Do you struggle to make your fantasy world feel "real"?
When you are writing your first novel, it is easy to get lost in the map-making and the magic systems, only to find that the story still feels flat. You want your readers to get lost in your world, but you aren't sure how to build the infrastructure to support them.
So today, I want to share 5 worldbuilding lessons from N.K. Jemisin.
If you don't know her, she is a titan in the genre. She is the first author in history to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years in a row for her Broken Earth trilogy.
She knows exactly how to build secondary worlds that feel tactile, lived-in, and solid. And her advice is often the exact opposite of what most "gurus" will tell you.
Let’s dive in.
1. Use your world to create clarity, not just cool scenery.
The first step in worldbuilding is understanding why you are doing it.
Many beginners think they need to build a secondary world just because they want to write about dragons or spaceships. But Jemisin argues that the true power of a secondary world is Distance.
When you write about the real world—like a kid being bullied in a standard high school—the reader immediately projects their own baggage onto the scene. They remember their own high school, their own bullies, and their own specific emotions.
But when you transport the reader to a secondary world, you sever that immediate personal connection.
You are still writing about people (and politics, and emotions), but the distance allows the reader to engage with your ideas on your terms.
You can create allegories for real-world issues without the reader getting defensive.
You can drop readers into complex conflicts.
You can explore human nature without the weight of the reader’s personal history getting in the way.
Use your world to create a blank canvas, so your readers can see your story clearly.
2. Know how your characters go to the bathroom.
Great worldbuilding isn't just about the history of the wars or the lineage of the kings.
It is about knowing the mundane, daily details of life.
As the author, you need to understand the daily life of your world as if you lived there yourself. Jemisin uses the example of her novel The Killing Moon, set in an Egyptian-inspired society. She researched how people in that culture used the bathroom—not because she planned to write a dramatic toilet scene, but because she needed to know the timing.
How long does it take to get ready in the morning?
Do they have indoor plumbing or an outhouse?
How do they commute to work?
If you don't know these details, you risk jarring the reader out of the story.
Readers don't consciously think about how they navigate their own subway systems or how they brew their coffee; they just do it. It’s automatic. When they enter your world, they need to go through a learning curve until those details feel automatic to them, too.
Your job is to know the mundane details so well that they fade into the background.
3. Beware of the "Iceberg Theory."
There is a common piece of advice given to new writers called the "Iceberg Theory."
It says that worldbuilding should be like an iceberg: only 10% is visible to the reader, and 90% remains hidden underwater.
Jemisin warns that this advice can actually sink your ship.
The problem is that it implies the 90% of work you do "under the surface" is waste. It suggests you should discard your creativity. But the truth is, you often need more than 10% to make a world feel real.
For example, in The Broken Earth trilogy, Jemisin created a massive list of seasons that could occur in her world. In the final books, she only included "the greatest hits of the worst seasons." But because she had created the full list, the seasons she did choose felt part of a cohesive, terrifying system.
Don't be afraid to dig into the details.
However, be careful of Over-Attachment. Just because you spent weeks creating a currency system doesn't mean your reader wants to read three pages explaining it. Do the work to build the foundation, but only show the reader what serves the story.
4. Don't just "file off the serial numbers."
One of the biggest mistakes aspiring writers make is "lazy" worldbuilding.
This happens when a writer takes an existing real-world culture—say, Feudal Japan or Medieval Europe—and simply transplants it into their fantasy world. They change the names, add some magic, and call it a day.
Jemisin calls this "filing off the serial numbers."
This creates two major problems for your novel:
It treats cultures as props. You are taking real people and real histories and wearing them like a costume.
It creates clichés. Because we see the same cultures used over and over again in media, copying them usually results in your writing the same tired stereotypes as everyone else.
If you are going to create a secondary world where magic exists, you have already stepped away from reality. So why retreat to the familiar?
Don't take a baby step away from Earth only to run back to what you know. Go all the way. Create something entirely new.
5. Recognize your blind spots.
You do not need to know everything about every culture on Earth to write a book.
That is impossible.
However, responsible worldbuilding requires you to recognize when you don't know something. If you are writing about a dynamic you didn't grow up with, or basing a fantasy race on a real-world culture, you need to be self-aware.
Recognize the gap: Admit to yourself when you are making an assumption based on a stereotype.
Do the work: Research the reality. Find out if your assumption is true, and if not, discover what is.
Create systems: Build infrastructure in your world that follows its own internal logic, rather than just borrowing logic from ours.
The goal of worldbuilding is to create a place that feels so solid that the reader stops thinking about the world entirely.
When the world works, the reader can finally focus on what actually matters: your characters, your plot, and the fact that you finally finished your first novel.
So, dig into the details.
Understand the mundane.
And build a world that stands on its own.
¡Happy writing!
—A.J.