creative writing - How many elements can you focus on during worldbuilding?

Possibly related:

Worldbuilding is a tireless art; that's what our brother site Worldbuilding-SE is for, and why as a writer you can actually catch the infamous Worldbuilder's disease.

A lot has been said on the topic. Brandon Sanderson, in the podcast Writing Excuses and in his lessons (here, example) suggests focusing only on three-to-five aspects of the worldbuilding of a given novel, unless one is willing to spend 30 years in crafting the next Lord of the Rings series. His advice is, roughly speaking: choose a subset of your world and characterize it well. For a novel, one could focus on weaponry, architecture and fauna; while working on flora, religion and politics in the next one.

Moving on, Herbert's Dune (the first of the saga) could be seen as an extreme example of the aforementioned idea. While there are a lot of details in the book, I'd argue that the most worldbuilding revolves around the sandworms. Everything - from the native colture and religion, to major plot point in the book - falls in the sandworms extremely detailed and imaginative ecosystem.

From what I've gathered, it's either:

• Detail almost everything, Tolkien style, even if this delays enormously the publication of your novel;


• Focus on three-to-five subsets of the worldbuilding and gloss over the rest;


• Find a really cool idea and build around it until you've squeezed all the potential from it.

Of course this is nor a complete, nor a correct list; but it resumes differnt opionions on the matter.

thus said:

How many elements can you focus on during worldbuilding?

Answer

How many elements can you focus on during worldbuilding?

From what I've gathered, it's either:

• Detail almost everything, Tolkien style, even if this delays enormously the publication of your novel;


• Focus on three-to-five subsets of the worldbuilding and gloss over the rest;


• Find a really cool idea and build around it until you've squeezed all the potential from it.

The number of elements will depend on two points:

1. 
   

   As the author, do you want to flesh out the whole world because you love worldbuilding and writing a novel in a half-crafted world feels wrong to you? Go the Tolkien way and have fun.

   
   


2. 
   

   As the author, your aim is a well-crafted story in a world that makes sense. You don't need to create every little detail, only the important things. You just have to decide what is important.

   
   

I suggest you start with a long list of points that a full-fledged world-builder might follow, then categorise those points into unnecessary, necessary and fundamental.

Let's check some examples. Say the story involves the hero travelling to a different kingdom to find their long lost sibling. What points must be developed?

• 
  

  Politics: unnecessary in kingdom A, necessary for one town in kingdom B. Decide the town political hierarchy. Maybe write down the name of the king.

  
  


• 
  

  Fashion: fundamental. The hero is a clothes salesperson (hence easily travelling around) so make sure you know what kind of fabrics they have, and what type of fashion folks are after. Maybe you could devise typical headdressers that differentiate regions and the hero is so savvy that he gains notoriety by knowing where folks are from with a glance.

  
  

This approach usually means that you have to know your basic plot in advance, but it's not manadatory. You can choose new points to ignore, mention and develop as the story progressed and you decide something needs attention.

In the end it's not about a set number of points, it's about what is relevant for the story you're telling. It could be two points, it could be twenty, all fleshed out at different levels. Look at the story you want to tell and let it show you which points are important.