What makes for "good" fantasy worldbuilding?

Hi everyone! Welcome back to journeying with Jandalf The Green! I'm Jandalf the Green, and this is our second video in our book discussion series.

If you missed the first video, I'll give you a link to that so that you can catch up on the series so far. It's not a long series yet, so it's easy to catch up on.

Our first video was about relatable characters, and this video, similar to the first one, is growing out of a series of conversations that I had with readers a couple of years ago about what you really want to see and really don't want to see in the fantasy genre.

So, “relatable characters” was the most common thing that readers brought up in those conversations, and the next most common thing the readers talked about was worldbuilding.

Which doesn't come as a surprise, that worldbuilding was one of the main things that readers wanted to talk about in terms of what we want to see in the fantasy genre, because worldbuilding is basically what defines the fantasy genre. So if anything is a surprise, it's that worldbuilding wasn't emphasized even above relatable characters, but it was a very close second. Obviously, if you care about fantasy, you're almost certainly going to care about worldbuilding as well.

Here’s what the readers said about worldbuilding:

So when I talked to readers, the thread about worldbuilding that came up over and over, very consistently, was that readers wanted the world to feel real, and what they would usually give as examples of what it means for a world to feel real is that it feels well-developed. It makes sense, it's cohesive. Readers mentioned things like, the author didn't just slap on a piece that didn't make sense, or just tag on an incomplete thought without connecting it to anything else.

Readers felt really frustrated when the rules of the world were not explained well, and they felt like they were thrown into this situation where they weren't sure how things worked, and it didn't seem to make a lot of sense how things worked. So I think they felt disoriented and thrown out of the story. And it hurt the believability. It hurt the sense that they're really having an adventure in a world that is just as real as ours. And they were frustrated when the worldbuilding just simply didn't make sense.

Explainability in Worldbuilding

And I thought that that was interesting and a good reminder, as someone who really can, if a fantasy world has really good aesthetics and vibes, I can give it a pass on not everything completely making sense. So I would be curious to hear from you guys, like, how much sense does the world need to make?

I will definitely get frustrated if it's just totally nonsensical, and it's not treated as nonsensical, right? Because there's the type of worldbuilding, like Alice in Wonderland, where the whole point is the absurdity. Or, if you're reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales, you're not expecting there to be a really logical reason why the stepmother can suddenly, like, make trees grow for no reason, you know. You're not expecting exactly logical cohesion in some types of stories.

So I think it really depends on how the story is set up, in terms of what makes sense and the explanations that we're going to be looking for. And I think that's what people were getting at with the rules of the world not being explained well, like, we should know what to expect. But how much cohesion do you want to see in a fantasy story? And how do you feel about stories where the whole worldbuilding concept is not so much logical cohesion as expected-unexpected things happening? Because there's such a wide range there. And I think it can work either way.

But what doesn't work—definitely—is when a world is set up like it's this very serious, cohesive, believable world, and then it's just not, and it doesn't make sense.

Uniqueness in Worldbuilding

Another thing that got mentioned a couple of times was uniqueness in worldbuilding, versus just feeling like we've seen all of this before.

So I would also love to hear from you guys how much you like to see familiar fantasy elements and stories. Because to some degree, I mean, I think we all come to fantasy to see familiar fantasy elements, or we wouldn't like the fantasy genre.

But at the same time, it can get very tiring to feel like every fantasy world is exactly the same. So what tropes do you feel are overdone? What would you like to see more of in fantasy worlds that rarely pops up? And what are some good examples of really unique fantasy worlds that don't feel so weird that they're just disorienting and unpleasant, but are very unique and really stand out, whether they also have some familiar elements or not?

Expectations for Worldbuilding: Three Shifts

One thing that came to mind as I was thinking about worldbuilding, and what fantasy readers really want to see in worldbuilding, is how our expectations for worldbuilding have shifted in the last couple of decades.

Now, I've only been reading fantasy for a few years, relatively speaking, but based on videos I've seen and articles I’ve read and people I’ve talked to and everything, it really seems like in the last 20 to 25 years, like in this century, so far, there have been about three major waves of influences on worldbuilding that have changed how we think about fantasy worldbuilding.

Early 2000s and Before

Because from what I can tell, from what I've observed, what I understand and what I've heard, in the first few years of the 2000s and before, fantasy worldbuilding was expected to have a lot of the mysterious and unexplained, and fantasy worlds were as much about what you didn't know as what you did.

