Creating a Fantasy Realm

Before your fantasy world can come alive for your readers, it must first come alive in your own mind. Wither or not your world is real does not matter, what matters is that is SEEMS real. Maybe it's not scientifically possible for your world to exist. That is not the point. The point is, that you and your readers are able to BELIEVE that your world exists.

When writing fantasy, you must ask the reader to suspend their judgment of reality and step into a world different from their own, but how do you decide how much belief they well need to suspend? Should your realm be an alternate Earth, only with dragons and faeries in addition to humans? Or should it be a realm completely different from Earth with purple grass and winged ponies and not a human to be seen?

For me, it depends totally on the story I am writing. If it's a more space opera sci-fi fantasy on another planet with aliens and space ships, than I don't bother clinging to any reality at all and let anything go. If it's a historical fiction type fantasy, like the NaNo novel I'm doing this year (2007) , where the hero stumbles upon a lost civilization that hasn't changed in a thousand years, than I try to stick with a lot of the historic facts about real people from ancient history, so that my readers well feel they have stepped through time right along with my hero.

For me, how much reality I add, depends on where I want to story to go and how far I want to send my readers into the depths of pure imagination, so it's different with every book I write.

What about you? Before you can write your story, you must create your world. Before you can create your world you must ask yourself: What level of reality do I want to keep? How far well you ask your readers to stretch their imagination for the sake of your story? Do you stick with *keeping it real* or do you just run your world into the depths of fantasy altogether?

For many fantasy stories the landscape plays a major role. If it looks like earth, you will have a mixed set of realms in your world: deserts, swamps, forests, fields, jungles, seasons, warm, cold, everything all mixed together on one planet. With a world similar to Earth's you won't have too much to do. You won't need to design atmosphere or create new types of animals. You won't have to study biology to figure out how it is your characters are able to breath on a planet without oxygen either. The closer your world and it's inhabitants are the being like the earth, the less work you have to do it the whole creating a fantasy realm process.

If it is nothing like earth at all, than you will have your work cut out for you. Is is barren rock like Mars? Molten lava like Venus? Frozen gases like Saturn? You will have to devise ways for you characters to be able to live and breath. You will have to create life forms that are scientifically correct, or at least *sound* scientifically correct.

Some authors prefer to use an alternate earth. Everything being the same as we know it, just continents moved around and renamed.

Others prefer to start from scratch and create an entire planet from the ground up, and write out detailed graphs about everything from soil composition to the DNA of the faeries.

Most authors, seem to do a blend f the two, and take a realm that is almost the same as Earth, and through in a few writer created plants and animals along with the usual cast of fantasy creatures: elves, drawves, etc.

What you do and how you do it it totally up to you. There are no right or wrong ways of creating a fantasy world.

The landscape of your world will effect your characters' movements and activities, so the type of landscape your realm has is important. Crossing the desert and crossing the sea are two very big challenges for your character, but also two very different landscapes, providing very different challenges. A character lost in the snowy tundra will suffer different challenges than the character lost in the forest.

Likewise a character lost in the forest will face different challenges depending on the type of forest he is lost in. A character lost in the Northern Maine woods will meet up with snow, bear and moose, while the character lost in the Amazon jungle will meet up with rain, jaguars and anacondas.

Be sure you know your landscape and how is will effect your story, before you send your characters out into it. And you know what? No one ever said you had to create your world all at once either! Writers who write in a *universe series* spend their entire lives expanding their fantasy worlds. (A universe series is a series of stories that all take place in one fictional universe, even if the characters are not the same in each story, the fantasy world itself is always the same.)

I was 3 years old when I created my fantasy realm. I have no idea where I got the idea for each of the planets or how it was that I came up with their names. By the time I was 8 however, I had each of the four base planets for my universe mapped and charted. Since than, I have not created any new worlds, only added to the ones I already had. Because I have 4 full sized planets, each fully inhabited with multitudes of races, I may very well me the rest of my life exploring it and finding out just exactly what everything is in it. That is the beauty of creating an entire solar system with inhabited planets. You become the explorer and you (the author) gets to spend years *traveling* through your planets *discovering* all sorts of new things and of course new stories.

Personally, when I am creating (or rather expanding) my fantasy realms, I like to pull out huge atlases, elementary school science books, encyclopedias, and museum coffee books. From these I have a huge stock of photographs of our own earth and all of it's wondrous lands and cultures. Pouring over the pictures in these books sparks all sorts of ideas about new *discoveries* I can find in my own realms. When it comes to creating a fantasy world, there is nothing better than looking to our own world for inspiration.

