Fantasy Worldbuilding with Emily Mundell
We come to fantasy for the worldbuilding, the chance to explore brilliant new worlds, the likes of which we'll see nowhere else.
If they're done right.
Emily Mundell is here to talk about how to do it right. She's the author of the adorable Sorceress and the Squid, and let me just tell you, the worldbuilding in that book was wonderful. I can't wait to see what else this girl has up her sleeve - and she's got some great tips for all of us!
So, you want to write a fantasy novel? The awesome and also incredibly difficult thing about fantasy is that great worldbuilding is key to creating an awesome and epic saga! Whether you've got a series worked out or just a short story, here are 5 Pillars of Worldbuilding for your fantasy fiction.
It's imperative to work out the landscape and layout of the world your story is taking place in. Otherwise, how will you keep track of who's where and what's what? The best way to do this is to create a map, whether digitally through specialized programs or hand-drawn on paper. It's an excellent way to visualize your world and to keep it organized. Especially if your story involves a lot of travelling or location-hopping, having an actual drawn out map will really aid you in keeping everything straight while writing. Also, hanging up your very own map of your novel's world is super cool and totally satisfying.
Whether or not you plan to include the use of magic or not in your world is entirely up to you, but should be decided ASAP in your worldbuilding process in order to help define conflict, character, and plot. The ability or inability to use magic will affect your characters exponentially and will have a large factor in other worldbuilding basics such as culture, race creation, and politics. If you do decide to use magic in your fantasy world, the rules and limitations of your magical code must be written out, for your benefit as well as that of your readers. Creating a system of magic that is logical, straightforward, and consistent is very important to crafting a believable fantasy kingdom.
You may opt for all kinds of different fantastical races in your fantasy world. Elves, orcs, dwarves, dragons, fairies, trolls, and dozens of other things - perhaps even a creature of your own creation! There's no limit to your imagination here. Whether you go all out with all different peoples or ethnicities, or choose to keep your world full of strictly humans, it is important to understand where you are going right away in order to create history, establish your geographical locations in terms of races, and to develop a culture for your characters in each specific setting. For example, an elf is generally associated with woodlands and if you have a whole race of elf-kind who isolate themselves from the rest of the world, they would probably do so in the woods. Knowing these things at the beginning allows you to organize the world much more smoothly and soundly from the beginning. Remember, race, environment, and history all play a role in creating culture and keep each in mind during your creative process.
Both of these aspects of worldbuilding will be greatly influenced by the previous three and establishing your leadership and belief systems is a key aspect of worldbuilding. Is your country ruled by a king? A queen? A prime minister? A priest? A senate? Do your characters believe in one god or a pantheon of gods? Perhaps there are different systems for different countries or different races? Perhaps politics and religion go hand-in-hand in your country? Or maybe they are worlds apart? It's entirely up to you - the author!
Languages are a very exciting but also very difficult part of worldbuilding. It can be a lot of work to craft your own language for your creatures, especially if you choose to create more than one kind of speech. While you don't need to be a professional linguist to create a language, establishing a grammatical structure and keeping track of your creation for consistency's sake is very important and will help your readers A LOT when it comes to the believability of your creation. Whether you are a keener who wants to craft an entire language, or a dabbler who only needs/wants the basics, creating languages for your fantasy is like icing the cake of your story. What a delicious and awesome treat for hard-core fantasy fans to come across a world as thought out as yours!
Do you have a favorite aspect of worldbuilding? Or have you picked up a book recently that tackled the challenge extraordinarily well? Let me know in the comments below and good luck with your fantasy worldbuilding endeavors!
If they're done right.
Emily Mundell is here to talk about how to do it right. She's the author of the adorable Sorceress and the Squid, and let me just tell you, the worldbuilding in that book was wonderful. I can't wait to see what else this girl has up her sleeve - and she's got some great tips for all of us!
Emily Mundell
Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Author of The Sorceress and the Squid
So, you want to write a fantasy novel? The awesome and also incredibly difficult thing about fantasy is that great worldbuilding is key to creating an awesome and epic saga! Whether you've got a series worked out or just a short story, here are 5 Pillars of Worldbuilding for your fantasy fiction.
