The villain teased above is the mad philosopher, Overman, an embodiment of Nietzsche’s tightrope walker who ironically dwells in the abandoned, dilapidated subway of the city of Nymphis. The old rail and bunker, called “The Rabbit Hole,” is key to the story “Masks: The Unmercenaries,” though it took some time to conceive of this dark hutch of villainy.
The inspiration came originally from a search of “abandoned locations” which yielded a list of beautiful derelict monuments and establishments that had become works of art and even tourism. The throne room of the Rabbit Hole was conceived after watching a documentary on an underground, nuclear-grade estate of vice.
This was just one facet of Nymphis, one facet of imagining and illustrating the world of my book. This process of world-building is enjoyable but is as well laborious in order to paint an immersive world that exists not only in our minds, but in the minds of our readers.
For my fellow world-builders out there, I’d like to share some insight I’ve employed through my own journey of sculpting my book’s world:
Lore & Backstory
“Masks: The Unmercenaries” began as a series of featurette chapters of characters. Before it had a central plot, it was a compilation of vigilantes from different backgrounds, fighting and living in different parts of the cities. Some of the structure and elements of those chapters and characters survived, but many didn’t.
But the exercise helped me craft Nymphis, to explore parts of the city I might not otherwise explore without writing a bit of backstory & lore of characters that wouldn’t even show up.
I think of Skyrim and Ark in this regard, of sprawling worlds that have an impressive collection of literature that lay out backstory of such a fun worlds. The books of Skyrim reference the pantheon of the NPCs, the history of Skyrim’s locations, allude to the dealings of the characters you meet. Ark accomplishes this too, laying out random logs of survivors for the player to collect, each entry expounding on how various perspectives see the island and the dinosaurs upon it.
When one is world building, I think it important to test the boundaries of the world, even if those parts are never directly used or referenced. Unconsciously, as a writer, you’ll be aware of how far your world goes, and invariably parts of that unused expanse will bleed into your novel or serve to be used as material for a later chapter or book.
Good Illustration Can Be Brief
I think of the Harry Potter series when I think of incredible illustration. While we all had the movies to help us in visualizing what J.K. Rowling was putting to paper, the author’s description of Hogwarts incredibly describes what the films set out to do.
For example, see our first view of Hogwarts in the following description provided by owlcation.com:
The narrow path had opened suddenly onto the edge of a great black lake. Perched atop a high mountain on the other side, its windows sparkling in the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers.
“No more ‘n four to a boat!” Hagrid called, pointing to a fleet of little boats sitting in the water by the shore. Harry and Ron were followed into their boat by Nevlille and Hermione.
“Everyone in?” shouted Hagrid, who had a boat to himself, “Right then— FORWARD!”
And the fleet of little boats moved off all at once, gliding across the lake, which was as smooth as glass. Everyone was silent, staring up at the great castle overhead. It towered over them as they sailed nearer and nearer to the cliff on which it stood.
“Heads down!” yelled Hagrid as the first boat reached the cliff; they all bent their heads and the little boats carried them through a curtain of ivy which hid a wide opening in the cliff face. They were carried along a dark tunnel, which seemed to be taking them right underneath the castle, until they reached a kind of underground harbour, where they clambered out on to the rocks and pebbles.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
J.K. Rowling doesn’t go overboard with her thesaurus or even set out to describe every inch of Hogwarts. There is instead details that either pair or juxtapose for a really powerful image. She uses the narrow path to blast out the expanse of the castle and it’s large lake, and then pairs the sparkling windows of the towers to the starry sky, as though making the castle heavenly.
In each paragraph, there are no more than two sentences that paint the image of Hogwarts, and most of the exterior castle’s description is accomplished in just a few paragraphs.
This is not to say that all descriptions in world building must be brief or simple, but it does free us from a load of expounding too much, leaving the audience little room to imagine for themselves. We have to realize that the world and characters we imagine in our heads and hearts don’t have to look, sound, or feel absolutely congruent to how our audience imagines them. We want the audience to feel drawn in by the choice details we use, giving them the freedom to almost create for themselves in the story rather than force them into tight parameters of description.
Know Your Tether
A temptation in world building is to blast out your world’s map as wide as you can and create a diverse looking world.
But great fantasy genres such as Lord of the Rings and Star Wars (yes, I did just call Star Wars fantasy) have a kind of tether or “home base” that are well developed, sometimes even more illustrated and detailed than the rest of the sprawling out universe. For Lord of the Rings, I argue this is the Shire whereas Star Wars is Tatooine. Both have a “homey” feel, especially given that these are the origins of our protagonist. They are the starting point of our adventures and provide us not entirely with a “neutral” palette, but one digestible enough to get us started before we hop into the wilder parts of the universe.
These tethers are either places our story and its characters return to over and over, or are given a special highlight with the amount of time we spend in them.
They function as reference points for the rest of the book, to show the diversity of our world with their simplicity and perhaps even modesty. They creep us into the universe, beginning to show us what the world we are entering into looks like so we’re not totally surprised when things get bizarre. They are places we may even become fond to, that we are excited to return to in the narrative because they fill us with a sense of nostalgia or “Sehnsucht”–a longing for a place we haven’t been.
Come to My City of Nymphis
And with that, I’d like to invite you all to my city of Nymphis!
My goal is to keep sprawling out this city through short story, and perhaps even one day plugging my audience into the city through photos of them wearing masks or their own contributions to the vigilante-plagued world.
You can dive into this world of masked crime fighters NOW and get yourself ready for a Halloween mood by picking up an Amazon Kindle copy today!
Click the cover below to dive in and become a hero (or villain)!
Also, be sure to check out my new gallery page to see and share promotional art!
Konstantin Träumer 