Two Worlds

Okay, so last week I told you who to read when you’re wanting to write foreshadowing and who to read when you want to get better at writing those tricky ethical dilemmas… this week, how about we have a little more fun?

Today’s topic is a little more for you sci-fi/fantasy authors, but it’s definitely something the rest of you could learn from as well. Actually historical fiction and steampunk writers might get some great information from this author as well, if you read him right.

Ted Dekker – The Circle

Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that The Circle got a little long and convoluted if you weren't putting enough focus into it. There’s just so much going on in the series, and no matter how much I love it (because I do love it, and I’ll never stop reading all the books that connect to it, even if there end up being more), I rarely recommend the whole thing to other readers. So we’ll be focusing on the primary series: Black, Red, and White. We won’t even get into Green. If you haven’t read the series and by the end of this post you feel that you should, then read the first three. And yes, you should read all three: don’t read just one and leave it at that. They're all so different and unique that you really need to read all three.

To the point though, if there’s one thing that you’ll learn by reading The Circle, it’s how to set up multiple worlds within the same story.

See, The Circle is about a man named Thomas, who lives in two worlds (ours and one where white bats are scholars and black bats are the embodiment of all evil). And Dekker does an amazing job of making both worlds perfectly real. There is no doubt in a reader’s mind that both worlds are the real world. Even though we all know perfectly well that the real world is the one in which New York City is a real place, and that there are no such things as Shataiki, we’re more than willing to believe that the second world is also completely real.

The way he does it? He treats them both as real. There’s doubt in Thomas’ mind as to which one is real, because they both feel completely real. There’s doubt in his mind because they also both seem ridiculous (ever think too hard about life and realize how weird it is? Something like that, only on a larger scale). And it works to the point that every reader I know who’s made it through as little as a quarter of the first book has then been completely ready to step into either world and live there.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? But it's not. Most writers wouldn't even know where to begin in doing anything remotely similar to what Dekker did in The Circle. 

Dekker is a master of storytelling, of making reality out of things very far from the truth. If dual worlds is something that you think one of your books might require, or if you wonder how to do it in the first place, you need to check The Circle out. Really, you ought to anyway.

We need to know how to write about things like different worlds, how to superimpose them over the real world and still have them both feel just as real. It’s a way for us to learn more about world building in the first place, a way for us to get better at making a fictional reality. Because no matter what, that’s what we’re doing. As long as we’re writing fiction, we’re creating a world that doesn’t truly exist. Dekker only takes it one step further, by adding yet another world to the mix.

So if you’re like me and you find yourself writing a book with two different realities on two different worlds, take some time and read The Circle. See how Dekker pieced together two worlds into one novel, seamlessly, to the point that there are still thousands upon thousands of readers all over the world who want to dive deep into that world.

After all, that’s what we all want from our readers, isn’t it?

[love]

{Rani Divine}


Speaking of other worlds, check out The Wraith and the Wielder by AC Schafer — it just came out today at RAD! 

Oh, and while you're there, go ahead and preorder The Nine Worlds by TL Boehm — it's the first collection of poetry that I can honestly say I enjoyed from start to finish! 

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