Wordsmith Wednesday: World Building in a Fantasy Novel

We have a guest this week! I’m super excited to introduce y’all to Russell Nohelty, one of my favorite writers.

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I’m doing a lot of promotion for my new Kickstarter, Ichabod
Jones: Monster Hunter, and as such I have been participating in several AMAs
around the internet.

Most of the questions tend to be about the project, or one
of my other projects, but sometimes they turn toward writing, and specifically
writing fantasy, which is something I am acutely qualified to talk about, being
as I’ve made my career writing fantasy novels and comics.

The biggest question I get related specifically to writing
fantasy is about how to go about world building in a fantasy story without an
info dump.

An info dump is when you explain the world at length in the
middle of a scene without explaining it through action. It could be through a
song, or a story found by one of the characters, or just somebody explaining
the world at length to another character.

This kind of world building stops the story dead and is
dreadfully boring both for the author to write and the reader to read. It also
demystifies the wonder of the world, which is one of the greatest parts about
fantasy.

So, how do you do world building the right way, then?

Good world building is done through the eyes of the main
character, or characters, if you have multiple point of view characters, a la
Game of Thrones.

In good world building, the world unfolds for the character
much like it unfolds for the reader, with each scene building on the next and
revealing more and more about the world.

Good world building is like building a train track while a
train is barreling forward. You should only lay that track moments before the
train arrives, but always with enough track that it doesn’t fall off the rails.

This means that you should strive not to reveal something to
your reader until right before they need to know it, so that it’s fresh in
their mind when the action happens.

If you reveal a part of the world a hundred pages before the
information is needed, readers will forget and become confused when the action
happens.

Instead, it’s important to reveal necessary information
within two chapters of when the characters will need to act on the information
they’ve received, and it is best to do so in the preceding one or during the
same chapter when they experience the threat.

For instance, if your characters go into a town and learn
about a beast that roams the mountains, and then head into the mountains…they
are going to either have to encounter the beast OR learn that there is
something else in the woods that is not the beast.

This either reinforces or subverts the information given,
and thus cements it in the brain of the reader, because they have just read
about the information, and then soon after seen the information for themselves
through the actions of the characters.

I also like to use another trick, which is not to disclose
any information for my readers until after the characters experience it.

In Ichabod Jones Monster Hunter, the first issue
starts with the main character creeping through an asylum unaware of what is
happening and scared out of his mind, until he runs into a great, big monster
which chases after him, and the rest of the issue is spent trying to figure out
what happened and how to kill the monster.

This plants the reader directly into the action, but it is also
jarring for the reader, which means it needs to be used sparingly.

In the case above, I used the jarring pace of meeting the
monster to show that nothing is safe and Ichabod could be put in life
threatening peril at any moment. It drew the reader in immediately and helped
them connect with the character.

Conflict is what bonds the reader with the character, and
conflict shows the true nature of the character. Good world building is all
about how to show the mettle of the characters and put them in conflict with
the world.

When you write an info dump, you do nothing to show the
conflict of the world with the character, and thus, it serves very little
purpose.

The world is only as interesting as the conflict it creates
with the characters, which means that showing the world in conflict with the
character is the best way to build empathy between your reader and the world
you’ve created.

You can check out the Ichabod Jones campaign, and even
download the first issue for free at: bit.ly/ichabod5

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For more information about Russell, check out his website at The Complete Creative. Also be sure to check out all of his novels and comics! He’s an immensely talented writer who I am proud to know.