u/Civil-Dot4349

I've been developing my own fantasy world for quite a while, and one thing I'm wondering about is specific choices in details you choose to present to your reader. Details that mention something Earth related, which could be as small as a material like cotton or as glaring as a drink with cultural implications like coffee. Examples include: grains, materials, minerals, foods, dances, drinks, phrases, and sayings.

I've heard that to some degree fantasy should operate within Earth logic as to not ostracize the readers from it's own world, but I wonder how true that actually is. I know that this is the tried and true method; plenty of fantasy books have borrowed countless concepts from Earth, (bread being the most common one I can think of) but I wonder if at any point doing so would actually take the reader out of the story.

In my specific case, I'm writing sci-fi and fantasy, where there is multiple worlds bridged together with magic, and to a certain extent I'd like to make certain worlds feel 'alien' whilst still operating within the realm of fantasy. One particular point I've been wondering about is measurements and time; a day on one planet would be longer than a day on another planet, and thus our conventional measurements of time don't seem sufficient.

I've been developing my own fantasy world for quite a while, and one thing I'm wondering about is specific choices in details you choose to present to your reader. Details that mention something Earth related, which could be as small as a material like cotton or as glaring as a drink with cultural implications like coffee. Examples include: grains, materials, minerals, foods, dances, drinks, phrases, and sayings.

I've heard that to some degree fantasy should operate within Earth logic as to not ostracize the readers from it's own world, but I wonder how true that actually is. I know that this is the tried and true method; plenty of fantasy books have borrowed countless concepts from Earth, (bread being the most common one I can think of) but I wonder if at any point doing so would actually take the reader out of the story.

In my specific case, I'm writing sci-fi and fantasy, where there is multiple worlds bridged together with magic, and to a certain extent I'd like to make certain worlds feel 'alien' whilst still operating within the realm of fantasy.

I'm not sure what the right word for this would be. Vibe, aesthetic, atmosphere — basically anything that makes a reader feel the story rather than just read it. I'm trying to get better at my fantasy worldbuilding, and I think I have a good idea on how to piece a world together, but a big part of what makes the world interesting is how the reader feels it; namely through how it's depicted in prose.

In a way I'm struggling to figure out how to make my own world pull the reader in as if they were living in it. Not just imagery, but feeling a general sense of whatever vibe the story is trying to capture at a particular moment. Dread and tension are what come to mind first, but of course there's a whole array of feelings an author might be going for in a given scene.

You might look at a visual medium for example. Something like a dark fantasy or psychological thriller movie; where the eeriness of a dreary cityscape or mystifying sounds of the night leave a strong impression on what kind of world is being portrayed. Though capturing that same sort of portrayal seems much more difficult in prose than it would be on a screen.

What I'm asking for is basically tips, resources, or books that may illustrate how to properly make a world feel lived in and/or carry a certain emotion to a reader in a way that doesn't feel contrived.