I read an article on the science-fiction blog io9 about this autistic savant who spent 20 years creating a fictional city called Urville. Here are some pictures that he drew (go and see the rest at this link if you are interested in the full story). In a nutshell, he envisioned everything including its own fictional history and how it was impacted by events in humanity's real timeline.I started to think of how many stories there must be to a place like this, and I wonder if this person will ever get around to writing fiction about it or about the lives of the people who populate it. I think that world-building can be taken to an extreme. I'm sure for the guy that made this city, it felt real to him. For me, world-building is the funnest part of fiction, and it's where I start with my stories. But there are definitely other approaches.Brandon Sanderson seems to focus a lot of attention on unique magic systems for fantasy. For myself, I dislike unique magic systems. They seem to slap me in the face as the author is trying as hard as he can to be "clever", and I hate it when an author tries to be "clever." I think to myself that maybe they'd like it if everyone they met looked at them and said..."Oh you're such a clever writer...look at you being clever" and then just pinched their cheeks.To use a writing analogy...I liken it to using some other word as opposed to "said". The word "said" is fine, don't get rid of it, I like it. But sometimes you get authors who have characters who are "retorting" and "cajoling" and "exclaiming" and "replying" and all that jazz. Just give me plain old "said". I take the same view with "magic". Just give me plain old sorcery with spell books and fireballs that form the backbone of the genre. Don't use a wyvern...just give me a damned dragon. Stop trying to be "different". J.K. Rowling just used wands and spell books. Look at how that worked out.The fantasy and science-fiction that I have studied that makes an impact on me has taken the clever route on the world-building. Ringworld by Larry Niven is one example. The world in the Rose and the Prophet by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman is another. A third is David Eddings' Belgariad. And a fourth is George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire". All of them have amazing worlds. Sure, Eddings had a unique magic system but I liked his world more than the magic system and it really wasn't all that clever. It was just like psionics in Dungeons and Dragons.And then there are those that say that development of character and romance is the most important. My only problem with this is that some people go overboard on character development to where the story is their reactions to what other people are saying and doing and it goes on for hundreds of pages with nothing happening.When you set out to tell a fantasy story, is your first step to envision the character first? Or do you build the world first? or do you come up with a magic-system first? Or do you do something different from these three things that I haven't touched on in this post?
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