Where's the fun, anyway?

You better move your armies in a realistic, practical way.

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I wouldn't worry much about that. Many highly-successful fantasy authors don't. (I do, but I'm not successful yet).

Many don't even put scales on their maps.

trebuchet said:

Help me, here. A question posed to me at the end of another thread needs answering, but not there.

Why aren't I close to finishing my next project? I'll tell you why.

I'm terrified. Intimidated. Frustrated. Irritated.

Fantasy should be fun. It should be fun to write. Fun, I say! But I can't finish my work. Why? I haven't done enough bloody research. I can have wizards, elves, and unicorns (if I dare to be cliche); but I dare not get anything scientifically, sociologically, wardrobe-ology, linguistically wrong. The swords must be made of the correct material for the time period. You have to live in the proper climate to have brown bread that contains molasses. You have to prepare your healing herbs right, and if you don't describe how, you are guilty of copping out and hiding your ignorance. If you are inspired by mythology, by the gods, you better have enough knowledge to bend the myth in a way acceptable to the learned. You better move your armies in a realistic, practical way. Even your trebuchets must be tweaked right. Good lord.

Okay, I'll allow that important things must be dropped correctly to provide verisimilitude. But in these enlightened times, one must get it all right. This is not fun. How many readers really care? Why on earth would anyone want to write fantasy if it has to be so much work? I am not lazy, either, btw.

To write a fantasy that is not going to be ripped apart, one must first acqire several post-graduate degrees.

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I don't think many readers care what the sword is made form, or whether or not the bread has molasses in it. I don't know anyone who reads fantasy looking for a bread recipe. Some detail is good, but too much is worse than not enough. You aren't teaching history, you're writing a novel.

The idea is to not get any details wrong, but this in no way means you need to put the detail in at all.

To write a fantasy that isn't going to be ripped apart you just need a strong story and great characters.

true. it's different if you're doing a historical fantasy, though. of course then you'd have to do your research. what irks me about historical stories is when a writer puts in every single bit of minutae they learned while researching. if i can't reasonably find something out, i skip it, like i couldn't find out what kind of rock was used to make headstones out of in a certain place in a certain time, so i didn't bother with it. probably just as well anyway.

on the flip side, i've always said young writers gravitate towards fantasy under the pretense that 'it's make-believe, you don't have to know nothin' 'bout nothin'.' ee! wrong. consequently, that's why a lot of fantasy by young writers reads like used t.p..

i think there's a happy balance to be had.

trebuchet said:

The swords must be made of the correct material for the time period.

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Bronze, iron or steel. If they're using copper, give them spears. Same with flint. How hard is that?

You have to live in the proper climate to have brown bread that contains molasses.

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I didn't know this. Trust me, I think for most people this won't be a problem.

You have to prepare your healing herbs right, and if you don't describe how, you are guilty of copping out and hiding your ignorance.

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Really? I've read a lot of fantasy, and I've never really thought about what herbs people used in dressings and such like. I really wouldn't care, either.

If you are inspired by mythology, by the gods, you better have enough knowledge to bend the myth in a way acceptable to the learned.

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Says who? Robert Jordan seems to have done quite well with the kitchen sink approach to religion he's shown in the WOT.

You better move your armies in a realistic, practical way.

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I think that as long as you consider things like where they're getting their food from, and how far an army can march in one day (not fifty miles), then you're there. The fine details don't matter.

I think James is right. Characters and story will take you much further than all the minor details. Speaking as a reader, if I empathize with the characters and I'm interested in what happens to them, then I'll gloss over the minor details--as long as the world is reasonably self-consistent.

As other people have said, I think you're mixing minutae with overall world-building.

A few local details are important to paint an impressionistic picture, yes, but brown bread or white bread? I don't care. Steel alloy in a sword? Don't care. Poultice making? Don't care. How a shirt is sewn? Don't care. Horsecart construction? Don't care. In fact, too much of this little picky BS and I get bored. Andrew want story! Nitpicky details make Andrew smash!

But big things are a different issue altogether. Don't drop things into a story that are physically impossible without a good explanation. Horses can't travel 200 miles a day for a week at a time, so don't tell me they can. (Well, unless they're *magic* horses...) Swords can't cleave a stone in two. (Well, unless it's a *magic* sword...) Etc.

Finally (and this is what the heart of your post is about), the fantasy world you build should feel *real* and *sensible*. Think of the world as another character. Everyone knows the characters in your book should have motives and plans that make sense and feel real to reader, right? The bad guy isn't evil just to be evil, he's a fully formed character that does things because those things make sense to him.

In the same way, the world should feel real and make sense to the reader. D&D-style over-simplification annoys me. There had better be a really good reason somebody just left a chest full of gold in an abandoned castle for the hero to find or I'm gonna be annoyed. People don't do that for no good reason. Likewise, towns should exist for reasons other than to supply the hero on his journey, and huge wars should have economic ramifications, and super-secret societies devoted to turning out paladins should have some means of financial support, and rivers should flow downhill, and houses shouldn't be made of wood if there's no forests around and so forth.

actually, your comments about magic horses and swords remind me of one of my pet peeves: the undefined magic sword (or other item or animal)

a sword which is presented as generically magical. it doesn't have aspecific powers or history, it just does whatever the author wants. also, to a less extent, generic magic. magic horses which aren't different or special, just like normal horses except better.

