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- The World Overview
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This section is going to contain tips mainly on how to create a world of your own and how to manipulate an existing world to fit your story better.
Creating a world for your story to take place in isn’t always necessary – you can use an existing world, such as ‘Real Life’ or RuneScape. If this is the case, then you can skip to the section on world manipulation as the next couple of paragraphs are going to discuss creating a world from scratch.
It is often the case that, even if you set your story in a different world, you won’t need to create much of it – just the areas that your story travels to. But how do we do that?
First of all, you have to consider what’s going to be happening in your world and what implications that might have on the rest of the world, if it were real. For example, if you have wizards running around the place, how common are they? How did they get their magical power? Does magic rule the world? If not, why not? Are wizards hated by the ‘commoners?’ If so, why? Thinking up and answering questions like these will give you a greater insight into the society of your world, thus allowing you to write more convincingly about the argument between Johnny the Wizard and Bob the Farmer as well as the interactions between the main characters.
Geography is also important; it can explain why there’s not much contact with another race or culture. It can also explain why various countries are at war, or have fought in the past – are they fighting over good farm land? Does country A want the runite mines owned by country B? You can then use this to explain why Johnny the Wizard has never met the elves, who live across the treacherous seas to the north, or why he hates Alex the Soldier from Country B. It adds another layer of plausibility to your story and will help to draw the reader in. Drawing a rough map can help enormously in world creation and it has the added benefit of aiding you in remembering where... ...everything is.
This is not to say that you should know and decide on absolutely everything about your world before you begin writing. You should have a basic foundation that you can build on as required.
- Manipulating The World
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This section is probably of most importance to those who are using pre-defined worlds, such as ‘Real Life’ or RuneScape, although those who have designed their own worlds should read through it anyway. It is imperative that you understand that, just because you are using a world that already exists, nothing is stopping you from modifying it to suit your purposes. Famous authors do so all the time – the fact that there was no magic in the real world didn't stop J.K. Rowling writing a story about wizards who live among us. It worked because, although we know it to be untrue, she gave us a plausible explanation as to why we don’t see it.
The main point of this section is that in most cases, as long as you, the author, can give us a convincing explanation as to why something is in the world, we will take your word for it. You can add entirely new locations, or change existing ones. Do you need Falador in ruins for your main character to explore? Tell us why it’s in ruins. Ask yourself questions that the reader is going to think about and then try to work an answer into your story. This is vital in immersing readers in your world; give them some history so that they understand it. Not so much that there’s no action, but enough to give them a feel for the world.
Whilst there is a lot of freedom in world manipulation, you must make sure that you stick to the rules of the world you’re in. Nothing spoils a story more than the author breaking one of the ‘rules' that he or she has set. If it has been established that Bob the Farmer can’t use magic because he would need to spend years of his life training, don’t suddenly turn around and make him learn magic to rival Johnny the Wizard in a day of story time.
You can manipulate the rules to say that Bob has natural talent, so can easily learn magic, but you can’t make him the best straight away. Nobody would believe that.
To summarize, you can do almost anything you want with your world, so long as it’s within the world rules you have created and you have a credible explanation for it.
F to the A to the Q.
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