So I have this trilogy I wrote. (Maybe you have one like it, or something similar sitting in your files somewhere.) I always loved it. It was my first "novel," my baby, very close to my heart in that dangerous way that means it will take you forever before you really understand it. Maybe "baby" really is the right word.
It has a lot of growing up to do, but I've never stopped loving it. The world - Varin - was the one part I was sure of, because it came into a mature form on the basis of my studies. That was the one thing I was an expert in at the time that I wrote it. Varin sticks with me. The characters, as problematic as they were in their execution (even after three, four, five drafts!) never stopped sticking with me. I knew that I had their basic roles right, the basic contradictions and flaws in their personalities.
And when I mean they stuck with me, I don't just mean I remembered them. I mean that long after I'd left them alone, realizing that this still wasn't the novel it needed to be, I kept having ideas that refined their character, brought them closer to what they needed to be in order for the story to succeed.
I got a really wonderful opportunity to step back into that world and "get it right" with the short story I had published in Panverse Publishing's Eight Against Reality anthology ("The Eminence's Match," reviewed here by Margaret McGaffey Fisk). It was years since I'd put the novel down, but when I finally got that story right, I knew I had the ability to get the world and the characters to come together. The character in that story, Imbati Xinta, was the first character I'd really grasped with any degree of complexity when I was writing the novel initially, so it made sense that he was the first one I'd be able to "get right." At the same time I was getting glimpses into the character of Akrabitti Meetis, the girl who seems innocent but really is an incredible intellectual subversive.
Last year sometime I started back into Varin writing a novel, For Love, For Power. It was a novel I'd attempted before, after writing the trilogy, initially because I wanted to try to understand the nobility and their situation better (a great reason to start a story, but not sufficient for finishing it, as I learned at the time). It was better-planned than the original trilogy, and when I picked it back up, it started to take off. I'm 2/3 through right now and certain that it will finish in a way that far exceeds what I was ever able to accomplish earlier. It's also doing something fascinating that I didn't expect. By getting me deep into the backstory of some of the trilogy's major players, it's re-focusing my attention on the elements of the original trilogy in a new way. It's forcing me to engage deeply with details of Varin that I hadn't previously considered. How the streets are laid out, for example, and how people who have no power will work around all obstacles in order to accomplish things. What kind of motives are plausible for people to hold. How people earn their money, and what kind of position that puts them in as far as altering the difficulty of their situation.
A few days ago, the question of money-earning opened a door for me into the backstory and mindset of the third character from the trilogy, Akrabitti Corbinan. He was always the hardest, because he was the least like me. I figured out how he was brought up and why he ended up getting involved with gangs, and why his people's undercaste status was so dissatisfying. Hint: it's not because he wants to overthrow the government, which would be implausible for a person in his position. It's because he figures everybody deserves some cash, a place to live, and some respect...and nobody he knows gets all three.
Figuring this out put me in a strange position. Always before I'd known Corbinan was the revolutionary - you know, the one who wants to bring the whole system down and make things right for his people (it's a familiar trope). Suddenly he wasn't that any more. It was refreshing - so refreshing! - for him to be so much more realistic, but I wasn't sure how he was going to get done what he needed to get done any more. I couldn't see how to get him to begin the story I had always imagined. So suddenly everything and everyone was working better than ever before, but the story was implausible!
Today I was talking with the lovely and insightful Janice Hardy, and it came to me. It was like a shock, and I got goosebumps. Corbinan has to discover a hidden library. But he doesn't have to have revolutionary goals, and he doesn't even have to know it's a library in order to get there. Once he's there, he gets arrested and dragged before the Eminence of Varin and his servant, Imbati Xinta. The Eminence falsely accuses him of spying and working for a political rival, has him tortured and thrown in jail. But here's the best part - it is those very accusations that for the first time give Corbinan the idea that he can make a difference. It is the fact that he then gets thrown in prison that gives him time to think it all through, and make plans. An ordinary person with a degree of insight into his own people gets exposed to something unusual, and the results are unusual. That is something I can get behind.
Suddenly I'm starting to realize that none of the previously written text of this story will make it into the new draft. I'm going to have to outline it from scratch, because that new beginning is already starting to show me how entirely different the story will be this time. I don't want to see what I did before. I want its spirit to stay with me, as it always has - but I want to write it the way I now know how to write it.
I'm telling you this because even though I see mountains of work ahead of me, it feels like climbing Mount Everest, in the best possible way. So if you've ever been in this position before, or if you still are guarding a "baby" somewhere, you might have a chance to realize that it still has hope. It might not be a baby, but a caterpillar just waiting for its metamorphosis in order to fly.
I get the feeling mine will fly this time, and I can't wait to get started.
Showing posts with label Varin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Varin. Show all posts
Friday, October 21, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Tired of cliché? Want to be unique? Pursue the why.
They say it's details that make a setting unique. Some would say, "Don't just create a character who is the generic chosen one who grew up on a farm unaware of his destiny," and they'd be right, but it's been done successfully. I'm thinking a lot of this is about details.
