fantasy realism....

My world is not earth, but since the culture of my MC is much like an older "western" culture, I try to use words no younger than 1800. Same goes for technology -- I shoot for pre-1800s.

I have worked out a lot of my history, but not so much of the social and government. History has a much bigger impact on my story than the current politcs. although that kind of thing always has an impact in some way. I'm only in the roughest of rough drafts right now, but I'm sure I'll have to work out more of this kind of background stuff, if only for myself.

Real life is important in my case based on sociology, not necessarily anything specifically modern.

But, no matter what kind of story you're telling, you should still be paying attetion to sociology (most likely it's unconscious, though) so everything works in a mindset we're familiar with. Or unfamiliar. That's the point.

katiemac said:

But, no matter what kind of story you're telling, you should still be paying attetion to sociology (most likely it's unconscious, though) so everything works in a mindset we're familiar with. Or unfamiliar. That's the point.

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Now that I think about it, there is a great deal impacted by the sociology of my world and I had thought out a lot of it. It was such a big part of the plot, that I just didn't realize it was "sociology" until I stepped back and looked. My story is very character driven and is more about how people interact with and view each other, especially people outside their own culture.

preyer said:

do you try to incorporate as much real life into your fantasy setting as possible? how much of an influence does history play in creating you fantastic universe? do you create governments and social castes, exchange rates and social issues?

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When I started my fantasy novel, I thought "Great! I won't have to research anything. I can just make it up." What I discovered is that making up a believeable world is harder than it sounds. Yes, you have to figure out a great deal about your society that may never even explicitly play a part in the book.

For instance, do they have religion and what kind? You can't refer to something as a god-send if they don't have gods. You can't say "What the hell?" if they don't have Hell.

Things got so muddled in my novel that I had to step back and write a short history of my world. Then all the names didn't fit, so I had to rename most of my characters. Then I had to scour the book of terms that had relevance to our world, like the term "midas touch". Midas was a king in the Greek myths, which is firmly in OUR world. That term can't exist there.

The point is you don't have to detail all those things in the novel. In fact, you shouldn't. But you DO need to know them yourself so you can be consistant in your writing. How much easier it would have been if I had figured this all out ahead of time rather than having to retrofit.

If anyone feels like they're having trouble with world building, this link by Wrede might be able to sort you out. I've never used it myself, just scrolled through peices (I read her books when I was younger) and it automatically incoropates all of these governments, religions and things -- sociology -- to make words comprehensive and more realistic.

Like what Roger said in the above post, just remember that while you might determine something using the chart, you don't have to include it in the novel if it doesn't fit -- this list is quite comprehensive.