Introduction to Worldbuilding and High Fantasy

Many fantasy stories, from Lord of the Rings to Avatar: The Last Airbender, fall into the category of high fantasy. High fantasy is a subgenre categorized by a setting entirely separate from our world, whereas low fantasy is set within our world and other subgenres entail the travel from our world into others. Due to this separation from our world, every aspect of the setting in high fantasy is created by the author through a process known as worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding includes not only the actual structuring of the landscape a story takes place in, but the consideration of a society’s organizations and history. It is key to setting the mood and morals for a story and is not only applicable to high fantasy but any story, from realistic fiction on a more subdued level to science fiction space operas in the extreme.

In this workshop, I will highlight a few key parts of the creation of a new world, while relating them back to the real world, and give lists of questions to consider while creating said new world.

Why Worldbuild
Not only can worldbuilding be very fun, but it can set the mood for your story and transport the reader to a place unlike any they have ever experienced before. One of my favorite parts of worldbuilding is how flexible it is; you don’t have to follow everything I say in this workshop, nor do you have to answer every question that I put forward.

Literal Worlds: Terrain and Maps

When I first heard the term worldbuilding, I thought it meant only the literal ecology and geography of a setting. While both are large parts, they do not make up the whole of worldbuilding. A world’s geography affects every other part of the world; a desert world is unlikely to include a large number of water parks, and if it does, the question of how it is done can be explored and add depth to a world.

In the real world, geography greatly impacts the resources available to those living there. A large diversity of terrains exist within a short distance of each other in the real world, though, as exhibited by Star Wars, this is not necessary in other worlds.

• What is the general geography of your world? Does it vary between place to place or is it largely the same?
  
• What specific parts of the geography would have the greatest impact on the story?
  
• How does the geography affect food resources? What about building and clothing resources?
  
• What is the history of the geography? Why did people originally decide to build there?
  
• What impacts does geography have on the communication in the society, both in short and long distances?
  
• How does the architecture of a society interact with the landscape?
  

Organizations

Whether large, expansive empires or confined familial groups, organizations of people are important to any plot and pondering their inner workings and structure, as well as the everyday effects they have on those within and without them, can provide depth to one’s world.

In the real world, governments, businesses, and large nonprofits come to mind as the organizations that have the most effects on the world as a whole. However, universities, clubs, families, and other such smaller organizations have great impacts on the everyday lives of their members. This is to say, organizations of all sizes matter to a world and a story.

• How large is the organization? What is its purpose? Are there others similar to it, in size or purpose?
  
• Who is in charge of the organization? How are they chosen?
  
• How does the environment surrounding the organization affect its actions and beliefs?
  
• What is the general opinion of the organization, by those within it? What about those outside of it? Why?
  
• How does it interact with other organizations? How does it interact with everyday people and their lives?
  
• Why might someone join this organization? How would they do so? What could make them not want to join?
  
• What are desired or honored roles within the organization? What are rejected roles?
  
• What are aspects of the society that would only be understood by those raised there?
  

Language
One defining characteristic of any given organization is how its members speak, and what aspects of their speech are affected by their membership. Pirates are unlikely to share every part of their language with nobles. Distinguishing between the languages of various organizations can bring further immersion to a story.

Constructed languages are also very popular in high fantasy worldbuilding, though I won’t be touching on them.

• What sorts of idioms are used in the society?
  
• What phrases are adopted by members of the organization?
  
• How do people generally feel about people who talk a lot? What about quiet people?
  
• Is small talk normal? What about deep conversations?
  
• What are stereotypes about those in a given organization?
  

Iconography
Closely related to language is iconography, or the symbols used by various organizations, whether within their own doings or within society as a whole.

Logos are a good example of icons in the real world, as well as internationally accepted symbols such as the International Symbol of Access.

• What are commonly recognized symbols within your world? What organizations do they come from?
  
• What do various colors symbolize?
  
• How can people distinguish between people of various social and economic statuses just by looking at them?
  
• What are the arts like? What about entertainment?
  

