WorldBuilding No-Nos

Ten Things I Hate about Your WorldBuilding

Beasts from your hell are always slimy, odorous, loud, over-size horrors with broken but razor-sharp teeth and bulging but blazing red eyes; they could easily be smelled if not instantly identified from two miles away. Yet somehow they still always get the jump on their victims.

Epidemics happen in your story only because some evil one cast a spell over a geographical region, and are never the natural byproduct of poor hygiene, crowded living conditions, contaminated water or food supplies, and/or lack of medical advancement.

Everyone in the village is an idiot. Everyone.

No one seems to be actively employed in the story. Farmers aren't planting crops, merchants aren't holding sales, and stable boys aren't shoveling manure, etc. Your courtesans, on the other hand, are always working triple shifts.

Queens and princesses are inevitably lovely, sylph-like creatures who radiate goodness and kindness, care deeply about their subjects, and are obsessed with feeding and caring for the poor; none display any of the typical physical or mental signs of being what they really are: the results of centuries of inbreeding.

The natural source of unparalleled magical power that has been sitting around in the open for millenia has never been discovered or exploited by native peoples, explorers, settlers, industrial developers, evil overlords or anyone except the hero, and then only when he is in desperate straits with nowhere else to turn.

While your world seems forever poised on the brink of destruction, an event that often can only be narrowly avoided by the hero and heroine having wild monkey sex, this doesn't seem to ever worry anyone else.

You give me in excruciating detail the pyramids, palaces and every other prominent place within a thirty-mile radius, but there are no bathrooms or toilets anywhere.

Your highly intelligent, extremely lethal mythical creatures, all of which are the size of a dump truck or larger, turn into quivering submissive bunny rabbits whenever a dinky human hero with a mission encounters them. P.S., even if they've been captured, beaten and starved by other humans for months, they never blame the hero or snap him up as a quick snack.

Your invented language bears a striking resemblance to Klingon as spoken by a stutterer.