Do you have worldbuilders disease? Is your setting a Mary Sue world? Worldbuilding is a big process—we’re literally creating a world, after all—and there are some common pitfalls that I’ve seen again and again… in fact, I’ve literally got a list of the known culprits. So we'll be going through 10 of the most common worldbuilding mistakes and how to tackle them!

1. Mosaic Worldbuilding

So let’s start with a definition: mosaic worldbuilding happens when your worldbuilding feels unconnected and disparate, like each "area" is its own self-contained zone. A great example of this is old-school MMORPGs or computer games, where each "zone" is its own closed sphere: there's no trade, influence, or overlap between different places in your world. The players or main characters can travel between areas, but nothing else seems to; no weapons, products, culture, or even other people. This can be a big problem for storytelling, because it ruins suspension of disbelief. It makes your campaign or novel setting feel like a construct. And anything that pulls your players or readers out of the story is a bad thing!

How to fix mosaic worldbuilding?

So how can you fix the mosaic worldbuilding mistake? To avoid it, it helps to have an overview of the things you'd like to create. World Anvil can be pretty helpful for that.

One good way to tackle mosaic worldbuilding is focusing on things that span regions and even countries: things like organized religions, cultures or diasporas, spy-networks or guilds. These can help your world feel more connected, simply by having the same religion pop up in different places. You can add a local twist to blend the flavour of your local area with the wider themes of your world. For example, the same religions or guild that has slightly different traditions in different places.

But the simplest fix for mosaic worldbuilding is simply remembering to add elements from outside the area into each location: things like foreign citizens, imported goods, stories, legends and rumours! Ports and trade cities are great places to weave in the influence of other lands, to make your setting feel more connected! It’s quick to do, and it also informs your players and readers about other places in the world.

2. Worldbuilder's Disease

Worldbuilder's Disease the compulsion to keep building your setting in increasing detail—more detail than you need, or than is even useful for you. And my classic example… is elven shoes.

Lets say, elves are an important part of your worldbuilding. So you detail a little about the clothes they wear, and their shoes. Maybe, if it’s important to your plot, you’ll add more detail; for example, a villain can be spotted because they’re wearing the wrong kind of shoes—like combat boots—to a ball. Great job, your worldbuilding is still serving your story. But if you find yourself getting over excited, and accidentally writing a fifty page treatise about the history of elven shoes over the last seven centuries and it’s not DIRECTLY relevant to your campaign or novel… honey, you’ve got Worldbuilder’s Disease.

Of course, you may be asking yourself, is Worldbuilder’s Disease really a problem? After all, if you’re having fun, isn’t that enough? Well, that depends. Are you putting off writing that novel, or finishing that campaign prep? Worldbuilder’s Disease makes it very hard to finish your setting preparation, and get started on your campaign, your novel or whatever you're worldbuilding for!

How to fix worldbuilders disease?

So what do you do if you have worldbuilders disease? There are several ways to combat this worldbuilding mistake.

First of all, you can limit your word count. Writing in bullet points, like in the Agile Worldbuilding method, is a good way to do that. You can also use timed writing sprints; for example, give yourself 25 minutes to detail elvish clothing... and not a second more!

Next, focus points are really important for worldbuilding a setting, and they can help you with worldbuilders disease too. After all, they help you... well, focus! In the meta section there’s a special section which helps you define what’s important in your worldbuilding, and I have a whole lesson on it in my how to start worldbuilding course. So, figure out your focus points and if in doubt, stick to them: that way you know what you’re worldbuilding will always be relevant.

And really, focus points are just one way to the most powerful question of all, which is why? Why are you worldbuilding this element? Why are you developing it, beyond a single bullet point or sentence? If you can’t think of a good answer, then it's time to move on. Remember, worldbuilding is an iterative process, and you can always come back and develop more of your world later.

3. The bad kind of Monoliths

Are all your elves snooty? Do all your dwarves love mining and drinking beer? Basically, do all your characters from a culture have identical opinions, religion, sexual orientation, hobbies and tastes? If so, you’ve built a cultural monolith. But don’t worry, it’s easy to fix!

How to fix Cultural Monoliths?

Understanding culture as a monolith is a problem as old as time. Our brains are pattern recognition machines, and those squishy meat-walnuts like to create consistency and see commonality: that is to say, we focus on what people have in common. But as a writer, that can lead to oversimplification in your setting. There may be common trends among your culture; for example, a majority of people believe in a particular religion, there’s a common cultural hobby, or certain prevalent opinions. But that doesn’t mean that everyone in the culture does.

