- SCARRIOR
- Sep 10, 2019
- 11 min read
How to write a novel and or build a Fantasy world
Introduction
So, you are planning to write a book, or rather, you want to? Good to hear, for the creator in the world of writing can summon the greatest and most extraordinary things of marvellous nature, whether it be a new religion, world, technology, setting, culture. Who knows, perhaps even our world was created in a flash of imagination from a being of another dimension?
So where to begin, i would say you need to get the software called Write Monkey, it has a spell checker that finds the words that have been miss-spelt, or perhaps even newly created by yourself, for who is to say a word needs to adhere to our all knowing and dictatorial dictionary that is forced down our throats in English class when we were a wee lad or lass? Just make sure you have a section in your book that gives a definition to each new word you create in that book, just so you can tell your readers that you told them so, and that you are not going to give in to the screaming A level master degree so called professionals that bash you into their way of thinking, no sir!
Anyway, when it comes to writing, what you will want to do you will want to follow some of the simple organisation tricks to make sure that your little project of literature, does not spiral out of control and become stressful, as we all want to finish what we start right?
The first and perhaps most important of them all, think of a theme, is it historical? Fantasy? Mythical steampunk assassination that finds space travel? Anything you want, you are the creator, you are god of your own universe, and as you write more and more lore, you will see that it too, will expand.
ONE thing i would like to stress above all is, don't conform, if someone says you have to write about this and that, "Oh your world does not make sense!" "How can a spaceship run on electricity!" "Are you stupid! You can't write politically incorrect stuff in your book, THAT'S OFFENSIVE WEH" pardon my language, or rather my masked candid language but, F*** them all. Your story, your rules, your universe. In-fact, if you can at least inspire at least one person to love your content and inspire one person to be P***** off at you, i think you have already started the path to becoming a success! At the end of the day, when you stop writing, you are writing for you only, not the readers, not the publishers, not your family (If they are interested) you, and you alone. Remember that film Misery, or book rather? Yeah, screw her, that is the sort you will be dealing with, only the not so dedicated, killing spree loving fan.
If you are writing for money, then that is fine! People will say, "Oh, if you write for money, you won't succeed" these people have a superiority complex, such as those who go to university and get a Master's and then start thinking that their Intelligence Quotient is higher when Intelligence Quotient has nothing to do with what you have learned, but rather how fast you have learned. We tend to ignore these people. Money, yes! that is where we were at before i ranted about the professionally inclined people of the modern age, we live in a world where living without money can be stressful, disasterous, and the pinnacle of our survival. Usually though, if you are writing for money, you must be also inclined to enjoy the points i have stated here and below already, otherwise you would not be able to motivated to do so!
Some of the things i recommend to follow below.
Maps
Maps are very important, even if it is just a village where the story takes place, to a thriving world the size of a galaxy (Exaggerated) you will always need to have a map, then populate it with races, cultures, religions, mercenaries, trading posts, empires. This way, you know where your story will lead as you use a map you have created in either Paint .NET, my favourite tool for digital graphics, to photoshop. The map is basically a reference point in determining where your party of travellers are located as they go from scene to scene, or perhaps it is a multi story consisting of multiple characters with different sets of relationships and cultural preferences?
You don't need a map if you are writing something that takes place in an already created place, for an example England. If you were to write a mythical story based in England, then you would most likely want to use Google maps for a precise location. This is very important, especially when you calculate the distance between towns, as someone who writes a three chapters dedicated to a party travelling from town A to town B only to find that they are both only 10 miles apart, unless you have some encounters and points of interest between there and then.
Maps are the most fun when you create a fantasy world, all you need to do is look at an area on that map and think, "Oh, i think i will plop a giant city there, and it will be filled with merchant ships and mages that are mercenaries for hire" then you can go "Oh and next to it, i shall put another city, that hates that other city, and they can spark a few scenes of drama for my book" next thing you know you come across these cities in your map and you suddenly write out a few chapters of a war between the two cities sparking content for your book and a sense of conflict.