Water is a part of your world's landscape, but it deserves special consideration on it's own, because water is very important to all forms of life. Where there is water there is life. Without water there can be no life. A realm without water, has to explain how it can sustain life in a very scientific manner, otherwise no reader is going to believe that life can exist in a realm with zero water.

Did you ever look at a population density map? The areas in green means there is little or no population there, while the areas in red mean that place is extremely compacted and over populated. Orange and yellow areas cover the spot between the red and green. Looking at one of these maps you will quickly notice a pattern: dessert, Savannah, and tundra areas have little to no population, while lakes, rivers, and coastlines all have red spikes. The answer to this is simple: where there is little water, there are fewer people. Where there is plenty of water, there are lots and lots of people.

People gather at water. People are attracted to water. People need water to survive. Make sure when creating your fantsy world you take this fact into consideration, because real or fictional, people are always going to settle down in a place where they have access to a good water supply.

Have you ever read a science fiction or fantasy book, where nothing is at all like our human world as we know it, and than it ended with a blatantly Christian marriage ceremony (often with a priest, vows, and rings) and the couple living happily ever after? What's wrong with this picture? Alien world... everything is different, than suddenly BAM! a wedding straight from our world? huh? What gives? Does this ever bother you? Why do writers put so much details into creating their world, yet none into creation a non-human marriage?

In my sci-fi books my aliens live on earth and have adopted several earth customs, however marriage was not one of them. They use the words husband and wife because otherwise humans wouldn't understand them, but never have I ever included a wedding or a ceremony or a church/priest etc. It bothered me that these people who were so different in other things would suddenly get married in a traditional human-style wedding.

Likewise my fantasy characters are rarely human, and more often faeries (usually Sirens or Phookas), and like my aliens, they do not follow after human traditions.

Here are things you will never find my sci-fi/fantasy characters with/doing:

setting foot inside a church
worshiping God/fearing Satan
getting married
wearing wedding rings
celebrating family holidays (birthdays, anniversaries, etc)
celebrating human holidays (Christmas, valentines, Halloween, etc)

How do I deal with this in the stories?

So you are writing fantasy, but your world doesn't have horses so what do you do? A lot depends on your type of fantasy... is it based on reality or complete fantasy? Do you want real animals or mythical beasts?

Here are some real animals you could consider:

camels
llamas
kangaroos
elephants
taper
tigers
lions
jaguar
wolves
oxen
sharks
crocodile
kamodo dragons
rhinos
hippos
zebra

Here are some mythical beasts they could use:

dragons
kelpies
hydra
unicorns
sea monsters
Cerberus (3 headed dogs)
roc/rook (giant eagles)
minotaur
basilisk
cockatrice
amphisbaena
phoenix
Phookas
griffins
hippogriffs
centaurs
sphinx
Pegasus
bunyip
phookas
kracken
frost giants
chimeras
hippocamps
manticore

If you are unfamiliar with any of these creatures, search for them by name on Google or Wikipedia and you'll find tons of info about each one.

Our world is full of mammals. Big mammals, small mammals. Cats. Dogs. Elephants. Aardvarks. Bears. The world is just teaming with animal life, and yet, how often do you see mammals in fantasy books?

Yes, the wandering wizards always have a horse or a donkey. Yes, the witches always have a black cat. Yes, the wolf is always out the get the little girl. Every fantasy novel has a horse, a cat, or a wolf. One horse, or one cat, or one wolf. Reading most fantasy stories you'd think the world was devoid of mammals, other than the humanoid people and one horse. Reading stories like that, makes me put the book down and ask: Did this author ever set a foot outside? Did he ever turn on the Animal Planet channel? Did he ever have a pet cat or dog? What the hell is wrong with this guy? How can he write a story about a world so full of life and yet so devoid of animal life?

You know what? I always think there is something wrong with a story that never once mentions animals. I find it weird that the characters have no pets. It's freaky when there are no squirrels chattering in the trees as the wizard wanders through the forest. Think about it: is it realistically possible to think that you have this world full of faeries and demons and dragons, but no cats and dogs or lions and tigers?

