[ General ]

A consistent set of world rules is a requirement when you sit down to write a story, and the rules you have will depends on the length of the piece. There is nothing worse than reading a book that conflicts with itself (Well that is a lie, but go with me. I’ll talk about other important things in later articles).

When I sit down to write a story, be it a short piece, a novel, or a series, I tend to decide where my story takes place. Is it in a “present day” type environment, in another universe, or in an alternate time line? The next question is “how much of the world will bleed into the narrative?” If it’s a short piece I made just laid out simple ground rules (e.g., real magic, present day, etc) that I’ll follow before I start investing time into the nuts and bolts of writing [NOTE: for short stories I may not even bother to write down anything unless the piece hinges on some type of abnormal concept]. For longer pieces, I may ask a few more questions (e.g. what type of magic? Where does the power get drawn from? Is it common or rare? What are the limits?).

In any case, the ground rules you write down need to be strictly followed throughout the work. If at some point you realize they must change then you need to consider what you’ve written. Does that change the path the characters would have taken? Is there a reason why they couldn’t have done this earlier? This is extremely critical for book series. There is nothing that will gain you great scorn from your die hard readers than changing a fundamentals without some solid justification.

However, this doesn’t mean that your world has to be static. The reader will accept facts given to them if they are couched correctly. If your magic is broken up into air, water, and fire, then a fire mage (who spent his whole life in and around volcanos) may find his power weaken or almost unusable if stranded on a boat in the middle of an ocean or on an iceberg. The main thing is to ensure you don’t apply random limits that make no sense to your reader.

By putting down these world rules, you may find that as you write it will also be easier to mold your story, since the rules for how things work can now guide your writing. It can easily free you to consider the interaction of things. If your story has a fire and air mage locked in heated battling with each other what can the air mage do that will not feed the flames? Maybe instead using a gust of wind to blow out a candle, as his master taught him, he can use the wind to create a vacuum to stifle the fire magic’s ability to spread.

Just make sure you write the rules down. Not only for your sanity sake, but it can also be a good tool for your editor and trusted readers to ensure you didn’t make a mistake.