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This might sound vague but you (general) need to be curious and willing to learn. Our world exists by a series of laws and consequences of millions (geological) and thousands (humanity) years of history. To do the same for yours, you cannot just smash pieces together of interesting things blindly.

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For people that aren't familiar with me, I run four series of world building prompt games that try to ask you how a very specific thing has features or traits that are interconnected, questions that are researched in a specific way to get you thinking about how things make sense in a logical way.

I will use a specific example here. I have a creature that I need to make for TCOM that can do a form of mind control on living things. I cannot make this too obvious, otherwise the bad guys get caught, so I'm now looking into ways this creature would have been previously used in animal husbandry.

This would make its existence and industrial application so critical that it might be hard for some that catch on to decide to do anything about it. But okay, now I need some cordyceps-ass behavior or investigation on neurotransmitters to see how to make it work in a way that "makes sense."

If I drop this into the world without establishing a connection to other things, it'll feel weird once the whole picture is there. Sometimes, I implement 5Y or an alternative of 5H and just ask myself WHY or HOW something works and if it sounds stupid, I try to fix it or find away to make it work.