Now granted not every fantasy story lends itself to having animals in it. If your characters never leave their castle you may not need anything more than a dog or cat. But if your characters are spending a lot of time in wilderness than you can be sure they will be seeing animals somewhere along the line. When creating your world, remember not to over look the animal life that lives there too.

When I go outside the first thing I notice is the sound of birds singing and chirping and twittering. Birds in the bushes. Birds in the trees. Birds on the ground. Birds in the air. No matter where you go, birds are everywhere.

Question here is, are there birds in your world and if so what kind?

Short of a cello player following your characters through the forest, how do your readers know when danger is around the next corner? The birds. People who live off the land (since as nearly all fantasy characters) are very in tune to the birds. Birds will be the first warning that a storm is coming and from which direction. Birds will tell you is there is something ahead of yu. Birds will warn of danger. How? Easy. Birds, like humans, have a very detailed and complex language system. Every twitter has meaning. I know personally know this because I spent many years studying birds and writing down their variations in tone and sound and what each means. Modern man has lost the art of listening to birds, but Medieval man used the birds as a guide. When in a Medieval style fantasy you see characters walking through fields and forest and NOT using birds as their guides, I stop and ask, why didn't this author do their research?

Before the invention of clocks and calendars, it was birds who told man time and dates.

Before tv weatherman, it was birds who told when it would rain and when it would snow.

Did you know that today's calendar dates and season changes where calculated by bird migration patterns? Did you ever know that on September 1st of each year, a flock of some 300,000 blackbirds flies south for the winter, and pass over our house at exactly 5PM every single year? EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Every single year on September 1st at 5PM I stand on the lawn and watch and seconds later they pass overhead, like a massive black cloud. There are so many of them in the flock that they block out the sun and the sky goes dark for the 3 or 4 minutes that it takes for the flock to pass by our house.

These birds have been using that time, that date, and that path for several hundred years, that we know of. No one told the birds what time it was or what day it was. They just knew the exact second of the exact day was time for them to leave and they left. All birds are like this. Like a well oiled machine all birds are that precise in their actions and movements. Because birds are so on schedule, Medieval man used birds to calculate time or day and time of year.

Now let's look at fantasy fiction. Did you wizard say he had to be home by 5? Uhm. . . did you know that it wasn't until the late 1800's that people started measuring days by hours? Yes, they did have clocks before than, but few people used them, and those who did use them, set them at any time they felt like setting them at. A more accurate thing for your wizard to have said would have been: I have to be home by twilight. or I have to be home before the crow caws. (Crows gather in a huge flock and caw very nosily just before sunset every night.)

Remember, like mammals, you world would not be complete without birds. Like mammals not every fantasy story needs birds, but if your characters are outdoors a lot, than they should be taking notice of the birds. Remember too, that if you are writing a pre-modern style fantasy that birds were very, very important to man's daily activities. A pre-modern fantasy lacking in birds and talk of birds in daily slang, will stand out as not realistic.

Now here's an animal that you don't see too often in fantasy books: insects. You know what? That is just wrong. Why? Well, nine times out of ten, fantasy characters are either out in the fields or out in the woods, and you know what? Cutting hay in the fields by hand is murder, because every swipe of the scythe stirs up yet another swam of black flies and mosquitoes. Even worse is when you drive you scythe straight through a hornets nest. How do I know this happens? Because once upon a time I owned a horse and I cut her hay by hand. (Yes, I don't just dress in Medieval gowns, I also live in a very Medieval lifestyle as well, that's how I can write Medieval style fantasy so well: I write what I know, I write what I do.)

Worse than the fields are the forests, esp as you start getting closer to water. Bugs will drive you batty. They don't give you a break. They cover you in an instant. Sleeping on the ground in the forest at night is dangerous. You MUST keep your skin covered at night, otherwise you'll wake up in the morning with huge red welts all over you hands, feet, and face, because the mosquitoes covered you during the night. Been there. Done that. Painful. Not fun. Don't try it. Don't let your characters try it either. Sleeping unprotected from bugs in the woods is the biggest mistake fantasy authors make. Buggless woods is probably the worst of the fantasy cloches and yet no one every mentions it!

