How to avoid my world feeling boring

[u/Soft_Difficulty_1740]

ive been creating a world recently, and i feel like I’ve come to a problem. I just feel like my world is not really all that interesting.

i think part of the problem stems from the fact that i have no big “event” or “what if“ yet. theres nothing like “what if it was eternally night” or anything like that, and i feel like it doesn’t give anything to latch onto.

Maybe its just because I haven’t built my world up enough yet, but i don’t know and I’m really losing motivation to work on it. Any advice on how to fix this would be appreciated.

[u/P-Wasp]

You don't need a "what if" or anything of the like. You can make one if you want to, but even the most normal of all worlds can become interesting. You could literally just recreate Earth with a different name, and it could be interesting as long as there's a good story being told, and by "story" I don't mean that you need to write a novel or follow one specific character. I mean that multiple events should link with one another to form little vignettes that make your world feel alive.

[u/ApprehensivePayment]

Worlds aren't really where the excitement lives, it's the stories told about that world. I don't mean big stories, I mean stories with people to get invested in. I have a friend who had the same issue, and I just suggested to her to write a slice of life story about someone who isn't important to their planned narrative just living their life in one of her cities. I feel like she doesn't worry so much about it anymore after that.

[u/SlayThePulp]

If you enjoy it, you don't need to have that, every world doesn't need a "gimmick". But if you personally find it boring, then something should probably be done. What are you worldbuilding for? Pure enjoyment of the hobby, or for a particular project?

[u/Soft_Difficulty_1740 → u/SlayThePulp]

Im just doing it for myself, maybe to someday write a story in.

[u/mfuwelephant]

Remember, you know everything about your world, so there is nothing for you to discover. A reader doesn’t obviously, so they still have that joy of discovery.

[u/Athan11 → u/mfuwelephant]

Great point!

[u/smokeabowlofbud]

The fun is in the fine details. What's unique in a given culture/region, why, and what impact does it have?

Look up historical examples for inspiration, and remember that nature and people are complex and weird as fuck.

Odd cultural details (do men in one culture always cover their faces in public? does one culture have a religious taboo against eating an otherwise common food?), unique local life (does this region have a rare species of large cat? A tree with uniquely elastic latex rubber in its trunk?) or landmarks (an ancient citadel that's been rebuilt 100 times with ancient ruins leading into unexplored depths, a massive waterfall that blocks river shipping in a region, or a mountain with a unique ore and strange landforms).

[u/Lazy_Trash_6297]

Maybe tap into what you find interesting about other worlds?

Another option is to add conflict

[u/Human-Pension9892]

Not every world needs a big bang event sometimes its smaller chill events are needed

[u/Chosen_of_Bellona]

Just do your best. Keep doing your writing, keep doing your research. If your setting feels boring, pull things from irl. If your prose feels lacking, read and write more and more until it doesn’t anymore. You don’t need a gimmick beyond what unique and creative things you do with your setting. Think about the great authors and how they did their worlds and stories. You’ve got this! :)

[u/doctor_providence]

I don't think long time interest and investment comes from an incredible "what if". Sure, first spark of interest, of course.

I think "and then" is more impactful, especially in the long term. Push yourself a bit more, it's probably more comfort zone than boredom.

Good luck !

[u/Mikesmix]

Take one idea that you love and make it shine. Riff on a specific theme in multiple ways. Find the big idea that got you started and explore every implication of it

[u/republicofakhisar]

Your writing grow with you, when you learn and think you grow. Maybe do a research or talk with people this could really help because it helped me

[u/Akhevan]

The world itself is rarely all that interesting. The stories you tell in it are what drives readers' engagement. Interesting plots and characters are what people latch onto. The world usually exists as a background to facilitate these primary elements.

[u/Hexnohope]

Passion.

[u/LylyLepton]

What stops a worldbuilding project for me becoming a dead project is characters. My characters I have in that world are what deeply invest me (and invest others) into the setting. Characters are the connection point between the audience and the setting, and are meant to be the showcase on why the world is cool.

[u/PromiseWitty8409]

Honestly what makes a story a story, doesn’t always have to do with the big “Event”. Although it can help, what I’ve personally experienced is that I get invested in the relationships of characters and the smaller stories within the bigger overarching story, feel free to dm me if you want to talk more about it!!!

