The Writer's Cafe discussion

I wondered how you other fantasy folks go about world building? I've given a bit of thought to this and will stick a couple of extracts from my blog on here as and when.
I think it's fair to say that I generally start with something familiar - mediaeval Europe usually - and then twist it until it fits. That's worked well for me so far (I think), but I'm very open to other approaches. I try to be logical about it, to see the reasons why things are as they are.

Fantasy worlds tend to be more about the 'other' elements, which tends to dictate to me much of the world. Other elements would be:

Magic - its prevalence, its potency
Governance - Kingdoms? Roaming tribes? Mixture?
Races - Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Ogres, Orcs, Demons...
Gods - Existence, powers

Fantasy itself can encompass so much, from midieval to cyberpunk, to alternate worlds/dimensions, it's hard to nail down the genre too much.

I like to start off drawing a map of my world: the mountains, forests, valleys, rivers, oceans. Then I start adding cities, villages, and ports. I begin to imagine kingdoms, empires, and borders. Little histories start to spring up in my mind along with cultures and races. Before long I'm asking myself questions. Why is this kingdom bigger than any of the others around it? Or what's it like for a merchant to travel through those mountains to deliver his goods in such and such town? Etc. it's great fun. If I could just world build and not have to worry about coming up with a great story! LOL.

Brady wrote: "I like to start off drawing a map of my world: the mountains, forests, valleys, rivers, oceans. Then I start adding cities, villages, and ports. I begin to imagine kingdoms, empires, and borders. L..."

Become a Dungeon Master for D&D - you make the world, the players make the story, for the most part.

LOL Scarivace! Been there and done that! I'm all about the Thac0!!

Scarivace - you're right. Devising these schemes is half the fun of writing fantasy. Magic in fantasy books tends to be very different from magic as conceived in the past. Here's something I wrote on it a while back while trying to sort out my thoughts on two different schemes:

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Magic - May 22th 2013
When creating a fictional, fantasy world magic often has an important role to play. But magic must have rules. It must have limits. Without these it becomes an unwieldy monster. The danger of rule based magic is that it begins to sound like physics. Arthur C Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. In the same way any sufficiently hidebound magic is indistinguishable from technology. So if we must have magic let it be unpredictable, capricious, and half tamed at most.

Magic is magic.

Traditionally it seems to have fallen into two different spheres: Sympathetic magic and Invocation. There may be others, but broadly speaking most manifestations will fall into these two camps.

The former follows a spurious set of quasi-physical laws. Many people will be familiar with the expression “hair of the dog”, which refers to the unhealthy practice of curing a hangover by drinking more alcohol. It is an abbreviation of “hair of the dog that bit you”, which is a suggestion that you can cure the dog bite by using a physical piece of the dog. Voodoo dolls work on the same principle, making a connection between one thing and another, and it was believed many years ago that you could poison your enemy by pouring venom on a blade that had injured him.

Sympathetic magic, then, relies on a mistaken apprehension of the way in which the universe works. It disassociates effect and cause, the cart and the horse, creating a magical vector to connect the two.

Invocation is based on the assumption that there are beings in the universe with the power to do things that we cannot. Prayer is the most common form of this. It extends into the whole summoning of demons, magic circles, Solomon’s ring, etc. etc. Secret words of power, symbols and the like, are used to gain control over these creatures that are bound by a set of laws that enable you to manipulate them and get them to do what you want without any comeback. It is generally acknowledged that if you make an error you get toasted.

I confess that I have never been drawn to either form of magic provided by tradition. They tend to be mixed and matched in the most bizarre fashion. Here’s a little quote from Paul Christian’s book The History and Practice of Magic:

“ Take a sheet of virgin parchment and cover it on both sides with the invocation: ADAMA, EVAH, even as the all powerful Creator did unite you in the earthly Paradise with a holy, mutual and indissoluable link, so may the heart of those to whom I write be favourable to me, and be able to refuse me nothing: * ELY * ELY * ELY. This sheet of parchment must then be burnt and its ashes carefully collected. Then obtain some ink which has never been used before; pour it into a small new earthenware jar and mix in the ashes together with seven drops of milk from a woman who is giving suck to her firstborn, then add a pinch of powdered lodestone. Use a new pen, which you must trim with a new knife. Everyone to whom you write with ink prepared in this manner will be disposed when reading your letter to accord you everything in their power. ”

You can see the ritualistic nature of it, and the strange mix of sympathy and invocation, and the pure perversity of the ingredients. In addition it is all mixed up with a hefty dose of religion.

I need a different kind of magic to create a decent fantasy world, so to paraphrase Voltaire, if it does not exist, then it is necessary to create it.

Shanakan

I like cause and effect, and so I see magic as a thing that needs an energy source. There are plenty to choose from. In Shanakan I chose to use the energy created by the friction between parallel words that move through time at different speeds. This allows me to postulate that in some worlds there will be a lot of magical energy, and in others none at all.