If you're just starting out on something like this, though, hearing this advice can be maddening. Details? What details? The last thing you want to do is take the same old tired scenario and add on a few bells and whistles, a bunch of superficial stuff that you made up because somebody told you that you needed details. Then you're still sitting where you started, just with a lot of extra words.
Pursue the why.
It's not really the details that make the scenario unique. It's how the scenario grows out of your world organically. Does the city have dirty streets? Okay, then why are its streets dirty? Does the village have an idiot? Okay, then who is he, and what is his family like, and how did he come to be where he is? Does he have a real disability or is he simply disaffected?
There are all kinds of societal scenarios that we see constantly in stories. But the fact that we see them constantly may not be because people are unoriginal. It may simply be because these things are real features of our own world. If we're working in a different world, we can have these features appear, but it's important to dig down into the underpinnings of the world and ask, "Why would this common phenomenon happen in this world?" Because things don't happen for no reason.
To make this concrete, I'll tell you about an insight I had over the last two days about my Varin world. Funny enough, it's about a part of my Varin world that plays only a tiny part in my current novel in progress. I was inspired in part by last Wednesday's worldbuilding hangout, which I'll be reporting on this coming Wednesday. We were talking about how to make larger economic patterns in society concrete by thinking about their impact on individuals.
Here's the part that I had before. It's the part that isn't as original as it could be.
Varin has an undercaste. They take undesirable jobs, so they work with trash, or in cremation, or as prison janitors. They get abused in their jobs. They live in small apartments. They have hoodlum gangs. One of my characters, Meetis, works in a prison and has a "good job" and a "good apartment." The other character, Corbinan, is a trash collector who has an "okay job" but not a "good apartment." He is a fighter who used to live on the streets.
It's not that it's not detailed. I had put in a lot of setting and stuff. But look how it changes when I tell you what I figured out.
The undercaste members get different economic benefits from their different possible jobs. People who work in prisons get apartments near their work, clothing, and food paid for by their place of work, but they get paid virtually zero cash, so once they have the job, it's almost impossible for them to leave (because they would be homeless with no money), so they have no recourse and are pushed around by their superiors quite easily. People who work in crematories get housing near their work, and are required to maintain high standards of cleanliness, but they don't get fed at work; they are paid cash to buy their own food. They are also paid "by the body" as an incentive for them to do the hardest work. Thus they carry cash but this money is often seen as dirty. Trash collectors are paid by the hour, in cash, and receive no other benefits. Thus they have a hard time securing apartments, and often a group of several people will join together and pool funds to secure an apartment (even if the apartment isn't designed for so many people). People (especially teenagers) without jobs form gangs and steal to keep themselves alive, but it's far riskier for them to try to rob members of other castes, so they target the trash worker neighborhoods first, the crematory neighborhoods if they're desperate, and only then would they try to target a member of another caste. They don't bother with prison neighborhoods because there's no money in it. The trash workers create their own gangs so they can stand up to the penniless hoodlums. The only way to get cash outside of the system without stealing it is to be able to read. These people deal with government workers all the time and are handed papers they can't read, so they will pay anyone who can actually read what they're being given and help defend them against manipulation by the contract writers.
It sounds complicated, but what it does is establish the reasons why gangs exist, who has them and who doesn't, and where they operate. These are details, but they are not random. So once it's all set up in theory, then I operationalize it on my characters' lives.
Meetis is the daughter of prison workers. Her mother is a reader, which is the only honorable way she could get the money to buy a ticket for her daughter to take a prison job in the capital when jobs are scarce at home. Thus, Meetis has an apartment near her work that she shares with her cousin Flara. It isn't well-maintained, but it works. She wears company clothes and eats at work. She works hard and doesn't eat a lot, but she has a safe home and doesn't starve, and she isn't targeted by gangs unless she goes into someone else's neighborhood. She is also a reader, so she has the means to earn cash if she can find the time to fit in reading work.
Corbinan is the son of crematory workers. As a result he got a lot of hard teasing as a kid, had to learn to fight early and ended up running away from home, and running with the hoodlum gangs. When he realized he was starving, but was too young to get a job, he decided to learn to read, so he cornered a reader and threatened him with a beating if he didn't teach him the skill. Once he could read he was able to separate from the hoodlum gangs and save some money, and when he was old enough he got a job as a trash worker. He lives in an apartment with six other people who work out of the same trash center, and though he's tired of gangs generally, he's now a target of the hoodlum groups, so he and the other six form a gang for their own protection. Now he uses his fighting skills to run off the hoodlums, and also to help the gang leader make sure everyone pays a fair share of rent. He's far too smart ever to pick a fight with a member of another caste, but if he and his gang become targets, he can hold his own long enough to help the others get away.
Suddenly he's not just some guy who knows how to fight for who knows what reason. He's simultaneously jealous of Meetis' easy life and a bit contemptuous of her for her lack of "freedom," and her lack of toughness. We can also see why Meetis' life is easy compared to his, but why it is hard on her anyway.
