In this week’s episode, I take a look at some of the dangers and difficulties of worldbuilding for writers, and look back at the last fourteen years of self-publishing.
This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Cloak Mage: Omnibus Two at my Payhip store:
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The coupon code is valid through May 11, 2025. So if you need a new book for spring, we’ve got you covered!
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 248 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April the 17th, 2025 and today we are looking at worldbuilding for writers, the advantages and the dangers of it. Before we get to that, we will do Coupon of the Week, have an update of my current writing projects, and take a look back at the last 14 years of self-publishing.
First, let’s do Coupon of the Week. This week’s coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Cloak Mage: Omnibus Two at my Payhip store, and that coupon code is NADIAOMNI2. And as always, we’ll have the coupon code and the links to my store in the show notes. This coupon is valid through May the 11th, 2025. So if you need a new book for spring, we have got you covered.
I am pleased to report that Shield of Battle is finished and I was publishing it last night and this morning. So by the time you are listening to this, it should be available on most ebook stores and as of right now, I’m definitely certain it is on Amazon, Smashwords, my Payhip store, and Apple Books, but hopefully it should be on the rest of them by the time this episode goes live. Now that Shield of Battle is done, my next main project will be Ghost in the Corruption, the fifth of six books in the Ghost Armor series, and I’m about 17,000 words into that and I’m hoping if all goes well to have that out towards the end of May.
I will also be starting on the final book in The Shield War Series, Shield of Power. As of right now, I am zero words into that. I have to finish writing the outline before I start. That’ll be my secondary project as I work on Ghost in the Corruption and then after Ghost in the Corruption is done, Shield of Power will get promoted to main project. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you know how my system works.
For audio news, Shield of Deception, the main recording I believe, finished yesterday. I just got a text from Brad Wills that he was done with that. So next week I will have my listener finish listening to it for any potential changes or errors and then it goes into the approval process and hopefully that will be out sometime in early May, if all goes well. Hollis McCarthy is also recording Ghost in the Assembly right now and is making good progress with that. So I hope to have more news on these exciting audiobooks from two excellent narrators for you shortly.
00:02:33 Thoughts on 14 Years of Self-Publishing
So instead of Question of the Week this week, I wanted to instead take a look back at the last 14 years of self-publishing because as of April 2025, I’ve now been self-publishing for 14 years, which is the longest continual time I have done anything ever. So I’m very grateful to all of you who have read one of my books or listened to my audiobooks and some of you have been around for that entire 14 years as well. So thank you for all the many books you have read and for following along on the various adventures of my protagonists. I thought it might be interesting to take a look back at the last 14 years and pick out a few of the highlights for each year.
So let’s start with the distant days of 2011. That is when I started self-publishing. I published Demonsouled and Child of the Ghosts and I wrote Soul of Serpents, which was the first book I ever wrote specifically intending to self-publish it and not try and place it with a traditional publisher. After Soul of Serpents came out, I then made Demonsouled permafree, which really worked quite well and sort of kickstarted indie publishing for me.
On to 2012. I wrote Soul of Sorcery, which was the first book of mine to get on the Amazon bestseller list, wrote the Linux Command Line Beginners Guide (which still sells to this day) in the realm of nonfiction, and I wrote Ghosts in The Storm, which was the first Caina book I ever intended specifically for self-publishing and not in hopes of finding a traditional publisher. Child of the Ghosts, Ghost in the Flames, and Ghost in the Blood I all wrote in hopes of finding a traditional publisher, which never happened, but Ghost in the Storm was the first Caina book I wrote within the entire intention of self-publishing it from the beginning.
In 2013, I finished the Demonsouled series with Soul of Swords and I started writing Frostborn. 2014, I finished the first Ghost series with Ghost in Surge and started Ghost Exile with Ghost in the Cowl. In 2015, I started the Cloak Games series with the very first Nadia book, Cloak Games: Thief Trap. The contrast between what I originally envisioned for the series and what it became is amusing. I joked that I wanted an urban fantasy series about a bad person very slowly and reluctantly becoming a good one, but what I actually ended up with was an urban fantasy/science fiction series about Catwoman evolving into Gandalf. Also, I didn’t plan for nearly as many science fiction elements as ended up in the series.
In 2016, Frostborn: Omnibus One hit the USA Today Bestseller List (back when that still existed), and I finished the Ghost Exile series with Ghost in the Winds. In 2017, the first five Frostborn audiobooks came out from Tantor with Frostborn: The Gray Knight being my first ever audiobook (as excellently narrated by Steven Crossley).
2017 was also my highest sales year so far. I finished the Frostborn series and started writing Sevenfold Sword. I started the Ghost Night series with Ghost in the Ring. Like Cloak Games, Ghost Night evolved significantly while I was writing it. I originally thought the series would be set entirely in Ulkaar, but by the third book I was bored with that idea and so the narrative started going all over the Empire instead and then to Istarinmul and Iramis as well. I also published the first five books of the Silent Order science fiction series.
