Crafting Your Fictional World: Adding Flavor to Your Story
Today I’ve decided to post a chapter from a work-in-progress project I’ve been working off-and-on with for the past couple years: Crafting Your Fictional World: A Guide for Writers and Gamemasters.
As I post chapters, they aren’t necessarily going to be in the order I intend for them to be if I finally compile them into a book, but they should each stand alone. And, hopefully, you’ll find them useful. :-)
If you enjoy the chapter, please let me know! That way I’ll know if I should continue posting other chapters in the future.
Crafting Your Fictional World
Adding Flavor to Your Story
Flavor is how your world feels. It’s the atmosphere created from the mood and the tone. Using world building as flavor adds spice to your story and, depending on how you season it, you achieve different results.
Mood: The emotional feeling conveyed by a story. (Creepy, uplifting, somber...)
Tone: The attitude portrayed by the narrator of a story. (Serious, humorous, sorrowful, etc)
You can set the tone and mood of a story by carefully selecting which words you use to tell your story, or to introduce players to a new area.
For example, a car colliding with a pedestrian feels considerably more violent than a car bumping into a pedestrian.
A ramshackle, musty tenement hall sounds far more gritty and desolate than a glowing, tenement hall with the dizzying odor of fresh paint.
A few choice words can help paint the rest of the scene for your audience, as well. What else did you picture with each version of the tenement hall? Were there cracks in the walls and upended floorboards in the ramshackle version? Flickering or dim lights? Was the air warm, or damp and stale?
How did that image vary with the glowing hall? Did you picture pale walls and a fresh paint sign? Clean carpets? Bright lights?
What sort of feeling, or judgment of the world, did you get from the words used: ramshackle, musty, glowing, dizzying?
The words you choose will help you showcase the world for your readers and players.
The words you choose also help create the feelings they get from the world… whether they have entered a wondrous, awe-inspiring world versus something more ominous.
Consider the difference between a gritty crime scene, an elegant palace, and a high-tech society. Different settings have different flavors, and properly seasoning them will enhance the reader’s experience of your world.
Below I’ll go into more detail with those three examples.
Each example focuses on a different type of world and utilizes different descriptor words to showcase and build that world. Admittedly, these examples will mostly focus on sight, but you’ll want to touch on other senses when possible, and we’ll discuss that in a later chapter.
Once you know the atmosphere of the story you want to tell, you can selectively choose elements of your world-building to enhance the aspects you want to bring to the forefront. We’ll go into more detail about the craft of choosing the right words for your world later as well, but I hope this gives you a “taste” for how world-building can flavor your story.
Let’s take a closer look.
While reading these, ask yourself:
How does each setting feel?
What kind of atmosphere, mood, and tone do they portray?
Which world-building details gives them their flavor?
As a note, all of these examples lean heavily into the world-building detail, and might need trimming depending on the goals of a specific story. The idea here is to make the details more visible for showing what I mean.
Example One:
A Gritty Crime Scene
A rugged wooden barrier closes the street, blocking gawkers from disturbing the evidence. Dried blood streaks had dribbled into concrete crannies. Shattered glass was scattered over the sidewalk from a broken window. Overhead, strips of yellow caution tape flutter from the tenement’s window like rags on a laundry line.
Sirens scream from a nearby underpass, their shrill wail rising and falling but never entirely fading. They intermingle with the cheap restaurant grease air clogging the ally and the constant hums of the fans that can’t keep up with the customers. Thick gray thunderheads build above the skyscrapers, mixing with smog and threatening a dirt-filled, torrential downpour.
The detective grunts, doing his best to keep his breathing shallow. He shoves his hands into his coat. The storm will make it difficult to gather any remaining evidence. The rain might never wash the city clean, but it can muddy a crime scene. He’ll have to work fast.
Details that added flavor: rugged barrier, gawkers, dried blood streaks had dribbled into concrete, shattered glass, fluttering caution tape “like rags”, torrential downpour, screaming sirens, underpass, shrill wail, smog, cheap restaurant grease, muddied crime scene
The imagery suggests dirt, grunge, and disrepair, thus adding to its gritty flavor.
Example Two:
An Elegant Palace
Marble pillars rise from an expansive porch, each pillar gilded with delicate filigree and brilliant sapphires. The gems glitter under the noon sun, representing the shining eyes of creatures carved into the columns. Gorgeous silk pennants flutter from the giant windows, their streams of gold and rich navy complimenting the smooth uniforms of the guards. Even the guards seem to enjoy the occasion, a few smiling or swaying in time to the music that floats from the palace into the courtyard. Guests mill about a grassy path with hedges trimmed to resemble sea dragons and giant fish, and each noble cools themselves with fans made of peacock feathers and silver as they bunch about, delighting themselves with the cool autumn air.
Details that added flavor: marble pillars, expansive porches, gilded, delicate filigree, brilliant sapphires, glittering gems, shining eyes, gorgeous silk pennants, giant windows, courtyard, hedges trimmed to resemble sea dragons, fans made of peacock feathers and silver, cool autumn air
The imagery consists of materials usually considered expensive, magnificent, or beautiful, and everything is described in “grand” terms (expansive, giant, noble) thus adding to the “elegant” atmosphere.
Example Three:
A High-Tech Society (Dystopian)
Gray steel lines the horizon as far as the eye can see. Gray steel and silver windows, sprinkled with neon near the ground where the pedestrians lurk. Advertisements for the latest fashion, the latest skin care, the best lights to flatter the influencer.
Not that many of the pedestrians notice the advertisements.
Most look onward, their gaze distant and dreaming, their worlds augmented through their eyes as they walk through streets decked out in the avatars of their choice.
She can’t see what they see, but she’s heard stories of what they can.
Streetlights transformed into talking trees who give staunch directions. People transformed into giant squids, or robots, or even squiggles, who wave as they walk. No one need be disturbed by the true mundane, by the rectangular skyscrapers and forgotten windows left mostly as a fire escape or because no one wanted to pay to remodel. No one notices the plastic bottles and foam cartons littering the ground, years old and accumulating, forgotten because they can be so easily obscured. No one can see the truth behind the lie, except those outside the walls, entering the new world for the first time without their augments.
She’s not sure she wants to enter that dream, though with the stoic guards at the door, cyborgs armed with weapons that she’s only ever heard of until now, she’s not sure she has much choice. She’s not sure they even know she’s human.
Can they see her? Or do they see a giant squid?
Details that added flavor: gray steel, silver windows, neon, advertisements, dreaming, rectangular skyscrapers, plastic bottles and foam cartons, cyborgs armed with weapons she’s only ever heard of
Much of the imagery references future tech, or technology associated with industrialization and technological progress (for better or worse), thus adding to the high tech society flavor. The narrator’s point-of-view judgments (her cynicism, “stoic guards,” uncertainty that she wants to be part of this society) adds to the dystopian feel.
In the next chapter we’ll have an exercise to help you practice identifying and adding flavor to scenes.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter! 😊
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