This is actually a pretty good list of bad worldbuilding techniques for your cool SF/Fantasy novel. To sum up, it's "Not considering how things fit together" and "Filing off the serial numbers of 'real world' stuff without actually considering how it works."
It's probably too late for your #NaNoWriMo novel at this point (stopping to do detailed worldbuilding doesn't produce word count, and having characters infodump about the world is rarely engaging writing[1,2]) … but, at the same time, giving some of these items some thinking during non-writing time — whilst commuting or showering or doing the dishes — might suddenly give you an insight into a bunch of additional complications you can throw into your novel to make your characters' lives more difficult.
[1] Unless your name is J.R.R. Tolkien — but he didn't wing it. He spent decades in worldbuilding, essentially writing novels as an excuse to use it.
[2] On the other hand, infodumps that get frequently interrupted by other people with either differing viewpoints of the nature of the world, or outsiders with this-just-occurred-to-me questions about it, can actually be sort of interesting — and produce more conflict.
7 Deadly Sins of Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is an essential part of any work of fiction. But especially for science fiction or fantasy, it’s the lifeblood of storytelling. But when worldbuilding fails, it can wreck your whole story, and leave your characters feeling pointless. Here are seven deadly sins of worldbuilding. The Rules of Quick and Dirty Worldbuilding The Rules of Quick and Dirty Worldbuilding The Rules of Quick and Dirty Worldbuilding Worldbuilding is the art of …
