I think this quote by Charles de Lint sums up my thoughts about building written worlds perfectly. Because to build a world in fiction you need to have layers. You need to have magic. You need the world to speak for itself, to be everything it needs to be for both character and plot.
At the end of July, I attended LeakyCon and experienced a great workshop with some of my favorite authors including Scott Westerfeld and Holly Black. They spoke all about world building. I think my favorite thing Scott Westerfeld said was to think of a new world like a character. For me, this was something that just made perfect sense! To think of a world like a character means that wants and needs come into play. And when this happens there is something that then drives the plot forward. I can say that this information has helped me tremendously in building my own worlds and making them feel authentic. All of the what ifs that we associate with characters propel stories forward and such questions in world building have the same glorious results. It needs to be a moving machine for it to feel real. It needs to feel alive. In the end, building new worlds can be pure magic. It can make people believe there are characters in fantasy worlds, that moonbeams and stars are objects of love. There's so many ways to go about building worlds as there are to building anything. But by loving them as wholeheartedly as people and books and stories, I think I can make them as real as my own backyard. And most of all, I want people to declare that my worlds are real some day, as real as Hogwarts or Faerie or even the Shire. I want people to be magic because of the worlds I've created.
xoxo
K.K.