I’d like to thank Geoff Turner, children’s fantasy author of Archie’s Mirror and the upcoming sequels Dragonspeak and Darkness Risen for participating in my worldbuilding blog series and providing some insights into his process. I just finished the first book in his series, and I must say, he shows some really nice accomplishment in this area. Following the author interview, you’ll want to come back to read
Geoff also gives a few exclusive excerpts from Dragonspeak. How exciting is that?
Q: What specific details do you include in your world to make it come to life for the reader?
A: My Land Beyond trilogy is set both in the real word and a magical land beyond the mirror. In the first book, Archie’s Mirror, there are elements from the real world that ‘filter’ into the fantasy world. At the beginning Archie, our protagonist, thinks he hears strange noises emanating from under his bed. When he checks it out everything appears normal; there’s just an old, stuffed monkey, a long-forgotten golf ball and some discarded toy knights. Once in the Land Beyond, these link to specific characters: an eccentric golf-playing giant and a peculiar monkey-creature with two faces named Palindrome, while the knights are in the employ of a great evil.
Also at the beginning, as he lies in bed, drifting off to sleep, Archie’s imagination ‘projects’ the land he’ll soon be visiting giving form to some of the locations, even though he’s never been there. The following is taken from the opening chapter:
“Staring up at his bedroom ceiling, the shadows began to form shapes before his eyes. Archie imagined the shapes were lands; different islands on a faraway map. He imagined knights galloping across green fields, horses’ hooves cutting through the mist. On one side was a forest, a terrifying forest of smoke, full of mystery and darkness. Across the middle was a sea, but a sea like no other. A solid sea of frozen waves many adventurers and tried, but failed, to cross. Then there was a great desert of moon sand that glowed blue both day and night. And further still were the rocky crystal peaks of the Mountains of Ice and Tears. Hidden deep amongst them was a palace and inside there – well, inside there was a terrible secret.”
So, the link between the two worlds is created early on. Not only that but the Smoke Forest, the Solid Sea, the Moon Sands and the Mountains of Ice and Tears are all locations that Archie, and the reader, will be visiting later in the book.
Q: If you’re a writer of alternate reality, how do you convince readers that everything happening in your story is a realistic possibility for the Earth?
A: I’m working on the final part of the Land Beyond trilogy, Darkness Risen. Without (hopefully) giving too much away, in this book the reality of our world has shifted due to events that happened beyond the mirror. Without getting too bogged down in String Theory and multiverses, I wanted to introduce the idea that there are uncountable worlds out there. As a children’s author I wanted to inject some humour into the concept, so I begin the book by saying:
“There are innumerable worlds. If you lived to be a thousand and spent every second of every minute of every hour trying to count them Think about that for a moment – that’s an awful lot of worlds. Of course, some of these are pointless like the one where all the roads lead to nowhere. Others are simply dull, such as Nigel 7, where every single living thing (whether its flora or fauna) is named ‘Kevin’ (this place isn’t only dull, but also incredibly confusing. Nigels one-through-six are similarly uninteresting, but Nigel 8 is an astonishing place, full of living rainbows and lazy, sunny afternoons that never seem to end. A world where ice cream forms a staple part of everyone’s daily, recommended diet, and your favourite show is always just about to begin…”
Moving to the world that the reader knows, it’s subtly changed, due to an external, invasive influence. The upshot of this is that reality has shifted in tiny, almost imperceptible ways; “sunsets have fewer colours and burn with less intensity, while sunrises are duller and promise less. It’s a world where happiness is in short supply and people rarely dream. And it’s a world where each day feels slightly worse than the one that went before.”
Into this world I throw a character that holds a crucial, but forgotten, link to Archie, and it’s through her eyes that I build and develop the shifted reality of the altered earth.
Q: Do you believe this statement to be accurate: “The World Serves The Story, The Story Does Not Serve The World”? Why or why not?
A: I agree with this – I firmly believe that the story should always come first – however, the world should complement the story you’re telling. When you’re writing speculative or fantasy fiction the world you’re building is integral, but shouldn’t overtake or dominate the tale. In my books Archie, is an outsider in the Land Beyond, much like the reader, so through his experiences and his story, the reader is introduced to the world.
Q: Small details are just as important as big ones. What small details have you included in your fictional works that serve as proof that the world you’ve built is real?
