Standing Worldbuilding Post

[guardiansverse]

This is a post to talk general worldbuilding, either by posting questions/musings about your own world, by presenting questions/prompts for other authors to comment on, or for general discussion of worldbuilding as an exercise.

1. Discussion below in thread format. Anonymous comments welcome.
2. If you are talking about something currently being posted to FFA, please clearly mark for any possible spoilers!
3. Please don't post plot or character questions here: take it to the Plotting and Brainstorming Post. Similarly we have a Concrit Post for writing you want constructive comments on.
4. Keep in mind authors' preferences as expressed in our introduction post.
5. FFA by-rules apply: don't be an asshole.

Comments

[anona]

Generally the latter, but I don’t mind the former if it’s done in a non-awkward way. An explanation in the style of a Star Wars opening crawl would be awkward, whereas a character thinking about important aspects of their world as they sit on the spaceship taking them to their new home (or whatever) is less so.

[sigridharem]

Definitely! I also think you can go too far in the other direction, where if you don't establish certain facts early enough adding them in late in the game might be jarring to the reader who'd come to expect something else.