On the one hand that can seem like an incredibly easy thing to do. I mean, how hard can it be? They've got the freedom to do whatever they want in their world, unconstrained by the real world limitations, geography or rules.
On the other hand creating an entire new world can be a daunting and complicated task. A whole world. From Scratch. That's no mean feat. Think about it. Designing a world. That simple sentence covers a wide variety of aspects that have to be thought through in order for the resulting world to be credible and workable. The writer has to set down how the society works, the hierarchy, the technology, the geography, the environment (and how that works) and place names to name but a few. Add in to the mix magic for a fantasy novel and how that works, who can perform it and how to limit it so that every dilemma thrown at your characters can't be simply cured by casting a spell, and the writer suddenly has a huge job on their hands.
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| A new world! The Vale of Tremorn and the Lonely Road from Harbith Hiln to Wickershore...or, is it? No, it's Glen Coe on a wet Friday afternoon, but the Vale is based on it. [Photo: Jack Gilbert] |
You might sense from that last paragraph that the brittle voice of experience was speaking there. I'm currently brainstorming ideas for my next project which will be a series of fantasy stories and I'm finding the creation of this new world a little more complicated than I first imagined.
It's not my first attempt at world building. I had to do it for 360. In that story, the main characters are immersed in a virtual reality system that has three different games each set in its own "world" (A war game, an alpine resort and an enchanted forest).
Each game has its own characteristics, goals and features, but all three run on the same basic principles that are universal across the virtual system.
That meant that I had to lay down common rules that would apply to the overall system as well as invent the locations and characters encountered by the protagonists in the three games. And like the magic of my fantasy novels, I had to make sure that the rules governing how the players operated in the games didn't make overcoming dilemmas too easy or too hard.
I had to rewrite those rules several times, I can tell you!
And that was just for one story. When it comes to writing the series, I'm going to have to be extra careful to ensure that I keep things consistent across all the stories, or at least work out credible reasons as to why things change mid-way through if they do.
That's where keeping a story "bible" or wiki can help. Some TV shows have them so that their writers can refer to them to maintain continuity and get the facts right ('cos there's nothing like getting a fact wrong to wind-up the fans - including me!). It might be in the form of a notebook, online wiki, or other note keeping program like OneNote, or Google Keep among others.
I use a mixture of a real A5 notebook and Evernote to keep all my notes and ideas, although I'm trying a new system of sticky notes and two large sheets of card to mind map my ideas for Kiranan's Crucible. I'll let you know in a few weeks how that goes.
But facts and ideas are only half the equation. Sometimes you have to cater to real world limitations even in a fantasy world. If your story features a city that's got a population of 50,000, how big would that city have to be? A square mile may be too small (unless it's a city inhabited by halflings), but twenty square miles could be very sparsely populated for humans.
Or if you have two cities a thousand miles apart, how long would it take to ride between the two? A week? Only if your horses can cover around hundred and forty miles a day at twenty miles an hour for ten hours solid (Or perhaps your characters use magic...?)
Factors like that will affect your plot.
The approach I'm using for Kiranan's Crucible is to think big, imagine everything, note it down, then filter through my grand ideas and temper them with some real world limitations where necessary.
That way I hope to create fantastic worlds that work for my characters, my plots and for my readers. We'll see how that goes too!
So world building can be a huge amount of hard work, but it's also be a lot of fun and when it's all done and everything works, it can be very, very satisfying.
