Answering Your Worldbuilding Questions - Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lecture #9.5 (2025)

0:00 Hey, Brandon here. This is the bonus companion video to my worldbuing Q&A lecture. So, if you have been following along for each of the topics for my lecture series, which is now finished, I'm recording a bonus Q&A. And these are your questions about world building taken from the Q&A episode that happened in my class. number one, in your lectures, you talk about having worldbuilding be a hollow iceberg. What are some signs or signals to us as writers that we've gone off the deep end with world building and our iceberg has become too dense? Similarly, how can we self assess our own work to see if the iceberg needs to be deeper and the world building needs to be more comprehensive?

0:41 Seems like a very fine line to tread and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Well, thank you. thank you for the question. This is a fine line to tread. So, let's start with the first one. How can you tell if your world building if you're putting too much world building into the book? I would suggest a two-phase litmus test. The first one is, are you spending so much time worldbuing that you aren't actually getting to your writing? this is the first and most important of the litmus tests. when we talk about people spending too much time worldbuing, really we're talking about they spend so much time upfront that they never actually get to the story. now this can be totally fine if that is your goal, right? We're taking the the focus that you want to be a professional writer. If what you want to do is spend 20 years worldbuilding the perfect world and then write some stories in it, I'm not going to stop you. There's nothing wrong with that.

1:33 but if your goal is to make a living as a science fiction fantasy novelist, you need to be releasing stories regularly. And so from that end, if you are spending so much time worldbuing that you aren't able to hit your personal writing deadlines, then that's when it starts to be a problem. for instance, I would recommend that most authors be shooting for trying to complete one book a year in a of a normal length sort of book. One book every two year is acceptable. If you're going over about one book every two years, then and you're spending a ton of time world building, I would recommend shifting some of that to writing. One of the things that's going to be a problem here is a lot of you newer writers, you're not going to know where you actually need to spend your world building time until you get better writing instincts. The more you write, the more your world building time ahead of time on your book will become more effective. So, build those writing instincts. See what you need. there is no wrong way to write a book. And some books have huge, dense, full of worldbuing openers that are of the style the author wants them to be. That's not wrong. A steep learning curve does, you know, cut out some of your audience, but it gains you other people that really enjoy that. Steven Ericson is a great example of this. But even there are lots of famous books that are very worldbuilding heavy straight up front.

3:01 Snow Crash does a ton of very bizarre, very interesting worldbuilding things straight in your first chapter. You're thrown straight in and you have to deal with this this wacky, fascinating, interesting world. That's not wrong. In fact, Snow Crash is one of the great pieces of science fiction literature. And so at this point you your second litmus test is for the goals that you have. Are you turning off your reader because you're not giving them stakes, character, and story and instead are you letting yourself lapse into wanting to put the world building in because you spent the time on it. That's the your second big thing that that people have a problem with with world building too much. They spend so much time on the history that when it doesn't match the storytelling, you still just want to put in paragraphs and paragraphs of explanations. Again, if this is the story you're telling, it doesn't have to be wrong. but oftent times that will turn readers off a little bit.

4:05 they'll say, "Why does this connect? What's the point?" the other side, if you're will you're looking for your world building to be more comprehensive. Well, generally your biggest problem here is going to be reader confusion. and I rely on early readers for this. You're reading, they're reading the book and they're like, I can't pay attention to the characters because I don't know what questions to be asking about the magic system. I don't know if I'm asking the right questions. I'm just confused. And usually that's not what you want. There are certain types of stories again where you want people confused a little at the beginning, but you pair those with really dynamic storytelling to pull them through the confusion as you're relying on this the realizations that come later to really build a a connection between them and the and the story. If you were blind reading a book and had to tell a prayer writer from an amateur solely based on worldbuilding, what were the symptoms you'd be look what would be the symptoms you're looking for? excellent question. As I said in the class, oftentimes you can tell a pro from an amateur very quickly the same way that you could tell a pro piano player from a an amateur piano player. Well, with this there's a few little things I'd be looking for. the first would be, how many names are you throwing at the reader? Straight up. You usually want to keep proper names down a little in your openings. You want to focus on the character and their names. you don't want to hit us too much. Once in a while, it can be good for setting a tone and whatnot. but people's eyes will start to glaze over and this can be one of your dangerous areas, particularly in a fantasy book. Throwing a ton of names and jargon and terms, unless you're shooting for that really steep learning curve on purpose, is one of those things that'll make you stand out. the other sorts of things, well, you will look amateur if you look like you're trying to show off your world building rather than letting it be there to enhance the story. If you are so excited by your world building that we have paragraphs and paragraphs of info dumps rather than a character doing something, then you have a problem. And what the pros are going to do, even if they have a really exciting magic system, there's a book called Spellright, which is an an excellent example of this, which is people creating spells. It's a it's a it's a an excellent book that I recommend. And the opening scene is a character basically trying to debug a spell. The problem being he's dyslexic and he's in class for writing spells and they're actually physically written spells. It's a really cool innovative magic system, but there's a character with a problem and his personal limitations then lead to the part making the problem worse through no fault of his own which immediately builds us sympathy and rooting interest. It shows off the magic system as he is debugging it essentially. a really good opening for a magic systemheavy first chapter.

