Creators & Worldbuilding
In today’s article we’ll be finishing up The Three Types Of Worldbuilders series I’ve been doing lately.
So far we’ve covered Planners and Storytellers, but today we’ll be discussing Creators and how they worldbuild. (spoiler alert: worldbuilding is basically all they ever do)
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What Is A Creator?
A Creator is the type of worldbuilder who is a worldbuilder first, and a writer second. In fact, they may even prefer worldbuilding to writing.
Creators find joy in creating new and interesting creatures and places, and usually get most of their story and character ideas from the things they create.
Some Creators may start building a world even before they have a plot, and will end up creating a plot and/or characters after they’ve already created a world, instead of starting with a plot/characters and building a world around them.
And as amazing as that may sound, it can lead to some pretty big problems…
Creator Weaknesses
Plot.
This problem could be anything from “What should the plot be?” to “Which plot should I choose?” to “Which characters should the plot follow?”
Creators do a ton of worldbuilding and they have a lot of different options to choose from when it comes to storylines, characters, etc.
But because of all the options they have, Creators may choose a storyline and start writing, only to become dissatisfied or bored and switch to a “better” story with “more interesting” characters —only for the cycle to repeat itself over and over again.
Creators have a tendency of becoming attached to the world they’ve spent the most time creating, so if they have a new plot idea they want to write (that may or may not fit their beloved story world), they will completely change their worldbuilding to fit the plot, instead of just creating a new world for their new story.
Another problem Creator’s often face is too much exposition.
If you’ve created an entire fictional world, it’s logical to want to share that world with your readers so that they will grow to love it just as much as you do, but Creators tend to overshare and overestimate how much information a reader actually needs to understand the story.
Like Planners, Creators get overwhelmed when faced with plot holes—especially if fixing them means changing a lot of the worldbuilding they’ve worked so hard on.
And also like Planners, Creators find it difficult to stop worldbuilding and start writing. Not necessarily because they want their world to be perfect before they start writing a story—though they usually do—but because they enjoy worldbuilding.
Creator Strengths
Creators tend to be great at describing their creations. You can clearly picture the places, things, people, and creatures they describe because Creators take their worldbuilding seriously. A Creator will go to the ends of the earth (or at least the farthest corners of the internet) in order to research different topics for their stories.
Attention to detail is one of the greatest strengths of a Creator. Creators turn fiction into fact in the minds of their readers by using their thorough research and heavy worldbuilding.
Creators transport you into their story world and make it so you never want to leave. They create fictional worlds that feel rich and alive—even if their story only takes place in one small part of the vast world they created.
Creators are experts at coming up with plot, scene, character, creature, and item concepts. Their imaginations are always active to the point where every hour of the day is a brainstorming session.
Creators excel at creating characters with complex motivations and interesting backstories (usually because each character has a specific place and purpose in the story world the Creator has developed).
Creators are both detail and big-picture-oriented, so they’re skilled at weaving symbols, motifs, and themes into their stories and worlds in both subtle and obvious ways.
What To Focus On
All in all, Creators are amazing storytellers—when they actually tell their stories.
Like Planners and Storytellers, Creators have many things that keep them from publishing their stories, but the biggest thing is chaos and confusion.
The average Creator may have at least ten different documents full of enough worldbuilding info to fill a book, but no idea how to organize it all.
Or, a Creator might have plenty of storylines and characters they could follow, but no idea which ones they should follow.
I wrote an article on Organizing Your Worldbuilding a couple years ago, so if you’re struggling with organizing your worldbuilding/writing, I recommend that you check it out!
But for now, let’s focus on the main problem Creators have when it comes to storytelling: narrowing things down.
Narrowing Things Down For Creators
In order to actually finish writing a story instead of jumping from plotline to plotline, it may be useful for a Creator to ask themselves a simple question:
“What kind of story do I want to tell?”
Instead of getting caught up in worldbuilding, characters, and plotlines, a Creator should take the big picture angle and choose a theme/message that they want to get across to their readers with whatever story they write.
Getting attached to a concept instead of easily interchangeable things like the characters and scenery will help keep the Creator focused on their goal of writing and finishing their story.
Encouragement from other writers will go a long way as well!
Creators are self-motivated when it comes to worldbuilding, but not as much when it comes to writing anything other than a character’s backstory or the first-few-thousand words of their newest story idea.
Having other people around to get excited about the story a Creator is working on may give a Creator the motivation and determination they need to keep writing.
The End Of A Series
And there we have it! This concludes my four-part series on The Three Types Of Worldbuilders Revisited!
Did you enjoy this series? What do you struggle with the most as a worldbuilder/writer? What other topics would you enjoy reading an article about?
Let me know down in the comments!
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