The phenomena are still there, but the whole thing feels different.
If you're just starting out on something like this, though, hearing this advice can be maddening. Details? What details? The last thing you want to do is take the same old tired scenario and add on a few bells and whistles, a bunch of superficial stuff that you made up because somebody told you that you needed details. Then you're still sitting where you started, just with a lot of extra words.
Pursue the why.
It's not really the details that make the scenario unique. It's how the scenario grows out of your world organically. Does the city have dirty streets? Okay, then why are its streets dirty? Does the village have an idiot? Okay, then who is he, and what is his family like, and how did he come to be where he is? Does he have a real disability or is he simply disaffected?
There are all kinds of societal scenarios that we see constantly in stories. But the fact that we see them constantly may not be because people are unoriginal. It may simply be because these things are real features of our own world. If we're working in a different world, we can have these features appear, but it's important to dig down into the underpinnings of the world and ask, "Why would this common phenomenon happen in this world?" Because things don't happen for no reason.
To make this concrete, I'll tell you about an insight I had over the last two days about my Varin world. Funny enough, it's about a part of my Varin world that plays only a tiny part in my current novel in progress. I was inspired in part by last Wednesday's worldbuilding hangout, which I'll be reporting on this coming Wednesday. We were talking about how to make larger economic patterns in society concrete by thinking about their impact on individuals.
Here's the part that I had before. It's the part that isn't as original as it could be.
Varin has an undercaste. They take undesirable jobs, so they work with trash, or in cremation, or as prison janitors. They get abused in their jobs. They live in small apartments. They have hoodlum gangs. One of my characters, Meetis, works in a prison and has a "good job" and a "good apartment." The other character, Corbinan, is a trash collector who has an "okay job" but not a "good apartment." He is a fighter who used to live on the streets.
It's not that it's not detailed. I had put in a lot of setting and stuff. But look how it changes when I tell you what I figured out.
The undercaste members get different economic benefits from their different possible jobs. People who work in prisons get apartments near their work, clothing, and food paid for by their place of work, but they get paid virtually zero cash, so once they have the job, it's almost impossible for them to leave (because they would be homeless with no money), so they have no recourse and are pushed around by their superiors quite easily. People who work in crematories get housing near their work, and are required to maintain high standards of cleanliness, but they don't get fed at work; they are paid cash to buy their own food. They are also paid "by the body" as an incentive for them to do the hardest work. Thus they carry cash but this money is often seen as dirty. Trash collectors are paid by the hour, in cash, and receive no other benefits. Thus they have a hard time securing apartments, and often a group of several people will join together and pool funds to secure an apartment (even if the apartment isn't designed for so many people). People (especially teenagers) without jobs form gangs and steal to keep themselves alive, but it's far riskier for them to try to rob members of other castes, so they target the trash worker neighborhoods first, the crematory neighborhoods if they're desperate, and only then would they try to target a member of another caste. They don't bother with prison neighborhoods because there's no money in it. The trash workers create their own gangs so they can stand up to the penniless hoodlums. The only way to get cash outside of the system without stealing it is to be able to read. These people deal with government workers all the time and are handed papers they can't read, so they will pay anyone who can actually read what they're being given and help defend them against manipulation by the contract writers.
It sounds complicated, but what it does is establish the reasons why gangs exist, who has them and who doesn't, and where they operate. These are details, but they are not random. So once it's all set up in theory, then I operationalize it on my characters' lives.
Meetis is the daughter of prison workers. Her mother is a reader, which is the only honorable way she could get the money to buy a ticket for her daughter to take a prison job in the capital when jobs are scarce at home. Thus, Meetis has an apartment near her work that she shares with her cousin Flara. It isn't well-maintained, but it works. She wears company clothes and eats at work. She works hard and doesn't eat a lot, but she has a safe home and doesn't starve, and she isn't targeted by gangs unless she goes into someone else's neighborhood. She is also a reader, so she has the means to earn cash if she can find the time to fit in reading work.
Corbinan is the son of crematory workers. As a result he got a lot of hard teasing as a kid, had to learn to fight early and ended up running away from home, and running with the hoodlum gangs. When he realized he was starving, but was too young to get a job, he decided to learn to read, so he cornered a reader and threatened him with a beating if he didn't teach him the skill. Once he could read he was able to separate from the hoodlum gangs and save some money, and when he was old enough he got a job as a trash worker. He lives in an apartment with six other people who work out of the same trash center, and though he's tired of gangs generally, he's now a target of the hoodlum groups, so he and the other six form a gang for their own protection. Now he uses his fighting skills to run off the hoodlums, and also to help the gang leader make sure everyone pays a fair share of rent. He's far too smart ever to pick a fight with a member of another caste, but if he and his gang become targets, he can hold his own long enough to help the others get away.
