[ SECRET POST #2980 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2980 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Lots of multiple secrets in one comment this week, throwing off the count!

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 083 secrets from Secret Submission Post #426.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Worldbuilding

[nyxelestia]

Work backwards, then forwards.

Start with whatever details of the world you need to build for the sake of your story, and maybe some periphery details that might be relevant/helpful to filling out your story (i.e. let's say you need to plan out a world's marriage traditions - that means you primarily need to develop those marriage traditions, but also need to at least sketch out the relevant religion, social structure, and/or family laws).

Once you've gotten that down, take a look at all the stuff and see what can overlap and try to kill as many birds with as few stones as possible.

That was working backwards - now you work forwards.

In one part of your story, you'll need to write a wedding. In another part of your story, you'll need to write a funeral. Either way, you'll most likely need a religion (or a universe-specific parallel of culturally institutionalized social customs) for them. So, now you sketch out a religion for your world, then use that as a basis for the wedding, the funeral, and now have something to consistently reference in passing in other circumstances (i.e. maybe you can reference other social ceremonies, universe-specific parallels to "Oh my god!" drawn from that religion as an exclamation of surprise, mythological references that characters might make but the story will never or only vaguely explain, common imagery and symbolism, etc.)

This can also go in other directions - since you probably had to at least sketch out some semblance of family customs for the wedding and funeral, you'll already have a strong foundation to build up your inheritance laws when you get to that part of your story. If you went into enough detail of the wedding scene to write out the foods, then you either already have a vague 'meal plan' for another fancy event, or you have a point of comparison for fast/junk/home-cooked/'simple' food when you want to set a different tone in another scene that involves eating (i.e. is this a world where meat is for special occasions but berries are an every-day staple? Or is meat easy to get, but berries are exotic foods you only eat rarely?)

This way, you can focus on worldbuliding only as much as you need, while still keeping things cohesive and not spending too much time on details that aren't important. And I do mean important - if the actual color of the grass is never particularly relevant, then you can just say it's purple, you don't have to explain why.