@DerpyFast
Well it’s a technique I use in my own writing. Don’t tell anyone, but while world building I try and include as many diverse and characterful little details in the setting as I need to set the tone, without necessarily knowing how I’m going to use any of those things. Then the one my readers latch on to, or I find interesting, I make a bigger part of the story.
I can understand the need for the Law of Conservation of Detail, but when overused it can easily make the world seem dreadfully dull and artifical. There’s a reason Middle Earth is so popular, even if people make jokes about the story spending a whole chapter describing a tree.
In a role playing game I run I included a cute little mechanic character to fix up the player’s stuff, giving her this awkward, shy personality. The players really loved her, so I gave her a plotline where she was pressured into betraying the players by the big bad, and one of the players really mocked her hard for it and refused to forgive her. Another was more sympathetic,
but only to manipulate her into sleeping with him.
She ended up betraying the players
and the big bad, because they were both mean to her basically. She’s now pretty much the central antagonist of the whole campaign. And she’s a far better antagonist that who I previously intended, because my audience has an emotional and personal investment in her.
