I guess I’m on a Mel Brooks kick today, but that’s not the point of this.  I was thinking about world building, which is something that most fantasy authors have to do.  There are different levels of depth that you can put your world.  You can have it be a surface world with very little depth, which works for some.  You can go the other route and have the world be deeper than a bottomless pit.  It’s always up to the author and it’s dictated by the story as well.  Yet, I have noticed that there is an important factor to creating a world beyond the physical description.  It’s a part of world building that can be easily overlooked, but it can bring such an amazing color to your world.  I’m talking about HISTORY.

Honestly, I never really thought about it until today.  I had added historical events to my stories as they were needed.  The Great Cataclysm, various wars, the Fall of Mylrix, and several other events that came up in conversation between the characters.  It felt incredibly natural because that’s what we do in the real world.  We occasionally talk about events of the past if they’re relevant to the conversation, so a world of fantasy shouldn’t be any different.  A big war happened between all of the races of Windemere and led to the creation of god-sealed spells, the eradication of a culture, and the death of the Dragon Kings?  I’d think somebody would mention it from time to time.  It wouldn’t come up in detail, but it would come up every now and then.

This can be an amazingly difficult challenge for some. You wonder if the information goes too far or if it might come across as pointless.  Truthfully, a character mentioning how a current event reminds them of stories of an ancient event isn’t pointless.  We do that in the real world.  Yet, I can see how the idea of building a history of a fictional world can be very daunting.  You have this temptation to fill the history with wars and cataclysms because those types of events are always the most memorable.  You start to think your world is incredibly violent or unlucky, but you’re probably on the right track.  Most of history that gets brought up in conversation tends to be war and cataclysms.  It’s unfortunate, but that tends to be the norm.  Still, you can always have a character talk about the domestication of a species, the invention of a world-changing spell, or the founding of a new city because a fantasy world does give you more options.  Just let the world talk to you and you’ll learn more about it.

I think back to the books I love to re-read like Ender’s Game, The Hobbit, and Ranger’s Apprentice.  All of these have a rich history that is gradually explained to some extent by exposition and character conversations.  I don’t usually go for the exposition idea because I’m trying to make the reader feel like they’re watching events unfold, but that’s just my quirky, pain-in-butt style.  Still, the effect is that you get a feeling that the world existed before you began reading.  Things happened prior to the adventure on the paper and beings lived before your attention came to them.  It brings an odd sense of wonder and connection to a reader who is trying to get absorbed into the book.  I don’t know about anybody else, but one of the main reasons I write is to entertain and give the reader an escape into Windemere.  This feeling of it being an ancient, magical world definitely helps in that goal.