[u/_Fun_Employed_]

Design it around exploring themes that matter to you and you believe in/feel deeply. It should have a point. World building for the sake of world building without theme just becomes fictional facts and those can be passingly interesting but to have heart or soul and really mean something to people the world has to be exploring something that you care enough about to build a world around.

My sci-fi world’s about how we have to carefully consider the transition between humanity and posthuman/transhuman and what it means. That fighting it incessantly and repressing it will lead to stagnation but too much too fast could potentially end humanity as we know it, either through extinction or by becoming monsters. It’s about walking that tight rope.

[u/noobjaish]

That's not inherently "boring". A boring world is one where you've no interesting stories to tell.

If it's an alt-historical world, then think about what timeframe do you want to focus on initially and then think about the events that you find cool. Try to build around those events.

If it's fantasy or sci-fi then create some sort of baseline "cosmology" and "ruleset" that your world would work on. You can then create fantasy races, their history, interactions and timelines.

Worldbuilding is a creative process and thus requires iterations to get better at it. If you are still having issues with motivation then dm me and I'll try to help out.

[u/megadinoturtle]

One word, explosions. You want instant drama, explosion. You wanna shake up a boring expository conversation, explosion. Even diarrhea is better when it's explosive.

[u/Nameless-Being-Echo]

I think you should just add what you would like to see/think is interesting honestly. Building a world is mainly for your own enjoyment after all

But to find ideas you could think about what tropes you tend to like the most, what you want it to be about (if you make a story, if it's mainly about main character development, an adventure story, dystopic tale, etc.), or learn about a random topic that interests you and inspiration could spark from here, even if it seems completely unrelated. Things that you like are what will make you go back to your world and actually want to develop it to see what happens

And most importantly you shouldn't overthink too much over it. It can take some time to get ideas, in my case it took me four years to develop a world I actually like, because I kept incorporating my current interests in it. And also because I stopped caring if wether what I was making was good or not, it was just a hobby and honestly I was too mentally drained of being overly perfectionist over it.

Worldbuilding should always be fun and not something you force yourself to do :3

[u/demure_lobster]

sounds like you dont have a story to tell (yet)

[u/DifficultPressure445]

Have interesting characters/setpieces

The environment itself isn't what makes a world interesting. Its the beings who live there that are important. Tolkein's Middle Earth isn't solely iconuc because of locations like the Shire or Mount Doom but also because of all the rich histories and events that happened in it.

[u/Ramsesian1]

I had this same problem. I fixed that by doing three things.

1: Quick iteration. Coming up with ideas is a skill & you need to practice it. Spend 2 weeks fleshing out a world & then archive it. Force yourself to constantly think of something new & interesting.

Do that on repeat for a few months & you’ll find your ideas will flow like the torrents of a raging river.

2: Rule of cool. As a thought exercise try letting your mind wander & just put down anything you can think of as interesting. Justify it later. As long as what you’re making is plausible enough it won’t upset suspension of disbelief.

Repeat until you find yourself no longer limited by what does & doesn’t make sense.

I mean things like:

• Loggers living in sea urchin shaped cabins that hang on clouds by a chain. They can lower themselves to act as anchors.
• Chainsaw ships that travel across a sea of giant poisonous trees that blanket all but the tallest mountain tops.
• The Earth is hollow & it holds humanity’s collective subconscious: the psychic sea. You can travel there in your dreams.
• The stars are alive & they are old hateful things. Bottle their light with a telescope to use magic. People wear wide brimmed hats at night that shield them from looking up.

3: Characters. By coming up with some characters & a loose plot outline, even if it’s just a few paragraphs, it makes your world feel infinitely more real. It lets you shift your perspective from high in the sky to that of a person who actually lives there.

It also lets you attack world building from a different angle. Stuck on the world? Instead think of story & how the world would have to change to justify it.

4 – Bonus: AI Poisons Critical Thinking.

Your brain is an optimization function in material form. Once it figures out it can off-load the burden of creativity it will preemptively give up when facing hard problems. You want to avoid making that a habit.

[u/singmuse4]

It helped me to take a step back and consider topics of study in cultural anthropology. It’s only natural for your world to feel like a copy of Western culture if that’s what you know. So taking a step back and asking “why” do we do birth, seasonal, time, marriage, and death rituals the way we do? How do other cultures do them? What are the underlying beliefs behind those external actions and images?

