Category: Saturday Setup

Saturday Setups: Habitats

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Introduction

Today, we’re going to focus on habitats. If you’re creating your own creatures, you need to take habitats into consideration. What an animal or creature is equipped with will vary depending on what they need to survive. A desert animal is going to have very different features than a jungle animal, for instance. This stuff should be pretty obvious, but we’ll go over some general stuff to think about. The specifics are too varied to cover here, but once you know what kind of habitat your animal is going to live in, you can tweak your design or build it with that in mind and do the necessary research.

Considerations

Let’s chat about what you need to consider about your creature and the habitat.

To start off, the most important thing about your creature is what it eats and how it gets to its water source. If the animal lives in the desert, it doesn’t have many options for these two things most of the time, so you’ll have to plan accordingly. But if it lives in the middle of the woods, this might be considerably easier to manage.

Second, how big is your animal? The bigger they are, the more food they’re probably going to need. Muscles need fuel, and that fuel comes from food. The more muscles you have, therefore, the more you’ll need to consume. A mouse doesn’t eat the same amount as a black bear before hibernation, for example.

Next, what kinds of resources are available to your creature and what sort of creature do you have? Rodents, for example, such as mice or gerbils need things to gnaw on because their teeth never stop growing. As a result, they need an environment that provides hard foods or things to chew on. A dog, on the other hand, doesn’t have that problem. They, instead, have the issue of needing plenty of meat to sustain them, so they need an environment that has plenty of prey to catch. The kinds of resources available in your environment might limit what kind of animal you have or, as is often the case with Earth’s incredible creatures, your animals may need to have special features that allow them to live in their environment.

Finally, the other thing I think is really important to consider is whether or not your creatures share their habitat and territory with humans or humanoid beings. If they do, you’ll have to take their interactions into consideration. Do the humans or their equivalent get along well with these creatures? Or are they constantly at odds? Have the humans destroyed these animals’ habitats or have they managed to coexist without doing that?

Conclusion

I’ve only covered some of the considerations, but the ones I covered are the ones I’ve found to be the most important for thinking through your creatures. At the least, it will give you a solid launching point for your own creations.

Saturday Setups – Global Mapping: Terrain Features Pt. 2

Ariel Paiement

Introduction

As a quick announcement, the worldbuilding posts will be moving to Saturdays to be a part of the blog section Saturday Setup, which will deal with different aspects of setting up your story world. The posts will, for now, be up every other week, just as they have been so far. With that out of the way, let’s get started!

Last time we took a look at global mapping, we looked at some of the main terrain features of a map. If you haven’t read Saturday Setups Global Mapping – Terrain Features Pt. 1, you should start there since the features you lay down based on that post will affect what ends up happening here. If you’ve already read it, you should be well on your way to creating a working map for your world, and you’re ready for this step.

With your mountains, rivers, and forests in place, it’s time to consider the last part of your terrain. What type of land are you working with? Tundra, foothills, deserts, or rainforests?

Deciding What Terrain Should Be Placed Where

When considering an area of land, one of the more important decisions is what kind of terrain it will be. Should it be a desert wasteland, a swamp, or a sunny lakeside oasis? Much of this will depend on the land features you already placed. If you have a mountain range nearby, the terrain right below the mountain range is considerably more likely to be hilly than it is to be a flat grassland or frozen tundra.

So, how do you decide what terrain goes where? Let’s take a look at the main kinds of terrains and where they’re most likely to occur. Then, you can put these principles into practice and start marking them in on your map. In the resources section, there will be some links to map-making sites to give you ideas for how to mark different types of terrain as you work.

Deserts

Typically, deserts are areas of terrain without much vegetation due to a lack of water. However, they can also form due to salt poisoning or exhaustion of the soil. They can be sandy or stretches of hard-baked ground, bare rock, or even snow.

Deserts are often located on the equator line because, on an Earth-like planet, the flow of warm and cool air causes the dry, arid climate conducive to a desert that’s incredibly hot. These are the subtropical deserts. For frozen deserts, they’re more often located near the poles or in areas of extreme cold (Siberia in Russia is one example of this on Earth).

There’s another factor in the creation of deserts. Mountains. Those ranges of peaks you placed? Yes, those have an impact on where your deserts may be located. While the air pressure caused by warm and cool air at the equator is one cause for those massive stretches of barren wasteland, mountains are another common cause.

But not every mountain range has a desert on one side of it, so how do you decide if yours should? This has to do with the moisture available in the air and the wind flow. Deserts formed by mountains occur due to the flow of wind over the mountains. As air flows up over the peaks, it leaves much of the moisture in it on the mountain peaks in the form of snow.

This leaves the air coming down from the mountain with much less moisture than it initially had, so as it moves further inland from the mountain range, it can end up creating deserts. This is considered the rain shadow of the mountain. If you choose to create this sort of mountain (and it’s likely you’ll have at least a few), keep in mind that it should always be on leeward side of the mountain.

The third kind of desert is a coastal desert. This one is formed when cold ocean currents contact the warmer air to create a dense layer of fog. These deserts may not get any rain, but they’re usually still wet because of the fog that has caused them to be unable to grow vegetation.

Finally, you have interior deserts. These occur far inland in places where moisture-laden wind simply can’t reach. This kind of desert may also lay in a rain shadow in part or whole. The Gobi desert in Asia is one example of an interior desert. It’s hundreds of kilometers from the sea, making it too far away to gain a moisture-laden wind. The Gobi desert is also in the rain shadow of the Himalayas.

Plains

Plains are flat ranges of land that can be grassland, forest, desert, or tundra. There are also flood plains and volcanic plains. I’ve already covered deserts above, and tundra is just frozen expanses of land that could also classify as polar deserts depending on the vegetation level. (Surprisingly, tundra can support a variety of mosses and small shrubs.) However, let’s take a look at the grassland, forested, flood, and volcanic plains.

