A random bitchy non-fiction thought I had today…

sbiworldbuilding-park-bench-method-wendy-c-allen-author-eelkat

Worldbuilding Without Worldbuilding

Or, Why Park Benches Don't Need No Fucking Map



By Wendy C Allen

Important:

Fraudulent sites are impersonating Wendy Christine Allen.

  • The ONLY official website for Wendy Christine Allen is www.eelkat.com

Fraudulent social media accounts, particularly on Reddit and FaceBook are impersonating Wendy Christine Allen.

  • The ONLY official social media accounts for Wendy Christine Allen are listed in the footer here at www.eelkat.com


Any websites and accounts you find online that are NOT on this list are NOT Wendy Christine Allen

While you are here, please take the time to read this:

Who is Tod Murphy? 

Do you know who this woman is?

She might be the woman who murdered my son. 

We need to talk about your worldbuilding addiction.

Yeah, I said addiction.

No, don’t look away. Sit down. We’re doing this.

You think you’re writing a novel, but what you’re actually doing is wasting six years building a tax code for your fictional empire’s turnip farmers.

You’ve got spreadsheets of bloodlines, calendars more accurate than NASA, and a twelve-page document explaining the mating rituals of your world’s mole-people.

And yet… you’ve got zero chapters finished. Why?

Because worldbuilding is procrastination in cosplay.

Here’s the cold truth, ice pick between the ribs style: your readers don’t care about your world. They care about your characters in the world.

You want readers to care about your ice-age dystopia ruled by feral librarians who wield barcode scanners like nun-chucks? Awesome. But you don’t need to tell them how the oxygen filtration systems work. You need to show them a character coughing blood because it’s broken.

Readers want to feel the world. Not read the blueprints.

That’s where the Park Bench Method slaps harder than a seagull stealing your fries. You don’t start with a goddamn lecture. You start with a moment.

A dude. On a bench. Maybe he’s eating something glowing. Maybe he’s covered in blood. Maybe he’s talking to a severed head in a plastic shopping bag. Doesn’t matter. That’s your world. Right there. One sentence in.

Your setting is what the character sees, smells, tastes, and mutters under their breath. That’s it. If it doesn’t hit the senses, it’s a Wikipedia article, not a story.

World-building should be felt, not explained.

You don’t need to tell us how your society functions. You show us a character bribe a border guard with a rusty can of peaches and a pack of fingernail clippings. That tells us everything.

Culture? Boom, shown.

Economy? Boom, implied.

Morality? Boom, twisted as hell.

Done and done. No charts needed.

And don’t come at me with that “But Tolkien spent years making languages!” nonsense. You are not Tolkien. Tolkien wrote those languages for fun on the side. His actual stories? Full of characters who moved. Who acted. Who got into deep shit in the woods. He wasn’t standing in front of you with a slideshow presentation about Elvish syntax before Frodo left the Shire.

If you’re using your world-building as a reason not to write chapters, guess what?

You’re building a prison, not a world.

You are writing yourself into a corner. A corner no reader will ever read, because you’ll never have anything to publish, because you were too busy writing the world, to write the story.

And every day you spend fiddling with background lore that never hits the page is another day your characters are sitting on the bench waiting for you to get your ass in gear.

You know what good worldbuilding looks like?

“He sat on the bench outside the ruined library, trying not to make eye contact with the crow in the business suit. The crow hissed at him in corporate legalese and shuffled closer. He held up his sandwich in surrender.”

That’s it. No map. No preamble. But the reader knows:

  • The world’s gone to hell.
  • Crows are lawyers now.
  • This guy’s about to get sued by a bird.

THAT is effective worldbuilding.

No explanation. Just action + flavour = immersion.

So next time you sit down to write and you feel the urge to sketch out your intergalactic shipping routes or your underwater coffee bean cultivation rituals, STOP.

Just stop.

put the fucking map away.

Sit your character down on a fucking bench and ask them:

  • “What are you seeing right now?”
  • “What do you smell?”
  • “What do you hear?”
  • “What’s the weirdest thing in your line of sight?”
  • “How uncomfortable is your ass right now and why?”

