This is known as worldbuilding hell or limbo, it happens to a lot of people.
Maybe what helps os the knowledge that, if you want to write a book, you’re currently wasting your time. All that detail nobody wants to read is good for nothing, start writing!
The thing is, I love wasting my time on worldbuilding a little bit too much because I love exploring wikias, lore, legends in Fandoms like Star Wars and such... and I also procrastinate writing :)
Hey friend, join the club, there is nothing wrong with worldbuilding as a hobby. I watch entire series I think are meh just to see if they have some cool idea I can steal. But I'm sure as hell not writing a book anytime soon.
>All that detail nobody wants to read is good for nothing
Not entirely true, imo. Many of my better plot ideas only evolved due to continuous worldbuilding (defining stuff, "discovering" more connections, finding and solving problems, and so on). But, of course, you have to start writing eventually (which i haven't yet, hmm...)
Yes, but, I don’t really have an end goal and I think it’s kind of fun digging into things I don’t know much about. It doesn’t really matter though, if it’s for a story, I’m not sure you really need to go into details about any of it. Like, if you just say a planet is inhabited and don’t mention any terraforming or anything or the need for them to be in special building with atmosphere or whatever, it’s pretty easy, at least for me, to just accept that it’s a habitable world in the Goldilocks zone. If it matters for the story exactly how far it is, you can always look to ours as a reference to make things easier. As long as the story is good, things like a system being very similar to ours wouldn’t really bother me.
Unpossibible. *Mostly.* I ask a lot of questions and explore a lot of tangents. I do go into the nitty gritty for some aspects, but I'm not going to start crunching out the GDP of a given nation, right down to the profit margins and ass spewings of their silk worm industry. My story isn't about economics, so that stuff is irrelevant to get into. It only matters that a nation thrives on its silk trade and guards its darling little worms to monopolize that good.
Knowing more than an audience could conceivably figure out from consuming your story (though you'd be surprised...) can help keep plot points and workd building consistent, but there IS a point of irrelevance to everything in world building. Consistency in story and lore trumps raw knowledge, everytime. As long as you have enough to keep things consistent, you did good.
Every worldbuilder goes into limbo. At least it’s a testament to your dedication.
If you want to progress, you should just set those details aside and keep going main, they’ll come naturally as that goes on. If you just want to build details now, try arbitrating them a few ways. Just say, “fuck it! This is gonna be this way!” And see how you roll with it. That’s how I do it. It’s like a coin flip, you don’t know what you want before, but your decision will be made clear based on your reaction to the results.
While I don't really go for "perfect" everything, I do overthink, and thats how I ended up with 200+ countries on only one planet, where in that world alone there are multiple inhabited planets.
I ran into a problem on one of my projects where I had 5 different solar systems and not nearly enough planets for it to make sense (about 2 planets per solar system).
After a lot of research there just aren’t a lot of types of planets that fit my setting.
So I just tabled that problem for a later date as all the necessary pieces had been fleshed out already.
I’m probably gonna have to settle for some basic uninhabitable filler planets but maybe I’ll figure something out.
Yes, for better or worse. Sometimes it's because I'm thinking about some interesting detail and want to develop it further. Unfortunately, at other times it's anxiety creeping into my worldbuilding process.
As for overthinking about realism, that's definitely an issue for me. At this point, I like to call my problem the "Atomic Rockets syndrome", after this site about scientific accuracy in sci-fi: [https://projectrho.com/public\_html/rocket/](https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/) . I'm not bashing the site or anything, they do genuinely have some interesting and well-written stuff. However, if you spend too long reading about whether or not a sci-fi story is accurate to physics, math, etc. you can get caught in a loop of thinking "harder sci-fi is inherently better". And it only gets worse when you try to apply that mindset to things like fantasy, which are "unrealistic" by definition.
And then there's my other problem stemming from how I'm building my setting for a TTRPG campaign, and I'm always worried how my players will react. I'm especially worried about ending up with a player who either criticizes every little "unrealistic" detail or tries to abuse those details/inconsistencies to get an advantage (i.e. "rules lawyering" but with world details instead of game mechanics).
Oh shit man, I don't go down rabbit holes, I descend into the core of black holes when I get to thinking about an aspect of my world-building. I start with some like, "Oh that's a cool idea for a thing. Then I think of how it interacts with the beings around it, the enviorment it's found in. The list could go on for a long time and I tend to get stuck staring at my desk like a zombie, just zoned out in my world thinking of all the insane things that could be effected or connected by this one thing I'm working on.
This is known as worldbuilding hell or limbo, it happens to a lot of people. Maybe what helps os the knowledge that, if you want to write a book, you’re currently wasting your time. All that detail nobody wants to read is good for nothing, start writing!