To begin, let’s look at the most common type seen on Earth. Grassland plains. These plains are identified by the main type of vegetation: grass. Depending on the region and climate, grassland plains can go by a few different names. For instance, the temperate plains in the US are considered just grassland or prairie. These have warm summers and cold winters. But the temperate plains in Asia are considered steppes, since they don’t receive enough rain to grow any tall trees or bushes. Lastly, the subtropic plains in Africa or other regions are called savannas because they’re warm and have scattered trees.

The second type of plain is the forested plain. These ones can occur in many places but are characterized by their variety of trees, shrubs, and vegetation.

Rivers create the third type of plain. Floodplains occur when a river overflows its banks and begins depositing nutrient-rich soil as it does. If the river floods often enough, the sediment can build up to create a floodplain. The Nile River is one notable example of this.

Volcanic plains, the last kind of plain I’ll discuss here, occur because lava has shoved its way up from underground to flow out over the land. This creates land that’s darker than the rest of the land around it, due to the basalt, a mineral found in lava that breaks down into the earth. The soil can be very nutrient-rich and is capable of sustaining vegetation.

Marshes and Swamps

Marshes are wetlands formed on the edges of bodies of water like rivers or lakes. They often help to transition from aquatic to land life. Generally, marshes can grow reeds, low-lying bushes, rushes, and grasses. They’re divided into three categories based on salinity. Salt marshes are the only marshes that are usually only located at mid-to-high altitudes. The other two types are freshwater marshes and tidal marshes, which are affected by the tides.

Swamps, on the other hand, are regions with a mixture of shallow bodies of water and land masses. They move slowly and sustain plenty of bugs and leeches. Many other animals also call the swamp home, and the vegetation that grows there varies widely. Generally, swamps are dangerous areas that should be admired from a distance. Not only are there many dangerous animals, but swamps also contain quicksand or similar features that lead to drowning. Swamps are also considered wetlands and may also be called bogs or, in some cases, salt marshes.

Conclusion

Using this as a guide, you should be able to map out most of the main features needed for your world. Of course, there will always be more you can learn about different types of terrain, but this should be enough to give you a good start. The other features are often found within these main biomes or terrains, making it simple to add them later on the map or on a localized map.

Further Reading

Photoshop Map Tutorial (A good place to start learning to map digitally if you enjoy digital art.)

Mapping trees (Helpful for marking out those wooded plains.)

Fantastic Maps Tutorials (A bunch of random map-making tutorials to help you get started.)

Examples of Map Symbols

Saturday Setups – GLobal Mapping: Terrain Features Pt. 1

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Introduction to Terrains

Hey, everyone! I’m back this week with a post on world-building. Today’s post is the first to delve into the global side of mapping, and we’re looking at terrain considerations first. Terrain affects a lot of your world-building. After all, if your characters are living in a desert, their lifestyle will be far different from a character living in the jungle.

Not only that, the distance between various points and the terrain lying between those points will greatly affect things like travel time and how characters choose to travel. What you do with the terrain determines whether it’s easy to find water or difficult to find much needed resources.

With the importance of terrain established, let’s take a look at some of the things you need to put onto your map and work through. Keep in mind as you think about all this that the map you’re building doesn’t have to end up in the front of your novel. It doesn’t even have to be pretty. It just has to be functional so that you can use it for your own reference.

So, on that note, let’s get started.

Mountains

There are plenty of places you could start with mapping, but I recommend you start with your mountains. These majestic features will form the backbone of your world. Where they are placed will determine a great deal about the kind of land (lush and green or barren and sandy), the places where certain kinds of plants and trees can grow, and what types of animals will be found where.

Without being too technical, air flow is changed a great deal when it runs into mountain ranges, and that air current affects everything around it. It even affects how often it rains and how much rainfall an area might get, particularly if the land is close to the mountain range.

So place these first. You can worry about coastlines, forests, and cities later. Those are all important, but not this important.

As you’re placing those mountains, here are a few guidelines you should keep in mind.

First of all, mountain ranges occur mostly where tectonic plates have crashed into each other because land masses were closer than they should’ve been. Some of the mountains in these ranges may be volcanic, but you can have entire mountain ranges with no volcanic activity.

On the other hand, if you have single mountains with no ranges around them, they’re almost guaranteed to be volcanic. This means you shouldn’t place single mountains all over the place. The volcanic activity will have a big affect on everything around it, as you can imagine. Place these types of mountains carefully and with an awareness of what it does to the surrounding terrain and natural habitat.

Using these guidelines, you can end up with chains, ridges, long plateaus, and even circles of mountains.

Wherever there are mountain ranges, there should also be foothills and rugged terrain from where the ranges were worn down and weathered. Make sure you include these in your map for any planning in the later stages. It will change how cities and civilizations in those areas are built.

The last major thing you should consider is the extension of mountain ranges past the places where the coastlines may end up. Mountain ranges often form little islands or peninsulas, so this adds a more realistic feel to your fantasy world. You can use this and sprinkle those features here and there on the coastlines to help add to the believability of the world’s terrain.

Coastlines

The second place to fill in is your coastline. Before you can start mapping out major locations and country borders, you have to know how much space you’re working with. Drawing in the coastlines will help you to do this and will give you a framework to work within.

While working on this step, you should also decide the mileage on your map. In other words, decide how much space your world covers. This will help when you’re working on the global borders between countries, filling in the major cities, and even mapping those cities out on a more localized scale.

As a general rule of them, coastlines are fractal in nature when viewed from a distance. The continents are formed through the sorting of rock and soil by the plate tectonics. The heavier materials are on the bottom and the lighter on the top, which gives the coastlines the fractal appearance you see when looking at the contours of both the coast of a small territory and the coast of an entire continent.