Answer those and congratulations, you’ve just created a world without spending ten hours naming all the moons.

Your story lives in the now. Not in the encyclopedia.

World-building isn’t lore dumps. World-building is flavour. It’s the trash in the gutter. The smell of ash and ozone. The way the vending machine growls at you when you walk by.

  • Sensory.
  • Specific.
  • Stupid.
  • That’s the golden trio.

Give us a world that feels like it might bite. Give us weird. Give us messy. Give us the sense that you, too, are just barely surviving in this chaos you’ve unleashed.

And when in doubt? Stick a park bench somewhere weird and drop a character on it.

Everything else (culture, history, religion, politics, whatever) can be hinted at through a single broken-down vending machine that dispenses expired pop rocks and boots you in the shin.

Done right, your world leaks out the corners. It oozes between the sentences.

Readers don’t even notice you built it. They just live it.

Now get off your world-building ass, and write the damned story.

| ©2025 Wendy Christine Allen | All Rights Reserved |

The Park Bench Method To Writing (and the series of articles and rants that go with it)

I've Written An Entire Series on The Park Bench Method of Writing. Here are more of the articles in this set: 

The Park Bench Method To Writing (Just the article - no prompt lists)

The Park Bench Method of Writing (the really old long, rambly post from years ago; the long page with over 10k writing prompts and lots of lists)

More like this:

Self Publishing- My Self-Publishing Methods | Things I Have Personally Done





What Is This Site?

I'm an author. This is an author home page. It's about me, my life, my books, my hobbies, my home town, and anything else that applies to me and my life. 

Since starting my writing career in 1978, I have written 130+ novels, 2,000+ short stories, 6,000+ non-fiction articles (ALL are found on this site), a few dozen stage plays, 12,000+ blog posts, and a few comic book scripts for Disney's Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck (I only worked for Disney one year (in 2005) and only wrote a few stories for their Danish comic books).

NOTE: I ONLY write the Quaraun series (aka The Twighlight Manor series aka The Adventures of Quaraun the Insane). In recent years there has been an issue with impersonators trying to pass books off as written by me, notably several non-fiction and Erotica books. I write neither nonfiction nor Erotica.

ALL of my books and their cover arts are listed on my website here. Beware of any books you find claiming to be me. If the books are NOT listed here on my website, they are NOT my books.

In fiction works, I specialize in Weird/Bizarro Tales set in 40th century CyberPunk-Quasi Medieval, Cozy Dark Fantasy and Science Fiction worlds featuring an intersex Elf and his Faerie husband main characters.  I DO NOT WRITE ANY OTHER SERIES - THIS SERIES IS THE ONLY ONE I WRITE.

Non-fiction (found ONLY here on my site) is daily updates of events in my life, and how-tos on how I write my novels.

I DO NOT write Erotica.

I DO NOT write books with HUMAN characters.

The Erotica books and books with Human characters, that you are finding, are written by scammers trying to impersonate me.

There is an ongoing FBI investigation into this matter. If you find any such books, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322

The FBI believes the people behind the impersonation accounts showing up, are relatives of the woman who murdered my son.

People always ask why I have a video recorder running 24/7. Watch these 4 videos of The Scarborough Walmart.


 I have a video recorder running 24/7. Because this parking lot is where I was attacked a second time by the woman who crippled me with the golf club at Southern Maine Community College in 2013 (who also murdered my 8-month-old son at the same time) this is the location of her 2nd attack,  the July 2016 attack with a shopping cart, the attack that left me in a wheelchair and despite over 200 "security cameras" and signs saying there are cameras in use... the police did not find even ONE actual REAL camera. Every "security camera" on this building and parking lot was ALL fake "dummy cameras" and that is why there is no video footage of my son's murderer. 

