Worldbuilding in an Instant: How ‘Love+Death+Robots’ Crafts Fully Realized Universes Quickly

One of the TV shows I adore is Netflix’s Love+Death+Robots. It’s an anthology series that takes the viewer to these exquisitely animated worlds that range from the past to the present and to the future.

Each story has its own unique world, so they have to do the worldbuilding for the audience incredibly quickly.

Today, I want to go over the lessons of that show before its fourth season drops.

Let’s dive in.

Worldbuilding Quickly 

The idea of worldbuilding can be one of those onerous tasks that drives writers a little insane. You have to communicate to the audience the rules of the world, when you are, where you are, and get them to understand it in a way that won’t take away from your story.

Well, what I admire about Love+Death+Robots is that it does all of this so quickly in every episode.

Let’s look at a few strategies they use to get the audience up to speed.

• Focus on the Core Concept & Conflict:
  • I like to start all writing with this mindset: What is the absolute minimum the audience needs to know about this world to understand the central conflict and the protagonist’s journey?
    • If you start from there, you fill in the details that are necessary and can add more later, on the rewrite.
  • Another big question I think needs to be answered: How is it different than the world we live in right now?
    • These differences are what needs to be upfront because we will always infer a world is run like ours unless told differently.
  • Build outward from this core concept, only adding details relevant to the plot or character arcs.
• Show, Don’t Tell: This is paramount in screenwriting.
  • Visual Cues: What is the tech like in this world and how can you describe the place on the page that gives us the cliff notes of where to take our imaginations?
  • Action & Interaction: How do characters interact with their environment and each other? Do they bow to superiors? Do they carry specific tools for survival? Do they avoid certain areas? This reveals rules and dangers organically.
  • Opening Scene: Your first few scenes are crucial. Use them to visually establish the tone, setting, and a key aspect of the world’s rules or reality quickly.
• Use Dialogue:
• Avoid Info Dumps: Characters shouldn’t sound like walking encyclopedias. Dialogue should serve character and plot first, worldbuilding second. But it can help to get some stuff out via your main characters — maybe put them in a situation where they have to explain something.
• Context Clues: Characters refer casually to locations, events, technologies, or social rules as if they are normal to them (e.g., “Make sure you clock out before the sector lockdown,” “Damn Sand People got another transport”).
• Conflict-Driven Exposition: Reveal world details through arguments, disagreements, or characters explaining things to each other because it’s necessary for the situation they are in.

You can also use voiceover or even start your movie or TV show with a brief explaining text before you dive in, like the Star Wars scroll. Or the Lord of the Rings prologue.

Let me know what you think in the comments.