Lore and wordbuilding are integral to a good fantasy story, whether that be urban, dark or high fantasy. Without the rules and laws of the author’s world, it is a plot, but not a story. They are the foundation to making the fantastical real, bringing the audience into a world beyond their wildest dreams, cloaking them in the wonders of the fictitious. Even urban fantasy and magical realism—which have solid foundations in modern reality—have to weave the fine threads of reality and fable to deliver a story which teeters on the edge of the two.
Dewi Hargreaves is our guest writer today. His short story Maccabeus came 2nd in a writing competition in 2017, and he has a piece in the anthology Chimera by Lost Boys Press, which will be published in March. He’s an avid short-story writer and dabbler in high fantasy. He also illustrates maps!
As you might know, I’m Ayshen Irfan, author of the Scarlet Cherie: Vampire Series, a paranormal, urban fantasy series set in the fictitious city of Britchelstone. With a focus on the protagonist, Scarlet Cherie, a vampire, the series follows her and her entourage of preternatural creatures (or “little band of misfits” as one reviewer said, of which I am rather fond).
With both of our experiences lying on the opposite ends of the fantasy spectrum, Dewi and I further explore lore and worldbuilding in high and urban fantasy, looking at some of the leading authors in their respective genres and discussing our own practice of the craft.
Lore:
"But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean."
—H.P.Lovecraft
Dewi: High fantasy series are renowned for their wide-ranging, impressive lore. Stories like The Wheel of Time and A Song of ice and Fire seem to have boundlessly deep histories—deep enough to have their own spin-off books.
But while lore is entertaining, it should always serve to enhance the scene or plot. If you spend a paragraph or two just talking about your lore, while the characters sit in stasis waiting for the story to continue, you’re going to have a pacing problem—and many readers will skip those sections entirely.
I tend to build my lore on the fly, as it’s needed, unless the story requires something different. Say your characters are on the run and they’re forced to spend the night in an abandoned castle. Have one of your characters tell the others the story of what happened there in ages gone past—and have it be a murder, or a ghost story, or something eldritch or spooky. Something that will add tension to the scenes that follow, after they get trapped in there and have to find a way out.
Moria in The Fellowship of the Ring is a prime example of how to use lore to enhance the story. We’re introduced to Moria in small bites: Gandalf will do whatever he can to avoid going through Moria, though we don’t know why. This builds tension, which grows when they’re forced to make their detour.
In Moria, we witness the fate of the dwarves, and learn how they made a brave last stand. We fear for the Fellowship: if the dangers in this place killed a whole dwarven expedition, how will their small band survive? Eventually, we learn the real reason Gandalf didn’t want to go into the mines: it’s the lair of a Balrog. Tolkien could have had Gandalf just say this at the beginning and go into a paragraphs-long infodump about how powerful and scary Balrogs are, but it would have been awful.
Use your lore to enhance the plot, adding depth to the storytelling. Because that’s what it’s there for.
This is why I tend to lorebuild on the go—I write the lore for a particular scene or chapter that will add the most to the plot I’ve already laid down.
Ayshen: Urban fantasy, my preferred genre to read and write, has to find balance in the confines of reality, working in harmony with the stretches of imagination—incorporating very real, human restrictions with the wild-card that is fantasy.
I’ve found my particular urban fantasy and paranormal realism influences in the likes of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter and Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries Series. Much like Dewi mentioned above, these series built rich, fantastic lores of their universes, but releases these as they progress slowly, usually so the reader learnt with the protagonists.
For me, my lore is extensive—as in, a huge document detailing the history, rules, and restrictions of every mythical creature included, and yet to be included, in my series. However, the protagonist of the Scarlet Cherie: Vampire Series, Scarlet, enters the world of the arcane with very limited base knowledge, so most of this lore is passed on slowly to Scarlet from the cast of more knowledgeable creatures. The lore is delivered slowly and relevantly, in order to build upon the world with the reader, letting the imagination and potential of what might happen run free.
Establishing lore as it progresses with the story also offers room to change and adapt with the growing plot. Lore which was written in draft one of The Fire Within My Heart was the bare bones of the wonders of many mythical creatures, and I’m sure the current lore will continue to evolve with the plot. By keeping the playing cards of lore close to the author’s chest, dealing a hand only when necessary, it leaves room to expand and transform with the book—though, admittedly, this is mainly relevant to series and not stand-alone novels.
