Patrick has brought up some great points that have caused me to think about starting completely over--redesigning the magical system from the ground up.
The world has a new name, and now its magic is about to get a major shakeup. It's pretty clear that a lot of what I initially wrote isn't going to or can't work
I'm actually surprised you listened, but in a way, gladdened. It's good to see someone who is genuinely open to criticism.
ReplyDeleteWell before we can start, we've got to pin down what you absolutely must keep and what you can afford to cut away.
In fantasy, there are generally two basic schools of thought, high fantasy and low fantasty.
Both tend to have particular flavors, but you'll note that neither is /defined/ by these flavors. A high fantasy tends to have more fantastic worlds, more than one sapient race, elves, common magic etc etc, and a low fantasy world will tend to have a grittier, darker world where people live by the skin of their teeth and a wizard is strange and misunderstood.
But as I said, neither is defined by these flavors. What defines high and low fantasy is what it's /about/. High fantasy invariably has a good versus evil conflict, and while this doesn't immediately indicate objective good and evil, it implies that somehow the two do ultimately exist. It is, therefore, in high fantasy that you'll see 'Dark Gods' and various villains who will be evil just for the sake of being evil. There's nothing particularly wrong with this, LoTR was written like this, but it is morally less complex than the alternative.
Low fantasy deals with alternative conflicts without the clear-cut good and evil of high fantasy. In low fantasy, for example, the main character may be a brigand with some redeeming features and some darker ones, a high fantasy protagonist's flaws will be either lighthearted or stemming more from incompetence than something much darker. In low fantasy, sometimes the right thing to do will be to commit sins, contract with demons, kill a child, whatever.
With those two poles in mind, it is quite possible to have a high fantasy set in the Dung-Ages with maybe one wizard in the world, and a low fantasy in a world where magic has not only replaced technology, but become one with it.
This is your first task. You must decide on which end your world will lie-- there is no between, it is a boolean statement-- because that will determine what kind of allowances you could possibly make. For example, if 'holy' is an element, or whether it's literally just the will of some God that no one is completely sure isn't just playing with humanity.
After that, you throw in the elements you chose to keep, and you grow it from there. Your current approach has been to think of things in an atomic manner, thinking of various points and answering those questions instead of developing from material already available. A good setting grows from first its tone, then its elements, then its geography, THEN its people and culture.
It is helpful, by the way, to discard any notions of 'writing fantasy', because fantasy is genre fiction, and automatically of a lower cut than 'literary fiction'. What you should write is a story-- first and foremost. It's just a story that has fantasy elements. It's not a series of fantasy elements and a story.
I have several friends that would be willing to help you, but as it stands, this comments method is a little difficult. You can set up a message board at proboards.com (its free), and I can call them in to help, if you like.
Good luck.
I would love the help!
ReplyDeleteAs for where my world will lie, I want it to be a high fantasy-style of world--because I want an old school heroic romp type of story where good triumphs over evil.
I will admit that maybe I am being too linear in the process, and that again, I'm open to having some help.