The world of a novel is built from words. An author who writes fantasy in a way that seems as though they are striving to have no style at all—I’ve heard it described as windowpane, transparent, or novelization style—is failing to impart the feeling or experience of the setting, the sense of being in that world, whether it be the unique physical or psychological or sociological or mythic landscape of the world. It’s not worldbuilding that imparts that feeling, but “the worldbuilding effect,” as M. John Harrison put it. Ursula K. Le Guin called it “the authentic Elfland accent.”
“Good prose” is a frequent topic of conversation on fantasy forums. “I’m looking for a fantasy novel with good prose.” “How important is good prose to you?” “I don’t care about prose.” “Good prose” is often equated, by those who prefer “transparent style,” with “purple prose,” which is by definition bad prose. But what they often mean is lyrical, flowery, baroque, maximalist styles, or something that sounds like Shakespeare, Spenser, Lord Dunsany.
“The authentic Elfland accent” isn’t any of these writers’ styles. That is, it doesn’t have to be any of these. It is simply the style appropriate to the story being told. When a fantasy reader rejects a book for having “bad prose,” it’s often because an author is writing a Wikipedia entry on the world that exists in their mind rather than bringing that world to life through language. This isn’t what “show, don’t tell” means, but it should be.
Why does, say, The Winged Histories have “good prose”? It gives voice to the kinds of characters whose voices are often ignored in both history and fantasy. The book is about a different way to relate to wars and kingdoms and heroes than is typically represented in fantasy. It’s about the thoughts and feelings and perspectives of people normally on the sidelines. Its themes would be much weaker if it were written in standard sf/f style of tight third-person limited narration. It’s “good prose” not just because it’s lyrical and expressive and beautiful and evocative; it’s good prose because the style and form of the novel supports the kind of story being told.
“Good prose” makes places and the characters who live there come alive. Gormenghast/Steerpike is not Hayholt/Simon, and Hayholt/Simon is not Winterfell/Bran, because of the different styles Peake, Williams, and Martin deploy in writing about those places and their inhabitants. It’s all the same on the surface, “boy crawls around big castle and sees things he shouldn’t,” but the three writers’ different styles highlight different themes and give each one a different sense of place.
“Art reveals the forces that animate the world,” as someone, I can’t remember who, put it. Not the facts of the world (or a world), but the forces, the flows, the affects. Worldbuilding isn’t a timeline of 10000 years of a setting’s history, or a map with lots of place names on it, or long explanations about how these plants are different, or in any of the “facts” of a fictional world. It is in the texture of the prose, in characters who seem like logical outgrowths of their societies, who have ways of speaking to one another and relating to one another and thinking about their lives that set them apart from those of our own world. Worldbuilding is how it feels to be in that world. In doing so, a writer reveals not only something about a fictional world, but something about our own world, as well. To make those sensations sensible, as it were, writers have to attend to the ways word choice, syntax, rhythm, and mood help them build not the facts of their worlds, but the sense of them.
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