Writing.Com General Discussion

As many others have mentioned, it really depends on the type of story you're intending to tell. If a setting is already familiar to your target audience—modern day cities, a medieval setting that's super popular in the fantasy genre and would therefore be normal for those readers—then you needn't spend as much time fleshing out the setting; instead, smaller and more intimate details of those settings can be sprinkled throughout your story as enhancement to add flavor and ground the tale in its place.

Conversely, if you're taking your readers to a brand new setting—a new world that is unlike our own, a land that doesn't obey our physical laws, etc—you'll want to delve more heavily into the worldbuilding of the actual setting. Just be careful how you integrate that information so it doesn't sound forced and detract from the pacing and forward momentum of the story. No infodumps; leave that to Tolkien.