Monster Makers: Make Your World Weird (and Don't Explain It!)
Published 3 months ago • 3 min read
Star Wars Poster
💌 Monster Makers #6
Make Your World Weird (and Don’t Explain It) A Jedi, a swamp witch, and a Grootslang with three mouths walk into a cantina . . . and no one explains a damn thing.
Hey Monster Maker,
Let’s talk world-building.
Not the kind that makes you draw twelve maps and create a trade system for haunted onions (though, mad respect if you do). I’m talking about the kind of world that feels lived-in, slightly grimy, and deliciously, monstrously weird.
Because here’s the truth:
📚 If you have to explain everything about your world, you’re not building a world. You’re giving a lecture.
Cuz no one survives a horror story because they took the best notes.
🌌 Enter: Star Wars
Since July is San Diego Comic Con (I can’t believe I’ve been going for 12 years!!!), the Monster Makers newsletter is serving Galactic energy all month long.
Say what you want about the Jedi being space monks with boundary issues (Acolyte, anyone?), but George Lucas understood this:
You don’t need to explain everything for a world to feel real. You just need to commit to the weird and trust your reader to keep up.
Exhibit A:
🛸 Han brags about making the "Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs”—and NO ONE blinks.
✨ Obi-Wan says, “Use the Force” like we all just get it.
💡 You’ve got creatures, droids, cults, sandworms, swamp hermits, lightsabers, spice smugglers, and a literal planet that’s just . . . lava.
Does anyone pause to offer footnotes? NOPE. They just live there. It’s normal to them.
And we believe it, because the story doesn’t slow down to explain the vibes. It lets the vibes pull us in.
Empire Strikes Back Poster
📝 Let’s Break It Down: Explain vs. Exist
Explaining the World
“The spectral trains run on necromantic energy harvested from forgotten souls. Only the licensed death conductors, who have trained for thirteen years in the Grave Academy, are permitted to operate them.”
Cool? Yes.
Do I feel anything? Meh.
Letting the World Live
“She tapped her Spectro card against the screaming turnstile. Gods, I hate rush hour. Too many ghosts and not enough seats.”
Now we’re in it. We feel the world. We’re riding the same haunted commute. We’re asking questions, but we’re intrigued, not confused.
🪠 Remember: readers don’t really want a lecture on the plumbing of your monster world.
They want to hear the pipes rattle and wonder what’s breathing in there.
Return of the Jedi Poster
🤺 Now Bring It Back to You
Your world can have things like:
Kaiju dating apps with deadly rules
A library where some books shout your secrets when you open them
Bureaucratic fairies with cursed filing cabinets
You don’t need to explain how it all works in the first three pages.
In fact, please don’t.
Instead:
🔮 Let the weird be normal to your characters. If the monster under the bed pays rent, your protagonist should just sigh and toss it their half of the electric bill.
🧪 Let the reader catch up. Treat world-building like a haunted breadcrumb trail—never the main course.
🩸 Lead with mystery, not mechanics. We don’t care how the chupacabra hall pass works yet. We care why the new kid has one.
🧠 Writing Tip: Use the Monster Test
If you’re not sure whether you’re over-explaining your world, ask:
Does your monster have to stop and explain its whole deal—or does it just snarl and let the reader figure it out?
Let the world reveal itself in:
What characters take for granted
What scares them
What’s forbidden
What’s rumored (but might be real 👀)
Trust your reader to connect the dots. (They’re freaky smart. They like it.)
📔 Writing Prompt: Let the Weird Be Normal
Write a short scene set in your fantasy, sci-fi, or horror world (or your D&D campaign), where something absolutely bizarre happens—and no one explains it.
The troll in the break room is warming up fish again? Typical.
Your heroine has to spit into a cursed lock to get through the library door? Ugh, Mondays.
There’s a “don’t look left” rule at the train station? People just step over the piles of disintegrated criminals without looking up from their phones.
Bonus points if your protagonist is more annoyed than surprised.
Extra bonus if a new character enters the world and we get to feel how out-of-their-depth they are—without a single info dump.
🕷️ Over to You!
What’s the weirdest, creepiest, most unapologetically bonkers part of your world—and how do your characters act like it’s just Tuesday?
Tag me @iliketododrawrings or hit reply and drop me your favorite casual chaos. You know I live to hear it!