D&D is guilty of this all the time of course. a D&D game tends to be littered with "+2 swords", when a magic sword in a book had better be somewhat more impressive then that, IMHO.
I'd much rather have the heroes legendary blade be somewhow unusual, even if not much mroe useful than a real sword, whether it can detect water, wreath itself in trnasdlucent flames, or is made of green metal.

A lot of world-detail can be tweaked after the story is finished, during rewrites. If it's getting in the way of your finishing the story, it may be a procrastination technique -- and a damned good one! I can't tell you how many times I've been able to sidetrack myself researching the history of teapots or the archaeology of beekeeping!

Also: too much detail bogs down the reader, IMO. It's more important to have the RIGHT details, carefully selected.

sort of a side note, they know when what you've written is a literary version of a game. they're not stupid. and if you have to resort to that as 'inspiration,' chances are it'll show like a neon sign.

i don't think anyone is suggesting no research is in order. see, that's always been my gripe about fantasy in a round about way, that research in the form of life experience is missing in a lot of fantasy stories because the author is fourteen years old and doesn't know nothin' 'bout nothin' noways. with nearly instant access to anything you could possible want to know about, not only is research not terribly difficult for most things, but it's easy to double-check as a reader. all it takes for a writer is to screw up one detail to skew the rest of the book in the reader's mind. personally, i'd rather have too many details than have what little detail there is to be completely wrong.

then again, and again, that's why young writers, i believe, gravitate towards fantasy, because they sometimes think they can fake the details. au contraire, mon frere. if anything, i'd think a fantasy author is harder pressed to paint a realistic picture *because* of the 'fakeness' of their world.

just the right amount of details *and* a consistent internal logic is the way to go, imo. true, i don't need to know how many spokes a cartwheel has, but if you're using real-life terms to describe a suit of armour, those terms better not make the ankle connect to the forehead. besides, i don't think i'm alone when i say i like to learn something when i read as long as it's slyly inserted into the text somehow.

a lot of this is just common sense stuff, eh? i mean, it doesn't take a genius to know you can't get maple syrup out of a palm tree.

trebuchet said:

Quite true. On the flip side, a traveler who has never seen a castle before had best not gape and gawk at the sight using all the correct names of its parts.

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Unless you have a valid reason why that knowledge suddenly becomes available to them.

To the OP: God's Teeth! Chill out! You only need to know the stuff the characters know - that's the glory of tight 3rd person. Conan never stopped to think who manufactered his swords, or what social system underpined the Hyborean arms trade.

Go read the first two novels in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series.

You know that minute detail crap is exactly why I don't write historical fiction. That's why we write fantasy.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant, muchacho.

preyer said:

a lot of this is just common sense stuff, eh? i mean, it doesn't take a genius to know you can't get maple syrup out of a palm tree.

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So THAT'S what I've been doing wrong!!!!

Now if only my ants would start producing honey... I keep checking their mounds but all I find are these pasty white buds and they taste AWFUL on buttered toast.

trebuchet said:

How much attention to give to small side details? More than none, but don't obsess over it unless it actually matters. I think I've got it now!

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The flipside of all this advice is that it does help to know your core technologies and systems well enough to play with them creatively, or else to find obscure primary sources you can rip off.

For example, a pet peeve of mine is writers who have no understanding about swordplay... never fenced, never doen any martial art, never attended an SCA demo, never picked up a sword. Invairiably, they resolve their sword fights by stepping out of the system, usually the good ol' throw grit in the eye ploy again.

Me, I've never ridden a horse - a major drawback for a would-be teller of chivalric tales. However, I've read a good book on the medieval warhorse, and I keep my eyes open for good warhorse annecdotes. If I need a cool horse moment, I'll simply lift one from e.g Joinville's Chronicle of St Louis.

zornhau said:

For example, a pet peeve of mine is writers who have no understanding about swordplay... never fenced, never doen any martial art, never attended an SCA demo, never picked up a sword. Invairiably, they resolve their sword fights by stepping out of the system, usually the good ol' throw grit in the eye ploy again.

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This has happened to me before but having an actual sword hanging on your wall helps. Sometimes if I need to know if a move will work, I'll just pick up the sword (a hand-and-a-half longsword similiar to what my MC uses) and try it out in slow motion. If it works without obvious flaws, good. Readers of fantasy are used to suspending some disbelief. If I impale myself, I'll probably cut that out of the story. Once I get patched up of course.

If you've never had any martial training and you're trying to write martial books, I'd advise you to locate the nearest martial arts dojo and take some classes.

Let's face it, if you're writing about Venice, it might help to actually walk around in Venice.

And, anyway, it's a great way to meet tough women a la William Gibson's recurring street samurai character.

Vomaxx said:

Many don't even put scales on their maps.

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Gasp! Surely this cannot be true!

Mike Coombes said:

Gasp! Surely this cannot be true!

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At worldcon this year, one writer said that providing accurate maps was a bad idea since you would be enslaving your future stories to arbitary decisions, e.g. regarding the placement of potentially warring cities.

Maps are there for the sub-14 year olds without the wit or imagination to follow narrative. Or for writers without the wit or imagination to take the reader with them.

If your story relies on a map, just replace 80% of the text with nice pictures. Maybe some just in outline so your reader can colour them in.

It depends on your genre and sub genre. Part of the charm of the Hobbit is the map. If you're writing any kind of "military procedural", a map may also be useful. For big sprawling fantasies, maps, like dramatis personae, help to keep the reader straight between sittings, and volumes.

Whatever works, my friend. Whatever works.