Writing Tips & Wattpad Tricks

Tip #14: Incorporating Fantasy Elements

Author: Novel_Worm

Category: Writing Tips

Fantasy novels seem to have a language of their own, filled with political, character-driven and general conflicts, but what facilitates these is a background element—the world, its societal norms, its political system, its magic system, its ethics, religion, language and so much more!

Yes, you guessed right, we're talking about worldbuilding!

In the last article on worldbuilding, we talked about how to create an engaging, believable and realistic world, and in this one, we're going to discuss how to incorporate these elements into your writing.

When I tried to write this article, I was actually stuck—I wondered what it is that makes these elements seem natural on the page—and came up empty. A quick internet search revealed that there are a lot of articles on creating the world, but I couldn't find a single one on using the world created!

That led me to wonder how I world build in my novel and here I present my analysis.

Worldbuilding can be incorporated using a variety of techniques—thoughts of your character, the prose of your story, the dialogue, etc. Let us look at each of these in brief.

1. The Thoughts of the Character

Depending upon when and where your character is, make them notice something about their surroundings that stands out to them, describe it and elaborate on it. For example, the second main character in my story is walking through the palace corridors to the King's study. In the process, he sees the portraits of the previous rulers, particularly the one of the first Queen who liberated the kingdom. This serves dual objectives—showing that it is important to my character to be a good ruler (he's the crown prince) and showcasing the history of the world.

Similar opportunities occur in almost every book. Be careful though, don't go out of the characters' own preferences and personality—don't have them notice something they usually wouldn't have!

2. The Prose

The prose of a book is an excellent place for worldbuilding—and usually a very overused one. This is dangerous territory, because this is where you're most at risk of info-dumping and boring the reader or making it seem like authorial interventions—which are definitely not good.

One way I would suggest to avoid this is adding character or action between explanations. But wait, before you start questioning my sanity, look at this example—the prose from the example I gave you in the previous method:

"Like always, Tristan stopped to admire the beautiful woman. Her posture was stern, her black eyes hard. She had the air of a warrior; her back was straight, her face contemplative and wary at the same time. It seemed to Tristan the she could jump out of the portrait at any time. How could he ever live up to her legacy? He looked up at the portrait with reverence, wishing she could see where they'd gotten Regina to. From a desolate nation—to a superpower; one of the most powerful kingdoms of the Realm."

When I add in that question, it reminds the reader that they are with the main character, seeing the world with his eyes and viewing everything with his lens. This is generally a good idea—you want to filter everything through your character so that the readers have more of an idea of the character and can relate to him/her better, resulting in a deeper, more personal bond.

3. The Dialogue

When I talk about dialogue, I don't mean the, "As you know, Bob," trope, because you should never, I mean NEVER, use that method. It undermines the reader and makes them feel like elementary students, and they don't like that. For those of you who don't know, this refers to when some secondary character talks about something that all the people in the conversation already know but is repeated for the benefit of the reader. This happens ONLY when EVERYONE in the conversation already knows about it. If some character doesn't, then feel free to use this method!

When I talk about dialogue, I'm referring to social and political worldbuilding. Is your story set in a high school? Have the dialogue reflect that with an informal tone and personal references. Is it set in a renaissance period? Make sure the characters speak in a formal way and skirt around problems and use implied conversations more than direct language, which would be more suited to a book set in a contemporary world.

Conclusion and Practice

As usual, all of these things are great, but don't rely on just one of them to set the tone and the world of your story. Each of them have their own benefits and pitfalls, and a great story incorporates little elements into everything—use all of them, but be sure to keep a look out for the do-nots mentioned above. As a writing exercise, maybe you can try incorporating worldbuilding into the following situations, and you can also incorporate conflict using Aria and Laine's advice in Tip #7 (it's great!):

Character: Alissa sees a vase given to her by her mother.

Prose: The vase has runes etched on it.

Dialogue: Alissa had forgotten about it until now, when she's unpacking her boxes in her boyfriend's apartment.

[Yes, I'm aware that they're mostly very mundane examples.]

Feel free to put up some other worldbuilding paragraphs you'd like me to review!

If you still want to ask me anything, write it out and tag me (), and I'll get back to you as soon as I can (and if I can't, Laine and Aria will definitely do a great job solving your queries!)

Want to submit your own Tip? 
Comment in this book and email your entry to avadelauthors@gmail.com. We'll review it, and if we think it's well-written and helpful to the Wattpad community, we'll post it! Your entry may be something you have written previously, even if it is published elsewhere. (=

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