World Building Archives : JamiFairleigh.com

Image description: The words Blending Cultures in Fantasy Writing over an image of a path leading through the woods towards a Japanese torii

Blending Cultures in Fantasy Writing: From Pickled Plums to Dragon Perches

Posted on August 8, 2025 by Jami Fairleigh

When I started writing fantasy, I expected the usual challenges: stubborn characters, tricky plot holes, and the occasional three-hour research spiral on how long it takes to cross a desert by camel. What I didn’t expect was the tug-of-war between...Read More

My Fantasy Library

Posted on February 10, 2023 by Jami Fairleigh

As a fiction author, I do plenty of world building in my stories, but it's still fun to build places like a fantasy library in my imagination. To start, I'd build my fantasy library extra tall, so I could have...Read More

50 Questions to Build Your Fictional World

Posted on October 21, 2022October 28, 2022 by Jami Fairleigh

All writers world build. Although sometimes attributed to science fiction and fantasy writers, anyone who creates a fictional community or describes an imaginary setting is world building. The goal when world building is to create an authentic setting that can...Read More

Should You Write What You Know?

Posted on March 5, 2021July 1, 2022 by Jami Fairleigh

The adage of "Write What You Know" is something all fiction writers are told at some point. But... should you? Writers seem split on this advice. Here's an article which provides pro and con quotes from 31 famous novelists from...Read More