It's a Fan-tastic World

The fantasy genre covers many different aspects of fantasy, from urban settings to high fantasy, and everything in between. No matter what part of the genre you choose there will be research involved, yes even if you’re creating your own world. Everything is based on something else, if you’ve read John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series you know his countries and the nationalities of the people are based on real life. The Skandians are based on the Viking culture, for example. Though his books closely resemble real cultures and yours may not, there will still be research involved as you decide where your people live, their language, culture, the way they fight, and what weapons they use.

While creating your world means you control how it appears, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to do any research. If your book is set in a world of your creation it will require as much research as a book set real-world in an urban setting. The more authentic your world and the people then the better your book will be. You can combine cultures to create a truly unique setting, but be certain things mesh well or readers may become confused and stop reading.

If you’re creating a language for your people, again research is required. Many languages use Latin as a root to their speech. It doesn’t mean you need to, but you can’t make words up out of the blue. Words need to have a root and the meaning must make sense when the words are paired up to make sentences. Your language needs rules for speech. This doesn’t mean all of it needs to be spelled out in your book, but you must be conscious of how your language works when writing it out. These sort of rules apply to a lot of things in your fantasy world. If your world is magical, then the magic must have rules as well. How to cancel out powers if your non-magical population is trying to control or destroy magic, for instance. There needs to be a history and a reason why things happen the way they do. Your readers need to understand how things developed so they can understand how your world works.

We authors tend to borrow from real life to help create our worlds and stories, it helps us relate to our stories and it helps readers relate as well.

If you’re uncertain where your book falls within the fantasy genre and its subgenres, there are many results if you Google the fantasy genre. High fantasy or epic fantasy, tends to be defined as being set in an imaginary world, whereas low is defined as fantastical elements appearing in our world. High or epic fantasy and low fantasy are the most popular and well known of the fantasy genres. Superheros are included in fantasy, magical realism where things like telekinesis appear in our world, or dark fantasy where the aim is to frighten the reader. These are just a few of the subgenres. No matter which genre your book falls under, do your research and make your story the absolute best it can be. If you put in the work then it will be worth it in the end. Your story will be the better for it and your readers will enjoy it more.