Yeah, it is. 
I ended up adding roughly 700 words to XVII. XVII was a rather short chapter and I’ve always felt it ended a little too early, but I didn’t know what to add to it exactly and I was rather desperate to update the book after not updating for so long. On the contrary, XVIII was already nearing 3000 words and it was not even finished yet.
So what did I do? I cut out the first part of XVIII and dropped it at the bottom of XVII. It needed a couple of tweaks, but it worked! It fit with the rest of XVII and felt like it was exactly what that chapter needed.
As for XVIII? It’s now a decent length. I’m trying to combat having long chapters for this book, so I’m putting a hard cap of 3000 words for all chapters. Now the word count was reduced to about 2200, which should give me enough space to finish the chapter without reaching the 3000-word limit.
I can already taste the update 
and damn, the last time it was updated was June 21 
and now it’s late September
I wonder when the rest of the chapters will come out. Last minute plans really wrecked my summer this year and stole at least a month’s worth of writing time, imagine how many chapters I could’ve put out by now 
EDIT: XVIII is now published! The word count is about 2500 words, which is just the right length for this book 
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I wanted to show you the table of contents list that made for my worldbuilding of Llyria.
When you get a chance, lend me your thoughts?
NOTE: Just look at the pictures/screenshots from Google.
It’s a lot, looks organized.
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That’s exactly what @J.L.O stated to me.
LOL!
I mean I could shorten it to something smaller and more manageable for me.
18.8k into the second draft of Without Parole. Struggling with this chapter. I took a break to work on the prequel for like a week, and a half, but now I’m up at 1:30am stubbornly refusing to sleep until I get past this stupid chapter! 
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That is so cool! 
Way more organized than me, that’s for sure. 
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Good luck with the edit! It’s hard to persist sometimes, but it’s great
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Yeah, but it is a lot to work with.
LOL! Sorry for the late reply.
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Well, if there’s a huge mountain range between two halves it’s great ocean, everything could be split by which side it is on, as far as how easily one affects the other for centuries…but then you have the naval military era, mountain climbers, etc.
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So, exactly what are you saying?
Forgive my stupidity, I am just slowly getting bothered by something else entirely.
If war X happens across an ocean from your MC, it’s not often relevant to the MC, so that would go in a file of “not needed for this story”. If exploration y happens across a mountain ridge that the MC doesn’t even trade with then it’s for a file of “not needed for this story”. It’s not automatically that way, but if you base it upon chunks of what is needed for this location, even if you’re dividing it into 4ths, then you only need the 4th that your MC lives in, and a smattering of references to the other 3/4.
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So, just focus on the things that are important to the story?
The rest is just for fun.
Yes.
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Alright.
I mean I can do that, but there are some things I just want to add that will sound nice for the worldbuilding of Llyria.
I am a glutton for punishment. LOL!
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It’s hard when you have to be your own cheerleader. I know it happens a lot to artistic/creative types who want to achieve a goal, and everyone just dismisses it because it’s not considered valuable in our society until the point (assuming it gets to that point) it starts to rake in money.
I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t found this forum. I probably would’ve given up on my novels by now. It sucks getting all excited about characters/my stories all by my lonesome. 
(sigh) Don’t mind me. Having one of those days. 
(hugs the entire forum)
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I agree with @stella_vigo . It’s okay to dive deep and far but in the end do be aware that it will be only for your own enjoyment, but if you’re stressing over how much work it is, then it no longer sounds like it’s enjoyable.
Fyi, I apologize for how long this answer got. I hope anything I said below is helpful.
My world has also grown to proportions I’ll never be able to convey to the audience, but I’m happy to say that all worldbuilding I’ve done has served a purpose. It was either for locations that my stories take place in and societies involved or to explain something.
For example, I’ve come up with the story of how this universe was created. But it wasn’t to check off something off the worldbuilding checklists. It happened organically when I dug deeper into my story, asking But why?
Someone could look at my finished worldbuilding and think, wow, so you started from the very beginning of time and came up with all of these events and places and created a timeline, etc.
