Worldbuilding: How to Write Fantasy Creatures

This was incredibly helpfull, i recently startet writing a novel about a "riftwalker" trying to reach his home dimension outside of conflict and war he also lands in worlds full of mystical creatures.

Ah yes numbers don't matter at all unless the numbers themselves have symbology. For me I made a dragon and when describing him I said he is 666 meters. The number has a suggestion of his evil nature.

I loved this video! I have been wondering how I would create and introduce my creatures/monsters in my novel. Do you have any tips for naming creatures? That is where I am really stumped.

I accidentally made character development in my book 😅

I'm a bit of an exception for the "smell resonance idea; I have an especially poor sense of smell and often the inclusion of smell descriptions confuse me.

You can also plumb the vast wealth of prehistoric creatures of Earth. They tend to be very big and very strange looking. Tweak them as necessary to fit whichever fantasy context you have. It's an inexhaustible resource.

thank you for your help, This video is going to help a lot with my books.

You should check out speculative evolution

"The [Mondoceros] was the size of a shark." If your fantasy world did not have sharks in it, then how would you describe this aspects of a creature? I'm battling with this idea that using real-world terminology can break immersion. So if I have a creature that looks like a dear, do I compare it to a dear when dears themselves would be very alien to the world I'm creating? I might then instead seek to understand how the people within the world would recognize such an animal.

Overall, this is something I'm working on, that I call Narrative Translation. It is unlikely any fantasy world speaks English, but to write an entire book in a made-up language that the world actually speaks would be absurd, and nobody would be able to read it. So an author could "translate" the language, but still be intentional with world-emmersing termonology. "He was working around the clock" wouldn't make sense in a medieval world where they don't have clocks, and could thus break immersion. Maybe instead, I could make up a phrase like, "He pushed the sun with his labor" to invoke the long hours he worked. Instead of saying, "He never liked being in the spotlight", it would be better to say, "Their gaze felt like a dragon's stare."

Whale Sharks are indeed amazing to swim with

I felt like I was in a fantasy world when I visited Mont St Michel

I believe Dementers were more of a representation of depression. They literally suck out one's life force leaving nothing but a vacuous husk.

What I took from this, is we should not be describing fantasy creatures, like Tolkin describes mountains.

When giving measurements in my fantasy stories, I don't use earth measuring systems. I reference body measures of the people for scale: The creature stood taller than three men high; It was small enough to fit into his palm; He could just about touch the other end with his fingertips, if he stretched far; ...
The only exception to this is the fact that Imperial measures for lengths have derived from body relatedness. A Yard used to be the distance between tip of the nose to tip of index finger on the forwardly outstretched right arm of whoever is measuring, and this eventually got standardised to the yard of the monarch that ruled when standardisations were brought in. Same principle applies to the Foot (duh) and Inch (tip to first knuckle on the index finger).
Even if a fantasy world has different benchmarks for weights, temperatures, areas, etc..lengths almost certainly will be based on body measures.

Something to consider, thank you my dear.

Thank you as a starting out Author that has written one 20 page novella that isn’t published, and has used chat GPT3 to enhance my writing. This video was very helpful. Thank you.

Are dinosaurs, pterodons, or both, the inspiration for dragons?

I recently finished a story with a 'Supernatural creature' as the title character. Wanted to do the horror and pathos thing lol.
Based him on 'real' folklore, occult etc (he starts as human but messes with neoplatanist magic aka 'lost hearts' m r james).
I kept the design simple.

Yes, "save the cat" or "pat the dog" scene.

mwah

Ricky Grevais's Fanimals is a great starting point to look at fantastical fantasy creatures

It is offensive that you used clips from the Eragon movie when talking about dragon riders.

I have a question: what are the rules for secondary characters? Besides the fact that they need to be related to the main plot one way or another what are the rules for when and how to use them? How much should they appear? What freedom do I have with them?

Fantastic video Jed! It was super informative and helpful!

