Building an entire fantasy world can be a daunting thing to take on as a writer – especially a new writer.
Fear not, creative!
There’s a good, solid way to get those precious ideas flowing.
Something you may not have even considered before.
A way that can be just as good as drawing inspiration from reading fantasy books and watching fantasy movies.
Can you guess what it is? (Drumroll).
It’s observing the world you’re in right now. The real world, right in front of your very nose.
Believe it or not, the world of reality can provide endless fodder for fantasy world-building.
The world of reality – that’s right, what you see and hear every day of your life.
Family.
Friends.
Strangers.
The people that surround you and talk to you every day.
The earth beneath your feet.
The sky above your head.
Your garden.
Your pets.
Your car.
Your job.
Even your own inner world of hopes, disappointments, triumphs, and fears can be used as fantasy inspiration.
Let’s provide an example of how you can draw from reality to help construct a fantasy story:
Say your boss is tall, has a deep, rich voice, and a strong, determined personality. You think he’d make a great alien villain in the novel you’re writing, so you change a few details about him in your head.
You change his skin to green, give him pointy ears, a bald head, and purple eyes, and an appropriate alien outfit, and voila! He is now that alien villain.
You’ve created an alien being from a basic human template by making just a few tweaks and changes. You’ve still drawn from reality; you’ve just twisted and altered it to suit your needs.
I have too many fantasies to be a housewife. I guess I am a fantasy.
– Marilyn Monroe
J.K. Rowling came up with the idea of a boy attending a wizardry school whilst doing nothing but sitting on a train, and the Harry Potter series was born.
Harry Potter’s school, despite being magical, still has several similarities to a normal school. The school still has its fair share of bullies, and the kids play competitive sports.
She also drew on her own inner life for her stories.
After graduating from university, she saw herself as a failure and seriously thought about killing herself. Her marriage had failed and she was unemployed, with a dependent child to look after.
She was diagnosed with clinical depression, and this later became the inspiration behind the soul-sucking characters known as the Dementors.
Rowling uses the world around her and lets her imagination run wild, tweaking, twisting, and playing around with reality, producing powerful and effective writing.
Her novels contain everyday people and things, but they’re often presented in bizarre and unusual ways.
Like cats that come in every colour, stairs that move, cars that fly, and people that live in paintings.
And ghosts, instead of being subtle and mysterious, actually having conversations with humans.
Let’s use the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien as another example. He invented the creatures known as hobbits.
They were basically humans, with a few fantasy changes thrown in.
They were very short, like children, had very hairy, tough feet, and liked to live in holes in the ground, in round-shaped dwellings.
What part of reality can you tweak and change to suit your fantasy story? What magical ingredients can you add? The possibilities are enormous when you think about it.
Fantasy has a dark side to it. It also has a light hemisphere – the power of the human imagination to keep going, to imagine a better tomorrow.
– Tim O’Brien
You don’t even have to be inspired by the present time if that doesn’t float your boat.
You can be inspired by the many time periods and cultures of history and add your own fantasy elements to it. Do some research and see what you can come up with.
Don’t forget to include solid rules in your world-building. All worlds, no matter how primitive, have systems of government and laws. Check out this list of forms of government in Wikipedia for ideas.
Magic is a big component of fantasy, and this too has to have rules to be believable.
What magical tweaks and twists can you add to reality?
Can you make changes to your chosen subject’s appearance to make them more fantasy-like, such as giving them different coloured eyes?
What powers can you give to your characters?
To your world?
Can you add a few monsters as well?
Go wild with your ideas and have fun!
The earth and its people are your templates when building a fantasy world, and you don’t have to ‘invent the wheel’, just play around with what’s already around you.
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