– So they’re walking. And hot damn – just about every fantasy novel has characters that walk places. Right on!
See, it’s not too hard narrowing things down when it comes to worldbuilding and fantasy novels. It’s pretty much a degree of subtraction, and taking away modern conveniences and anything that might take money. So you have what God or the Gods or the Deities or whomever gave you.
Boring!
– I want to see people flying around on dragons, in steam ships built by gnomes, and on newfangled contraptions that could blow up at any moment and often do!
– I want to see people sailing about on ships and in hot air balloons and even in chariots that zip about on rudimentary roads and while getting broken wheels constantly!
– I want to see people popping into the room via spell or teleportation gate or portal of some sort, and I want them to do so with style and panache and the wherewithal to make it appear like they’re not fazzled.
– I want all of those things you see, because this is fantasy fiction and that’s what’s been promised to me.
Or is that not the premise we’re talking about when we say fantasy? Maybe your idea of fantasy is a little different from mine. Maybe it’s in the here and now with cars and trains and even planes, and maybe characters do travel about like you and I.
Not in my world, bub, not at all.
So defining what’s possible via transportation is a very early visual and psychological cue to your readers of what your fantasy world is about and is capable of, as well as where your story can go, the physical laws if you will, that are bounding it in.
These are important considerations, the laws that your world adheres to. If you don’t know them, how the hell are you ever going to break them? And that’s another thing that your readers are expecting, for you to break the rules, introduce unfathomable modes of transportation and all the rest of it. It’s what makes fantasy fiction so fantastical!
Speed and Distances in Fantasy Novels
How long does it take to travel from one place to another in a fantasy novel?
Elfwood has some good information on what people are capable of, transportation-wise. People, for instance, can walk about 30 miles a day. “But it’s hard to keep up that pace for more than a few days,” the article states, and “rugged terrain reduces that distance.”
With a horse you can get up to 50 miles in a day, but “the biggest advantage of a horse is the increase in cargo capacity.” Again, you can’t maintain that pace very long, though a “consistent 10 to 15 miles per hour, sometimes even 20” can be achieved “if you have regular stations to change steeds.”
Now we’re getting into the idea of a long journey, perhaps following a character as they deliver a message over a few days. Usually this would be boring, and you’d reduce that to a paragraph, or even a sentence – “Sir Anthony rode north for 3 days to the king’s castle.” But with the idea of transportation as a part of your story, you can have Sir Anthony stop at way stations or inns, and he can run into problems, or learn of new plots against the king, or even get killed, throwing the plot into a whole new direction.
If you really want to get into the temperament of mounts, how riders should match up against their mounts, and everything else about fantasy horses and travel in fantasy worlds, check out this post by fantasy author Charles E. Yallowitz.
The Elfwood article goes on to profile wagons, which get about 12 miles per day, actually slowing things down. But this again increases opportunity for your characters – are they guarding the wagon, acting as mercenaries, or just wishing it wouldn’t get stuck in the mud so much? After all, they promised that pretty woman they’d make sure her and her party of clerics made it to the village safely. Well, Zed the party’s alcoholic barbarian did.
R.A. Salvatore had a lot of scenes where the characters are guarding caravans, moving about slowly. It’s a great way to introduce what your characters are doing after we last saw them, in Book 2 or 3 or whatever.
Armies marching can do 30 miles the article goes on to state, while boats present new opportunities altogether. And perhaps I’m not even mentioning an aspect or feature of transportation that appears in your novel. Let’s press onward.
Features of Transportation in Fantasy Novels
When I was writing the Jongurian Trilogy, my modes of transportation were plentiful. Characters moved by foot at first, then by river ship. After that they switched to oceangoing vessels and then to their feet after a shipwreck. At one point some characters were being drug on litters.
Chariots were a big mode of transportation in my series of historical Chinese novels, books set in 400 BC. They can be a lot of fun in battle scenes, and they kick up lots of dust, which obscures what’s going on. Lots of potential there, oh yes.
– When I wrote The Hirelings the characters walked everywhere, because they were poor. The kingdom guards chasing them often did so on horseback.
– For my historical novella Ale Quest, characters also walk…and ride mules. At one point they were carrying flaming barrels of pitch on a wagon.
So there’s lots of options – those are some that I’ve chosen to take.