Feedback for the website:
#1: For the website, I've noticed that the 'random question' system gives you the same question repeatedly. For instance, I got the 'What is the geography of your world like?' question dozens of times before I got my fiftieth question for the first and it was the same with a few others. Lots of questions make it feel like you'll only come across a certain question by chance. So in terms of the randomizer, I understand the effectiveness of it, I just think you should probably consider a way to avoid questions being repeated endlessly.

#2: Then, for the 250 questions package(10$) there is no way of telling if getting those questions would even be worth it. After all, why spend 10$ to get 200 extra questions when you can't be sure if you'll even get all of them(see #1) or if they'll be as useful as the first 50. Not to say I don't think they will be, but without any reviews, you can never be sure. Unfortunately, I can't really think of a solution for this. Outside of maybe hinting what the questions might be and so on.

#3: The questions are very, very helpful and insightful. On multiple occasions, I thought 'Oh wow, I never thought about that!' and there were other times when I thought 'establishing this makes sense!'. Overall, the questions are remarkable and very broad, I have to say my only complaint so far is not being able to tell how many of them you have gotten previously without going back and counting your previous answers.

#4: All in all, the website is good, could maybe use a dark mode for when it is used at night, but otherwise, I don't really see any problems with it!

Feedback aside, thanks for the great and informative video! I hope this helps!
9/10 experience with the website, would recommend it!
(P.S. I also think you should leave a spot where people can leave reviews for the website as a whole so people are more likely to trust it!)

This video made me realize I’ve developed a thematic element in my story that I’d never even realized! 😂
My story is about monster hunters who use hounds to hunt and pursue monsters in a world where wilderness is constantly encroaching on civilization. Listening to your points made me realize that I am using the dichotomy between hounds (animals bred and modified by humanity) and monsters (usually creatures borrowed from mythology and folklore) as an allegory for the tension between known world of human experience, and the larger world of the unknown and the mysterious. I suppose this would tie into your points about world building, but on a fundamental thematic level.

First off, the whale comparison actually kind of helped me. I don't think I myself have many of that... I guess, Jurassic Park style introduction to fantasy creatures. It kinda jogs my memory, that even if we all "know" what a whale is, there are soooo many people that never actually see one, never the less swim with one. The same can even be said about big felines, foxes, even rabbits. Sometimes just spotting an animal from a distance just locks us in a trance, and of course the mighty ones, or fantastical ones, will carry that weight a lot more. Its something different to account for, rather than the convinient lore experts or fear-filled moments done often for the plot's sake or a conflict. The sense of wonder in seeing something wild can be special and almost sacred, and probably should become something to strive for a little more in my own works.

The sensory one is a good one. I think I could improve there myself, but I believe I make a pretty good use of 'touch' as well. In a way the two are linked when meeting something new. If you look at an old wall, sometimes you can visualize how it 'feels' by the way it looks dusty or old. A 'chalky' touch is almost seen in it. For creatures, this is good for detailing the texture. Coarse hairs and slimy skin, and wooly is virtually a transcending idea between how they look and feel. Its almost like fashion, the moment you mention corduroy or silk there is a 'feeling' as soon as you see it. If you're not bridging the two, something feels kind of wrong or missing, or the entity itself might be very confusing to behold.

Finally, your size advice is great. I find when I'm doing scifi I do try measuring things more. Maybe too much. Function should serve better, and I could consider that a little more. While in fantasy I'm not opposed to some anachronisms, I do halt myself with measurements and really ask if it feels right to weight a beast with some modern and easy unit. In fact "weights a ton" is just an expression we throw around casually, but has a literal alternative, so I don't want to be too hung up and worry over saying something about that. But on the other hand, I can't do it as easily to say it with a genuine force "This cart now weighs absolutely one-ton." It... just feels off. How'd they get that exact measure? No, much like how we loosely say it weighs a ton, someone in day to day life would actually be saying its as heavy as a horse, or as wide as the river. Its especially difficult with time explanations, but I've even used a silly slang of "a sun hop", as if the sun actually made a little jump in the sky to explain "a couple hours". Meanwhile scifi is almost backwards at least when characters are speaking of it. Perhaps narratives could still leave things abstract or down to function, but if a person remarks about it with computers built into their eyes or some screen, they're able to measure things down to the decimal and almost see the world in too much information.