Magic

Thus far, much of what I’ve touched on is applicable to not only high fantasy, but worldbuilding in a variety of genres and settings. However, magic is almost always found in fantasy, low or high or anything in between. It’s a staple of the genre, and as such greatly affects any story containing it. Magic may seem simple—your characters can just wave their wands and make their problems go away!—but the consideration of how a magic system affects every aspect of a world, from day-to-day life to international disputes, can take a large amount of effort but bring a sense of realism and logic to your story. On the other hand, magic can add a layer of mystique and mystery to your narrative when neither the characters nor the readers are entirely sure what is possible.

In general, there are two types of magic commonly recognized: hard magic and soft magic. Each has its own pros and cons which I will touch on. It’s important to remember that hard vs. soft magic is a spectrum rather than a binary, and many systems exist somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum.

Hard Magic Systems
With strict limitations and rules, hard magic systems function as tools for introducing more realism to a world. Just as physics and other sciences in our world have laws and constraints, so too does hard magic. Often, hard magic has consequences for its users and cannot be used too much. Adult high fantasy is far more likely to include a hard magic system, with examples being Mistborn and the Kingkiller Chronicles.

Soft Magic Systems
If you want to introduce whimsy and wonder to your story using magic, usually a soft magic system is the way to go. There are few limits on the usage of magic and often the reader is left in the dark as to what is possible with the magic. Examples of soft magic include Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia.

• What can be done with the magic? What cannot be done?
  
• How are those with magic generally treated?
  
• What are the laws surrounding magic?
  
• Where does magic come from? Is it natural or manmade?
  
• What consequences does magic have on its users?
  
• How common is magic? How many people have the ability to use it?
  
• What is the aesthetic of the magic?
  

A Note On Taking Inspiration

When creating new worlds, it’s often easy and fun to take inspiration from real-world cultures and societies. However, it’s important to not just take inspiration from just one such real-world culture and diversify your inspirations. When taking inspiration from a real-world culture, especially one you are not familiar with, it is important to steer away from stereotypes and cliches, as they can be harmful. Research is a big part of worldbuilding and finding a variety of inspirations can make your world and story more interesting.

Conclusion

That’s all from me! While I attempted to touch on many questions to ponder when creating a setting for your new high fantasy story, there are, without a doubt, many things that I left. Whether you choose to write fifty thousand words of a centuries long history for a particular important artifact or simply dive into your plot and see how the world comes about along the way or anything in between,

Thank you so much for reading all of this! I hope you have learned a bit about worldbuilding that you can apply to your stories and wish you the best of luck with the rest of the weekly!

slayyy lio

thank u for this!!! <3

this is amazing =00

a intro to conlanging

introduction

what is the main thing i should know from this workshop?

language is fun! it is creative and constantly changing. when completing this activity, have fun, create and challenge rules, and don’t worry about making it “perfect.”

what is a conlang?

conlang is a shortening of “constructed language” — and it means just that. a language that was created by a person, or people, rather than developing naturally.

what is linguistics?

linguistics is the scientific study of language: how it is structured, how it forms meaning, how it impacts speakers.
this workshop is structured to introduce you to a few of the various subfields of linguistics, as you take from their offerings to form your own delicious soup conglang. i will briefly introduce a few concepts in each subfield, then list questions for you to consider when creating your conlang.

why make constructed languages?

you can make a conlang for many purposes or reasons. some linguists set out to create a universal language, such as esperanto. others are just for personal enjoyment. for our purposes, we’re focusing on conlangs in fiction.
in fiction writing, creating a language for your characters and their cultures can reveal details about them you might not have considered before, as well as enriching the world for the reader.
recently, i used suppletion (when two forms of the same word come from different origins; for example go and its past tense conjugation went, person and its plural people) to make the plural form of person. the direct translation was “eyehaver,” which led me to several questions about the culture of the language. why are eyes so important? when did the significance begin? was there ever a regular version of the plural for person? does the word still register in the minds of the speakers as coming from that origin?
all this to say—thinking about the language your characters speak can give valuable information and depth to them!

what are some things you might consider before creating a conlang for a story?

