Presenting a fictional world

This is called "worldbuilding", and there are various ways to go about it. The only wrong way is the one that fails to convince the reader. You might check the Fantasy & Sci-Fi subforum, or look for books on writing F&SF for help.

You can do the alternate reality angle, where Earth is basically still Earth, but with a twist: Rome never fell, or magic is real, or the Beatles never took off. So long as you tip the reader off to what's different, you won't need to redraw the map or rewrite (too much of) the history books.

Or you can do the made-up world, one with distinct parallels to Earth but with its own geography and history and so forth. It's tougher, true, but you get total control over your world this way. And if you focus just on the stuff that affects your novel (and don't disappear down the rabbit hole redesigning the atom), it shouldn't be too overwhelming.

As for things like distances... well, unless it's pivotal to the plot to know precisely how many kilometers it is between City A and City B, feel free to fudge it, or refer to it by travel time and/or inconvenience: "You want to go all the way to Betaville? That's two weeks by train - if you can even make it through the passes this time of year!" Have a rough map sketched out for yourself, and keep notes (so that Betaville doesn't end up relocating from a remote northern mountain outpost to a tropical south-westerly seaside harbor), but don't get too hung up on exacting details.

Good luck!

The reason it's easier to portray travel in video games and films is because of jump cuts. You could use this sort of transition in your writing, but it might be awkward and hinder flow. Most books I've read that take place in other worlds are accompanied by illustrated maps, so it's easier to use "they travelled from X to Y" within that world. Even without a map, it's not a difficult thing to have someone mention a distance without specifying actual miles/kilometers ("that'll take a month there and back").

If you use the Real World model, would it be more of an alternative history or a parallel universe? The Hunger Games uses the vague outline of Real World United States to establish geographical boundaries, allowing readers to identify District 12 as being somewhere around the Appalachian Mountains. Another YA trilogy, The Montmaray Journals, creates a fictional island in Real World Europe during WWII. Even True Blood fits under this category (and is possibly closer to your intentions).

Creating an entirely different world seems like it may fit your story better, but that's really for you to decide. Do you want to make all the rules, or do you want to adjust reality?

Mention the travel time. 'Bob felt like the walking dead at the end of his 13 hour flight from Xyzistan to Nolandia.' Or similar. How does the journey affect the character?

Read some fantasy. Happens all the time and of you build your world right is less than vague


Also - when did metrics become a burden? I learnt it at 5 (though I tend toward metric/imperial depending) But you measure tine/distance in your world?? How else? Three weeks later they....

Not 100% confident I understand the problem tbh

Mr Flibble said:

Read some fantasy. Happens all the time and of you build your world right is less than vague


Also - when did metrics become a burden? I learnt it at 5 (though I tend toward metric/imperial depending) But you measure tine/distance in your world?? How else? Three weeks later they....

Not 100% confident I understand the problem tbh

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I don't think I understand at all. Worldbuilding isn't especially hard, you just write in the apropriate details and how the world effects the characters in the novel. Now, finding the right amount may not be easy depending on who's writing, but it isn't all that hard either.

The first thing to remember is this:
This is your world. You must believe in it or no one else will!

TheWordsmith said:

The first thing to remember is this:
This is your world. You must believe in it or no one else will!

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That's the second thing to remember. The first thing to remember is that all novels are "fictional."

caw

I would ask - just how are they travelling? Most of your readers (I assume) would be familiar with travelling by foot, car, train and probably jet-plane. They'll be able to roughly work out how far things are from the time elapsed. Now, unfamiliar means of travel (horse, airship) might need to have it spelt out clearer just to highlight how far/fast they've traveled.

I'm not sure what the problem is here, Zenith.

I see you haven't written anything before, but we must also read if we wish to write and from the issues raised in your post I can only assume you have not read novels of the type you're thinking of writing.

I haven't had any coffee yet so only 20% of my brain is working... but your question confuses me a little. Sounds like to me that your discomfort isn't in world building as much as written transitional sentences.

