How do you approach building a world that feels lived-in across thousands of years of history without burying readers in lore?
My journey into world building began as a dungeon master creating worlds for my players to adventure in. I spend a lot of time building the “behind the scenes” maps, timelines, races, and cultures so that I have a clear idea of what is possible. Then I allow the players, or in the case of my books the characters, to explore the world. I have them describe the world and interact with it a little at a time, adding layers as needed for the story to build. I try to avoid the information dump by alluding to additional lore without diving into it before it is needed. I enjoy the characters telling other characters about the history of a place or event. I feel like that represents how people learn, adapt, and grow in real life. Not every piece of information, even pertinent ones, are always presented at the very beginning of a problem. We tend to learn as we go, which is how I try to write it.
What’s your philosophy on magic systems—do you lean toward Sanderson-style rules or Tolkien-style mystery and wonder?
As a reader, I feel that both types of magic systems play roles in building different worlds and I enjoy them both! For me, as an author, I believe magic needs to be magical. In both of my series, there are rules, but like Cirrus says, they are made to be broken.
When I first sat down to create the magic system for Legends Are Made, I read a series of posts from Sanderson offering advice on how to design magic systems. For Legends, my system is very D&Desque, a style adapted from Jack Vance, known as “Vancian magic.” I have personalized the system and included things like a “pool” of mana and others that you can read about! My system defines how magic is taught, and what can generally be accomplished with it, until someone is powerful enough to bend, if not outright break, the rules. To me if the system is too rigid, it seems like science, and if it just is, then you lose the opportunity to have a character develop and for the reader to have the joy of predicting what the character may cast next.
For my Lost series, I strayed from the D&Desque style. There are still rules and restrictions but this system is based more on the caster’s imagination and what resources are available to draw on. This series also differentiates a little more with magic that is available to different magical races as well as humans.
To summarize all of that, if the magic systems were a continuum with Tolkien style at 0% explanation and Sanderson at 100%, I would place my books around 70-75% with Legends being more explained then Lost.
Epic fantasy often juggles a massive cast across multiple POVs. How do you decide whose eyes we see through and when?
For Legends, I choose to focus on the two primary characters, Sofia or Kemuri. It is their story and I wanted the reader to experience the world from their points of view. I have used other ones when Sofia or Kemuri were not available, such as Kemuri’s young life. I also utilize alternative POVs when I want the reader to develop a deeper connection with the characters. I decide this by thinking about what feels right. I also asked my wife on numerous occasions whose perspective she would want to see a situation from. I enjoy using different people’s POVs in the Prologues, Epilogues, and fight scenes to give the reader insight into how those particular individuals think and act.
How do you keep readers oriented when your story spans continents and generations?
I use an altered 365 day calendar, so I began by adding specific dates with months at the beginning of each different section. I also indicate at the beginning of a chapter whenever it shifts from the past or present.
I believe the best thing I did was create not only a world map, but maps of each continent, as well as important kingdoms. Even better, I used a program that allows me to see a grid, so I can set each square to a specific number of miles. That way I knew how far they were traveling in a set amount of time. For example, in book 3 when Tamerin and the others are traveling by horse, I knew how far they could go, and how much they were taxing their mounts.
The best way to keep everyone oriented with where and when is to make sure it makes sense. It is easy to fall out of a story when a group’s horses are traveling what the reader was pretty sure was 200 miles in a day. While we’re reaching for the fantastical, it breaks immersion in the story if the times and locations do not line up.
The chosen one narrative has been both celebrated and criticized. How do you approach prophecy and destiny in your work?
Ahh… The “chosen one” trope.
I think the reason why people feel so strongly about it one way or the other is because it resonates with the core of our humanity. We all want to be special. To feel wanted and needed. To see the hero in ourselves and ourselves in our heroes. To feel like it is possible for everyone. In Legends, my main characters are all Champions, all chosen ones.
But they all worked for it, and they could have all fallen to ruin if they stepped even slightly to the side of the razor’s edge they walked. Like Mab said, “When the ability, the destiny, to do greatness comes along, it reaches out to you, longing to be embraced. Most fail to achieve it because they refuse to reach out and grasp its hands back.”
Kemuri suffers a learning curve. Although he had been training with a dragoness since the cradle, his friends repeatedly have to bail him out after he bites off more than he can chew. He falls into despair, he makes mistakes, but he learns he grows. He makes choices that lead him to a greater destiny. Sofia relies on her friends as she gains experience and comes into her own, too. She is not perfect, she has fears, she fails. She has a destiny that she could reach, but she must work to grasp it.
