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The Sunlit Hearth: The Great Refuge of A Fantasy Character’s Home
Sunfire
CONTENTS
The Premise
There are many moving parts that comprise a stellar fantasy world that just makes people want to spend time in it. While the story, landscapes, the flora and fauna, and characters are important, there is something else that is equally salient when it comes to constructing a fictional world and that would be someone’s place of residence. Believe it or not, a fantasy character’s home is far more noteworthy that you think it is.
The number one reason why a fantasy character’s home is essential to worldbuilding that it isn’t just the place where someone lives; it has its own story to tell. How it looks, feels, the kind of furniture and decorations in it tell both the viewers and other characters a lot about its owner, all without one single word being uttered. The fascinating part of this is it is shaped by the owner’s personality, making it a reflection of who he is at heart.
The thing of it is, while showcasing the home of a character might be important, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have an unique characteristic that lets it stand out from the many others scattered across the world. This characteristic can be something as small as an irregular shaped kitchen to as grandiose as a sprawling mansion on top of a great hill, overlooking the smaller homes at the bottom.
A fantasy character’s home interior doesn’t just solely consist of furniture and adornments, it also has an ambience that shapes how both the people living inside and guest feel. It affects many things, mainly how they approach making decisions and how they interact with one other which adds a dynamic layer to storytelling. For instance, a warm, cozy home is likely to have more pleasant conversations and stronger friendships as opposed to one that feels cold, making its inhabitants either feel detached from each other or seek outside activities in order to avoid spending time there.
This is the twenty-ninth article in The Sunlit Hearth series. If you’re interested in building your own imaginary world from scratch, head over to our blog page where we cover a wide ranging number of topics. It won’t take long before you find one that catches your eye!
A Fantasy Character’s Home: A Peek into His Soul
To many people, a house is just a structure made out of various building materials with a roof to boot, a place someone dwells in. To those with a keen eye, they know it is much more than that in that it is essentially a reflection of its owner’s heart. When someone enters someone else’s home for the very first time, he looks around and the items and objects he finds throughout tells him a lot about the person or family who owns it.
In many ways, a fantasy character’s home is an extension of himself. The decorations and other adornments that populate its walls and tables represent the things he believes in or cherishes more than others. A person who values family above all else will have pictures and portraits of his loved ones as well as objects made by them here and there, all of which bring him happiness. Looking at them brings back pleasant memories, memories he will remember for the rest of his life.
Decorations and adornments do not just make a fantasy character’s home. Its furniture serves to define the place of residence. Many factors dictate this, from its shape to the material used to where it is placed in said household. A cold, impersonal one will have essentially bare-boned furniture with a cheap material as opposed to a warm one that has comfortable furniture that brings a smile to those around it.
The color scheme of a fantasy character’s home offers insight into his soul. The scheme, from the kind of wallpaper used to the floor to the roof, tells other people what kind of person the home’s owner is. Warmer colors signify more cheerful people who have an optimistic outlook on life, a stark contrast to their colder brethren that showcase more detached people who prefer to keep to themselves and see the world in a negative light.
Give a Fantasy Character’s Home a Way to Stand Out
The home of a fantasy character isn’t just a structure found somewhere in the world; it’s part of it. It’s part of a city, country, and so on. The thing of it is, it is awfully tempting to ignore what it has to offer since there’s so many homes that they all become a blur, making creators choose to focus their stories in other places. In order to take full advantage of it, the best way is to give it something that lets it stand out from the others.
By giving it an unique characteristic, it makes it easier for both your characters and the audience to remember what it looks like. Take the Burrow in Harry Potter for instance. Though the Weasley family lives there and is full of magic, its unusual appearance showcases just how strong of a role magic plays in that household and thus becomes one of its defining characteristics, something that people remember every time it appears in the books.
The unique characteristic can be anything tied to a house. It could be that it was built with gold, it’s powered by a strange energy that doesn’t appear anywhere else in the world, or how peculiarly shaped it is. Doing this for every character’s home isn’t feasible —your viewers can only remember so much and you don’t want to run the risk of giving them more than they can handle — so only focus on those of the major characters.
Even though the characteristic is primarily used for worldbuilding, it can also impact the plot in various ways. For example, throughout his repeated visits to the Burrow, Harry learns more about the magical community and how magic functions, information that will eventually serve him well later on in the series. Its strange appearance becomes one of his favorite places to visit, one he enjoys returning to time and time again.
The Importance of Ambience in a Fantasy Character’s Home
The exterior of the house conveys to outsiders what to expect when they step foot inside but the interior truly sets the tone. Besides the furniture and decorations, its ambience heavily influences how things go within the house for better or worse. In fact, it can become one of its defining characteristics, a thing people associate it with whenever they think of it.
The atmosphere of a fantasy character’s home can change how its residents perceive each other and other people as well. For example, a tense ambience can drive them to be regularly at odds with each other and view the others with suspicion or people feel compelled to walk around them on eggshells, fearful that they’ll say something that will enrage them.
A home’s ambience is defined by several things, all of which work in tandem at all times. It’s comprised of the type of furniture present in the household, how they’re arranged, what kind of decorations that adorn the walls, and the color scheme of the walls and floor; all of them affect the atmosphere in varying degrees. These elements shape how things go within the house on a day-to-day basis.
When designing a fantasy character’s home, one that will be one of the story’s major settings, think about who lives there and what he or she likes. For instance, someone who enjoys the outdoors would like to have artwork and replicas of animals here and there alongside with woodsy furniture that bring the outdoors inside. The ambience will naturally become apparent over time as you create the house.
A fantasy character’s home reveals a lot about his personality and how he sees the world. Thus, it’s important to feature items and objects that reflect who he is at heart, essentially telling other people what he wants them to know about him before one single word is uttered. Giving it a characteristic that stands out makes it more memorable and likely to remain in your audience’s memory bank long after the plot’s ended and they’ve moved onto something else. In the end, his home is merely an extension of himself.
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Sunfire
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