World-Building in Fantasy Novels

Welp…welcome, I guess? I’ve forgotten how to do this. Anyways, your second favourite blogger is back! The first favourite’s probably someone who actually posts. I am challenging myself to a ‘5-day continuous post’ streak. I have no ideas for these posts, nor are any of these posts pre-written…let’s see if I can be consistent enough for this.

I have always been a big fan of fantasy novels, Percy Jackson, Chronicles of Narnia, and the Hunger Games were the original mainstream fantasy stories I read, recently I have been getting back into the fantasy game, but this time the not-so-popular ones like the Art of the Adept. Having analyzed multiple such books, both popular ones and underrated ones, I like to think that I have a pretty good idea of what differentiates them. If you go search for the most important elements of any fiction book, people like to talk about characters, plot, theme and conclusion, but there is one another very important part of fantasy-fiction that not a lot of websites and bloggers talk about – world-building.

Harry Potter wouldn’t be Harry Potter without Hogwarts. The Hobbit wouldn’t be the same without the valleys of Middle Earth. Percy Jackson wouldn’t be the same without Camp Halfblood. You could however argue, “There are so many series with worlds much more complex and intricate than these like Will Wight’s Cradle, why aren’t these as mainstream as the others?”

“World-Building can be as complicated or as simple as your story needs it to be”

Moriah Richard

My take on this is that each and every one of these ‘popular’ books has a noticeable balance. A balance between the characters, the plot and the world-building. It’s like putting the rabbit and turtle into a race across multiverses with dark elves listening to The Beatles. A simple plot and basic characters but an unnecessarily complex world. That’s one of the biggest reasons some books do so well and others don’t.

Imagine The Maze Runner’s cast in a rendition of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It makes absolutely no sense.

I believe that any good fantasy world should have the basics down – a brief history, unique culture and a time period while still being relatable to the readers. This is one of the biggest reasons people love Percy Jackson. The entire storyline is closely connected to the real world. This is also one of the easiest ways to create a fantasy world instead of one completely imaginary world where you have to define and create every single thing from the flora to the inhabitants. It’s like the difference between Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (my 11th final exams still going around in my head).

That was my take on world-building, if things don’t go horribly wrong I’ll see you tomorrow with another post (don’t hold me onto that though). See you later ✌️