7:10 The reader who reads that will know very quickly if this is a good book for them. whereas you pair that with the amateur and you'll end up with this long- winded sort of in the dawn of time there was a magic that was and there's no characters to latch on to. there's this over wrought, overwritten opening that feels kind of purple and it's just like a big barrier to getting into the story. That's one of the things world building specifically that you would look at. Now, of course, the main things are going to be how well the reader how well the author can handle voice and how well they can get across this world building through the way the character sees the world. That's a hybrid between character and world building. but it is, as I say in class, the grand skill of writing science fiction fantasy is the ability to convey your world through the eyes of a character. So, you don't even realize as a reader that the world building is happening. Instead, you feel like you're getting character and plot. How do you make your world's history relevant to the storyline? How do you make the history described in the books surprisingly relevant? I'm always impressed at how every bit of historical context given in your books ends up being crucial to the plot. War breaker is a wonderful example of this. well, thank you. again, so how do you make the history relevant? So your easiest way to make things relevant on that first question is to make them interesting to the characters in some way. the reader if they can pick up on the relevance early on because it's important to a character, they'll pay better attention. And particularly if you're going to be using this history for important things later on, you want them to have paid some attention. And a lot of times what you're doing here is you're doing a bit of a you're signposting that they should be paying attention for a reason different than the fact that there's a twist coming.

9:08 You make the character interested in it. You make it their passion. you make the character ignorant about it. And the the real point of the scene that the reader thinks is this is the two characters chatting about something and there's a subtext of either like romance or argument or things like this and they're paying attention because they're fascinated by that and then the clues you have inserted about history become extra relevant later on. your where your character's focus is is where your reader's focus should be. usually those things match up exactly and if you're writing well they will. But how do you make it surprisingly relevant? Well, this be this comes from understanding what you need to foreshadow and a lot of times it comes from knowing what your ending is before you're writing or revising. If you are a discovery writer, it's okay.

10:02 you get to that ending and then you do a good revision where you say, "Okay, these are the key things that I need that are crucial. How can I devise scenes early on that convey this information without looking heavy-handed?" And it's that heavy-handedness that you really need to watch for as a new writer. having the storyteller come on and the point of the story, you know, oftentimes wits, the point of wit story is to motivate in a certain way. the reader's watching for those motivation context clues. When something becomes relevant later on with Hoy's story and you're like, "Oh, I learned that history." That's really fun. I thought I was just learning about you know, Hoy giving a pep talk.

10:45 you know, find ways to make everything you're doing achieve more than one goal. And with these history lessons, what you don't want is a history lesson. You want a fun and interesting dynamic scene where things are happening. and people are excited. Another way to make these interesting is to somehow make them visual. This is why when Whit is telling the the story of the water sail, he is using some lightweaving. He knows that an audience needs something more to really bond to than just a story. And it can be as simple as throwing powders into the air as I have him do. a lot of books will have, you know, visual context in some way. it's the reason that Maui has tattoos in Moana, so that when a story happens, you have a visual representation of that story. They don't have to necessarily flashback. You've got a cool means of telling the story.

11:38 look for these sorts of things to keep people engaged and interesting when they're on the screen. And then pay them off. The more often you pay them off, the more people will want to pay attention later on. All right. I am working on a story as told by the spirit or god of the city in which it takes place. and the viewpoints from characters all different points in time. Very cool. Very ambitious. I approve before they ultimately all converge in the main timeline. Okay, great. Some cloud atlas sort of stuff going on here.

