Anonymous · 1mo

When you read fiction with an emphasis on worldbuilding, what makes a culture come alive for you? Are there any details you always enjoy seeing discussed or anything you really miss when it's not brought up?

Maybe because I don't have a particularly discerning eye, but I treat every sentence, from the language used in normal conversations as well as environmental descriptions as a chance at worldbuilding. Something I enjoy always, is the way the world expands in the perspective of the protagonist as they venture into the world, in the most natural way. We are in this character's head, and therefore their world, and the world expands from their experience. The world is not Just There, as a natural setting in which the protagonist experiences the story, but that their horizon also widens the farther away they venture from their starting point. I think this is one way to ensure that not a lot of readers are lost in the world before they are brought to the character's motives. However, I do have a major bone to pick with a lot of authors, and it's using contemporary curse words for, say, books set in medieval fantasy settings and such. They tend to break my immersion for like a smidge second, before I can focus right back into the world they've set up.

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