World Building in Novels

     I read fantasy more than any other genre of book. The idea of magic, in both the familiar world I know and the world the author builds, fascinates me and I feel it truly put my imagination to the test.

     As I wrote my books in July and November, I made sure to sit down and read for, at least, an hour a day. With my job this summer, I didn't find it too hard to find time to read. In the summer, it helped me formulate the world Iron Butterfly took place in.

     I studied maps and descriptions of the setting extensively. How did the author describe this? How did this link back to the map? What can I do to incorporate that technique into my own writing?

     The Twilight series accomplishes the describing the world well, in my opinion, although my opinion of the overall series aggravates others. I realized how well the author described Washington, down to the last details down the coast. As I explored down the coast this summer, I linked in the novels I read prior to the vacation, like Wings by April Pike, which takes place in Crescent City, California. However, a fellow NaNoWriMo author, who has enjoyed a great reception to her self published novel Duffy Barkley is not a Dog, grumbled about Pike missing a key detail about the placement of the lighthouses on the coast. 

     However, other fantasy authors, such as J.R.R. Tolkien, T.A. Barron, Ursula Le Guin and Diana Wynne-Jones build their worlds fromt he ground up. Wynne-Jones, a favorite author of mine, mixes the 'real' world with magic as her characters travel through the dimensions. Twists on history make an excellent story lines, whether the world forms with magic growing along side it, or whether history changes due to the early discovery of DNA, such as in the Leviathan series by Scott Westerfield. Other authors, like Tolkien and Barron, go back to the very beginning of time to build their novels, or at least introduce the character responsible for it all. 

     I incorporated both the 'reality' we live in and my own world in Iron Butterfly this summer. I wish I wrote as well as the authors listed above (with only Meyer's descriptive skills). I need to work many snarls to work out in my story line, whether it deals with deciding what kind of forest the Black Court lives in or describing the series of buildings the dwarves built within the mines after they escaped from the oppression of the White Court. I need to build around some of the characters, like the ever present iridescent chameleon who makes his home in the trees of the forest. Sometimes, I'll need to build the characters around the world, as characters like Finn and Emma will need to react to environment around them. 

Either way, I have a long way to go.