Let’s face it. The world isn’t a good setting sometimes. There aren’t enough fire magic or extreme landscapes for your heroes to conquer. You have to invent your own world, where you, as the writer, command what is and what isn’t possible.
The danger of this is that it sometimes forces your world to be too absurd or implausible. When this is the case, readers will be hesitant to enter and fully immerse in it, resulting in a non-fulfilling experience.
For your world to be effective, you need to fill it with things that would make the reader feel that he is there naturally, as if he is an actual inhabitant of that world.
Establish the difference between this world and your world
Are you going to allow magic in your world? Then define it early on. Make sure that in the very beginning, the reader understands what can and cannot happen in it. Don’t introduce a core difference in the late stages when the heroes are trying to defeat the enemy, as that would feel like cheating. Establish the rules and make your heroes find their way within those rules.
Create a history for your world
The reader has to feel that he’s not put into a world that was created yesterday. Make it a real world, where past events shaped the present and where life continues to go on and on, just like this world.
Model your world after real cultures
Once you’ve made your own world, you have to add a sense of realism to it. Create a group of people that is patterned after, let’s say, ancient Japanese, full of vigor and discipline. This is to give the reader a level of familiarity with his surroundings. This is the same technique used in Star Wars- wherein George Lucas patterned the events in the movie to actual events in the Roman Republic’s transformation to the Roman Empire.
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