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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36734
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36734
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

### Make up anything you like (without violating copyrights and trademarks).

Outside of intellectual property laws, the whole point of fiction is to exercise your imagination.

That said, if you write for **readers** (not just yourself and your own entertainment), then they will expect certain things to be true about your story; and if they don't like it, they just won't buy it.

Much of this site is devoted to these unwritten expectations of readers and what turns them off or makes them stop reading or feel like they have wasted their money, or even actively insult and denigrate an author's work as both revenge and a public service.

Specifically the reader's representatives, in the terms of agents, publishers and professional critics: They have spent a career learning what readers will want to read, so unless you self-publish, you must pass those gatekeepers: Get an agent that likes your work for its saleability, so she can sell it to a publisher and make some bucks for both of you; and both agent and publisher will have in mind what critics might say about it.

I won't go into all the details, but readers do expect reasonable consistency of magic systems, characters, and the setting. Although you can just make all of these up (and I do), it might be difficult to sustain this sense of consistency if you don't do any planning or research at all. If your setting is medieval, you break consistency if your characters find magic iPhones or flying saucers they can pilot, or suddenly discover halfway through the story they have telepathy, because that was convenient for your plot.

But the answer is yes, you definitely can just make it up from scratch as you go along, and don't feel bad about it; I do it. I usually make several passes through my finished story to ensure consistency, and often will draw a map of my world as I go along and need new places.

I'm a discovery writer, and I've taught myself tricks to be successful that way. Perhaps you are too --- Making it up as we go along is how we work.

Original score: 1