World Building 101 (part 4)

How much of your world should you reveal? The temptation for those who have invested vast amounts of time into their world building are the creators that are at the greatest risk—they feel an ownership and responsibility for all of their imaginings, and respond by trying to cram too much of this information into their writing. The exposition can easily become too long and burdensome to the hungry audience that is eagerly anticipating discovering a point to it all. It is best to describe your world through your characters, subtly or overtly, depending on your writing style. Nebula and Hugo award winning scifi author, William Gibson, had a unique approach with world building in his novel, Neuromancer—he revealed the world his characters lived in through inference. Rather than explaining how things worked or identifying the terms he used, everything was left to uncover through context. This may not be an approach that works for many (and Neuormancer is not exactly an easy read), but it is one example of a way to reveal the world you built. Instead of defining your world through narrative exposition, let your audience discover it through the eyes of your characters and through the memories they reveal as the story unfolds. To be safe, keep the description of your world on the shorter side--detailing a location that requires two or three full pages of narrative is an approach that will likely begin to lose all but the most dedicated readers.