Greatest thing about writing, is that you can create anything you want, plop it anywhere, and then go, hey lets make some people that live there and write a story about them, next thing you know you have a thousand readers, and wow, what a fan base you have! Now you have multitudes of people inspired by your book or series of books, who are now sharing in your own little universe of experience!
Character Sheet
Another important step in the construction of your world, characters. Characters are important for they are the tools of personally grafting themselves upon a reader, but most importantly, they are the tools of which are used to interact with your universe! No one wants to know about a dead city full of ruins and treasure, if there are no personal automatons running around exploring it, in a sense of gratifying free will! Perhaps a page or two in a third person sense, where the writer talks about the history of the city, but not chapters.
Character sheets can range from anything you want, i personally set my character sheet up in PaintDotNet, i outline their skills, personality, profession, race, culture, eye colour, hair colour, name, any relationship ties to other characters, and a description box, as well as traits. Do not forget about gender! No use having the brave and noble lord Leslie only for the writer (That's you) forget his gender and suddenly Leslie is a lady, talk about a medieval sex change! Although if you imagined the character properly, you will never forget anything about him or her, or anything in your universe at all.
I currently have three distinct types of character categories:
Main characters:
Characters paramount to the story, you write them consistently throughout the story.
Secondary Characters:
Characters that are influential but do not dominate the page's of the story too much to be considered in the main category, these tend to have around 20 pages in your story dedicated to them.
Non-Important:
Basically the title, those that have helped in some way, such as a tavern keeper, giving a page or two in the story.
Lore
Add lore! Add New elements, new resources, new worlds, new religions, cultures, ethnicities, blue people, sex addicted alien women, crazy lunatic smugglers that shoot new types of narcotics into their tongues! Build a universe from the ground up. New technologies, new cities, old emperors and their respective descendants or dynasties. Everything has a part, and as long as it can add useful intriguing words to your novel, you will be fine. No use writing a book about a man who spends his entire time at the camp in the woods! Add some animals for him to hunt, perhaps a lion with four eyes, oh and it's got cybernetic implants, and the whole world is a crazy cybernetic apocalyptic world because some madman liked cybernetics too much.
Add families, factions, politics, changes in history, focused character arcs who changed the world around them, timelines from thousands of years ago to now, like Tolkien's Middle Earth, or George R.R Martins Game of Thrones. Write what makes your world tick, and add some!
Scene Plan
This is perhaps the best organisation method you can do, and it really keeps you going, otherwise without it you may actually end up going one day "Look, i don't know where i am in the story, i don't know where it is heading, and i am afraid of screwing it up and making it lead me into a direction that has drifted away from the story". We don't want that, i used to write my scene plan in a digital graphics program with a layer system, using layers in PaintDotNet or Photoshop, you can turn them on and off, so you can turn on a layer for character 1 scene plan, character 2 scene plan, and so on. I stopped this, as editing an image file over and over again became tedious, i started spending more time mingling around what to add and delete all the time. I use good old Notepad now, i usually arrange by scenes into 5 sections under a chapter. Chapter 1 - Chapter name, then Scene 1 (1000 Words): this and that happens Scene 2 (1000 Words): da da da Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5 then chapter 2 and so on. You can have as many words in a chapter as you want, the novel is up to you, but i like to keep it simple and go with 5,000 which for some people is still too much.
Remember 300 words is 1 page in a book. If you write a 1200 page book and want it printed instead of using a kindle or any other type of E-Book service, you will need to split it into such and such. This is what J.R.R Tolkien did with the Lord of the Rings, he split the series into three books. 'Fellowship of the Ring', 'The Two Towers', 'The Return of the King'.
