How to Build a Fictional World Without OVERWHELMING Your Readers

are you struggling to incorporate worldbuilding elements into your story without overwhelming your reader with too much information whether your story unfolds on another planet or in a magical Fantasy Realm or with just a Different Twist on our own reality World building is a difficult Balancing Act but here's the thing while creating an engaging world is very important it's also easy to go overboard with information and lose your reader interest before they even get into the story that's why in today's video I am doing something that I've never done before I am going to give you

an exclusive sneak peek at my expansive live training World building 101 this live training Dives deep into the science of crafting a engaging memorable fictional world without overwhelming your readers or yourself while you're writing it I've combined every powerful and valuable lesson that I've learned about World building into this training including how to leverage your story world to deepen your character's internal conflict my secret hack for effortlessly writing Exposition through action how to write immersive setting descriptions without slowing down your story's pacing how to organize the details of your world and keep track of everything

and the best way to curate a one-of-a-kind vibe for your story world and have fun doing it so let's dive into part one right now and tackle the most challenging aspect of World building which is connecting it to your character making your reader immediately care about the World building because of why it matters to the characters okay so before we dive into the different parts of this training I just first want to refresh real quick about the dos and don'ts of World building first don't info dump all the World building at the beginning of your

story and overwhelm us do expand your world as your character interacts with it so Exposition through action that's we're going to talk about today in more detail don't make your character's conflicts begin and end with the way the world Works do leverage the way the world Works to make your characters unique inner conflicts more compelling don't paint yourself into a corner with the rules of Your World do stay consistent with your world's rules but leave room for new possibilities don't slow down your story's pacing with wordy descriptions of the world do make your descriptions Vivid

and meaningful to the story so keep things moving forward okay so let's get into it key number one how to leverage your story world to deepen your character's internal conflict this is something that when you start researching about World building I don't see a lot of writers talk about this this leveraging the internal conflict with the external conflict we're going to take our world building to the next level with this so just like we discussed with the dos and don'ts of World building it's essential that your character's conflicts don't begin and end with the way

the world works okay so society and the world can be against them but you must ensure your character's conflict is strong enough to stand alone even outside the world they find themselves in okay so if we saw these characters outside their world would we still care about them that's a really good question to ask yourself would we understand their goals fears and the Fatal flaw tripping them up if we put them in a different world would they still have personal struggles so this is all about making your character's struggles personal on top of everything that

they're dealing with because of the world that they find themselves in so you can leverage these two things together okay this is a vital question all of these questions are vital to ask yourself to test the strength of your characters internal conflict because if we take them out of the world and suddenly they have no internal conflict because the world itself was the only thing that made them special that made us care about them then I challenge you to dig deeper and see if you can make it even more personal could this character have personal

conflicts even outside of this world or if they were to be uprooted and placed in a different world would they still have personal struggles would they still have a fatal flaw would they still have a desire and a fear and a misbelief so questions to ask yourself now when it comes to building this world that your character finds thems in and I talk about mind maps don't get scared because I'm not going to give you a mind map like this okay when you start looking up World building mind maps and you know how to World

build you might see something that looks like this and be immediately overwhelmed like oh my goodness how am I going to outline all of this without um ripping my hair out I'm not going to give you a mind map that looks like this or like this or like this so don't panic my goal is not to overwhelm you with a chaotic World buing mind map like this I personally would be overwhelmed by a mind map like this it would it would be crazy to um have to sit down and figure all that out because of

this one simple thing for instance look at this one um we have like the creation the beginning that's where this mind map is starting the creation in the beginning and then that goes down into geography and population and history and from there we break down all these different aspects of the world this is overwhelming because first of all it's a lot to think about but second of all and more more importantly it's starting with geography population and history not a character right so what matters what's my point of reference for any of this mattering why