Another thing to note: Have you ever walked in the woods? Leaves are slippery. Leaves hold water between them. You step on leaves and you are liable to go flying on your butt. The fall is not the worst of it though. The slugs are. Because the leaves are wet, slugs nestle up between them, making the fallen brown leaves more slippery than a sheet of polished ice. Slugs are slippery. You step on a slug, they squish. You step on a wet leaf on a slug, the leaf goes one way, you go the other, and now you have squashed slug on your butt, on your back, and in your hair. Slugs travel in hoards. Where there is one slug, there will be hundreds. They'll all be hiding under the leaves, and you probably won't see them while you are waking, but when you fall, you'll land on them, and you'll know it. There's nothing like spending an hour by the creek, trying to wash orange slug slime off your cloths either. Icky.

And yet, how often do fantasy stories ever mention this off forest wandering phenomenon? Never! Why? Because the author did not live in the forest and had no way of knowing that this happens. I live in the forest. It doesn't happen to me, because I've learned (as does every one else who lives in the forest) to control my balance like a ballerina. If your characters live in the forest, they will walk with a light step to avoid a tumble when stepping on slugs. If they have never walked in the woods before, they will fall a few times at least.

Maybe adding bugs to your world is a bit too detailed for you, but hey, the real world has bugs, so why shouldn't a fantasy world have bugs too?

When creating fantasy wild life, remember not to go too far overboard in making them too different from things your readers can identify with.

Usually I use the same basic animals only different; say the horses are shades of blue and pink instead of tan and browns. Cats with wings. Small things are big: say slugs grew to 20 feet instead of 5 inches. Little stuff like that. My reason for it is simple: readers can identify the animal, as being enough like something that they can see and touch, and therefor can paste an image of in their head, while at the same time being just different enough, so as to be fantasy, but not so different that the reader has trouble imagining it in their head.

The goal is to keep the reader reading: NEVER MAKE THE READER PUT DOWN THE BOOK! If they have to think too hard about what something looks like, it takes away from the plot of the story and the reader puts the book down. Keep your readers AND you fantasy creatures at the same time, by not going overboard in making them different.

I think it depends on the story you are writing.

Personally my fantasy is usually of the non-magical or very limited magical kind, so I do not personally put too much effort in a magic system. Reason: It is not important to my story and my story can move forward without any magic involvement at all. When I do use magic, I use it on a very limited basis. For example: in my Twighlight Manor series there are a few *magical* characters: sirens, born with the ability to control electrical currents and water; phookas, born with the ability to shape-shift and *throw* fire; and an alchemist who spent most of his life studying how to control the energy around us and use it in a typical wizard like manner. The sirens and phookas are born with their abilities, and thus technically are not *using magic*. The alchemist is the only one who really does any magic that could actually be called magic. As you can see, for the purpose of my series, I have no need to create a system, other than to write up a few rules about what these characters can and can not do. The whole system easily fits in one paragraph.

But, as I said it depends on your story. If your fantasy is set in a place where magic is a daily thing and is done by many beings, than you are going to want to write up a system of some sort. Why? Will, that's easy. If you have your ice wizard saying he can only preform a snow making spell if he has the tooth of a rare snow dragon, in chapter one, than you better not have him cast a snow storm with a simple wave of the wand in chapter 10! The purpose of writing a magic system is so that you know who can do what, when they can do it, and what they need to do it with, so that you keep your story consistent once you start writing.

So my answer to your question is this: match your level of magic system creation to the level of magic used in your story. If your story has no magic, than no system is needed. If it has minimal magic, you would only need a few lines typed up. If magic runs rampant in your story, than you may very well find yourself needing a details set of charts, graphs, and a full 50 page glossary of which spells do what. There is no right or wrong answer here, because it all depends on your story.

Must you create maps, dioramas and other such things for your world? No. Only if you feel it will help you in creating your world. There are just as many authors who will tell you to NOT draw maps as there are those who tell you you must draw maps. The thing to remember about maps, is that they are only a tool, and like any tool, using the wrong tool for the job does more harm than good.

You would not use a screw driver to pound a nail into the wall would you? No. You pick the right tool for the job at hand. For some stories, a map will be just the tool you need to keep your story on track. But for other stories a map may distract from your story. How do you decide wither you need to create maps or not? Will, that is not an easy thing to answer, because there is no right or wrong answer here. Every author is going to feel differently about this issue, and in the end only you can decide wither or not drawing up maps is going to help or hinder your writing process.

The content of this lens was created by Wendy C. Allen compiled from posts on EK's Star Log, the official blog of author and artist Wendy C. Allen, a.k.a. EelKat. Reprinted here on Squidoo with permission.

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