1. GEOGRAPHY
It's imperative to work out the landscape and layout of the world your story is taking place in. Otherwise, how will you keep track of who's where and what's what? The best way to do this is to create a map, whether digitally through specialized programs or hand-drawn on paper. It's an excellent way to visualize your world and to keep it organized. Especially if your story involves a lot of travelling or location-hopping, having an actual drawn out map will really aid you in keeping everything straight while writing. Also, hanging up your very own map of your novel's world is super cool and totally satisfying.
2. MAGIC
Whether or not you plan to include the use of magic or not in your world is entirely up to you, but should be decided ASAP in your worldbuilding process in order to help define conflict, character, and plot. The ability or inability to use magic will affect your characters exponentially and will have a large factor in other worldbuilding basics such as culture, race creation, and politics. If you do decide to use magic in your fantasy world, the rules and limitations of your magical code must be written out, for your benefit as well as that of your readers. Creating a system of magic that is logical, straightforward, and consistent is very important to crafting a believable fantasy kingdom.
3. RACE/CULTURE
You may opt for all kinds of different fantastical races in your fantasy world. Elves, orcs, dwarves, dragons, fairies, trolls, and dozens of other things - perhaps even a creature of your own creation! There's no limit to your imagination here. Whether you go all out with all different peoples or ethnicities, or choose to keep your world full of strictly humans, it is important to understand where you are going right away in order to create history, establish your geographical locations in terms of races, and to develop a culture for your characters in each specific setting. For example, an elf is generally associated with woodlands and if you have a whole race of elf-kind who isolate themselves from the rest of the world, they would probably do so in the woods. Knowing these things at the beginning allows you to organize the world much more smoothly and soundly from the beginning. Remember, race, environment, and history all play a role in creating culture and keep each in mind during your creative process.
4. POLITICS/RELIGION
Both of these aspects of worldbuilding will be greatly influenced by the previous three and establishing your leadership and belief systems is a key aspect of worldbuilding. Is your country ruled by a king? A queen? A prime minister? A priest? A senate? Do your characters believe in one god or a pantheon of gods? Perhaps there are different systems for different countries or different races? Perhaps politics and religion go hand-in-hand in your country? Or maybe they are worlds apart? It's entirely up to you - the author!
5. LANGUAGE
Languages are a very exciting but also very difficult part of worldbuilding. It can be a lot of work to craft your own language for your creatures, especially if you choose to create more than one kind of speech. While you don't need to be a professional linguist to create a language, establishing a grammatical structure and keeping track of your creation for consistency's sake is very important and will help your readers A LOT when it comes to the believability of your creation. Whether you are a keener who wants to craft an entire language, or a dabbler who only needs/wants the basics, creating languages for your fantasy is like icing the cake of your story. What a delicious and awesome treat for hard-core fantasy fans to come across a world as thought out as yours!
Do you have a favorite aspect of worldbuilding? Or have you picked up a book recently that tackled the challenge extraordinarily well? Let me know in the comments below and good luck with your fantasy worldbuilding endeavors!
I love worldbuilding! I don't know if I'm very good at it, haha, but it generally seems to work. That said, I'm a plantser, so the only stuff I tend to figure out in advance is what I know for sure will affect the story— generally speaking, significant locations, inspiration sources, magic, and something about the different cultures/peoples. I don't always go into detail on the politics/religion and language until I'm actually writing the story; I figure I can discover the world as I go. :)
ReplyDeleteWorldbuilding is the bomb, haha. For me how much of it I do totally depends on the individual story. For many books - including "The Sorceress and the Squid" I have gone in totally blind and just making it up as I went along. Of course this involves a lot of later editing. :P For my epic fantasy series, I have almost as much worldbuilding material as actual book material (which right now sits at about 400,000 words). I tend to swing from one extreme to the other. XD However, I've certainly found it very helpful for fantasy especially to construct as much of the world as possible off page. Especially if you're writing for a decade at a time like I have been, that way you will still have information recorded that your brain may have forgotten. I find that more and more with this particular series, mostly because it's so expansive! But there is certainly much merit for discovering the world as you go, which I really enjoy doing with smaller books.
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