👍🏻

One very funny example for "use all 5 senses" comes in the Final Fantasy series where you have those birds called Chocobo who are basicly yellow ostriches but in cute and they look cute behave cute and everything and you would not expect them to cause problems that is until you are told that they smell horrible

so you can use it to give the fantasy animal an interesting twist

The way I describe the creatures in my current project, The golden sea, is that there is a book in the world called ‘The book of monsters’. So when a new creature is introduced, the entry in that book is what you can read. So for example, let’s say there’s a creature that can create rocks(this is a simple example, not one I actually have), then, in the text it might say “Bella opened the book of monsters, and began reading the page


*(Insert creature name here, I don’t feel like creating a name for this creature, since I’ll never use it again)
A brown creature made of rocks. It can create rocks from thin air, and throws it at its prey. It can also use the rocks that it creates to replace missing body parts, by just putting a new rock there*


Bella told her crew to be prepared so they didn’t get hit by a rock

My science-fantasy novels focused on writing fantasy organisms that not only inspire prehistoric wildlife, even dinosaurs, but they’re written to be powerful and even can adapt and evolve fast enough to get around even the most technologically and magically advanced civilizations, but they don’t evolve to exterminate sapient species, like humans, as they only evolve to survive and coexist with the natural world within its ecosystem, even there are some that are benevolent, mostly apex predators, while others are either neutral or territorial, mostly herbivores.

To someone like me, who started writing somewhat "accidentally" after drawing a lot of original charcters and creatures, these videos are very helpful and entertaining to watch. They give that structure and organization I need to flesh out my creations and make them functional, believable and interesting. Thanks a bunch!

And now I've got ideas for someone akin to Steve Irwin getting isekai'd and having kobolds assist them lol.

Website looks amazing and is working for me - will be super helpful to get the creative juices flowing!

I also completely agree with your discussion of choosing the most evocative details to describe and focusing on functional implications rather than specific measurements. I think it can be easy to mistake 'immersive' for 'highly detailed' but if your reader is taken out of the story in attempting to put together all the details and build the picture then the result can definitely be less immersive. Like everything in writing - all about striking the balance!

I always suspected I wasn't wasting time staring at animals at the zoo and observing their behaviours, wondering what magical beasts they could become in my novel. Thanks J.

I think a very important aspect of how one describes with senses, is a form of "6th sense" that is rarely used. I'm talking about the sense of emotion, which is a form of sense envoked by something's presence, either physically or in one's mind as a train of thoughts you can't let go of.
This creature, how does it impact the emotions of those around it? You can describe a horrifying look, a foul smell - but what is the emotional description? Dread? An aura of dependability? Hopelessness? How a creature affects our senses and idea of what its existence is to us, can do so much more than what normal senses like looks, touch, and smell ever could. It's how Lovecraft wrote of his eldritch horrors, how he managed to describe something so vastly outside our understanding that even a single look would drive one mad. How do you describe the looks of something that you can't see without losing your mind? You describe its impact on our sense of emotion. Lovecraft is of course the very extreme of this sense type, but even adding a mere fraction of this alongside traditional sensory descriptors, can go a long way in deep fantasy writing.

Damn this guy's building a whole-ass website.
I have a strong feeling this guy will be one of the premier fiction writing channels in a year or so.

Website sounds incredible! I’m struggling to get on, there might be an issue with the site!

Love your work keep it up

That was one of the most majestic shots of pigeons that I've ever seen.

After writing a dragon rider fantasy, I'd be curious to hear the lessons you learned from writing Animal Companions. (Though maybe your dragons are more sentient like people.) I once tried putting a dog in an adventure story, but it was definitely unsuccessful. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

Broo keep going you are the best

I am very inspired by you