One thing readers
of fantasy look for is a journey to a magical world that is unlike the mundane
world we all inhabit, so building that world is one of the most important tasks
of a fantasy writer and also one of the most fun.
There are two
basic types of world builders, sometimes called architects and gardeners. Before
they even begin to write the story, an architect takes days, weeks, months
outlining every intricate detail of their world from economics to politics to
magic. They will create whole notebooks full of climate data, geography, types
of inhabitants, religious systems, and even holidays. There are two basic
dangers to this type of world building. The first is using it as an excuse to delay
beginning the actual story. It can become a distraction/procrastination tactic
to combat a writer’s anxiety about whether or not they are truly good enough to
be a writer. (An anxiety nearly all writers share.) So a writer needs to know
when to stop world building and start writing. The second danger is to use
every detail imagined within the novel itself. You spent time creating it, so
you need to share it, right? Wrong. The writer will always know more about the
world that actually appears in the story itself. As an author, you only reveal
as much of your world as the reader needs to know. The details of the world
should emerge gradually as they are needed for plot and character development,
not be dumped on the reader because the writer created a cool aspect of their
world that doesn’t matter to the story itself.
The second type of
world builder is often called a gardener. A gardener will have the seeds or the
very basics of their world in mind and allow that world to grow as they write
the story. They don’t know everything about their world when they begin, but
allow it to emerge as the story needs it. This type of world builder also faces
potential problems. The first is a shallow or insufficient developed world with
too many aspects of it unexplored. A shallow world will not satisfy the reader.
The second problem is continuity errors. The author may claim one thing about
the religion on page 5 that is contradicted by the scene on page 94 that doesn’t
mesh with what they bring out on page 296.
Either method can
work and work beautifully as long as the author is aware of the dangers and
guards against them. The problems of both methods will be inevitable in the
first draft and is one of the many tasks that will need to be addressed in
revision.
Some people
believe that since they are creating something that doesn’t exist, they can do
anything they want with it. This is true only to an extent. When you are
creating a new world, you are asking your readers to suspend their disbelief
for the length of the story. The reader knows that dragons and magic don’t
exist, but during the time they are emerged in your story, they should be
willing to pretend they do. In creating a suspension of disbelief, the author
will find the reader a willing accomplice. Fantasy readers come to a fantasy
novel with an absolute willingness to loose themselves in a make-believe world.
If they didn’t want to temporarily believe in unicorns and fairies, they would
have chosen a different genre. But the reader will turn against the author if
the author doesn’t create a believable world, and once a reader loses their suspension
of disbelief, it is almost impossible to get back. They probably won’t finish
the current novel, and they certainly won’t read another by the same author.
So how does an
author keep the readers’ suspension of disbelief? The following 4 rules lay
that out. (Note: The only unbreakable rule of writing is, does it work?
However, if these rules are followed, it will work most of the time.)
Rule #1: Your world needs consistent
rules. Unicorns can’t be drawn only to virgins at one point in the story and
then come to your non-virgin main character at the moment she has need of a
unicorn. Dragons can’t need 100 lbs of meat a day, but exist in a desert
without much life. Fantasy doesn’t mean illogical. Readers will readily believe
something that they know not to be true, but they will balk at anything that
insults their sense of logic.
Rule #2: Anything in your world that
also exists in the real world either needs to be consistent with what the
reader knows of reality or have an explanation for why it isn’t. So if you’re
including such aspects that you have little experience with, you need to
research them. One glaring examples of this problem are horses. Horses are a
staple of epic fantasy, but few in the modern world have had much interaction
with horses. They aren’t like cars with legs, which you can ride all day with only
brief stops to load them with fuel and simply park and forget about at night.
They are living beings that need a lot of care and have restrictions on their physical
strength and endurance. If you are going to include horses in your world, make
sure you understand horses.
Rule #3: Include diverse people. No
group of people (or elves, fairies, or dwarfs) is all good or all bad. If you
have a large enough group, you will some assholes in the mix, some truly caring
and good people, and a whole lot of people with varying degrees of assholeness
and niceness. Nor will they all think, believe, or act the same way. You may
decide in your world that dwarfs are obsessed with mining gold and gems, but if
your novel has a large enough sample of dwarfs, there should be some who prefer
to play the lute or carve pictures into the rock walls of the caves. A society
of only knights and nobles also couldn’t exist. It would also need farmers and
artisans.
Rule #4: Your world needs to be
structured in such a way that it addresses real world realities, such as food,
clothing, shelter. If a society is to exist, human needs must be met. If they
aren’t, society is unstable and won’t last long.
What's your favorite fantasy world? Please tell us in the comments below.
