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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31547
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31547
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The simple answer is that you don't. You don't tell the reader anything that is not needed to support the plot of theme of the story.

There are a lot of people who enjoy world building as a hobby and when they have built a world they want to write a novel set in it as a way of taking people on a guided tour of that world. Their primary interest in the story is to make sure that all the features of the world that they are especially proud of get included in the tour. This is a harmless hobby, but it is not how novels are written.

In a novel, story arc is paramount and story arc consists of a character resolving a conflict between two desires. At its heart is a moral choice (a choice between values) and the working out of the consequences of that choice. The plot of a story exists to bring the character to the place where they are forced to make this difficult choice and to then demonstrate that they have made it and lived with the consequences of it.

The purpose of setting is to provide a stage on which this plot can be acted out, where the incidents and coincidences on which the plot depends can be portrayed convincingly. Thus world building is the servant of setting, which is the servant of plot, which is the servant of story arc/character arc. A novel requires, and should only exhibit, as much world building as is required for the setting to do its job.

That does not mean that there is no room for details like hobbits hairy feet, which play no role in the plot per se, but it does mean that these details should be used sparingly. And don't fall into the trap (which others will inevitably recommend) of working them into the action of a scene. That approach simply detract from the reader's appreciation of the scene, or induces the writer to include an unnecessary scene just to work world building details into it. Both these things bore the reader. They can also be confusing. If a scene sneaks in the fact that one character has seven fingers, it that a feature of the race or is that particular character deformed? If you want to tell readers, for the sake of local color, that your characters have seven fingers, do what Tolkien did and just tell them.

Original score: 14