creating a fantasy world
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
For as many years as I can remember it has been my greatest aim to write a novel in the genre of heroic fantasy. I have dreamed of a world, with kings and empires, oceans and continents, gods and demons- all of my own making- and then writing about it. And so, about four years ago, I sat with a blank piece of A3 paper and drew a map. And I have never looked back.
What sparked me off was a little book some of you may know- the Lord of the Rings. Having read it about thirty times, (and having been christened "Tolkien boy" by my schoolmates) the book completely captured my imagination. I would invent new stories about the hobbits or wandering tribes of orcs and occasionally put them on paper. This soon lost its interest however. I wanted a world of my own- somewhere I had invented. Thus the world of Giarc was created. There was one large landmass- Grom, which was inhabited by four "borrowed" races, Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Grobbins. Even at this early stage I realised that my world must be in some way different from Middle earth, but still the stereotypes were there. The elves were tall, thin and enjoyed poncing around with harps, the Dwarves were short, stocky, and lived underground. fairly run of the mill fantasy. And then I wrote a short story about a magically enabled dwarf, who befreinded a dragon and saved his village. I showed it to my english teacher, who said it "showed promise" but then, he said that about most of my work.
Slowly the world changed, evolved, and grew. New races emereged, (new, as in ones that had not been used 30 times over by various authors) the customs of the different peoples emerged, and the world truly developed its own unique feel. Now all I have to do is write the book.
I am not here to help you too much with the book- the thing about fantasy that I love is that there are always new alleyways of possibilites to be explore- far too many for me to give you any comprehensive guide on how to write the book. I will give you a few hints and tips along the way.
1- The Geography.
The first thing you will want to do when creating your world is get a map of it drawn up. Be careful here- you must ask yourself some important questions- is this the universal world map? By this, I mean, is this how the world looked at the moment of creation and how it will look at the end of time? I prefer this simple structure- thre is really no need for a whole lot of faffing about with tectonic plated and the like. However, you would do well to write a creation story to explain the making of the world- and why it was made as it is. Depending on your kind of fantasy, you may want to have some "great sundering, in which the great continent was split by a stray thunderbolt during a war of the gods" or such like. The general structure of your world is very important. for instance, a fellow fantasy author once wrote about a flat world where a great waterfall fell from the edge of the world down to hell. The world was square, with great mountain ranges around the edges to prevent ships falling of. However, just one mistake meant he had to rewrite 80 pages. While writing about the journey of the protagonist from the east continent to the lands of the far west, the fact that the world had edges seemed by some obscure chance to have slipped his mind. He had the lead charecter sailing from one to the other... but over an ocean that didn't actually exist. This kind of mistake is very common, so be sure not to make it. Always be careful to plot out any journeys taken on a map.
depending on which way round you want to do it, you can either create a world for your pre defined civilisation to live in, or create races and peoples to inhabit a scratch built word. Decide where you are going to put your deserts, oceans and the like, so that you can believably have races suited to the climate of the area live there.
I will update this entry very soon, I hope it has helped!
What sparked me off was a little book some of you may know- the Lord of the Rings. Having read it about thirty times, (and having been christened "Tolkien boy" by my schoolmates) the book completely captured my imagination. I would invent new stories about the hobbits or wandering tribes of orcs and occasionally put them on paper. This soon lost its interest however. I wanted a world of my own- somewhere I had invented. Thus the world of Giarc was created. There was one large landmass- Grom, which was inhabited by four "borrowed" races, Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Grobbins. Even at this early stage I realised that my world must be in some way different from Middle earth, but still the stereotypes were there. The elves were tall, thin and enjoyed poncing around with harps, the Dwarves were short, stocky, and lived underground. fairly run of the mill fantasy. And then I wrote a short story about a magically enabled dwarf, who befreinded a dragon and saved his village. I showed it to my english teacher, who said it "showed promise" but then, he said that about most of my work.
Slowly the world changed, evolved, and grew. New races emereged, (new, as in ones that had not been used 30 times over by various authors) the customs of the different peoples emerged, and the world truly developed its own unique feel. Now all I have to do is write the book.
I am not here to help you too much with the book- the thing about fantasy that I love is that there are always new alleyways of possibilites to be explore- far too many for me to give you any comprehensive guide on how to write the book. I will give you a few hints and tips along the way.
1- The Geography.
The first thing you will want to do when creating your world is get a map of it drawn up. Be careful here- you must ask yourself some important questions- is this the universal world map? By this, I mean, is this how the world looked at the moment of creation and how it will look at the end of time? I prefer this simple structure- thre is really no need for a whole lot of faffing about with tectonic plated and the like. However, you would do well to write a creation story to explain the making of the world- and why it was made as it is. Depending on your kind of fantasy, you may want to have some "great sundering, in which the great continent was split by a stray thunderbolt during a war of the gods" or such like. The general structure of your world is very important. for instance, a fellow fantasy author once wrote about a flat world where a great waterfall fell from the edge of the world down to hell. The world was square, with great mountain ranges around the edges to prevent ships falling of. However, just one mistake meant he had to rewrite 80 pages. While writing about the journey of the protagonist from the east continent to the lands of the far west, the fact that the world had edges seemed by some obscure chance to have slipped his mind. He had the lead charecter sailing from one to the other... but over an ocean that didn't actually exist. This kind of mistake is very common, so be sure not to make it. Always be careful to plot out any journeys taken on a map.
depending on which way round you want to do it, you can either create a world for your pre defined civilisation to live in, or create races and peoples to inhabit a scratch built word. Decide where you are going to put your deserts, oceans and the like, so that you can believably have races suited to the climate of the area live there.
I will update this entry very soon, I hope it has helped!
