Settings Drive Us Crazy When Creating Unique Ideas

We can drive ourselves crazy when we wish to craft a setting unique to our stories that sets them apart from the rest of literature. Sometimes it is a hair-ripping experience trying to set your stories apart from other works, to truly make something your own.

But I always say to myself, “I may be slightly crazy, but at least I’m free to try things out.”

I want to tell a grand epic across twenty books. Meaning I have a long way to go for the story to finish up the main threads and craft the best stage for the events.

Part of writing such a long tale is creating that often-searched-for, memorable setting.

I’ve spoken about the auroral storms that rain down blossoms, petals, and full flowers called bloomfall before.

But there are other facets of this world that make it stand out. The world is set up as an ascending array of seven spheres, with one even having wings where people live on continents. Between each of the spheres, there is a trail in the shape of a Tree of Life branch that leads to other spheres created out of small gemstones called the Cabochon Trail or Cabochon Belt, depending on which sphere the character is from (the dialect and terms may differ).

These are massive arrays of lines and spheres, since each sphere in Orchestrylus is the size of a planet on its own. The trail of shining gems between the spheres that reflect light from the Flames surrounding each sphere spans for billions of measures in each distinct trail.

The airships that take you between each of these spheres use the solar energy stored up in each Cabochon Trail to propel themselves between the spheres, breaking through the photon sphere of each sphere to land on each planet-sized location with newly arrayed gravitation.

The photon sphere acts as a repository for light that creates each sphere’s Flame.

The workings of a fantasy world are such that these things also must make sense to the reader. Orchestrylus is shaped like a Tree of Life with trails and spheres interlocked into a pattern.

The typical notion of a universe beyond the spheres is there, where the overarching titans of the skies, the spiralixes (spiral-shaped structures of red and blue respectively) of Zaph and Rubinus, are off in the distance and dance between each other every night during the Crossing event. They are said to be collective masses of multiple Flames like the ones around Orchestrylus far off in the distance.

But the main part of the world is the sectioned display of spheres that resound with the musical vibrations of existence itself.

I feel like this world concept is unique to my Orchestrylus Odyssey alone. I’ve never seen another story do that. But readers will ask why the gravity of one sphere might not affect another, or how the microscopic and macroscopic gems in the Cabochon Trails keep their shape over billions of miles. Why is the number of spheres seven instead of ten?

Those are all questions that must have an answer that makes sense. It’s easy to say, “Magic did it, duh.” Or, “The Conductor is basically God.”

But I want my world to be consistent and have grounded rules mixed with a sense of wonder.

How might you take your story’s setting and put in some unique twists to keep it your own?

Happy writing!