Building a World

I love reading fantasy. Correction: I love reading GOOD fantasy. And almost nothing makes a fantasy stop seeming good as much as an inconsistent/underdeveloped world. For your information, magic definitely qualifies as part of the world, and in my opinion, making the magic element inconsistent is the most prominent fantasy world mistake an author can make.

For example: the magical land of Enthrold. In Enthrold, wizards can teleport to other wizards as needed. The main character, Zatris, who happens to be a wizard, teleports to one of her wizard classmates, Belrak. She barely knows him but does it out of convenience. Later, Zatris gets captured by evil goblins, along with her non-magical friend, Nikita. Nikita knows that there was a wizard back in the village named Mogbel only because she's seen him being shouted at by his mother. She asks Zatris to teleport to Mogbel. Zatris says she can't because she hasn't formed a special "teleportation bond" with him. Wait...what? Earlier she teleported to Belrak, who she barely knew!

This type of inconsistency makes me, and I'm sure many others, stop believing in the story. This completely halts the flow and makes the story much less interesting. Sadly, I've seen this used quite often. Character A is in a tight spot. Character A has awesome magical powers that could be used to painlessly escape from said tight spot. Then, we discover that the magical power has some strange restriction that we've never heard about before and usually makes no sense. Although I understand the motivations behind this action (to make a more interesting scene) the price is too high. I'll admit, I've done this a few times and it's a very easy trap to fall into.

The best way to solve this problem? Plan your world and speculative element BEFORE you write the story. That way, you can avoid any potential inconsistencies while still creating scenes that will keep your readers engaged. I'm doing this for the first time. I'm using this website (that was a link) to do this. It's actually designed for the month before NaNo, so it's very appropriate.

Sorry if I rambled. I will be back tomorrow, with a piece about the Writer's Bane!

~ Sophia-Rose