Suddenly he's not just some guy who knows how to fight for who knows what reason. He's simultaneously jealous of Meetis' easy life and a bit contemptuous of her for her lack of "freedom," and her lack of toughness. We can also see why Meetis' life is easy compared to his, but why it is hard on her anyway.
The phenomena are still there, but the whole thing feels different.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Successful Technologies Endure: Deepening your world
Today my family and I went to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. It was really awesome. Among other things, we saw the original star-spangled banner which flew over Fort McHenry during the defense of Baltimore in war of 1812 and inspired the song by Francis Scott Key. It was very moving. The other thing that really struck me was a house.
This house was amazing. Not because of any single feature of the house, but because of its history. It had been built back in the 1700s before the Revolutionary War, and eventually been disassembled and moved to the museum from its original location in Massachusetts. The museum had set up the house with different key rooms restored to their original condition - and as you walked around the house, each room had been decorated to show a different period from the house's history, along with associated artifacts and portraits of the people who had lived there. It was a whole narrative of American history created through the use of this one house.
I can certainly see how this ties back to my post about focusing worldbuilding efforts on a single artifact (in this case a house). The other thing it makes me think of is how this house was still around in this neighborhood in Massachusetts up until the 1960's before it was moved. The same house. The same place. 200 years. Four separate families.
Successful objects and technologies endure.
I mean, after all, did you use a fork today? What about chopsticks?
I saw this house, which must have stayed around while some things changed around it and others did not. I also visited the Capital, which has been around looking pretty much the same for an awfully long time with things changing around it.
The old and the new coexist everywhere. I noticed this very keenly when I lived in Kyoto, Japan for a year, but it's true of your home too. Your fancy new photo printer uses paper. Paper is pretty old. The way carpenters work wood to build houses has been innovated, but probably not that much. Nails have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. Mirrors have been around for thousands, though their current form is different.
The same should be true of your world.
Take a look around it. What is old? What is new? Who lived in this house before its current residents? Is there any evidence available for that? Is there anything that has had one meaning for one group of residents that has a different meaning for a later group?
I must cackle when I say that I do this for Varin. I have secrets up my sleeve (quite a number of them). The old buildings, like the Eminence's Residence and the Imbati Service Academy, didn't used to be called what they are now called, and were used similarly, but by entirely different groups in Varin's past. There's a reason why the capitals on the columns of the Academy are shaped like flames. There's a block of red stone on the threshold of the Academy's front gate which reads, "Cross this threshold with a pure heart, and the Mysteries shall be revealed." The Imbati mark, the lily crest tattoo, didn't always used to be a caste mark, and wasn't always worn on the forehead.
It's not only interesting, it's fun. Mwa-ha-ha!
This house was amazing. Not because of any single feature of the house, but because of its history. It had been built back in the 1700s before the Revolutionary War, and eventually been disassembled and moved to the museum from its original location in Massachusetts. The museum had set up the house with different key rooms restored to their original condition - and as you walked around the house, each room had been decorated to show a different period from the house's history, along with associated artifacts and portraits of the people who had lived there. It was a whole narrative of American history created through the use of this one house.
I can certainly see how this ties back to my post about focusing worldbuilding efforts on a single artifact (in this case a house). The other thing it makes me think of is how this house was still around in this neighborhood in Massachusetts up until the 1960's before it was moved. The same house. The same place. 200 years. Four separate families.
Successful objects and technologies endure.
I mean, after all, did you use a fork today? What about chopsticks?
I saw this house, which must have stayed around while some things changed around it and others did not. I also visited the Capital, which has been around looking pretty much the same for an awfully long time with things changing around it.
The old and the new coexist everywhere. I noticed this very keenly when I lived in Kyoto, Japan for a year, but it's true of your home too. Your fancy new photo printer uses paper. Paper is pretty old. The way carpenters work wood to build houses has been innovated, but probably not that much. Nails have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. Mirrors have been around for thousands, though their current form is different.
The same should be true of your world.
Take a look around it. What is old? What is new? Who lived in this house before its current residents? Is there any evidence available for that? Is there anything that has had one meaning for one group of residents that has a different meaning for a later group?
I must cackle when I say that I do this for Varin. I have secrets up my sleeve (quite a number of them). The old buildings, like the Eminence's Residence and the Imbati Service Academy, didn't used to be called what they are now called, and were used similarly, but by entirely different groups in Varin's past. There's a reason why the capitals on the columns of the Academy are shaped like flames. There's a block of red stone on the threshold of the Academy's front gate which reads, "Cross this threshold with a pure heart, and the Mysteries shall be revealed." The Imbati mark, the lily crest tattoo, didn't always used to be a caste mark, and wasn't always worn on the forehead.
It's not only interesting, it's fun. Mwa-ha-ha!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
"Foot Assignments" - how idioms and metaphors bring your world to life
I've written about idioms before. I've explained them to my kids plenty of times. "That's an expression," I'll say. "It means this..."