An article appeared on Curse Breaker Series in 2013 that profiled all kinds of elements a fantasy world needs. One of those was transportation, and this is what they had to say:
“You can always tell the strength of a country by the type of transportation they have access to. Do they use airships or airplanes? Horses? Ships? Cars? Trains? Teleporters? Time Machines? Underground drills? If a country is wealthy enough, they’ll have access to most of these things and then some. If the country’s poor then it’ll show in their technology and especially their transportation. Remember, trade and commerce isn’t just about how cheap the product is to make. It’s also about how fast the product can get to the customer. The kingdom with access to teleportation technology will have a great advantage over horse and carriage any day.”
It’s just another aspect of transportation to think about. Remember, large novels like those of George R.R. Martin consider this, or at least their political and social features are dependent upon them. So if you want to go big, think about not just where your characters are going, but how they’ll get there too.
4: Class-Systems in Your Fantasy World
What are the people in your world like? Are they plush and posh and smelling like rosewater…flower petals? Or are they downtrodden and depressed, smelling like the bottom of a boot?
Worlds have all kinds of people, as ours can attest. And those people work. That work ethic often dictates what class or caste they’re in. The harder you work, the lower your class. The less you work, the higher your class.
That’s just the way of things, it’s well known. Or is it? Because…what the hell’s a caste?
Wow, this gets tough, huh? I’d have to say that a caste is something you’re born into and can’t move out of, while a class is more fluid, like a ladder allowing movement up and down the rungs. It’s not always like that, of course, but remember, you’re world-building here…you can do whatever you want!
Your fantasy characters know this, because they live in your world. How do they like the world you’ve created for them…or do they?
Class is an interesting concept, and we need to explore it a bit.
There have always been class systems in life. Whether it was slaves building pyramids in Egypt or gladiators fighting in the Roman arenas, many people have gotten the short end of the stick. They could be slaves on Viking ships, servants in French manors, or fast food workers today. All are downtrodden, and they’re one feature of our class system.
The other feature is the cream of the crop, the upper crusts. These are the pharaohs being sunned with palm fronds and the emperors throwing bread to the masses. They could be bearded warriors that are missing an eye, aristocrats that long ago forgot what morals were, or financial fat cats that view the world as their piggybank. These are all examples of characters you can use in y
our stories, for good or for ill.
Actions & Consequences
Some of the best stories in history always have characters struggling to get out of their current class and into another. Whether it was 1,001 Nights or some Dickens’ tale, people are always uppity. You can’t keep ‘em down, they always want more, and I’ll be damned if sometimes they don’t even bother to ask.
Do your characters ask, and what happens if they do? What happens if they don’t, and instead just take? What safeguards are in place in your fantasy world to ensure people aren’t getting uppity and trying to class-jump?
Class-systems require a rigid level of hierarchy, and that means a bloated bureaucracy. If you want to include a believable class-system in your fantasy fiction, you’ll have to do a lot of planning.
– Where do the bureaucrats work, in which district of the city, and how far from it do they live?
– Do those propping up the class-system get a piece of that system or perhaps some tax-breaks?
– How long has the class-system been in place, and what system was in place before it…and did it go willingly or by force?
– Who benefits the most from your class-system, and how do they ensure those benefits continue to flow in a consistent and predictable manner?
– What keeps the people who benefit the least from your class-system in their place, and what do the ruling classes do to inhibit their ambitions and pride?
– How much does it all cost, this bloated bureaucracy and the industries and systems needed to keep it and its class-system in place?
– How many people are in each caste of your class-system, and what are their earnings and quality of life and other little details like?
– Are there neighboring countries or kingdoms that have differing class-systems, and what is their attitude toward your class-system…and have there been mumblings over this in the past, or even fighting?
– What are the propaganda machines that the ruling class uses to fool, hoodwink, and bamboozle the lower classes into remaining so, well…lower-class?
These are all things you need to think about when you create your fantasy world class-system. As you can see, it takes a lot of thought, and it goes across a wide range of disciplines – economics, sociology, psychology, government, history, and perhaps a few more that escape me at the moment.
Examples of Class Systems in Fiction
Class-systems are big, all-encompassing, and full perils and pitfalls for unsuspecting writers. But they can be done, and some of the best books that have pulled them off are:
– The Outsiders;
– Great Expectations;
– The Remains of the Day;
– Brave New World;
– The Jungle;
– The Iron Heel.
Those are all great books, and I’ve read a few. But mainly I stick to those with more fantastical situations.
