Image by LearningLark used under CC BY 2.0
Some storytellers really like their worlds. You’ll know them when you find them: their stories feel like a transparent excuse to use the maps they created. That’s because they’re committing these storytelling sins.
1. Taking the REALLY Scenic Route
The heroes need to defeat the villain or obtain an important item, but instead of simply accomplishing their objective, the worldbuilder creates excuses for them to wander the entire world first. Exactly one sight-seeing stop per kingdom, planet, or social faction provides just enough time to discuss the wacky ways of the denizens before moving on to the next stop. The story becomes weighed down by irrelevant excursions, and since there isn’t time to depict these places in depth, the audience only gets a superficial view of the world.
Sinner: Wheel of Time
Rand: Wow, we have a lot of world to cover before I can save the day. And I have to conquer most of it.
Mat: Let’s split up! We’ll cover more ground that way.
Perrin: Great idea. That way it’ll only take two generations of writers to get to the end.
Penance
If you’re ready to repent, you have two options. First, you can cut out the tour. Satisfy your worldbuilding impulses by covering fewer locations in more depth. The second option is to rework your plot so travel actually fits in. You want a quest that’s open-ended – focused on the journey and not the results. A great example is Lloyd Alexander’s Taran Wanderer. Taran is on a quest to discover himself, and that could happen anywhere. When your plot has an objective that’s more specific, traveling feels like a delay in the story.
2. Collecting One of a Kind
While the heroes are acting like tourists, they gather important characters. Soon the party has exactly one person per kingdom – by complete coincidence, of course. There wasn’t time to get a nuanced view of any of the places in the tour, and since these characters are official representatives of each place, they aren’t treated with any depth, either. Each character in the collection is a poster child for all the stereotypes associated with their home planet. Among the heroes, wacky hi-jinks are used in place of character development.
Sinner: The Belgariad
Garian: I’m tired of traveling. When are we going back to the farm?
Polgara: We can’t go back yet, we still need a specimen from the knight kingdom and the dryad forest, at least.
Garian: As you wish, Aunt Pol – wait, a specimen?
Polgara: Silence! I am powerful and mysterious, and I know what’s best for you!
Penance
A diverse group of protagonists can yield many benefits. But avoid making any protagonist into a stereotype with contrived and superficial personality traits. Every society has diversity and disagreements. Ask yourself how characters differ from others in their society and in what ways they accept or reject the traditions they were given. Consider having two characters from the same culture; it will allow you to depict their customs in more depth. Then just make sure their participation in the story feels natural. Give them a strong, plot-related reason for joining the heroes.
3. Telling Dozens of Unrelated Tales
Many worldbuilders know better than to contort their plot to loop through every country. They’re aware that three countries max is the limit. To fit their 30 countries into the story, they’ll need 10 plots! Each plot opens with a hero in their own corner of the globe, dealing with their own problems. Since the heroes are barely interacting with each other (if at all), the narration can only follow one hero at a time. In any given scene, nine out of ten storylines are suspended so just one can inch forward. Of course, the heroes will slowly come together, forming an epic finish – someday, maybe.
Sinner: Game of Thrones
Robert: Ned, help me keep the Iron Throne.
Ned: I’ll do my best.
Daenerys: You’ll fail. As a Targaryen, the throne is mine! I happen to be overseas right now, but I’m on my way… sort of.
Theon: Just you wait, the Iron Islanders are taking the throne! Or a throne, anyway. We have absolutely no chance of making a dent, but we can dream, and you can read all about our dream for some reason.
Tyrion: Maybe we should get back to Robert and Ned.
Little Finger: Too late, they were killed seasons ago.
Penance
You can fix an overwhelming number of separate plotlines by either integrating or separating them. If you choose to keep them together, important choices by one viewpoint character should impact the others. Anything less, and you’re still condemning your plot to constant pausing. Otherwise separate the heroes into their own stories, or just delete some of the viewpoints. If your semi-conjoined plot threads aren’t good enough to carry their own story, they aren’t doing your overarching work any favors by staying.