A fun example of this is Varric Tethras in Dragon Age: he’s a smartass dwarf who doesn't have a beard, is more interested in writing detective novels than mining, and is generally the opposite of the stereotypical fantasy dwarf.

Introducing variety will help you make your characters (whether main characters or side characters) stand out as individuals, making them more memorable. But more than that, it’ll highlight issues in your society. It’ll create cultures and people who feel more real, and more relatable! And we all know the feeling of being different, so it’ll help your audience connect with your different characters too.

4. Tone whiplash

Tone Whiplash is where you jolt your players or readers very suddenly between moods, instead of easing them in. That doesn’t mean you can’t have variation in tone in your worldbuilding (you really should!). And it doesn’t mean you can’t have humour in a dark setting, for example. But very discordant juxtaposition of tone can really break the tension of a story.

It’s a problem the opposite way round, too. If your world is a bright cheerful tea-in-fairyland kind of place, and suddenly becomes a violent blood-bath of chainsaw-murderclowns, then you’ll loose all the readers who enjoy tea in fairyland, and your murderclown-lovers won’t make it to the bit they’ll enjoy. Basically, you end up turning off all your readers.

And even if people stick around, a tone whiplash event sets up very clear expectations. It telegraphs "something is suspicious here" to the audience. Most people will immediately assume the unicorn-rainbow elves are hiding a Dark Secret. And, if they're not, it’s going to fail to fulfill audience expectations. If you're subverting those on purpose, that's fine: but you never want to accidentally set up an expectation you don't deliver on. It feels like a broken promise.

How do you fix Tone whiplash?

So how do you smooth out Tone whiplash? Well, try applying some practicalities! The rainbow-elves in the example above might be protected by wards from the haunted forest… and maybe they live in fear that those wards will fail. Or they might be fierce hunters, wearing demon-spider teeth as trophies. When you bring the practicalities of the two very different settings together, it starts to feel more cohesive.

And especially when dealing with tone, a simple aesthetic shift can make all the difference. What if you reskinned those rainbow-elves as shadow elves, or even as moss goblins? They perform the same function in the story—it’s an oasis in the dangerous forest—but by moving them one step nearer to the tone of the wider area (that is, demon-spider-infested haunted doom forest) you’ll smooth out the Tone Whiplash, and make things feel more credible and less suspicious.

5. Mary Sue Worldbuilding

Can only one story be told in your world? Is it designed exclusively for your characters to shine? In fact, is it almost as if the world setting didn’t exist outside of your main characters and their actions…?

When asked, worldbuilding professor Dr Trent Hergenrader said that this was his number 1 worldbuilding mistake, one he sees again and again in his own students. We’ve nick-named it Mary Sue worldbuilding, because it’s the kind of worldbuilding mistake that can create characters of the Mary-Sue trope: so perfect, competent, and flawless that they seem like a parody. It’s also sometimes called "a snowglobe world", because the setting feels like a fake, contained environment for the protagonist: like the world from The Truman Show.

Whatever you call it, this worldbuilding problem gets in the way of suspension of disbelief, because your world feels like flat stage pieces, rather than a dynamic set. And it can also make your world boring, as if no one is doing anything or making any decisions except your main character.

How do you fix Mary Sue Worldbuilding?

A quick way to patch up Mary Sue Worldbuilding is by adding backgrounds, complexity and motivations to your side characters or NPCs. That’s a good way to show that there are other stories, struggles and narratives beyond those of the main character! Introducing a side-kick or second main character with their own character arc and complementary strengths and weaknesses can also help to break the Mary Sue worldbuilding problem.

But a more systemic fix for mary sue worldbuilding is by introducing history and current affairs of your world! Basically, making other stuff happen that isn’t directly related to your main character! After all, not everything should revolve around them!

When other things are happening in the background—let’s say a megacorporation merger or protests against magic users—the world feels much bigger than just your main character. Your characters may never get involved with these things; in which case, you can use them as genre and background flavor for your world. A cyber-suit here, a disgruntled mage there. On the other hand, your characters might be smart, and leverage associated events, like using a protest as a distraction. Either way, it’s a good technique for showing that the world is bigger than just the title character.

And even better: worldbuilding current affairs gives you more potential stories you can tell in your world in the future!

6. Bloated, Overly Complex Worldbuilding

Done right, world settings are stunning, complex, ever-growing realms that breed stories and excitement! Done wrong, they're overblown, over-complicated and impossible to track! Over-complexity is a common worldbuilding mistake, especially from those who build using the Top-Down worldbuilding method.

