[CURING WORLDBUILDER’S DISEASE / RESEARCHER’S SYNDROME]
ABSTRACT
The cure for Worldbuilder’s disease and its related pathogen, Researcher’s Syndrome, is writing the story. This is for hobbyists, professionals, discover, and outline writers.
So, let me explain.
INTRODUCTION
To defeat a disease requires understanding, so why worldbuild in the first place? One of the fun parts of writing is building the world in which your story takes place. If you write fiction (Fict) or nonfiction (NF), you don’t just have facts and characters. They generally don’t exist in the nebulous void. Even then, a nebulous void is where dreams die, political aspirations are born, and human sacrifice runs rampant. Even if you are writing your autobiography, everyone worldbuilds.
Fantasy (Fant) and science fiction (SF) writers thrive on making strange worlds that allow for stranger stories. Some stories can’t happen without dragons, magic swords, laser swords, dungeons, moon bases, quests, fireballs, plasma guns, AI, and shroud-beasts. The best stories often happen when you ponder how these different elements affect each other. Thinking things through creates a tale that grips readers, even after they put the book down.
Historical (Hist) or Contemporary (Contemp) authors have a real world, but what parts get the focus? Is it the grungy living of a boy on the outskirts of a Dark Age German village, surviving bandit threats? What of the political intrigue among the rich Renaissance Portuguese? Even early modern contemporary living will read differently depending on the book’s themes.
Even in NF, your topic is not isolated, separate from the rest of reality. Most, if not all, carnivorous plants, such as Venus flytraps and pitcher plants, live in boggy areas where they must digest insects to obtain sufficient nutrients, including nitrogen, to survive (Kreuzwieser, 2014). They don’t just eat bugs because it’s cool; it’s a survival mechanism that should be mentioned.
So, we authors and writers are tempted JUST to keep building and researching. In Fict like Fant and SF, this looks like adding more magic spells, dungeons, cultures, characters, and kingdoms. NF, Hist, Hist Fict, and other stories based on reality in some form can get to a point where you keep trying to find more and more sources for more and more facts. When you keep expanding the setting or researching to the point that it stops you from writing the story, that is Worldbuilder’s disease, also known as Researcher’s Syndrome.
The cure in every case is writing the story.
METHODS AND TECHNIQUES
Depending on the writer that you are, that will alter how you write the story. Feel free to go to your section below, or read this in full.
HOBBIST WRITERS
Hobbyists don’t need to cure it. If coming up with the specifications of mech suits for frogs, figuring out the best color word for a demon’s tooth, or even figuring out how ancient Egyptians had frozen treats makes you happy, then thrive in the experience. You’re a hobbyist. Don’t let social media heads or the taxman take the joy from you. If you are not trying to publish your work for an audience larger than yourself or a friend or two, don’t worry about it.
If you’re a hobbyist trying to publish your first book, don’t feel too stressed. A good rule of THUMB is the … FINGER AND TOE RULE. (Flips Shades) If you have written even a single word in your book, you’re fine in the past five days. If you need two hands to count the days since the last time you wrote in your book, that’s concerning, but it can be normal. If you need all your fingers and toes to count the days since you last wrote anything in your book, you must force yourself to look at it again and add at least a single word. Now, this can be a single word for the outline, the rough draft, the beta reader edits, the editor edits, or anything else. There have been days when I could only add a word to the work. That may seem humiliating. “How could I be so pathetic that I can only add a single word?” You need to ask yourself, “What is more pathetically disgusting? Is writing a word today, which makes it easier to write the words tomorrow, and by the end of the week, you’re back to your beloved hobby? Is it bad to keep plugging away at the fun parts of making your world while ignoring your draft? Is it embarrassing for the pine tree to have no needles?”
It’s the de-needled pine. That’s so embarrassing. But if writing more at work does not spark joy, you need to ask why. Is it a single particular part, or is it the entire thing? If it’s just a single part, ask someone else for their opinion, or a professional in a relevant field. Even if their critique is wrong, other people’s opinions can help you come up with new ideas that you can use to steer you in the right direction. If the entire work fills you with quiet dread, you should consider rewriting the book in a way you would enjoy more, or consider putting this book down for now and try writing another work. If you’re doing a report or project in school, you should consider talking to your teacher or professor about changing it. Most people have to pen a few works before they figure out their writing processes and write works that they and others enjoy. It’s ok if you have a book or two, or even ten, that you must put down like an old sick dog. What matters is writing a good report, journal article, short story, or novel.
DISCOVERY WRITER
If you are not a hobbyist, but a pants-er, a write-as-you-go person, a discovery writer, read on. Spending a hand’s worth, five hours exploring a particular concept before trying to write anything in your work is reasonable. Spending a second’s worth of hands to get a solid grasp on a topic is also reasonable. The moment your research reaches a toe’s amount, you need to start moving forward by putting something down.
The first five hours, that first handful of hours, are enough time to figure out that historical Vikings did not have horns on their helmets, that giant squids are not only gigantic but also dwarfed by titanic squids. If the Fant world is a water world, boats will be important. It’s enough time to find a few books on a topic at your local library and skim them. It’s also enough time to find some podcasts, niche websites, or journal articles that talk about what you seek. Those first five hours are usually enough for high school work and below to get an A in any report.
