Category Archives: worldbuilding

A few words on concepts that don’t exist in the real world

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When you build a fantasy world, chances are there’ll be concepts that don’t exist in the real world and that you’ll have to name. A concept that comes up frequently in fantasy worlds, is one that characters with magic have a means of transporting themselves from one place to another. Here are a few examples:

  • In the Harry Potter books, wizards and witches apparate (and disapparate).
  • In Shawna Reppert’s urban fantasy Ravensblood series, mages can teleport.
  • Dina von Lowenkraft chose shift for her book Dragon Fire.
  • In my manuscript Mage Girl, characters relocate.

How you name this power is up to you—you can use an acknowledged term (teleport), you can invent your own term (apparate), or you can change the meaning of an existing word (relocate).

The basic concept is the same, but each author defines their own set of rules governing the use of this power. For example, you have to know the place where you are going or use a person who is in that place as an “anchor” (Ravensblood), you have to practice and pass an exam (Harry Potter), if you’re exhausted it can go wrong or not work at all, only certain people (mostly mages/wizards) can do it…

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Time keeping in a fantasy or sci-fi world

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When establishing your fantasy or sci-fi world, one element to take into account is time keeping. I already mentioned it in my post on anachronisms, but the way people measure the passing of time will influence their daily lives and therefore impact in one way or another in your story.
You don’t necessarily have to flesh out all the details of your world’s time measurement to your reader, as Tolkien did in Lord of the Rings (Appendix D), but you as the writer have to know them.

Is time measurement as accurate as in our world? If not, what would people say instead of “give me a minute” and how would they make appointments? Would they refer to the sun (mid-day) or the moon, for example?
In Ancient Rome, the day was made up of twelve “hours” of equal length between sunrise and sunset. As the length of days varies, so did the length of these hours.
In Monica Hughes’ fantasy duology Sandwriter/The Promise, a ten-day is the equivalent of our seven-day week.

Does your world have an equivalent of weekdays, and how are they named? Are there days that are different from the others (like our Sundays or Sabbath), or is every day the same unless it’s a special holiday?

If your story is set on a different planet, astronomy comes into the equation:
How does that planet orbit its sun? Is there more than one sun? Are there moons, and how many? Does the planet have seasons?
Also, are your characters natives of that planet and naturally use the astronomical references for time keeping? Or are they colonists from Earth and try to stick to Earth time measurements? If they have been there for several generations, have they kept it up, or are they gradually shifting to adopt the natural references of their new home?

If your story is set in space, do your characters follow Earth time-keeping? (Astronauts on the ISS, who are in close contact with Earth, work on GMT.) Or have they established a generic time-keeping system? Are they even from Earth?

All this will play into your story, as it has a direct impact on how your characters think, speak, and generally manage their time (or not).

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How to make a feather quill

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During research for my time travel story set in the French Renaissance in the early 16th century, my fingers started itching to use a feather quill as my time-traveling protagonist did. I found some how-to websites and got started.

First, obviously, you need some nice feathers. I’ve been told the use of certain birds’ feathers may be forbidden in some countries, so please make sure you know where your feather comes from.

  • Find feathers in a park
  • Know someone at the Zoo?

Other items you will need:

  • Soapy water and an old toothbrush or
  • Space in a freezer
  • A recipient big enough your feather fits completely in
  • Sand
  • An oven-proof recipient
  • A sharp knife, an x-acto knife or a cutter work best
  • A cutting board
  • Ink and paper

One internet source says to scrub them in soapy water (with an old toothbrush, for example). During a zoo visit, a bird keeper told me that leaving the feathers in the freezer for a day or two would kill off any vermin. (I left mine for two days, to be on the safe side.)

If you wash them, the next step is obviously letting them dry.

Then you shave off the fibers near the tip because once you dip your quill into the inkwell, you don’t want to have them dripping with ink.

Next you leave them in water overnight. The instructions say this makes them soft and easy to bend.

Again, you let them dry.

Heat sand in the oven to 350°F/175°C. Stick the feathers into the hot sand once you take it from the oven and leave them in there while the sand cools. This is supposed to harden the feather so you won’t have to resharpen it too often.

Now comes the trickiest part – cutting the tip into the right shape. Be warned, the feather is still surprisingly hard and cutting it in the shape you want will not be easy. Use a pen to trace the shape on the tip and then cut along your markings. This is more carving than cutting, actually. Once your nib has the right shape, you need to make a split at the center.

