Fantasy has many subgenres, from dark fantasy, to sword and sorcery, but all of them are linked by the supernatural – be it magic, demons, witches or sorcery. This might fool a new writer into believing that he or she can write an epic fantasy without a problem, because when it comes to fantasy, many writers tend to think that anything goes, and that anything can happen. However, the background in fantasy is what makes it so appealing, from the magic to the characters, and in this genre, all is connected by world building. There are several things you should think about when you’re building your fantasy world, and below, we’ve gathered some of them.
1. Mapping
Before you begin your story, or as you’re plotting your fantasy story, you need to map out your world, from continents, to rivers and forests, hills and mountains, lakes, seas and oceans. Then, think about the people and their settlements – cities, towns, and villages. You need to make a basic map or the world, at the very least, but the more details you put into it, the better, because you never know which part of your world you might need later into your story.
2. People
When it comes to world building, the people in your universe have a great role to play, and not just the main characters. This is why mapping is important – it lets you decide on the behavior of the people that live in different areas. For example, people that live in the mountains will be different, both physically and psychologically, than people that live near a river or by the sea. This leads to them behaving differently, and their language and interactions with your other characters will be different, defined by their way of life and their experience.
3. Rules
Your story will not belong to the fantasy genre if it doesn’t have at least a little bit of magic in it. However, you can’t just use magic in your story without defining the magical system. You need to show how the people in your world can obtain magical abilities, whether they get it at birth, or through rigorous training. Do they specialize, or does everybody get the same basic abilities and improve upon them later? Answering these questions will give limits to the magical system, and add consistency to your universe, and become a part of the world your characters live in.
4. Cultural values
Cultural values define a person’s upbringing, and with that, have a great influence on the person they grow up into. This is where your characters come in. Depending where they come from, originally, their values will be different. In fact, some of them might differentiate so much that one character becomes antagonistic to another character. In fact, may be even the main conflict between your protagonist and antagonist might originate from different cultural and social values, although, this doesn’t happen that often in fantasy. However, this will add color to your characters’ attitudes, and will further help in setting up your world as a whole.
5. Consistency
It goes without saying that every interaction, every plot point and everything that happens in your story has to be in complete synchronization with the world you’ve created. You cannot have the hero magically develop amazing skills that will defeat the antagonist, nor can you have the hero saved by an unnatural force that cannot properly be explained. This is why the four elements mentioned above are needed in your world building – because they will serve as guidelines later, especially the one about the rules of magic, and about what can and cannot be done in your world.
Image credit: greg westfall on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0
Georgina Roy wants to live in a world filled with magic. As an art student, she’s moonlighting as a writer and is content to fill notebooks and sketchbooks with magical creatures and amazing new worlds. When she is not at school, or scribbling away in a notebook, you can usually find her curled up, reading a good urban fantasy novel, or writing on her laptop, trying to create her own.