- what purpose will the language fill in the story?
- how much will the language appear in the story? how will it appear, in isolated vocabulary and phrases or full paragraphs?
- who speaks the language? is the main character a member of that group, or an outsider?
- why and how is the main character exposed to the language in the story?
these are leading questions, meant to inspire other questions of your own.

let’s construct a language!

phonetics and phonology — sound system

ever wondered why different languages sound different? it’s because they have different phonological systems! many things go into the distinct sound of a language, from stress structure to intonation, but for the sake of simplicity we’ll stick to the familiar vowels and consonants, and how they interact.
english has twenty-six letter forms in its alphabet, that on their own and in combinations make up around forty-four sounds (depending on the dialect and accent of the speaker). of these, twenty are vowels and twenty-four are consonants; english is much more complicated phonetically than the twenty-six letter alphabet may suggest. many sounds in english are quite similar in their formation; think of the initial consonants in “thigh” and “thy.” both are created by placing your tongue beneath your upper teeth and blowing, but one is voiced and the other voiceless, which has to do with the vibration of your vocal chords. these two words are example of a minimal pair, where only one sound difference causes a difference in meaning.
one phonological feature found in many languages, but not english, is tone. tone is the pitch and change in pitch of a word. a common example given is found in mandarin, where the same consonant and vowel “ma” is four different words with different tones: mā for mother, má for hemp, mǎ for horse, and mà for scold. to someone whose native language lacks tones, distinguishing between these tones can be difficult, just as distinguishing between “thigh” and “thy” can be difficult for those whose languages do not have difference between the two consonants.
words are formed through combinations of consonants and vowels in order as allowed by a language’s phonological system. english allows consonants to be clustered together, as found in words like strength and squirrel. but only certain sounds can be found at the beginning or end of a syllable (the “ng” found at the end of “thinking” is never the initial consonant in english), and the main body of a syllable must be a vowel. english has a (ccc)v(cccc) syllable structure — vowels are required, and can be preceded by up to three consonants and followed by up to four. a common structure is cvcv, where only one consonant is followed by only one vowel. these differences are easy to spot in writing.

consider…
- what are the most common sounds?
- what are never-used sounds?
- what are some minimal pairs?
- are there tones in your language?
- are there consonant clusters in your language? which consonants can occur at the beginning or end of words?
- how many vowels can there be in a row?
- are there common accents? what are the differences between them?

vocabulary & morphology

words! they’re how we say things, they’re the smallest unit of meaning that can stand on its own. and when it comes to language, they are possibly the most obvious aspect.
morphology is the study of morphemes, the smallest unit of meaning, which include root words (as in “word”) and affixes added to root words (as in the pluralizing -s). affixes are morphemes that usually cannot stand on their own, and include prefixes that come before the root and suffixes that come after the root. morphology also describes how words can be formed from combinations of roots and affixes, including how their lexical category (or part of speech) can be changed. by adding affixes to a root, new words can be created whose structure can clearly be seen / heard.
a language’s vocabulary is highly influenced by its history, location, and culture. which words are common or which meanings have many ways to be expressed can say a lot about a fictional culture and what is important to it — but when it comes to real languages and cultures, the concept that language limits or completely determines what a person can think about has been disproven. while language can change how you think, it cannot stop you from thinking about things that the language does not have words for. english may not have two different words from light and dark blue, but english-speakers can still see the difference. still, it is important to consider why a vocabulary contains the words it does.
other possible traits a vocabulary may have are grammatical gender and loanwords. grammatical gender is another part of a word, designating it into a category that will change how it is modified with morphemes or adjectives. often in human languages, these genders match up with human genders (masculine and feminine) and sometimes neutral, but they aren’t strictly gendered in the way they may seem. loanwords are words that come from other languages, often because of the introduction of a new concept / object whose name is borrowed from the original language’s name for it. for example, karaoke is a loanword from japanese.

