#WriterProblems: How Much World Building Is Too Much World Building?

Kids,

I got my first round of comprehensive feedback on the novel from an editor friend of mine and, as I had enthusiastically requested, he had given it an incredibly detailed read and had incredibly detailed feedback for me.  And you know what?  I didn't get (that) bummed out about it at all.  I think there's a tendency out there to read full critiques back from people and think 'oh shit, now I'm at square one again' but I never fell into that headspace because the majority of the feedback I got was useful.

I love useful criticism.  Granted, I've now got oodles of tweaking and polishing to do before I release this thing into the big wide, world but the feedback I got confirmed what I'd been convinced of all along:  the bones of this story are solid.   There's just a random sixth digit that I might need to lop off and maybe a vestigial tail that needs ground down and some meat needs to be added here and there but there's a solid core there.  I'm close.  I'm so close that I can taste it and therefore, I will perservere, continue and keep going until you, my would-be readers, get to read the finished product.

But today, I'm confronted with a new problem- one that writers of genre fiction especially might be familiar with:  How much world building is too much world building?

This has been a problem for me in the past:  I get bogged down in paragraphs of content that soon turn into pages of backstory and alternative histories and I feel like my characters and my story get buried by it.  And I have this almost visceral distaste for big, lengthy, italicized openings that set the stage and let the reader now every minute detail of the universe they're about to step into.  That feels lazy to me and I feel like I can write better than that.

But then a new problem becomes clear:  if you don't raise the curtain on your world right from the get-go, you're lifting it slowly throughout the book- and that can be confusing for your readers but if you can pull it off, then I think discovering the world that you've created as a reader reads the book could also bring a little extra sweetner to the table and make your book that much better.

I'm a big fan of the idea of starting a book in medias res and then letting the reader catch up as they go along.  That's got risks attached to it (if the reader gets confused or lost or if, heaven forbid, they think your story doesn't make sense) but I also think if you can pull it off it could be awesome as well.  An exciting chance for the reader to really dig in and explore the world that you've created.

But I throw it out to you kids:  how much context is too much context?  How much of a world do you need to build for a reader to buy into it?  And given a choice, do you prefer to assemble the puzzle of the world of any given book yourselves or do you want the curtain fully raised to know exactly what you're getting into?

thinking deep thoughts
Tom