Fantasy World Building

1. Introduction: World-building can be the most important part of fantasy writing. And it can also be the most fun, but it can also be the most difficult to pull off. Hello and welcome to my class. My name is Corinne bully and I am an author, ghostwriter, a content writer. I decided to teach this class because for me, world-building is one of the most fun parts of writing. Fantasy author. It is something that I deal with a lot because fantasy is one of the only genres where really anything goes. It can be hard to outline the rules because there aren't really rules. So it can be difficult, especially when you're first starting out to make a world that is first of all believable, second of all unique, and third of all, one that does not contradict itself, which I'll be talking about more deeply later on in this lesson. So this video is going to be directed mostly toward beginners, but you can also learn from it and think of things that maybe you hadn't before. If you are an experienced fantasy writer as well. 2. Sub-Genres: So the first thing I'm going to cover is sub-genres. So what's the point in choosing a sub-genre? I mean, a lot of people don't want to have to classify their book because you don't really have to worry about that as much until you're trying to get published. Or you are self-publishing and have to put in a category, or you're looking for literary agent and you want to know how to pitch your book. Those are all valid points, but it can be very helpful for you in a world building aspect. If you know exactly what subgenres your book falls into. And this can mostly just help you to set up the setting. Not necessarily from stereotypes within himself manner, but just to get a better feel for exactly what tone you want, what types of things you want to be in this world. For example, let's say you're writing a steampunk book, even though you could just go in your own direction with this, it can be helpful to read other books that are in this category. Figure out what types of things you see a lot in the genre that are trending, which things aren't, things you do want to do, which things you don't wanna do. It can just be helpful overall to get a feel for the usual setting. And then you can figure out from there what will make yours unique. 3. The Line Between Fantasy and Reality: Likely your world is going to have some qualities that are like the real-world and then some that are fantastical. So it's important to distinguish how much you're going to use from the real-world and how much you are going to add on yourself. Obviously, you cannot fully do a complete all our fantasy world and not take anything for reality. Because first of all, that would be like impossible because you're starting from something you can't start from nothing. You're going to draw inspiration from things in the real world. You're going to do things that readers can relate, have all of that information that people cannot already relate to, then you are going to be doing a lot of information dumps. So this can sometimes coincide with sub-genres. For example, is your book a high fantasy and it has more of the fantastical aspect? Or is it more urban fantasy? And you have some sort of normal human civilization that has fantasy seeped into it. It's important before you start writing to figure out how much of this you want to include, how much fantasy want to include versus how much reality and how much you're drawing from the real-world and your real experiences. 4. If It's Unbelievable, Make it Believable!: So perhaps one of the most important things that a lot of people don't realize about fantasy is that you need to make your fantasy believable. There are no rules to fantasy. You can do whatever you want. But if you are making something that is unbelievable, you need to make it believable. What do I mean by this? Let me give an example from one of my own books. The project that I'm in the middle of right now called Peter shadow. It is a middle grade fantasy. And in the book, Shadows are in their own separate world called the shadow world, that is part of the real-world. But things happen separately in the shadow world and cannot affect the real-world. So the times that there are exceptions, I need outline these exceptions to make sure that I'm not breaking my own rules. So I'd certain creatures that could affect the shadow world as well as the normal world. But in the beginning I clearly outlined which creatures these were and why, for example, magical beings such as ferries, they can enter the shadow world. I had to make my own rules. I can't just have something thrown out there that doesn't make sense with everything else I have. And just hope that the reader won't get upset about it. The readers are going to, they're going to accept the fantasy that you provide, but they're also going to see when you contradict your own rules and what have you just don't do rules. What if you just make a completely fantastical and don't explain anything? I hate to tell you this, but it's going to be a mess. You need. We outline what roles there are, at least for yourself and then follow them. You don't have to say straight out to your readers like this is how it is, this is how it's not. You just need to follow your own rules and guidelines. For example, in Harry Potter, ones help wizards to control their magic, but they can also do magic without them. It's just not as precise and it takes a lot of practice. This makes it so that she's able to do scenes with certain characters that are powerful enough where they can do magic without wants. And that being said, because she has ones used so fully throughout the book, she does need to say this and make sure that it's clear for the cases that she does use it. 5. How to Know When to Stop Planning: How deep do you need to go into this planning? While that is something that only you can decide, It's important to stick to what is essential to your plot. Because while it would be interesting and maybe fun for you to create a guide to all of the different plants that are in this world. It won't really help you. And it might also distract from your plot if you feel like you have to later include this, like if your character is