How do you describe getting from A to B in a smooth, well-written way that doesn't confuse the audience.

I think that's hard to answer without knowing more about your writing style.

My suggestion would be not to worry about video games or movies but read adventure books. Captain Blood. Tale of Two Cities. Any of the Dirk Pitt novels. They have tons of transitions and you can see how the writers manage it.

Giving advice here --

You can use the outlines of the present world and give everything a new, made-up name. Here. Or use some part of the real world that will not necessarily ring bells. Here, here, or here. Cut the maps into pieces and recombine them in novel ways. GIMP is a free program that will let you do this.

Lookit some maps people have made of fictional worlds. here, here, here, here. You can do the same thing. (See how they've mapped just the sections of their world that they need.)

And as everyone has said, you can think of distances in terms of miles, furlongs, versts or you can think of distance in the time it takes you to get from one place to another.

Or you can just be vague. Folks talked about 'Far Cathay' for a thousand years without saying, "Far Cathay, 8000 miles away by sea or six months sailing time." Lots of folks post their vacation pictures on Facebook without explaining how long it took to get from Yellow Knife to Frostbite Falls or how many kilometers clocked up on the car.

You are endlessly free and powerful in creating your fictional world.

Now you should go start writing.

I agree with what most people have posted. You can just tell the reader about how long the travel took and they can piece the rest together themselves. They don't need to know that it was like traveling from the UK to India, they will be able to identify with 16 hours on a plane just as easily.

Most books set in fantasy worlds contain a map. You could do that as opposed to worrying about mentioning the exact distances traveled.

Zenith667 said:

Hello,

For my fictional novel, I intend to set my protagonists into a fictional world, where supernatural is somewhat ordinary, but you have other names for countries and regions, and people with a specific religion.

The problem that appears to be, for me, is that if you need to move characters around the world, it is much more vague if you have to invent country names and specify the distance, say, in hundreds of kilometers, than say, "they traveled from UK to India" - the reader may imagine a map, where UK is and where India is, and doesn't have the burden of metrics for distance. Certainly, the latter would be much more meaningful to the reader than saying "From country ABC to country DEF, X hundred km!"

I find it much more easier in movies and video games to present a totally fictional world, where even the map of the world can be totally different.

I'm also thinking as a possibility to use our world but present it as a fictional world, i.e. to have people traveling "from UK to India", but anything else to be totally different than the world as we know it. It might be awkward.

Do you guys have an idea which way would be better?

Thanks!

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Well, if you've got Supernatural stuff what about Magical stuff? you could do something lis apparition which JKR did in HP.

Zenith667 said:

I'm now thinking about... if you have an invented religion (or deities) in your story, and you have a section when someone talks / reads about them, such as, about "the beginning", I am wondering how it would go with convincing the reader...

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I wouldn't shoehorn "In the beginning, the god Jytaquel cut off his own head and that became the world" into the story unless there's a reason for this to come up. Because you're right, devoid of support from the story, this sounds like any other creation myth out there.

But let's say that in your world, there are twin seas, which are round, and a dry valley beyond them and the Teeth Mountains just beyond that. All this comes out naturally because the characters are traveling to the mountains. Then at some point, you could mention the origin story, and the readers realize the world really might have formed over a god's skull.

Perhaps I can imagine a smarter story, but still, I'm worrying the reader would say "what a bullshit!". now, whether the told / read story is true in the novel, or simply the characters believe it - it may not make big difference here.

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Depends on how it's presented.

Zenith667 said:

I am still not sure I understand fully the fact with "convincing the reader". I mean, besides inconsistencies or gaps / lack of details.

I'm now thinking about... if you have an invented religion (or deities) in your story, and you have a section when someone talks / reads about them, such as, about "the beginning", I am wondering how it would go with convincing the reader... First and foremost, if I get to read (now, we're in the real world) the Sumerian stories of creation, they would sound ridiculous. Perhaps I can imagine a smarter story, but still, I'm worrying the reader would say "what a bullshit!". now, whether the told / read story is true in the novel, or simply the characters believe it - it may not make big difference here.

