I'm still confused about
@Ral's definition of "world building", because to me this kind of "setting development" is an element of all kinds of writing. All stories require internal consistency on multiple levels, and developing the basic setting is an aspect of all kinds of fiction.
In the OP, it is presumed that we are talking about "intensive" world-building, in the fashion where there are two moons or 20-hour days or calendar months named
Zfastler,
Moeaerjia, and
Kaieralia -- which in my honest opinion only appeals to a small subset of people.
I think nearly everyone can agree that maintaining an internally consistent setting is essential to all kinds of writing. However, I don't believe most people would necessarily define that as "world-building". It's just the setting. To me, it's honestly just semantics to claim that authors actively perform "world-building" when they write a story like
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, or the
Little Prince. All writers establish a setting and stick with it, and failing to stick with your setting is just bad writing.
The procedural aspects of "setting development" also differs from writer to writer.
Intensive world-building enthusiasts will often obsess over creating a map first and imagining their entire world (source: I did this a lot in middle school). The story comes secondary to the setting, because the author is primarily interested in the setting first.
However, I would argue that a majority of writers (even fantasy writers) do not pursue this pattern. Most writers start with an
idea -- i.e. dragons, a wandering inn, super grandma, a hot air balloon -- and expand their story around the idea. I believe that the story comes before the setting for most authors.
I think over many years, I've encountered a lot of amateur writers and "world-builders", and a personal observation I've made (feel free to disagree with me), is that the "world-builder" amateur writers are generally less successful than the story-focused authors. The reason for this is that I've encountered dozens of middle school world-builders who obsessed over their map and magic systems, yet when it came to writing their stories, they rarely break past the few couple chapters. They prone to info-dumping, leading to incredibly boring expositions like attempting to introduce 13 different gods and their theology system in chapter one of their story. They also have a tendency to have a poor grasp of theme, character development, and narrative structure compared to more successful writers.
To be clear -- this was the way I used to write. My NaNoWriMo story from 2013 was an intensive world-building story that likely would have bored the heck out of everyone because I was obsessed about making an entropy-based magic system that was pseudo-scientifically consistent. To some regards, I cared about the setting more than I cared about anything else in the story that I was attempting to write.
The major pitfall is that just because I care about my worldbuilding setting, nobody else necessarily does.
I think one of the major areas of growth that I experienced was when I switched over to writing short stories in college.
When I started writing short stories, I developed a much stronger appreciation for
theme and
character development -- which are currently the two strongest values that I currently have as a writer. I learned over time that it's not your word count or the fanciness of your prose that determines the effectiveness of your writing, but rather your ability to
deliver a punchline in a self-contained story.
I frequently write in the fantasy genre because I like the flexibility to explore different scenarios.
For instance, in fantasy, it's possible to explore a novel situation such as a princess who is cursed to have poisonous skin... and therefore cannot physically touch anyone without killing them. My
primary focus as an author isn't the setting, but rather the premise behind the story. My objective is the explore the circumstances around this premise and paint an interesting picture for the readers to gobble up. I can develop a lot of themes that simply aren't possible in a historical fiction or modern-day Earth story, and I believe most readers enjoy these kinds of stories for reasons other than the setting.
I think so many people had a negative reaction to
@Ral because many of us
simply don't agree with this kind of broad sweeping statement.
But when it comes to Fantasy, it is the setting that makes people interested in fantasy.
There are many authors and readers on this site who write (or read) fantasy, and we flatly disagree that the setting is the main reason that drives most reader interest for our stories... or the stories that we like to read as readers.
Certainly, there is a population of readers and writers who adore world-building and primarily pick novels because they like the setting... but I personally contest the notion that these are the majority of readers.
It's true that there are stories that I adore the setting. For instance, I loved the Star Wars universe as a child (which is sci-fi, not fantasy, again pointing to the fact that nothing about this is unique to "fantasy" as a genre). However, the bulk majority of stories that I like, I like for various reasons not related to the setting.
For instance, on NovelUpdates, I like villainess novels, dragons, and kingdom-building novels. If there is a dragon -- then I will literally go read it. This is interest in a pattern (or subject), not the setting... which I think is the behavior of most readers of popular fiction. If you believe that most people read isekai novels or harem novels because they like the setting... I think that's an extremely misguided conclusion. To use KonoSuba as an example, I doubt anyone really finds its generic isekai medieval fantasy setting particularly that interesting, but the story is immensely popular because the main cast is iconic and people love Megumin's ex-plosionnn~! Similarly speaking, Re:Zero is popular because the premise of dying a lot is cool and otakus like Rem. Arguably, many of the setting for these stories really isn't that great, yet the stories are immensely successful regardless.