English is full of little expressions that aren't literal, and a lot of these make reference to metaphors. I have a list of English examples in the post linked above and I'm not going to do a lot here, but take for example "I'm off to the rat race." That expression is all about metaphor. A person is a rat. Life, or at least work, is a race for rats. The metaphor then comes along with a whole set of implications about how the person feels about heading off to "the rat race," that it's pointless, exhausting, demeaning, etc. Depending on the character of the person who uses them, and how that person feels about work, for example, the implications of the expression may be interpreted somewhat differently.
This is an enormous opportunity for worldbuilders.
Some idioms might be cute, and some might be serious, but any way you approach them, they are incredibly illuminating of a culture and characters who belong to it. I personally feel that idioms are so closely linked to the culture of which they are a part that, if they are used outside their original cultural context, they stick out of a story when I'm reading it. If you're creating a world, you should be giving serious attention to idiomatic expressions.
One type of idiomatic expression is the aphorism - a phrase intended to give people behavioral guidance. "The early bird gets the worm" is used constantly in English, but this set of words, in this order, is so recognizable as belonging to our culture that I would hope I'd never run across it in a story world not directly linked to our own. If there are no birds, or there are no worms, you're in serious trouble. And even if there are, and your people place value on rising early or acting early, don't use it just as is. Change it. What are the primary motivators for your people to be getting up early, or acting fast? Create something that makes reference to that. Off the top of my head I'll give you this: "First arrow names the kill." This would be a society in which people hunt with arrows and whoever has their arrow hit first gets to receive some kind of honor. I'd work out the details with naming as I went. Story cultures can also have their own special values that will be honored with aphorisms. In Varin, the servant caste is guided by the expression, "Imbati, love where you serve." This is a big deal for members of the caste who have to struggle with their own identity and with cruel masters, etc.
Another type of special phrase arises around extremely common activities. In this context I think instantly of the phrases "log on" and "log off"... I mean, seriously. "Log"? I'm thinking this use of "log" goes back to the idea of a captain's log, but what you've got now is something where the expression is used so often that we don't really think about what the individual words mean, only what the phrase as a whole refers to. Because of the underlying connection to idiosyncratic activities of our own world history, this kind of phrase can't always be imported wholesale into a story world (hey, there's another expression!). Whenever you have a really common activity in your world (and it may not be common or have an associated idiom in ours), see if there's a special way people would refer to it, and how that might be connected to cultural details or cultural metaphors. I have used two different phrases involving the word "foot" in this context. In "Cold Words" (Analog Oct 2009) I had Rulii use the phrase "take foot" instead of "arrive." In my Varin world the servants don't "run errands" but "take foot assignments." This kind of tiny alteration can really help your world feel like it doesn't have to owe anything to ours, and can also create a wonderfully unique atmosphere.
I found myself listening in the other day on a forum conversation about a world that was using Chinese culture as its basis, and the writer was very concerned about whether to use Chinese idioms. Here's another very fascinating question. My own bias would be to say this: if your culture isn't actually a version of a culture, don't use actual idioms from that culture. Those idioms are going to broadcast the fact that this culture is at very least a fantasy or science fictional analog of Chinese culture (to use this example). Then if other aspects of the culture are non-Chinese, or if the language they use is not Chinese-derivative, the idioms will stick out by a mile. You can always alter or "translate" idioms. If you want to retain a Chinese flavor, one thing you can always do is have idioms play the same cultural role in your story world as they do in China. This is a link on the meta-level that won't actually require you to link your story world directly to China, but will give it some flavor that people will link with China. After all, one of the parameters of idioms is how often they are used and what they are used for.
I'll let you all think about this while I go off and take some foot assignments.
Note for Wednesday Worldbuilding fans: I have a couple of new entries that have come in, and I am planning to take them on, I hope within the next couple of weeks. Thanks for submitting!
English is full of little expressions that aren't literal, and a lot of these make reference to metaphors. I have a list of English examples in the post linked above and I'm not going to do a lot here, but take for example "I'm off to the rat race." That expression is all about metaphor. A person is a rat. Life, or at least work, is a race for rats. The metaphor then comes along with a whole set of implications about how the person feels about heading off to "the rat race," that it's pointless, exhausting, demeaning, etc. Depending on the character of the person who uses them, and how that person feels about work, for example, the implications of the expression may be interpreted somewhat differently.
This is an enormous opportunity for worldbuilders.
Some idioms might be cute, and some might be serious, but any way you approach them, they are incredibly illuminating of a culture and characters who belong to it. I personally feel that idioms are so closely linked to the culture of which they are a part that, if they are used outside their original cultural context, they stick out of a story when I'm reading it. If you're creating a world, you should be giving serious attention to idiomatic expressions.
