Off the Bookshelf: WRITING WITH SOFT WORLDBUILDING, by Hans Arthur

 

What is soft worldbuilding, you may ask?

That's the first lesson, defining "soft" and "hard" worldbuilding.

Of course, for those who are new to writing fiction at all, maybe you need to learn what worldbuilding is.

Worldbuilding is ... well, creating the world where your story takes place. The culture, technology, history, religions, medicine, art, industry, food, etc.

The depth and intricacy of the details essentially define if you're going soft or hard. Are you someone who likes the world to be spelled out, all the layers defined, the history solid and established, the backstory for all your characters, whether main or secondary or tertiary or even the ones who only appear in one scene and never again? Yeah, then you're into hard worldbuilding.

If you would rather focus on characters, and let their growth and discovery and how they face challenges move the story forward, and you only explore the bits and pieces of their back story and fragments of the world around them as they affect the story ... that's soft worldbuilding.

These are simplistic definitions, of course. But the explanations and examples in this short book are helpful in figuring out just how much work you need or want to put in before you actually start writing the story. And might just save you a lot of headaches in the long run.  

Bottom line: it all depends on the kind of story you're writing, and you would be wise to figure out at least that much before you sit down and write the first word.