Worldbuilding

The purpose of worldbuilding isn't just to do a cool exercise, but to give a sense of place — and all of your thought experiments absolutely have to result in something vivid and alive.

High fantasy of the George RR Martin kind hinges on world-building. When there really is a whole world to build, and not just a historical period or a particular country, world-building does not take a few paragraphs in a short story; it takes chapters.

A sequel of this magnitude has the ability to reach higher, though, with more creative worldbuilding balancing out the dime-a-dozen pop culture references and cheap gags.