So, when you are designing a fantasy setting, there are two forces that you have to balance. This is giving me trouble with my current setting at the moment: That which is already known and assumed about a fantasy setting, all the genre-based clichés, the tropes, the things people assume are probably true about your setting lacking any other information; and the nuanced details. The things you’ve put in that are unique, different, twisted, and more your original content.
On one hand you don’t want to rely too much on assumed generic content. I mean… we’re creatives, yes? We are worldbuilders and dreamers of dreams, we want to be seen as original and visionary writers for the most part. Yet if the world is completely separated from what people know and expect, you run into some problems.
For one thing, people don’t get the nostalgia for that classic fantasy content that might help sell your work, if nothing in your work is familiar, then are they really going to be drawn to it initially? That nostalgia can be a powerful tool to take advantage of. Making them work too hard to understand the setting can be an obstacle for them.
If nothing is familiar, then people can’t enter your world as anything but a foreigner. It’s one thing if you introduce a new creature, such as a Slarazzen, and describe it in a shorthand way “It’s a dragon made of ice, covered in purple spines, that is friendly and helps travelers with directions” because mostly fantasy readers are prepared to accept that there will be some new original ideas and creatures in any new fantasy setting.
But if everything has nuance, everything has a ‘but’… “It’s a dragon, but in this world, dragons have fur and are the size of dogs.” “It’s an elf, but they have blue skin in addition to the pointy ears, also they are very violent and emotional.” “It’s a unicorn, but it has a spine of horns and it’s really mean.” “It’s called a halfling, but it’s half-beast instead of just, like a half-sized person” If they can’t RELY on anything familiar because these things are so nuanced and modified that it might as well just be completely new…?
Then you’re not only failing to take advantage of the fill-in effect, but it actually happens in opposition to their experience, so the reader builds up expectations for a “fantasy” setting, and then you knock them down every time. Is that fun for a reader?
Now, you actually can rely on the cliché’s to fill in the unwritten gaps. As soon as you say “fantasy setting” then everyone reading will begin constructing a safe, generic set of fantasy genre expectations. They may expect some of them to be challenged, with a new original setting, but anything you don’t elaborate upon will be “filled in” by that pre-built construct.
The fill-in effect makes the world feel complete when you haven’t clarified every single little detail. It’s what makes writing a setting based on the real world rather advantageous, because ANYTHING you don’t specify can be specified just by looking at the real world. It’s mostly unimportant, assumed information, which can act as a platform for you to build from.
It is easy to feel that this is “lazy” writing, and I know it is my inclination to look at and explain everything in a new way with “but”s galore, but I have to wonder if people are going to be drawn into a setting where they can’t understand even basic concepts without reading a full novel? Or go through a 90 page players guide explaining all the ways in which this setting is a fantasy setting but NOT the fantasy setting they are imagining it to be?
Now, a lot of the more elaborately altered settings might be really fascinating for people who are willing to read that players guide or get into that novel. If it is well written enough, a positive enough experience, it can not only expose people to those unique nuances but help them fall in love with them. It establishes new nostalgia.
But there are so many original worlds out there. Sometimes I feel like for every creator who wants to be an author or a story teller, there are a half dozen new worlds being designed, and each of them yearning for a fanbase, to become the next big thing. Just getting seen, much less actually getting people IN, is no easy trick with all the new worlds out there. It isn’t just the depth and complexity to build a long-term interest for people who dive in, but it needs to have surface level elements that tempt people to make the dive in the first place.
People want confidence that they are going to have a positive experience before they’ll commit. And, of course, people are looking for different things. So to some degree, that is also the way out of the dilemma.
So this is what I come to: Some people are looking for the expected, some people are looking to be surprised. Someone people see a generic fantasy book and say, “Nothing new there” and some people see a nuanced fantasy book and say, “too much work.”
And it goes without saying: if you alter your worlds dramatically and specifically not because you want to, but because you think it will get or keep more interest, then you are undercutting your own emotional investment. Compromising your passion in the work. That is not ideal if you want to actually finish and be proud of your creations.
All this leads me to two conclusions:
1: If you are inclined to nuance and complexity, as I am, there are still going to be places where you can tie in those nostalgic appeals without compromising your creative vision. If my work is simply going to require more from the audience and be less reliant upon their expectations, then that is the nature of MY work, but I can still find places to fit in some of that comfortable nostalgia that will appeal and maybe draw a few more people in.
2: This idea I first heard from Milton Davis on Facebook, who is heavily into self-marketing and a lot more successful in that area than I. I’ll elaborate on it, but the concept is basically this: You are writing for your audience. YOUR audience. There are almost 8 billion people in the world, and plenty enough of them will LOVE your work no matter what it is. Do the best you can do and work at always improving, yes, but don’t feel like you have to “trick” people into reading. Make your work appealing to those who will enjoy reading the stuff you enjoy writing. Write it BECAUSE you enjoy writing it. Because you want it to exist in the world. Then advertising and self-marketing isn’t about shoving your work in the faces of people who don’t care and finding a way to MAKE them care… it is about bringing together the work you’ve created and the people who will love it.
So this isn’t my usual kind of a post, but I hope you found it helpful, as I have, to think through some of these things problems. If you have a response, or more to add, a comment is always much appreciated and welcome 🙂
See you next world,
—Charles