My fictional kingdom didn't start out as a fantasy world.
One of the keys to fantasy fiction is world-building. You can see this in the fantasy and sci-fi fandoms that dominate regional and national conventions (you can't really call them "Comic Book" gatherings...they're so much more than that now). Fans know the lore and history of their worlds, so much so that George R.R. Martin's world has its own atlas, encyclopedia, and history book.
The Kingdom of Llanfyllin didn't start out as a complete world for me; I didn't even know I was writing a fantasy book in the first place, to be honest. Dylan's Treasure was conceived to be a short story about a prince taking part in a knight's tournament. His home, Macnylleth, and his father's capital city, Llanfyllin, were picked off a map in an old atlas because they sounded like fictional places from a fairy tale land.
As the story grew, I knew I needed a complete nation, so I took the map of Wales and redrew the borders to create eight provinces. I made the Cambrian Mountains much more of a natural barrier than their real-life counterpart, and I made several of the cities far more substantial than they are in the real world, Llanfyllin more so than any other. My grand capital is a sleepy little country village in the U.K. even today.
You'll never find a year or a reference to a calendar in my world. They keep time by the sun and the moon, whose passing is recorded by the burning of special candles cast for this purpose. I do refer to real nations—England, Scotland, Ireland, France—but there is no Great Britain or United Kingdom in my world. They are, in my timeframe, independent nations, and their rulers do not correspond to any historical figures, lest their own actions conflate with those of my imagination.
I'll talk more about the geography of the nation after the release of the next book, The Spring of Llanfyllin, but I can say this much without spoiling the surprise: while the action of Dylan's Treasure is mainly limited to the city of Llanfyllin, the second book takes us all over the kingdom—not just Llanfyllin and Macnylleth, but Aberystwyth, Caernarvon, Holywell, and Ruthin, just to mention a few places.
The necessity of the expansion of the kingdom to encompass the new story led me to think about not only the geography of the kingdom but the history of the land as well. My Wales has always been closely allied with England but always a separate and distinct nation as well. Creating an alternative history has enriched the story and drives much of the lore in the second book.
In addition to place and history, the development of the first story led me to the discovery of magic, another unexpected event from my original conception. I'll be back on Wednesday to talk about that idea and how it expands in the second book, as well.
Comments