Worldbuilding: How to Write Fantasy Setting Descriptions
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
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In today's video, I share my 7-step process for writing immersive setting descriptions in a fantasy novel.
⏲️ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Introduction
00:20 - Define your purpose
01:42 - Filter through character
02:58 - Focus on the vivid & unique
05:00 - All 5 senses
06:39 - Progress plot & character
07:31 - Weave delivery systems
08:35 - Make the mundane specific
09:56 - Example setting description
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Some awesome advice. Balancing world building with NOT boring your readers while still conveying the character's interactions with that world, is tough sometimes.
Impressionism focuses not on making a 1 to 1 accurate to real life painting, but to convey the impression that the painter gets of the thing they are looking at. Your description of filtering through the character and focusing on the vivid reminded me of that.
Also the footage in this thing is rad. Awesome way to bridge the worlds of written description and cinematography
Cheers - was a lot of fun trying this new direction
Thank you for swallowing seawater for this video xD
Filter through character was the best reminder for me - rather than focusing on what you want the reader to see, remembering what your character currently cares about will be what they notice in their surroundings.
Such a great piece of advice. It is amazing how much depth it adds to the story when you filter through your character.
You weren’t kidding about the swallowing seawater thing 😂😂
Yoooo, describing clouds that are about to rain as swollen is gold... especially if its a threatening or post threat moment.👌🏽
Descriptions of surroundings is one of those things I don't always remember to include, so this should help! Thanks, Jed 💙
You're welcome!
Thank you! I thought I was the only one to have crappy descriptions in my first draft. I loved the rewording you used with the bland descriptions. Mostly, it's just nice to know I'm not alone with leaving descriptions for the editing process. 😊
Glad it was helpful!
I always struggle to write taste and smell sometimes. My current book is in a snowy area so I tend to focus only on temperature and sounds. Thanks for the advice!
Can you do a video on how to introduce characters or make better characters because all mine seem to be a ripoff from Game of Thrones....not that I am mad as G.O.T was my inspiration along other things 😂
Am I the only one who suddenly wants a book about Lucian?
Thanks once again, Jed. It is also useful to sometimes temporarily withhold the setting from the reader at the start of a scene to focus them on fear and emotion, or a conversation. Some situations are intense enough that we miss the details of our surroundings until later. This can also be used to set up the atmosphere before the setting reveal.
When your videos drop I get a little burst of inspiration for my story through the lens of your advice.
Your commitment to making these videos shine is exceptional. Keep up the great work!
Cheers Mike!
This is quite literally how I was gonna start my story
Awesome to see the Aussie beaches mate and awesome video you’re killing it
While you were talking about the sensual details outside of vision and sound I had to think about the book I'm reading (Harry HArrison's Eden Trilogy). He does a phantastic job in using all of the senses in his descriptions. Especially his use of taste baffles me every time. In "West of Eden" he has somewhat of a sub-plot dedicated to the sensetion the main character feels when eating, starting off with "a hunter has to go without water for a day" over his reluctance to eat the strange foot the Yilané feed him up to the point when he gets sick from eating roasted meat because he's not used to it anymore after all those years away from his tribe. It makes not only the world but also the character more believable in my eyes and I have to say, I want to use smell and taste more often myself from now on.
Great video! Thanks for the tips. I also love that you added those scenes at the beach 😄
I admire your commitment to the videos.
This video has really showed me areas i need to improve on. Thanks again
Another key takeaway from this video is that to be a good writer, it's important to get up from your keyboard and experience the world for yourself. Jed, as a writer, went on a trip and because of that could write a beach description far better than someone who had never been. That's why I say that writers who live life are always better. This happened to me when I took a trip to Wyoming and could describe a setting with furious winds and bleak emptiness around me. Great video, as always!
Another great advice. Big thanks
What a great video Jed. One of your best. I love how you walked us through the 7 steps than presented us with an example. Great work and as always, great advice!
This example was great!
Glad you enjoyed it, Luis!
Hey Jed! Fantastic video! Will definitely be applying this in my own writing! A video idea I just thought of is one on writing groups and your thoughts on them and how they should be formatted. Have a great week!
Great tips! Going through my chapters and writing notes do my next draft and I’m noticing how many marks I’ve made that say “setting!” Very helpful!
Great video. I am terrible at describing pretty much everything, and this helped me a lot. Also, the background footage was great.
Glad it helped!
You used the name Lucien, and I immediately started thinking about 9 eyes. 😆
IYKYK
Great video, Jed! I've been watching your videos while I work, and have been getting all kinds of ideas to make my first novel as good as it can be. Thank you for all your help and for your inspiring content. It's making a world of difference.
That's awesome to hear :)
When I heard your examples for descriptions, I was very impressed by your vocabulary. Do you have any advice how to get a vocabulary that is vast, and also fitting for what you are trying to say?
I think it comes down to just reading and writing a lot, and also googling a word whenever I don't understand it.
One author who I believe does "here is where they are, here is the action" really well is British author Brian Jaques. The examples I am giving come from chapters 2 and 4 of his book The Sable Quean (yes, correct spelling) and take place at the foot of an extinct seaside volcano.
"Waves broke endlessly on the sands of Mossflower's western shore, with the lonely hissing sigh that is the music of the sea. Late noon sun was still warming the beach above the tideline, where the mountain of Salamandastron towered over all."
