Conveying Worldbuilding Without Exposition!
(As requested by both an anon and @my-words-are-lightâ)
One of the hardest parts of writing speculative fiction is presenting readers with a world thatâs interesting and different from our own in a way thatâs both immersive and understandable at the same time.Â
Thankfully, there are a few techniques that can help you present worldbuilding information to your readers in a natural way, as well as many tricks to tweaking the presentation until itâs just right.
Four basic techniques:
1. The ignorant character.Â
By introducing a character who doesnât know about the aspects of the world building youâre trying to convey, you can let the ignorant character voice the questions the reader naturally wants to ask. Traditionally, this is seen when the protagonist or (another character) is brought into a new world, society, organization. In cases where thatâs the natural outcome of the plot, and the character has a purpose in the story outside of simply asking questions, it can be pulled off just fine. But thereâs another aspect to this which writers donât often consider:Â
Every character is your ignorant character.Â
In a realistic world, no person knows everything. Someone will be behind on the news. Someone wonât know all the facts. Many, many someones wonât have studied a common part of their society simply because they arenât large part of that fraction or donât have the time for it.
Instead of inserting an ignorant character and creating a stiff and annoying piece of expository dialogue, find the character already existing in the story who doesnât know about the thing being learned.
2. Conflicting opinions.
A fantastic way to convey detailed world building concepts is to have characters with conflicting viewpoints discuss or argue about them. Unless youâre working with a brainwashed society, every character should hold their own set of religious, political, and social beliefs.Â
Examples of this kind of dialogue:
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