World Building
First of all, an apology. I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on my blog. Unfortunately, I picked up COVID-19 at the end of January and spent most of February in an unproductive state, feeling very sorry for myself. I’m fortunate the virus didn’t give rise to any complications for me or my family and we’ve all fully recovered. Now I’m back, I’m going to look at the importance of world building in writing fantasy literature.
I recently joked that if someone were to watch me working on my book, they’d find a middle-aged man drawing maps of a world that doesn’t exist. Is that a productive use of my time? I’d argue maps are only one aspect of a wider world building exercise all fantasy authors must undertake. It’s actually essential to ensure the reader’s experience is both enriched and, more importantly, credible. Part of the attraction of fantasy is the reader is transported into a different world. They become armchair explorers of another realm and that alternate reality needs not only to be painted in big bold colours but contain all the details necessary to bring it to life.
Taking The Brotherhood of the Eagle series as an example, those bold colours come from setting my story in a world inspired by medieval Viking culture, set in a region called Laskar. Laskar itself is sub-divided on the map, setting out the geographical location of each clan and the territory they hold. However, beyond the simple geography, the relevant details for the reader comes from working out the relationship between the individual clans. Which clans are allies and which ones are rivals? How does that dynamic play out within an individual clan? Who is jockeying for position and who will carry the votes at the clan moot to become the next clan chief? This melding of character, context and wider place shapes the story and my writing. The world into which you place your characters is part of what forms who they are, their attitudes and actions.
There are concentric rings of detail beyond the immediate setting of my story. I’ve mapped out the neighbouring kingdoms and visualised the six continents making up the world of Amuran and, broadly, the cultures existing on each one. In one case, I wrote a 21-page history for one continent – background for a novel I worked on between 2005 and 2011 that I ultimately shelved. I’ve kept those details because they could still come in useful for a future project and, in any event, this is now part of the fabric of the world I’ve created. Other continents are still unmapped – nothing more than a wobbly hand-drawn line on a sheet of A4 with the name scrawled in the middle. A blank canvas to explore another time, full of possibilities.
In addition to the physical realm, there’s also a developed religion and mythology for my world. The very first thing I wrote, before starting any of my novels, was the creation myth for Amuran. I’ve come back to this several times, working and refining the tale each time, because it’s one of the key building blocks of my world and the story. The part the gods played in the rise and fall of Amuran has a major impact on events in the Brotherhood series.
Is all this necessary? Each author will make up their own mind on how much world building they need to do. Back in 2007 the author Joe Abercrombie wrote an interesting piece on his blog that informed my own early writing. You can find it here - https://joeabercrombie.com/maps-craps-2/. The main point he was making was an obsessive focus on the details can get in the way of the story. If the perspective is limited to epic events happening on a grand scale, the characters can get lost. If you spend all your time wondering if my characters would get from Kalamar to Ulfkell’s Keep in six days rather than five (obsessively working out the scale of the map, considering the terrain and their mode of transport) you are, with the greatest respect, missing the point. It’s all about the impact the journey has on them and their feelings towards it that matter. In fact, when I write I’m always deliberately vague about what day it is and how long and how far my characters have travelled for this reason.
All that said, I’m going the other way to Joe Abercrombie and I will be adding a map to my books. If you want to get your hands on an early copy of my Brotherhood of the Eagle world map it’s being given away to all my subscribers with my April newsletter. You can sign up to receive the next issue here - https://www.timhardieauthor.co.uk/contact or by clicking on the Contact page on my website. Just don’t send me an email pointing out it would have taken Rothgar six days to travel from Kalamar to Ulfkell’s Keep, rather than five.
