World building: my strength and my weakness.

[Demos Mirak]

Let's cut right to the chase, to keep you guys from needlessly toiling through fields of text:

I always get stuck at the world-building part, be it urban fantasy, swords & horses fantasy or sci-fi. It's the thing about writing that I do best, the individual story lines, not so much. My question is, how can I resolve this issue? And now, for the fields of text.

Once, I had written about 100 pages, but 75% of that was background and appendix type of material, just 25% actual characters and story development, something that normally is the meat of a book. Then, I normally get stuck on that part and get frustrated, ending with me not writing for a while, losing the feel for the story and tossing it all away.

In my opinion there are two possible solutions to this problem. The first being that I negate the problem completely and find a co-writer who is tasked with the majority of the non-world-building, while I do the world-building. The upsides of this are that it is most likely easier for me, and that you write more when there are two of you, as general rule of thumb. The downsides are that you have to find someone and, more importantly, that writing is a hobby, not my job. I study Medicine, and that will take priority. As a result, I might not have enough time to put into it to satisfy my co-writer, and thus drag their productivity down. That wouldn't sit well with me.
The second solution is that I work on my weakness. This would probably be harder to do, but would make me beholden only to myself. It would probably involve short stories.

[pcpoet]

I am new to writing. I am a author wanabe.  one of the things I have discovered that helps me write is to set up an action in my story and try to figure what is the logical reaction in the story by the other characters to what has happened. some times it takes me in a direction that I never thought I would go in my writing but it is helpful to me

[Griffyn612]

I sympathize with the issues between world building and story telling. I've got a world I've spent hours developing, but haven't written a single moment of story for.  and I've got a story written in a world I haven't fully developed, and needs major editing because I decided to change things after I started.

world building is fine, but you need to find a story to tell.  worlds are only interesting once the reader or viewer becomes invested in them.  and writing a text book on a world's history won't do that.

I recommend creating a situation.  imagine something happening in your world. then, decide how it's going to impact the world. is it small scale, or large?  life altering, or world altering?

then imagine your protagonist. are they fixing it? stopping it from happening? making it happen? 

then imagine the antagonist (sometimes that comes first). decide what the different sides are trying to accomplish.  how do they react to one another? how do they react to the developing situation? 

the story isn't about the world. it's how you want to change the world. it's what you want to see the world become, or what you want to see it avoid.  world building is order. it's making history, rules, and logical structure and development.  the story is chaos, either trying to break part of the world, or all of it.

I'm not published, and i don't know that I'll ever be. I haven't even tried yet. but if you want to talk with someone about ideas for your world, PM me, and I'll see if i can help. as long as the world isn't similar to anything I'm working on, I'll share some ideas.

[Farmerbob1]

Something that I have found to be very handy at times for ME is to read out loud what I'm writing, and listen to it.  How does it flow?  Would I be keeping an audience's attention with verbal storytelling?

Clearly this doesn't work for everyone.  It doesn't always work for me.  However I know it helps me a great deal from time to time when something just doesn't feel right.

Something else that you may want to try to do, and this is a writer's trick that hit me like a brick when I first read it.  Put your world building in what your characters do and say, not as narration.  If your character is a competitive swimmer don't describe it as narration, have there be some interaction where the character being a swimmer fits in.  Their goggles fall out of their sports bag on the way to class and it sparks a conversation.  Maybe their backpack has sewn-on awards for swim meets that they took prizes in, and a classmate asks them what they are.  Metaphors and examples the character uses might be phrased in swimming terms.

Instead of building your characters alongside building your world, build your world by explaining how your character interacts with it.

I understand exactly what you mean by too much world building.  I tend to do the same.  However, I've made it more interesting for readers, I think, by focusing my world building into interactions.  The world building occurs as part of the conflict.

Then again, I may be telling you nothing new, and these ideas are things you already have tried

Best of luck!!

[Demos Mirak]

Pcpoet: That seems like a good strategy. I'll keep it in mind for when I get stuck again.

Griffyn612: Indeed, history text-books are rarely the most interesting reads. It seems like a good building plan to me, and I will try to use it. I'm now working on shorts mostly, and trying to weave the world directly into the story. I'll PM you if I work up a real background piece, which most likely would be used as reference piece by me.

Farmerbob1: I'll try the reading out loud once I get back home (staying at the family for the holidays) or when I'm alone. Always makes me feel weird when I start reading out loud with other people nearby.
I am indeed trying to work the background into the story, but I got to watch out for making it a big info-dump. I always find that immersion breaking, unless it's done really well. One example of it done badly is CSI, I always think 'Wow, you guys must be really incompetent if the tools of your trade need to be explained every single time.' I understand the why, the viewers need to know what's going on, but to me that's not the right way. Now, to find a better way, that's the trick.

[Farmerbob1]

Another way to help explain things that might work, depending on the story, is to have one of your characters talk to themselves fairly regularly, and occasionally get overheard by people nearby.  Writing a character that talks to themselves could be a challenge though.  Too much, and it seems too far-out weird.  I could easily see writing a story about Doctor Who, for example, and having them be a self-talker.  This would then give you handles to explain things in dialog when nearby people say "What?" or "No Way?" or "That's crazy." as they hear him mutter on about an idea.  Trying to imagine, oh, Captain America as a self-talker on the other hand, would be a bit more of a stretch, unless you're just going to have him count exercise reps.

[Paynesgrey]

I found that creating a "bible" of sorts helped.  Nothing fancy, just a timeline and glossary.  Maybe do a dramatus personae as well... it'll let you lock down the things you're already good at... That might make it easier to turn your mind towards how living, breathing people take part in those events, or are affected by them. 

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

  Trying to imagine, oh, Captain America as a self-talker on the other hand, would be a bit more of a stretch, unless you're just going to have him count exercise reps.

Well, unless you count the sequence in Civil War where he's escaping the SHIELD Helicarrier by leaping from fighter plane to fighter plane, there's a goodly chunk of that that's all talking to himself about what he's doing. I saw a lovely parody of that where the dialogue was swapped out for wondering what to have for dinner and reminding himself to pick up laundry and not to loan Luke Cage his stereo and so on.

[Farmerbob1]

Wow, they had cap talking out loud to himself?  It has been twenty years since I regularly read comics.  I guess they might have changed a few personalities.