One of the things I love about writing
fantasy is that you get to create a different world. Since you’re making it up,
you can fill the world with all sorts of interesting things that are impossible
in the real world. Pet dragons, floating cities, dust that gives you prophetic
dreams, … things that would make life very different if they existed.
However, too many imaginary things
would overwhelm your reader—and strain your power of invention—so most of the
food, clothes, and everyday objects will be borrowed from reality. But even
here, you get to choose from a world’s-worth of civilization. Do your
characters live in an agrarian kingdom, or are they part of a nomadic tribe?
What is the climate where they live—temperate, tropical, or positively arctic?
And what sorts of objects and technology do they possess?
But you can’t mix-and-match just any details
you like. Cars don’t make sense in a stone-age setting. Where would they come
from? How would they be fueled? Similarly, if you have horse-drawn carriages,
you need carriage-makers, and they
need leather-workers, wood-workers, and blacksmiths. These trades don’t have to
play a role in your story, but their existence has to make sense in your
setting.
One way to get a sense of what objects
and activities can reasonably be combined is to choose a historical period—say,
France in the late 1700s. Things that went together in reality are plausible
together in fantasy.
For example, in the story I am working
on now, The Slipper Ball, the MC’s
family traditionally made and sold a really excellent pear preserve. Fruit
preserves have been around for a long time, so that aspect isn’t a problem, but
being able to bottle and ship them without spoilage is another matter. What
equipment is needed? How non-industrial can I make this world while still
making the sale of specialty jam plausible?
Glass jars could be hand-blown, but the
rings and lids I use for my own jam are probably stamped out of big sheets of
metal in some enormous, highly automated factory. Hmm… a system using wax rings and metal discs
existed in the 1830s, and that technology seems within this world’s
capabilities. That doesn’t mean I’m going to bore the reader with the details
of how the jars are sealed—the technology isn’t wildly out of reach and that’s
all I’m looking for. For that matter, I could just have specified that one of
the fictional ingredients, lemonroot, has amazing preservative properties.
That brings me to a related point—I want
the world to be plausible, but I don’t want to go into a lot of unnecessary
detail. I have scenes set in the kitchen, and some baking takes place there, so
I probably have to decide whether there is a free-standing oven or just some
sort of shelf set into a great hearth. I don’t
need to discuss where they get the wood for the fire, since there are trees and
forests nearby and the reader can just assume the existence of woodcutters or
some equivalent tradesman.
Even if you do simplify your
world-building by tying it to a historical period, inventions that coexisted in
reality don’t necessarily have to go
together in your world. The American colonists had both guns and printing
presses, but maybe your world has
extensive libraries and no firearms at all. Or maybe there are enough guns for
the Wild West, but all the wanted posters and news-sheets are laboriously
hand-lettered. Your imaginary world, your choice.
Furthermore, different geographic areas
can have different levels and kinds of technology (within reason). The Fourth
Kingdom needn't be particularly industrialized if they can import their jam
jars and iron stoves from the Second Kingdom. Since the story doesn’t take
place in the Second Kingdom, I can skip over exactly how the Second Kingdom has
organized its industry. The silk for their ball gowns comes from the First
Kingdom, perhaps, which is known for its textiles. But whether that silk comes
from silkworms raised on mulberry leaves, or domesticated spiders, or fields of
silkweed doesn’t matter—it just matters that the reader knows their finest
gowns have the texture and shine of silk.
And finally, no matter how much work you put into it, no imaginary world is going to be perfectly consistent and it isn't worth the time to try to make it so. The important thing is to avoid having the reader stop in the middle of the story and say, "What the heck? You don't weave on a spinning wheel!!* Even I know that!"
*Yes, I really saw this--and in a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, no less.
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