Seeing a lot of threads on SFF worldbuilding which makes me happy so I'm going to drop some SUPER PRACTICAL advice right now b/c I'm a worldbuilding juuunnkieee
The easiest way to organically show your world is to make your characters live in it. Like, really live in it. WHILE ADVANCING THE STORY. Most plot points consist of characters meeting each other: to exchange info, fight, love, threaten, confront, etc. Where are they doing it?
If your scenes are always in the castle or headquarters or wherever, you're passing up a huge opportunity. I have my characters meet up in an office building, a temple, a restaurant, a sporting event, a school, etc. So you SEE the world w/o the focus being on what's around them.
And you can also use the backdrop to enhance whatever convo the characters are having. Sporting event? Maybe it says something about that character that he's a fan. Church? One crosses herself, the other doesn't. Interesting. Slide it in there, and keep telling the story.
Everyone says don't infodump. But sometimes you JUST NEED TO GIVE INFO. So how do you make elegant "info offerings?" By giving it out in little chunks at the time when it makes perfect sense for the characters to be thinking about it. And don't combine them. One. At. A. Time.
Never give all the info about an important thing all at once. You can give ONE ASPECT of how the ship works and then circle back to it later and add ANOTHER ASPECT. Reader goes, "oh yeah, you mentioned the ship is alive back in chp 1, so NOW I see you're telling me how it eats."
Resist, with all your strength, the temptation to make up words. Only make up what you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO b/c there's no analog in our world. Don't give paper a cool name if it's PAPER. Use names/titles to cue readers to cultural context but keep naming as simple as you can.
The most powerful tool in worldbuilding is POV.
Let me repeat that. The most powerful tool in worldbuilding is POV.
Let me repeat that. The most powerful tool in worldbuilding is POV.
The world, our world, ANY WORLD, is different for different people. To make a fictional world seem three dimensional, you have to see it from different angles. This doesn't mean you 20 POV characters. You can place your POV character(s) in positions where you/they see the angles.
Do your characters walk through the slums? Do they party in the governor's mansion? Do they go to the hospital? Speak to the Pope? Every human interaction is a window into the world, into the way it works and the balance of power. Worldbuild through characters instead of facts.
Okay, I could go on for a while b/c I love this stuff and couldn't resist jumping in, but I gotta go. Read all the other good threads floating out there today. Build some awesome worlds and write them into glorious existence.
