Fantasy Authors Use Existing Cultures for Easy Consistency

Inconsistencies in any fictional world can be jarring to audiences and detract from the narrative; “lacking consistency, a world may begin to appear sloppily constructed, or even random and disconnected.”58 Since Secondary Worlds are increasingly likely to be inconsistent as they grow in size and scope, analogies to the real world are particularly useful to Fantasy authors because they provide a template in which not every detail needs to be either imagined or explained to the audience. Genre conventions operate in very similar ways. Mark J. P. Wolf points out that inconsistencies can exist at more or less intrusive levels of the world and narrative, and also observes that avid fans are more likely to notice them than casual readers.59 Most if not all of the audience members who participate in the debates discussed below appear to fall into the first category because of the level of importance they place on what are perceived to be inconsistencies between the imagined world and the historical real world.