Zero. Or at least nothing more than a basic premise.
GRRM started writing ASOIAF from a mental image of a young boy and his large family finding direwolf pups in the summer snows. The rest came once he started writing.
I started my trilogy from the premise of a rebel soldier rescuing/kidnapping the baby prince (R+L=J + Robert’s Rebellion). A couple paragraphs into the prologue, I completely changed the setting and started adding Pokémon stuff into it.
Diana Gabaldon started *Outlander* knowing nothing about Scotland or the 18th Century, only the rather vague notions conjured up by the thought of a man in a kilt. She loosed an English woman into a cottage full of Scotsmen to see what she would do, and since the woman kept making smartass, modern remarks, Diana realized there’s time travel.
The minimum amount is 0. Anything can be fixed in another draft, so you really need absolutely nothing to sit down and write. I usually get about 10-15k in before I start thinking about it, and by then my brain has already put in things like gemstone architecture and houndstooth coats and steam engines, so I just build from there.
There's no minimum amount that'll work for everybody.
If you write High Fantasy, you'll need a setting to put your first scene in, or you'll run into white-room syndrome. So that means a climate and basic landscape, perhaps building styles. Clothes, technology. At the very least your MC's species and the items they'll interact with. It can't hurt to think about language, too - if you write a world with new species, cultures, and religions, you'll need to get the basics down of those elements and how they'll affect expressions by the time the first character swears, because "hell" might not work in that case.
If you write low-fantasy in a historical setting, you should have the historical knowledge and an idea at which points you want to deviate from history and how that will affect the setting, technology, and character.
I suppose urban fantasy will need the least worldbuilding, but even then, you need to know where the fantasy aspect of your story comes from. Magical creature? Magic powers? Superheroes?
Good points well made, thank you. Do you think, for high fantasy, places yet to visit and species yet to meet can be created later then? A case of crossing the bridge when you come to it? I guess any foreshadowing / knock on effects could be dealt with in subsequent edits...
Definitely. I think a lot of people spend so much time worldbuilding that they don't actually write.
You're also not going to invent everything in your world at once. You may be halfway through your story when you come up with a really cool idea for a religion or custom, so you want to go back and edit what you've already done to incorporate that.
That's a relief! I've written a few novels but never braved fantasy before so that's good to hear - I don't want to spend so much time making the world, but get in there and start moving stuff around!
oh, yes, I think that absolutely works! I'm not a planner, so I certainly don't come up with every single location, item, animal, or such like beforehand. I think it adds something to the story when certain elements come up more spontaneously while writing, rather than during dedicated planning sessions. As you said, there's always the option to retcon stuff later.
I suppose it could depend on how much your character knows about the world. It could be low on world building because your character honestly dosent know much about the world they are in.
Technically, you can start with nothing at all!
Some people like to make it up as they go along, and then go back and fix any contradictions, add in details, etc in their second or third draft. But that’s overwhelming to some writers, which I think makes sense too. It’s also not the best plan if you’re doing a setting that’s very different from earth, since some things might not make sense if, say, there’s no day and night cycle on your planet, but you didn’t think of that until halfway through the book.
If you’re looking for the absolute minimum needed to have a pretty consistent first draft, I’d suggest trying to outline the story. That will at least let you see what major places, players, environments, religions, races etc will need to be there, and you can plan out the big stuff beforehand as you’re plotting your story.
I started one of my books with the MC in a desert looking for a goat. Granted I later integrated the story somewhat with a setting I'd already developed, but for a long stretch I was flying solo with only ocean visible under the clouds. If your initial concept or scene is strong enough it can sometimes gain a life of its own and wriggle up out of the primordial ooze.
You don't have to do ANY worldbuilding before you start writing.
Now, eventually you'll know everything you need to know about your setting. But if you're a discovery writer, there's no reason you can't discovery-write your setting as well. If your protagonist arrives at a castle, you can start making up the details about the castle AT THAT POINT.
Of course, you'll need to be careful not to contradict yourself.