Not that that's universal, but there would be a lot of wizards where it's not 100% clear where their power comes from, or the magic comes from magic words that you say, and don't ask too many questions about why those words are magic.

Or if there are explanations, they're just very simple, intuitive answers like, “This is just how things are.” Basically, this is just how the world works. And you're not necessarily meant to seek for all the very detailed, scientific types of answers, as much as you are to just kind of enjoy the fact that things work differently in this world, and we will probably never know all of the reasons why that is.

Thinking about something like Lord of the Rings, which offers answers for so many things that happen in the world—of all of the worlds that have ever existed, Middle Earth offers maybe more answers, numerically speaking, than any other—and yet, there's still Tom Bombadil, right? There are still the men of the woods, the ancient men who didn't make it into the films. There are still pieces of Lord of the Rings that are not explained and probably never will be. And that's fine, and that seems to be kind of a hallmark of that era of worldbuilding.

Shift #1: Hard Magic

And it seems like there was a big shift in how we understand worldbuilding and expect fantasy worlds to work in the early 2000s and moving forward with the rise of Brandon Sanderson. Now, not to say that he's the only person or the first person to ever make this shift, but he has certainly popularized the idea of hard magic versus soft magic.

And the idea of hard magic is basically that it has very distinct rules, that it's very predictable, in the sense of, if you do x, then you will get y result. It's much more like science. It kind of blends the lines between science fiction and fantasy at times, because it feels much more like the science of a different world than the supernatural elements of a different world, even if the supernatural is also at play.

And again, not to overdo the distinction, because there have absolutely been hard magic elements in older stories than Brandon Sanderson's, and it's not like soft magic (where the magic is less explained more based on nature, intuition or something) has gone away, but it does seem like there has been a shift in fantasy readers expecting a lot more explanations of how things work in fantasy worlds.

And I think in a sense, that's a good thing for us writers, because I think it holds us to a high bar of, “Make sure that you actually understand how your world is working. Make sure that you put in the effort. Make sure that that you believe in this world, that you find it believable yourself, and that you're not just throwing in some familiar fantasy elements, like ingredients into a pot and, you know, and calling that good.” So I think it's good for writers, in a sense, and I think it can be a good thing for readers, too, to think more critically about their books and to ask good questions about how things work. It's good practice for critical thinking in real life.

So I think all of that is great, but at times, I feel like, if we are expecting hard magic systems or hard worldbuilding from every story, then we may miss or misinterpret some really good stories that just don't have that type of magic system, or that type of expectation where maybe there aren't as many explanations. We may start accusing it of being Deus Ex Machina, or just not very well explained, when maybe the the mystery is supposed to be a little bit more of the point, or maybe we're not asking the questions that the story is really wanting us to ask.

So I think that there are a lot of pros and cons there. Hard magic, when it's done well, is really cool and a really good addition to the fantasy genre. But there are the soft magic stories that I think still have a lot of value, too, and maybe are not quite as popular anymore.

Shift #2: Cozy Fantasy

Except that there is another wave of influence on the fantasy genre, kind of in the opposite direction, which is cozy fantasy. And this really accelerated right after the pandemic, maybe a little bit during, but I think mostly after the pandemic, when everybody was really tired and overwhelmed, and so many people felt like, “I just do not have the energy to ingest a world with 17 different cultures and languages and three magic systems that all have 2700 rules to each of them.”

Like, people just wanted something a lot simpler, something that would be fantastical, but something that was not going to require nearly as much of the brain gymnastics as the really complex hard magic fantasy world (or even soft magic fantasy worlds can also be very complex). And people wanted a break from that, and that's a big reason why cozy fantasy has become so popular.

And in cozy fantasy, usually you've got very low stakes, very simple magic. It tends to be in a small town, a small business, within a family. It's very small scale, and I don't see a lot of hard magic cozy fantasy. If there are examples of that, let me know, because that would be interesting. But where hard magic tends to lend itself to the very big, complex worlds, cozy fantasy tends to lend itself more to the simple, intuitive, natural magic without a lot of explanations, because nobody comes to cozy fantasy for a science class. People come to cozy fantasy to escape and relax and take take a deep breath and have a good time. So that's the second wave of major influence on the fantasy genre.

Shift #3: Romantasy (+ other genre blends)

And then the third wave (which, you could argue that this started before cozy fantasy; it seems to have really taken off just in the last two to three years or so, but you could argue about whether this was before or after cozy fantasy) is romantasy, which, you probably either love it or hate it. I may do another whole video about romance and the fantasy genre, so let me know if you're interested in that. But I won't get into that in this video.

