GoodRules

Writing is hard

Which way do I go?

It takes a special kind of crazy to decide to build a fictional universe from scratch. It’s easily my favorite part of the writing process (to be honest, haven’t got much further so this opinion is immature at best), but it’s also turned out to be one of the most difficult things I’ve ever attempted. From what I’ve seen, there are generally 2 “types” of world builders, with some variability in the middle. On one side, you have the “pantser”—the writer who just makes it up as they go. This approach is just wild to me. The idea of letting the whole world just - happen - without a safety net or an encyclopedia worth of notes, hoping you don’t break a rule you established three chapters ago, sounds terrifying. This method works brilliantly for some (cough Matt Dinniman cough), but for anyone who needs even a remote amount of structure, it’s a one-way ticket to chaos. However, the other extreme, the meticulous planner, can lead to basically nothing ever getting done at all. Sounds fun, right? Right?!

That meticulous planner trap is a deep, dark rabbit hole. You start with a cool idea for a magic system or a sci-fi faction, and suddenly you’re three weeks deep into mapping fictional trade routes and calculating the orbital mechanics of a moon that appears in exactly one scene. Tolkien is the patron saint of this approach—the man invented entire languages and genealogies spanning thousands of years of fictional history before a single hobbit stepped out his front door. You try to connect every single character, relationship, and historical event until it becomes this massive, paralyzing web. The danger is that if you write too much detail, you end up painting yourself into a corner before the story even begins. You’re left with a beautiful, 100-page personal wiki, but absolutely zero plot.

So, the real challenge is finding that elusive middle ground. How do you write enough detail to make the universe feel expansive and lived-in, without completely suffocating your own narrative? The secret I’m slowly (and painfully) learning is the illusion of depth. You don’t actually need to know the entire 500-year history of a fallen empire or how the local tavern sources its ale. You just need to give the reader the feeling that those answers exist somewhere. Leaving some blank spaces on the map gives you the flexibility to actually write the damn book.

But man, when you finally hit that sweet spot, the payoff is incredible. It’s that magic moment where you strip away the massive lore documents and just stumble onto those simple, elegant ideas that click. They just work in your brain. They bypass all the anxious overthinking, plop right down onto the paper, and suddenly the world breathes on its own. It’s those exact moments of pure, unfiltered fun that keep you coming back to the keyboard (or notebook, yes some of us did grow up writing on paper), even when the rest of it feels like you want to throw your nice, new, beautiful Black Pearl Lego set through the wall… It’s safe, I promise.

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