15 ways to write complicated worlds without making them complicated.

From high concepts to character dynamics.

Feb 18, 2023

15 ways to write Complicated and Uncomplicated, and make it work.

I’ve been thinking about comprehension a lot recently. One of my fans told me she is planning to read my first book again to find the hidden jokes and secret lore. This makes me very happy. It means that what I planned - to write a multiverse that fits in a book - worked out.

One reader even re-read one universe’s chapters in reverse order. She worked out things that a lot of others haven’t.

When I read stories, I enjoy ones which don’t spell everything out for me. If you’ve watched Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, you’ll see a lot of visual storytelling that can be missed when you look down at your snacks for half a second. But what’s critical is that losing this fragment of storytelling does not derail the story experience. You still know what’s going on through dialogue.

But, if you pay attention now, you know some things earlier than you would have otherwise. Comprehension relies on your attention. Not your full attention, but an almost subconscious recognition of different pieces of the story coming together.

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I think when crafting a story, especially a big one, you should consider that your readers are smart people. A lot of people are, even if social media tries to convince you otherwise. After all, your readers are voluntarily going out of their way to buy, and then read, a big book. Not everyone likes doing that (which is fine) but most of the people that do like doing it, like it because of the challenge.

So challenge them.

[As an aside, anyone who can watch all of a massive TV show and remember the key plot points is also pretty smart. This advice applies to all big media projects]

Get people thinking. Don’t be too vague, but consider who your audience is. What are their hobbies? How educated are they?

A lot of writing classes don’t think about that last one.

Perhaps it’s seen as offensive, but I don’t think it is. Certain people like certain things. I have a slightly different audience for each story, and by the end of March will have performed a stand-up comedy set that’s almost entirely aimed at people who have been through higher education. My short story, THE PROFESSOR AND THE TARDIGRADE, seems to be enjoyed a lot by physicists and biologists. Whereas my short stories about Tin Foil Tim are popular among my comedian friends.

And most of the time, I mix all of that together.

It’s okay to have a refined audience and aim for them.

So when you are building a world, how do you make it complicated and uncomplicated?

To put it simply, you do not have all the stuff ON THE PAGE.

Here are 15 examples of writing a big story in a small way.

Don’t ‘frontload’ your story with a hefty prologue or exposition. Instead, cut some of the prologue and place it within dialogue, or later in the story. If the reader does not absolutely need to know the geography and geopolitical history of Dragonland now, don’t tell them about it now. Tell them when it becomes relevant, or a little bit before (foreshadowing).
Do look at other books with similar scope. If you’re writing a trilogy, read a trilogy. Or better yet, read reviews of that trilogy. Or even better, watch youtube reviews of that trilogy written and acted by a grumpy person. Find someone who HATED a trilogy and work out what went wrong.
If you’ve published work before, ask a previous reader what they loved most about your worldbuilding. Work on that.
If you’re brave enough, repeat step 3 but for things people didn’t love about your worldbuilding. Work on that too.
Find yourself lost in a forest on a spaceship and try to write your way out of the place. Create an action scene in your book, put it right at the front, and see how much of the lore is relevant when your characters are trying to not die.
Subtext is key. Even subtle things like a character avoiding bodies of water, or being very careful around traffic lights, can hint at some worldbuilding that can be made obvious later. Your more observant readers will work it out sooner, allowing them a cathartic payoff when they are proven right. Anyone else can just enjoy the story as it unfolds.
Write in layers. Point 6 only covers two, but you could add numerous storytelling layers to a story without bewildering your audience if you do it right.
Find your own definition of ‘right’. I’m not your boss. If you want to write a story with 1 layer or a story with 20, you can. Create your own genres, be weird.
And most importantly. Entertain yourself. If your brain wants to write a silly, simple story, write it. Similarly, if you need a complex puzzle of a trilogy to throw together like a mad scientist in a workshop, do that too. You are your audience.
Make it comprehensible to a casual reader, but engaging for a passionate one. That is to say your book should be an easy read, whilst having the depth that other readers want on demand.
Do not patronise or bewilder. This is an addition to point 10. Essentially you don’t want your audience to think you think they are stupid. A story with overly complicated prose will be borderline unreadable, pretentious, and dull. A story with oversimplified characters will make the reader feel like the writer doesn’t respect their intelligence. Ever seen a movie with painfully cardboard dialogue? Remember how uneasy it made you feel? Yeah.
Don’t go into the uncanny valley of literature. Humans make mistakes, stories in real life get messy. If things happen too coveniently all the time then the believability collapses, as do any stakes you set earlier on.
Addition to point 12. Stop resurrecting fan-favourite characters just to sell more action figures. And if you do bring someone back from the dead, have a damn good reason to.
Enjoy writing. It is no good writing something that does not inspire you. You need to enjoy yourself in a challenging way. Once people read your book, they will feel the joy you felt when writing it. Seed it into your book. Add the psychic subtext of enjoyment. People will feel it through the pages and they will love it.
Be your own audience. This is the most important point.

More about comprehension.

I found this video today, and I won’t pretend the ideas in it are mine, so here it is.

This is a fantastic video. Steve Kaufmann’s idea to accept uncertainty can be taken from its original context here and used to explain how some people read books. And it is critically important when you are writing one, too.

I accepted uncertainty when writing my own book. I purposefully left gaps in character lore and worldbuilding because I trust my audience. You should trust yours. But in order to trust them, you need to know them first.

So here is the biggest piece of advice.

Publish something.

Do it now.

It doesn’t have to be your best work.

It can be messy and unedited.

Just get the confidence to put yourself out there.

Find a writing group and join it.

Find beta readers (you can ask in the comments here if you like, you might find people. It’s what this is for).

Build your confidence to do things by doing them.

Take small steps if you need to, but take steps.

I have just joined RoyalRoad and within a day got two lovely comments on a story I had originally published in Who Built The Humans?. I won’t get into talking about WBTH, but my point is that feedback is everywhere. You just have to go out and find it.

I’ve been desperate for feedback for a number of months, which motivated me to republish that story as a standalone eBook. It will later be on Draft2Digital and Bookfunnel. I use Bookfunnel to find readers, as most of you will know. And I’ll do another post about that process soon.

If you enjoyed this post and want to support my work, please consider a free subscription. My goal here as Halfplanet is to help people. Beyond that, I would like to gather enough passionate writers and readers to convince the Arts Council that a magazine I have planned is worth investing in. You might be in it. But that’s a story for another day.

See you next time,

Stay innovative

-Phillip Carter, Halfplanet Press