The Win Report

If you are an author or avid reader of fantasy and/or science fiction - or if you enjoy role-playing within either of those genres - then you already understand the powerful allure of entering into a Secondary World. You’ve experienced the joys of immersing yourself in your imagination, of exploring the freedoms and consequences of existence in an alternate place where the root assumptions differ from what we hold to be true in our world.

Fantasy can open the mind to possibilities seldom gleaned amidst our daily grind in “reality”. It provides feelings of excitement and release that are difficult to explain to the uninitiated.

I will assume, since you’ve read this far, that you’re already besotted with the creative impulse. But maybe you despair of ever giving the right form to your ideas - or believe that you’ll never even conceive of any ideas that are uniquely your own. So how do you move from your initial desire to its realization as a fully-developed creation? Well, your first clues as to the road to take lie with what you most love. What themes in the stories you read, what eras of history, what cultural or personal issues really attract you? If you harbor strong feelings about any aspects of the human drama then it’s likely that you have something to say about them.

Isolate those ideas. They will be your starting point, the seed ice-crystals around which you can form your own unique snowflake of a world.

When first I longed to write a fantasy novel, I had but two ideas. I wanted to follow a young lad’s mystic initiation, a journey that would take him out of his homeland and thrust him into unknown terrain - both physical and spiritual. So the adventure would challenge not only his resources of body and character, but also his very beliefs about the nature of reality. This was theme number one. My second theme: the setting my character moved through should be strongly evocative of the American West circa early 1800’s - frontier times. Since the “Wild West” is the romantic era of American history - and this is my country, for better or ill - I wanted to pay homage to the great American Myth. Also, I knew I could steer clear of many fantasy clichés by avoiding a medieval, pre-industrial milieu. There would be no dragons, unicorns, enchanted swords, or flying broomsticks; and an unusual conception of magic would be required.

Perhaps you can see now how quickly additional ideas will tend to group around your core themes. Good. Now it’s time to provide some structure, boundaries around this budding world to fence out the incongruous and allow the suitable elements to grow and flourish. I would suggest at this stage that you draw a physical map of your imagined environment. The scope of this map will depend upon your ambition. If you’re running a role-playing game for beginner-level characters, then a plot of land the size of Rhode Island might do fine. But if you intend to write an epic fantasy novel then you might require something the size of Europe or even larger. Carefully consider your goals and then set your parameters accordingly. I opted to sketch a peninsula about the size of New England, connected to a larger continent by a mostly-frozen Land Bridge.

Once you’ve sketched your outline then fill in the topography: mountains, rivers, forests, deserts, jungles…whatever is appropriate for your central concepts. Natural details only, for now; and if you want your physical topography to follow a different order than it does in our world then provide a reason for that. Fantasy worlds are free to dispense with the rules of “reality”, but they must be self-consistent. After all, boundaries are what define a thing. Chess would bore us all if every piece could be moved in whatever fashion we fancied. Challenges - and, therefore, excitement- arises out of limitation. And fiction thrives on conflict.

Once you have your map completed make a dozen or more photocopies of it. On these copies you can plot your setting’s chronology: how peoples and places evolved to your story’s present day. Again, the extent of your history depends upon your ambition. Do you wish to outline three long ages of mortal and Faerie existence like Tolkien did with Middle-Earth? Or would the significant events of three human generations suffice?

I conceived my own setting to be a “New World” and decided that, at the onset of the novel, it would have been settled for about five hundred years. So with ten maps, each encompassing fifty years, I outlined all the events that influenced the general character of the land and its cultures. This was easier to visualize on paper. You can see your nomads migrating down through the northern mountain passes and discovering prairie lands that will become their hunting grounds. Then they skirmish with forest dwellers over rights to the river. Forts are built on both territories. These evolve into towns and eventually into cities. One city is invaded and its inhabitants are slain down to the last woman and child. So in your story’s present day your characters may stumble upon some ruins that are dripping with history.

As you trace developments with these chronological maps your guidelines will be those central themes with which you began. Since I started with two ideas I therefore had two primary concerns as I constructed my timeline. First, since my protagonist would be undergoing spiritual initiation he would need to have guides and mentors. The mystical discipline that he would follow had to evolve. So I was absorbed not only with events like migrations, settlements, wars and alliances but also with speculating about how peoples’ beliefs develop over time. Secondly, I had to arrive at an era reminiscent of frontier times - i.e., with the development of such cultural staples as early firearms, steamboats, locomotives, and civilized townsfolk existing alongside nomadic hunters and tribesmen.

These two considerations were my grounding focuses as I filled map after map. Along the way, many subsidiary ideas attached themselves to the primary ones. I would weed out those that didn’t fit into my setting and promote those that did.

Once you’ve reached your world’s present day, you know who the major players are and where they came from. Your history will have built-in consistency because you constructed it from the ground up. Now it’s time to flesh out this environment!

First, though, you must understand that an invented world is never completed; the best we can do is to stop at an interesting place. So how far do you want to go in lavishing this imagined place with detail? This will depend upon your intended use for the material you’ll end up with. If you’re pursuing this creation as a hobby then there’s no need to ever finish. Add to your heart’s content; elaborate upon your people’s languages, traditions, political and economic factors, social orders and religions. But if you intend to write about this world, or have the people in your role-playing campaign travel through it, then you need to intuit when you’ve developed your milieu fully enough to give it the breath of realism. I personally find that finishing touches are much easier than preliminary sketches, though. By now you have certain advantages that will lend a sense of ease to approaching the remainder of the work. You understand the distinctive character of your own land, and all else will follow.

During this final stage, many of us want to research our subjects to insure that our work has credibility. If you are an author, however, I would offer some advice that runs counter to what you’re bound to read or hear elsewhere: postpone that research until you’ve written a first draft of your story. Draw upon what you know, or what you can imagine. There’s a simple reason why I suggest doing this. Having completed your first draft, you’ll know exactly what you need to study for your particular story and won’t feel overwhelmed, believing that you need a historian’s all-encompassing knowledge of the time period you’re working in. I am not a scholar of early American history. I merely scavenged what particular details I knew I would need in order to make my story real. Spare yourself countless hours of library and internet searches. Write your story first; you may be amazed to discover how much you already know about your subjects.

There is a rare satisfaction that comes with the realization of an imagined Secondary World. We have provided a place for our escapist fantasies - and deepest philosophical speculations - to live and breathe. At times it may seem like a mad pursuit; certainly there may be friends and significant others who don’t understand it. Let me assure you that we’re in impressive company though. J.R.R Tolkien devoted his entire adult life to the creation of Middle-Earth. Stephen R. Donaldson had “Covenant” dominating his mind for the better part of ten years - and recently returned to the saga after a twenty-five year hiatus. Similar things can be said of Frank Herbert and his “Dune” saga. The extent to which these authors were enamored with the creative process is evinced by the depth and breadth - and believability - of their invented worlds.

I wish you a happy birthing!

Seth Mullins is the author of “Song of an Untamed Land”, a novel of speculative fantasy in lawless frontier territory. Visit Seth at http://www.authorsden.com/sethtmullins.