12:07 do you have any suggestions for how to pull off nonlinear storytelling? I'm using third person limited storyteller for the narration. All right. so one of the things to be aware of is that readers will naturally bond to whatever they consider the main timeline most. And it'll be extra work to get them to care about the other timelines. And that's just something you have to overcome. Make sure that each of them has a hook that makes them distinctive, a narrative hook that is somehow interesting. And if you can early on start to tease that these things are going to be relevant to each other, every little little bit of relevance, the reader early on will latch on to and be like, "Oh, that's important."

12:56 Even if it's something as simple as Dallinar mentioning his knife again, the knife that was in a flashback, and be like, "Man, I like that knife." right? Just to tie them together to to give that little hit of, oh, these are going to be relevant. and start that early. Start promising that convergence long before it happens so that readers subconsciously start to say, "Okay, this is all relevant. This is all meaningful. this is all important." You're going to have less of a problem with this style of story than you will with flashbacks. which might seem odd to you because they're all different characters, but readers early on are going to see this premise and be like, "Oh, I see what's happening. It's a cool nonlinear thing." And once again, people will self- select into liking this story as you open and kind of let it dawn on them what it is. And that's going to mean that the people that this story is for are going to keep reading. And if you can pay off for them, don't worry about paying off every story for everyone. pay off for the people that are going to love the fact that you're doing a nonlinear narrative. And that's how you do it. You start to give these clues that things are going to come together. You're going to want to while they're reading, they're really going to want to see things in one timeline have an influence on another timeline. You're going to want to see parallels. One of the stronger nonlinear narratives and even is is Doomsday Book by Connie Willis in which one character goes back in time and is experiencing the bubanic plague while a modern pandemic is happening in the future. and the ways that the science fiction timeline deals with the pandemic versus the helplessness of the people in the past timeline gives us all of that thematic both contrast and parallelism that we want in really interesting ways. And of course, most of the book is about the past. And so the flash the the future ones are very brief and don't overstay their welcome. And it works really really well for that reason. It's a it's an excellent example of doing this. So, hopefully that will help you. I do think you'll have less trouble than you think, because people will quickly pick up on what type of story this is. and they will bond, to watching it all come together. That's going to be their progress. The process of world building, how do you measure your progress on world building? Is it by word count, section? Do you write formally, or note format? Do you set a deadline for your world building and then just let that pass? or would you carry on? So, usually I work via a deadline for my world building. I say, "Okay, I've got this much time before I'm going to start writing." The thing to remember is, even though I'm a heavy outliner, I am generally going back to my notes guide a lot during the early parts of the book and writing a chapter, filling it out. if you've been following the progress of Ghost Bloods on my weekly updates, you'll see that some weeks I only get a couple percentage points and other weeks I get the full four that I want. That's because I say I'm diving back into world building for this week.

16:01 I've written enough of a chunk that I know what I'm going to need later on. Let's go and make sure that's all in place. my world building is generally a mix of paragraphs explaining and bullet points just giving a list. early on it's paragraphs. later on it turns into bullet points which might seem reversed to you but that is the way it happens is as I'm exploring the world I'm kind of talking my way through it and as it starts to click into place then all I need is the bullet points because this is only for me I've already got the general feel I just need reminders on some things and so this is for a new book by the way what's my process like is it by word count no the whole thing does tend all of my notes on character setting plot together tend to be about 10% word count of what the final book will be.

16:52 100,000word book tends to have around 10,000 words of world building. but that's not a hardf fast rule and I don't look to keep that rule. I've just noticed that theme as I do it. so I don't look for a word count. I look for a do I feel confident in this setting and can I start writing and when I hit a point where I need to build something more and this is something really important that those of you who have worldbuilder disease you won't be able to anticipate all the things that you're going to need. So it often is better to start writing and then hit okay I need this let's spend a little bit more time in my world building here. Just don't let it interrupt your writing too much.

17:31 and I do that quite a bit. I'm like, "All right, what's the theme for this? Let's jump back to my notes document, write out a few paragraphs so I have it later on." All right, I feel comfortable on that. Back to the writing. How often should you describe the spice, quote unquote, just the poor practice in the first place, or is there a way to use the same principles without a physical description of location? so, again, there's no one way to do this, but I'm glad you're asking this question. it is a relevant question.

