Worldbuilding – revealing

You’ve built your world and understand how it works. But how do you bring it out into the open for the reader to appreciate?

Well, first off, it helps to remember the point of worldbuilding is not to show off how good you are at worldbuilding. The point is to bring the world alive for the reader in order to enhance the story.

Here is a collection of techniques to expose your world to the reader. Keeping that goal in mind will help you choose your tools wisely. It’s important to remember that none of these are inherently right or wrong, they are just tools in your toolkit.

Infodump

Yeah, let’s get that one out of the way first. Infodumps – long slabs of exposition – became a notorious hallmark of speculative fiction, a way for the author to show off their inventiveness rather than anything to benefit the reader. And avoiding infodumping has become a cliche among speculative fiction writers. But the infodump is still an important (if dangerous) tool to be aware of.

An infodump is where the author breaks off the main narrative and lectures the reader to deliver a lot of information. Done poorly – and it’s very easy to do poorly – it kills the story stone dead and has the average reader yawning and skimming. Done well, it can convey a lot of essential information very efficiently.

The biggest danger of infodumping is not necessarily the boredom factor, but the risk of delivering information that is not necessary. Even a well-written and entertaining exposition might turn out to be a complete waste of time, not saying anything really important, and not enhancing the story in any way. The problem is you’ve gone to all this effort to invent a unique world, and the need to share every detail can be overwhelming. Infodumps make it too easy to yield to temptation.

Disguised infodump

A raw infodump is straightforward exposition, the author directly addressing the reader. As such, it tends to come across as very dry, like a history lesson. But there are ways to disguise it’s nature. and make it more palatable.

For example, introducing an actual narrator to talk to the reader lets you adopt a less formal voice, as if having a fireside chat. The stream of facts can be broken down by asides, actions, and reminiscences by the narrator as if they were in the room telling you a story. Or the characters can be used as second-hand narrators, talking to the reader by some indirect mechanism such as quoting a report or correspondence.

Microdump

Probably not a recognized term (I just invented it) a microdump is simply a small infodump. Maybe only a sentence or two slipped into the narrative as an aside. Little snippets can bring information to the reader in small and unobtrusive doses.

Done well, brief “tells” can be an efficient way to convey small facts. They are not suited to complex explanations, and too many of them can bog down the narrative.

Weave the world into the story

This is considered best practice in writing, though that’s nothing more than a present day fashion which could change again in time.

This can consist of subtle showing – view the world through the point of view of the character, notice what they’re noticing, see their reactions to the world around them. The world will reveal itself through their interactions with it. This approach benefits from thinking about the character, their situation, emotional state, motivations etc. and ensuring their viewpoint remains true to character. For example, an engineer or someone frustrated with obstacles in their life might notice small glitches in the world’s technology. Someone on the run will be looking for hiding places and escape routes, or objects that could be used as weapons. They might notice plush curtains for cover, but wouldn’t stop to fixate on their colour and glaring clash with the furniture in the way a design influencer might.

Less subtle, is to use a character as unfamiliar with the world as the reader, someone who has to be taught, with a more knowledgeable guide to explain things to them, and therefore to the reader.

Dialogues and recaps between normally knowledgeable characters can also be used to bring things to the attention of the reader. This has to be done carefully to avoid feeling contrived – the “As you know, Bob” trope.

Prologue

Sometimes a certain amount of scene-setting is necessary to understand the story. A prologue gives you more latitude to infodump without breaking the main flow of the story. The danger is that readers will often skip prologues and go straight to chapter one. The challenge is to make sure the prologue is suitably engaging.

Epigraphs

Small inscriptions at the start of chapters can convey useful information. The advantage is that, because they are outside the main narrative, they can talk from other points of view, revealing things that the point of view characters wouldn’t know, and use a completely different voice.

Epigraphs might be things like literary quotations, extracts from correspondence, reports, news articles, all potentially invented from your world and designed to illuminate some aspect of it.

They should be kept brief.

Afterword

An afterword can be used to reveal something about the worldbuilding. For example, in historical fiction the author might include an afterword to talk about the factual framework for the story, real places, people, or events around which the fiction was woven. Typically, this would supplement the context of the story, but would not include anything that was needed for understanding.

Other front and back matter insertions

Things like maps (beloved of fantasy), pictures, and glossaries can be inserted at the start or end for the reader to reference. This leaves it up to the reader’s discretion how much time to divert from the story itself.

Outside the book

Most authors these days have websites. This is an ideal place to publish your worldbuilding in as much detail as you want.

A little goes a long way

When it comes to the main narrative of the story, a good rule is to treat worldbuilding as just another plank in the structure alongside things like character and plot. Space on the page is valuable real estate. You don’t want to waste it. Every scene, paragraph, word, sentence has to earn its keep, so ask yourself what work is this detail performing to enhance the story? Does is convey some understanding vital to the plot? Does it affect character motivation? Does it help build atmosphere?

You will likely have documented a lot of world details, and it seems like a waste to not bring it all into the story, but every detail you include should have a purpose. What makes it into the final story should only be the tip of the iceberg. But the surrounding depth, the details you don’t include, are not wasted. The reader may not know they’re there, but you will. This will show through in your storytelling, allowing you to talk with authority and consistency. The work you put in, even if it’s kept off stage, will show itself to the reader.

You can be more liberal with mechanisms that don’t alter the flow of the story itself – additional material in the book such as appendices. These should be seen as supplementary, not integral to the story. And if you are publishing background material separately, this is where you can go to town on not just the story world, but the process that went into conceiving or researching it.