: Re: Should I include an appendix for inessential, yet related worldbuilding to my story? I'm of the opinion that a story should stand on its own; any worldbuilding that is necessary for the plot

@Shanna875

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My question is, for the sake of satisfying reader interest, would it be worthwhile writing an appendix summarising certain inessential worldbuilding entities that's entirely optional for a reader to peruse?

It can be worthwhile. Some readers are "hungry" after a story ends, and will devour any appendix you provide. It can be argued that since you have that material sketched out, it's worth to make it available to the audience.

Yet, I'd like to leave here a couple of warnings:

Don't get self-indulgent. There's a fine line between adding information for the more curious readers, and doing so just to stroke one's own ego. Maybe the audience would like to know something more about the city of Godswater, true enough; but no matter how smart your worldbuilding is, they probably don't want to read about the entire history of its government.
Appendix writing can get you worldbuilding disease: after all, there will be always points to expand. Following the previous example, if you included an excerpt about Godswater, you'll be tempted to put in a similar one for each city that has been referenced in the novel. But is it really worth it? Borrowing the famouse iceberg metaphor, most of the worldbuilding is doomed to remain submerged anyway. Either that or you'd be dumping exposition.
Ideas are - sometimes - like bullets, in the sense you don't want to fire them all at once without taking aim.

I'm going to expand on the last point. You have completed a story from a PoV that explores just a bit of the world you have created; you find yourself with "additional material" that the readers won't get to enjoy. Sure, you can use that material to make appendices, but should you really?

Any good idea, and the good work, that you have put into worldbuilding would be better showcased in an actual story. You could write another novel, or a set of short stories. Instead of compiling a dictionary entry about the city of Godswater, you could write something in there. This would be good both marketing-wise and well, writing-wise. Readers who loved your first novel are more likely to be interested in a second, even losely related one.

Sure, writing an appendix is not "wasting a bullet". At least not necessarily. But if you're in the lucky situation of your readers wanting more of your work, maybe short online stories would serve you better than appendices.

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