I started carrying a camera 24/7 the very next day after Scarborough police informed me they could not identify the blonde woman who attacked me or her gold Volvo 240GL station wagon, because EVERY CAMERA at this store's parking lot was an empty case with no real camera inside it. My son would be 12 years old this Christmas 2025, and his murderer walks free, still unidentified because this parking lot did not have real cameras. 

Those things that look like cameras on the building and light poles, are fake, according to the Scarborough Police Department. That is why I have a camera running 24/7, because my son's killer walks free because there was no camera the day we were attacked.


While you are here, please take the time to read this:

Who is Tod Murphy? 

Do you know who this woman is? She might be the woman who murdered my son. 

146 Portland Ave, Old Orchard Beach, Maine, is NOT FOR SALE.

And I'm sick of real estate agents who are too incompetent to research land ownership before they show up to stick a for sale sign in my yard.

The fact of the matter is, my son was murdered in 2013, and the friends and family of the murderer think it is funny to keep ILLEGALLY listing my land for sale, because apparently their child murdering bitch friend didn't hurt me enough by crippling me with a golf club, ripping my baby out of my 8 month pregnant belly and beating his brains out on the ground with a golf club.

Also, her friends and family like to gaslight me by doxing me on ufo and alien abduction forums, while pretending to be me, and trying to make it look like I believe in ufos or aliens, even though I think people who believe in ufos are raving lunatics and people who claim to be alien abductees are crazy. 

Worse, they've also taken to harassing my WW2 vet homeless friend, by calling HIM an alien, demon, or cryptid and sending alien crazy ufo nutjobs at try to "catch him".

So, yeah, my son was murdered and the murder's friends and family endlessly harass me, my friends, and my family both online and offline, and I'm not happy with it at all.

There is an ongoing FBI investigation into this matter.

The FBI is looking for information into:

  1. identifying my son's murderer, 
  2. identifying the scammers who listed my land for sale, 
  3. identifying the impersonators who pretend to be me both online and offline, 
  4. the harassers who are harassing the homeless man and sending the UFO nuts to harass him... 
  • If ANYONE tells you 146 Portland Ave Old Orchard Beach, Maine is for sale:, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322
  • If ANYONE tells you I believe in aliens, demons, or UFOS, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322
  • If ANYONE tells you my homeless friend is an alien, a demon, a cryptid, or named Etiole for sale:, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322


I'm going to repeat it because I'm tired of people showing up and making offers:

146 Portland Ave, Old Orchard Beach, Maine, is NOT FOR SALE.

There is NO ONE who has authorization to use my land.

NO ONE.

Not my mother.

Not my father.

Not Ben.

Not my mother’s Atwater relatives.

No one.

If ANY ONE hires you to do ANYTHING on my land, know that you are doing it ILLEGALLY and WITHOUT my knowledge or permission.

My mother has ZERO legal right to hire you to do anything at 146 Portland Ave. Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

My father has ZERO legal right to hire you to do anything at 146 Portland Ave. Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

Ben has ZERO legal right to hire you to do anything at 146 Portland Ave. Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

My mother’s Atwater relatives have ZERO legal right to hire you to do anything at 146 Portland Ave. Old Orchard Beach, Maine.




While you are here, please take the time to read this:

Who is Tod Murphy? 

Do you know who this woman is? She might be the woman who murdered my son. 




| Home | Index |



How did you build your audience?
Not online, that's for sure.
aka How to sell ten million books
aka How I sold ten million books.



Want to write like I do? You want this page: Writing Mindset Shift & Lester Dent vs Kishotenketsu w/Thoughts on Being one of Dr. Lindstrom's 200 PenPal Students (NaNoWriMo & NovNov 2025)




The Park Bench Method of Writing

(just the article)

or

The Park Bench Method of Writing

(with the list of 10k writing prompts - takes a LONG TIME to load - SEVERAL MINUTES!)



Why I am not proud of Disability Pride Month.
In fact, I think it’s deplorable and downright offensive.



I Think UFO and Alien Believers Are Weird Here's Why...




Does every writer have to deal with this shit?







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Wendy Christine Allen 🌸💖🦄 aka EelKat 🧿💛🔮👻
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