How to Write a Fantasy Novel – Daniel Abraham
Interview - Creating Fantasy Worlds & Advice for Writers
Apr 17, 2009
In an interview with Suite101 writer Jennifer Jensen, Daniel Abraham shared the challenges of writing fantasy, creating worlds, and how he starts the process.
About Daniel Abraham
Daniel Abraham has written six fantasy novels (and co-authored a seventh), numerous short stories, and a graphic novel. His Long Price Quartet series continues with The Price of Spring, which will be released in July.
What Should a Writer Consider When Creating a Fantasy World?
Economics. Where the food comes from to support the great cities, how the sewage problems are dealt with, how travel works, and how a world with your particular kind of magic changes all those bits. The beautiful thing is that you don't have to put much of that in the books. If you know, for instance, that magewater flows backward, and you tell the story of how that was used to disable the locks and stop grain shipments just before the invasion, the magic feels more convincing.
That and check your geography and physics. If the two moons in your world are in different phases, you've got a problem.
How Do You Create Your Own Fantasy Worlds?
Grudgingly, with slow, heavy steps, I make a map. Mountain ranges, then rivers, then cities, then trading routes. Usually it's all built around some fairly fuzzy idea of a historical culture. Then I add in magic and see what that changes and what concrete sensory details I can use to show that.
For instance, in this new project I'm working on, a particular kind of very insidious magic changes your blood. Because of that, legal contracts involve a little bloodletting, just so everyone knows the negotiation wasn't tainted. And because of that, there's an idiom in the world "scarred as a banker's thumb" or "numb as a banker's thumb" referring to the buildup of damage that comes from signing lots of contracts just the way "mad as a hatter" was about mercury poisoning.
Those kinds of details accrue around the world as I write the first draft and think my way through everything. By the time I've finished the first draft, I've got a pretty decent feel for how things fit together. The first few chapters will need serious rewriting -- and sometimes the whole book needs a new draft -- but the mechanics of the world are pretty solid.
Describe the Challenges of Writing Fantasy vs. Realistic Fiction.
The hardest thing is keeping track of all the things I've made up. Is the island to the west or the north? Are dragons twenty feet long or fifty? Internal consistency is the only thing I have to convince the reader that the world I'm talking about is real. And I can't easily draw on the common culture we all share. For a story in the real world, I can say something like "Berlin, 1935" and there's a whole world already built. "Camnipol, Fifth year of the Salt Emperor" isn't ever going to have that shorthand.
On the other hand, I never get my historical facts wrong. So that's a plus.
Does Your Story Idea Start with a Character, a Plot, or a World? Why?
It varies with the project. Sometimes I'll know a person in the story and figure out what happens; sometimes I'll know what happens and figure out who it's happening to; sometimes I'll know a sentence that someone says or a piece of description. Since, in the finished work, all of those things are worked into the same dough, I'm not sure it matters which bit you start with. They're all connected.
Any Advice for Aspiring Fantasy Writers?
While you build all the nifty, eye-catching, cool stuff in your fantasy world, take a few minutes now and then to remember that the people in it are people. A friend once explained all romantic comedies by saying you can make fun of anything except the love between the two characters; if you do that, you've cut the story's throat. For fantasy, you can exoticize everything except the characters' emotional lives.
Read more from Daniel Abraham about:
 |
 |
 |
 |