why do I need to know about the species and the natural laws and and the natural history and oral history if it doesn't matter to a specific individual character okay so we're going to dig down into what's below the surface we're going to do this a little bit differently because your character's journey of change like we always talk about is the most important aspect of your story okay it's what makes us care and keeps us reading so you can develop every aspect of your story world like the gods and and the natural laws and the

politics and all of that and still have no story because you didn't develop the conflict below the surface okay so we're going to take it from a different perspective today we're going to do a World building mind map but we're going to start from the perspective of the protagonist so that being said this is what the Mind M template I'm going to give you today looks like we begin with the prot I like to think of it as like these three bubbles you could even put these bubbles inside of each other and have them expand

from each other but for the sake of laying this out on the screen I did them I did them side by side so first we have this bubble here that is the protagonist's inner World okay this is what we always talk about on my channel we have the protagonist we have their desire Their Fear their misbelief okay their desire and their fear stems from their misbelief so the misbelief is at the root of who they are um I'm going to show you an example of this fill down in a minute but if we explore from

here into what I like to call the small world the small world is an extension of the protagonist's reality so we have their occupation what they do for a living or what they do all day every day we have social struggles that they face we have the class that they find themselves in in this Society their place in the world okay all these three things do have an impact on them and they are more important because they're in the small world of that protagonist's personal reality rather than the grander um Global reality that everyone faces

okay then we have characters we have friendships family enemies you can extend from there you could go into love interests Sidekicks mentors whatever the case may be but these are just some basic bubbles to get you started with this mind map and then we have the big world so the big world is outside the small world and way outside the inner world but it still has some repercussions and effects on the protagonist so we have the government the government is influenced by Culture by religion um science all these things are kind of interconnected we have

history Legends are influencing history and maybe we have magic or maybe we have technology depends on the world that you're building it depends on the genre you're writing depends um you know with science fiction you might have a bigger focus on technology rather than magic in fantasy you might have a bigger focus on Magic okay so whatever the case may be you can really customize this and even make your own mind map that is sort of like this with as many bubbles and as many deviations as you want you can make this as big or

as small as you want but I want you to start from the perspective of the inner world because the inner world is what we care about right it's what matters the most to us because we can see what matters to the protagonist and that's where a lot of writers go wrong is start too big they start with the big world and then they start zooming in okay then we have the small world of these people and then within this group of people we have one person that we pluck out of the chaos and that is

our protagonist but I want you to think of it as reversing that whole process we are starting with the protagonist we see what they care about we see what matters personally to them and would continue to matter to them even if we took them out of this world and then we start to expand and explore from there okay so where a lot of writers go wrong is they start focusing too much on things like culture history politics religions which is fine that is all good stuff to dig into and develop for your world to make

it really feel real and lived in but remember culture history politics and religions are what create societal conflict okay you see this even in the real world even in our world um beliefs opinions fears and desires create personal conflict so the personal conflict is the thing that we are really caring about right outside of the bigness of everything so I want to show you what this looks like in an actual story example and we're going to do this sort of like workshopping it so we're going to actually develop a story World from scratch today starting

with the protagonist so let's say we're writing a science fiction story we'll call it starborn deception this is Loosely based off of a story prompt I created for my story smoothie video so if you saw that video you remember this prompt probably if not I will link the video in the resource kit and I made up this prompt basically by blending ingredients from Pride and Prejudice Mulan and Star Wars so if you know my story smoothie method is basically a process of taking inspiration and little ingredients from stories that really that you really love and

that get you excited putting them in a blender and creating something entirely knew from it so using these three stories the genre plot characters and kind of blending them together we came up with this our protagonist is Yumi a rebellious engineer or inventor who has spent her life raising her three younger sisters after a plague took their parents' lives when her sisters mysteriously disappear Yumi must disguise herself to infiltrate the oppressive Astron and Elite space Forest to rescue them while undercover Yumi must fool the esteemed General zento as she per as she forms unexpected alliances

