By WSM
Edited by Harith Syafiee
From left: Elizar, Ifvan, Yoshin, Raisa, Alana | Credit: WSM
Ever wondered how creators—authors, writers, and artists of your favourite fantasy books or media—came up with such detailed imaginary worlds and systems in their works? Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and other well-known fantasy works all have one thing in common: their unique world-building that is not far-fetched from the real world yet so distinctive with the existence of power systems, peculiar ecosystems, languages, cultures, and different rules and norms.
How did they, the authors, come up with all those? The answer may be obvious, but still, if you think about it, can you come up with a completely imaginary world that is similar to real life, but with different systems that are so well detailed inside your head and bring the idea out to a piece of paper (or a document)?
This is called Paracosm, where a person comes up with a detailed imaginary world in their mind, mostly existing since childhood. And I would like to make it known that I, in fact, have been creating an imaginary world inside my mind since I was twelve. No, probably earlier than that.
I’m sure some of you had, at least, an imaginary friend during your childhood or played houses with imaginary characters. Well, I at least did. I used to play with literal blocks of Jenga—the one where you build a tower and try not to make it collapse—as characters. Instead of playing it like usual, I used the blocks to build houses and buildings, some of them as characters, and then had the characters interact with each other in various scenarios. Yes, I’m also the voice actor for everyone. I found out that this is called worldplay, and it is the beginning of how I developed a paracosm in my head.
Glad to say that my imagination is so vivid and constant that it has literally become a big part of my life. At the age of twelve, I came up with a story initially made for a comic. Of course, with that story, an imaginary world consisting of fictional characters and systems comes along. This paracosm inside my head has been developing ever since, and over the span of ten years, the fictional world and characters I have gradually brought into life through papers and writings. Each character I have is dear and precious to me, and at one point they almost feel like they are my children, in a way.
Come to think of it, the characters I made inside my mind practically grew up alongside me. They undergo the same growth and development as me, their stories and personalities changing along with the expansion of my knowledge and experiences. They have brought me joy, peace, and a sense of comfort, even though it might sound ridiculous to some people. But believe me when I say, the time I spend working on my stories and characters, drawing and writing them, is quite possibly the thing I enjoy the most in my boring life.
I would like to yap more about my story and the characters, but that would likely take up thousands of pages. So, with this, I definitely recommend creating and imagining your own world and story, unleashing your creativity, and projecting all your fantasies into them!
Here are some of my artworks (a bit old, during 2020), showcasing my characters and their little interactions.
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