Depth of Worlds

Depth in a fantasy world. At first, you might think that it's not necessary. The world is just a backdrop for the story. But depth to the world adds depth to the story.

Look at the world around you, at the animals in the wild. Predator and prey exist in a balance. The top predators are highly adapted to taking down their prey. But a large number of fantasy worlds ignore this.

Dragons are my favorite example. If a world had dragons, there would be repercussions. Dragons, by definition, are top predators. Prey animals would develop defenses against dragons. When a falcon flies into the sky, other birds hit the deck and bunker down, waiting for the predator to pass.

So in any world where a dragon can just swoop down and pluck some beast off the ground and eat it has some obvious problems. In a case like that, one of the two has to be an introduced species, non-native, or it wouldn't be that easy.

In one of my worlds I addressed this by giving the prey animals defenses against aerial predation. A crest of sharp spikes isn't fun to grab on to, after all. Rather like a porcupine: few things bother it more than once.

But that sort of depth in world-building, even though it can be work, adds depth to the story as well. Little details bring the world alive for the reader, make the disbelief suspend a little more, and draw them into the thick of things.