How to present details about the setting in a fantasy world without telling? [closed]
Closed by System on Jan 19, 2017 at 13:05
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One of the rules of good writing is the show, don't tell rule.
I want to create a realistic fantasy world, so I've thought about details like astronomy, geography and so on. For instance, this world has a lighter gravity than Earth, which allows flying heavy animals and living on higher mountain tops.
But how could I show this for the readers without telling them? And without referring to Earth?
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I am not sure, how lower gravity would allow people live higher up a mountain (it is not gravity, it is a lack of oxygen which limits the habitability in that dimension, and the lower the gravity is, the less atmosphere the planet is able to detain, but I am not a physicist, and could be mistaken), but in a different gravity world both flora and fauna would adapt to it--this might be a question for the worldbuilding exchange--the trees would likely grow higher, and yes, larger animals would be able to fly, like dragons and pegasi (is that a correct plural for Pegasys?).
It is for you to decide if the strength of humans and ordinary animals would be scaled down proportionally, and that would dictate the way how to show it throughout the story.
But it definitely has to be showing, not telling--mention the trees, touching the clouds, a bird-of-prey with a six-foot wingspan, etc.
At the end, it is your story and not the gravity which makes the reader interested.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26149. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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The people in your story might not know anything about Earth, but your readers do. You can show lighter gravity by describing things that couldn't happen on Earth -- a person out for a jog bounding high enough to brush tree branches, somebody casually carrying an anvil under one arm (this depends on whether your low-grav folks have lost strength, of course), a game of something like basketball where the basket height is several times the height of the players "to make it a little challenging", and so on. What you describe has to seem perfectly natural to your characters (from their point of view gravity is normal), but has to stand out as unusual to your readers.
The same approach works for other variations -- a casual reference to the second moon rising, to the blue-white glow of the sun, to the scraggly purple brush in the forests of blue-leafed trees, whatever.
Showing means describing and letting the reader draw the conclusions you want him to draw.
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