An example, what the three aforementioned paranormal, urban fantasy series have in common is the deliverance of traditional folklore beings adapted to fit into a modern and real environment, with a new spin on ancient creatures.
A great example of this, which I love from the Anita Blake Series, is Hamilton’s concept of vampires having unique names, and no other vampires being allowed that name unless the vampire dies. It’s a small, arbitrary bit of lore, yet one that just adds that extra bit of character to the narrative of the world in general.
When playing with old, traditional creatures and bringing them into reality, you have the freedom to create lore that never before could have existed in the traditional tales, which is a wonderful power to wield over your story.
With all of this in mind, in the Scarlet Cherie: Vampire Series, I have also been very dedicated to keeping a lot of the magick and ritual with some basis in ‘reality’. For example, the necromancer-demon hybrid Gwydion, or Rune, as he is more commonly known, raises the dead, and the ritual he performed is very much based on a ‘real’ ritual from necromancers of old. Equally, every flower, plant, and ingredient used in spells and rituals are one-hundred per cent relevant to the ritual in real life, looking at witchcraft both old and modern.
Being able to play with fact, fiction, ancient mythology, and modern reality is exciting. I’ve, personally, found that I fall more into fiction which incorporates a reality I know well with the occult, blending what we all know and feel safe in with darkness and magick. And lore is the root to be able to create these wonderful worlds in which we get lost.
Worldbuilding:
"In the very depth of your heart lies the almanac of world building."
—Abhijit Naskar
Dewi: If you’re writing high fantasy, you’re almost certainly writing in a ‘secondary world’—a setting that isn’t connected to the real world in any way. This means that how everything in the world works is up to you.
Most writers see this as something either exciting or terrifying. I’m one of those who loves it, and loves worldbuilding. For years, I would sit and doodle pictures of places, characters, and countries in my fictional settings, then spend hours working on a detailed history, banners, maps—even demographics like population density.
And I never wrote them.
For me, the bigger and more detailed the work became, the more I struggled to slot a story into it. I was worldbuilding to entertain myself—and if that’s your thing, by all means, go for it—but I wanted to write stories. So I started worldbuilding with stories in mind.
When I’m creating a new setting now, I start with a simple question: how do I make this world unique? I try to find a single concept that I can tie the rest of the worldbuilding to, an interesting dynamic at the heart of the setting which sets it apart. Perhaps mist is a living thing in this world? Maybe cities walk around? Etc.
Then I stop.
It’s very easy to fall down the worldbuilding hole here, so before I think any more about the world, I start brainstorming different ways I could use this element in a plot. Maybe all the cities suddenly start walking towards the sea, and the characters have to discover why—or perhaps the mist goes to war against humanity. From the very start, you want the interesting element in your world to be baked into your story’s plot. Not only will it give you a more interesting story, but it’ll make your world feel more realistic, too.
Now, if you’re a dedicated outliner, this is the point where I’ll let you go and do some proper, crunchy worldbuilding. Just don’t lose sight of your plot.
Ayshen: Where urban fantasy might fall short is in the worldbuilding. Of course, some urban fantasy series worldbuild by creating realistic cities or towns which don’t really exist, but really seem like they could. If you read my blog on the naming of Britchelstone, you’ll see how ‘Britchelstone’ is a replication of Brighton, though by separating the two, it gave me more creative freedom to add and remove the elements of the real city which help or hinder the plot. Another example of this would be Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries set in the small Southern town of Bon Temps—which could realistically be your average small, rural town in Southern America, save the vampires, of course! Bon Temps, set in the fictitious Renard Parish, Louisiana, places her fictional world in a real state.
Both of us, Harris and I, explore real places within our fictional ones. Sookie Stackhouse often ventures further than her Parish, such as to Dallas, whilst Book 2 in the Scarlet Cherie: Vampire Series will be set mostly in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Hamilton, and other authors, such as Stephenie Meyer, took a different approach by setting their series entirely in real places. Some may think that could hinder the worldbuilding, but Hamilton is a prime example of how that is not the case. Though her series predominantly takes place in her hometown of Saint Louis, Missouri, Hamilton found a way to make the city into one of fantasy. Several fictional businesses are based in the city, such as the popular Guilty Pleasures, based in ‘Blood Square’ (if you’re being rude), and the infamous Narcissus in Chains.
As Dewi said before, worldbuilding can be a rabbit hole down which it is all too easy to fall. When writing urban fantasy, there is sometimes less room for creative freedom, but that doesn’t mean you are entirely stunted in your options. Whether you take the approach of Harris and me, or Hamilton and Meyer, there are options to have your world bloom from stagnant concrete to one of colour and enchantment.