No. I worked backwards and I worked only on what was relevant.
Example story questions that resulted in massive worldbuilding
WHY does the villain want to use my character? To make good profit.
WHAT can my MC do that is worth so much? He knows magic others don’t.
WHY does he have more knowledge than others? He’s not like other cambions because he’s half demon and half Ember.
How do demons learn magic vs Embers? Demons are born with the knowledge while Embers pass on knowledge to their children. It’s more impressive knowledge than what demons have.
Why do Embers have this special knowledge and abilities? They learned it on The First Realm (their native realm) directly from Creators.
Why are demons born with magic knowledge? Their Creator, Tiamat, made it so when she created them.
WHY? Because she wanted to give her creation a fighting chance in a harsh realm she gave them (Nether).
What’s harsh about the Nether? There is no wind and so air and moisture don’t travel which leaves large parts of the realm inhospitable and even deadly. Demons have to use magic to make up for elemental deficiencies and survive.
Why did she give them a harsh realm? Because she was allowed limited energy to create the new realm and she spent most of it on creating a diverse set of demon races, leaving very little to enrich the realm (as opposed to Gaia who created Earth with plentiful resources and simple nonmagical creatures-humans).
Why did she have limited energy if she’s a powerful Creator? Because it was a contest rule. Three Creators compete with each other. Each had the same level of energy to use to create a new realm. At the end of agreed upon time they would check on their creations to compare which realm thrived and which couldn’t survive.
…
Okay, this is getting long so I’ll stop here but this is just an example of deep worldbuilding that serves a purpose. I doubt I’ll ever have the chance to explain the creation story to the readers because the Creators never make an appearance in any of the stories, but it was a worthwhile effort because it helped me understand the world and how things work, especially magic.
Most of all, it was fun to write and I loved that feeling of being able to answer every relevant question.
As a contrast, I tried to create one of the realms by answering a list of worldbuilding questions, similar to your list. Result: I was able to fill in some of the answers but I’m still largely unfamiliar with WHY things are the way they are. Despite answering all those questions about weather patterns, social hierarchy, architecture, etc, when the time came to write a story within that realm, I got stuck because I didn’t foresee the worldbuilding details I would need.
When I go back to work on that story eventually, I plan to follow the other process of asking story specific questions and adjust worldbuilding. That’s not to say there’s no value in the work I’ve done with a worldbuilding checklist, but I think it wasn’t the best use of my creative time.
So instead of starting from the general what does this realm look like, I’m going to ask the question: what subjects are taught in the institute my MC will attend? Why do they teach those subjects, etc.
…
So for you, I’m not saying to never use a checklist. It could be a good starting point but if the long list daunts you then maybe try a different approach? I don’t know if my method of asking questions would work for everyone but it might be worth trying.
The process should be fun.
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That is so true, and I wholeheartedly agree.
Here I am to give you a hug because hugs and nice and you most certainly need one.
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My other option is to just make it shorter, but I will have that lingering feeling that I will forget something.
For the novel, the worldbuilding is important in it’s own way. The reason why I am stressing about the worldbuilding is because I have topics that require me to think…a lot.
The things I need to think about are stuff that require research…heavy research.
I guess that is why I am stressed about it in some ways.
There are things that don’t needed to be added in the novel unless I make the novel something far more.
So, I understand where you are coming from even though the worldbuilding is purely for fun and work.
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hugging you right back
Having a community is invaluable. In my personal life I don’t have anyone to talk to about this stuff. Non-writers really don’t get it, and honestly, I don’t even try to explain because these challenges are so specific to the writing journey, I don’t think there’s a way to explain it at all.
And I really do love talking about my projects. Even when my posts get long, I’m always holding back, thinking, no one wants to read a wall of text. But I still love writing it.
And it helps. I think better in writing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started a thread, explained my problem in detail, and by the end of writing an explanation, I manage to come up with a solution. So even the threads I delete before publishing help me.
But it all starts from having a place to write those threads.
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