Less is More

With the release date for my first novel finalized, it’s time to start looking towards the future of the series. Maybe “start looking” is the wrong way to put it. After all, I already have a series of seven planned out as well as another trilogy set thousands of years in the past, but I definitely need to put more thought into creating a cohesive world.

Over the course of the last couple of months, this endeavor has occupied more and more space in my mind. I want to not only write stories and characters that will keep readers coming back, but I want to fashion a world unlike any that has come before it. As with most fantasy authors, world building has always been a driving force behind my ideas, but the more I write, the more I realize how difficult it is to seamlessly write your world building into the story. Eventually, I want to have a Sillmarillion type compilation of all the hard work I’ve put in behind the scenes, but until that day sharing little bits here and there will have to do. I know I’ve already talked about how to create your world, but today I want to share my thoughts and ideas on how to integrate the world you’ve built into your story.

There are several ways to introduce the lore of your world into your story. The easiest, but least rewarding way is to simply have the narrator flat out tell the reader the information you are trying to convey. I don’t recommend this method if you want readers to stick around for any length of time. Another way to convey the lore, is to have one character tell another character. This can be a little tricky if you want to do it right. If you have the character doing the telling go into a monologue filled with every detail of the lore that you can cram into a single chapter, it will feel forced unless they have a really good reason for doing so. You want to be more subtle about it. Have characters share little snippets here and there, or better yet allude to some aspect of the lore that is shown in more detail later. This can be difficult to pull off, especially for someone like me that struggles with believable dialogue.

The last, and my personal favorite, way to conveying your lore to the reader, is to describe the details of the world around the characters. Are your characters walking through an ancient valley, have one of them see part of a ruined castle wall sticking out of one of the cliffs above them, hinting at a civilization that used to occupy that region. Are your characters traveling across a vast plain, have one of them trip over a rusted blade sticking out of the ground, showing there was a great battle that took place there long ago. It’s the little things that really keep readers hooked.

It’s easy to get caught up in the history of the world you’re creating without stopping to think, is this something my readers will really care about. The reason something like the Sillmarillion worked is because Tolkien had already written captivating stories and compelling characters to get the readers interested in his world of Middle Earth. As a writer that’s just starting out, I hate to tell you this, but readers don’t care about your world…at least not yet. Focus on writing a good solid story first with characters that have desires and shortcomings of their own before you delve further into your own little world. I just hope readers find my story captivating enough to want to learn more about my world, otherwise my head might explode with all the ideas I have pent up in there.

Do you guys have any good tips for world building, or do you have any stories that you’re currently working on building a solid lore for? Let me know down in the comments, and as always, happy writing out there.