However, there are things that can mess this up. Regions won’t look the same zoomed in or far away when you start including tidal flats or beaches, river deltas, mountains and glaciers (or a combination of the two), flat regions that include shifting barrier islands, or continents that haven’t had sea-level ice in a long time. To better understand how to map these features, if you want to include them in your world, you should study maps of these features on Earth. Understanding what it looks like in the real world and why it works the way it does will help you to develop a system that works for your own world.

However you end up choosing to shape your continents, make sure that the coastlines are–as a general rule of thumb–rough and ragged. They shouldn’t be smooth and pristine because that isn’t true to geographical features or to science. Fantasy may break rules, but even a fantasy world has some sort of plate movement and continental shaping that will be somewhat like ours.

Rivers

Rivers are next up. This is going to play a large part in defining the climate of your world. Plus, water sources are a must for life, and with your mountains and coastlines in place, you’re ready to start placing those rivers where civilizations often spring up.

This might be one of the simpler steps on your map since rivers follow some fairly simple, straightforward rules. And they don’t deviate from these rules unless you get a ton of magic involved. So, here are the rules you need to follow for your rivers:

  1. Rivers flow along the easiest path of least resistance: high elevation to low elevation. Never the other way around.
  2. As your rivers travel toward the coastlines, they will merge. They will never separate.
  3. Rivers going across flat land may change course by creating ever-wider loops. Eventually, however, the loops will pinch off and straighten the river back out.
  4. Rivers in mountainous regions may change course due to blockages or changes in elevation. But they will always find the path of least resistance and follow that.
  5. Rivers provide life to small towns and beginning cities. Wherever you have a river mouth, you’ll probably have some sort of civilization. So, if you know you want a city in a specific location, make sure there’s a fair-sized river close by.
  6. Lakes should only have one river flowing out of it toward the sea, never two. There’s only one lowest point, and that’s where the water will flow. The river may split off later, but it won’t with the lake.
  7. Deltas form when a river carrying sediment hits: a body of water (ie: lakes, oceans, reservoirs), another river that cannot carry away enough of the sediment quickly enough to stop buildup, or inland regions where water can spread out and deposit sediments. Keep in mind that the tidal currents can’t be too strong, or they’ll wash away the sediment.

Finally, the source of the river is important. Most rivers start in a mountain region somewhere since mountains catch a lot of water. However, they may also begin at lakes or in marshy regions. Some may also be fed by heavy rainfall for part of the year and be completely dry for the other part. The key is that wherever the source may be, the river won’t empty into the source as well. It will start at one point and end somewhere completely different.

Lakes

This section is fairly simple as well. Lakes usually form because rivers hit a basin of some sort or were dammed up by something. They may also form as a result of water collection in craters left by meteor impacts, but these sorts of lakes are fairly rare. The largest lakes usually occur because pieces of a continent pulled apart or glaciers carved them.

In cold, rocky regions, there are often many small lakes connected by rivers because the water is unable to carve through the ground and must simply filter from one pool to the next. This causes a tangle of rivers and streams connecting all the little lakes.

In hot and dry regions, you shouldn’t be including any significant lakes unless there’s a large river to feed them. Instead, you’re more likely to end up with salt flats or tiny lakes at the bottom of a dry basin. The lakes are likely to be very salty since they can’t drain off into the ocean. If you do have the river to feed it, the lakes are highly likely to overflow their shores and cause a larger drainage area, so keep that in mind when drawing your rivers in desert regions.

Lakes also shift their boundaries, but when they do so, it’s much more cataclysmic. If they fill or drain too much, they can destroy entire civilizations, so if they shift their boundaries, be ready to include the catastrophes it caused in your world’s history. The historical trauma is fairly common in the earlier stages of a world’s history, but as things stabilize, it becomes less common on a level that would be civilization-shattering.

Forests

The last thing we’ll cover in this post is forest placement. In a following post, I’ll discuss how you can determine where to place hot and dry regions, deserts, swamps, and hilly regions. But for now, this is a lot of information to digest, so I’ll stick to the prominent land features that you need to have a basic map.

That said, what do you need to consider for forests? First of all, forests usually spring up in areas with a temperate climate and ample rain. This means you could have massive forests covering large portions of your map so long as the climate isn’t too cold or dry. You won’t, therefore, see forests in prairie land or areas with a sub-arctic type of climate.

What kinds of trees are growing in your forest depends largely on the region. On Earth, mountains can house fir trees, pine, cedar, oak, dogwood, and a variety of other trees depending on what section of the mountain is being examined and the area the mountain is located.

Of course, on a fantasy world, there are likely species of trees that don’t exist on Earth, so the main goal with those species of trees would be to make sure they have features that will allow them to survive in the climate you’re placing them in. This means you’ll need to do some research on the types of trees and the features that make them suited for one climate or another.

Conclusion

Okay, that’s it for this post! There are a lot of considerations to think about when mapping out your world. As you work, don’t worry about being perfect. The map will be messy. And since it isn’t meant for anyone else’s reference, it doesn’t need to be pretty. If the map is pretty, it will only make it harder for you to trash it and try something different if you aren’t satisfied with it.

So, experiment and feel free to be loose, messy, and spontaneous. Try to be realistic about where you place things, but feel free to try different things, make different layouts, and change things up until you find something that you’re truly satisfied with.

Next time I post about world-building, we’ll take a look at global mapping and some other important aspects of terrain. We’ll also briefly go over the placement of cities and civilizations since you’ll likely want to show the more important locations on your map for your reference. However, I’ll leave the details of mapping the cities themselves for the section on local-scale mapping.

Feel free to share any techniques you like to use for mapping in the comments if you have them. We can all benefit from learning new ways to do things!

