Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding isn't unique to fantasy fiction. Every author invents a world for his or her characters, from something as simple as what the protagonist's bedroom looks like to something as complicated as an entire solar system. But for obvious reasons, worldbuilding is particularly important in fantasy. Without a convincing world – whether it's our own world with differences, or a completely new place – the fantasy falls apart.
Much of the time, a fantasy author won't even use most of the details he or she has created in the book itself. That's not what they're for. People don't want to read pages and pages of information about how this economic system works or why this animal evolved with fangs. But if the world has been built with sufficient care and attention – if it holds together logically and coherently – then it will live. It will breathe. And that will make it seem real, even if all those lovingly created details are only referred to in passing.
My two fantasy worlds are very different from each other. The setting for Dawn Rising is quite traditional – and deliberately so. It's meant to feel both familiar and strange, like something in a dream. Something that could have come out of a seventeen-year-old girl's imagination. So you'll find swords, castles, magic; journeys over inhospitable terrain; politics and battles that build to a world-threatening climax. But you'll also find birthstones, elemental jewels and a therapist who doesn't believe any of it is real. You may find the long-lost heir to a throne, but you'll also find the opposite. (And if you're not sure what the opposite of a long-lost heir would be, I guess you'll have to read the series to find out.)
The events of Darkhaven, on the other hand, take place within the walls of a single city. Arkannen is very much an industrial society: there are factories, trams, clockwork. Gunpowder has been discovered elsewhere, though as yet it is rare within the city. It could almost be an eighteenth-century European civilisation, were it not for the fact that its overlords have the ability to become powerful creatures at will.
So what links these two worlds? What brings a fantasy world to life? It may seem an obvious answer, but the lifeblood of a fantasy world is its people. No matter how alien the setting, if the characters feel real fear and love and pain then we can feel it with them. And in the end, that's much more important than lists of complicated languages* or what the people of a particular island nation do on feast days.
* Though, I have to admit, I do love lists of complicated languages. Remind me to share my notes on Catathian with you sometime.
Much of the time, a fantasy author won't even use most of the details he or she has created in the book itself. That's not what they're for. People don't want to read pages and pages of information about how this economic system works or why this animal evolved with fangs. But if the world has been built with sufficient care and attention – if it holds together logically and coherently – then it will live. It will breathe. And that will make it seem real, even if all those lovingly created details are only referred to in passing.
My two fantasy worlds are very different from each other. The setting for Dawn Rising is quite traditional – and deliberately so. It's meant to feel both familiar and strange, like something in a dream. Something that could have come out of a seventeen-year-old girl's imagination. So you'll find swords, castles, magic; journeys over inhospitable terrain; politics and battles that build to a world-threatening climax. But you'll also find birthstones, elemental jewels and a therapist who doesn't believe any of it is real. You may find the long-lost heir to a throne, but you'll also find the opposite. (And if you're not sure what the opposite of a long-lost heir would be, I guess you'll have to read the series to find out.)
The events of Darkhaven, on the other hand, take place within the walls of a single city. Arkannen is very much an industrial society: there are factories, trams, clockwork. Gunpowder has been discovered elsewhere, though as yet it is rare within the city. It could almost be an eighteenth-century European civilisation, were it not for the fact that its overlords have the ability to become powerful creatures at will.
So what links these two worlds? What brings a fantasy world to life? It may seem an obvious answer, but the lifeblood of a fantasy world is its people. No matter how alien the setting, if the characters feel real fear and love and pain then we can feel it with them. And in the end, that's much more important than lists of complicated languages* or what the people of a particular island nation do on feast days.
* Though, I have to admit, I do love lists of complicated languages. Remind me to share my notes on Catathian with you sometime.
