How much is too much world-building?

I get it. Writers have heroes. We think we have competition. At the end of the day, we’re all trying to find the right way to write our novels.

Science fiction and fantasy writers are different. We create a world in our heads. When it’s first-world (i.e., Earth with fantasy elements), we go off the reservation. To make a believable world, we need to world build. We need to understand what’s different between what we’re doing and what others are.

Tolkien is the GOAT. He set a standard for hyper world-building. He created details that never found their way into his published books. Robert Jordan? Ditto.

Enter Brandon Sanderson. He’s been criticized for too much worldbuilding. YouTube pointed this article to me by someone commenting on it, criticizing Sanderson. Did Sanderson earn the critique?

Sanderson’s BYU lectures argue against hyper world-building. He argues against feeding every little detail into your novels. Yet his two critics accuse him of just that. What’s up?

Robert Jordan infected Sanderson. After all, Brandon was invited by Jordan’s estate to finish the Wheel of Time series. Delving into all of that lore affected him. He has a legacy, too. He wants to ensure his own setting has enough lore for successors to add their own stories.

Sanderson comments that publishers don’t like long novels. The investment return is too much. Yet he writes huge novels. His fans crave it. I can see why some authors would increase their world-building to include in a novel to fatten it up a bit. Jordan stuffed his novels with it.

How much is too much?

The movie Office Space has the answer. You need enough “flair” to express yourself. Some authors want to be like Sanderson, so they dial world-building to 11. Brandon’s advice was, “don’t.”

World-building is yak shaving. I’ll wait for you to look it up. My setting is a character. I need to know enough about my setting to know how it reacts to the character.

Given how I write, I don’t feel compelled to tell you everything. You’ll figure out what you need to know. But I need to know.

My answer for “how much” came at a writer’s conference. After listening to a panel of renowned sci-fi authors, I concluded I needed a novel-length write up of a setting. My novels weigh in at about 70,000 words (give or take). I need 70,000 words of world-building. But not all at once.

Sanderson? His novels weigh in at over 350,000 words. Following my metric, he needs five times the world-building I do. I don’t think the criticism leveled at Sanderson is fair. He’s not your typical writer. He has different needs. His audience is different.

I once tried to learn the bass by playing a Beatles’ song. I beat myself up for lack of progress. A bassist friend reminded me Paul had over a decade professional experience writing the lick I was having a hard time playing. Never compare yourself to another author. Especially if he has experience.

I’m sure as fans read my book, they’ll complain I don’t have enough world-building. They’re right. But since I see writing as a collaboration with the reader, I don’t have to have enough world-building. I want you to fill in the blanks.