Saturday Setup: Creatures – Creating Your Own

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Introduction

Any discussion of creatures and fantasy would be totally remiss if I didn’t cover creating your own creatures. After all, while we’ve got a plethora of well-established fantasy creatures, creating your own is one really fun way to put a unique spin on your world, and plenty of authors do it. There’s a variety of ways to achieve this goal, and we’re going to talk about some of the options available to you.

Option #1: Entirely New Creatures

First off, you have the option to create creatures that are entirely new. They’re not based on anything in existence, and they are all their own thing. When I think about examples of this, you’ve got the telfies from my book Bane of Ashkarith or some of the creatures in Brandon Sanderson’s works (though most modern fantasy creatures couldn’t be placed in this category, some of his could be, in my opinion.).

With the telfies from Bane of Ashkarith, they aren’t really based on any particular creature. I just kind of decided on the general appearance based on their diet and what I wanted them to be able to do. Some people have asked if they were dragons of some sort. The answer is a resounding no. (No offense to anyone who wanted them to be dragons. I like dragons, but these guys just aren’t it, and they’re not based on dragons either.) Given the fact that they have fur that can change color with their moods, a tubular body with no legs, horns, and no big nasty teeth (oh, and acid slobber if they decide they don’t like something), they’re not really based on anything recognizable. So, arguably, they’re pretty much entirely new creatures because of this. You could strip it down to basic components and claim they derived from some Earth-based animal or mythological beast, but that’s true of just about any creature.

For Sanderson’s work, the most clearly unique creature he created that doesn’t seem to be really based on anything clearly Earth-related is the chull. These are lumbering beasts with carapace covering their bodies. They’re herd animals that often get used in place of horses in terms of functionality, but that’s where the similarities in appearance pretty much end. The creatures definitely look unique. Depending on who’s doing the art and which type of chull we’re talking, some of them look sort of more like crabs than anything else, but others look as if they’re some sort of strange dinosaur with giant shells on their backs. I’ve put pictures below so you can have a better understanding on this one, but when you read the descriptions of them in the books, they definitely seem otherworldly and unique.

Axehounds are another creation from Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives that are pretty unique. On first glance, you’d think they’re basically just a type of dog, but when you get a look at the creatures, it’s hard to decide if they were based on dogs or something else. Arguably, this one isn’t quite as unique to itself as some other things, but it’s not a terrible example.

This is from ArtCanine on Facebook.
This is from StormlightArchive.fandom.com. As you can see, they do sort of resemble crabs. Kind of. But they’re not always this crab-like in appearance. The larger they are, the more different they look.

Option #2: Based On Mythological or Real Creatures

This is probably the most commonly used option for fantasy creatures. With this one, you just pick a mythological beast or a real animal from our world and tweak it so it’s different. Arguably, some would say, Sanderson’s chull are an example of this. Of course, this depends a bit upon which type of chull we’re talking about. That case could easily be made for at least the smaller varieties, at least. However, even if that example doesn’t hold true entirely to this category, there are plenty of things that do. I mean, just look at dragons. How many times have those been done? Thousands, right? And everyone has a slightly different spin on it, even if there are lots of similarities when you look at all the representations as a whole. So, they’re a perfect example of this category!

oPTION #3: cOMBINATIONS

Don’t feel like creating an entirely unique creature but also don’t want to just alter the usual suspects from Earth? Combinations are probably your best bet, then. With this third and final option, you take interesting features from other animals and blend them together. (You can do the same with mythological creatures or with animals and mythological creatures.) Some combinations are going to produce some pretty odd or grotesque creatures, but if that’s your goal, it’s easy to accomplish. Otherwise, you’re going to want to choose features that go well together or animals that wouldn’t look too strange when combined.

One example of this that I can immediately think of would be the Numahi from my novel, Pathway of the Moon. This creature shows up later on in the book and is described as having somewhat feline features like those of our big cats on Earth mixed with those of a bear. An odd combination? Maybe. But the different features of a cat and bear are not so bad that they would make an ugly creature either.

The combination possibilities are literally endless though. You can come up with so many different things, and this is a ton of fun. If you’re an artist, you can sit down and just sketch up some different ideas for how to combine things to see it visually. Even if you’re not an artist, you could do this if it helps you to visualize. No one else has to see it, right? Even if you don’t do that, if you can get a good mental image on it, you should be all set because you can write the description down to help others visualize it too.

Conclusion

Hopefully this has been helpful to those of you wanting to create your own creatures. There’s a lot that goes into it, especially if you’re creating your own creatures, so on upcoming Saturday Setups, we’ll be talking about things like determining habitat, types of animals, and creating your creatures around what their environment and feeding habits are (since these are the two most important factors that determine what a creature will look like and what features it needs.) Until then, happy writing, and thanks for joining me on today’s Saturday Setup!

Saturday Setup – Creatures: The Usual Suspects

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Introduction

This week, we’re moving from language creation to talking about fantasy creatures. Today, we’re just going to go over some of the typical fantasy creatures and what you ought to be considering for them. Mainly, this week’s post is going to be focusing on bigger creatures like dragons and sea monsters. It won’t be a long post, but I’ll discuss some things I think people overlook a lot when they populate their world with these monolithic creatures.

Problems Presented by Large Creatures

First off, most fantasy novels featuring dragons, giants, sea monsters, and their ilk never take the time to consider some very important factors. Given the size of these creatures, we’ve got a few issues: living space, temperament, and food.

With living space, you’ve got some leeway because if your world is vast and has lots of forests, mountains, and ocean that isn’t being ruined by mankind, then these larger creatures will be fine in this arena. But, it is something to think about. A dragon is by no means a small beast, and it’s going to need lots of room to fly, hunt, and live.