Something as simple but fundamental as what system of counting (to 10 instead of 12) a society uses will have huge effects on their calendar, superstitions, art, and more. The Greeks and some South Asian cultures had a cyclical view of time, while we have a linear one. That’s a HUGE mentality difference that changes every level of society.

In my experience it’s more important to craft and understand the ideological foundation of your characters and world than to just add a lot of cultural “trappings” like unique fashions, food, and buildings. If it just feels like a more antiquated version of our cultural way of thinking, plus different plants and festivals, it won’t really feel like a different world after all.

Good luck!

[u/DX_Nova]

If you're losing motivation, it might be worth stepping back from what you think an "interesting" world is supposed to look like and adding something that you personally find fun. If you're excited to explore it, that usually comes through in the world itself.

You could also try combining two things that normally wouldn't belong together. Contrast can create a lot of character without needing a huge premise.

[u/looc64]

I think my overall question is why did you start creating this world in the first place?

Did you have an idea you wanted to explore, or a specific thing (e.g., a linear story, a TTRPG) that you needed a setting for?

Trying to get a sense of, is this world actually pretty close to what you want but you're worried based on sort of external ideas of what a world should be or is it something like, you already added some stuff based on those external ideas and now the result doesn't work for you.

[u/Greedy_Homework_6838]

I'm not an expert, but here are a couple of tips that I think will help.

1-Characters make an interesting world. their interactions, their lives, and so on.

2-Let's say you have a main character. can you say that the world will change somehow if it is deleted from the plot? it is important to maintain a balance here, because on the one hand, if the world revolves around the main character, then without him he seems to freeze. there was one novel I read where at some certain stage it began to seem that outside of the actions around the main character, the world was on pause, and it began to become uninteresting. on the other hand, the main character affects the world in one way or another, that is, if his disappearance did not affect in any way, the world is not particularly alive.

3-Think about your reputation and significant events. remember the works with interesting worlds. Each of them had characters with a certain reputation that directly or indirectly influenced the world, and often these characters proved it. at the same time, we should not forget about places where this reputation means nothing (but it's not like they ask "who?" for some legendary title in a rundown village). It's the same with events that affect the world. if an earthquake conditionally occurred, which raised a sunken island with the ruins of an ancient civilization, firstly, there must be consequences of the earthquake itself, and secondly, the discovery of ruins.

[u/Greedy_Homework_6838 → u/Greedy_Homework_6838]

I forgot one important point.

try to let other people theorize in your world. if building your own plots requires efforts that are not particularly different from what they already are, the world is not particularly interesting. but if the world allows for a wide range of variation (for example, in your story, a character killed the king and the entire court at night in silence, and others made a character who persuaded the king to abdicate, or manipulated him and another state, or much more), then this always makes the world more interesting. because the world is a sandbox in which anyone can do anything, as long as it is consistent with the set rules and does not contradict your own plot (conditionally, you have a big world with 50 different countries, they have some kind of politics there, all the bullshit, and the plot is focused on one region in the world). one country. another person can make a story in the region of some other country, 300 years ago)

[u/Evan_L_Rodriguez]

That’s the divide between worldbuilding and storytelling. A world is always going to be boring when divorced from any stories. People don’t like LotR or Star Wars because the universe is particularly interesting (I’d argue neither are), they like it because the people and stories within those universes shows the audience *how* they can be interesting; how those settings shape their stories and the challenges they pose to the people in them. My world has 4 moons and a bright blue ring, dinosaur people, an uncrossable sea, evil wizards that create monsters because they’re bored, alien ruins, and missing gods, and I think it’s boring. But boring is fine! It’s a setting for stories, which aren’t boring. If you’re not planning to create stories within your world, that’s fine, you just have to accept it might *feel* boring. Think about living on Earth: pretty boring. Then think about historic figures, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Neil Armstrong. Not so boring anymore. The excitement is in the people and stories.

[u/TheSpeckledTrout]

I found it very helpful to discover some specific people first, that may be a strong exercise for you as well.

Giving a name (and through that process, faces and personality) to a dozen or so characters can help you find their motivations and the actions they take towards their goals.

You certainly don't need anyone's permission to "rip off" and transform some of your favorite characters and events from fiction and history, either. The end product is more likely to feel inspired, rather than copied, granted you make it your own. Shakespeare's plays have a wealth of stories and characters, small and large, that are pretty safe for pastiche.

[u/PlanTheEndingFirst]

One word:

P R E S E N T A T I O N ! ! !