Are you writing a fantasy novel in the real world? Does your real-world need some fantasy tips and tricks to feel real? How to keep the two separate from combining together.
- Fantasy World: Involves magic or abilities, magical portals. Fantasy creatures such as dragons, fairies, Elves, and monsters, etc.
- Real World: No living magical creatures or dragons. The real world deals with real issues of everyday life. Paying taxes, working a full-time job, taking care of kids and getting them to school. Keeping the business going. A war between two different country’s, etc.
See the difference. So how do you keep them separate from combining in your story? Are you wanting to write a story about fantasy creatures and monsters, but not in the world. Yes, it’s possible.
If you don’t want your monsters to be in the real world then you can have your main character stumble upon a portal in the middle of nowhere or in the depth of the woods that leads to the Fantasy world. That’s another way you can keep the real world and the fantasy world separate.
Now if you want the real world and fantasy world to be together then you can have aliens come down from space and land on planet earth. Or you can have dinosaurs roam an island on the other side of the world. There are plenty of ways to have these two worlds combine if that’s what you want.
- How to write a Fantasy World?: A fantasy world can have as many monsters and creatures as you want. If you want to write a dark fantasy novel and don’t understand the world then, of course, you’ll have to do some research. Do you want your dark fantasy to be in the real world or the fantasy world? If you don’t know what a dark fantasy book is here’s my little definition of it.
“Dark fantasy is a darker and spine-chilling theme of fantasy. (Meaning dark monsters, dark creepy towns, old castles, etc) It also has a gloomy atmosphere or a feeling of fear to it.”
That definition sounds like something I would want to write about.
If a dark fantasy is what you want to write about then you’ll have to build the world around the idea that you have. I don’t know enough about dark fantasy to write about so I would have to research.
If you are having trouble with writing a fantasy world and don’t know what monsters you want there is a book that I used a lot while writing. It’s called The Practical Guide to Monsters. When I write a fantasy book I go straight to this book.
This book has all kinds of monsters in it. Its a great source for writing monsters.
- The Rules: If you are going to write a story about a character entering the fantasy world make sure you know the rules. And keep them clean and simple throughout the story. Don’t let your characters break the rules either. You can have them understand and know how to break them if you want. I’ve seen that in books and in movies too. And when they do break the rules something either bad happens or someone dies.
For example: In my novel The Wish, my main character Inga (who is the evil witch from Salem Massachusetts) can’t live with wearing the diamond around her next because all the kids she has killed, their soul is trapped inside the diamond and it’s keeping her strong. If I have her take it off throughout the rest of the novel and she walks walking around like there’s nothing wrong then I broke my own rule.
Understand now? You have to keep the rules in mind throughout each chapter. Its good to also write them down too, so when you do get to a scene where you are stuck then you can look back at the list that you wrote down earlier and see what rules you have.
- World Building: World building is also an important theme throughout the novel. World Building is the setting of the novel. What does your world have? What does it need? Where is it at? What kind of people lives on it? What do they wear, how do they speak? These questions are important as well.
When I wrote The Wish I knew I was going to have my character Geena who is the psychic to have a vision of Salem Massachusetts and the town where Inga had come from. I needed to know what clothes these people wore and how they lived and how they talked. When I researched that I learned a few things about the town. I learned different ways they killed witches. Where they lived and what food they ate and how they clothed themselves. Developing a world can give you an insight of many things to come.
That’s it for this blog. Hope it helped. Have a great day and happy writing!