Fantasy 102: World Building

This article builds on Fantasy 101, where we discussed the importance of a basic plot and an understanding of your story's scope.  Plot and scope will dictate how varied the setting of your story will be.  If your tale transpires in a single cave or cottage, your setting will be much simpler than a story that spans multiple continents.  To say it another way, your plot and scope will determine how much of the fantasy world you must build.

Some critics of the genre claim that fantasy authors have an easy job.  We don't have to research our settings.  We can simply make up anything we want and - POOF! - it's part of our world.  I suspect some writers are inclined to write fantasy for this very reason.

I argue that any serious fantasy writer actually has a tougher job than a writer who crafts stories set in the real world.  Real world settings require research, because the author can't write anything that's a glaring contradiction to real life.  As long as he avoids that pitfall, he has instant reader acceptance of his setting.  It just takes time and diligence.

A fantasy author, on the other hand, must create every detail of his world.  This world must contain enough detail for readers to understand it, but it must not be too detailed, or the readers will get lost.  Many of the details an author knows about his world will never be directly written into a book, but the author must be intimate with all aspects of his setting, because the devil is in the supporting details.  Detailed knowledge of the setting will make the entire story a fuller, more immersive experience for the reader, because the author's knowledge is revealed indirectly through dialogue and little details.

If an author of a real-world story needs details on the economy or architecture of the Bronx, he has thousands of pages of resource material.  If a fantasy author needs details about the economy or politics of the elven city of Terius, all the details must come out of his own head. These details must not contradict one another; the author must convey them in concise and fluid manner, and he must never forget any detail he includes in a story.  If he forgets, and contradicts it later, some reader will ensure there's hell to pay.  This is true of any author, but I contend that it's harder to remember "facts" about things that don't exist.  A fantasy author must create a world that is fresh and new to the reader, but not so fantastic that the reader can't relate well enough to wish to stay in the world.

Depending on the plot and scope of your story, you may have weeks or months of work ahead of you.  There's a reason we mortals usually leave world building to the gods.  It's really hard work!

I recommend a rough, top-down approach.  Write down the basic features of your setting that can be derived from your basic plot and scope.  Then divide that list into individual items and fill in details as you're able.  Keep a notepad handy at all times, because you'll never know when a great detail for your world will pop into your head.

As a general rule, I also recommend that, as the writer, you're aware of what's going on around your story.  If your entire setting is in one castle, even if no actions or events occur outside of that castle, you still need to know something about the surrounding countryside, because the castle doesn't exist in a void.  The surrounding environment will have an impact on the people inside.  If it doesn't, your setting will not be as immersive as possible.  Readers may not buy into it.

Based on your plot and scope, here's a partial list of world elements you may need to consider:

Topography

Continent size and shape, key terrain features (e.g. rivers, mountains, forests, oceans,) man-made features (e.g. cities, roads, bridges, fortresses, mines, national/political borders)

Races

How many races will you have?  Each race increases your work exponentially, because each race represents at least one separate culture (and probably has multiple subcultures,) which requires details for a multitude of factors.

• Languages: How do races speak within their race and with other races?
• Government:  How is order maintained?  Who makes the rules?  Who enforces them?
• Politics: who are the power players, and what are their agendas?  Are they violent, passive, or something in between?
• Arts and entertainment: what do these beings do for fun?  Do they have music, sculpture, painting, games of chance, games of skill, written language, or formal education?
• Technology: How do they communicate or travel over distances?  How sophisticated are their buildings, fortifications, weapons, armor, medicine, astronomy, chemistry, and other sciences?
• Economics: How are goods and services exchanged?  Where is the supply?  Where is the demand?  What goods and services are produced?  Who wants these products?
• Religions:  What do these beings believe?  What impact does religion have on the rest of their society?  How many different religions are followed by the race, and do they tolerate each other?
• Environment:  How does weather and topography affect the race?  What do they eat?
• Other:  What about holidays, calendars, time keeping, taboos, superstitions, and prejudices?

Regions

Even if your story has only one race, all of the considerations for race apply to different regions, such as two countries, two baronies, two cities, two sides of town,  two ends of the same street or two rooms in the same house.

Other Forces

• What kinds of creatures, other than sentient races, populate your world?  How do these creatures and the races interact?
• What natural laws are at work in your universe?  Do they work the same as the ones in the real world?
• What other forces are at work?  Does your world have magic?  How does it work?  What are its capabilities and limitations (I could devote an entire book to this topic.)

As a writer, you can cheat and avoid most of this work, but your story will suffer if you do.  Fortunately, you don't need to figure it out all at once.  I recommend that you write out the basic details you have for an area, and flesh it out as more pops in your head.  More ideas will come to you as you fill in the blanks for your world.  If your hero's quest will span six full novels to get to the final castle, you don't need a to-scale blueprint of that place before you write the first book.  You can fill it in as you go, as long as everything remains consistent and believable within the context you've established with previous details.