consider…
- what are the most common words?
- what are the most common morphemes? most common affixes?
- how large is the vocabulary? are there many function words?
- what are words that have many synonyms?
- how many color words are there? how are number words formed?
- do words have grammatical gender? do they change for any other characteristic (eg color, size, opinion)?
- what words are related? why are they related?
- are there any loanwords from other languages? why did your language not have a word for that before (or did it? if so, what happened to that other word?)?
- how are plurals formed? how do verbs conjugate for tense or mood?
- are there any examples of suppletion?
- how large are your characters’ vocabularies? what caused their vocabulary to be that size and makeup?

syntax — sentence and clause structure

don’t you just love grammar? me too! really, the way grammar is taught and spoken of in schools doesn’t totally match with how linguists consider it. in linguistics, grammar is how words are created and put together into clauses and sentences to create meaning. you already know grammar, because you use it every day to communicate. and the only thing that distinguishes “correct” grammar from “incorrect” is whether people use it and whether they can understand it when used. no one would say “language english the like i,” so it is ungrammatical.
syntax describes the systematic way words are combined to form phrases, clauses, and sentences and the systematic way phrases and clauses are combined to form more complex sentences. this includes word order: in english, sentences follow subject-verb-object order; first is who/what performs the action, second is the action, and third is who/what the action impacts. many languages use subject-object-verb instead.
spoken discourse is a subfield of linguistics concerned with the connection between meaning and utterance in greater context. that is to say, discourse looks at what we say and how we say it. think of ordering food; when we say “could i get a sandwich?” we don’t mean “am i physically able to get a sandwich?” we mean “give me a sandwich.” but of course the latter sentence is extremely impolite; in english, indirectness, often through asking questions instead of giving commands, is polite. spoken discourse also looks at humor and how it is created. many times, jokes are funny because they are unexpected or flout of the four maxims of conversation: quality, quantity, relevance, and manner.
the maxim of quality says everything is, within the speakers knowledge, true. sarcasm, or saying what you do not believe is true specifically to mean the opposite, is an example of “breaking” or flouting the maxim of quality.
the maxim of quantity says utterances should be as informative as they need to be, providing no more or no less information than required. if you see a large group of ducks, saying “there are at least two ducks” flouts the maxim of quantity, because while it is true, it doesn’t capture the degree to which there are more than two ducks.
the maxim of relevance is quite simple: everything said in a conversation is relevant to it. this assumption is helpful when indirectness is considered; often questions are not directly answered, but the answer given can still be inferred to be relevant based on this maxim and on other context.
the fourth maxim is the maxim of manner, which is somewhat of a catchall that says to be clear, brief, orderly, and unambiguous. the sentence “she ate the apples and cut them up.” does not follow the maxim of manner, because the subject would have cut the apples before eating them, rather than after as is implied by the sentence’s order.
these maxims are better considered as guidelines for the listener than rules for the speaker.

consider…
- what is the word order in your language? does the verb, subject, or object come first in a sentence? is the noun or adjective first? does word order even matter?
- how long are sentences? what is the shortest one can be? the longest?
- what words are required to make a sentence?
- is formality / politeness a major part of your conlang? how does it change the way sentences are formed or which words are chosen? how might you speak to your brother, as opposed to your aunt, as opposed to a complete stranger, as opposed to a political leader?
- is indirectness more common or directness? is one considered more polite than the other?
- where does humor come from? are there common jokes? is sarcasm common? what about puns?

conclusion

so that was a lot of information. i was, practically, summarizing everything i know about linguistics from several years of interest and almost a semester in an introduction class, in not very many words. if any of it, a lot of it, flew over your head, that is fine. the main takeaway from this workshop is:
have fun when creating your language. all languages are different; if you want to throw everything i went on about, go ahead! but consider thinking about the questions and enjoy the discoveries about your story they may lead to.
best of luck with the first part of the weekly, and the weekly and session as a whole. now get out there and go do some language!

other sources
lingthusiasm, a podcast that dives deeper into some of the topics i referenced here
youtuber tom scott’s playlist “tom’s language files” includes short, well explained videos about some linguistics features and other language-related topics
pbs’ series otherwords which looks at various word- and language-related topics in short videos

if you have any questions or points you would like me to clarify, please let me know!