Advice for Novice World Builders
Posted On September 13, 2017
- Don’t place your Forest of Terror right next door to your Mountains of Doom alongside your Chasm of Eternal Fear. You can have too much of a good thing.
- Remember: rivers flow from the mountains to the sea, not the other way around. Tempting though it may be to have water running uphill, the laws of hydrodynamics are fairly well understood and if broken, will have unfortunate consequences for urban sewerage and waste water disposal.
- Weather happens.
- Never try to have a capital of the Evil Empire of Doom without a Z, K or X in the name. It just doesn’t work.
- The Web of Life is really tricky in fantasyland. Dragons as your top-level predator play hell with the food chain.
- Never put anything interesting in the middle of your fantasyland. If your map goes to two pages, you can lose important stuff in the gutter …
- Cities are where they are for three reasons: protection, trade routes and ‘lost in the mists of time’, which is always handy.
About The Author
michael
I'm a writer of fantasy, mostly for Young Adults.
One Comment
Love the advice Michael. Reminds me of The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Dianna Wynne Jones. I never knew that horses spread by pollination.