World-building has to be coherent and logical. You have to think about how your world fits together and the consequences of A, B, and C.

And that works.

But what I personally love is when a fictional world doesn’t necessarily make sense. The tiny contradictions are what make those worlds real. Things the characters themselves never stop to think about until it’s pointed out to them, and then they can go, “Wow, that really makes no sense” and laugh about it with each other. Because that’s what our world is like, too.

Example:

Marijuana is tolerated in the Netherlands. Not legal, but tolerated, as long as you stick to certain restrictions. (No, I don’t know the difference between “It’s against the law, but we don’t enforce that law” and “It’s totally legal”, but I’m sure there is one. Let’s call that weird detail number one.)

Those restrictions are things like “only five plants per household, for personal use only” and “only coffeeshops can sell pot” and “coffeeshops are not allowed to advertise” etc. All sensible stuff.

Take note of the “only coffeeshops can sell pot” and “one can only keep plants for personal use” regulations. An obvious question arises: Where do the coffeeshops get their product from?

If we were world-building a cool secondary world, we’d decide to have state-run plantations, or heavily regulated coffeeshop-owned plantations, right? We’d imagine well-guarded plantations with all sorts of fancy rules and check-ups.

Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t make that much sense. The only way for coffeeshops to get their marijuana is for them to buy it illegally. The police actively seeks out plantations to shut them down, while they’ll pass dozens of coffeeshops daily–they’re on every street corner!–without batting an eye.

This? Is really really weird, yo.

And the Dutch will laugh about it and make jokes and comment on stupid politics, and politicians will argue to close down coffeeshops entirely to combat organized crime, or to legalize the backdoor because the current situation is ridiculous. That’s just the way life is.

So when you’re world-building, don’t be afraid to ignore logic from time to time. Take something that sounds absurd and illogical and then make it a source of wonder and debate in the novel itself. Make it seem real to the characters, and your reader will swallow it whole.

Because it’s those kinds of details that make your world come alive.

Oh, the excitement! *fans self*

11. Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?
I love them all, or I wouldn’t write them

That said, Cally from The Hands of Cally Wu is exceptionally difficult. Her voice is very distinct, but also very closed-off. It’s hard to make her come across as sympathetic and interesting, because even in first person present tense, she won’t really let us into her head as much as my other characters will.

Lillian from Always Read the Fae Print is the complete opposite. I love writing her. She flows very, very easily. The humor, the voice, and her more serious traits – yes, damn it, she has those – all fit together seamlessly in my mind. I rarely have a problem with her. She’s just fun.

12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you’d like to share?
So far, that’d be Fae Print; the worldbuilding in Heirs and The Hands of Cally Wu are both still WIPs. I think the latter especially needs a lot of work; I focus so much on the main character and her situation that the worldbuilding really comes secondary. It’s a very different kind of book from the others. The world is there, but she doesn’t interact with it as much as my other main characters. Since I started writing the book without a lot of preparation (very unlike my usual methods), it was easy to let that part fall by the wayside.

Definitely something I’ll need to fix in revisions. Eep!

13. What’s your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?
Dutch. I’m intimately familiar with it for some absolutely bizarre reason, and it’s very interesting to approach it from an outside perspective. I really hope I’ll be able to write future books in the Fae Print series some day.

14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?
I use Google Maps! It’s a really handy tool for personalized maps. Here’s the one I have for Heirs right now, with the spoily things purple-d out:

I also had one for Always Read the Fae Print, but since I actually live in this city, I didn’t use it as much. I knew most of the locations and details by heart. I mainly used it to figure out the best routes for getting from here to there, how long it would take, et cetera.

For Heirs, it serves much more of a purpose: street view is my saviour. It also helps in adding the little necessary details, like which road they’re driving on. Without this I’d actually have to do something absurd like visit Seattle, which –

Actually, I guess there are worse things!

15. Midway question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!
Mike Carey. I don’t really know anything about the dude in real life, but his writing is kick-ass. As much as I love the idea of urban fantasy, I often don’t really feel compelled by the execution. His books are an exception.

I’m also quite partial to Maggie Stiefvater. I mean, she draws! And she does it prettily! And she can also, you know, write, I suppose. I can’t help but appreciate that combination.

Which reminds me that I really ought to go work on those commissions. It’s such a balancing game, this life. 

World-building is one of the skills I’ve always admired in writers who can handle it well. Ranging from creating entirely new worlds to bringing an existing environment to life and anything in-between – if it becomes a real, fleshed out setting that’s a character all its own, you’ll really, really have to mess up with the rest of your book if you want to lose me as a reader. It’s made me hang in there with books like Children of Men, which started slow, but has so many details about the world and people’s reaction to it that I stayed entertained despite it; it’s why I was completely appalled to hear that people have read Watchmen without reading the supplemented materials. (See? You even made the Watchmen Crimebusters all emo.)

No matter how much I love it as a reader, it’s one of those things I can only sigh wistfully at, knowing I likely won’t be able to achieve it as a writer.

Which just makes me want to give it a whirl, and make world-building a priority in my next book.

I pondered current and upcoming projects of mine. The post-apocalyptic sci-fi, I thought, would definitely need a lot of world-building, but that’s a book I won’t be ready to write until at least a year or two from now. Next, it occurred to me I could make LA a much more relevant part of the cosy mystery I’ll be tackling this year, but was somewhat unsure; I have, after all, never actually been to LA.

Unless the plot demands otherwise, my contemporary fantasies are automatically set in the USA to increase the appeal to the US market. Why shoot yourself in the foot if you don’t have to, right? The only problem with that is that I’ve been to the US a grand total of twice, and despite my complete immersion into American pop culture, still do silly things like have my characters pick up mineral water from a gas station or mention them passing job centres. (I’m still wrapping my head around their non-existence in the US.)

Of course, I could always research like hell, visit again – which I intend to – or ask friends of mine for details, as I’m doing with the Wielders scenes set in Chicago. Still, brief visits or second-hand info are sketchy to rely on, and I’m not sure it’d give my book the same immersive feel as Bon Temps in True Blood (forgive me, I haven’t read the books) or Miami in the Dexter series (which I have read, but remains very intertwined with the TV series for me).

So what kind of setting could I use? Something unique to the fantasy genre, that I still know enough about to write authentically?

Oh, right. I’ve lived in this quaint little town called Amsterdam since the second I was born.

And last year, I wrote this funny little book called Always Read the Fae Print which just so happens to be set in Amsterdam.

Honestly, how do I even remember to breathe and feed myself?

All of this is doubles as an elaborate intro to the photos I took on a boat trip last Sunday. I never quite realised just how very Dutch The Netherlands can be at times. Sometimes, I really do love my country.

… even if this last picture quite aptly illustrates why we’re all going to drown within the next 100 years.