Just-In-Time World Building

You’re sick of hearing “Show, don’t tell.” Got it. But then you’re told to use vivid descriptions and detail-rich settings to enrich your story. So how do you describe the world your character inhabits without “telling” about it? This is a constant balancing act, whether you’re writing space operas, historical fiction, a beach-themed romance, or a contemporary thriller set in your own neighborhood. Somehow you have to describe that world without looking like you’re describing it. Good trick.

One technique I particularly like is when an author reveals the world as a character encounters it, rather than using info-dumps that sketch (or worse, expound upon) the world’s history, politics, religion, or geography. Let’s look at an example. Here’s a tempting little info-dump:

For years, the province had been infected by the Brat’an religion, which was led by power-hungry priests who seemed to delight in sowing political unrest with their weekly sermons. Ted the Mercenary hated the priests. They seemed the worst sort of humanity to him. Fortunately, their toe-hold in this part of the region seemed fairly small.

Sure, it’s short and to the point, but it’s boring. I’m telling the readers something that I think they should know about my world. I’m not showing them why this part of the world matters in my story or how it affects my characters. Big difference. Using a scene instead of exposition to deliver this type of information is almost always a stronger approach. Here’s an alternate paragraph that shows how I can stay focused on the story and let the scene reveal a new part of the world as my character moves through it.

Ted the Mercenary pushed into the bar and bumped into one of those nasty little Brat’an priests with tattooed earlobes and a crescent moon shaved into his head. “Been sacrificing kittens again?” Ted asked the priest. “Or just whipping the crowd into a treasonous frenzy, as usual?” Ted let his gaze slide pointedly around the bar, where there was a definite lack of frenzy happening.

Okay, sappy example, but still…This kind of writing is more fun for readers. Because I let my character literally bump into this particular aspect of his world, my readers get all kinds of information about a religious faction, some politics, Ted’s attitude about them, and society’s view of them. But we’re not being told about a religion—we’re seeing Ted’s opinion of that religion through his reaction to the priest.

This is what I call “just-in-time” world-building, where aspects of the world become visible to the reader as the character interacts with it. In fact, because we’re not just describing the world but showing Ted’s interaction with that world, we get even more information, atmosphere, emotion, and insight than in that first info-heavy, expository paragraph.

To be sure, sometimes you can’t avoid info dumps. To have characters talk or think about information just so the reader can hear about it might seem too obvious and staged, or it may unnecessarily slow down the pace—the “As you know, Bob” trap. (“As you know, Bob, when my father died in 2012 in that unfortunate toffy accident and left me his ’68 Corvette and his vast fortune in Play-Dough sculptures, I became a Play-boughy.”) In some situations, narrative explanations may work better. But in general, our job as writers is to find the most natural, organic way to show how our worlds work. That often means letting our characters interact with their world—actually bump into it—and do the world-building for us, at just the right time for readers to learn that information.

Look at some of your favorite authors. How do they bring their characters’ worlds alive? If you’ve got a favorite example or author, please share it with us in the Comments.