Is it bad not to explain things?
Background
So I see a lot of questions on the site like this. They're all about deeply explaining worldbuilding and stuff, doing all of that explaining type of thing. Normally, I just skip that. For example:
My 'magic' system works by calling upon the power of the ancient tales and old gods.
That's literally all I've said about it. I didn't really want to waste words on going in-depth because there isn't that much to it.
Only details necessary to the story are mentioned.
Now I know this one is going to be particularly frowned upon, but I'm really big on not confusing the reader. I only mention things about the world when they have to be. Of course I have a big, sprawling worldbuilded idea in my head, but I don't want all of that to spill onto the page.
It seems different with a lot of people. Many questions asked on this site are about really in-depth, intense worldbuilding. It all seems so unnecessary to me. For this question I think I'd just have the thing work and mainly show the reader how it worked through dialogue (if I really had to).
Question
A few questions which tie into each other:
Is it necessary to include tons of worldbuilding details?
Will a reader just 'accept' that something works, or require an explanation?
For example, my magic system is a great example of that. There is no explanation for why you can draw upon the power of the ancients it just happens.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/26550. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
2 answers
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My only objection to It Just Happens is when you overload the suspension of disbelief.
You can draw on the power of the ancients for magic? great.
You can draw on said power for flight, telekinesis, telepathy, physical transmogrification, healing, fighting, blasting fireballs, warding off someone else's fireballs, wayfinding, animal telepathy, and mixing the perfect Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster... all at once? by the same person? without paying a price? Now I'm going to need an explanation.
So as long as you don't strain your minimalist explanation with maximalist results, you should be okay. Each person can do one thing at a time, or maybe each person can only tap one kind of magic: sure. That's reasonable. You don't need to go into details about how you contact the gods or which gods bestow which power etc. It's when It Just Happens becomes Dei Ex Machinae Happens that you need to prop up the Dei with worldbuilding.
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The audience that actually cares about worldbuilding is pretty small. Most people who read LOTR, for example, don't care a fig about the whole legendarium. They only care about the story.
Most stories with magic in them are very indefinite about how the magic works and what the limits of a character's magical abilities are. And, in fact, the same could be said of physical abilities. One sees this particularly with superheroes, whose abilities seem to be adjusted to the crisis of the moment rather than being consistent across a movie or series. But it is often true of ordinary human abilities in stories that depend on physical feats.
If this is true, why does it not all seem like cheating? Why is the suspension of disbelief (or, to use Tolkien's phrase, the reader's acceptance of the sub-created world) not violated by these inconsistencies and the general lack of definition of capabilities? Because, in the end, stories are moral. They are not about solving technical problems, they are about facing moral dilemmas, about seeing how much the protagonist is willing the bleed in pursuit of their goal. They are about moral transformation or moral revelation.
The question as the heart of every story, therefore, is not, how will they get out of this, but, what are they willing to give up to get out of this. We want to see the price paid. We do not feel cheated by the use of powers otherwise unsuspected or unexplained, as long as the moral order of the story is not violated.
But if new or unexplained powers are used to get the character out of a moral dilemma, that is a very different matter. That is a cheat. That is deus ex machina.
You don't have to explain things, therefore, unless they create a moral question in the story, and you don't have to worry about things that just happen as long as they do not violate the moral order of the story.
There may, of course, be other reason why you may want to explain them anyway, and they may or may not change the audience for your story, but your obligation is to the moral consistency of your story, not the mechanical consistency of your invented world.
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