The second handful of hours is fine to strengthen your understanding. Those last five hours should be spent identifying your top three to seven immediate sources, estimating which chapters of the books will be most helpful, finding specific podcast episodes, and locating particular web pages (like mine 😉 ) that have the answers you’re looking for.
Once you reach the 11th hour or more of research, you must start moving forward by taking notes, citing sources, and adding to your world. Even for geniuses, six hours, with so many sources, facts, and ideas, is too much. In neuroscience, it is understood that presenting too many facts in too little time can result in high IQ individuals forgetting and misplacing information. When there are too many facts and not enough neuronological space, something has to go. Hopefully, it’s a cringeworthy memory from middle school. At this point, record some facts to avoid losing valuable information to the forgetful void. Another aspect is that writing things down at this point helps to address glaring plot holes, missing perspectives in the research work, and the like. When you ensure that your worldbuilding aligns with the story, it will help you write your piece more effectively. It will make editing more fun and easier. I said easier, not easy. It will help you solve plot holes, write more engaging characters, and eventually push the work out the door and into the real world, where it gets to make you money.
PLANNER WRITER
This process looks very similar if you are an outliner, a planner, or a writer. You should still follow the finger and toe rule. The first handful of hours explores something particular, the second handful goes in depth, and then write something down.
The significant difference here is that discovery and outline writers naturally gravitate towards different styles of research and analysis. Discovery writers tend to dislike researching things they don’t care about. Suppose they take the time to study how a Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation gun, or a LASER gun, works. That information will likely be included in the SF novel (Hecht, 2025). Some weird trivia, like which elements change lasers’ colors, will make it in as a gag or a key plot point. Planners like me enjoy the process of researching, even if I know I probably will never use any of those facts in my work. So the finger and toe rule looks different for us meticulous planners.
We outliners have been taking notes and recording things every step of the way, from the initial pondering and research. What we would benefit from most is doing what others do intuitively. We need to take a step back, look over our notes, and see if there is a story that we can make from it or what of what we have figured out can be added to our work. Let’s say, for example, you research redwood trees. If the best parts of your exploration helped you understand the newts, worms, birds, and squirrels that have never touched the ground, ask why?
If you have yet to write the book, this question will help you determine what kind of work you are drawn to create. It may be an investigation into one habitat specifically, focusing on ecosystems worldwide that lack solid ground to work with. Perhaps the story is more whimsical: what would it take to create a tall tree habitat in your backyard?
If you have already started writing your NF book, ask yourself how the previous handful of hours of studying support, deepen, or challenge the essence of the work. Does the new information elaborate on essential aspects, reveal interesting nuances, or give a more dynamic view by showing opposing ideas? What do you need to fill in the cracks of your study?
If you have already started writing your Fict book, ask yourself how these facts will enhance the story? Will they tie into a character’s back-story? Do the tree-house fairies with their pet sky animals layer the theme or the plot? Will the drone newts fire lasers at our protagonists as they swing through the trees? Don’t try to force the material into the story; if it naturally enters, use it. If it doesn’t make the story better, love your story enough to set the research aside.
For planners like me, the second handful of hours is focused on filling in the most significant gaps. Whatever large plot hole, opposing viewpoint, or cultural elaboration in the setting should be the primary focus for fixing. At this point, the key is to find enough points to line them up and give them to someone else. They should be able to make enough sense of the work to either like it, hate it, or get intrigued. If the response from a part or whole is confusion or indifference, those parts need fixing. Taking steps back and ensuring that the research is helping your work heals a mind sick with Researcher’s Syndrome or Worldbuilder’s Disease.
CLARIFICATION
I want to make a clarifying point. I love doing hours of research and putting it into my work. I wrote a book called THE MANGO ENCYCLOPEDIA, and it took at least three years of research to gather all the journal articles, textbooks, websites, and more to have enough info to write it. This does not include my time with editors, cover artists, or legal stuff. I am not saying that you should only put one or two handfuls of hours into your work ever. When I did not figure out the finger and toe rules, my work took far longer to write than it had to. There were several parts of the book I had to reresearch because I forgot or lost critical information. Over 40% of the book was written in my last year working on it.
CONCLUSION
I would not have a published book today if I had not done the above suggestions. If I wrote a similar book today, knowing the finger and toe method, I could finish writing, editing, and legal issues within two years. My future books will only take months not years to finish.
That’s my explanation.
The cure for Worldbuilder’s disease and its related pathogen, Researcher’s Syndrome, is writing the story.
REFERENCES
(Hecht, 2025) Hecht, Jeff, et al. “Laser” Encyclopedia Britannica (2025) https://www.britannica.com/technology/laser/Fundamental-principles
(Kreuzwieser, 2014) Kreuzwieser, Jürgen, et al. “The Venus flytrap attracts insects by the release of volatile organic compounds.” Journal of experimental botany 65.2 (2014): 755-766.