How to World Build by Collaborating with Your Readers
My new redefinition of the fantasy genre spectrum
What does a Japanese magical realism bestseller and a high-fantasy spoof have in common? Let’s find out!
My former view of the fantasy spectrum
In my mind, magical realism and high fantasy are the two opposite ends of the fantasy genre continuum. High fantasy features epic adventures in richly-imagined, fictional lands. At the other end of the spectrum is magical realism, where the setting is the real world.
High fantasy books dedicate thousands of pages to creating a detailed imaginary world to become a playground for readers. Magical realism stories have no world to build, since they takes place in a world we already know.
However, my current magical realism read in juxtaposition with the last epic fantasy novel I read, made me rethink that assumption. On the surface, The Dragon Squishers and Before the Coffee Gets Cold couldn’t be more different—but the way they handle world building is surprisingly similar. That similarity sketches a roadmap for alternative approaches to world building in fantasy fiction.
Economical High Fantasy
My go-to example of high fantasy is The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. Jordan’s lovingly crafted and coherent world-building details flesh out an epic world of varied imaginary lands. Each nation has unique people, traditions, culture, customs, cuisine, style of dress. Jordan details the scrollwork on a carved chair, the embroidery on a coat sleeve, the flavor of a drink. This level of complex world building fills thousands of pages across fourteen novels.
Is it possible to set an epic adventure in an imaginary world without getting into sartorial details and punch recipes? Scott McCormick’s The Dragon Squishers proves it’s so.
Recently I wrote about the role of parody in The Dragon Squishers. I discussed how McCormick stitched together his fantasy world from elements of famous series in the genre that most readers would already know:
The choice was so darn economical…LotR is such a well-known fantasy icon…Dragon Squishers wasted no time building a detailed fantasy world by summarizing its backstory as a parody of Middle Earth: Lord Smoron, the halfling, Elbo, legendary cufflinks in place of the One Ring…any [fantasy] reader could easily get the gist.
McCormick leveraged the massive influence of LoTR on our cultural storytelling subconscious to do much of the heavy lifting in his story world. He rapidly constructed a sprawling setting out of LoTR memories from his readers’ minds. The parody landed the story firmly in the humor subgenre of fantasy. It also facilitated strong focus on character development and provided a logical plot foundation that lends an inevitable, “feels right” satisfaction the story.
The Dragon Squishers demonstrates how sparse world building can be effective in epic fantasy. On the opposite side off the spectrum, is there a role for detailed setting in magical realism, a genre known for minimal world building?
Deeply Imagined Magical Realism
Little did I know last week, when I was writing a post on the importance of rules in fantasy fiction, that a masterclass in manipulating rules to sculpt a story was about to arrive on my Kindle.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi immediately intrigued me with its premise: a coffee house in Tokyo where patrons can travel back in time. The catch is, travelers must return before their coffee goes cold. What a clever and elegant take on magical realism.
I’ve only read the first chapter of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, but I could already sketch a picture of Kawaguchi tiny Tokyo coffee house. I know where the cash register is and have counted the chairs and table. I know the regular customers are and even their usual outfits.
Kawaguchi doesn’t need to paint a picture for readers of what a coffee house in Tokyo is. Few words are needed to call the entire setting of the novel to mind. Everything he describes is already part of the modern reader’s daily life.
As such, Before the Coffee Gets Cold isn’t a doorstopper like a Robert Jordan novel. Yet Kawaguchi takes the time to engage with the reader. Together, he and his reader build a detailed and highly graphic setting. It’s a treat to be there.
As delightful as the setting is, the true magic of the fantastical world is built from rules.
The first rule of time travel is laid out by the title. Time travelers must return to the present before the coffee gets cold. However, the rules hardly end here. As more rules are piled on, the would-be time traveller grows increasingly annoyed, anxious, and grumpy. The process of understanding the time travel rules creates the most elegant combination of world building and characterization I’ve read in a long time. Not a single word is wasted.
Though nothing but rules and everyday furnishings make up this exquisitely crafted, one-room fantasy world, I have the same feeling of connection and deep knowledge with its occupants and the intricate texture of their lives that I would after a thousand pages.
Does that mean economy in world building should be the fantasy writer’s goal? Are all those thousands of pages in Wheel of Time wasted? I don’t think so.
My redefined fantasy spectrum
Before encountering The Dragon Squishers and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, I believed the spectrum of fantasy genre ran from magical realism to high fantasy. For me as a writer, that’s no longer the most useful way to picture the continuum.
Instead, I see the fantasy genre as a spectrum where, on one end, writers do the imagining for the reader. Writers take responsibility for building a coherent and deeply detailed world, then open the doors and invite the reader to come explore. Reading this type of fantasy is an incredible adventure into setting that has already been imagined for you. It’s like going on vacation. Some of my very favorite reading experiences have been with this type of fantasy.
On the other end of the fantasy spectrum are reads where the writer opens the door to a world that’s only partially created. The invitation to the reader is to collaborate, to call on the knowledge and experience they already have to build a world that’s half the author’s creation, half the reader’s.
The magic of reading is always to bring our own experiences to what the author has imagined. However, stories like The Dragon Squishers and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, leave far more up to the reader than fantasies at the opposite end of the spectrum. Readers receive only a little guidance, and are encouraged to bring more of themselves to the read.