The Importance of Building up the World Around Your Heroes & Making them Transcendent Figures - Fiction Guide How to Always Succeed at Writing

Pre-Suppositions in Fantasy

I went over this in the essay the other day, but only slightly. Now let’s get into how to do it. Part of the reason it is important to establish some ‘pre-set’ ideas into your art, into your Fantasy universe is that this helps to establish the values, the moral fibre and the philosophical underpinnings of your stories.

How this is pretty much done is to get into the assumptions of the various characters. What is it that is meant by this? Nothing less than what they believe about the world around them is what is meant.

This means that for examples a character believes that honour is important as much because this is expected of him or her, also because in the world that’s been constructed it holds some measure of importance. This is particularly the case of the Hyborian Age by Robert E. Howard.

Just as this is of some importance in that universe, in the Secondary World of the likes of Tolkien, meekness but also history are important. You truly feel the weight of many tens of thousands of years behind you.

In Tolkien’s Legendarium there is the pre-set expectation therefore that the characters must be wary of

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Building the World Around your Hero

When constructing your universe you should focus on the values of the people in your world in order to imbue it with a sense of otherness but also familiarity. Think about the values that you love most; honour, valour, chastity and so on and you’ll arrive at some interesting conclusions and ideas baked into your world.

Let’s take the world of Redwall for example. Beautiful and splendid it is. Very English. But it has some interesting ideas about spiritual Chastity, which is one of the key virtues of those stories as characters who give into wickedness even just once tend to do so over and over again, even as the virtuous become ever more saintly.

This is interesting and gives you some idea of how Brian Jacques was thinking as he was writing those stories.

This isn’t to say you should remove all ‘dark matter’ from your universe. To the contrary, the appeal of stories like Superior, Princess both from Korea, or even from stories like those of the Silmarillion and Conan’s various exploits are precisely that; the darker side of things.

This is what we want to see; darkness appear so that it might be defeated but also that we might see characters struggle morally and internally. It’d be boring if they didn’t struggle after all. But part of the struggle is that they must overcome the internal darkness that haunts them.

Part of this is the joy of seeing characters triumph against all odds. But this is why it is so important to imbue them with an ‘Old World’ kind of morality that dogs them and the world around them. This can be seen in how casually you might see Conan take a life, and yet you also see him treasure life more dearly than aught else.

The thing is that you must separate yourself from your own ethics on some level, ponder them and have a good hard look at them and also look at those of your characters. If you want your characters to really stand out, have them make decisions you would never agree with.

Have them take a life when they shouldn’t, have them steal, and have them cheat on their spouse and lie and what not.

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Do you know why you should have them do these things? So they can atone, improve and overcome the natural consequences of their actions. Mistakes must be made. But at the same time have them try to keep to honour-codes and ideals that are different from your own.

They must have different ones. For example, my ideals and values are clearly not the same as Conan. He’d probably look down on me. That’s fair. But that being said do I still like him and find him fascinating? Oh sure. What of the likes of King Arthur? Depending on the portrayal or adaptation he’d probably think differently, all the better.

Readers don’t simply want to escape to another world, they want to escape to worlds with badass men, cool sorcerers and sexy ladies. But more than that they want to escape to worlds where the badass man can string a harp, or the lady can discuss the finer points of Aristotelian thought and so on.

The more philosophical, the deeper, the more intelligent your characters and the more archaic and medieval their values the better. This is really what I’m arguing for, as it is the ancients and medievals that inspire Fantasy fiction. Therefore shouldn’t the value systems and ideals and codes of honour approximate theirs?

This isn’t to say that we should base our heroes off of Genghis Khan or something. Absolutely not. But rather that we should take the most heroic of their icons like say Scipio Africanus at his best and lionize him and try to understand his values as we write our own fantastical version of him.

This is what is meant by me when I say let’s write some good ‘moral’ Fantasy fiction. It must NEVER involve preaching to the Readers. The reason is quite simple; the Readers will determine their own thoughts and ideas. We can inspire them to be sure, but we should instead of trying to pushing them in a negative direction try to get them to understand the characters and use the opportunity to inspire them.

For example; how many of the best police officers out there sought to emulate the likes of Aragorn or Superman? Quite a few right? Well, in that case doesn’t that show what a positive inspiration a hero can be?

But all the same Aragorn has different values from those of us in the modern age. His are the product of the much more ancient Arnor/Gondor, two societies on the tip of collapse and which still cling to honour, to the importance of fighting the good fight. In short it is a warrior society.

Warrior societies are interesting, and we don’t live in one. Yet we can derive some measure of inspiration from them. This is why we must bear in mind the differences in time period and thinking.

Delve deep into your worlds, into the philosophies that permeate them. Each world should feel different, should have a layer of thought to them and also a nature all their own. For example; I may well ascribe the French ideals of the pre-Revolutionary period of ‘One law, One Faith and One King’ (Un Loi, Un Foi, Un Roi), but this means nothing without a major virtue or set of virtues to accompany it. So I’ve got my values, now for a virtue, I’m going to select say Chivalry but that’s not a virtue but a set of them, so instead I might well choose Kindness.

So now my world will reward or otherwise show that the Kindly are the highest point in the world of Pangaea. It is something of a theme now. But that’s not good enough, because remember that Evil must at various times have its day.

I know many will think this a contradiction to my many disparaging essays against the likes of George Martin. But the thing is that I don’t mind Evil winning in-universe. I’m of the view that if Sauron didn’t destroy Numenor, Arda would be all the more boring for it. The Witch-King had to destroy Arnor, why? Because it is so much more interesting that way.

But where virtue wins out is in the context of the story. The values of the society you craft must be different from our own, and the beliefs must be different. But this doesn’t mean it must be nihilistic. To the contrary. They might believe in dreams more than we do, they might well believe that every man in the village must go out into the world and forge a sword.

