I have 74,000 words of worldbuilding notes for my high fantasy project, writing every day for almost two years now, so I have discovered that some things help and some things hinder my ability to write well and write productively.
I am not sharing these as a formula. I am sharing these because I have found that they work for me specifically, and I hope they can be helpful. If you work better writing otherwise, do it your way!! I hate hate hate people that claim their advice is universal. There is no universal advice. But I don't think my experience is applicable only to myself; I hope I can help at least one person in some way with one of these suggestions. I do, however, articulate some of these points as though they are truth; this is because I think some of them are principles that can be applied in multiple ways.
I have found that before writing notes about general personality traits, I first need to write their desires. The things they most deeply and intuitively and unconsciously feel and want and need. If you understand a character's desires, writing the rest of the character's personality, behavior, dialogue, motives etc. will come easily. There is a distinct difference between desire and motivation; people are often aware of their motivations, but unconscious desires are what every motive stems from.
Let me provide an example. Perhaps the character is deeply obsessed with a friend of theirs, or their girlfriend/boyfriend. That happens all the time in real life. You might write in your character notes "obsessed with her boyfriend", but you can go a step deeper than that. This person may be self-aware of this obsession, but it must stem from a desire they are unaware of; a desire to feel safe, or perhaps fear of abandonment. If you write about their fear of abandonment, it will be easier to write other personality traits.
This is how people work. The conscious mind is emergent of so many impulses and desires we do not understand and are not aware of; every conscious motivation in every human alive emerges from an unconscious desire. This is human. If you write your characters like this, they are more realistic.
When creating a world, the deeper the world, the more you can get immersed. When you, the writer, get immersed, that's when the project no longer becomes work; it becomes an obsession. I'll spend hours glued to my desk writing, and it's the only thing I can think about. And when I quit for the day or go to eat or take a shower, my head is swimming with things about the story; I'll be thinking about fey dynasties and primordial evils and relics and cosmic entities and it's all I can think about the rest of the day. There have been days where I have skipped breakfast and lunch so I could write.
This is all cool and good, but how does someone do that? How does one make the world deeper? My only tip is to just write about the world, and don't stop writing. I curently have 74k words of note about the world, about the characters. As I write, ideas come to me, and as I write those ideas, more ideas come to me, and as I write those, more idas come, and it goes on and on.
I used to struggle really badly with writer's block. It's like I would just get all "constipated" and anxious and I just had no idea what to write next. Like no ideas were coming to mind, and the ones that did were awful. It was so frustrating, it made me want to pull my hair out!! I watched this video by a dude who gave the advice "don't be afrid to write garbage" but that still didn't work. But I did ultimately discover a solution to the issue that worked for me better than anyone's advice: I just set a timer, and started typing words. It doesn't matter if you even keep what you write. But if you just start typing, after a hundred words or two suddenly all these ideas will start to flow, and you'll be able to write again. It doesn't matter what you write about. Just start writing.
Seriously. I have spent big money on all this different software. I have tried so many of them, and used so many of them heavily, but ultimately I have found that features don't matter. They don't. The bells and whistles are secondary to productivity and can actually hinder it. What really matters is if the software is designed such that you are able comfortably write for long periods of time. I have spent $50+ on Scrivener, $100+ on Wordstar, $10 on Nimblewriter, $15 on Deepdwn. I have also used niche zen editors like Focuswriter and JDarkroom, and I have found that in the end, after trying all these different programs over a period of a decade, I have settled on using Obsidian (a free application) and Google Docs (free as well).
I've even written productively on a typewriter of all things. Features don't matter -- what matters is distraction. Scrivener was so cluttered with features that I was distracted constantly by all the cool things I could do. Deepdwn was also very cluttered; there were so many ways to organize your files with metadata that I spent so much time messing with the metadata instead of writing.
I've also spent big money on keyboards. I was thinking that a really expensive keyboard would make writing easier because it would feel so good to type on. That was not the case. It was exactly the same. Right now I am using a membrane keyboard that I got for $3, because I have found that I like the tactile feel of membrane the most.
Find the software that allows you to focus productively. It's better to write with notepad, a free .txt editor, if that's what you're most productive on. If you like the expensive software though, use that!! Use what's best for you.
Writing sprints are a HUGE boost to my productivity. On Discord, me and a group of people will set a timer and write for the duration of the timer. Afterward we all compare wordcounts. It's called a "writing sprint" and it MASSIVELY increases my productivity. If I try to write without sprinting or timing myself or challenging myself in some way, I am so so so so much less productive. Even if I don't have someone to write with, I'll still set focus timers and write for the duration of the timers, just to see how productive I can be in twenty minutes.
Having something flavorful to sip on allows me to write for longer periods of time. It doesn't matter for me specifically if it's caffeinated. Sometime's it is coffee, sometimes tea, sometimes soda, sometimes energy drink, sometimes even a glass of wine. The point is to be sipping on a flavor that you're in the mood for, and keep sipping on it as you write.
It's been studied. I read an article about how a study was done and they found that people who sip on a beverage can focus for longer without burnout. Get a some dranks!!
I don't advise liquor because after a couple of drinks your head might be swimming with alcohol and it's harder to write. I find that the limit for me if I want to be productive is a single glass of wine, or even a half a glass. I don't advise writing while intoxicated on other things. I tried it once and I made so many grammatical mistakes that I only noticed when I sobered up.
Personally I love love love black coffee or earl grey tea. Those two beverages have carried me very far. In 2024 I would have recommended energy drinks because I drank like 6 per day instead of eating breakfast or lunch. But no longer.
Write things you are excited about! Don't write things that feel like a tedious and painful chore. If you need to, cycle to a different project, or a different facet of the project. For example, if I'm sick of writing about my characters, I might write about a fictional nation or a religion. Or I might switch projects entirely and work on something else.