Anne McCaffrey is one fantasy author that did a lot with caste systems, and you can see this in her book Dragonflight. That book is discussed quite a bit in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders, Volume 3, by Gary Westfahl. Here’s an excerpt:
“The human culture is a vast feudal caste system, with three kinds of hierarchy: one with the dragonrider at the top, another with a Lord-holder who is responsible for overseeing the work of his people, and the third with a Master in charge of one of various halls patterned after late medieval guilds. Each of these groups has responsibilities to each other, as well as loyalties within their communities. Dragonriders live in weyrs, usually built inside caves high up off the ground so their dragons can live inside with them. Lords live in stone, castle-like buildings often built out from ground-caves and with room for all their people to subsist within their safety during threadfall. Master crafters have holdings where youth are trained and crafts are perfected, but they spend much of their lives as individuals in holdings and weyrs as their function is both education and entertainment.”
Westfalhl goes on to say how important children are to that caste system, and if you haven’t read those books, you might want to check them out.
Another author that has a detailed fantasy caste or class system is R.A. Salvatore. We saw this rise up in the first book of the Dark Elf Trilogy, Homeland. There we see detailed accounts of how the residents of the underground city of Menzoberranzan live. It’s a rich caste system, with upper houses and lower houses, all built upon a complex edifice of religious hatred toward themselves and the outside world. It’s a caste system that’s dependent upon war and family infighting, and it’s a great read!
There are plenty more examples, and fantasy literature has always used classes and castes to tell stories, make us care about characters, and offer insight into our own world. For most of the time the class systems we’re depicting are either examples of what we see around us, or gross caricatures of it.
That’s what makes reading fun, and I encourage you to think about these issues when you’re thinking on your fantasy world. Happy writing!
5: Entertainment in Your Fantasy World
What do your characters do for fun, and perhaps more importantly, what do people in your world do for fun when the day’s all done? Yeah, the NPCs if you will…what do they look for in thrills?
– Are there large arenas where gladiators fight and gambling takes place backstage, both small-scale and large depending on the rage?
– Is there an area where animals rip people or even small children apart, perhaps as entertainment for rich people, or poor?
– How about a carnival, one that comes to town every few seasons or years, carrying with it news of the outside world?
– What about contests of strength and skill, the kind that have archery or wrestling or even pie-eating?
– Could it be that your fantasy world is one in which the stakes are especially high, and the gauntlet is run and run often?
– Or are those stakes low, and consist more with digging things up and out of the ground, perhaps for dissection purposes, or even clandestine classes upon such?
– I’d bet that you have a world in which unicorn hunts go on, and the horns are prized above all else, especially as the supply dwindles, or am I wrong?
– If I am, would you perchance think upon a world of tamed dragons, and brave men that stick their heads in chained mouths for seconds at a time, the rewards are so great?
– If that’s a bit much, then think about the rivers, and the races upon them, or the mocking of the beasts and spirits that live within and around them.
As you can see, there are many entertaining things to do with glee, it just depends on your proclivities. Some authors will balk at such fancy fare, while others will set to it with whimsy and dare. It’s what makes fantasy fiction so fantastical, no, and I’ll be you’re getting pretty eager to go. So go and write up those chapters and fill them with characters both bold and fun, but don’t forget you have a story to tell, one that has to get done.
6: Education in Your Fantasy World
Are your characters smart or ignorant? Do they have schooling, or have they been schooled? When asked a question, do they answer quickly or do they get angry that someone has challenged their intelligence, smiting them quickly with whatever heavy weapon is at hand?
Just because the fantasy characters you’re writing are smart doesn’t mean they’re educated. And just because they’re not educated, it doesn’t mean they’re stupid. There’s book smarts and street smarts, and both require a fair amount of learning.
So…which kind of learning does your fantasy character have? And really…who needs to get educated? I certainly don’t think the scullery workers or stablehands need to know much. The captain of the guards probably doesn’t need that much schooling, but I hope he’s had more than the common gate guard…don’t you?
Well, maybe not. It depends on if you’re trying to break into the castle. But then, there are educated ways to break into a castle, and…uneducated ways, to
put it nicely.
Some of the main characters that I think need an education in their background are:
– Wizards;
– Priests;
– Alchemists;
– Squires.
There are more…but that’s all I can think of. Now, some of those go without saying, but you have to remember, we take a lot of this for granted. We just assumed that the wizard or squire went to some kind of school or academy, but did they? And if so, why not put a few asides into the conversation, something that gives us more background into who that person is as a character. Yeah, it might drag on a bit and it might slow down the story, but a lot of readers buy fantasy books because they like worldbuilding and character-building and all the rest of it. Now’s your chance to do that!
How to Write Fantasy Page 2