And
"The endless hiss of breaking waves was softened to a weary sigh by the ebbing tide. Gulls wheeled and soared over the dawn-lit sea. Clear skies and a rapidly blooming sun predicted another fine summer day."
Great example
But ... what if ... what if my character WANTS to go around and lick everything?
Don't let me stop you
It sounds obvs nowi think about it, but limiting the information is actually a great immersive method. We know that humans can only process 5-7 pieces of info anyway, so it makes you feel like you're there and thats what you notice👍🏼
being out on location really helped with the immersion
Believe me, I felt very immersed when that water went up my nose
Interesting, so how do I memorise all the seven important approaches in an easy way? 🤔
Good advice!
Reached 31k out of 50k for my first project. I need to go back and put some world building into a few scenes.
5:58 I guess one of your relatives is named Anakin, am I right? 😝
It goes everywhere...
Is Jed trying to build a career as an author or as an actor/model? Haha, great video!
😂
Could you do a video on how to write a novel for someone with ADHD? I have focus issues and have a tendency to continuously skip through scenes a little too quick or spend too long on some (so the pacing is off). I have such an imaginative brain but struggle to put my fantasy world on paper cohesively 😊
I have ADHD and it is my huge honor to tell you to do your own work and get over it.
@@arzabael God awful advice, you don't just "get over" ADHD. Your experience with a disorder neither makes you an expert of it nor makes it easy to manage for other people who have it as well.
The trick OP, is to just go over everything over and over again. You'll lose focus, like always, just keep coming back to the scenes you've already written and rework them as many times as necessary. It may take you twice as long to finish your book but you'll finish it eventually.
This was very useful to me. My story focuses on a ship of aliens who are all part of a government program to introduce species who never developed FTL to the galaxy by having them do menial labor on the interstellar telecommunications infrastructure. (It is totally benevolent and definitely has nothing to do with the fact that the super advanced species all have too nice of UBI to come piece together prefab antennas and the robotics industry engages is blatant price fixing so they can't even automate crap)
So im definitely going to be factoring in the differences between how a Monkeylike alien and an Earwiglike alien interpret environments.
Also will be doing even more of the "more than sight" thing, since many of the characters have more or less than five senses.
In my own writing, I try to use descriptions that the character would use themselves, and to use what they notice in their surroundings as a way of conveying their character. Another thing I try to do is to add sensory descriptions that’s not just visual, it helps making it feel more real if you don’t just write “the city was large and bustling with activity”, but also add the sounds, the smells (horse dung, woodsmoke, cooking, a brief burst of perfume as a well-dressed woman passes by), even sensations like stepping into a puddle and suddenly becoming very aware that your boot has a hole in it somewhere.
Commenting for the algorithm
Legend
sorry, but my first thought was that a scribe of a city would not know about tides at all.
Mmm, maybe a good point
Why not? I grew up in a landlocked state without the internet and I knew about the tides, we learned about them very early on in our school.
First?
Damn- you beat me :)
Second ¿
Honestly, one thing I struggle with when writing fantasy is horses and riding. As someone who got to sit in the saddle of a Shetland pony when I was 4 as my only experience with riding a horse, it’s difficult to imagine what it actually feels like and the little details I could have added when writing. Honestly, I’m considering asking some nearby equestrian centre if they’d let me hang out with their horses and help out in the stable for a day, so I’d get some actual experience.
As an aside, I’d suggest that Lucien would worry about getting food. If you’re not used to spending time in nature, nature in and of itself can seem a bit frightening and threatening. Sure, you may know in theory how to fish, but can you actually make a fishing rod yourself and catch something? In an unfamiliar environment, how can you know what is edible and what isn’t? Another thing people often do is that they worry about the scariest possible wildlife in that area, so someone on a beach might think of sharks, whereas someone in deep pine forests might worry them about wolves or bears behind every tree. They don’t have the same idea of what’s likely to happen and what isn’t as someone who’s used to that area would.
I don't know. Jesus. Good advice. Poor execution. You lost me at - Water trickled down his throat, filling it with the tang of salt… Trickled is far too passive for this situation. Then - Horrible dryness clogged his throat… Dryness, hang on, he’s just had a mouthful of salt water. There is so much wrong with this. Too many superfluous adjectives - Gritty sand, really. Sand is gritty by nature. Too many words added for effect here rather than precision of meaning. A modern trend in writing. Why not just : "Salt water drenched his face, flooding into his nose and mouth. Lucian spluttered awake." In most cases less is more. I could go on.
Trickle is fine, the ocean isn't attacking him, it's behaving as it always does. The water trickles down his throat because it's the little bit of water that was in his mouth when he was awakened by the water hitting him. You've apparently never had salt water in your mouth or throat or you'd be 100% aware that it makes your mouth feel dried out, not wet. Your ignorance of life isn't evidence that a description is incorrect. Gritty is also used as an adjective here because the character is feeling the sand between his teeth, just saying "he moved his jaw and felt sand between his teeth" isn't enough to evoke the gritty feeling of sand crunching in your mouth. He could have found a better ways to write this scene, sure, but your complaints are as useless as they are irrelevant. Try harder next time.
Can you stop making these videos please? You're making my competition better writers.