A: Meals and banquets play quite the role in my stories. From the breakfast that Falco the giant devours from ‘a plate the size of a cartwheel’ to Thomm the fisher-boy – who actually loathes fish – shuddering at the thought of the ‘frog-fish pie’ and ‘scalefish eggs spread thickly on doorstops of crusty white bread’ his mother has packed for him in his knapsack, to the spread put on at the palace, which is described as follows:
“Each of the tables groaned under the weight of the feast, the like of which Archie had never seen in his life. Whole suckling pigs, dripping with juices, struggled for space beside thick crusted pies and enormous steaming puddings that gave off such an enticing aroma of rich herbs and spices that Archie’s mouth could do little else but water as soon as his nostrils caught their scent. Elsewhere were massive, roasted dactyl birds, which in turn were surrounded by so many fruits of so many colours that it was impossible to name them all, while platters of frozen, baked and fried desserts filled the remaining space. Even the Sorceress (famous – to Archie at least – for her incredible cakes and biscuits) eyed them with a degree of envy. In between the main dishes were numerous sauces, gravies and custards in shining silver pots, jugs and ladles. Although there were important matters yet to discussed, the King believed that plans always went smoother when his guests had full bellies.”
I really love creating these kinds of ‘incidentals’ that give the world of the Land Beyond depth and a sense of realness within the context of the tale.
Q: Give me an example of where your characters’ interactions further develop your world.
A: The inhabitants of the world and their interactions are as important as the world itself; in many ways they drive the story forward, while the main characters find themselves ‘out of place’. The Land Beyond is filled with fantasy character tropes that I’m sure readers will recognize and relate to, such as giants, evil knights and damsels in distress. Having said that I’ve tried to subvert the reader’s expectation from these tropes, so the giant has an unexpected backstory as an actor, the damsel is hardly in distress and the knights are something unexpected altogether. Alongside these there are the wolves that inhabit the Moon Sands and have more than a touch of beatnik about them, a hero from the Land Beyond’s past and a specific type of bird the characters need to convince to build them a cloud – what else, but a Cloud Cuckoo.
Susan: As an aside, Cloud Cukoo was a fabulous character!
Q: Specific to one of your stories, how did you make it come alive?
A: In my second book, Dragonspeak, there’s a particular location within the town of Mosaic, called The Dark Market. As its name suggests it’s a shady, grubby, somewhat felonious place of commerce that is initially defined by its smell. Here’s an extract:
“More than anything it was the smell that characterised the place. More than the sound of traders hawking their ill-gotten wares and the general hum and bustle of people hurrying this way and that, more even than the strange and dubious sights that filled the dark, narrow nooks and alleyways. Stalls were laid out, some on rickety wooden structures, others little more than rough-spun blankets scattered on the cobbled ground. The stalls appeared to sell everything from the banal to the exotic, the everyday to the arcane with the promise of bargains that could not be matched anywhere across the Land Beyond.
A tall, slender man with a bald head and wearing nothing more than a grubby loincloth, his entire body covered in black tattoos, stood beside a collection of tall wicker cages, each of which contained flocks of strange, hook-billed Worry Birds, gathered from the lands beyond the Severin Ocean. Their lavish green and yellow feathers were purported to turn midnight black whenever danger was near, their warning cry apparently so loud and terrible that it could make a man’s ears bleed. Further along a squat fellow with an eyepatch and an untrustworthy smile laid out small bones on threadbare crimson velvet. Rumoured to be the finger bones of the legendary great warlock Prosperon, and so imbued with unearthly powers, his customers didn’t appear to care (or count) that he’d already sold more than sixty and had more locked in a chest beside his club foot.
But back to the smell, which so thick and cloying that it clung to the back of your throat, leaving behind a myriad of flavours. Exotic herbs mingled with the rich aroma of heavily spiced grilling meats and sickly sweet, overripe fruits. While not exactly unpleasant, the effect was overpowering, particularly when mixed with the unwashed and somewhat remiss personal hygiene of the stallholders and many of their patrons. It could safely be said that the Dark Market was not a place for the faint-hearted or those with a particularly over-developed sense of smell.”
Dragonspeak
Q: Society, rituals, and symbolism: Have you included any unique elements like this in your world?
A: Legends and history play a significant role in the story of the Land Beyond. When our protagonist meets Sir Bartholomew, the first and always hero it’s in the eye of a memory storm that takes him to the location of a great battle from many years ago. The further I found myself travelling into the history of the Land Beyond, the more I realized that I had to lay out a timeline, so that there was a logic there to what was influencing the ‘present’.
Order Geoff’s super-fun fantasy today! You won’t be disappointed!
You can read more from Geoff on his website and blog: https://www.geoffturnerwriter.co.uk/