Newsletter-07/07

This will Take More Than Seven Days-Part 1

         Although world development has been touched on by another editor, I hope to present some more in depth information about the topic. World design is a major part of any fiction writing, but it is of particular interest to fantasy, since so much of fantasy revolves around how the world is different from ours. There are a lot of decisions to be made, and many steps that should be taken to develop what will ultimately be an alien world that the reader will come to know as well as the one we all live in. It can be a lot of work, but it can also be as much fun as writing stories in the world.

         The first thing an budding world builder will have to decide is what sort of world it will be. While there are a vast number of options, they essentially break down into three groups: Totally made up, Historical with a twist, and Modern with a twist. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, and the choice may not be an easy one. Of course, the choice becomes very easy if you already know what story you are going to write. The needs of the story always come first. If you are just deciding to write, and don't know exactly what the story is going to be, then the choice of worlds is pretty open ended, and it may help to know some basics about each type.

         The totally made up world is pretty self explanatory. This is a world constructed from scratch by the author. A lot of fantasy is done in such worlds. Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Shanarra, The Belgariad and so on and on and on. All these stories and series of novels are written in worlds made by the authors. There are many advantages to working in a custom build world. The big one is no one can tell you what to do. Anything goes, as long as it works for the story and you can write in some reason for the oddities. A second advantage is research. Since you are setting the scene and making the rules, what you say goes. It doesn't hurt to do some research on basic information, however. If you're story is set in a fishing village, it's best to know some details you can put it to make that village come to life.

         The big disadvantage of the home built setting is that you now have to do a lot more work defining it for the reader. Most people know what a horse looks like, not so many people will have such a clear idea what the six legged lizards used as beasts of burden on your world look like. You will have to find a way to describe the pertinent features of the world without boring the reader. This is also a problem when history becomes important. It is pretty useless to have a character mention the great war of the Ice Spire when most readers won't even know what the Ice Spire is. You will have to find a way to provide this information without destroying the continuity of the narrative. Having a character suddenly break in to a long exposition about the war only works in very specialized cases. There are a number of ways to handle it. Perhaps a character's relative was involved in the war and reminisces. Perhaps the town is having a festival relating to the victory and one of the characters needs to be told what it was about, or maybe even a traveling minstrel is singing a ballad about the war. Just don't break the narrative to exposit about the war, that will damage the story.

         Custom made worlds are seldom out of place in a fantasy story. Since they allow the writer to come up with all the history and details of the world, they are ideal for someone who wants to write something really original. They are also great for people who don't have ready access to a library, since you don't need to spend a great deal of time finding out details you will need to provide your readers. They are not so great when you want to tell a story where everything is familiar, but something is just slightly off. There are also a number of stories that are strongly based on folklore, or even urban legends. In those situations, an author might want to make use of the real world.

         There are many examples of fantasy stories set in the real world. The upcoming League of Extraordinary Gentleman is set in Victorian times where literary characters really exist. Terry Brooks Word and Void series is set in modern America. In both cases, however, the real world is altered to fit the needs of the story, but not altered so much that it becomes a foreign setting.

         Both the Real World With a Twist options have similar advantages and disadvantages. In both cases, you have limits. You have to make use of the history and cultural points that are already there, with some modification for the story as necessary. The main advantage of this is that you will have to generally do less work establishing the scene. Generally, readers will know what a car is, how dogs look and behave, what apartments are like and so on. You won't have to provide every detail of World War 2, just the ones that are different from established history.

         The main disadvantage is that you will have to do a lot more research to get things right. No matter what part of the real world you set things in, someone is bound to have been there, and be able to catch your mistakes. If you write about places you know you have an advantage. You will still probably need to do some work to get the necessary details just right so no one will catch things like a car going the wrong way down a one way street to arrive at an address that cannot possibly exist. When working with the real world you are trading ease of writing for necessity of research.

         No particular choice is perfect, and they are all pretty much equal for the choosing. So long as you can handle the needs of any giving type of setting, you should choose freely among them. Don't restrict yourself because one type of world might seem like more work than another. The effort will be worth it for any of them.

Colin Back on the Ghost Roads