Characters:
"Dreams are the touchstones of our characters."
—Henry David Thoreau
Dewi: When writing high fantasy, you’re almost guaranteed to have an expansive cast of characters, some essential, others less so. The one thing they have in common? They all exist in your world, so they should behave like it.
For the longest time, high fantasy has largely mirrored medieval European culture, and writers tend to grab concepts from it to fill in holes in their worldbuilding. A prime example of this is A Song of Ice and Fire, which has the Faith of the Seven. While it does have seven deities rather than one, the Faith otherwise largely mirrors medieval Christianity—it has powerful religious leaders who guide the moral compass of society, it has marriage, and it has religious buildings (septs) which behave very similarly to churches.
This means Martin can write background characters in a relatively generic fantasy/medieval way—the holy knight, the corrupt bishop, the cheating noble husband, and so on. But modern fantasy tends to be more experimental, drawing from other world cultures or existing in its own space entirely.
If you’re writing this way, you have to rethink what archetypes you draw on. For instance, you can’t have the manly, misogynistic mercenary in a world where women can and do frequently become warriors—or if you do, others should treat him as though he’s behaving strangely. If your culture’s religion has no concept of marriage, you really have to think about how common people—and therefore your characters—think about human relationships, sex, and children. A society which values pacifism won’t have a murderous knight as a cultural icon who everyone looks up to and follows the example of.
All of this is to say: as settings in fantasy move further away from their medieval European roots, we as writers have to be extra diligent in making sure our characters behave in a way that isn’t at odds with the cultures we build for them, or else these experimental new settings end up feeling like fancy—and out of place—wallpaper. Do it right, or don’t do it at all.
Ayshen: More often than not, urban fantasy is set in a very real reflection of modern society, in which many of the social norms and what is considered acceptable are mostly the same. From my experience of writing urban fantasy, the behaviours of my characters reflect societal norms in some ways (especially the more ‘human’ characters like the witch Adalia, werepanther Kai, and recently-turned vampire Scarlet) but they must adapt these human behaviours to their lives in the supernatural world. I mean, what’s the point of writing all that lore if the character setting makes it impossible?
An example of this would be the therianthrope (wereanimal) lore in the Scarlet Cherie: Vampire Series. The pack laws and rules differ from animal to animal—whether that be who is dominant in their respective areas, the matriarchal or patriarchal system, and their human/animal behaviours. Their behaviours have to find equilibrium in their relationships as animals, with a usually bloodthirsty and primal element, whilst also finding ways to fit into human society and that predominant aspect of their personalities. Even how they relate to each other tactilely would be very different to those of a ‘normal human’, which you see Scarlet grapple with in relation to Kai and his displays of physical affection in The Fire Within My Heart. Though therianthrope lore is barely touched on, in Book 2, so much more of it is explored and made clear, shining light on the hierarchy of the different groups and the way in which they conduct themselves in both forms, and how that affects the characters’ behaviours of both the human and animal sides of themselves. But, to say much more right now would be giving too much away!
Harris and Hamilton both went down a unique and very interesting way of eliminating some of the conflicts between real, human settings and that of the paranormal—their preternatural creatures were ‘out of the coffin’. By doing this, both authors also tackled a particularly interesting and novel lore: the relationship between humans and the paranormal on a global scale. You can see it particularly with Hamilton, with her references to ‘Addison v. Clark’, the legal case which gave vampires legal status. Harris, with her invention of ‘Tru Blood’ also revolutionized the relationship between humans and vampires in her setting, making the vampire characters have a new element of duplicitous safety whilst also remaining dark and dangerous.
Hamilton and Harris found fascinating ways to have their characters fit in an urban fantasy setting. Watching ancient vampires be bound by human laws and wishing to be law-abiding citizens, or humans with paranormal abilities have their skills used by police forces to help fight crime, added whole new dynamics to the connections between lore, characters, and setting. Part of the reason urban fantasy can be so engaging is that, when is done like this, it drags the reader even further into their world of magick and miracles, whilst also making it seem like it could truly be possible in our monotonous reality.
Writing urban fantasy often means that you, as an author, must find a way to make your characters work within their respective society in which it is set whilst still having the element of fantasy. It is going to be simply unrealistic to have your lore completely disregard how people would be expected to respond to real-life situations and restrictions, unless there is a particular reason which is explained in your writing.
Comments