Building Ancient History for My Fantasy World: The Broken Realms

Have you ever read a fantasy novel and felt like the world existed long before the story began? Readers might imagine fantasy authors writing hundreds of pages of historical records before writing the story at hand, like Tolkein. I’m not one of those authors. That approach buries readers under endless lore, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not the road I took.

Instead, my goal was simple: create the feeling of a thousand years of history without going on for twenty pages about a tree (sorry, Tolkein). So I’m going to talk a bit about how I built the ancient history of the Broken Realms.

The Earliest Events First

My world’s foundation began with a map. I sat down and drew the world, splitting it into the Sun Realm and the Shade Realm. Then I focused on the oldest parts. If you’re an author like me, the biggest cataclysmic events don’t need every single detail. They simply need to cast a long shadow over everything that follows. In the Broken Realms, that event split the world into the Sun Realm and the Shade Realm. I gave it a brief limelight in my novella Divided—not because I didn’t want to spend a little more time on it, but I just had other things to write.

I Let Ancient Cultures Inspire New Ones

I wanted the new cultures/people groups in my world to feel authentic without copying verbatim what we have here on Earth. So I studied the early myths, traditions, and daily life of real-world cultures — tribal Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and medieval England (a classic fantasy setting). I looked at origin stories, family structures, religious beliefs, art, government, food, and what people enjoyed in their free time. I had to weed through similar questions as historians. What about all this information I’m reading is important?

I took those combined influences and asked “what if” questions. What if the Isokanii people, inspired by tribal Africa, worshipped massive Shade Beasts? What if that worship was something more and they could actually bond with these Beasts to become elite warriors? Those “what ifs” helped me create cultures that feel real and relatable while staying completely original to my world.

Using these universal concerns helped to make my fictional world and cultures feel more alive and make a connection with readers.

History Should Shape the Present

History can still feel alive because people live with its consequences. I took this same idea and applied it to the Broken Realms. Traditions form, customs evolve, and architecture carries the marks of who came before. The city of Beirut is a perfect example. My husband pointed out that it’s all these different architecture types — French, Roman, Italian, Greek — because it got conquered repeatedly by every culture that showed up. Names tell the same story. The Thames River is because the Romans conquered the known world and expanded. Imagine if, instead, it was the Egyptian Empire that did this. Names and architecture would be completely different. Timelines matter, even if I don’t spell them out in a 400,000-word book, they quietly affect how characters live today.

Resisting the Urge to Explain Everything

Not everything can be explained. Some things will always be mysteries. The Night Crystals from the Shade Realm can be used by mages in the Sun Realm, which shouldn’t be possible. The Shade Realm is the opposite of magic. I spent some time thinking about how I could make this connection work, but in the end, I decided the effect was more important than the reason. Sometimes you can get away with that if it’s explained properly. I really wanted this element in the story, so I stuck with it and chalked it up to a mystery. The characters don’t know, so the reader will never know—sorry. That’s one of the nice things about being an author.

The Result

I didn’t write a textbook, but I did build a foundation, let ancient cultures evolve into new ones, and let mystery shape what we know. When history quietly frames the present, readers feel like they’ve stepped into a world that was alive long before the first chapter — and will continue long after the last page. That’s what draws us in, and that’s why we keep going. That’s one of the many reasons why I love writing and worldbuilding.