within the Astron Archy all while confront confronting her deep-seated fear of Abandonment okay so we have internal conflict external conflict as she unveils a Sinister forces's plot for Galactic domination Yumi Sparks a transformation within the Astron Archy and inspires a revolution okay so sounds like your typical science fiction right you guys probably know I'm not a science fiction writer but I wanted to challenge myself and get outside my comfort zone and try to develop this story from scratch using just this simple prompt I came up with a few plot points for the story and some

internal conflict external conflict so we have the different levels of this world if I were to take this prompt and build it out with the Mind map we just looked at it might look something like this so here's an example of it in action we have our protagonist Yumi right we have her desire to keep her sisters safe that's the basic goal of the story and then we have her fear which is abandonment which came from her parents dying in the plague okay so her misbelief beneath all of this is I can't trust others to

protect me that would be like the basic overarching misbelief okay and then we have the small world so in the small world we have Yumi she's an engineer an inventor and she's a workingclass woman but she's going to be living in this Society that's kind of loosely based off like the society in Pride and Prejudice which is you know this Regency kind of patriarchy where women have to get married and they're kind of like if a workingclass woman is unmarried she's kind of stigmatized so we're going to borrow some of those aspects from that world

and that Society for this world so we have this character who resists social convention so she's a little bit like Mulan she's a little bit like Elizabeth Bennett in that way kind of a mixture of the two um and then we have her family and and characters so maybe she has a cooworker BFF who's like based off of Charlotte Lucas um she has three younger sisters no parents and then for enemies probably General zento character will be an enemy as well as anybody in the astronaronic we have military forces exploit science okay um cast system

degr workers and women so again that plays off of her place in society so we're tying all of this together giving it personal meaning maybe we have religion is forbidden by the Astron Archy maybe we have history is Rewritten in favor of the Astron Archy so everything is sort of being controlled by this oppressive government right and maybe Legends are the real history so we have different layers to the history here and then for technology maybe technology is controlled by by the Astron Archy so that would also come into play with yumi's personal life right

because she's an engineer she's building this high tech stuff that's illegal for her to be doing so now that puts her into a place of conflict with the big world so as you develop this I want you to just look for places where you can challenge yourself to make some aspect of the Big World personally significant in the small world okay so depending on who you're character is look for those opportunities where how can I make the big world have a personal impact on the small world and then the inner world of my main character

and this is balancing that line between plot and character okay so as we develop this story world you can see how the most crucial aspect here is the main character and her personal unique internal conflict so it's not enough that Yumi is a workingclass engineer in an oppressive cast system that treats women as the property of their husband conscripts unmarried women for the Astron Archy and doesn't welcome female entrepreneurs okay why is this not enough because we could be following any female character who is trying to be an engineer and dodge the draft and the

stakes would be the same okay this is this is the point I've made a lot with plot driven stories if you can replace the main character with any other character then it's not character-driven enough so what makes Yumi unique is not the big world but her personal inner World her motivation to keep her sisters safe to be the one person they can trust in this unpredictable and cruel world to give them the sense of security that she lost when her parents died and she felt abandoned okay so automatically you see how that's like way more

powerful that automatically makes this story like way more I would even be interested in reading this story and I'm not much of a science fiction reader because we have character-driven elements here okay so so taking this one step further how can we use the world to leverage conflict so Yumi has multiple layers to her conflict already she is an unmarried woman in a man's world an engineer inventor inventor in a society that stigmatizes workingclass women and she's determined to dodge the draft and stay out of the Astron Archy without getting married okay so that's one

way to get out of it but she doesn't want to get married because she's based off Elizabeth Bennett so and she's going to help her sisters do the same so given the specific conflicts what would push her outside her comfort zone AKA what's the worst thing that can happen to her specifically and this is something you can even do if you haven't fully plotted your book yet but you want to sort of use the world to create that conflict and create the plot you can prompt yourself with these same questions okay now setting up this

world what's the worst thing that could happen to this character what can push her outside her comfort zone and become the inciting incident I came up with this answer to lose her s sisters to the Astron Archy and to feel responsible for it okay so that would probably be pretty difficult for her to deal with this inciting incident would also set in motion all the external conflicts that I have planned for this story so we're going to take that setting in we're actually going to write a piece of it in the next part but first

