User blog:Taldin/Weekend Worldbuilding - Wherein Lies the Whimsy

One of the things about a good fantasy world is that it has to be different from what we all know and love. It has to be fantastical, if not fantastic - some rules of reality that are bent, or broken. When it evokes a sense of childlike wonder, or divine awe, you're doing it right.

When you're told that you're taking a part in a fantasy, that is a request to suspend your disbelief. Your call to follow the white rabbit down the hole to unreality.

For some of us, keeping it as close to the real world is where we want to be. Grounded in something that feels familiar, we accept small changes, subtle changes, alternative histories, and so we just take the one or two steps into the weird that helps us relate to the world and its characters. Perhaps the unreal part is even hidden in plain sight -- Harry Potter comes to mind.

For others, painting the difference with a giant paint roller of larger than life magical things is what creates a good fantasy. Finding unicorns grazing at the side of the road, a dragon hitched to a post outside the inn? Sure, why not? In these tales, mankind is often the minority, the little player with heart in a big field of bigger monsters, fiends, and friends who were never born human. Magic is as common as air, and those who do not have it are missing out.

Somewhere in between lies the path of the swordsman, the ninja, and the trickster, the folk who don't have the special talents that are magic, but their skills in the mundane make up for their lack. Someone who could be at home in high fantasy or alternate reality, because their strength lies in places that you could pick up in the here and now with the right training and resources.

Our stories are fiction, but they may have some basis in truth; sometimes the truth is what we dream, or what we fear, too.

We begin with what draws us in; we continue where the road leads us.