When in Zylteriia...

World building is mentally exhausting. I haven't spent much time blogging about craft books lately, but I have been making my way through The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction by Philip Athans. I am almost half way through. The book is filled with your standard, practical (if not somewhat generic) novel writing advice with a fantasy bent, but it also tackles the topic of world building in some detail. Frankly, the work building information was my reason for picking up the book. There is no groundbreaking world building process set forth in this book, but the author does provide a comprehensive list of all of the considerations that we, as writers, should be taking into account as we create the setting for our novels (as well as characters, flora and fauna, political systems, religions, etc.), and there are a ton.

As the author has aptly pointed out, not all of these considerations are pertinent to every story, but because my series starts out narrow in scope and broadens sig…