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When constructing an imaginary world for the first time, there are a lot of questions you must ask yourself. How you answer them dictates what type of world it is, where people live, and so on. There is one question you must answer before you can begin and that would be how many fantasy races you want to include in your world and the story you intend to tell with it.
This question is one of the most important you must address since it determines the possibilities you have with the various races. While it is unusual for one world to have just one race, the number of races vary among the worlds across the genre. For instance, in Middle-earth you have humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, and so on. Each one of them engages differently with each other, making the world feel more real, not to mention the number of tales you can tell with them.
The thing of it is, when it comes to fantasy races, the more you decide to put in your own world, the more work you have to do. There is a lot of things you must to in order to bring each one to life. You have to flesh out their culture, their mythology, where they live, and so on. This can feel overwhelming, especially for those doing it for the very first time.
While you, the creator, have a lot of information to work with regarding races, there is another element you have to account for: your audience. When introducing your world and the races that call it home, the last thing they need is to be bombarded with all kinds of information that they are not going to be able to remember. Information overload is dangerous and can drastically hinder their enjoyment of the world you’ve created and its story.
This is article number thirteen in The Sunlit Hearth series. For more, take a gander at our blog page where there is a scintilla of sterling articles you can check out!
One of the best aspects of the fantasy genre is exploring the different major races that live in an imaginary world. The audience sees how each one lives out their lives, the things they believe in, and so on. This enriches the experience, making it more likely that they’ll spend even more time exploring the places they live in.
This leaves you with one question that will shape how your world looks: how many fantasy races should I have? This is a question you do not want to rush; instead take as much time as you need to find a number you feel works best for you. Have too few and the world feels a bit barren and having too many makes it feel crowded.
You can look to your favorite worlds for inspiration and see how their creators did it. See how they developed them, how members of each one interacts with each other and outside their face, among others. Doing this can help you a lot more than you think at first glance since you gain insight that will prove instrumental down the road.
In many stories, the various fantasy races make an appearance and shape the plot in interesting ways. For instance, in some worlds, some are hostile to each other, making it difficult for them to get along which can cause trouble for the protagonist as he endeavors to get them to put aside their mutual hostility to stand against an evil force. This can make for riveting storytelling and imagine how many stories you can tell with them!
Having different races makes the world feel dynamic and adds to its lore. Sure you could just have one but having more is interesting and plus, you get to explore different plot lines that you otherwise couldn’t with just one. For example, with dwarves you can showcase their love for mines and caves whereas the vast majority of humans don’t hold them with the same reverence, shining a light on how they view the world.
While creating multiple races for your fictional world is a terrific idea, it isn’t without its issues. Before leaping into it, it would be prudent for you to understand exactly what you’re getting in. Understanding the task in front of you makes it easier for you to follow through to the end since many people don’t bother to go all the way.
The more races you have, the more work you have to do. You’re not just fleshing out the important details of one race, you’re doing it over and over again for each one of them. That means you have to figure out things like where they live, what they eat, the things they believe in, and so on.
Generally speaking, the more information you have, the more you have to keep track of. Even though it sounds like a great idea to put it all together in one document on your favorite word processor app, it’s better for you to create separate documents for each one of them. This helps break up everything you jot down and also serves as a handy-dandy reference point when developing the plot since you can just pull out the right one and scroll down to what you need.
No matter how many fantasy races you have, there are key pieces of information you need to work on. Besides thinking about where they live, you have to also flesh out their culture, their way of life, the type of government they have, their attitude towards other races, and so on. Each race is distinctly different and how they perceive the world influences how they interact with outsiders in various ways. For instance, one race might be hostile towards another but be friendly towards a third one. How they interact with one another can make for compelling storytelling.
Now that you’ve put together all the important details about the different fantasy races in multiple documents, you have another task to focus on: how do you incorporate them in the story without burdening your audience with way too much information for them to process? This is more tricky than you realize, especially for those doing it for the first time.
It helps to think about it from your audience’s perspective. Imagine you’re reading a story for the first time. You’re learning about the world, the characters, who’s good and bad, where they live, among other things. You’re being bombarded with information throughout and while you’re processing it with relative ease, there is a small part of you that feels a little bit overwhelmed. As a creator, you want to keep them engaged throughout the story without overwhelming them.
An excellent way to weave the issue of information overload for your viewers is to break it down in bite-sized pieces and introduce each piece when it fits in the plot. For example, in The Lord of The Rings, Tolkien introduces readers to Hobbits and in the first several chapters, they learn about them and how they see the world. When they become comfortable with them, Tolkien then brings in Gandalf the Gray Wizard and readers begin to learn more about the world of Middle-earth and the fantasy races that populate it.
Slowly introducing them at specific points in the plot heightens your audience’s enjoyment of the tale. By focusing on one at a time, they are able to learn more about them and have a good understanding of who they are by the time another race is brought into the plot. This increases their immersion in your world, making it more likely they’ll want to spend more time there.
Fantasy races make worlds fun and interesting but only if they’re done right and presented in a way that only makes the audience want to discover more about them. Thus, finding the right number to feature in your own is crucial. On one hand, you don’t want to have too few — unless that is your intention — but on the other hand, you definitely don’t want to have way more. The more you have, the more work you have to do and the more your readers have to learn. Above all, they should enhance the world and the tale, not hinder it at all.
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