What does this believe say about the civilization/village in question? Well for one thing that they are a warrior society and for another that they are a people that value valour.

So make it particular. As said I tend to per every story pick a virtue of the seven classical ones, and then I settle on one philosophical point and then I pick the culture to use as a template and then I get going. A lot of cultural ideas will turn out differently, and as I write I weave together different strands of history, and mix in the philosophical ideas and the virtue in question along with the culture’s values.

So for example you might find that the vast majority of the Beast-Folk of my world, or the nations of Caledonia and even Gallia value their individual clan above all else. You might have the Norvech villages that mark their own villages as more important than themselves.

Why? Because this is what gives them a sense of community and such. This helps motivate their personal decisions. You might have the far more individualistic world of Dragonlance where characters make decisions based on personal ambition. Raistlin dreams of magic and power, Tanis of true love and of course you have the likes of Huma who wants to save the world. These are ambitions. But you look at Huma’s value of Honour, of Chivalry and of love above all else, this is due as much to him as a person as well as the influences on him growing up.

So in-world influences on a character are indeed important. They shape the individual. And it is true for the read world too, I mean look at the likes of Julius Caesar, who was shaped by a century of war and an age of conflict, now ask yourself what sort of man he became later in life.

Now if let’s say you’re like

Thérèse Judeana

and wanting to write a story about love, well that’s the value she’s chosen. The virtues I’ve seen her stories highlight are Charity and Chastity if we’re being honest (the latter in particular kind of fits with her image and her stories’ universe if we’re being honest). This will kind of help to mould the nature of her characters, just as an understanding of psychology will, and a familiarity with symbolism, the symbolism of nations that are used as templates for her story’s nation and so on.

All these factors play a role in layering a story and adding meaning to its details and ideas. But enough about virtues and value systems to a world and story, now onto how to use the failure of virtue to shape your story.

Always ask yourself; why is Aragorn the way he is? Is it because he just is? Nonsense. He turned out the way he is also because of the world around him. So don’t skimp on the details, world-build, world-build, and world-build some more. Also remember that part of this is establishing the values, virtues, ideals and history of the world around them.

Gotham has a personality. As does Middle-Earth, and even Aquilonia. They all have a certain temperament, they all have a personality. No hero just pops up out of the ether. Frodo didn’t. Aragorn didn’t. Conan didn’t. Huma didn’t. Elric didn’t. Geralt didn’t… and so on.

To capture it is important, and once you do this will ultimately shape the hero which you write. Because the thing is he must live in the world you construct.

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When Virtue Fails…

So you must have had in the background of your story something that happened that serves as the inciting event. Arguably it is better to have the world be a flawed place, rather than an idealized one. Certainly there can be idealized elements. Such as say a great order of Knights, awesome so how are they messed up? Or how did they mess up? The reason you should ask yourself these questions is because we live in a fallen world and so should your characters also.

They must wrestle with vices, grapple with demons and struggle against the very worst of sins lest they be dull and uninteresting to people. Certainly they must grapple with these things and triumph if you want to write an uplifting story.

But the thing is that the world must not be perfect so what this requires is an imperfect world. In Tolkien & Howard’s cases they had apocalyptic events that utterly changed the landscape and world. The First Age ended with the death of Beleriand, the Second with the death of Numenor, and the Hyborian Age of Howard begins with the collapse of Acheron which was preceded by the Cataclysm that destroyed the Thurian Continent/Age. Dragonlance’s Krynn had a meteor thrown at Istar the greatest of cities/empires.

So the lesson to be taken from this is that for your world, typically there must have been bad things that happened in the world’s history. Don’t be afraid to have something mind blowingly bad happen. The collapse of Rome, the fall of the Han, the rise of Genghis Khan and so on are all terrible events.

Now for one thing Dark Fantasy might occasionally show these exact events in the midst of taking place, so you can show some of it. I’d demure from showing something like rape onscreen so to speak, but I’m no thought-police and demure from any sort of ‘power’ or ‘influence’ of a sorts over people. I would recommend you think hard on it and what sort of message it sends. That said if its part of a character’s background it can indeed work (not my place or desire to tell you what you cannot write).

Dark Fantasy can open a lot of doors, and you can really offer your characters some really dark choices but the whole idea is that they should make the best possible choices available before them. Where others might be trapped between two choices, the Dark Fantasy hero finds a third way. So he should be clever, he should be honourable and he should be a man of his word who can think outside the box of his world.

So when virtue fails, your hero finds a way (kind of like nature in that way ;) ). So remember that the most uplifting hero isn’t just one that manages to inspire people because of some great virtue, but because they can transcend their own world. But the key is that they do it unconsciously.

None of the greatest of Fantasy/Mythological heroes have EVER turned to the camera and said; ‘golly I just ascended above these other petty mortals!’ that’d be silly. They must absolutely rise above the others unconsciously.

They must shine and overcome all the threats before them, in an unironical way without ever missing a beat and without any kind of ‘self-awareness’ in the Modern sense of the word.

So if your hero fails, if he or she struggles and you feel unsure, don’t. You’re doing great. Keep it up. Keep going. Take heart!

If your story is to function in any sort of way, the relationship between the character and the world around him must be established. He must have a developing bond with the history of his world and must be in turn explored by it. What this means is that it must change and mould him as you write, and as you develop him. Developing him in this context means when you’re still at the ‘character concept’ phase, while the former statement about ‘changing and moulding’ is supposed to take place as you’re writing.

So bear all these lessons in mind, as they are very important to bear in mind and could help to improve your (doubtlessly awesome) story.

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Also Crown of Blood has a new edition, with maps, character bios and more!