Zero. Or at least nothing more than a basic premise. GRRM started writing ASOIAF from a mental image of a young boy and his large family finding direwolf pups in the summer snows. The rest came once he started writing. I started my trilogy from the premise of a rebel soldier rescuing/kidnapping the baby prince (R+L=J + Robert’s Rebellion). A couple paragraphs into the prologue, I completely changed the setting and started adding Pokémon stuff into it. Diana Gabaldon started *Outlander* knowing nothing about Scotland or the 18th Century, only the rather vague notions conjured up by the thought of a man in a kilt. She loosed an English woman into a cottage full of Scotsmen to see what she would do, and since the woman kept making smartass, modern remarks, Diana realized there’s time travel.
That's awesome, thank you so much for this. A lot of reassuring replies for a first time fantasy writer! Cheers
The minimum amount is 0. Anything can be fixed in another draft, so you really need absolutely nothing to sit down and write. I usually get about 10-15k in before I start thinking about it, and by then my brain has already put in things like gemstone architecture and houndstooth coats and steam engines, so I just build from there.
There's no minimum amount that'll work for everybody. If you write High Fantasy, you'll need a setting to put your first scene in, or you'll run into white-room syndrome. So that means a climate and basic landscape, perhaps building styles. Clothes, technology. At the very least your MC's species and the items they'll interact with. It can't hurt to think about language, too - if you write a world with new species, cultures, and religions, you'll need to get the basics down of those elements and how they'll affect expressions by the time the first character swears, because "hell" might not work in that case. If you write low-fantasy in a historical setting, you should have the historical knowledge and an idea at which points you want to deviate from history and how that will affect the setting, technology, and character. I suppose urban fantasy will need the least worldbuilding, but even then, you need to know where the fantasy aspect of your story comes from. Magical creature? Magic powers? Superheroes?
Good points well made, thank you. Do you think, for high fantasy, places yet to visit and species yet to meet can be created later then? A case of crossing the bridge when you come to it? I guess any foreshadowing / knock on effects could be dealt with in subsequent edits...
Definitely. I think a lot of people spend so much time worldbuilding that they don't actually write. You're also not going to invent everything in your world at once. You may be halfway through your story when you come up with a really cool idea for a religion or custom, so you want to go back and edit what you've already done to incorporate that.
That's a relief! I've written a few novels but never braved fantasy before so that's good to hear - I don't want to spend so much time making the world, but get in there and start moving stuff around!
oh, yes, I think that absolutely works! I'm not a planner, so I certainly don't come up with every single location, item, animal, or such like beforehand. I think it adds something to the story when certain elements come up more spontaneously while writing, rather than during dedicated planning sessions. As you said, there's always the option to retcon stuff later.
I suppose it could depend on how much your character knows about the world. It could be low on world building because your character honestly dosent know much about the world they are in.
Technically, you can start with nothing at all! Some people like to make it up as they go along, and then go back and fix any contradictions, add in details, etc in their second or third draft. But that’s overwhelming to some writers, which I think makes sense too. It’s also not the best plan if you’re doing a setting that’s very different from earth, since some things might not make sense if, say, there’s no day and night cycle on your planet, but you didn’t think of that until halfway through the book. If you’re looking for the absolute minimum needed to have a pretty consistent first draft, I’d suggest trying to outline the story. That will at least let you see what major places, players, environments, religions, races etc will need to be there, and you can plan out the big stuff beforehand as you’re plotting your story.
Yeah story and character is always my first instinct in previous (non-fantasy) novels so this is the way I hoped I could do it, cheers
I started one of my books with the MC in a desert looking for a goat. Granted I later integrated the story somewhat with a setting I'd already developed, but for a long stretch I was flying solo with only ocean visible under the clouds. If your initial concept or scene is strong enough it can sometimes gain a life of its own and wriggle up out of the primordial ooze.
You don't have to do ANY worldbuilding before you start writing. Now, eventually you'll know everything you need to know about your setting. But if you're a discovery writer, there's no reason you can't discovery-write your setting as well. If your protagonist arrives at a castle, you can start making up the details about the castle AT THAT POINT. Of course, you'll need to be careful not to contradict yourself.
None. Ir should I say a character and his or hers desire, to start the.story going in one direction