The Worldbuilding Diaries- Chapter Eight; Crafting Fantasy Races
Fantasy is a genre characterized by its mythological creatures, references to magic or unexplained miracles and its exploration into humanoid races who walk the line between humanity and beasts. This post will explore how to create your own fantasy race with all your much-needed instructions on how to assemble your species with all the teeth, horns and extra appendages properly attached or it'll guide you on how to build on pre-established fantasy races to craft a new interesting creature to explore and build upon.
This post will cover:
How to build upon pre-existing species
How to craft your own species
Fantasy species should not justify your genre; this means that in the context of your story the inclusion of a fantasy race should someone add to your story and enrich your world. When you narrow down your field of focus to a select number of fantasy species you can put more care into their existence and use them to effectively make your world feel fuller and more lived in. Take the time to analyse how their inclusion will affect your story, do the characteristcs and visual appearance of this species fit within the bounds of your setting? If you do choose to include a fantasy species how can you add to its lore, modify others understanding of it?
Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, Gnomes, Tieflings, Centaurs the list is never-ending and each of these fantasy species has a pre-determined set of characteristics associated with them, twisting these characteristics or simply building upon the pre-set design will make these species although largely unchanged feel more unique and their inclusion intentional. Take the characteristics of your chosen species and alter them, increase the range of their personalities and influential cultures or alter their physical characteristics, take the features of a fantasy race and emphasize them or replace them, give them fins, electrical pulses, horns, tails to aid them in combat etc. By employing these changes you have new impactful imagery and you also inevitably open up further questions on the history of your race, how did they gain these features, is this species an extension of humanity or something entirely different, are they born through magical means and what is their relationship with magic.
The fantasy races that are deeply intertwined with the fantasy genre are not meant to stay in a clean, organized, unaltered state, they are yours to toy with to change and alter to best fit your ideas and the story that you're trying to tell. Change them till they reach the point of no return and become something else entirely.
One skill I've learnt to embrace is building on 'comfortable features' take the pre-determined characteristics of a fantasy species and reverse them, revel in the opposite and the unrefined.
Most fantasy species are animals or ideas humanised to a certain extent or are extensions of humanity, elves are almost an extension of the positive or idolized aspects of humanity, wisdom, beauty, longevity, peace you could choose to humanize light or stray away from humanization entirely and have a species of intelligent non-humans.
When developing my story I decided to take the elven pre-set and alter them slightly, I darkened their skin, removed the elongated ears, gave them black teeth and altered their history and thus creating a species that was far enough away from the initial source material that I could call them my own. It's important to before you begin drafting/including this new species in your works to practise including them in the narrative, how do their advantageous characteristics and negative characteristics affect how story decisions are made, their fighting style and survivability. Does descriving their multiple limbs and complex anatomy break up the flow of the narrative and feel unnatural when included in a passage. Do they have a different region of origin, how have their characteristics influenced their history?
Your creations should be defined by writing.
