Narnia, Panem, Westeros, Prythian, Middle-earth, The Empyrean, The Burn, The Fade, The Shade, Harry Potter’s Wizarding World, and perhaps even a galaxy far, far away.

For as long as ink and paper have existed in this world, authors—to the enjoyment of readers everywhere—have written about and shared their own worlds. These myriad fictional worlds may have commonalities, but each one is uniquely special to its fans. Personally, I’ve fallen headfirst into many of these realms and devoured all the different strategies these authors use to build them. I am by no means an expert in fantasy writing or world-building, but my lifelong love for the genre has led me to the conclusion that while there is no right way to build a fictional world, a wrong way is to give your reader a textbook instead of a story.

But even I realize that avoiding information dumps is easier said than done. After all, how can a reader truly understand the impact of each character’s actions and words without the proper context? In my reading, I’ve found a few techniques that seem to do the job well. Keeping the story in first place and giving the reader breadcrumbs rather than heaping spoonfuls are tactics present in some of my favorite fantasy novels.

What comes first, the world or the story? For the author, the answer may be any and/or all of the above. Maybe the author pictures a scene and then builds the characters before dreaming up the world they live in. Or maybe they create a location—a city, a building, a room, or a planet—and then find the characters that belong there. But while the author’s process is unique to the person, for the reader, the best (or at least, my favorite) fantasy worlds are built by the story. Rather than have an overly long and technical description of the particular world and all the societal complexities, environmental impacts, and diverse cultures that come with it appear first on the page, the characters’ interactions and the trouble they find themselves in do. Then, as the action builds, so does the world.

In stories like these, the action, the spaces between the dialogue, and the subtle descriptions of the scene around the characters—happening both when they are speaking and even when they are silent—are ghosts sneaking the world-building into the story until the reader is living in this new world right along with the characters.

And just because this “story builds the world” approach is my favorite doesn’t mean it is a script that demands the first chapter of every fantasy story should start the same. As with every blog post I write, my thoughts are opinion-based only, and some of the best stories throw “technique” right out the window with the critics. I don’t believe this approach means that we have to get rid of story techniques like prologues or elements of lore—I just like when the author uses them strategically.

To take an example from popular fiction, Rebecca Yarros starts off her fantasy novel Fourth Wing with two short elements of lore. The first informs the reader that the story has been transcribed by a scribe, and the second is a quote from the dragon riders’ war college textbook stating, “A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead.” Two short lines of lore, and the reader is in this new world of Basgiath War College without even meeting the main characters.

And for all those prologue haters out there, I think George R. R. Martin did a good job starting book one of A Song of Ice and Fire (a story involving an insanely complex and massive fantasy world) with a great world-building prologue. Just read these small sections from the first few pages of the prologue:

“We should start back,” Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. “The wildlings are dead.”
“Do the dead frighten you?” Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile.
Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go. “Dead is dead,” he said. “We have no business with the dead.”
“Are they dead?” Royce asked softly. “What proof have we?”
“Will saw them,” Gared said. “If he says they are dead, that’s proof enough for me.”
Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner. “My mother told me that dead men sing no songs,” he put in.

Right away, the reader gets the medieval-world vibe with the use of words like “Ser” and “lordlings,” and the term “wildlings” throws in the mystery—all without a long exposition of the lore. Then, with this:

“Will could see the tightness around Gared’s mouth, the barely suppressed anger in his eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Gared had spent forty years in the Night’s Watch, man and boy, and he was not accustomed to being made light of. Yet it was more than that. Under the wounded pride, Will could sense something else in the older man. You could taste it; a nervous tension that came perilously close to fear.
Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the Southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him.
Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the track of a band of wildling raiders.”

We are introduced to the Wall and the Night’s Watch. Martin used the dreaded prologue to start his story—and thereby his new world—and the reader is right here for it. And he did this all without introducing a single main character.

Martin, like another fictional creator—C.S. Lewis—did a great job letting the story build the world. Another thing his technique had in common with Lewis is that he keeps the reader on a need-to-know basis. Both authors do a good job revealing the world piece by piece as the reader needs to know about it.

Look at the first chapter of the beloved Lewis classic The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When Lucy steps through the hanging coats and into Narnia, the faun she meets there doesn’t immediately go into a speech about the kingdom’s political history to make the reader aware of the danger lurking in the form of the White Witch. Instead, Lewis has Mr. Tumnus relay the story of the doom that has befallen Narnia while confessing to actively kidnapping her. Therefore, rather than a boring history, there is a sense of urgency, which makes the reader hungry for the details—and get a chill when he tells us, “Even some of the trees are on her side.”

The number of right ways to build a fantasy world is countless—whether you start with a bit of meaningful and engaging lore, get right to the action, or use a well-crafted and unique prologue. Letting the story build the world and keeping your reader on a need-to-know basis are surefire techniques to write a great new legend.

Happy writing—and even happier reading! What do you think? What fantasy world do you like best?

Let us know and jump into the discussion below. And don’t forget to sign-up for the newsletter for more monthly tips or join Allison’s Book Club to talk books!

And if you want to read about St. Claire, Pennsylvania, a small town full of big secrets, check out FRITTERED MOMENTS!