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First off, keep in mind that - for the most part - readers want to believe in your story. It's like a puppet show: you know it's just fancy socks with googly eyes in front of a painted backdrop, and the audience knows it, but for the duration of the show there exists an unwritten agreement that everyone will believe it's real. The world created on the back of a giant turtle rising from the primordial ocean? Fine by me. Magic as a disease transmitted by bugbites? Sure, whatever works. They want to enter your world. They want to suspend disbelief. So they sign on to this agreement when they buy a ticket to the puppet show that is your story, and so long as you keep them interested, they'll usually go along for the ride. Now, this agreement breaks down when someone (usually you, the writer) screws up and makes it obvious that it's just socks and painted backdrops, by fumbling the puppets or rippling the curtains or messing up your lines - you break internal world consistency (wait a second - that character was wearing bug blocker, and suddenly they're levitating stuff! How did they git bitten by the magic mosquito?), or don't provide enough of a sense of world for the reader to buy into it, or don't give them anything or anyone worth caring about so they get bored and start picking at the edges of the sets. Now, you're never going to please or convince every single reader; I love me a good firebreathing dragon, for instance, but some science nerds might be too hung up on the physical impossibilities to accept them. That's okay. Don't write for them, and don't spend pages and pages of wordcount explaining every little thing to try to convince them to stay in their seats: the people bought a ticket to a puppet show, not a university lecture. But you can usually hit a nice happy medium, where stuff is happening and the world is unfolding alongside the story.

Any reader who picks up a book thinking "This is bullcrud!" or "FAKE!" is a literary troll and should find another outlet for their cynicism. Once the reader's past the front cover, however, it's up to you to keep them turning pages. Your best bet here is to have a few good betas to let you know if you're succeeding before you unleash your story into the wild, either as a query or as a self-published title. (Believe me, I wish more self-publishers used competent betas... I've read some good ones, and I've read some very, very not good ones...)

Hopefully, some of that made a little sense.

ETA - In fantasy stories especially, whether or not a creation myth is true can have a big bearing on the story. To take the turtle-world idea: if it's just symbolic, it can be simply another fireside tale. But if the world really is resting on the back of a great cosmic turtle, and if the Forces of Evil can actually harm or kill that turtle...

Zenith667 said:

I am still not sure I understand fully the fact with "convincing the reader". I mean, besides inconsistencies or gaps / lack of details.

I'm now thinking about... if you have an invented religion (or deities) in your story, and you have a section when someone talks / reads about them, such as, about "the beginning", I am wondering how it would go with convincing the reader...

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Go back and read a fantasy that you really enjoyed, in particular one which really make you see/feel/imagine the places and people. Observe how the author made you believe in these things. Re-reading and observing will help you understand this more than anything someone can tell you *about* it.

Read Tolkien, Hobbit or Lord of the Rings trilogy, and tell me how far they traveled.

Yup, you need to do a lot more reading before you're ready to write this.

Jeff

There are people who do the setting first.
There are folks who write a bloody six-book series to have an excuse to invent Elvish.
There are horror writers for whom the poorly developed characters are mere victims to his dark mythologies.
If you are one fascinated by intricate maps, if you bear Cthulu within you, then this is a great path to creation.

If not so much that ...
Another way to approach story is to imagine characters
and write about their hopes fears desires angers needs weaknesses.
Then let the story that emerges determine whether the God Fornuth has one head or two and exactly how far it is to Tipperary.

See Jemisin's works for supernatural settings that hold a human story in cupped hands.

Zenith667 said:

I've just read this and this and this.

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Thanks for the helpful links! I personally find world-building a bit of a challenge, but only because I tend to obsess over details

I would echo most of the advice here. Also, check out /r/worldbuilding on reddit. The people there are scary good at any world building topic you can think of.

Zenith667 said:

For my fictional novel

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Apart from the worldbuilding... remember that all novels are by definition fictional.