Writing Blog Number 2

20240210 World Building

World Building

I mentioned in the Speculative Settings post that world-building when it comes to setting is important, if not vital. However, even though it is fantasy, unless you are going for something beyond the ken, there needs to be some sort of basis of realism, a concreteness to support the whole thing.

Some great worlds have been built in literature. Discworld from Terry Pratchett. Middle Earth from Tolkien, Howard’s Hyborian Age, Lieber’s Erewhon. So many great worlds.

So… how do we world build?

First, and this has to be a given now: DRAW A MAP!

Everything I mentioned in my last post needs to be there. Placement of towns, terrain, farmlands, where things are made, etc. Also, look at rivers. Rivers do not just appear and flow; they start higher up and gravity carries them. They need to come from where it snows or rains a lot to give water, or from some sort of natural sporing or the like. No such thing as spontaneous water. What created the mountains? What created the islands? How many landmasses are there? Why? There is a lot to consider just physically.

Now you have to populate it. Is it human only? Humans and creatures of mythology and legend (elves, dwarves, etc.)? Creatures you have made up? Are they just humans in a different skin, like the alien races in the Star Wars and Star Trek universes? If they are different, how? In the traditional publishing world, many publishers, especially in science fiction, will now ask: if they act like humans with one personality trait dominant and with some knobs or extras added on, why not just use humans?

Think about the creatures. Intelligent beings who can fly will have a completely different mindset to we land-bound humans. Creatures who live underground will hate light and have heightened other senses. It must all be considered.

It might even be good to look at the evolution of your creatures. Cameron did this with Avatar. He did the whole history of life on Pandora. Amazing. Released it as a book. But is it in the film? No. Doesn’t need to be. But that sort of care comes out in the world.

Maybe you could look at government systems. We have sort of democracies in most of our world, but would they fit your fantasy world? Even in your historical romance set in a central European principality? In my main fantasy world, most nations are monarchies (some absolute, some with what we would call parliaments advising the monarch), there are a few theocracies (because there is a very dominant religion in my world), a few plutocracies (which tends to lend itself more towards villainous governments, to be honest), and a couple of kraterocracies. The thing is, these help the reader because they can relate in some way to them, and world build so simply.

However, if you decided to have a government by the person with the most intelligent pet owl, people are going to wonder (a) why that form of government would work, (b) how that form of government even developed, and (c) what that form of government would mean for the people who lived under it. At least with the old tried and true forms of government, the people and their political ambitions or lack thereof can be explained and understood.

I will say that if you decide to base a world on a similar system to Lord of the Rings, it has been done to death. Even before J.R.R. Tolkien died, he was so sick of it he approved the parody book Bored of the Rings. Dungeons and Dragons was based on LotR in part, and so all fanfic from D&D goes back to LotR. What all this means is whatever you want to do in this field, it's probably been done before so be prepared for a lot of rejection letters.

As I mentioned in the Speculative Settings post, you need to look at many things in your world. Okay, your characters wear armour and everyone has a sword. That means that metal ores must be common and blacksmiths even more so. Your characters eat, so where is the food? They make clothing from many materials – where did they come from? How are they made? Also, think about religions. Are they important? How many? Monotheistic or pantheistic? Most non-technological cultures have strong religious overtures to everything they did. Or does religion not matter at all, as in Middle Earth? I will say, I find the use of religion in fantasy on Earth-like worlds feels more realistic – pantheistic, differing across cultures, some cross-pollination.

Then there is the issue, especially in extraterrestrial fiction, where the worlds are mono-environmental. Sure, there might be a snow area "at the north", but the worlds have one climate, one terrain, the same trees and plants and animals are everywhere, there is no variation in weather. Star Wars is shocking for this. But look at Earth - that is not the case. That is why we humans have managed to become such a thriving dominant species – exploiting the entire world.

So, some extra quick-fire mistakes I’ve seen: characters in most fantasy books rarely pass farms, the towns do not have industrial areas, lower socio-economic people are generally portrayed only as beggars, there are coins available to everyone (and nearly always based on D&D coinage systems), religions are just Christian allegories. That’s just the blatantly obvious.

Then we have scene setting that often involves ruins. Why are they where they are? Why haven’t other cultures built in the same place? What happened to those old civilisations? Did they collapse, were they conquered, or did a natural disaster impact them? This historical world-building can also add flavour.

I have been asked about using invented fictional languages (which Tolkien did magnificently, Harrison in the West of Eden series did surprisingly well… and no-one else has even come close). I would avoid it if possible and find a way of using different text stylings (fonts, a combination of italics and in square parentheses, etc.). Here is what one of my publishers and I came up with:
         [Ho, stranger! What do you do here?]
to indicate a foreign tongue being spoken (in trad publishing, they do not like different fonts and really hate different colours). As it is, I tend to base my fictional languages on a mixture of Latin and ancient Greek, and/or a combination of French and German. Change a letter here and there, but use the declensions/ conjugations so that it isn't coded English. However, don’t call a cow a ‘Splonk’. If it looks like a cow, moos like a cow, gives milk like a cow, then it’s a cow. Science fiction writers are shocking with this – they write with a graphoplex; why not a pen? Which is an example I found in a story I read years ago.

Now, many fantasy writers do create their own worlds. The problem is a lot of writers (especially fantasy writers) put a lot of work into their world-building, and they feel they need to show the reader how much work they’ve put in and how clever they are. They've created this world and, dagnabbit. they're going to show everyone their world is fully conceived! Expositions, info dumps, stuff that hardly matters – Chekhov’s gun is very important. Does knowing about the time the eagle-people stole the mouse-king’s sceptre add anything to the story? No? Then leave it out. Write it as a separate, stand-alone short story. Or do what Tolkien did, and write a shed-load of essays. They were intended for him and him alone, but most ended up published. The writer doesn't need to include everything in the story; if it's important, it'll come up; if not, it'll be there for the next book in the world, or you’ll know you’ve done a thorough job. Either way, do it because without it, you’ll have a gap. Drip-feed info, let characters experience it, let them learn, and let some things remain unspoken. However, we don't need to know everything.

Especially scenery. Either drip-feed or cut scenery description to what is vital for the plot. A great example is a book I read a few years ago where they spent two long paragraphs describing a waterfall. This waterfall was just a piece of scenery. It meant nothing, and was only mentioned once more when they said something like, "It's near the waterfall." I had the feeling the writer was too in love with their descriptive prowess and the metaphors they'd used and didn't want to lose it.

So, that long-winded rant is world building.

TL;DR: Use a map. Create everything. Don’t show your readers everything you’ve created. Placement, names, creatures, living aspects, religion, government all needs to make sense.

And I have a feeling if anyone bothers to reads this, this will be the first of my hopefully helpful posts to get abusive responses.

(Note: I have not spoken about magic. That is a different rant for a different day.)