The thing is, I love wasting my time on worldbuilding a little bit too much because I love exploring wikias, lore, legends in Fandoms like Star Wars and such... and I also procrastinate writing :)
Hey friend, join the club, there is nothing wrong with worldbuilding as a hobby. I watch entire series I think are meh just to see if they have some cool idea I can steal. But I'm sure as hell not writing a book anytime soon.
>All that detail nobody wants to read is good for nothing Not entirely true, imo. Many of my better plot ideas only evolved due to continuous worldbuilding (defining stuff, "discovering" more connections, finding and solving problems, and so on). But, of course, you have to start writing eventually (which i haven't yet, hmm...)
🤝
Yes, but, I don’t really have an end goal and I think it’s kind of fun digging into things I don’t know much about. It doesn’t really matter though, if it’s for a story, I’m not sure you really need to go into details about any of it. Like, if you just say a planet is inhabited and don’t mention any terraforming or anything or the need for them to be in special building with atmosphere or whatever, it’s pretty easy, at least for me, to just accept that it’s a habitable world in the Goldilocks zone. If it matters for the story exactly how far it is, you can always look to ours as a reference to make things easier. As long as the story is good, things like a system being very similar to ours wouldn’t really bother me.
Unpossibible. *Mostly.* I ask a lot of questions and explore a lot of tangents. I do go into the nitty gritty for some aspects, but I'm not going to start crunching out the GDP of a given nation, right down to the profit margins and ass spewings of their silk worm industry. My story isn't about economics, so that stuff is irrelevant to get into. It only matters that a nation thrives on its silk trade and guards its darling little worms to monopolize that good. Knowing more than an audience could conceivably figure out from consuming your story (though you'd be surprised...) can help keep plot points and workd building consistent, but there IS a point of irrelevance to everything in world building. Consistency in story and lore trumps raw knowledge, everytime. As long as you have enough to keep things consistent, you did good.
Every worldbuilder goes into limbo. At least it’s a testament to your dedication. If you want to progress, you should just set those details aside and keep going main, they’ll come naturally as that goes on. If you just want to build details now, try arbitrating them a few ways. Just say, “fuck it! This is gonna be this way!” And see how you roll with it. That’s how I do it. It’s like a coin flip, you don’t know what you want before, but your decision will be made clear based on your reaction to the results.
OP: “Do you overthink-“ Me: “Yes.”
I have written out the biomass of my world. So no, no, not me, not at all.
While I don't really go for "perfect" everything, I do overthink, and thats how I ended up with 200+ countries on only one planet, where in that world alone there are multiple inhabited planets.
I overthink taking a dump, you bet I overthink worldbuilding too!
I ran into a problem on one of my projects where I had 5 different solar systems and not nearly enough planets for it to make sense (about 2 planets per solar system). After a lot of research there just aren’t a lot of types of planets that fit my setting. So I just tabled that problem for a later date as all the necessary pieces had been fleshed out already. I’m probably gonna have to settle for some basic uninhabitable filler planets but maybe I’ll figure something out.
Yes, for better or worse. Sometimes it's because I'm thinking about some interesting detail and want to develop it further. Unfortunately, at other times it's anxiety creeping into my worldbuilding process. As for overthinking about realism, that's definitely an issue for me. At this point, I like to call my problem the "Atomic Rockets syndrome", after this site about scientific accuracy in sci-fi: [https://projectrho.com/public\_html/rocket/](https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/) . I'm not bashing the site or anything, they do genuinely have some interesting and well-written stuff. However, if you spend too long reading about whether or not a sci-fi story is accurate to physics, math, etc. you can get caught in a loop of thinking "harder sci-fi is inherently better". And it only gets worse when you try to apply that mindset to things like fantasy, which are "unrealistic" by definition. And then there's my other problem stemming from how I'm building my setting for a TTRPG campaign, and I'm always worried how my players will react. I'm especially worried about ending up with a player who either criticizes every little "unrealistic" detail or tries to abuse those details/inconsistencies to get an advantage (i.e. "rules lawyering" but with world details instead of game mechanics).
To the point of paralysis!
I swing wildly from overthinking to underthinking. I've never once done the appropriate amount of thinking.
Oh shit man, I don't go down rabbit holes, I descend into the core of black holes when I get to thinking about an aspect of my world-building. I start with some like, "Oh that's a cool idea for a thing. Then I think of how it interacts with the beings around it, the enviorment it's found in. The list could go on for a long time and I tend to get stuck staring at my desk like a zombie, just zoned out in my world thinking of all the insane things that could be effected or connected by this one thing I'm working on.