On the temperament side of things, you also have leeway. For creatures similar to humanity in their varied temperaments, such as giants, trolls, or other similar creatures, you may not need a particular environment to satisfy them temperamentally. But if your dragons prefer their privacy and really don’t like humans, you’re going to have a problem if they live near or on human territory. On the flip side, if dragons just adore humans and can’t stand trolls or giants, they might not be so happy living in the mountains or forests away from humans. These sorts of considerations have to be made.

Finally, food! This is the biggest one that nearly every fantasy novel with these creatures ignores. They have to eat something. They’re not going to survive on air, not with those big frames. So what are they going to eat? If they can’t get enough food from hunting big game, then they’re going to spend all their time hunting. A few measly deer from the woods or even a nice cow or two from the local village won’t sustain these creatures. They’re simply too large biologically for this to work, so you’ll have to find a way this can work if you want these guys in your world. Without that, it just isn’t going to make much sense. Granted, readers have been taught to just accept their existence, so you may get away with it on some level, but laziness doesn’t pay, and some subset of avid fantasy readers will notice.

Considerations

Now that you understand the problems, you should be able to figure out where to start for considerations. Take those three main problem areas and start asking yourself how you’ll solve them. Start thinking about what kind of personality your different large creatures have. It’s important that you don’t just throw generic fantasy creatures into your world to give it the flavor of fantasy. Doing that will end with your world feeling flat and unmemorable. So have fun with it. What makes your fantasy creatures unique, and how does that play into considering their needs in the environment around them?

Conclusion

That’s it for this week, everyone! I did promise it would be short. Next time, we’re going to talk a little bit about creating your own creatures. This can be a ton of fun, so I hope you’ll join me for it. See you there!

Saturday Setups – Factors to Consider

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Introduction

Last time, we talked about languages and developing them, but this week, we’re going to briefly go over some factors to consider. Building languages is complex, so it’s important to break it down and go part by part. How far you go with it obviously depends, as we said last time, on what you want and need out of this exercise. Some people may just decide they need a few common sounds and aren’t concerned about an entire working vocabulary. Others will choose to go all out. Regardless, there are some factors you should consider when building the language.

Readability

First off, you should consider readability. Your reader is going to be seeing names and, in many cases, at least some words from the language you’re building. If you create a name like Aldafhjfd or some other such strange combination, people will have trouble processing it. Granted, even in real life, we’ve got names or words that we don’t know exactly how to pronounce, especially if we’re looking at a language like Gaelic or Welsh and don’t know the pronunciation rules. We’re likely to get it wrong. But we can still process it. We can still assign some method of pronunciation to the word, even if it might be wrong.

As writers, we expect that when we create our names or use unusual names from other cultures in real life, we’re going to have some subset of readers who may get close but a much larger subset that won’t get even close. So, our goal isn’t to worry about whether or not they can pronounce it properly.

Chances are that most of you wouldn’t know how to pronounce the name Leorithdhil, but you could probably come up with something that made sense to you, and you’d be content with it for the duration of the novel if need be. It doesn’t matter to me that you can’t pronounce it right. It does matter to me that you don’t trip up on the name or the word every time you see it. If you’re stopping to try to wrap your head around the sound of a word or name whenever you come across it, I’ve failed because those couple of seconds (or minutes, if you’re like me and try out every possible pronunciation method trying to figure it out) are seconds you can choose to stop reading because you’re no longer involved in the story.

That’s bad!

I don’t want you all to stop reading, and you don’t want your readers to do so either. So, before you do anything else, readability and ease of access for the readers should be at the top of your list of concerns.

SImplifying to Keep Your Sanity

Guys, let’s just be honest here. Building a language is hard. If you’re trying to build it from grammar rules up, it may make you want to tear your hair out, no matter how happy you are with the end result. I should know because I’ve done this. I still have stuff I’m tweaking with the language I’ve been building, but much of the grammatical side is already in place because I love grammar, syntax rules, and language in general. (If you couldn’t tell…) In spite of my love for those things, there were times when I sat and stared at the page in despair because I couldn’t figure out how to handle a problem that had arisen with the rules I’d created or with the way something fit together.

No matter what, you’ll have those moments if you do any extensive language building, just as you will with extensive world-building in general. However, you don’t have to dissolve yourself into a mushy mess that can’t think or function. Simplification is allowed. You’re not trying to create a language people in real life would be able to use for every situation. Even Tolkien didn’t do that, though he did give his fans a highly-developed, impressively functional language with more vocabulary than most language constructions have. Despite that, he still didn’t give them the amount of vocabulary necessary for every day conversation.

So, don’t feel you have to either. Create what you need first, then worry about adding to it as you feel like it, not worrying about or stressing out over it. Once you’ve developed what you need, the rest is icing on the cake. It isn’t necessary and shouldn’t be something that makes you want to bang your head into a brick wall repeatedly.

Simplification comes in quite a few forms. You could choose to remove letters from the alphabet, as we discussed last time, you could borrow grammar rules from other languages in real life, you could borrow sounds from languages around you, or you could even decide to limit yourself to creating words only as you need them. Whatever form of simplification you choose, do implement some simplification method(s). It will keep you sane!

How Much is too much

The last area of consideration I’ll cover is more of a question than anything. How much is too much? You need to figure this out before you start building, particularly if you’re going to use the simplification method of building only what you need. Knowing how much is going to be too much for your novel is really important. It keeps you from overloading your story and your reader with the overabundance of building you’ve done in this area.

Every story is going to be different in its requirements and what you can and cannot get away with. Every audience will have different expectations of you as an author and of the area of language building in particular. Know what those requirements, restrictions, and expectations are. If you don’t know them, you’re highly likely to disappoint your readers with too much or, in some cases, too little.

Once you know what your story and its audience require, limit yourself. Don’t go to the extreme of too much. Include what you know will be tolerable and enjoyable for your readers.

