’t make the details of your worldbuilding more important than your characters or the story you are telling. This mistake prioritizes the creation of the world over the actual plot and character arcs, leading to a stagnant narrative.
Best Practices for How to Create a Believable World
Plan your worldbuilding in manageable pieces to grow, detail by detail over time. Approach world creation incrementally, focusing on specific aspects to build a cohesive and evolving setting.
Geography
Define the physical landscape, climates, and resources of your world, as these fundamentally shape its inhabitants and events.
Culture
Develop the beliefs, customs, social structures, and artistic expressions of the people within your world to make them feel distinct and real.
History
Establish significant past events and their consequences to provide context, depth, and driving forces for the present state of your world.
Technology (and/or magic)
Determine the level and nature of scientific advancement or magical systems, ensuring they are consistent with the world’s rules and impact its societies.
Two Elements for Worldbuilding in Exposition
In the book Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card (who writes part 1) has some excellent advice and talks about Naming and Implication when worldbuilding in exposition. He has a great definition for worldbuilding in the handling of exposition and then outlines five elements to create worldbuilding effectively. However, I am only sharing two in the following excerpt related to this worldbuilding writing prompt. The full chapter includes much more.
One area in which SF [and fantasy] differs from all other genres is the handling of exposition—the orderly handling of necessary information to the reader.
[Worldbuilding and exposition] is a balancing act.
Too much raw information up front and the reader can’t keep it all straight; too little information and the reader can’t figure out what’s happening. The result in either case is confusion, impatience, boredom. The audience quickly learns that you don’t know how to tell a story, and you’ve lost them.
Instead, information must be trickled into a story, always just enough to know what’s happening.
…Too many names at once are hard to keep track of, and we aren’t always sure which is the viewpoint character.
Fantasy Worldbuilding Writing Prompt
First: Invent a Few Details About a Living, Breathable World – Full of Air
Consider the very air of your world. Is it breathable for humans? If so, does it carry any unique properties – perhaps a faint shimmer, an unusual scent, or a subtle effect on perception? What are the common sources of energy or power in this world? Is it harnessed from nature, discovered through technology, or perhaps even drawn from something more secretive or fantastical? What is one popular form of social interaction or ritual that is deeply ingrained in the culture within your world?
Invent imaginative answers to these questions.
Second: Write an Introduction to Pique Your Audience’s Interest Through Limited Exposition
Now, envision a character who is deeply familiar with the everyday realities of this world encountering something slightly out of the ordinary. Write an introduction of about 250-350 words from their perspective, showcasing this moment.
In your writing, be sure to:
- Name: Give your viewpoint character a name.
- One Detail: Introduce a specific, evocative detail that seems commonplace to the character but subtly implies a much larger, more complex aspect of your world – its history, its magic system, its societal hierarchy, or a looming threat. This detail should pique the reader’s interest and suggest a deeper story without revealing too much.
- Perception: Like Tyrion viewing the North from his personal observations and feelings traveling along the King’s Road in George R.R. Martin’s example, introduce your details through how your character feels and by what your character observes.
- Setting: Ground the scene in a specific location with sensory details that further hint at the nature of your world.
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