Cities and towns can be important landmarks in many books.
Today I’m talking about different details you can incorporate into world building them.
Cities and towns can be so important in fantasy books that I think they need their own video for
this series. This is going to be the fourth video in my world building for fantasy series and I’ll
link the rest in a playlist up in the cards. The purpose of this video series is to provide
a jumping off point for beginner fantasy world builders and show you how different world building
elements can affect your stories. This is geared towards writers, especially novelists like myself.
For the purpose of this video, I’m going to refer to anything that is a village, outpost,
town, city, capital, or citadel, or anything else like that as just a "settlement" just for
ease of speaking. But basically I mean anywhere that the people in your world have gathered and
created a home community. So first is going to be a location. you don't have to have a whole world
map figured out but just get an idea of where the settlements you're going to be writing about
are located. Is the capital city on the northeast coast? Is the small town where the main character
starts out on the western plains? So if the people of your world are anything like the
humans of earth then you're probably gonna have your settlements near a water source. But the
people of your world could have totally different values as well. Say they need some kind of mineral
for power sources, then they will probably settle near large deposits of this mineral. Or if there
are frequent natural disasters maybe they mostly live in areas where these occur less frequently.
The location of settlements in your world will probably also vary a lot depending on what your
main mode of transportation is. If horses are how most people get around in your world, then you're
probably going to have settlements a lot closer together. But if everybody takes a dragon to work,
you can probably have cities in the cliff sides with no problem. What is the actual space that
your settlement takes up? How long does it take to get from one side of the settlement to the other?
And is there any reason it's laid out or shaped the way that it is? And what kind of roads does
the settlement have? A small village will probably only have dirt paths but a larger city could have
paved roads. Next is population. So approximately how many people live in the settlement?
A fun trick is to look up towns that you're familiar with in our world and use that as a guide
for population size. Who makes up the majority of the population? If your world has more than
one fictional race, is on settlement mostly elves and another settlement mostly humans, or are they
pretty intermixed? Next is names. Settlements are typically named after things like landmarks,
events, or historical figures. This would give you names like Captain's Landing, Silverriver,
or Jamestown. Names aren't something that I as a reader ever really question, and they're something
that is a writer like to have fun with. In my series I named some of the towns after things
that were sitting on my desk but rearranging the letters, so... large towns and cities will often
have ways to distinguish the different areas. These can be named, or they can just be known
as things like "The Southern District" what are most of the structures in this settlement made of?
If it's a small town in the middle of the forest you're probably going to have a lot of buildings
made of lumber, but if it's a city in a mountain you're more likely to see it maybe stone and more
ornate buildings. Your settlement might be based around the local mine, or some kind of special
landmark, like an ancient magical tree. Depending on your other world building and the size of your
settlements, you might have places of worship or other such important locations inside your
towns. These might be really modest buildings in small towns, or it could be a large temple inside
a city. Laws. Again, depending on your world building, laws, rules, and ordinances could be
different in your city compared to the country as a whole. What is the crime like in the settlement?
Do your settlements have some kind of sheriff or law enforcement, or is it just up to the people of
the settlement? Next is commerce. Everybody’s got to shop, so where do people buy stuff? Or trade
for stuff. Is there only one tiny general store in the outpost, or do the people of the settlement
only buy things from traveling merchants? If it's a larger city, you might even have a more
than one marketplace for, you know, general people shopping, and then for business trades.
What are the local businesses? How much do people here do on their own versus go to others for,
like clothing or baking? And of course you cannot forget the inns! Inns are a hallmark of fantasy,
and pretty much essential if your main mode of transportation across your lands is horses.
Inns are a hub of activity. They’re gonna be where people in the town gather to talk,
and they're also gonna be where mysterious travelers encounter locals and vaguely answer
their questions. You can also consider your settlement's imports and exports. If it's a large
city, you will have maybe one or two main exports depending on the location and who lives there.
Also consider what this place does not have. It could just be luxury items, or it could be some
kind of necessity like wool, or wheat. Lastly is going to be maps. Some writers like to use maps
to help them visualize their settlements while they're writing. There’s a surprising amount
of free programs out there that you can use to generate maps for your cities or even your worlds.
I’ll leave a link to some popular ones down below if you'd like to check them out. If
you'd like to dive into the world of Olexia, you can check out Age of the Gods, which is a free
short story I’ll link down below. Alright that's all I got for you so thanks for watching. Bye!