If you want to build beyond that, then collect it somewhere for your reference and for the reference of enthusiastic fans if you have them. There may be some fans who really want to learn more about this world you’ve built and the languages in it, but don’t write the book for those fans because they won’t be the majority. If you pander to them, you’re going to drive away your main audience: readers who just want a good story in your genre. Instead, make the further resources on the world and its culture, languages, and more available to those super-fans who really want to dig into it, but make it available outside the story. A glossary and further resources for readers section on your website is one good way to do this.

Conclusion

In the end, when language building, you have a lot of technicalities to consider. But those technicalities need to be framed properly with an understanding of your audience and their needs. Go with what your audience needs to access and enjoy your story. Leave the rest in notebooks for your own personal enjoyment or reference.

Saturday Setups: Language Building – An Introduction

Featured Ariel Paiement

Introduction

In a post on language factors, we already went over some basics about languages and building them for specific areas as well as basics on how to do it in general. In this post and upcoming ones, we’re taking a look at this more closely. This is a process that is entirely optional, and people do varying degrees of it. Some go all out while others opt out entirely. Neither is wrong. A language you’ve created isn’t necessary to lend credibility to your work in most cases, but it can be very helpful. The goal of this section is to equip you with tools you’ll need to build languages if you choose to do so. I can’t cover everything, but I’ll try to cover what you need to get started. We’ll begin with an introduction to building languages and why you might decide to do so.

Why Create a Language?

First and foremost, creating a language should be done for fun. It isn’t required, even for high or epic fantasies, to make a good story. In fact, it’s easy to end up taking away from the story with this type of world building if you’re not careful. Because of this, the predominant reason to create a language is because you want to for the sake of experimenting, having fun with it, and being able to say you’ve created your very own language. If playing with sounds, coming up with new writing systems, and dabbling in creating grammar or structure rules sounds fun to you, then this area of world-building is for you. If you already know you’ll hate it, move on. It isn’t worth driving yourself nuts. For those on the fence, I encourage you to give it a try. You never know; you may love it. At the very least, you can say you tried it.

Besides fun, another reason to build a language of your own is because you want a naming system (or just the names) for people, places, and things that sound suitably unique but also have some sense of cohesiveness and weight behind them. This could mean you just want names that sound like they could come from the same regional location or it could mean you want names that go as far as having root words from a language that gives the names an actual meaning, much like our names on Earth have meanings behind them. Those two different sides of the spectrum obviously require differing levels of involvement from you in terms of language building, but they’re both valid needs. 

Finally, language is so entwined with culture that many times your culture ends up changing with the language. If you’re writing something heavily invested in culture, language–spoken and written–plays a big part in it. You may only choose to add in some exotic names and maybe some insults or curse words to lend to the illusion of depth you create, or you may choose to go all out and create the language that you need to include songs in that language, like Tolkien does with Elvish in Lord of the Rings. How far you go depends on your interest in it and on what your readers are expecting. You can go overboard with this, so it’s important to always have balance. Don’t overwhelm readers with a lot of text in fantasy languages you’ve created. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have some terms or names that are pulled from the language creation work you did.

Where to Start

If you’re feeling like this is complicated at this point (or have felt so since you saw the topic of this post), I’m not going to lie to you. It is complicated. But it isn’t impossible, and there are ways you can make life easier on yourself. Let’s just look at the starting point I’ve used for this in the past since a starting point helps to make things seem a little less chaotic.

Usually, I start with the alphabet. I take the time to think about all the sounds available to me in my language and alphabet (English in my case), and I weed through those root sounds. I may take out a vowel or a consonant here and there to lessen the number of letters I have to deal with. I have also, in the past, chosen to incorporate the diphthongs (vowel combinations like ae) found in Latin or other languages. When you’re adding sounds to your alphabet or syllabary that your native tongue doesn’t have, you can look at the sounds of other languages. This is a tremendous help, and it can give a lot more depth to your language, especially if you’re doing this for the first time. Even Tolkien, a well-accomplished linguist in his own right, borrowed from other languages to create the dialects of Elvish. 

Starting with your alphabet or syllabary gives you the building blocks for words. It makes it easier to determine what sounds can and can’t be involved, and you’re making a call on what the language will sound like at the very basic level. If it’s going to be soft and lilting, it’ll be because of the sounds you kept, added, or threw out in this stage. If it will be harsh and guttural, it’ll be because of what you kept, threw out, or added at this point. Everything in a language pivots upon two things: its grammar and its vocalization/sounds. Grammar is more complex, so start with what’s simple and build up from there.

Conclusion

Hopefully you have a better understanding now of why you might want to create a language and the uses it can serve in your novel. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a deep breath. This isn’t as bad as it seems, and I hope to show you that it can be a ton of fun for creative minds in future posts. You can set up the language in whatever way you choose. Look at the languages we have here on Earth. There’s tons of variation there, right? Well, for your fictional languages, you can use systems just as varied, and you also have the freedom to mash together concepts, sounds, and techniques from other languages around you in real life. If you let go of the stress of thinking everything has to be perfect and just start with your sounds and the premise that this is meant to be a lot of fun for you, you’re going to be fine. You can take it as fast or slow as you need to, and you can choose how much you feel like doing. No author is required to build a complete language, nor are they required to do any language building at all. It really is entirely up to you, so have fun with it and don’t stress! Just like all other areas of world building, this is your chance to do things your way and to have fun while doing it. Take advantage of it!

Saturday Setups – Magic: Consequences

Featured Ariel Paiement

Introduction

This week’s discussion is the last on magic for now. We’re going to go over consequences to magic. We’ve already hinted toward this a bit, but a closer look at it is important because there’s so much variation in the topic. So we’re going to examine this area in a little more detail. Since I already covered the importance of having structure to the magic system and the need to have boundaries as well as consequences that limit magic use, we won’t go into that with too much detail. Instead, we’re going to look at some of the kinds of consequences and how they can be used. Let’s get started!