I feel the chosen one trope works, but only if the characters earn it. I want people to relate to their fears and failures and still have hope knowing they were born for this and they can succeed and win the day.
What’s your process for naming—characters, places, languages? When does invented terminology enhance immersion versus create barriers?
Oooh… Naming. Well, I based each of the different races’ languages off a real world one that I felt fit them either thematically, or how I pictured them sounding. That’s where all of the words for spell triggers come from. I also try to add slight twists to real naming conventions. For example, how dragons have a specific list of suffixes to denote male or female.
As for places, most are named after some geographic feature in the prevalent race’s language, or after famous people. Although most of those are people the readers will never meet and only exist in my history files!
Too much invented terminology turns me off as a reader, so I try to stay away from it. I add a few slang words here or there, some different curses or exclamations, things like that. The “dragons above” versus the one time someone says “dragons below” to Smoke, setting him off, for example. I only do it if I think it will be easy for the reader to follow or figure out from context clues.
Epic fantasy has deep roots in European medieval settings. How do you engage with, expand, or depart from that tradition?
The majority of Legends is set in a medieval European style setting. Why? Because the books I loved growing up were set in this type of castle and kingdom setting. So it is what I have read, what I have run D&D campaigns centered around, and also run LARP events for. It is what I know. It allowed me a foundation of hierarchy, traditions, and social expectations that I did not have to completely create. It can be hard enough to design a running, living, breathing magical world in a familiar setting. I imagine it would be exponentially harder to create a different foundation for the reader as well. Of course I did depart from some traditions. Where there is magic, there is indoor plumbing, faster communication, less disease. There are magical weapons, fantastic races, holidays that did not exist in European medieval times. I also have a love for steam punk that was brought into these books in the form of the lightning rail and airships.
How do you sustain narrative tension across a multi-book arc while still delivering satisfaction within each volume?
I try to make good use of the prologues and epilogues to tease at the next adventure while bringing closure to the current adventure.
Throughout each individual book, I have specific tasks that I want the characters to accomplish that are incremental goals heading toward the major showdown or a piece of the puzzle they need to proceed to the next phase of the story. There is satisfaction in knowing that a goal was completed, but excitement in knowing that just led to the next step that the character needs to take. I also attempt to introduce characters and situations that leave the reader wondering where and when they may become important, or what else something may mean. I then come back to those in later books to tie things together and allow the reader to go back to a section and make a new connection based on what was alluded to before. For this series I made the goal of the series very well known. Sofia has to record Kemuri’s story. The ramifications of telling each part of the story on her life and his are what the reader gets to experience and wonder what the eventual outcome will be.
What’s your approach to morality in epic fantasy—clear good versus evil, grimdark ambiguity, or something in between?
Noblebright. It’s a term I’d never heard of until I was well into writing the Legends series, but it’s what I grew up with. Heroes doing heroic things. People using their wits and skill to not only survive overwhelming odds, but triumph.
Some things are objectively good or evil. We can argue scale and shades of grey, and all of that, but some things simply are one or the other. I like to take into account the execution of something instead. Take Smoke in book 6. He’s not always a “good guy.” I’ll try not to spoil anything, but he does something very noble to save Nyneeve, but by no means is the way he goes about it “good.” It is downright nasty, vindictive, and I’d probably say borderline evil, but it probably crosses over that moral line.
I want people to see the sliver of darkness in good people, and vice versa, the light in dark individuals. Saying that, in my books some people are irredeemably evil for evil’s sake. For example, Rothio / Zeliothor, the man tried to conquer a world with undead, manipulated a child with alchemy and enchantment magic, etc, all for his own power and survival. Any reasons he gives are nothing more than lies he tells himself so he can sleep at night.
None of us may have to make the world or universe shaking choices of my characters, but we all decide every day who we want to be. I want my characters to represent that, and show that some days we may fall short, but we have the opportunity to rise again, because there are heroes and the world is not all black and white.
Which element of your world exists purely because you love it, even if it’s not strictly necessary to the plot?
Interesting question. Especially since my wife had me take most of those out! If I had to pick something, which I suppose I do, I’d say the size of the Invicta Draconis. I grew up loving Godzilla movies, so I pictured these rare, advanced dragons to be that big. Three or four times larger, and sometimes more, than ancient great wyrms. Something that would cause your heart to skip a beat when you saw them. A sight that would weaken the knees of their enemies when they showed up on a battlefield while causing their allies to believe nothing could stop their eventual victory.