6 Worldbuilding Mistakes Every New Writer Makes

My whole story started of with me playing with my characters and my world, originally these were just characters i liked to imagine and put in different scenarios as a sort of passtime, and as i built their world, i got an idea for conflict, I've just written something of a first chapter for it yesterday, i haven't written anything in 5 years, and this whole story started with me playing imaginary dolls with my characters two years ago

To paraphrase Stephen King and a lot of others, what you imply draws people in a lot more than what you say, because you trigger their imagination to fill in the blanks.
You have to give enough for readers to latch on, not spoon feed them.
Learning about your universe should be a consequence of your story unfolding, not a prerequisite to it.

I personally do have world builder's disease and one advice I can give on how to "overcome" it is to embrace it for a while and really ask yourself "Do I actually desire to write a story or do I maybe just enjoy the flow of creativity and the sense of escapism world building gives me?"
Because there's nothing wrong with just being a world builder if that's your hobby. No one ever said you have to write a book for your world building to be amazing and valid.
For me, by just dropping all pressure and giving myself the permission to world build and write a wiki for as long as I wanted, I eventually realised that there WAS an interesting plot that simply had to be told, one that naturally grew out of my world building because it functioned as one of the core problems of the society at the center of my world.
This will also help you completely circumvent the problem of your plot and world being disconnected.
Now I am more motivated than ever to write my book because I have such an all-encompassing understanding of what the stakes are AND I already have an extensive wiki to base my writing off of. And sometimes, I still feel like world building instead of writing for a week or two so I take a break from writing and indulge in this other hobby without feeling bad for it.
As long as you're not on some sort of timer, this works pretty well I think.

so not a writer in a traditional sense but ive been building a campaign for d&d. ive shared this with other DMs to help them fill the checklist of avoiding these mistakes.

Oooh a Choice of Games author? 👀😊

I usually try to have the story create the world.

im literally building a world filled with fungal mushroom magic stuff lmao this is so on point

Thank you, well said.
The last point reminds me about what an author said about his science fiction novels. Good science fiction, takes on distinct idea and puts it onto a normal world. How the new thing then changes that world and the consequence, is the story. For example a fantastic novel called "We all died at Breakaway Station" by Richard C Meredith has an interstellar civilization. The communication between solar systems is by a continuous data stream. It is like filling a hose with water. You can only fill the hose at the speed of light, but once full, you can pulse the energy to get faster than light communication. This means that if the comms is broken for even a moment, it will take years to reestablish. This one piece of tech drives the motivations of normal people because they understand its gravitas. When war comes this plays a central part of the plot.
I think fantasy should be similar too, when I finally put pen to paper I hope I can pull it off.

I think going big on world building suits best for video games like DnD or The Elder Scrolls. For books and films there's just so much you can write up to not make it feel congested

They’re on the sea, right? And apparently they have planes. So really they can ship in anything from anywhere.

The real questions would be, why is the city built on the spires specifically and what resources do they have that are valuable enough traders brave the way there with all those supplies?

You've found something valuable. A related book could deepen your understanding if you're into this. "Stars Aligned" by Olivia Whitestone

Interesting stuff. If this topic grabs you, I'd recommend a similar book. "Stars Aligned" by Olivia Whitestone

I wonder if the problem of starting too big is because originally they want to have elements they might potentially use later along with minimizing any possible conflicts and contradictions. But in the end, they can't help but to wanna use all of it in one go. 🤔

You have made some really good points! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us!!!

I'm a writer who loves architecture too. My other job was 3D visualization of blueprints for a while. It was fun seeing them come to life. I like to make my settings characters, and architecture is the best emotional face of that.

Also, for your tall rock spires with no access to food or water: Therein lies an entire book about the factions that get food to these places, and the various conflicts they get into. Food production and delivery would be a religion there. Take that question of where it comes from, and make that the conflict.

And where does it come from? A place with vast flat lands, obviously, but still not ideal to actually live in because........

I would've come up with a reason for them living on those spires because of a past conflict forcing them up there.

Pretty much contradicted yourself on that language part. Thinking about each phrase your characters use in a historical context is a huge time sink at best and will actually detract from your audiences investment at worst. A couple well spaced out terms unique to your setting should be enough but overdoing it will detract from the remainder of the work with the exception of a small minority of readers that will love it, or poke holes in it. Like you said, there’s a lot of words and phrases we use and don’t notice, neither does the audience and I’d rather have them thinking about the character’s conflicts and fate than the implications of the use ,or lack there of, of “minutes” in a preindustrial setting

Jed: “don’t start your world too big.”

Me: “too late.”

Love the food question! I’m always wondering about that whether irl or enjoying a good book/movie, or world building

considering the last suggestion about your professional knowledge, computer science might be the most useless major a medieval wroter can have... that's me.