Fantasy Fiction 101: Choosing a Style to Build Your Fantasy World
“You can make anything by writing.”
C.S. Lewis
We started this series by asking the basic question “What is fantasy fiction?” and continued with the slightly more complicated question “Why write fantasy fiction?” The answer to both, simply stated, is that fantasy fiction is the ultimate “What if?” This is the genre that brings dragons to life, fills forests with fairies and ancient guardians, and creates worlds where magic flourishes and fantastical, mythical creatures occupy the same earth as you or I. The world is not restrained by the limitations of reality, but only by the boundaries you weave into the fiber and construct of the world you create.
Once a fantasy reader starts a new journey into being a fantasy writer, however, the joy can quickly turn to terror. Worldbuilding alone is intimidating and overwhelming, not to mention your cast of characters, magic systems, and then of course your favorite part of the process, actually writing the bloody thing.
In the spirit of Lewis Carroll’s sage advice, we spent some time discussing how to “begin[ning] at the beginning” and we’ll conclude this series by talking about how to “go until you reach the end” - which is a poetic way of saying we’ll talk about how to finish your first draft. By this point, we’ve broadly addressed the initial stages of imagining, planning, and plotting your novel, and spent time in the last post talking about the different character archetypes found in fantasy fiction and the general purpose they serve for your story (see “Casting Your Characters”). This post will serve as a broad introduction to worldbuilding. Specifically, we’ll define hard worldbuilding and soft worldbuilding, then we’ll review the main elements of each style, address their differences, and discuss which style might work best for your story.
Let’s get started.
Hard Worldbuilding versus Soft Worldbuilding
In the second volume of On Writing and Worldbuilding, Timothy Hickson writes, “Worldbuilding is not just the act of creating a fictional world in the abstract. It is also about what you consciously choose to convey to the reader or viewer in the text - what builds the world in the mind of the reader” (252). While it can be exciting (and terrifying) to get straight into the details, it’s important to take a step back and consider how you plan to bring readers into your fantasy world and what experience you wish for them to have. So, when it comes to conveying these details, there are two primary (and most popular) methods: hard worldbuilding and soft worldbuilding.
Hard worldbuilding is all about dropping your reader into the world and providing extensive details to the point that every aspect thereof has been thoroughly revealed and explained to them, including:
Architecture
Clothing Styles and Fashion Trends
Cultures
Currency
Floral and Fauna
Geography
History
Languages
Social Norms and Hierarchy
J.R.R. Tolkien is the most well-known author to utilize hard worldbuilding in bringing the realm of Middle Earth to life. He created the elvish language, entrenched the lands of Rohan and Gondor with richly complex histories and cultures, and provided readers with a detailed timeline for how the “little peoples” (a/k/a hobbits) came to the Shire. Even the role something as simple as pipeweed had on the Shire and its inhabitants was thoroughly articulated in The Hobbit’s opening pages. Volumes and volumes detailing the various histories of Middle Earth, from the First to the Third Ages, were written and published over the years, to the point that Middle Earth doesn’t feel much different from the history of any modern country.
So, what then is soft worldbuilding?
Essentially, soft worldbuilding is a more emotional and psychological way to convey the world to your readers. Absent the hard, irrefutable details of accounting for every aspect of your world, soft worldbuilding grants you the option to leave massive gaps in conveying how the mechanics of the world operate and instead create a mysterious, foreign, richly imagined landscape where the answers are rarely given and the readers are allowed to ponder the possibilities or fill in the gaps on their own. Hickson highlights filmmaker and creative genius Hayao Miyazaki, the mind behind films such as Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Princess Mononoke, as the Tolkien of soft worldbuilding, giving his audience stories with “imagined depth that comes from the viewer or reader…wanting to know more” (255). Soft worldbuilding immerses the reader just as much as its counterpart but does so “using the unknown, flexible rules, and the reader’s imaginative involvement” (Hickson, 255).
Choosing the Worldbuilding Style for Your Story
Hickson describes worldbuilding as a “spectrum, not a binary choice” and notes that as writers, we “may choose to withhold things for effect or…choose to not have answers. You may employ hard worldbuilding in some areas of your world and soft worldbuilding in others” (256). In other words, it may not serve the plot to thoroughly detail the elements of your world from the beginning, so you may choose to save more detailed accounts of the geography, history, fauna, wildlife, et cetera until it serves a specific purpose in the narrative. Examples of this hybrid style include C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia series, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. In all of the aforementioned examples, worldbuilding elements are revealed in small, bite-sized pieces, expanding the respective worlds across multiple books in moments where it serves a character’s arc or develops the plot.
You will want to iron out the balancing act of mixing hard and soft worldbuilding with your editor in the long run. Don’t expect to get it right during the first draft, because you won’t. If there are certain elements that you already have crystal clear in your head while writing the first draft, keep these notes handy so you can provide them to your editor during a developmental edit. It will help determine how consistent you’ve been throughout the draft as well as what, if any, details may need to be tweaked to maintain the balance.
Final Thoughts
"The real question in worldbuilding is not how much can I dump on the page, but how much can I get away with not actually telling people?"
Scott Lynch
I believe that one of the easiest ways to begin worldbuilding is to consider which style will work best for you. You may consider soft worldbuilding too vague, but remember that hard worldbuilding is no easy task. Unless you have your writing floaties in place and are ready to plunge straight into the deep end, soft worldbuilding may be your friend for the first couple of stand-alone novels. Hickson concludes his remarks on worldbuilding by suggesting you write a character-driven story as an experiment, using soft worldbuilding to determine what lore is imperative for your reader to understand about your world (260).
To help yourself with this exercise, you may find it helpful to return to the classics and read fairy tales from the Grimm Brothers or Hans Christen Anderson. While often short and to the point, these stories are character-driven and provide basic examples of soft worldbuilding in a fantasy setting. Once you’ve digested a few of these and jotted down some notes about how worldbuilding is conveyed, I recommend you try writing a fairy tale of your own. This may help you get comfortable with creating an experience for readers in a world with fantastical elements without trying to replicate Middle Earth straight out of the gate.
Happy Writing!
Writer Resources and Further Reading
For further reading on worldbuilding in fantasy fiction, along with some quick tips on how to track worldbuilding across multiple volumes, check out the following links:
"Hard or Soft Worldbuilding - Which is Right for You?" (Writers Write)
"How to Track World-Building in a Fantasy Series" (Writer’s Digest)
"Top 4 Challenges of Fantasy World-Building and How to Overcome Them" (Live, Thrive, Write)
"What is World Building in Fiction?" (Writer’s Digest)
For writers who are interested in exploring different elements of fantasy worldbuilding, I’ve linked some of my favorite podcasts and YouTube playlists below. I personally recommend Tale Foundry as a growing channel that covers a wide variety of fantasy fiction media and dissects different aspects, including worldbuilding, magic systems, character arcs, and much more!
"Fantasy" video playlist (Tale Foundry)
"On Writing" video playlist (Hello Future Me)
"Worldbuilding" video playlist (Tale Foundry)
"Worldbuilding in Science Fiction and Fantasy" from The Editing Podcast (Louise Harnby)
