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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46401
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

## **Some of the best worldbuilding is done gradually.**

If you introduce _all_ the elements of your fantasy world very near the beginning, you risk boring your readers with a massive infodump. It's often _better_ to introduce it piece by piece, as long as you do so in a way that seems 'natural'. This is why a lot of fantasy follows the standard Tolkien motif of the young provincial protagonist with little knowledge of the wider world - then the readers can learn about the world together with the character, and learning piece by piece is consistent with the story.

**Example:** in Robert Jordan's _Wheel of Time_ series, there are a vast number of characters and cultures which we learn about throughout the series. No way could all of those be explained in the early chapters, or even in the first book. We don't even understand fully what _Aes Sedai_ are until around book 2; Aiel culture is introduced around book 4; Seanchan culture even later than that.

## **How to make a new introduction to the lore 'fit' with the story?**

I mentioned above that you should introduce new elements of your world in a way that seems 'natural'. What does that mean exactly?

As a minimum requirement, **it should at least make sense that this wasn't seen before.** Going back to the Young Provincial Protagonist trope, it makes perfect sense that the _readers_ only learn about Xidajopian culture halfway through the book if the viewpoint _characters_ were unaware or ignorant of Xidajopia until then. But if you introduce a new magical ability which some characters had and knew about all along, you'd better make sure it's something they had no cause to use before.

For extra bonus points, **make the new introduction fit with something previously unexplained**. Sometimes it feels to readers as if the author is making it up as they go along and hadn't even _thought_ of some new piece of lore until the time it's introduced. The best way of _proving_ that your new addition isn't ad hoc is to make sure it connects with something earlier in the story, but not in such a way that everyone could predict it from that earlier something.

**Example (bad):** another answer here mentioned J. K. Rowling's _Harry Potter_ series, in which many creatures and types of magic appear only far into the story, so that the worldbuilding gets deeper as the series goes on. But sometimes a thing introduced in a later book makes a nonsense of previous books because "why wasn't it used back then?" (the out-of-universe reason being "the author hadn't invented it yet back then").

**Example (good):** in Brandon Sanderson's _Mistborn_ trilogy, there's a very logical and well-defined magic system, but not all of it is revealed at once. The first book introduces us and the main character to Allomancy and Feruchemy, but Hemalurgy is only understood in the third book. When that happens, we realise that many minor things throughout the story are in fact connected with it. It's clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that the author _did_ have this in mind from the beginning, but at the same time it would've been impossible for even the shrewdest reader to predict the details of this new magic system.

Original score: 22