Kirsten, I totally agree. Although I’d say you don’t have to “know” every little detail. Rather than your world should be tight enough in construction that if someone were to ask you an off the wall question you should be able to give them an answer off the cuff that would fit entirely into your world. I do think people tend to overcomplicate how much worldbuilding they actually need, filling journals with details etc but rather that the world *works*, the magic has consequence etc. You need to know your world intimately, but not spill that all over the page – how messy!

Hi Angie. I hope I will be avoiding your dead salmon – lol! But yes, too many people think you can do what you want with fantasy. A world needs rules (did I mention I’m a librarian by day? Shhh) and the rules need to be consistent. Glad you liked it!

Thanks a million for having me here, December. I’ve really enjoyed it!

Well, not really. I find that the world building that works for me relies strongly on consistent use of interlocking elements and determined questioning of the elements that make up the world.

THANK you, yes. [nodnod] I wrote a column on this subject a while back — I wince whenever I hear someone chirp happily about how fantasy is so much easier than contemporary or historical because you can “just make everything up!”

[headdesk]

If you just throw a bunch of random pieces together then you’ll get a jumble of random pieces, not a coherent, functional world. Making up a good fantasy world is just as much work as researching a historical. It’s a different kind of work, to a certain extent, but people who think you can do “Anything!!” in a fantasy just don’t know much about fantasy.

Unfortunately there are editors who don’t know much about it either, and some of these thrown-together monstrosities actually get published, which just encourages all the other people who think, “See! It’s easy!!” At that point I want to start whacking people with a dead salmon until a few brain cells get jarred loose. [wry smile]

Anyway, yeah — good post. [nod]

Angie

Best piece of advice I ever got on worldbuilding was that the reader doesn’t HAVE to know everything about your world–YOU do. A reader can often tell if you’re just faking your way through a story with half-assed worldbuilding, but as long as you have your history/mythology/rules of society and all that crap clear in your own head, you don’t have to disclose every tiny little detail.