I'm creating a fictional world, please help me?!?

Question

Rather like Middle-Earth, Pern, and "Wizarding World" in HP, I am creating an entirely fictional world in one of my fantasy novels. I have already included what is their life style, how they live and everything else but the thing that I am most worried about are their names and their religion.

I have decided that I will give them the usual names of our world like Jim, Jack, Harry, Jane, Alice etc...

I don't think it is a good idea to invent a FICTIONAL religion for a fictional world. It sounds really silly to me. I guess I will give my characters the religion of our world and hopefully give hints in my novel saying for example that there was a little church at hill etc...

What do you guys think? Any advice about this will be much appriciated.

Cheers,

Hoffie

Answer 1

I think it is a good idea. I am creating my own fictional world two. thats why u will see from me my questions. Just do what you feel is good. Also can u ppl plz answer my question? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 2

I'm curious how closely other aspects of your world parallel ours, because if the culture is very foreign in other ways, it will be pretty jarring to run into common English names, and even more so to find Christianity sailing along in fine form in a country where Jesus never existed and the geopolitical circumstances that led to Christianity's rise from persecuted cult to major world religion never happened. Obviously you can get around the Jesus/geopolitical thing by using the trappings of Christianity like churches, priests, etc. without ever going into any more detail than that, but I guess I find it fun to invent my own religious beliefs that fit in with the culture I've created. YMMV, obviously. ~shrugs~ Simply, religion is very dependent on culture, so you need to have one that makes sense within its context and even within a single religion you get a lot of variation depending on circumstances. Just look at the differences between Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, and UUs in today's world. Then add in the 2718271651 other Christian sects that have come and gone and stuck around since Jesus died on the cross, the Sunnis, s**+'ites and Sufis of Islam, the many sects of Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the almost endless variety of Paganism...

Anyway, I have a page of worldbuilding resources that I thought you might find handy, including a number that deal specifically with language and religion issues: http://www.squidoo.com/fantasyworldbuild...

A couple links from the page I especially recommend:

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/worldbuildin...

http://www.rpgmud.com/WorldBuilding/Myth...

http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memorie...

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pound/

Answer 3

I suggest you read the Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones for ideas. The author created a world closely parallel to our own.

Answer 4

The way you're doing it sounds good. :) Subtle hints as to the religions can be good, because that way it wouldn't be as offensive to non-religious people as if they were clearly religious. My advice is to just make their religion a minor part of the story; don't try to focus on it too much.

Answer 5

Awesome idea! I've been creating one since I was twelve. Rules are- there are no rules. Hence, imagination takes course.