One type of idiomatic expression is the aphorism - a phrase intended to give people behavioral guidance. "The early bird gets the worm" is used constantly in English, but this set of words, in this order, is so recognizable as belonging to our culture that I would hope I'd never run across it in a story world not directly linked to our own. If there are no birds, or there are no worms, you're in serious trouble. And even if there are, and your people place value on rising early or acting early, don't use it just as is. Change it. What are the primary motivators for your people to be getting up early, or acting fast? Create something that makes reference to that. Off the top of my head I'll give you this: "First arrow names the kill." This would be a society in which people hunt with arrows and whoever has their arrow hit first gets to receive some kind of honor. I'd work out the details with naming as I went. Story cultures can also have their own special values that will be honored with aphorisms. In Varin, the servant caste is guided by the expression, "Imbati, love where you serve." This is a big deal for members of the caste who have to struggle with their own identity and with cruel masters, etc.
Another type of special phrase arises around extremely common activities. In this context I think instantly of the phrases "log on" and "log off"... I mean, seriously. "Log"? I'm thinking this use of "log" goes back to the idea of a captain's log, but what you've got now is something where the expression is used so often that we don't really think about what the individual words mean, only what the phrase as a whole refers to. Because of the underlying connection to idiosyncratic activities of our own world history, this kind of phrase can't always be imported wholesale into a story world (hey, there's another expression!). Whenever you have a really common activity in your world (and it may not be common or have an associated idiom in ours), see if there's a special way people would refer to it, and how that might be connected to cultural details or cultural metaphors. I have used two different phrases involving the word "foot" in this context. In "Cold Words" (Analog Oct 2009) I had Rulii use the phrase "take foot" instead of "arrive." In my Varin world the servants don't "run errands" but "take foot assignments." This kind of tiny alteration can really help your world feel like it doesn't have to owe anything to ours, and can also create a wonderfully unique atmosphere.
I found myself listening in the other day on a forum conversation about a world that was using Chinese culture as its basis, and the writer was very concerned about whether to use Chinese idioms. Here's another very fascinating question. My own bias would be to say this: if your culture isn't actually a version of a culture, don't use actual idioms from that culture. Those idioms are going to broadcast the fact that this culture is at very least a fantasy or science fictional analog of Chinese culture (to use this example). Then if other aspects of the culture are non-Chinese, or if the language they use is not Chinese-derivative, the idioms will stick out by a mile. You can always alter or "translate" idioms. If you want to retain a Chinese flavor, one thing you can always do is have idioms play the same cultural role in your story world as they do in China. This is a link on the meta-level that won't actually require you to link your story world directly to China, but will give it some flavor that people will link with China. After all, one of the parameters of idioms is how often they are used and what they are used for.
I'll let you all think about this while I go off and take some foot assignments.
Note for Wednesday Worldbuilding fans: I have a couple of new entries that have come in, and I am planning to take them on, I hope within the next couple of weeks. Thanks for submitting!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Using details for setting: insider details and audience details
The other day I ran across the following question from Strange Horizons editor Jed Hartman on Facebook:
"Are Russian authors as enamored of matryoshkas as English-language authors who write fiction set in Russia seem to be?"
My ears immediately perked up. I'm sure you have probably already grasped the issue: an author unfamiliar with a culture is trying to set a story in that culture, and is looking for details that will help back up the setting. What can he/she place in the room? Where can he/she have a character go, which will richly suggest setting and context?
The matryoshka example demonstrates one of the traps inherent in this process. It is easy for outsiders to a culture to draw conclusions about what objects would be in a room based on their own limited experience of the culture, often from movies or stories, or just common knowledge in their own culture about what the foreign culture is like.
I have personally been on the other end of this. When I was studying in Japan, I got asked all kinds of questions about what I was like... which turned out to be questions about what all Americans were like. All Americans? Seriously - are all Americans "like" anything? I would say in a country this large and diverse, there are a very few things we can really point to and say "all Americans are like this." But I was asked more than once, "How many guns do you own?" And on numerous other occasions I was asked questions that began, "Since you're a Christian..." Please notice the very very large assumptions inherent in any questions of this nature. I would, quite awkwardly, find myself in the position of having to speak for every American when I am absolutely certain that is a position for which I am unqualified.
Obviously this is an issue that doesn't apply solely to setting - it applies to many other categories as well. However, since I'm thinking about setting here, let's take this a little further.
What kind of details do you need? Well, for real world settings and cultures, you need to have done your research. I'm an anthropologist and very much into the idea of field work and representation of the insider, so I would recommend going and finding a member or three of the culture you'd like to work with, and finding out what really goes into a room. This is one of the reasons that I set up the Writer's International Culture Share - because it's a lot of work going out and finding people, and I love having so much specific, detailed information from unusual cultures available in one place.
Be aware that if you feel certain you know what must be there, but have never actually walked into that setting, you are probably wrong. There is an enormous difference between cultural insiders and cultural outsiders: they will notice different things. Different languages let us categorize things differently, and different cultures lead us to think different things are normal. That's why I often will go back to literature, such as Japanese literature in translation from the time period I'm working with, in order to determine what insiders would be paying attention to.