One last piece of good news:  No detail is permanent until you print the book and people buy it.  You can always go back and change details of your world as long as you're careful to avoid contradictions or disparities.

In the beginning, you should have at least a few details for the initial setting, the surrounding area, and any areas that factor into the main characters' backstories.  Yes, I realize it's a ton of work, if you want to do it well.  If you don't want to put forth the effort, perhaps you should do some research on the New York subway and write a story about places that already exist.  Leave world building to those who would be gods.

Tune in next  time for Fantasy 103: Characters.

Infinite State Machine

Have you ever heard of a finite state machine (FSM)?  It's a term that gets thrown around when folks discuss mathematical models, digital circuits, or computer science.  You'll also see it occasionally in data networking (EIGRP uses the DUAL FSM to determine favorable routes.)

You might be wondering, "What is an FSM?"  More likely, you may wonder, "Why is he telling us this?"

Perhaps it's an oversimplification, but an FSM is basically a logical device used to compute results based on a set of conditions.  They can be used to program computers to sort through a diverse array of data and arrive at pertinent conclusions or predictions.  They're called finite state machines because any given FSM can accept only the preset conditions it's designed to consider, and those preset conditions can only be subjected to a limited number of state transitions.

I'm talking about it because people sometimes ask me questions like, "How do you come up with your plots?  How do you keep character behavior consistent?  How do you decide what the characters will do next?  How do you keep it all straight?"

Passive Voice: Aggressive Killer of Reader Attention Span

Many writers fall prey to passive voice. No one can avoid it forever, and it does have its uses at times. However, an author - especially a fiction author - can strengthen prose by avoiding passive voice whenever possible.

Passive Voice Defined

A sentence is passive any time an object of a sentence is made into the subject. If that doesn't make sense, consider this example:

• The curse was uttered.

It is passive because the curse is the object that was uttered. The true subject of this sentence is omitted from the sentence. We could add him into the mix:

• The curse was uttered by the heretic.

The sentence is still passive. The curse is the subject of the sentence, and it cannot actively do anything. Obviously, it cannot utter itself. The heretic is the source of the action. To make this sentence active, make him the subject of the sentence:

• The heretic uttered a curse.

In general, any form of "to be" combined with a past participle creates a passive sentence. Forms of "to be" include "being," "will be," "will have been," "has been," "have been," "had been," "is," "am," "are," "were," and "was."

What's the Big Deal?

Now that we've defined passive voice, you may wonder why anyone cares. Passive voice has three major weaknesses:

1. It isn't as interesting or dramatic as active voice.
2. Its ambiguity often creates confusion or distrust.
3. Omitted details makes an author seem lazy.

Save the Drama for Your Mama

Passive voice does not engage a reader as completely as active voice. Imagine a scene from a fantasy novel where the hero rides to meet a dragon in battle. Which example holds your attention better?

• The mountain was ridden across by the hero to avoid the devastating sand storm that was raised by the dragon's flapping wings.
• The dragon flapped its wings and raised a devastating dust storm on the plain. The hero rode across the mountain to avoid it.

Politicians, Take Notes!

Passive voice often creates confusion or misleads a reader. The following voice contains many words, but it doesn't really say anything at all:

• His wife might have admitted that a few insults may have been said.

Alternately, passive voice can be used to avoid blame. Neither of the following sentences specifies a person who can be associated with the action:

• Three thousand ballots were lost.
• Some of the files were leaked to the press.

Who lost the ballots? Who leaked the files? Even if a writer is not intentionally obscuring identities, this type of writing rips the spine right out of your work. It makes a reader suspect the validity of the entire piece, even if other facts are clearly stated.

Lazy Brains Write Lazy Sentences

Lazy writers tend to use passive voice extensively. Unfortunately, the converse is also true. Extensive use of passive voice makes a writer seem unmotivated. Why should another person be motivated to read your work when your own apathy and laziness are evident in every weak sentence?

I saw evidence of this trend many times when I taught college classes. I assigned essay questions at midterm. Students had seven weeks to research the questions and to plan their written responses. Then they wondered why I flunked them for writing lazy sentences.

• The data packets are encapsulated.

(A person could write an entire book on the encapsulation process, but this fellow summed it up in one, completely uninformative sentence.)

Reconsider the very first example in this article.

• The curse was uttered.

Suppose this is a sentence in a book report or a synopsis for a story that I've never read. Reading this sentence poses more questions than answers. Who uttered the curse? Why? What kind of curse was it? What effect did it have?

Even if we rephrase it into an active sentence, all questions are not answered.

• The heretic uttered a curse.

However, written in an active voice, we have a better frame on which we can attach additional details.

• Confident that his dark powers could kill his foes, the heretic uttered a curse on the first night of the new moon.

This type of sentence is not possible if we start with the passive version.

The examples above show the limits and faults of passive language. It can kill good writing, but fortunately it is easy to detect and correct once you've trained your eyes to see it.