Newsletter 12/15

This Is Going To Take Longer Than Seven Days Part 6
Flora and Fauna

Last time I discussed fantasy cultures, or the human element of the setting. This time, I'm going to look at the other life forms out there, specifically plants and animals. It would be pretty tough to write a story, especially a fantasy story, without any of these. They can serve a number of purposes, from basic window dressing to vital components of the plot. "To cure the King's illness, you must find the Bloom of Valkavian, which only grows on the peak of Mt. Feldspar and blooms only on the full moon..."


There are a number of ways you can create vibrant ecosystems for your fantasy world. First, like any other part of a story, you can steal ideas from real life. Horses are a staple of fantasy, as are trees. Most fantasy authors use real world animals and plants to populate their world. This has the advantage of familiarity. You generally don't have to let the reader know what a horse is or what it is used for. You don't have to explain why poison ivy is a bad thing to stand in. You don't have to explain that seaweed is not generally found inland. The reader can legitimately be expected to already know this. As such, real plants and animals can usually form a strong backbone of a fantasy world.

Sometimes, however, the author wants or needs to go beyond the bounds of the real. There are lots of reasons for this. Our world tends to lack some of the staples of fantasy worlds. Monsters are pretty rare in real life. Plants that can miraculously cure any disease are tough to find to. So, generally you will at least need to come up with a handful of new things for your world. That doesn't mean you should just throw reality away, however. To create a believable world, your ecosystem will have to be believable too.

There's a few rules that should be followed. These are the sort of rules that you break at your own peril, especially if you give no in story explanations. The first is that as you higher up the food chain, there are fewer and fewer representitives. So, we have plants all over the place. Herbivores usually travel in herds. First level carnivores tend to be outnumbered by the herbivores they eat, and so on up the chain. Forgetting this is a pretty big mistake. I've seen a few worlds that had multple dragons living in the same general area, along with a bunch of other things. Wouldn't work, unless there was some kind of in story reason. Dragons are big, and they must eat a lot. More than one or two should depopulate the area pretty quickly. Now, if the dragons feed off ambient magical energy, or perhaps consume the aura from precious metals and gems (explaining thier hoarding tendencies) that would make sense. Such explanations never seem to appear in the badly constructed worlds, however.

Another rule is that things tend to be well adapted to their environments. In a fantasy story, adaptation can take on many forms, but if you have a creature that dies when it dries out, don't stick it in a dessert. Always think about the purpose of the creature or plant when you set it up, and things should work out fine.

So, how do you come up with unique inhabitants of your fantasy world? Well, there's lots of ways. If you're just looking for a few different specimens of flowers, that's just window dressing. Come up with a good name and description and that's it. If you want them to have benificial, or even malevolent properties, come up with a brief explanation why they are like that, but make sure you are consistent. Don't claim that an herb is a deadly poison on one page, and then make it a common spice in another.

For things that will take a more active role, but not be plot central, start with something from the real world, and make modifications. I've read stories set in arid desserts where beasts of burden resemble horses and such, but are in fact of insect stock. In another series, reptiles were the norm. Functionally they were both horses, but different looks, and different names made them more world specific.

For things that the plot centers around, great monsters, rare herbs and flowers and so forth, you will need to develop things a lot more. Integrate them with the rest of your world. If there is a particular evil god you favor, let him make a few truly nasty monsters. If there are some mighty wizards mentioned in the histories, name some plants or animals after them. Try to make things unified rather than just a collection of cool stuff and your readers will thank you.