Quotes About World-building

There are many reasons why novelists write but they all have one thing in common a need to create an alternative world.

I played lots of fantasy games. I would create these worlds, and I would believe in them.

The problem with most genre fantasy is that it's not nearly fantastic enough. It's escapist, but it can't escape.

I write fantasy because it's there. I have no other excuse for sitting down for several hours a day indulging my imagination. Daydreaming. Thinking up imaginary people, impossible places.

Part of the particular interest and beauty of science fiction and fantasy: writer and reader collaborate in world-making.

("we appreciated the intricately thought-out, detailed universe you've created for your story." ~Arthur A. Levine Books (publishers of The Harry Potter series.)) about my book!

Fleshing out a world, creating and playing a host of secondary character, arbitrating rules and crafting scenarios can be difficult tasks. Nonetheless, the chance to make a dream come alive is well worth the trouble. When the other characters carve their niches in the world, you give them the world itself.

The point of fiction is to cast a spell, a momentary illusion that you are living in the world of the story

Good fiction creates its own reality.

What I like to do is write the story, see where it takes me -- and then check out the details I don't know. When I first started writing, there were a lot of things about the world that I understood but didn't have the vocabulary for -- and even more things that I just had no idea about. For instance, do you know all the parts of a door frame? Or what flowers bloom in the spring in alpine climates? There's a surprising amount of homework involved in writing a book.