bigsleepj (post: 1435890) wrote:Maybe at the start of each chapter you can have a small "entry" from an encyclopaedia
Another excellent example of this would be in the Dune books by Frank Herbert! I always loved the quotes from supposed historical accounts, many of which are very quotable indeed...though I suppose the purpose they serve isn't always introducing the way the world works.
More in line with what you're needing, I think, would be like
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb (which I would heartily recommend to any fantasy fan). The whole story is first-person, but the reason he's telling the story is because he's trying to write a history. He ends up telling mostly just his own story, but there are snippets that appear to be what actually ends up in his account, each of varying lengths and often explaining an aspect that will come into play in that chapter (like explaining what the deities of the land are, where the Red-Ship Raiders came from, what the culture of the Mountain Kingdom is like, etc.). But Hobb doesn't skimp on the "actual" story either]That said, there are readers who enjoy the old-school writing style of Tolkien. His Middle Earth culture was super complex. Personally I found LOTR too long winded, but it's a beloved classic with plenty of fans, so you could write this way.[/QUOTE]
Generally, I'd say that unless your name is J.R.R. Tolkien, you shouldn't write a fantasy novel like that. I mean, I love LotR to death, and I think the writing is beautiful and engrossing rather than soporific, but I think there are
very few people who could pull off something like that. I mean, in so many ways LotR goes against general guidelines of what makes a good, interesting novel, and I think the only reason it works at all is because Tolkien was a genius and an expert in language, which was after all his primary interest in creating Middle-Earth in the first place.
/pointless rambling
And I don't know how many people are like me, but I actually relish stories that don't feel the need to spell out every minute detail of the culture to me. In some ways, I prefer Narnia over some other fantasy books because there isn't this intricate map in the beginning. When I see a map, I always feel the need to keep looking at it, to make sure I understand every detail of where things are. It's the same way with culture - if every little thing is spelled out, I feel the need to remember it all. I actually like stories where it's assumed you know the way things work anyway, without bothering to explain the whole history; that way, the way the world works and where things came from are revealed more naturally. Reading
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood was a very enjoyable experience because, even though it wasn't a fantasy, every piece of information was given to you out of order and barely explained, so you had to fit it all together yourself. And seemingly effortlessly, by the end I had a perfect picture of what Gilead was like.