18:09 how often? Again, no rule here. What you want to do is remember that kind of pyramid of distraction. you want to start a scene by pulling the reader into that scene, either with characters launching like straight into a problem or something like that. if you start with dialogue, make sure you set the scene at some point. every chapter should set the scene, even if it's in the same place. Have the character notice something different or whatnot.

18:39 I have a lot of characters out in the mists in Mistbornne. And each time I'll set the scene, I'll do it from the character's viewpoint. Today, they're feeling like this, and the mists seem playful. Today, the mists seem kind of dark and ominous because the character's mood is such there could be anything hiding in there. to at one time the mists are lighter and so they might describe it in one way at another time they're deeper and thicker or there's certain lights. Basically finding different ways to describe the same thing. Someone's in the same room all the time. you know, use a few sort of clues like there's a clock that's always ticking in the corner and today that beat seemed to be to the song that he had been singing earlier or today that clock ticking was really annoying or whatever it is so that you're reminding us of what the setting is. set that scene, put the character in the scene, and then you can go, you can go through the rest of the chapter without doing a lot of the scene setting, except for occasional reminders of having the character interact with it.

19:46 interacting with the scene to pull us back into it is really handy. You'll see people doing this a lot in film as well. after there's a long conversation, they push out of their chair and they like, you know, slam on the table or they lean against the wall or something like this that is doing the exact same thing. It is pulling us out of the abstract into the concrete, reminding us that these aren't talking heads, that these are characters in a setting.

20:13 and interacting with that setting is really just very handy. how often do you describe the spice in Dune? you're talking about how the spice kind of sparkles in the air. I would do it any time that a character is pausing and looking across the setting. I might not describe the spice in detail every time. I might just throw it in a line, but I would include it in each of your setting details. Just like in mistboard, every time someone's outside, they're going to describe the mist. And finding ways to just make this work and not feel too redundant is part of your job as a writer. finding ways to set I mean you're gonna have to write so many scenes that take place in a room with two people talking to each other.

20:56 Practicing how to make that scene description interesting by seeing it through the character's viewpoint and mood for that day is one of the things you need to learn as a writer. So I'm glad you're asking this. and I would recommend that you just you just practice it that focus on that and see what you can do. I wouldn't say the lack of scenery change for a character is poor practice. there are lots of great stories that take place in a single room. And so I mean Emperor Soul is my award winner and 90% of that story takes place in one room. I'm finding ways to make that room evolve and change in order to keep it fresh and whatnot, but definitely not poor practice to keep someone in the same place. Just depends on the story you're telling. All right, last question. Is there a way to blend divine entities with mortals without making them feel disconnected from the primal primal instincts of the worlds or overpowered compared to mortals? a mix of sylmerelion and Narnia for example. Well it is definitely a thing that I am doing.

22:00 whether it's effective or not is is your mileage may vary. I do a lot of this in wind and truth. in fact so yes there are plenty of ways to do that. one thing to to keep in mind is motivations can be can cross all sorts of boundaries of alien biology and divine natures and things like that. If somebody cares about something that's relatable, well, it won't really matter who they are or what their power are.

22:33 That care, that passion is going to pull us through. If someone is prevented from doing something they want to do, we know what that feels like. Even if some sort of divine figure is doing it. Now, there is a reason why the gods in the cosmir feel more a little more like Greek gods and a little less like omnipotent divinities. And I'm I'm kind of in between those two. More than a Greek god, less than an omnipotent divinity. and that is because I do want to make them relatable and I do need them to be viewpoints now and then but I use them sparingly because I do think it is difficult to get someone to bond to someone who is doing that much.

23:17 You can or is capable of that much. You can absolutely do this. there are stories that do this. It depends on the conflict. It depends on what your theming for that viewpoint is. and I guess my answer to you is yes, it's very possible, but there are as many ways to do this as there are authors who might try it. So, you're going to have to find your own method of doing this and ways to make rooting interests and to make people fascinated by these characters. And you might just use pros to do that. a very distinctive and interesting pros might be the method. Or you might make use the Superman problem. What makes Superman interesting? the things he can't do. What are the overpowered individuals incapable of doing? That might be where your story is. You could go either direction on those. So, there you are. Those are your worldbuing questions. thank you so much. We have one more of these videos that we are prepping which is going to be the the nature of publishing and the bonus video on that. And then we will wrap up this series for now. So, hey, thank you so much for your questions and I hope that that was helpful.