writing

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This is about worldbuilding in a not realistic but thematic and mood-driven manner. One which prioritizes the enclosed world and not the 'realism' of ours, while maintaining a 'grounded' feel to it.

It requires something commonly referred to as 'environmental storytelling', which most associate with film, television and video games but holds its roots in written fiction.

Discussions of curtains and their color and meaning are examples of environmental storytelling. But, but, so are more direct things such as describing a river as 'bleeding and flecked with bits of white floating about as so much glitter'.

You want to create a mood, set a scene, give your reader something that may never be overtly explained but will certainly add to their opinions of what is going on.

We don't see enough of it anymore, as there's been more preference for quick and dialogue-heavy fiction or the 'explain every blade of grass' method. But that is another discussion.

Right now we're yammering about a world that follows its own logic, with a theme that guides the design as much as the story.

This is not a guide, however. I don't pretend to know enough to teach. I've merely done this enough times myself, and enjoy fiction that does it, to be able to yammer about it. I hope you get something from it, but I'm not here to teach.

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I'm not big on 'themes', I tend to lose them too quickly to keep to a theme. So I prefer to let them emerge on their own through the story and world. Because of that I prefer 'mood'. I go into every scene with a mood in mind, whether this scene involves characters, monsters, or the environment alone I have a mood I'm trying to create or enhance or even lessen.

Because of this, I don't worry about how much sense it makes. So long as it fits the mood and doesn't contradict previously established in-world rules for things.

So if I want, say, a world inside an egg--that boasts lush forests and seemingly endless oceans--with a sun as its yolk that somehow hasn't boiled everything around it... I'm going to make it. It won't make sense to our understanding of how the world works, but it isn't our world.

This is the joy of fantasy. It doesn't have to make sense to Earth, because it isn't Earth. It just has to make sense to itself.

So you establish some in-world rules for how things work and you keep to them and you do whatever you want.

You don't even have to explain these rules, but you can show them and let the reader infer from there how certain things work.

One can choke a reader in description, it is terribly easy to do so, but if you're working off mood more than explanation you can keep it simple and effective. The idea isn't to explain everything, but to encourage questions.

The words you use to set the mood can change the reader's perspective on not only the scene itself but the world it takes place in and when you let mood guide your design, you find that something as simple as the light filtering through leaves can tell a story.

If you describe the light as searing and blinding, add in colors one might not expect such as vibrant pink or red, you've already made this a fantasy world where the sun is an obstacle.

With the light filtering through the trees.

No one is saying it's dangerous, there aren't paragraphs of history to explain it, but the description suggests it.

This is both using mood as design and environmental storytelling.

Mood you're creating with the searing light? Fear.

Story you're telling with the searing light? Light dangerous.

It's a simple example but I hope it's enough to show what I mean by using mood and environment to build your world and tell your story.

I've been using my own for examples, so let's continue with that for this last bit as this combines horror and fantasy and explains how easy it is to create a world readers will understand without having to be 'realistic' about it;

Throughout the (roughly) 180k words of Weald and Wen there is no mention of weather. Of it raining or storming in the woods. Either woods. Any of the woods. The only instance of the word 'rain' in regards to 'water' is collected dew on very tall mushrooms and fronds.

This water isn't even regarded as water, it's regarded as poison.

There's no water. There's a lot of 'ichor', but no water.

Yet no one's remarked on how the trees are so lush and the plants thriving. Because it's made fairly clear through a character's background of 'feeding the woods' and all of the bleeding rivers and pools, and dripping leaves of likesame reds, that the woods are fed by ichor (a mix of blood and sap, which is largely inferred but tossed in deliberately in description maybe two places).

It doesn't even go into the specifics of how a living thing being devoured by hungry red pool equals lush and vibrant woods.

And it doesn't need to, because the environment has been established, rules set through it, and you're compelled to go along with it.

The fact the woods are all fed by what looks, and seemingly operates, as blood also adds to the overall story and mood of not only the woods themselves but the world as a whole. Which is one of fear, of unease, of horror.

Now, one might wonder of the logistics here if there's things living in these woods... how are they alive? This is also largely explained through environmental storytelling. Through the use of background or inference.

The things that look like they might need water drink the poison water, but only hot. This is not explicitly stated but shown through one of them making tea and offering it to others. There's no other mention of drinks beyond this tea, but there's suggestions in her kitchen in the form of pots and cups and how close they're kept to tell the reader 'tea' is probably all she drinks. Or that she at least boils things often. Lots of drying plants around there too.

No one comes out and says it, the narration doesn't explain, but it is shown through the environment.

What this also shows is that these creatures, who require boiling what amounts to water to survive, do not belong here. They're outsiders here. They have established settlements but were clearly not born in these woods... or they'd not need to boil the water.

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I have yammered too much now. I hope there was sense in that.

A fantasy setting doesn't need to make sense to Earth, it needs to make sense to itself and follow its own rules so it makes sense to the reader.

You can do this most effectively, in my opinion of course, through environmental storytelling. Showing, not telling, as it were (but not in the way that typically means). If you want to establish a place as old and ruined, possibly haunted, you describe what it used to be. Not what it is ('towering remnants of remarkable construction, the echoes of prayer heard clear through slips of still-bright stone').

Also, mood is a fantastic basis for anything. You're creating art. It's emotional. Get moody with it and find some fun words to set that mood.

Any fluid can be described as bleeding, for instance, and using that word immediately sets the mind to red and blood and danger or pain.