For the last year, I've been having trouble with a Capital "T", in developing my plot so that it fits with my fantasy world. The storyline would always end up going nowhere, or the characters wound up doing something that made no sense, just to get things done and move the story along. Last night, while asleep, I woke up realizing that there's nothing wrong with the plot, it's my world-building that's wrong! I've been trying to shoe-horn a very cool plot into a very interesting world that is simply incompatible with the plot! Just because the plot is very cool, and the world you build is also very cool, that doesn't mean that the plot and that world go together! A big "DOH!" on my part. I have wasted a lot of time trying to make two incompatible things fit together.
Oh God. So much yes.... I got 90k words in and realized my world/scenario sucked horribly. To the point I lost interest in even working on it. My current one I am fixing this by spending more time on the world building and writing short stories based in that world to work out any links before I decide what to do with it.
Jesus, you managed to write 90k with story and world at odds? I draw my hat before that. I’m curious what kind of world setting is it?
Well, it's easy to let enthusiasm get in the way of practicality. And when you are enthusiastic about both plot and world, it's REALLY EASY to ignore the incompatibility and assume better writing will fix it somehow.
Okay, that’s true enough. Maybe you could try to mesh it together somehow...like have parallel worlds so you won’t loose the world setting in priority to the story. Or play around with time instead...or have it happen on a different planet if it’s a multiplanetary world setting. Or you could have someone dreaming, or in a come to make the world reasonable....just bouncing ideas here