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That moment my fantasy novel worldbuilding totally collapsed on me
I was 40,000 words into a fantasy novel set in this desert city I spent months building. Then I realized my entire magic system relied on a plant that literally could not grow in that climate. I was sitting in my local library in Austin staring at my laptop screen at 3pm on a Saturday. I had to scrap like 12 chapters of scenes that used that plant as a core plot device. What I ended up doing was replacing the plant with a mineral that forms in dry caves instead, which actually made the lore cooler. Has anyone else had to kill a huge chunk of their story because of a basic logic fail like this?
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nathana481mo ago
That happened to me once and it taught me to check basics first.
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alicesingh1mo ago
Oh man, I feel that. I always skip the obvious stuff first then spend an hour wondering why my power strip is off.
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sullivan.finley1mo ago
The mineral swap was the right call. I had to do something similar when my underground city had a light-based magic system that made no sense once I mapped out the tunnels. I swapped it to a sound-based system where echoes carried power. Lost about 15 chapters of setup but the rewrite was tighter. Best fix I ever found was to keep a running list of what your world actually needs to function. Climate, resources, geography. That minimal might have saved you those 12 chapters if you'd written it out before starting.
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