Rowena Cory Daniells

If the World Building is done well, you won't even realise it is there.

You'll be caught up in the story, desperate to know what will happen to the characters. Maybe you'll empathise with a protagonist, who has to buy his sister out of slavery, but only after he's served his apprenticeship to the wizard's guild.

Your reader will accept a lot of things in fantasy. They'll be familiar with the traditional medieval setting. You won't have to explain what a tavern is, or how a guild works. But …

Beware of Mining the Secondary Sources. Rather than world building based on all the fantasies you've ever read (secondary sources), do your research from primary sources. If you decide to write medieval fantasy do some research into what life was really like. For instance, in some cases well off families would send their babies out to a wet nurse and not see the children until they were two or three years of age. How did this affect the family bonds? How did the wet nurse feel? By researching from primary sources you will create a  richer fantasy world for your characters to inhabit.

Beware the Info Dump. You don't have to stop the story to explain how the system of slavery works, or how an apprenticeship works. You only need to reveal as much as the reader needs to know, at that point in the story, for them to understand the protagonist's motivation. As long as you give enough information for the reader to empathise with the protagonist, you will have them turning the pages.  If you need to get information across, you can convey it through conversation, (as long as they're not discussing something they both already know). You can have your protagonist see something, rather than be told about it. You can have someone come in from outside the protagonist's society and this will give your protagonist a reason to explain what's going on.

Beware the Invented Noun.  In the past in Russia, there were specific words for relationships like the second son's wife's sister's daughter. They needed words for exact relationships because they lived in large extended families.  In your invented world there might be large extended families and your character's place in the family might be important, so you'll need to invent a noun to describe it. This is fine but beware of bombarding the reader with invented nouns. When the book opens, the reader will be trying to make sense of the story, keep track of the characters, learn their names and their relationships with each other and work out what the threat is. Feed in the invented nouns slowly.

There are many things to consider when building a fantasy world, weather, food resources, threats and trade partners, society's structure, how laws are enforced, what level of technology they have, religion, who heals and how, who speaks what languages and how this defines a person's place in society. Many of these are self explanatory. Here are three that are worth giving some thought to.

Consider your World's History. In our cities there are buildings hundreds of years old, next to modern buildings. Think of the history behind your society. It didn't arise overnight. Even when people arrive in a new country, as Europeans did in Australia and the US, they bring their myths and prejudices with them. Does your invented society live in the ruins of a lost civilisation like the Romans, or does it have a secretive religious mythology like the pagans who were supplanted by Christianity? A history hinted at gives a sense of permanence.

Consider the role of Women in your World. It is all very well to have warrior women, but how realistic is this? Females aren't as strong as men. Without contraception sex can lead to pregnancy.  The limitations of biology and how people get around them make for interesting reading. Are the females in your invented world repressed? Can they own land and property? Can they get an education? Despite the limitations women faced in the past they have held positions of power. They have run businesses and acted as regents for their infant sons.

Consider the role of Race in your World.  Human nature being what it is, people create in-groups and out-groups. Does one section of society repress another for reasons of skin colour, religion, or magical abilities?

The best thing you can do for verisimilitude in your invented world is read about different societies. The more diverse knowledge you have to draw from, the more complex and interesting your world will be.

Everything must flow logically, and even illogical elements should have a reason.  (You mean if I pay the church, I can commit sins and be forgiven so that I can still go to heaven? That sounds like a good deal).  From the lowest street urchin to the ruler, everyone will have a place in that society. Their motivation and their secret fears will be shaped by the society they grew up in.

Book one of Rowena Cory Daniells' fantasy trilogy King Rolen's Kin, will be released in early 2010.

www.corydaniells.com