The evolution of contemporary speculative fiction has sparked a profound debate over what truly drives a narrative. Historically, Western literature prioritized the plot—a tightly structured sequence of cause, effect, and human choice that propelled characters toward a definitive internal transformation. In recent decades, however, the spectacular rise of video games, tabletop role-playing games, and sprawling cinematic universes has shifted creative energy toward worldbuilding: the meticulous architecture of fictional histories, magic systems, geographies, and lore.
This cultural shift has created a rift in literary philosophy. In his critical essay, The Rise of Worldbuilding and the Decline of Literature, G.M. Baker laments this trend, arguing that an obsession with expansive settings has diluted the art of storytelling and choked the oxygen out of traditional literary plots. Conversely, writing instructor Nathan Nance offers a more harmonious perspective in The Art of Story as Worldbuilding, framing the setting not as a rival to the plot, but as an essential, symbiotic partner. By analyzing the tension between Baker’s macro-level critique and Nance’s ground-level craft advice, we can observe that worldbuilding has not inherently degraded literature; rather, it has fundamentally transformed the relationship between setting, character, and reader expectation.
The Friction of Form: Story Worlds versus Legendariums
To understand why worldbuilding and traditional plotting frequently clash, one must first examine how their structural demands differ. Baker draws a sharp line between what he terms a “story world” and a “legendarium.” A traditional story world is intentionally small, compact, and isolated—just expansive enough to act as a crucible for a specific human drama. Think of an isolated country house in a murder mystery or a ship at sea; these settings exist solely to trap characters together and force an emotional or moral reckoning. Crucially, when a true literary story concludes, its transformative arc finishes with finality, and the story world neatly folds up.
In stark contrast, a legendarium is vast, ancient, and open-ended. Within a legendarium, the backstory is often treated as the main attraction, and the immediate front-story serves merely as a trigger to pull back the curtain on the universe’s history. Because the primary goal of a legendarium is to build a universe that outlasts any single narrative, its stories cannot be allowed to close with absolute finality.
Baker argues that this structural open-endedness directly compromises character depth. True literary merit, he asserts, requires profound, permanent character transformations. However, a character cannot undergo infinite psychological overhauls before their personality hardens; thus, multi-volume franchises and corporate media universes inevitably resort to a “serial reset,” flattening characters into static figures who experience only skin-deep moral lessons so they can return to the starting line for the next installment. From Baker’s perspective, the expansive legendarium inevitably sacrifices the psychological depth of the individual on the altar of infinite world expansion.
The Craft of Symbiosis: The Narrative Triangle
Where Baker sees an inherent, zero-sum conflict between world and plot, Nathan Nance identifies an opportunity for profound creative symbiosis. Writing for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, Nance addresses the exact creative failure Baker critiques—the dreaded “worldbuilding first” trap, where an author spends years detailing economic models and magic rules without ever advancing a plot. However, Nance’s solution is not to discard the legendarium, but to weave it inextricably into character psychology through a framework he calls the narrative “triumvirate.”
According to Nance, plot, character, and worldbuilding form an interconnected triangle. A writer cannot alter a single detail in the setting without triggering a direct ripple effect across the other two corners. In an expertly constructed novel, the rules and constraints of the environment are the precise mechanisms that force internal character growth. Environmental pressures, political structures, or resource scarcities naturally generate authentic personal and social friction.
Furthermore, Nance argues that the human element is what prevents worldbuilding from devolving into a dry encyclopedia. A reader rarely cares about the cold, mathematical blueprint of a fictional world; they care about how that world impacts human beings. By filtering the setting entirely through the protagonist’s emotional state, sensory perceptions, and immediate needs, worldbuilding stops being a distracting backdrop and becomes an active engine of human drama.
The Audience of Abundance: A Generational Shift in Reading
The divide between Baker and Nance ultimately mirrors a broader generational evolution in reader psychology. Baker approaches fiction from a classical literary standpoint, valuing the passive consumption of a complete, tightly wound work of art. For this style of reader, an overabundance of lore feels like bloated self-indulgence that stalls narrative momentum. He notes with some weariness that modern historical fiction often prioritizes accurate factual research over literary execution, and that contemporary fantasy fans frequently care more about wandering through a built universe than following a propulsive plot.
Yet, as Baker himself astutely points out, worldbuilding has emerged as a uniquely participatory art form. Modern audiences, heavily influenced by interactive media, do not always want a fictional universe to vanish when a character’s personal arc ends. They wish to imaginatively inhabit the space, learn its rules, write fan fiction, and engage in cosplay.
Nance’s writing philosophy directly serves this modern expectation by advocating for the gradual, strategic release of lore. By withholding complex cultural history until the characters are forced to navigate it, a writer keeps the immediate pace tight while dropping breadcrumbs that hint at a much larger, vibrant universe waiting to be explored.
Reconciling the Rift
Ultimately, worldbuilding and literature are not mutually exclusive; rather, they exist in a delicate, high-stakes balance. When worldbuilding is executed poorly—treated as an exercise in self-indulgent data-dumping or exploited by corporations to sustain endless, hollow franchises—it validates Baker’s warnings of a declining literary culture.
However, when executed with Nance’s symbiotic framework, worldbuilding does not destroy literature; it elevates it. By anchoring vast, imaginative landscapes to deep character psychology and authentic dramatic stakes, contemporary authors can achieve something truly remarkable: a narrative that satisfies the classical craving for a profound human story, while simultaneously constructing a magnificent, enduring world for the reader to call home.