Now all you need is an inkwell, paper, and some practice. Look what my 10-year-old daughter did when I let her choose one of my feathers.

And to round it off nicely, here’s some history:

In Europe, the feather replaced the reed pen for writing in the 6th century CE. The birds whose feathers were most commonly used besides the goose were raven, duck and grouse for fine writing, and vulture and eagle feathers for bold writing. The feather dominates writing in Europe through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Classical Period, until the invention of the metal-tip pen in the 19th century.

My web sources: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Quill-Pen-out-of-a-Feather and https://minervaspencer.com/how-to-make-a-quill-pen-the-real-way-and-also-the-cheaters-way/

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Beware of anachronisms

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When I’m reading, one thing that’ll jolt me out like nothing else is anachronisms. Please do your research and make sure that nothing is out of place/time.

Time itself is a prime example of anachronisms in stories set in the past or in fantasy settings inspired by the past. In a medieval setting (which is also still very popular in fantasy), even though there are clocks in church towers or secular public buildings, people are unlikely to carry a time piece around with them and say “We’ll meet again in 30 minutes” or even “Wait a minute”. (Unless otherwise specified in your fantasy world building, of course.)

Another example of an anachronism is the mention of electricity passing between the protagonist and the love interest in a book set in Ancient Rome. It jolted me so much out of the story that I haven’t read any of the other books by the author, even though I’m a huge fan of Ancient Rome stories.

You don’t want that to happen with your readers, do you?

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A comprehensive guide to world building (not by me)

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I am not going to expound on world building because I can’t claim to be an expert. However, I would like to present the four-part article “The Challenge of Creating A Believable World” by writer Dina von Lowencraft (author of the YA fantasy DRAGON FIRE), as it is the most comprehensive I have come across so far. The article includes several lists of questions to guide your own world building:

Part One “The Physical World” goes over the basic building blocks of world building.

Part Two “The Inhabitants of Your World” takes a closer look at society and how it shapes its inhabitants.

Part Three “The Inherent Conflicts/Issues in Your World” explores different kinds of conflicts linked directly or indirectly to world building.

Part Four “Showing Your World” looks at different ways to show your world building in your story.

Please check out Dina’s book DRAGON FIRE on GoodReads

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Some quick thoughts on names

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Chances are, unless you’re writing historical fiction (and maybe even then), you’ll need to name lots of characters. Let me share some tips:

If you are writing real-world fiction, consider what realistic names are/were in your chosen time and place. Even if you give your protagonist a “special” name, unless it’s a main feature of your story, most named characters shouldn’t have “special” names. For research, try “baby names popular in year X” (with X being the year of your story minus the age of the character you’re naming, obviously).

For foreign settings, try to find someone from that country/area to confirm your choices (I assure you there are not as many Pierre Dupont in France as you might think, or Hans Meier in Germany). That is especially true with names from cultures where naming rules are different from what you are used to (Chinese names are a prime example).

For stories set in certain time periods or communities, learn about naming customs. Ancient Rome had rather straightforward naming rules that can easily be reproduced and applied to fictional characters. Closer to home, in my grandma’s region of Eastern Frisia, children would receive the same names over and over again from generation to generation, and if in those big families a child died, the next one born would get that child’s name. (Much to genealogists’ despair, I’m sure.)

In a fantasy or sci-fi world, it is you who make the rules, and this includes naming. However, even there it is a good idea to remember to keep your names pronounceable. When I was reading the Never-Ending Story for the first time as a kid (when it was first released and before any movie adaptation), I struggled with the pronunciation of all the names of people and places, it annoyed me to no end. As editor Heather Alexander said at a writers’ conference I attended a few years ago, “you want your readers to be able to talk about your book”!

Don’t use too similar names for different characters (unless it serves a plot purpose). You don’t want your reader to mix them up and get confused.

In real life, people do have unusual names. And there isn’t always a (big) story behind it. But when characters in your story have unusual names (whether the protagonist, the antagonist or a secondary character), readers assume there is a reason (and it better be a good one), that you did it on purpose. Unusual names stand out, so if you give a character an unusual name, you better know why.

Once you’ve come up with a name, check the Internet. You don’t want your protagonist to unintentionally share the name of a criminal, a person well known in another English-speaking country, or an important character from someone else’s books. (Don’t use names that are too similar to well-known characters either.)

Oh, one last tip: Don’t name your protagonist after your kid – or your kid after your protagonist!

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