But what I think is interesting about the rise of romantasy (which is fantasy, but the main focus is the romance plot), about how that affects worldbuilding, is that in romantasy stories, the worldbuilding is not the main show. Again, in typical fantasy, we're largely coming for the worldbuilding, because if you don't really care about the fantasy worldbuilding, like, why are you not reading some other genre? But romantasy kind of is some other genre. It's basically romance, but it's also fantasy.

And what romantasy tends to have is a lot of trappings of the fantasy genre, but not necessarily a lot of—well, let's just say a lot of romantasy books have been accused of not having the most cohesive or unique worldbuilding that could be offered. I have not read a large amount of romantasy books. But from what I hear, there is a lot of complaints about romantasy books not having the greatest fantasy worldbuilding, which is somewhat understandable, given the fact that it is really two genres mashed together, and it seems like the genre that tends to get the principal attention is the romance and not the fantasy that goes along with it. The fantasy is more like the outfit that the romance wears than anything else.

So I think that will continue to have an interesting effect on the fantasy genre and on worldbuilding expectations. And there are some other genre mashups that can do a similar thing, like science fantasy or mystery fantasy, where it's two genres at once. And so the fantasy is really only half the story. And so the worldbuilding is probably going to be more along the lines of aesthetics than it is deep development of fantasy cultures and races and languages and magic systems and everything.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with having a story that basically belongs to a different genre but has the fantasy aesthetic. But fantasy fans may be pretty frustrated with that if that's not what they came in expecting. And I do think if you're going to tell a story that is even half fantasy, you do need to put the effort into the fantasy side of it just as much as the other genre side of it, so that it can be a good romantasy book or a good mystery fantasy book, and not just a good romance book or a good mystery book that happens to have some fantasy on top of it.

What do you think?

So I would be really interested to hear your thoughts on all three of those movements or shifts: the hard magic, the cozy fantasy, and the romantasy or genre mashups. And let me know if there are any big shifts that I missed or left out. But I'd be interested how much you like these shifts, if you have a favorite one or a least favorite one. Personally, I'm kind of partial to the early-2000s-and-previous type of fantasy. So let me know if I'm not the only one. Or if I am, that's fine too. We don't have to live in the past.

But what do you think of these shifts in fantasy? Do you see these shifts, and what are the pros and cons of them specifically on worldbuilding, and what would you like to see more of? And what do you feel like the fantasy market has a little too much of these days?

And just in general, what type of worldbuilding is your favorite? Are there various elements of these different types of worldbuilding that you like to incorporate, or that you like to find in your books?

Like, as a writer, I feel like I kind of combine all these, where I like the feeling of the mysterious and unknown and unexplainable and the pre-hard-magic era, but I also like the groundedness and believability of the hard magic type of worldbuilding. I like that fantasy can be combined with other genres, and that we can get really creative about how we do fantasy by bringing in aspects of other genres. I like that cozy fantasy reminds us that fantasy is kind of supposed to be fun sometimes, and we don't always have to take it so very seriously, and laughter and having a good time is just as legitimate in fantasy as a bunch of really dark warlords trying to take over the world from each other. So I think that there are things to learn from each of them, but I would be interested to hear what are your favorite elements of these different types of worldbuilding, or if there are other types of worldbuilding that you enjoy.

It's been interesting to see fantasy readers and writers recently think about categorizing fantasy worlds. I don't know if that's something that would have happened as much a couple of decades ago or before. But I've recently seen a YouTube video that I thought was quite interesting that I will link where the BookTuber talks about 10 different levels of fantasy complexity. And I thought that that was an interesting concept to think about. And also author H. L. Burke recently posted kind of a matrix of worldbuilding possibilities or a spectrum that was kind of interesting. So I'll try to find that and link that for you. And let me know what you think of those ways of categorizing fantasy worlds, if those make sense to you, or maybe you don't usually categorize your fantasy worlds at all, and you just either enjoy it or don't. And I would love to hear about that too.

So, thank you so much for being a part of this discussion! Leave a comment below, either the YouTube video if you're watching on YouTube, or the Substack post if you're if you're reading through Substack. And I'm looking forward to talking with you all about fantasy worldbuilding, one of the most fun subjects in the world. So I think we'll have a really good time.

Thank you for journeying with me. Bye!