Worldbuilding- Moonlake’s Favourite Elements

This post is somewhat inspired by the post of Berkeley Kerr that I’ve reblogged under this same category some months back but compared to his very extensive article, mine is more modest in scope. I’m merely talking about my favourite elements in world building aka things I like to include whilst building my own fantasy world. In no particular order, they are:

1. Lore (including creation myth): personally, this is the element that always draws me to fantasy. Whether it’s stories/poetry/ballads about past ages, lost races, fallen empires or plain creation myths, they fascinate me. I’m less interested in treasures and tales of dragons except on a light reading basis. Anyway, for me, lore adds complexity and depth to a world and is an integral element of building up the history of my world. In fact, I’ve personally found that it is way easier to construct these relative to actual history of a fantasy world (probably because I never actually care for history myself)- sometimes they even come to me of their own accords.
2. Speculative biology: basically the creation of fantasy fauna and flora. Personally, I tend to create more fantasy plants in the process of world creation for my novels- don’t know why, just happens to be. These are just tidbits that I drop in to spice up the world.
3. Constellation: personally I always create constellation that embodies a particular culture’s values and ways of living
4. Cultural adverbs & fantasy vocab: something I always create despite myself, I use them both as spices and to reveal the underlying culture that I’m writing
5. Social customs: this encompasses things like special festivals, various habits in daily life, gestures etc.

Again, I stress that this is not meant to be comprehensive in nature, merely a discussion of my favourite elements when constructing my own fantasy world. And that’s all for today. And oh, I haven’t forgotten that I’m still owing a post. I will make it up shortly.