Okay, so you're writing a scene and you are trying to set it in ancient Heian Japan, and you want to depict the setting. You'll probably want to indicate the season (spring, fall, summer, winter, rainy season), whether or not your character is indoors (he/she might be noticing temperature, after all), because seasons are very important to the Japanese (then, and even now). If you're looking for particular objects or vistas associated with the season, then go back to Japanese poetry in translation, and you'll discover things like the association of the moon with the autumn, for example. If there is a woman involved there will likely be privacy screens in the room. If it's winter, there will be a brazier to help keep people warm. Depending on who the people are and what they're up to, you may find writing materials in the room, short tables, brushes and ink blocks, inkstones, etc.
I always like to start with a set of core insider objects. But that isn't always enough. You can start with the things your character will notice, but it's also a good idea to keep in mind someone else: your audience. Chances are you're not also writing your story for Heian Japanese insiders, and therefore there may be details - important ones - that an insider wouldn't notice but that your reader will fill in incorrectly without guidance. This might include something like the fact that the floors are either polished wood or tatami mats, and that people don't wear shoes indoors. In a case like this, pick out a few details that you feel are important to note, and then hide them. Take them and set them in the background by making them part of a description of a character's action, or incidental to something else that is important to the character. That way they won't take on too much importance in the character's mind, but they'll be sitting there available to the reader so that later when you mention the character falling on the rush mats, they won't go, "Huh?"
This distinction between insider details and audience details also applies to fictional worlds of the fantasy and science fictional variety. The people of Varin will always notice a person's caste, and will notice distinctions within their own caste but typically not that of others. On the other hand, they live underground but don't tend to take much notice of that; I have to sneak it in here and there. They also have very little wood, and large pieces of wood are extremely expensive - that one I can either show someone noticing, as when a servant notices that the family he's interviewing with has a gaming table and chairs made of real wood, or sneak in, as when I put in a word here or there to remind readers that tables and chairs are typically made of brass or steel, and doors of steel or bronze (thus combating specific real-world expectations).
It's something to think about.
"Are Russian authors as enamored of matryoshkas as English-language authors who write fiction set in Russia seem to be?"
My ears immediately perked up. I'm sure you have probably already grasped the issue: an author unfamiliar with a culture is trying to set a story in that culture, and is looking for details that will help back up the setting. What can he/she place in the room? Where can he/she have a character go, which will richly suggest setting and context?
The matryoshka example demonstrates one of the traps inherent in this process. It is easy for outsiders to a culture to draw conclusions about what objects would be in a room based on their own limited experience of the culture, often from movies or stories, or just common knowledge in their own culture about what the foreign culture is like.
I have personally been on the other end of this. When I was studying in Japan, I got asked all kinds of questions about what I was like... which turned out to be questions about what all Americans were like. All Americans? Seriously - are all Americans "like" anything? I would say in a country this large and diverse, there are a very few things we can really point to and say "all Americans are like this." But I was asked more than once, "How many guns do you own?" And on numerous other occasions I was asked questions that began, "Since you're a Christian..." Please notice the very very large assumptions inherent in any questions of this nature. I would, quite awkwardly, find myself in the position of having to speak for every American when I am absolutely certain that is a position for which I am unqualified.
Obviously this is an issue that doesn't apply solely to setting - it applies to many other categories as well. However, since I'm thinking about setting here, let's take this a little further.
What kind of details do you need? Well, for real world settings and cultures, you need to have done your research. I'm an anthropologist and very much into the idea of field work and representation of the insider, so I would recommend going and finding a member or three of the culture you'd like to work with, and finding out what really goes into a room. This is one of the reasons that I set up the Writer's International Culture Share - because it's a lot of work going out and finding people, and I love having so much specific, detailed information from unusual cultures available in one place.
Be aware that if you feel certain you know what must be there, but have never actually walked into that setting, you are probably wrong. There is an enormous difference between cultural insiders and cultural outsiders: they will notice different things. Different languages let us categorize things differently, and different cultures lead us to think different things are normal. That's why I often will go back to literature, such as Japanese literature in translation from the time period I'm working with, in order to determine what insiders would be paying attention to.
Okay, so you're writing a scene and you are trying to set it in ancient Heian Japan, and you want to depict the setting. You'll probably want to indicate the season (spring, fall, summer, winter, rainy season), whether or not your character is indoors (he/she might be noticing temperature, after all), because seasons are very important to the Japanese (then, and even now). If you're looking for particular objects or vistas associated with the season, then go back to Japanese poetry in translation, and you'll discover things like the association of the moon with the autumn, for example. If there is a woman involved there will likely be privacy screens in the room. If it's winter, there will be a brazier to help keep people warm. Depending on who the people are and what they're up to, you may find writing materials in the room, short tables, brushes and ink blocks, inkstones, etc.