I want to just quickly say something about contemporary because World building can apply all of this same stuff can apply to cont contemporary as well so if you're writing contemporary you might be think can I World build can I make things this intricate yes absolutely you can now when you're writing a story that takes place in the real world you can skip some of the exposition because your readers understand how society and nature work okay um and you'll have more time to focus on specific aspects of your protagonist's small world their inner world as well

which usually makes contemporary stories more character driven than other genres that's probably why because we've already set up the we understand the world now we can get deeper into the small world however you can still use the worldbuilding Mind map to craft unique and immersive story world you still need to figure out what is possible and what is impossible for your characters within their bubble of reality okay so for example when I was writing the other world which sounds like it would be a fantasy almost but you guys know it's a contemporary uh takes place

in the real world and when I was writing it I had to really figure out and like draw the lines of my protagonist's small world to understand the aspects of the big world that had a direct impact on her life okay so in orca's case who's my protagonist nature was more influential to her than Society because she was kind of cut off from society she has she has you know grown up on this island all by herself with her father and she's not really part of normal society so because of that I had to draw

the boundaries of okay what is her world like in fact you know the whole basis of the story is kind of starting from this place of she's in this world and the other world is out there and she feels like it's this mysterious thing she wants to know more about because it's so outside of her small world okay so find different ways that you can leverage this and do this with your contemporary story if you're writing contemporary okay prompts prompts for this section first what is my protagonist's inner World small world and Bank world and

you can use the Mind map to craft this also how does my story World force my protagonist into a uniquely difficult situation because of their internal conflict something important to think about and if we saw this character outside their world would we still care about them would we understand their goals fears and fatal flaw that's tripping them up okay let's get into key number two I know that was that was a lot I just went over but we have a lot more to EXP explore first mastering the art of exposition through action so what we

want to do here is keep the momentum going there's nothing like a wordy info dump to kill the pacing of your story and overwhelm your reader okay you've probably experienced this many times when opening up a new book or starting a film and being overwhelmed with information so it's essential to make sure that you don't hit pause on your story for too long to give us an some Exposition about the world instead let's find a way to show and not tell the need to know information through action so we're not slamming the breaks on your

story's momentum okay and my hack for doing this is to ask myself two questions and the answer to these two questions becomes the scene okay so first what needs to be accomplished right now for the plot to move forward and what aspects of the world is the reader asking questions about okay so those two questions once you have the answers to those two questions weave them together into a single scene without pausing for too long to explain things to the reader okay so once you have the answers like we know what needs to be accomplished

for the plot to move forward and we know what questions the reader is asking we can weave that into a single scene and I'm going to show you how to do that in just a minute but first my Golden Rule of exposition I want you to adopt this as your Golden Rule if it ain't asked don't answer it okay where most writers go wrong with Exposition is when they start answering questions that the reader hasn't even asked this is like giving us the punchline to a joke before telling the joke okay it kills curiosity curiosity

is your secret weapon for keeping your reader hooked brain science literally shows that Curiosity triggers this pleasure and rewards center in our brain and encourages the release of dope mean similar to the effect of using an addictive drug okay they've literally studied this and watched brain scans of what curiosity does to your brain it's amazing so if you leverage curiosity the right way you can literally make your reader addicted to your story seriously but balancing that Curiosity reward ratio can be a tricky thing so we're going to look at what that magic ratio is now

you've probably heard me talk about this before I talked about it in my flashback live training with revealing questions and answers what I found as a reader is that the magic ratio is for the Curiosity reward is like two to one as in we have twice as many questions as we have answers but we are continually rewarded piece by piece with answers so that dopamine is still firing in our brain we want to keep reading but the thing is if you never reward your reader with answers to their questions you'll confuse the heck out of