How to fix this worldbuilding problem?

To solve this worldbuilding issue, limit the different areas that you dig into when you're worldbuilding! If you're focussing on the military and politics of your world, you might want to dial back the amount of detail you add to your religions. This doesn't mean you can’t add juicy flavour there, but don't create hundreds of complex organized religions in lots of details! You'll never be able to use this information in your novel or campaign without exposition dumps, and it'll make your world feel too complicated for your players and readers to absorb!

7. Tropey, unoriginal worldbuilding

Generic feeling worlds are those world settings which feel familiar... and not necessarily in a good way. They might feel like a knock-off of a familiar franchise, like Tolkien’s Middle Earth or George Lucas’s Star Wars. This is a problem, because without giving your world its own unique characteristics, it’s hard for your players and readers to fall in love with your setting!

How to fix this worldbuilding problem?

Make sure that when you start worldbuilding, you consider your unique concept and overview of the world. Creating a meta-information article in World Anvil is a great way to keep track of that information. If you’re adding a familiar trope or concept, consider giving it a twist or a subversion. Reading widely, and especially reading books and watching movies from many different cultures and genres, is another good way to get inspiration from multiple sources and help you create something really special and unique!

8. Insta-travel Worldbuilding

This is a scale problem, at heart. There’s nothing more guaranteed to pull you out of a story than someone traveling hundreds of arduous miles on a journey… and then making their return almost instantaneously! Whilst it’s not necessary to plan distances in your world to the inch (or the 2.5cm!), breaking the rules of physics without explanation will give rise to complaints from your players and readers.

How to fix this worldbuilding problem?

Having a map with a simple scale is a great way to double check this! Remember, it need only be a sketch, and no one else need ever see it! Interactive maps are a great way to do this, and you can add lines to your map with journey times on them too! Remember that different terrain will pose different challenges, and some spaces may take longer to cross than others. Not all vehicles go the same speed over different terrain, and some terrain will require a change in transport type. For example, you’ll need a ship to cross the water, but (in our world at least) they’re useless on land! Beyond that, you’ll have your own vehicles in your world, and you know best how fast they are, and how long it takes to get from A to B!

9. Dark, dark worldbuilding

Don’t get me wrong—there’s no problem with building a dark world setting. But if everything is dark, then... well, you have a worldbuilding problem. If you want shadows and darkness, you have to have some light. If everything is awful, if everything feels grim, then your world loses its punch. And of course, exactly the opposite. If everything is wonderful all the time, you have no conflict, which means… no story!

How to fix this worldbuilding problem?

Remember that your world is in motion: things will be getting better or, in the case of a dark world setting, getting worse. Seeing a light go out, seeing the hero lose, or watching the corruption of good; these things are way darker than a monotone dark world could ever be. If you want to create a dark world setting with meaning, make sure that there are bright spots in your world, and show how they are disappearing, being corrupted or actively destroyed.

Also, remember that even in the darkest or brightest of worlds you should introduce contrast. Perhaps, if you’re writing “cosy” fiction or a children’s world this contrast will not be huge—more a shadow than darkness—but it should be there. And in very dark worlds, this contrast can serve to heighten the tension even more if it is very intense. For example, in a dystopian world, most of the population of a city might live in desperate squalor, but the 1% live in a clean, floating city above.

10. ULTIMATE POWER worldbuilding

Ultimate Power is a worldbuilding problem that’s surprisingly easy to create, if you have magic or powerful technology in your world. For example, say—by magic or nanobots—you have the power to imbue a wheel with perpetual motion. It doesn’t sound like much, right? Well, using force multipliers, you now have unlimited power. You can run trains off it, power factories, and whatever else you can imagine.

Constructs, like Golems for example, are another great showcase of this worldbuilding mistake. They are magically created work-machines, essentially, which require no food or fuel and can work all day and night. Set one to turn a wheel, you again have ultimate power. So why is no one using it in your world? Why do you still have people doing hard labor?

How to fix this worldbuilding problem?

The core of the ULTIMATE POWER problem is magic or technology without sufficient cost or limits. Introducing limitations is a key part of worldbuilding these aspects of your world. Make sure that you make it clear WHO has access to the power, which fuel, components or ingredients are necessary, and under which conditions it doesn’t work. In the long run, your player characters and novel characters will have a much more satisfying journey overcoming or managing these obstacles. And you’ll create a world that doesn’t have worldbuilding problems! A great example from media that solved this issue is the world of Full Metal Alchemist and its magic system based on the law of equivalent exchange.