The controlling intelligence in the Shanakan books is the dead – or the souls of the dead if you prefer. In this scheme the dead dwell without consciousness in the energy that magic controls. It is the dead who know how things may be achieved, who translate the will of the mage into magical deeds. This is a form of invocation, perhaps, but it is an invocation of the unconscious. There are no demons or djinni to get in the way – only men and women.

The Sparrow and the Wolf

In The Sparrow and the Wolf I used energy as we know it. It comes in three flavours. Firstly there is the energy that a man or woman has of themselves. This is the same energy that you use to pick up a suitcase, to brush your teeth, to function. It is limited, but it is easy to control and easy to get at. This is what the Durander Mages use. The second flavour requires connection with the world, the ability to draw the same energy as the first flavour from other entities. With the skill to do this you can kill another simply by drawing all the energy from them, effectively draining them in an instant. Alternatively you can draw a small amount of energy from a great number of creatures or plants. This is obviously less destructive, but takes greater skill.

The third flavour of energy relies on Einstein’s e=mc2. This is to say that the amount of energy that can be extracted from anything is proportional to its mass. This is, as anyone who does the maths can tell you, a source of almost limitless energy. In The Sparrow and the Wolf this is the difference between a Durander Mage and a so called God Mage.

Now that I have an energy source in each of my worlds I need a controlling intelligence in The Sparrow and the Wolf.

It seems bizarre to me that someone could just heal someone else, or even themselves, without knowing how they work. It would be like a car mechanic working by laying his hands on the bonnet of a broken car and fixing the engine that way. Something has to know how to do what the magician or mage wants to do.

Fortunately for us, human bodies contain within them a detailed blueprint of themselves. This blueprint exists in every healthy cell, and we refer to it as DNA. This is also true of trees, wolves, fish etc. etc. In this instance I have imagined magic as a deployment of power to make things become what, in a sense, they desire to be. This is also true of everything’s tendency to decay, the desire of living things to grow etc. The knowledge of how to get to that state is already present. A rock at the top of a hill knows how to fall, but one at the bottom is ignorant of how to fly. This is a subtle magic, but brute force is also available.

Simple force, however, comes with its own rules, its own skills. Magic used as simple strength also obeys the normal laws of physics. You cannot push a mountain over because it weighs more than you do. The mountain pushes back. You need to make one mountain push against another, or against the rest of the world. This involves the setting up of opposing forces in such a way that they can be controlled.

This is the essence of the controlling intelligence.

Of course I fee free to break or bend any of these rules at any time, magic being magic…

Hrm. Interesting. I don't know how much I agree with that. For me magic, when I write, is usually drawn from the elements around us (I will often tie it to 'earth air fire water and spirit'). The 'magic' of the user is the ability or gift to direct what is already there. Guide it, amplify it, suppress it, etc. For example, in a story I am currently writing, the key Magic is of the Druids, and they draw it through song, but only song that issues from the center of their soul/heart, and the magic is used to bring storm, or grow tree, or heal wounds.

My two bits.

Well, anything goes - that's the point. This is fantasy after all. But what you're talking about sounds very similar in principle to one of the scheme's I talked about - the idea that magic can be deployed to make things be what they want to be. The mechanism may be different (singing) but the underlying thingy is equivalent.

Back to world building. I wonder if there's a fine line when constructing your world, between cliche and just following a good formula for fantasy. For example, how many fantasy novels out there have barbarians ALWAYS in the North living on the tundra or plains? Is this becoming too cliche? Or is it just expected?

I think there's a certain logic to northern barbarians. If you think about the climate and the hard life that it implies you might expect hard people. The land is marginal at best, and may not be able to support 'civilization', however you choose to define that. It would be nice to find a logical way of turning that around. How about a world that's thirty degrees warmer than ours where habitable land it at the north and south poles and the equatorial region is desert? It's been done, I'm sure.

I'm sure it has been done. I find it interesting. How far can an author deviate from the "established" fantasy genre rules and expectations without being utterly rejected by fantasy fans? And what are those rules and expectations to begin with? For example, I read a fantasy novel recently where the dwarven race was just a little too technologically advanced for my personal taste and it was a burr under my saddle throughout the novel. I'm sure this was no problem for other readers, but it was for me. It's just an interesting topic to ponder on once in a while.

I have always believed that there is an established grammar for every genre, and that if you stick close enough to it you can avoid a lot of description and explanation. If you say dwarf and mean a short, bearded, subterranean race that works metal, then you don't have to say so. If you want to be radically different you should probably not call them dwarves.
My personal preference is to completely avoid dwarves, elves, orcs or indeed any race other than men that is mentioned in LOTR (but I'll make an exception for dragons because they are so... awesome.

My strategy is usually to choose one aspect of the world building (usually it's something along the lines of the population, because I'm more character-focused) and then I arrange the other characteristics around this single aspect.
For example, taking the technologically advanced dwarves Brady mentioned, I would ask myself: a) are they more technologically advanced than the other races? b) why? c) what effects does this have on the political balances (e.g. if the dwarves have better tech than the others, they should be the ruling race in the continent)

Going back to the very earliest my story started with a name which developed a character, then a place where he lived, and then a world in which such a character and a place could exist. The tale, as they say, grows with the telling.