them right and a confused mind always says no closes the book puts it back on the Shelf you don't want that but on the flip side if you give your reader too many answers before they get curious will'll be overwhelmed by all this information we're not ready to digest it okay we're not hungry for it so we're not ready to digest it remember we get satisfaction from putting the pieces together and seeing the Fuller picture and feeling like we created that picture we participated in finding those pieces and putting them together in the right way

okay so in case you don't know I'm going to show you what info dumping looks like we're going to use our story example here of our um our sci-fi story that we started developing and if I were to write a paragraph it's terrible so brace yourself um that was info dumping everything I wanted to tell you it might look something like this in the sprawling Metropolis of shen Madeo where the iridescent glow of holographic Billboards painted the night sky Yumi an ingenious young engineer meticulously fine-tuned her revolutionary holographic invention within the confines of her clandestine

Workshop the cityscape outside her window pulsated with life but beneath its dazzling facade lurked the oppressive grip of the Astron technological monolith that had ruthlessly seized control of the government and snaring the once free Society in a Labrinth of surveillance and subjugating Yumi a mastermind in the art of deception wielded her holographic prowess not only to elude the Relentless draft inforced by the Astron but to safeguard her sisters from its clutches in a world where unmarried women were conscripted into the Astron service yumi's engineering Sanctuary became a Haven shielding her family from the prying eyes

of the allseeing regime the history of the Astron archy's Ascent to power was a tale stained with betrayals corrupt alliances and the Relentless pursuit of absolute do dominion over both technology and society yet in the shadow of her accomplishments Yumi remained acutely aware that the only Sanctuary from the astron's grasp lay in the institution of marriage a prospect that seemed more like a transition from one prison to another okay so if this was in a book if I open the first page and this is what I was met with I would be closing the book

I wouldn't even get to the end of this paragraph honestly because I would be gone it is so info dumpy so much Exposition so many descriptive words it's terrible and why we're accomplishing everything right I mean we're telling the reader what they need to know about the world the astronarium to protect her sisters how Society works but it is just an info dump right it's just a truckload of information dumped on us with no real action or imagery to show us who this person is is or why we should care about them so remember remember

the Golden Rule here if it ain't asked don't answer it see how I'm answering all these questions that have not even been asked so that's what that Exposition looks like now Exposition through action isn't just about feeding information to the reader it's about keeping the story in motion while we receive information okay It's tricky to do this but it's once you practice it enough you will get the hang of it so keeping the reader asking questions hungry for information so that when they receive answers the information is ready to be digested so let's go back

to our two critical questions what needs to be accomplished for the plot to move forward and what aspects of the world is the reader asking questions about so in the beginning of our story starborn deception we need to see our protagonist Yumi actively pursuing her goal and avoiding her fear okay internal we want to see the internal conflict immediately if possible so we need to see why what's happening with the world matters to her on a personal level and it's okay if we have a few questions as long as we understand what is immediately happening

and why it matters so then I would say to myself okay the goal of this scene Abby is to show Yumi trying to protect her sisters from the Astron using her unique skill set as an engineer and inventor show what's at stake with without revealing too much about the world so can we do this let's see a better example this is a rough draft mind but still much better what if we began the story a different way with dialogue with action I'm scared youi what if we get caught shh we're not going to get caught

now stop fidgeting immediately we have Stakes two lines and we have stakes in the dim purple light of the underground Workshop Yumi adjusted the magnifier attached to her headset she'd done hundreds of holographic masks fittings but never like this never on her little sister ma in the dead of night with Trembling Hands it was delicate work at the best of times disguising holographic sensors on a person's temples to make them unnoticeable to the naked eye it required total concentration and plenty of light neither of what Jimi had I can't see a blasted thing in here