Dialog
Write dialog through your own words, as you write the dialog, think of the culture, the reference point on whether it is set historically or fantastical. Mood, Theme, and Aspiring tone. For an example you could write "How goes it sir, want to view my wares?". We can see here that the character that mutters this dialog is of a mercantile background, is he a trader? Smuggler? or a thief? The choice in dialog is entirely up to you, just make sure that you set a theme and speak the words yourself. As your dramatic third person language that you use in the novel to describe the story in an artistical tone, can rub off and make the dialog strange, dramatic, confusing, and hard to associate, creating one confused and disgruntled reader, not to mention yourself, if you start reading the story from the viewpoint of that of a reader.
Add emotion between characters, perhaps one character slept with another's girlfriend, while they were saving the world from evil tyrannical cybernetically enhanced squid-fish that were being controlled by the Chinese in an effort to assume control of Japan's Calamari market. See, you can't call me unimaginative now! Even if it is exaggerated to the core! Apparently "Cybernetically" is not a word, this is what i meant by earlier, create your own words and define them, sod the Dictionary to the seven hell's! Just make sure you add a dialog between characters, even if they are one time characters you will never write about again.
Structure
When you write your book, you want to use a good vocabulary, depending on who the book is for and whether the language you will use will associate with them. For an example, Deranged, illusion and Hysterical are all good words for us adults, but if you are writing a book for children in mind, you are going to have children that will not be able to read your book on their own and would require a translator, an adult, which means it all of a sudden becomes a children's book for adults! However, if you do insist on using this, you should state at the start of the book, that the language is tricky, however it is with the curious little learner in mind, and that even when we or a child hears the words 'Theologically' 'Magnificently' or 'Illuminated' it does spark a sense of emotion and imagination, even in a child's imaginative age.
I like to use complex but self explaining words that roll off the tongue, such as the one above 'Illuminated' as in "The shining light that paled in the skies brief mask of darkness, illuminated the ground in it's prowess for domination" or along the lines. This is to make the book more artistic, however i have seen people use simple speak in their words, that has actually became notoriously praised. I just view that using these new complex words both educate me, and the reader. Words are the bones of our literature works, and learning new ones, help us define and broaden our novel writing horizons!
Plot Devices
Plot devices include things such as a secret traitor in the group that no one knows about, nor the reader, or it could be that the reader knows, but the character doesn't. Secret family ties, like Luke and Leia skywalker from Star Wars. Basically something that the reader thinks is happening or has happened that takes a different turn. You can even write cliffhangers at the end of chapters, which is currently popular, while flashbacks is currently hated. You can drop hints about plot devices throughout your story.
English Language Devices
Remember to use, Metaphors, Similes, Personification, Rhetorical dialog, Euphemism ("He's in a better place now", "He too a stroll to close to the firing line", etc), Foreshadowing (hinting that something might happen) and so on.
Using language devices like you were taught in school, will most likely make your story a success. Using it an artistic sense, for an example, personification. "It flew like a bird into the wind, the aircraft was light as a feather, yet deadly as the Cobra willing for the hunt".
Multiple Plotlines
One thing that will come up for sure when you write multiple characters into a story is organised chaos, i will tell you now, for the sake of you and your readers, when you write multiple story arcs in your novel, whether it is for yourself, amazon kindle, or a beefy publisher, write each character's viewpoint in a story as a chapter. In Game of Thrones for example, i believe Tyrion, one of the most notable characters in the story, has around 14 chapters named Tyrion. If you are writing an ongoing present and dynamic story, you will not want to have all 14 chapters written out as so in one go, unless you want to write some sort of reader detective story where the reader reads the stories of 4 different characters or more in one go, one after the other as each story folds into one another.
Get Inspired!
One thing if you are looking for good old inspiration willpower, is to watch Tolkien (2019) a film about J.R.R Tolkien's life and some of his antics. The film depicts his early life, time before he started writing, however the film does show where his creations and desires came from, and the sad references in the film that detailed Tolkien's actual life.
Memorable Quote
J.R.R Tolkien
"The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter’s power." -J.R.R Tolkien
