Writing help

Conveying Worldbuilding Without Exposition!

One of the hardest parts of writing speculative fiction is presenting readers with a world that's interesting and different from our own in a way that's both immersive and understandable at the same time.

Thankfully, there are a few techniques that can help you present worldbuilding information to your readers in a natural way, as well as many tricks to tweaking the presentation until it's just right.

Four basic techniques:

1. The ignorant character.
By introducing a character who doesn't know about the aspects of the world building you're trying to convey, you can let the ignorant character voice the questions the reader naturally wants to ask. This is commonly seen in cases where the protagonist is brought into a new world, society, organization, etc, but non-PoV character put under the same circumstances can be equally useful.
It works best when the inclusion of the ignorant character feels natural. They must have a purpose in the story outside of simply asking questions.

2. Conflicting opinions.
A fantastic way to convey detailed world building concepts is to have characters with conflicting viewpoints discuss or argue about them. Unless you're working with a brainwashed society, every character should hold their own set of religious, political, and social beliefs.

Examples of this kind of dialogue:

• "The goddess Irelle would never ask for such a sacrifice! That's a blasphemous addition to the sacred texts that only a damned cultist would propose."

• "The new lamps in the cockpit might give off a funny light, but they're entirely recyclable! Think of all the dumps we wouldn't need back on Earth if everyone would just switch over. If we're ever going to successfully repopulate the planet, we need to stop polluting it further!"

• "This is a peaceful country, yes, but one build on blood and stolen land! If you left your worthless barn more often, you would see that. The rest of the empire is not as placated as you think."

And as a nice bonus, the reader gets to learn something about the characters beliefs, how they communicate, and how open-minded (or stubborn) they are.

3. Historically and culturally significant places and objects.
Characters bringing up worldbuilding topics out of the blue can feel forced and disruptive, but giving them a reason to talk about a specific topic helps soften the blow. Strategically places buildings and objects can ease the conversation into historical, religious, scientific, or political discussions. Things like:
Religion: Temples, holy books, idols, imagery, religious leaders out for a walk, worshipers praying or singing.
History: Monuments, statues, ancient buildings, historical artifacts (likely replicas), culturally significant designs that arose from mythology, historical fiction novels.
Science: New inventions being installed or tested out, academic buildings, seminar announcements, advertisements, hospitals.
Politics: Propaganda, reminders to vote, new laws being put into practice, angry citizens, protests, war preparations.

4. Ignore explanations entirely.
Sometimes the best way to convey how a world works is just to dive straight in. Let the reader learn about the world by watching the main character interact with it.

This method is also a great way to start out writing your first draft, because there will always be time to adjust and add in stronger explanations for things in later drafts.

Alternately, you could go for the opposite first draft method, and write exposition for everything during your first draft, and then cut it down the the bare necessities once you start editing and rewriting.