walking through the woods and you've outlined all of these different plans. You don't want them to be like, oh, look, there's a concern. Land. These are the things about the plans that the character knows, oh, look, there's this other plant. So even if you say that you're not going to include a lot of this information that you come up with. It's going to be difficult for you not to include it, especially when you see examples when you can. But you also don't want to end up with lots of information dumps end an essential information. So what I recommend is that you tried to stick with the information that it won't be vital to your plot. So for me and my wife, fantasy novel, Darkness Rise, I had a kind of flower using the previous example that was actually very important to the plot and came up many times called Rosie flows. So I made sure to include it early on in the story so that it doesn't come up suddenly like, oh wow, there's this plant here, is this information about it. This is what's going to happen with it. I introduced it earlier on. Not really as foreshadowing, but just to have the information out there so that people wouldn't assume that I was going to use it. Maybe you just think that it's some information I'm giving for world-building purposes. But then I do come back to it later. So I try not to come up with information and use that information unless it's important for the storylines progression. 6. Introduce New Information Gradually: When you do have things like this, all this extra information, like if you have a language for a certain civilization or a history, it's important to include it gradually throughout the pros. So if you're just info dumping non-stop, like you start talking about the history and then you get this whole history lesson. Or you have characters speaking in this language constantly or just a lot. It's important to include it very gradually so that readers can keep up with it because they're not going to sit there and taking notes. They're not going to write down like, Oh, okay, here's a translation for what this means. If this an essential part of your book, like if there's a greeting that is used in this other language, then once the greeting is said, make sure to use it often without putting in other things as well. Let them get used to that thing, let them understand it. It's the same with character names that are complex or like hard to pronounce, things like that. Try to introduce them slowly. Don't add them all at once. Same with also geography, places in your book. Even if you have the map in the beginning, they're not going to want to keep on going back and forth between the map and the story that's just going to get tedious. So try to avoid that. 7. Don't Let World Building Become an Excuse to Stop Writing: So the last piece of advice that I'm going to give you is that you should really make sure that while you're doing world-building, you're not using it as a way to stop writing your book or to keep from writing your book. You don't have to do all of your world-building before you start writing, you really just need to do what's essential to start the book and maybe for a few bigger scenes later that you know, are going to happen. You do want to have a sense as to setting. Where is your character going to be going? Geography wise, how much time is it going to take to get from place to place? What rules are there? What creatures are there that they might encounter? All of those things are important before you start. Yes. That being said, you don't want to keep on coming up with more and more and more information and eventually feel like you can't start writing until you have this perfect amount. Come up with what's essential to the plot to begin. And as you keep writing, you're going to find more things that make sense, come clear, and you're going to come up with more ideas from the writing process itself. So don't try to focus too much on the world-building before you write. Just do what you think is really important before you start writing and then let more come after. And you can always go back and revisions and make changes if you have two, the first draft is not the job that people are going to be reading. It's not set in stone. You can go back. You can make changes. And in fact, you should make a lot of changes because the first draft is not going to be perfect. And you should accept this from the beginning. 8. Writing Exercises: So here's what I suggest that you do for world-building, for your book, when you're first starting out, number 1, come up with at least one sub-genre that your book falls into. Second, what makes your world different from Earth? Figure out which things are exactly on Earth and which things are going to be completely individual to your world. Three, figure out the limitations. What rules are there? This could be for magic, this could be for the forces of nature. Is there gravity? If not, what forces are there? Set the boundaries and do not push them. And if you're going to, then make sure you clearly outline and what exceptions are there and why. And lastly, figure out how these things affect the characters and the plot. You don't want it to all just be there for no reason and have the character is being pushed around by it. You want everything to connect in a way where it can push the plod along. It can affect characters, whether that be personality wise, like maybe because of where they grew up in the world, maybe it impacted their traits. Maybe it affected the course of their life. Maybe it is continuing to affect the course of their life. Maybe it is what makes them who they are. Just figure out how all of these things coincide with your plot. Make sure you only do what is essential for now and maybe if you other things for fun, but be careful because too much world-building can end up with info dumps and you don't want that. So I hope this was helpful to you. Let me know if these exercises worked for you and what you came up with. If you wanna see more writing advice, maybe consider checking on my YouTube channel where I also do writing advice videos. And hopefully if I do more classes in the future, you guys will come check them out. So thank you for watching and happy writing.