How To Write Fantasy Novels | A Helpful Guide

World-Building (An Introduction)

World-building may actually be the most crucial part of setting up your fantasy novel.

I mean... what is a story without its setting?

Answer?

GARBAGE.

Though your characters and plot do make up the more significant portion of your book's exciting details are (probably) the main reason why people read your book in the first place, your story's setting is, in fact, meant to be the place where all incidents in your book occur.

There are three key and vital parts to your world-building that all writers have to consider when writing a book.

1) What era or timeline does my story take place in? [Time & Place]

2) If there is magic, what type of magical system is it? How do I explain how the people in my novel get their powers? [Power Systems]

3) Is the community unjust or peaceful? Is there discrimination or a social hierarchy? [Society]

These three points will be discussed in further chapters, but for now, let's get down to the introduction!😉

As we all know, fantasy novels are exceptionally famous for being imaginative, creative and very, VERY hard to write. Most writers lose inspiration tremendously fast as they see their stories falling to pieces upon writing.

Why is this so?

That's because they probably were unable to continue writing as the logic of their worlds broke apart.

It could've been the power system being too flexible, the setting being too abstract and nonsensical, or it could've been the laws in the society not making sense. Unfortunately, these minor cracks in fabricated worlds can become major very quickly, so the obvious way to avoid these pits of misery is to plan out your world thoroughly. Exceedingly so.

You see, when writers try to make a fictional world, they sometimes go overboard and make them wildly unrealistic by adding ridiculous laws or giving broken powers to people in their stories. But, soon enough, they will start to realise the holes in these so-called settings and will try to use various ways to solve them.

This is the reason why plot devices were made!😑

(plot devices will be further explained in another book on my account page)

Writers also have frequent faults of making their stories overly complicated to the point where their characters are swallowed by their surroundings and seem much more insignificant than the world they are put in.

However, an example of a book that did manage to have a fantastic world that is so imaginative and interesting but still managed to make their characters significant would be...

HARRY POTTER.

This story had it all. It's no wonder that it is still very famous and a best-selling book even though it was first released in 1997 (which is a heck of a long time for a book to be popular).

Harry Potter is one of the few fantasy novels out there that was set in modern times but still made it big. It stands beside modern fantasy book series such as The Royal Institute of Magic, The Magisterium and The Hound of Rowan. Still, it is considered the godfather of the contemporary fantasy book world.

J.K. Rowling did a smashing job. (But she's still a shitter)

The ridiculously complicated world of the Harry Potter series is so highly descriptive and well-thought-through that it isn't hard to believe that that fabricated world is real if you are told so.

Which is probably why snapewives exist.

They rlly took delulu to a whole other level.

Anyway, back to Potterverse:

The power system, social status of the people and (of course) the world itself are spectacular.

There is no way in hell you can tell me that the idea of platform 9 3/4 is not ingenious.

And in this book, you will (hopefully) be able to learn how to write a story like that...