4. Describing Every Shrub in Every Kingdom
Whether by traveling all over the place, or simply starting all over the place, the heroes end up on a dozen different planets. But being in all these diverse locations isn’t a goal in itself; it’s an excuse to describe everything there. Cue the page or more of description every time the protagonist walks down the street of Novelty Colony #9. Once the initial description of the street view is done, their trip will feature inconsequential visits to a teashop, florist, and theater that are depicted as full scenes despite their low importance. As for the actual plot of the story, they’ll get to that… eventually.
Sinner: Lord of the Rings
Merry: Before we go to the new place, I will describe every bit of gossip I have heard about it.
Frodo: Then we will spend a page and a half in song!
Sam: Could we just get the detailed narration about our uneventful afternoon over with? We already sang ten songs.
Merry: But those songs were for other portions of our journey. This song is about the next five pages.
Penance
Your audience will need some description of the world, especially if it’s unique. But they don’t need more than passing mentions for most details. If you want to describe your world in depth, the best thing you can do is make it matter to your plot and characters. Then you’ll have a reason to dwell on it without taking a detour. Otherwise, summarize scenes that don’t matter to the entire narrative. Take out the long snippets that aren’t important, and post them on a website to reward fans for finding you online. In the story itself, cut down to the points that are the most interesting and relevant.
5. Giving Endless Lectures
The heroes are in a novel location that is described in incredible depth. But some details can’t be seen by a protagonist. The kingdom the heroes are visiting has a long and nuanced history, secret codes of honor, and delicate machinery that works silently below the cobblestones. If the story just moves forward, the worldbuilder won’t get to talk about them. Without information on every single thing, the audience could get confused. Or at least, the worldbuilder hopes so.
Sinner: Ancillary Justice
Breq: So I’m on this remote planet trying to get this – wait, you can’t possibly understand the powerful artifact until I give you some backstory.
Breq: So way back when, I was watching my favorite – wait, before we listen to this conversation you have to know the social customs of this culture.
Breq: So the thing about this culture is that they never say what they – wait, you can’t understand the nuances of this culture until you know the intrigue taking place on this planet.
Breq: So there’s this dominant group and this – wait, first you need to know how we came to conquer this place.
Breq: So we’re this race of…
Penance
Extraneous information should be conveyed on a need-to-know basis, just enough for the audience to understand what’s happening. The exception is foreshadowing; you can provide some extra information to set up for later events. But in that case, going on for too long will make your foreshadowing sound obvious and contrived. If you feel flashbacks are essential, consider starting your story there, instead of interrupting present events.
6. Introducing a Crap Ton of Characters
Sometimes worldbuilders turn their fervent passion towards creating character pantheons rather than loads of places. Most of these characters aren’t the heroes, because there’s just too darn many for all of them to be protagonists. Instead they’ll form an elaborate family tree, sordid organizational history, or factions in a power struggle. And since their interests are related, naturally they have to be introduced all at once, with their name, relationships, and reputation described immediately. The audience won’t get the chance to see many of them in action, but they’ll know each character’s middle name and favorite ice cream flavor. That is, for the two seconds before they forget.
Sinner: Soon I Will Be Invincible
Fatale: I’m glad I joined the superhero team. Otherwise I wouldn’t have discovered my true passion: looking through the archives of all the previous superheroes!
Blackwolf: We should stick to the mission at hand.
Fatale: Sure, just as soon as I finish cross comparing the old generation to the current set of heroes. I might need more sources for that, I’ll just have to visit a few retirees and interview them.
Dr. Impossible: Hellllooo, I’m a threat here!
Fatale: Yes yes, later.
Penance
Start by removing all description or introductions of minor characters. Then look for the first scene where any of these characters influence the plot. In most cases, that’s where their introduction should go. You don’t need to introduce their aunties, uncles, and bankers along with them. If they are part of an important group, just say they have family or team members with them, and move on. If you get to the end of the story without finding a scene where a character makes a difference, leave them unsung. To handle your characters well, you may also need to adjust their roles or combine a few together.
