Dee Benson on creating a magical fantasy world
The best thing about stories is getting lost in the lives of the characters, and in fantasy novels, the worlds the characters live in can feel so real and alive that they almost become characters themselves. Creating a vivid, immersive world is at the heart of every great fantasy story, and I wanted the world of Damien Ike to really capture the imagination. The novel is set in Astralis, a major city in a magical realm called the Above Plane, and there are two main questions I asked myself while building this world.
1. How has magic shaped this society?
This was the fun part. Arlo, my co-writer, and I discussed how magic affects everything from the technology in this world to the sports they play to how parents keep tabs on their children. The part I enjoyed the most was writing the school scenes at Lumen Academy of Magic. Maths is so much easier when your teacher can use their powers to create shapes in the air to explain concepts, and science experiments don’t take long when you can use magic to speed them up. What’s more, the classrooms are all spectacular. To mention a few, the teleporting classroom is enchanted to look like a quantum world, with particles of varying sizes oscillating in the air, and the Magic Law and Governance room looks like a dungeon.
But there are also negative aspects. Since magic is so important in the Above Plane, it leads to strict hierarchies where your power defines your place in society and those with bigger, more ‘valuable’ powers have higher status.
2. What is the Big Problem in this society?
This was the more serious side of worldbuilding as the Above Plane has a huge problem: Mages, those possessing magical abilities, are allowed to live, while Nullborns, those without magic, are not.
My starting place as I delved deeper into this problem was to figure out the ‘big lie’ that underpins the ‘big problem’ and gives it life. I asked myself the following questions:
- What narrative is told to justify not allowing a whole demographic of people to live?
- How do Mages kill Nullborns in a way that allows them to still feel like moral, upstanding people?
- Who is the most affected by this problem, and who benefits from it?
- How does it impact day-to-day life?
So as not to give away any spoilers, I won’t say how I answered these questions. But I will say that one of the things I really spent time working through was how to make the problem in Damien Ike’s society visual so that readers can picture exactly what is happening and to give it more of an immediate emotional impact. I used a tower that stands at the centre of Astralis and is taller than any other building in the city to symbolize the problem, how big it is, and how it looms over the whole of society.
These are just two of the ways in which I used intricate layers of worldbuilding to explore themes of identity, power and corruption in Damien Ike and the Fallen House of Draven. The Above Plane is magical and exciting, but it’s also riddled with secrets and lies, and Damien, the son of the most powerful Mage in the Above Plane, is forced to navigate a treacherous path between upholding family loyalties and fighting for a society where the type of power you have—or whether you have power at all—doesn’t determine your worth.
Damien Ike and the Fallen House of Draven is out now in paperback.
