I wrote before about trusting readers with spare prose—the silences between sentences. This is the same instinct applied to worldbuilding.
Torven doesn't know he's in a fantasy novel.
He doesn't think about how the dragon-bone gates got there, or why the settlement trains children in formations they'll never use, or what it means that people wear jewelry with empty sockets where blood gems used to sit. He doesn't wonder about any of it.
He lives there. It's just... how things are.
I keep wanting to explain things.
The hierarchy. The history. How dragon bone is harvested. Why Edge-dwellers live where they do. The politics of the Council. Every time I write a scene, part of me thinks: but the reader won't understand unless I—
I'm learning to stop there.
I realized something while writing the prologue. I'd spent a paragraph explaining the bone gates—what they were made of, how old they were, what they signified. Then I looked at it and thought: Would Torven think about any of this?
He wouldn't. He walks through those gates every day. He doesn't see them anymore.
So I cut it. All of it. Just let him walk through.
I don't know if that's the right way to do this. But it felt better than the explanation.
There's this thing I keep catching myself doing: explaining what characters would never explain to themselves.
You don't walk into your kitchen and think about how the refrigerator works. You just open it. Grab the milk. Close it.
Torven opens the gates. Walks through. Closes them.
If I make him think about dragon-bone architecture, I've stepped outside his head. I've broken something. I think. I'm still figuring out what, exactly.
I'm trying something with the blood gems.
First mention: People in the crowd wear jewelry with empty sockets where gems used to sit.
Second mention: Dessa wears one at her throat. I don't say what it is.
I'm hoping by the second mention, the reader starts to understand without me saying it: these were valuable, now they're gone, and Dessa still has one because she matters.
Maybe that's too subtle. Maybe readers will be confused. But confusion might be okay? At least temporary confusion. The kind where you're in a world that doesn't stop to explain itself.
I think that's how it should feel. Like being a visitor somewhere, learning by watching instead of being told.
I don't know. This is my first novel. I'm mostly making it up as I go and hoping no one notices.
The settlement trains boys to hunt dragons. They practice formations. They learn protocols.
There are no dragons.
I don't explain why they keep training. Torven doesn't see it as strange; it's just what they do. What they've always done.
I'm hoping the reader sees the emptiness I'm not naming. The ritual without meaning. The absurdity that nobody in the story acknowledges.
It feels more powerful this way. The silence around it. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe readers need me to say it.
I've started using Torven as a filter.
When I want to explain something—the history of the Edge-dwellers, how the Council works, what happened to the dragons—I ask myself: Would Torven think about this right now?
Usually the answer is no. He's too busy surviving. Too caught up in the moment.
So I don't write it. I trust it'll come through in other ways. In what he notices. What he takes for granted. The things he doesn't question because he's never had to.
I keep second-guessing this approach. Every writing guide I've ever read talks about worldbuilding, about making sure readers understand the rules, the setting, the stakes.
But the stories I love don't explain themselves. They just... are. You figure it out by living in them for a while.
That's what I'm trying to do. Let readers live in the settlement instead of studying it.
I have no idea if it's working. But it feels right. And for now, that's all I've got.