u/CalligrapherThen4033

I am wandering how do you handle this? English is my third or maybe even fourth language so the level I have is not the same of many of you, of course. 😅 Everything I write I need to translate into English so more people would be able to access it - it is about the broader audience - and that’s how I got to RR. Writing a post is not a problem at all, but a whole story - it will take ages to finish anything.

RR was something new for me. I translated the first 3-4 chapters, published them and then the realization came - I don’t have enough time to properly translate my texts between chapters (once in a week), and that’s when I quickly got a professional translation. However it was quite expensive (and maybe not what I was expecting in terms of the text quality). So my only way to release the chapters is forgetting about my plan “a chapter per week”.

With Tolkien (and not only), even when the characters stayed in one place, you could still feel that elsewhere people were trading, migrating, fighting wars, speaking different languages, carrying old grudges and histories. Middle-earth felt inhabited.

A lot of modern fantasy feels much smaller to me. The plot happens in one important location, while the rest of the world exists mostly as names on a map or background decoration.

Maybe I notice this more because of my own life. I was born in Armenia, grew up in Russia, and now live in Spain while constantly switching between Armenian, Russian, English, Spanish, and Ukrainian every day with 24/7 knowledge of what is going on right now in every part of the world I’ve ever lived in.

Moving between cultures makes you realize how differently people think, speak, behave, joke, even argue. And I think fantasy worlds feel more alive when those differences actually shape the setting instead of everything having the same “generic European medieval” feeling.

That’s something I’m trying to bring into my own writing. Maybe I am failing right now - you tell me but I feel WHAT EXACTLY I wanna do with my writing. Maybe I will work it out.

Curious what fantasy worlds made you feel this sense of “largeness” beyond just geography.