she grumbled irritably why don't you just turn on another light M asked and risk bringing the Aston Archy down on her heads Yumi hissed back they may they have night patrols now you know they send their soldiers out to prowl the streets and arrest people like me and you and do you know what they do with unmarried women who are caught trying to dodge the draft not to mention hoarding illegal technology she made a sweeping gesture around them at the workshops scattered with holographic noes digit screens and circuit boards they immediately conscript you into the

lowest ranks of the Astron that means we'll be fighting on the front lines the first to die is that what you want M shook her head anxiety swimming in her eyes no Yumi but there are other ways to avoid conscription without breaking the law Yumi grunted as she carefully fused the tiny holographic sensor to her sister's Temple you mean marriage it's not such a bad idea if you found the right man M smiled dreamily someone who looked like General zento General zento is a tyrant and a beast Yumi said I don't care how good they

make him look in the tabloids besides marriage used to be about love not protection from being turned into cannon fodder I know Ma murmured but protection is enough for me Yumi cued her little sister's face in her hands I'll protect you and kyomi and Lena I won't let anyone take my sisters away from me she smoothed her fingertips over the sensors of M's holographic mask that's why I made you this disguise so you'll always be safe no matter where you are boom boom boom fists pounded a door above them Yumi and Ma jumped when they

heard a Gruff voice barking the words night watch open up okay so rough draft I know but in 400 words in just a few paragraphs we have raised the stakes we have shown who these characters are on a more personal level we've even seen some of their personalities clashing with each other we have Yumi is is serious and focused and the older sister clearly we have M who's like a little bit more dreamy she still has some of her like childish fantasies about her we have these two conflicting elements here and in the first line

right the first two lines between those two lines of dialogue we have Stakes now if I were to really write this story and I were to you know write multiple drafts of it I'd make this even stronger probably add a little bit more to this opening scene but you see how like even with just a few lines of dialogue and action and we're keeping the story moving forward we actually have momentum here we don't have like just this omniscient view of the city and how it all became here and you know all the the oppressive

government and everything involved we actually have a scene with action with dialogue with these two personalities clashing we see some of the stakes and we see some of the World building just unfolding through dialogue and dialogue is a great vehicle to unload some of that world building with so again using dialogue to help emphasize what's going on in no uncertain terms without confusing the reader so try doing this with your own story or even try just a exercise of a story that you're not even going to write like I did here with this science fiction

um it can be fun just to test out some of these methods and see how can I reveal some of this world through dialogue through action without going into a huge info dump okay so prompts questions to ask yourself here what needs to be accomplished for the plot to move forward what aspects of the world is the reader asking questions about leveraging the Curiosity reward magic ratio how can I make my reader ask two questions and get one answer how does the exposition show what's at stake for the protagonist that's what matters the most more

than anything else more than the history more than the natural laws and the magic we need to know what's at stake we need to know immediately like I just showed you in that excerpt in the first one the info dumpy one we didn't know what was at stake we just had a bunch of information dumped on us in the second excerpt the dialogue and action filled one we know what's at stake because we can see the main character we can see her struggle she's trying to protect her sisters they're actually about to get caught so

there's like this action I would be interested in reading the next paragraph and the next page the next chapter that's what you want if you enjoyed that extended preview of my training on World building you can click the link below this video right now to get access to the rest of the teaching and when you unlock this training you also get access to my extensive live training archive vault which includes over 26 hours of in-depth teaching on topics like character creation plotting editing writing romance publishing and marketing your book and so much more I host

new live trainings on the first Sunday of every month so there's lots of value being constantly added to to the live training Vault and I hope to see you over there I think you'll love it so click the link below this video to unlock access right now and finish watching this extensive live training on World building I'd love to hear from you so join the discussion comment below this video and tell me what you thought of this training so far what is your favorite aspect of World building what do you love about World building the

most I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below smash that like button while you're down there and be sure to subscribe to the Channel if you haven't already because I post writing videos every single Wednesday and I would love to have you here in the community until next week my friend Rock on [Music]