How interesting is your world? Is it interesting enough that you would want to live there? Too interesting that it would terrify you to do so?
I recently heard about someone who created a world so dull that she didn’t even want to create her story anymore (it was a Dungeons & Dragons world, not actually a book, but it’s the same idea). Her characters (the players in the game) would go places and interact with people. They had a goal and worked hard toward achieving it. But it was simply uninteresting and no one could figure out why. And then it dawned on them…
No conflict!
The intrinsic workings of the world presented no conflict. It was an interesting world in that there was magic and interesting settings and creatures, but without conflict built into the world it was boring.
We all know that your novel needs to have conflict. Your protagonist has a goal and there needs to be something or someone stopping them from achieving it—an antagonist. But your world also needs to have conflict.
It could be something as simple as bad weather or as complicated as a stratified social system that the protagonist is fighting against. Magic could be the problem—either having it is bad or not having it is. If you’re dealing with creatures such as vampires or weres does the world around them know they exist (no conflict) or not (conflict in that they have to hide their true nature).
You don’t even need to write fantasy for such conflict to be necessary. In a historical setting (such as my Regency romances) economic disparity is a conflict as is the Napoleonic War. In contemporary stories, a small town could provide conflict in that everyone knows everyone else and word spreads like lightening. Or your characters could live in a big city where there are other external dangers.
There are endless possibilities on how to build conflict into your world depending on the story and the nature of the world, but the idea that the world itself must provide conflict may be something that hasn’t been considered. Think about the world in which your story is set and then think of what conflicts that world presents to your characters. The world itself is a fascinating antagonist and it’s a shame not to use it.