Based On A Twitter Thread About Worldbuilding

Blog » A picture is worth a thousand words, so let's start like this:

[draws a big circle]

This is the fictional universe which you created. It should have solid fundamentals and internal consistency. You should be able to answer most sensible questions about it.

[draws a much smaller circle inside it]

Your story will only cover this bit.

*

By "you" I mean "me". You can write whatever, however the heck you like. But I've found this approach to work for me.

Why do we worldbuild?

I can think of two major answers to this question. One is consistency.

In most cases it's desirable to avoid genuine contradictions wherever possible in a story. Direct contradictions (a character's eye colour changes from one chapter to the next) are relatively avoidable. What's harder to avoid are the contradictions which arise if the audience just asks "Why?" a few times.

When an audience is nicely engaged with a story, some of that audience, the curious ones, will start asking follow-up questions which l...