In 2018, the Sevenfold Sword audiobooks started coming out from Podium, and I started doing my own audiobooks with Frostborn: The Dark Warden and Child of the Ghosts. I finished the Cloak Game series with Cloak Games: Mage Fall and decided to continue Nadia’s story with the Cloak Mage series.
In 2019, I finished the Sevenfold Sword series and started on Dragontiarna. Dragontiarna: Knights was my 100th novel. I started the Cloak Mage series with Cloak of Dragons and Cloak of Wolves.
In 2020, COVID. I wrote the entire Wraithshard series in 2020 and also took Photoshop classes, which was helpful for both cover design and ad images. In 2021, I finished the Dragontiarna series with Dragontiarna: Warden. I started on the Dragonskull series with Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire and I finished the Ghost Night series with Ghost in the Sun.
In 2022, I continued Dragonskull, Silent Order, and Cloak Mage. In 2023, I finished Dragonskull and the Silent Order series. I started Ghost Armor and The Shield War, attempted to write a LitRPG (which became the Stealth and Spells Online series), and I started the Half-Elven Thief series.
In 2024, I continued Ghost Armor, The Shield War, Stealth and Spells Online, Cloak Mage, and Half-Elven Thief. I wrote Ghost in the Veils, which was my 150th novel. In 2025 (so far), I decided that I had too many unfinished series, so right now I’m focusing on finishing the Shield War, Ghost Armor, and Stealth and Spells. Considering that I just released Book Five of Six of The Shield War and I’m working on Book Five of Six of Ghost Armor, I think I’m making good progress.
But looking back, it has been a really busy 14 years, hasn’t it? As always, thanks for reading and hopefully if you’re looking for a new book of mine to read, you can go out and get Shield of Battle right now.
00:07:22 Main Topic: Worldbuilding
Now onto our main topic of the week, worldbuilding and creating backstory, which I’m classifying as a writing adjacent activity.
As you know, if you’ve been listening to the show for the past few weeks, I’m working on a new podcast series about what I call writing adjacent activities. What do I mean by writing adjacent activities? I’m talking about a task that seems like it is part of the writing process but really belongs in a different category. These tasks are important, but they can also be a pitfall if you spend too much time on them or don’t use that time correctly. In this series, we will focus on a few of those tasks and how they can benefit or hinder your writing process even though they seem like good uses of time and may be beneficial in the proper amounts.
In this episode, we will conclude this series of writing adjacent activities with discussion on worldbuilding and creating backstories. Although these things are very important in creating stories, especially in fantasy and science fiction, they can easily become a never ending project that doesn’t lead to actually creating the story itself. We’ll discuss ways to help yourself find a balance and realize when it’s interfering with your writing goals.
First of all, what is worldbuilding? It is the process of creating the history, culture, politics, magical systems, and geography of a whole fictional world. For example, the districts of Panem in the Hunger Games series or the magical system of allomancy and feruchemy in the Mistborn series are examples of things created for those fictional worlds. As we mentioned earlier, worldbuilding tends to be most used in fantasy and science fiction.
Backstories are less intricate than world building. Simply put, it’s what happens to your characters before the story starts. For example, in the Frostborn series, it’s part of Ridmark’s backstory that his wife Aelia dies before the start of the series. Although it doesn’t happen “on screen”, the guilt and emotions he has over it is an essential part of his character and drive his actions in the Frostborn series. Characters in any genre will most likely benefit from having at least a little bit of backstory because it makes the characters feel more developed.
So what are the benefits of spending time on worldbuilding and backstory? Here are four reasons it’s a positive thing to do as a writer.
#1: Having a well-developed and compelling world makes your story richer and more interesting. For example, the plots in the Harry Potter series are fairly simple. What compels people to reread them are in part because they enjoy the details of Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and Diagon Alley. The magical world in Harry Potter has a lot of small, often humorous details.
#2: Worldbuilding helps you think out details in advance that could hinder your writing process. For example, if your magical system relies on wizards drinking massive amounts of coffee in order to cast spells but the story is set in an Arctic world in the Ice Age before global trading made coffee easy to acquire, you can’t have them grow it themselves naturally because coffee beans need a different climate. Trying to decide where to get the coffee is going to derail things for a bit and could be decided in advance to make the writing process more efficient.
#3: Backstories make a character feel more like a real person. It feels like they’ve lived a full life before the story. It makes them feel less like a puppet, more like a real person. Having at least a sense of their family and personal relationships or their work experience adds a lot to the reader’s understanding of a character. For example, in Half-Elven Thief, knowing that Rivah was almost sold into slavery by her father explains why she’s not eager to spend time around nobles and often acts against her own self-interest to help people gain freedom. A good backstory can create character motivations and make their decisions clear to the readers.
