Writing.Com General Discussion

We all kind of know the most important thing in the book is characters. If people don't care for your characters they don't read to the end. Plot is also important. The other half of your readers care about that. That's why half the viewers of the Lost finale hated it. The writers focused on characters, not the plot (Abrams and Lindelhof said that)

As my hyperbole implies, you gotta have both. All the world building won't give you that, and in fact, the psychological pattern is that a guy who spends more on world building tends to focus on that in the writing, aka infodumps. By all means, you gotta have a world, but a good story can just as easily take place in our world and there's no assembly required.

Now in actual practice, I find an edges-in approach, working on aspects of plot, character and setting together. Because ideas you have about one part inform and adjust ideas about the others.