Types of Consequences

Okay, so this particular topic is pretty vast in that the possibilities for consequences to magic and why you have them vary so widely. But let’s take a quick look at some different types of consequences. You can have mental, physical, emotional, or tangible consequences for things. The first three are relatively straightforward. The consequences in these categories will end up affecting the user directly in one of those three areas, so there may be restraint in how much magic is used depending on the severity of the consequences. The last is a little less obvious. Tangible consequences are ones that don’t fall under the other three. They affect the user indirectly instead, usually by affecting his loved ones or by taking something from him that is precious to him.

Examples of Consequences

Obviously, the consequences for using magic change a great deal depending on what category they fall into. A magic system whose consequences are mental might include anything from losing memories to going into a coma. Obviously, the severity may vary depending on the magnitude of the magic used, but the type of consequences allowed will be dependent upon what you choose to use for the consequence category. A physical magic system wouldn’t include losing your mind or losing memories, but it could include illness, losing body parts, blood sacrifices, or some other physical consequence for using the magic or even for making it work. And still yet again, emotional consequences won’t be the same as either of the previous two. This type of consequence isn’t necessarily as common as the first two because it’s a bit harder to come up with things to use. But emotional consequences might include losing the ability to feel a specific emotional, temporarily or permanently, or could even include a heightening of some negative or positive emotion for a time period as well. Or, perhaps the consequences emotionally result in some sort of “mental” illness that affects only one’s emotions or perceptions of the world around them. Typically, emotional consequences are going to go hand-in-hand with mental consequences simply because the two categories often impact each other, even in the real world. 

The category that’s most expansive is the tangible consequences category. This is because the consequences are taken out on those around the magic wielder. So, a mage’s sister could go insane because he tried a spell that was really strong. Or, perhaps a close friend dies as a result of the use of magic. Really, the possibilities are endless. The key to note here is that when it comes to consequences, I don’t mean direct consequences that occur because someone used magic wisely or unwisely. Think of consequences here more as a price that is exacted after magic is used. In some systems, that price might be the drain on some sort of extra energy reservoir that the magic wielder possesses or use of life force. In others, the price could be something else entirely. The magic will work, but you don’t get it for nothing.

Practical Use of Consequences

Now that we have a foundational understanding of the topic, we need to understand how to use consequences practically in a novel. This can take many forms because, as noted above, the choices and combinations are pretty limitless. And you aren’t bound to staying with only mental or only physical consequences. You could have differing prices depending on the type and magnitude of the magic. For example, in Pathway of the Moon, I have three different consequence systems for three different situations of magic use.

The first is the normal type of magic almost everyone uses. In this consequence system, people draw on an energy reservoir inside of them. That reservoir will replenish, but those who try to do magic that requires more than what is in that source will end up drawing on their own life force. Obviously, this is a strong incentive for people to understand their own personal limitations and to avoid overdoing it.

The second system is in place for those use dark magic or shadow magic. Since both have similar workings and both can draw on the life force or energy source of other people around, the system is the same for both. In this case, those who have and use this kind of magic pay a different price if they choose to use someone else’s energy instead of their own. They suffer mental consequences as the blackness of the magic used can overwhelm them and will eventually drive them mad.

The final system is in place for, again, those who use magic drawing on the force of others. But in this case, it is for light-wielders because their magic doesn’t operate the same way as the magic of the shadow-wielders or dark magic users. In this system, drawing on the life force of others results in physical consequences, not mental. Using magic this way here results in the loss of physical senses over time, and each subsequent use of others’ life force comes at a higher and higher cost.

All of these systems operate in the same world and series, but they’re all very different types of consequence systems. Hopefully this helps you to see how you can weave consequences into your own book and your own magic system. How you choose to do it will vary to one degree or another from how I’ve done it, but this was just an illustration to underscore the fact that you can combine things as you like.

Conclusion

I hope this article has been helpful to you and has brought you some useful advice on how you can work with this very important area. It’s not a matter of right or wrong in this case, so have fun with this and don’t be too concerned with whether or not it’s “correct”. Have questions or suggestions? Feel free to leave those in the comments below!

Saturday Setups: The Extent of Magic

Ariel Paiement

Introduction

We’ve been discussing magic in our Saturday Setup posts the last few weeks, and this week is no exception. This time around, though, we’re going to talk about extent of magic use and some tips for how you can determine that. Figuring out how much magic to use and how many characters can use it is a bit of a daunting task, so hopefully, this will shed some light on that for everyone!

Consideration #1: Sub-Genre

Before you do anything else, stop and think about the sub-genre you’ve chosen to write. If you don’t know much about it, do some research and learn about the different common elements, such as magic, in the sub-genre. I’ve posted quite a few articles on different sub-genres of fantasy on my Sunday Sub-Genres section of the blog, so if you’re looking for somewhere to start, you may find something helpful there.

Regardless of where you do the research, you need to understand how much magic is incorporated into your sub-genre. If there’s not a lot, you’re already starting at a less intense starting point than you would with a sub-genre that throws it in everywhere! Key takeaway here: know your genre.

Consideration #2: Consequences

Okay, when you built your magic system, you probably built limitations into it. If you didn’t, see my post on building magic systems to gain a better understanding of why you should! But, assuming you have limitations and rules in place, these are a great place to start in determining how much magic use should be involved.

If you have a system that is built on the premise that everyone has magic, then magic use is going to be quite high. Almost everyone, if not everyone, will be using some form of it, and there won’t be a ton of dreadful consequences for normal magic use. For instance, in the Aurelai universe, most types of magic don’t exact a high price. There is regular magic use, and no one dies or loses something precious to them just for using their magic in a responsible, every day manner. In a system like this, magic can be expected to be seen everywhere.

