Comments on: World Building for Fantasy Novelists — No, your characters aren’t in a play

By: Keith

Keith — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 23:22:23 +0000

This blog really helped me, especially the section on Characters. I’m writing my first short stories, and you helped clear up some issues. For practice, and maybe more, I’m writing about my main character (who is a stranger, an off-worlder) attending the meeting of an alien parliament, with some details borrowed from ancient Rome. I’ve put in some props for the alien characters to handle, and it integrates well with their culture, which is very much into ritual and form.

By: Jane Lawry

Jane Lawry — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 17:41:48 +0000

Thank you for this, it seemed that publishers only wanted dialogue and action in their stories and any descriptive passages were eliminated. You have restored my faith in publishing as for me writing was my effort towards keeping the language alive and well.

By: Lauren Auty

Lauren Auty — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 12:35:09 +0000

Really interesting article and I agree about needing a middle ground with world building. It is sometimes a difficult balance to strike but have found with my own writing that it’s a skill that does build over time. It’s important to make the world the characters that are in it feel that little bit more real. That can be the difference between a good story and a great story. I find Brandon Sanderson really amazing at world building and try to emulate that in my own books.

By: Easter

Easter — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:11:34 +0000

This is all excellent advice, thanks. What I’m fretting over is how my descriptions tend to appear as figurative language. So, for example, instead of writing, ‘The lower slopes were purple with heather and dark pines grew on the summit’, I’d write something like ‘The hillside was humming, the the heath thick with flowers, the ridge line softened by the tops of dark conifers.’ Can this kind of language belong in genre? Am I having a failure of imagination because I’ve only ever seen a hill of heather in the Lakes District in summer so all I can think of is the purple and so many busy bees they were like heat haze? Do I have to be more generalized?
I’m having real problems with this. I want to write speculative fiction and I’m scared I’m going to come off as a cut price Thomas Hardy.

By: Teresa Edgerton

Teresa Edgerton — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:51:24 +0000

I agree. The details should, at the very least, illuminate the story. Otherwise, they are just set-dressing.

The details and the overall context make the story convincing … or not

By: Elaine

Elaine — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:19:58 +0000

Interesting article on Worldbuilding. I especially like it when you speak of the importance of creating a world and keeping it in context to the character and story. If not, the world created becomes flat. I especially like how you stress that building a world in fantasy (and this belongs to all of fictive writing) should be apparent in dialogue, mannerisms, morals, etc. The story is in the details, indeed.