In The Art of Story as Worldbuilding, author Nathan Nance addresses the common pitfall where writers get so trapped in researching and documenting their fictional universes that they forget to write an actual story. He argues that worldbuilding should never exist in isolation; instead, it must be filtered entirely through character perspective and plot necessity.
The piece offers practical advice for writers, but its scope is intentionally focused on craft execution.
Nance introduces a brilliant, interconnected triangle: Character affects plot, plot affects worldbuilding, and worldbuilding affects character. This reminds writers that changing a detail in one corner of the triangle instantly triggers a ripple effect across the other two, preventing the setting from feeling like a static backdrop.
The essay’s strongest point is the argument that a reader doesn’t actually care about the dry mechanics of a fictional world (like how a spaceship’s engine works). They care about how that world impacts human beings. By focusing on how a fantasy element—like a mechanical prosthetic arm—makes a character feel internally, the worldbuilding automatically gains emotional weight.
Nance accurately diagnoses a major source of writer’s block: spending months or years building languages, economic models, and complex magic systems before writing a single scene. He rightly argues that over-preparing can freeze a narrative, whereas letting the world reveal itself during active drafting keeps the prose dynamic.
Using The Expanse series (James S.A. Corey) and V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic perfectly illustrates his points. He shows how these authors intentionally withhold complex cultural lore or political details until later books, introducing them only when the characters are forced to navigate those specific challenges.
While Nance acknowledges that everyone writes differently, his advice strongly favors “discovery writers” (pantsers) over “outliners” (plotters). For complex high fantasy or hard science fiction, building out the rules, physics, and constraints of a magic or technological system before writing is often a necessity to prevent massive plot holes or logical inconsistencies later on.
The essay leans heavily on the standard, well-worn advice of “show, don’t tell.” While this is generally good practice, there are times in speculative fiction where an intentional, beautifully written summary or brief “info-dump” is the most efficient way to establish scope and push the narrative forward without grinding the action to a halt.
Nance assumes that most readers will get bored by extended descriptions of a culture’s history or artistic exploits. This overlooks a significant segment of the science fiction and fantasy community that genuinely loves deep, encyclopedic worldbuilding for its own sake—the exact phenomenon G.M. Baker critiqued. For some readers, exploring the grand design of the universe is just as satisfying as following the protagonist’s personal journey.