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Topic : Re: World Building vs Story Writing Note, this might be off-topic and belong on World Building SE? I have always been far more interested in building the world my stories take place in than the - selfpublishingguru.com

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My best suggestion would be to rough the world-building as you write your story. This way, the world can form around your story and not the story around the world. This, of course, is not how reality would have it. All of our stories adapt around the world as life's struggles form our civilizations.
I am not saying to preclude changes to the story to fit a properly developed world but think of it as a series of slide bars that you slide back and forth until you have discovered a happy medium between storytelling and world-building. I, too, find it difficult to create a happy medium, and thus I subscribe to the idea that if I spend too long developing a specific part of the world, I likely do not need that story element, or it can be done another way.
Case in point, in a story I am writing, the Earth's ecosystem was being changed by an invasive species of plants. This was done by a species that conquered the human race but were pushed off. As my characters are too young to have an effect on the inter-planetary events early in the novel, I have them deal with the changes he world is going through and use the way they handle the changes to demonstrate the underlining anger everyone has toward the changes that no one seems to have the means to stop.
Of course, there are other storytelling elements the uncontrolled changes reflect, and thus become a repeated theme of change throughout the story. Thus the world changes my characters, and to me, that is world-building done right.


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