7. Succumbing to Fatal Uncontrolled Series Inflation
As the story progresses, many worldbuilders drown it deeper and deeper in supplementary information. A story that’s sunbathing gets wet feet as protagonists split up and more viewpoints appear. It becomes submerged as each viewpoint character travels to a different kingdom and tackles their own trivial side plot. Soon the original plot and characters can barely come up for breath. Instead of becoming more gripping and tense as it progresses, the story gets slower and duller. But hey, the audience got hooked on the story while it was still trim, so the worldbuilder can force them to read any amount of random material before finishing what they promised in the beginning.
Sinner: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn “Trilogy”
Simon: I’m getting my own trilogy! I have mysterious parentage and everything.
Joshua: As the good prince and rebel leader, I would also like viewpoint scenes, if you don’t mind.
Simon: Sure, why not?
Miriamele: I’m the love interest, so I get viewpoint status too, right?
Simon: Umm… okay.
Utuk’ku: I’m the last of the Gardenborn.
Jiriki: I’ll teach you elf chess.
Simon: Wait, wait. There won’t be room for me anymore!
Joshua: Don’t worry, we’ll just make the third book big enough to fit everyone.
Penance
Additional viewpoints and plot threads will probably take more space than you think they will. When planning, scale down ambitions for the end of your story. Then make it clear how scenes with new characters will impact the characters you started with. If your central character will gain or lose depending on what happens during other viewpoints, your audience will have a reason to care what happens. Your new interludes must also keep up the pace. Don’t leave the most central character in the midst of a dangerous situation just to depict side characters doing nothing particularly exciting.
Altogether, enthusiastic worldbuilders often take on too much, and in the process lose sight of the story they’re telling. In fact, sometimes it feels like they don’t want to tell a story at all. But if you’re an avid storyteller who’s been laughing at them this whole time, you’d better stop now. Your sins are up next week.
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WOW! This post really hurts (but in a good way, I hope). I have sins to confess: 1. Taking the REALLY Scenic Route and 6. Introducing a Crap Ton of Characters!
Yeah, this one opened my eyes :) Thanks!
I’m impressed, most people can’t take criticism so well. That says great things about you as a storyteller, to refine our skills we all have to accept painful criticism now and then.
David Weber – The Honor Harrington Series commits every. single. sin. It’s still awesome, provided you have good skimming skills.
My first series is #6 and #7 in a nutshell. I counted something like a hundred characters in eight books. -.-
I have major decisions to make. I’ve worked on my first series for nearly six years, and I’m the kind of person who tries not to waste things.
Cut out characters who do not really advance any of the important plot points and try to move their plot points to other characters (or cut them, out, too). You can save the characters for other stories.
Easier said than done! I actually attempted to edit Book 1 and 2 today, and I gave up after several hours. All books of my first series are such a tangled mess that I’m not sure what to do with them anymore. National Novel Writing Month is very soon [too soon!], so I’ll be focusing on that, and sometime in December I’ll take another look at my first series. Even if I don’t make a concrete decision, it’ll be something.
I’ve been there, Tifa. A series I worked on for six years, and every time I tried to fix it, I just hit my head against a wall. I stuck with it for so many years because I loved it, but I finally decided to set it aside indefinitely. I realized that since I had grown so much as a writer, I could create a whole new series faster with better results that trying to tame the beast that was my first series. If I ever return to it, I’ll be rethinking it from scratch after getting some distance, and the series will be better for it. Maybe that’s not the right move for you, at least not yet, but I wanted to share.
I know the feeling.
I actually let my first novel sit for a long time, more than halfway done, and then realized I needed to split it up into three novellas, because it didn’t really have a throughline, but three overlapping ones. Now I need to find the time to write the novellas…
It’s nice to know I’m not alone.
It’s hard to believe I’ve changed so much when it comes to writing, in just six years.
I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like wasting things, so I’m not going to scrap my first series entirely. There’s some good bits here and there, at least according to the people who’ve read some of the books. That’s somewhat encouraging.
“Those are bodies you are collecting, you creep.”
As a bug collector, I take extreme offense to this. Prepare to feel my wrath, puny human.