#4: Worldbuilding makes the story more unique and can give you ideas for the plot.
Making a world and thinking about its economic, social, and political structures is a creative process. For example, in the Cloak Mage series, Nadia has been given the power to deputize civilians in emergency, which she does frequently because being the main character, she runs into a lot of emergencies. This ability led me to consider what it must be like for an ordinary person to engage with all the changes to their world in such a short period of time and how most of them don’t even see the threats that Nadia faces daily. This led me to create short stories from the perspective of the truck driver Casimir Volansko, who views the world in a very different perspective from people like Nadia or Riordan.
So although worldbuilding is important and in some genres it’s absolutely essential, it can be a pitfall if it falls out of balance with actual writing. Here are five ways it can become a pitfall or hinder you as a writer.
#1: Worldbuilding that is too detailed can read as false or twee to the reader. A while back, there was a viral social media post talking about how in fantasy place names often have intricate explanations that take up entire paragraphs, when in reality places are often named for no significant reason at all, such as Big River or East Creek, or because of translation or clerical errors such as Britain having six different River Avons.
It’s important to remember that characters actually living in these created worlds won’t think or talk too much about the broadest aspects of their world because of them, it’s completely normal. For example, in our world, we almost never have long conversations in day-to-day living about why some people live in the suburbs and some do not. The reasons that people live in suburbs are known to all of us as part of the gestalt and not especially interesting as part of day-to-day to life. Where that changes is when something changes within those suburbs, such as, for example, a new housing development or changes in property taxes, then people might get more opinionated or philosophical, but even still only as much as it impacts them personally most of the time.
So what you’ll want to do is avoid the infamous “As you know, Bob”, where one character will tell another a great big info dump just for the sake of sharing that information for the reader when in fact, the characters know that already and there’s no reason to reiterate it.
#2: It can be hard for a writer to step back and separate all the possible things established in the worldbuilding process from what the plot actually needs. Just like with historical research, it can be tempting for the writer to want to include everything or have a hard time judging how much information is too much for the reader. Simply put, the reader needs to know the worldbuilding enough to follow the plot. If the worldbuilding is holding up the plot or overcomplicating it, then it’s not serving the reader or the book.
The same thing is true of backstory. We don’t need to know about every case a detective in a thriller has previously solved unless it impacts something about the current one or explains something about his behavior in the book. For example, we don’t know how Ridmark learned to read as a child because it’s not relevant to what he’s doing in the Frostborn series. What we do learn about his childhood is that he learned the importance of wielding a staff and this early lesson informed his respect for the weapon. Because Ridmark learned to wield one properly, he has an advantage over someone who doesn’t respect staffs, and it comes up often in action scenes in the Frostborn series.
#3: Worldbuilding can easily become a never ending arts and crafts project: making an entire atlas worth of elaborate maps, drawing outfits for each character, rendering entire cities worth of buildings, and even testing out fabric dyes are all things that people have actually done as part of the worldbuilding process that doesn’t translate to progress in writing a novel.
#4: Worldbuilding can take over the task of creating a strong plot and strong characters. The coolest world or most intricate magical system isn’t going to matter if the characters are undeveloped or the plot is weak. Think of worldbuilding as the seasoning that enhances the meat of plot and characterization.
#5: At some point you have to set aside your worldbuilding and actually write the story. It’s too easy to spend months or even years creating a world without getting a single chapter finished. Some people are happy with worldbuilding as its own separate hobby and just enjoy the creative process involved with that instead of writing or developing plots. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. However, if your actual goal is to finish a novel, you have to eventually make the transition from worldbuilder to story crafter.
What are some ways to avoid spending too much time on worldbuilding or backstories? Here are two tips that might help you.
#1: It might be helpful to create your outline before you start worldbuilding. If you have a solid idea of what the plot is going to be, you can focus the details of your world around that, which is generally more effective than the opposite approach.
#2: Set aside time for worldbuilding apart from writing. For example, give yourself a week to work on worldbuilding and character backstories before starting a draft limits how much time you will spend on it and redirects you to focus on the actual writing.
And a bonus tip, it might be helpful to just think of your worldbuilding in terms of what the character knows. For example, in Half-Elven Thief, I did a little bit of worldbuilding for the rest of the Empire in the setting and the political system and so forth. But it’s only relevant to the terms when Rivah happens to think about it or affects her because as we mentioned earlier, characters only tend to think about the circumstances of their world when they’re directly affected by them. So Rivah isn’t really that interested in how the Empire is governed or who the emperor is, but she’s much more interested in local affairs in Tar-Carmatheion since that affects her the most personally.
Like the other writing adjacent tasks in this series, worldbuilding and creating backstories will expand to the amount of time and effort that you’ll allow it. It’s important to give it its proper place and to keep the focus on getting words down on the page.
So that’s it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review at your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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