But if you created a system where magic requires a high price even if one can wield it… Well, your protagonist, at least, and maybe even your antagonist, are not going to be so keen on using it. For example, in Pathway of the Moon, there is a way that those trying to perform extremely high-powered magic can gain the energy they need to do so from other people to avoid draining their own life source. But you have to pay an extremely high price: your own sanity and physical health, depending on what the magic chooses to target. You don’t get something for nothing. So, most people aren’t willing to perform that kind of magic. It’s a powerful deterrent for those who are sane and even a little bit concerned about their own health, if not that of others. While this doesn’t limit my whole system in this series’ case, it certainly does place a limitation on the extent of magic. It means that certain kinds of magic aren’t so likely to occur on any regular basis.

Consideration #3: Likelihood

This sort of goes hand-in-hand with the previous point, but take a minute and think about how common magic is. Does everyone have it? Only a select few? Does everyone know it exists or is it something that’s kept hidden? The answers to these questions and others like them end up determining if it’s likely that a character could use magic to solve a problem or in every day life. Sure, it might exist, but if the likelihood of use is low, then you’re probably not going to see magic everywhere in the book. On the other hand, if the likelihood is high, you’re likely to see it everywhere.

Consideration #4: Usefulness

Let’s face it. Some magic just isn’t all that helpful on a quest to save humanity or when facing down a man-eating, fire-breathing dragon. And in those cases, characters probably won’t be using their magic to help themselves out. The extent to which this consideration affects your story really depends. If it’s limited to certain types of magic a person might end up with, then it might not change how often magic is used or the extent to which it is used. Of course, if this extends to every kind of magic, then magic, while it may exist, is fairly useless for the purposes of the characters, and it will end up sidelined unless needed to heat a can of soup. You get the idea, hopefully.

Consideration #5: Society

One other major thing to consider is society itself. While there might not be a limit on what magic is capable of doing, there may be a societal stigma against it or a ban that prevents it. Or, the opposite may be true. Perhaps society ostracizes those who aren’t able to use magic of some sort, so those who can’t must find a way to pretend they possess it. The possibilities are pretty endless, but if you have a society like this, it’s going to affect the extent to which and the way in which magic is utilized in your story.

Conclusion

There are, of course, many other ways in which magic can be limited or expanded in its extent and use within a book. But these are the main things I’ve seen and used in determining the extent of magic in my books. Really, you have to tailor your approach for each series or each novel/story. No one story will be the same as another, and some may call for more magic than others, even within the same series. It all depends on the focus of the story or series and what you’re trying to accomplish. However, these key considerations should help you get started.

Have other considerations that have helped you to decide how much magic is enough? Feel free to drop them in the comments below! If you have a suggestion for a future discussion topic on Saturday Setups, please don’t hesitate to either email or leave a comment!

Saturday Setup – Magic: Effects on Development

Ariel Paiement

Introduction

Last time, on Saturday Setups, we talked about different systems of magic. This week, we’re going to talk about the effect of magic on development. This is quite an expansive topic, and I could give many, many examples. But I’ll do my best to keep it short and to the point. The concepts and things you need to think about may vary depending on your world, but the general direction should be roughly the same. 

Development

First, let me explain what I mean by development. Development here is the development of society in any area that magic in your world might be usable. If magic can replace an innovation in our world, that’s an area of development. This is important because there are quite a few areas that magic can affect. 

Areas of Impact

Alright, let’s dive into the main point of this article. Magic impacts many things about the world your characters live in. For example, if everyone is capable of teleporting wherever they need to go, there wouldn’t be much use for cars or other transportation devices. These are the kinds of things you have to think about. Let’s consider some of the areas that magic can have an impact.

Technology

Obviously, I already pointed out one example of how technology can be impacted by magic, but really, the possibilities are limitless. There may be specific areas of technology that simply never develop because magic takes their place. Why use an engine made of metal and parts if you can power a car off a magically imbued crystal? Why bother with a stove if you’re able to boil water with a thought? There are so many things that either society or individuals may never need or use simply because of magic. Depending on whether or not a specific magical ability is wide-spread in society, you may have parts of technology that develop but are only used by a certain subset of people. This could, of course, lead to divisions between classes based on magic too.

Social Development

Magic can often impact societal development as well. A natural hierarchy can appear depending on the kind of magic most common and the system it naturally promotes. If some people are naturally more powerful than others magically speaking, this leads to a system starting with the strongest and moving down the line to the weakest. Given that it’s human nature to group, categorize, and label, it stands to reason that at some point, those groups and labels might be used to keep one group or another down or even as a prejudice that people justify because of the group they’ve assigned other individuals to. Cliques and prejudice toward those of a lower class or those who are different has been seen in just about every society on the face of planet Earth. So, it stands to reason that magic could end up being a tool people use to divide themselves and to keep the “lower class” down. 

Exploration and Science

If people are viewing the world through the lens of magic, what would they be capable of discovering that we cannot? Would they be able to see more of the universe than we do? Would their methods of exploration and their approach to science be completely different? There’s no way of knowing for sure what might be different here, so as the writer, you have to use your creative thinking to come up with things that might change because of the system of magic you have chosen to employ in your world. Since every system is different, no one answer will be right in every situation. The things that have to be altered from our methods and exploration of the world around us will vary based on the magic available, so it’s important for you to think through that one on your own to make sure your changes fit your system.

Conclusion

These are, as I said, only a few of the ways magic can have an impact on a world and those living in it. There are certainly more ways and more areas that magic can impact. But these are the ones I consider to be the most major in their impact on society and your characters. Have another area you can think of or something to add? Or do you have questions about this topic? Feel free to ask in the comments below!