I always like to start with a set of core insider objects. But that isn't always enough. You can start with the things your character will notice, but it's also a good idea to keep in mind someone else: your audience. Chances are you're not also writing your story for Heian Japanese insiders, and therefore there may be details - important ones - that an insider wouldn't notice but that your reader will fill in incorrectly without guidance. This might include something like the fact that the floors are either polished wood or tatami mats, and that people don't wear shoes indoors. In a case like this, pick out a few details that you feel are important to note, and then hide them. Take them and set them in the background by making them part of a description of a character's action, or incidental to something else that is important to the character. That way they won't take on too much importance in the character's mind, but they'll be sitting there available to the reader so that later when you mention the character falling on the rush mats, they won't go, "Huh?"
This distinction between insider details and audience details also applies to fictional worlds of the fantasy and science fictional variety. The people of Varin will always notice a person's caste, and will notice distinctions within their own caste but typically not that of others. On the other hand, they live underground but don't tend to take much notice of that; I have to sneak it in here and there. They also have very little wood, and large pieces of wood are extremely expensive - that one I can either show someone noticing, as when a servant notices that the family he's interviewing with has a gaming table and chairs made of real wood, or sneak in, as when I put in a word here or there to remind readers that tables and chairs are typically made of brass or steel, and doors of steel or bronze (thus combating specific real-world expectations).
It's something to think about.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Worldbuilding: New Discoveries (use your people!)
I made a discovery about my world this week. I was very excited - I don't make lots and lots of new discoveries in Varin, because I've been working with it for twenty years now.
Those of you who have been worldbuilding for a while shouldn't be surprised by this - there's always more to discover about a world, particularly if it's an extensive one. This discovery was prompted by my fabulous beta reader, Jamie Todd Rubin, who sensibly asked (not a verbatim quote), "If all the nobles are going to go around trying to kill each other's sons in this section, where are the police? What are they supposed to do about it?"
Good question! I'm going to start by addressing the Varin question, but then explain a bit about what I think it means for worldbuilding generally, so bear with me.
Now, it's not as though I don't understand how the Varin police work so much as a question of how they deal with this particular situation - a highly unusual one that only occurs during the fight over who will become the next Heir to the throne. The limiting factor in the police's effectiveness is that Varin, though it's a high-technology world of cavern cities, is in decline and doesn't have telephones (if you'd like me to explain that, let me know in comments, but it would require another post). So they have beat cops under normal circumstances.
And under abnormal circumstances...
Well, I've decided the Arissen-caste police can't condone this sort of assassination free-for-all, but they know they aren't going to be able to stop it from happening. So they're going to do a few things to enhance people's safety:
1. Close sections of the city to pedestrian traffic. No point in letting innocent bystanders become collateral damage here. All the nobles keep to a central set of neighborhoods on the fifth (deepest) level of Pelismara, and maybe one or two on the fourth level, so those neighborhoods are restricted to all but essential traffic during Heir Selection.
2. Increase the number of police on the beat in the core neighborhoods. Now, any time I decide to place people somewhere, I'm always interested in how they might be feeling about their new duties. The Arissen police feel jumpy about being assigned to these areas, and are rather irritated with the nobility for causing everyone so much trouble. It all seems rather pointless to them - but they would feel proud if they had the chance to catch a nobleman out, so they are quite attentive.
3. Rely on the servant caste to provide information. All of the nobles are constantly escorted by bodyguard/personal assistants of the Imbati servant caste. The Imbati are known for their truthfulness, if also for their adherence to Oaths of silence. The police find them frustrating, and know it's pretty pointless to question those who work directly for a noble suspect. But they can question the servants of the intended victims. Those servants may not be available for questioning right away, since they are obliged to deliver their masters to engagements on time, but they do provide excellent information.
Here's the thing. In Varin, because of the caste system which covers everybody, I always find myself trying to determine what kind of people to place where. Back when I was creating the pharmacy, it was "what caste is the person who will take the role of pharmacist"? The other day when I was creating a private restaurant for nobles, it was the same. In a restaurant for the general population, you'd find merchants - no big surprise. But merchants are too low in caste to interact directly with the nobility, so what does a private restaurant look like? Well, I decided it was more like a gentleman's club, populated by the servant caste and a few stray members of the artisan caste selected for their expertise (e.g. the sommelier was an artisan).
The things that people do for a living can be made to fit into the vocations of different castes, but not always in expected ways. Just because a person is a member of a particular caste group (or other social group), and his/her social role is restricted, doesn't mean that role must fall into a super-tiny set - at least in the complex urban setting I'm working with. When I place the people, and try to fit an Earthly role into the Varin setting, I learn a whole lot about how Varini conceptualize that role just by determining which castes are involved.
One entertaining thing I figured out when considering the police question was that there's an inherent conflict within the Arissen caste (which covers soldiers, police, firefighters, guards, etc.). The city police are supposed to keep the assassination free-for-all under control. They are Arissen, but so are the special bodyguards assigned to the candidates for Heir - and so are the assassins! There's a wealth of opportunity there for strife between castemates, as when the police are frustrated with the cavalier attitude of the special bodyguards who don't help collect evidence as well as they should, or when the police and bodyguards wonder how it is that the nobles keep finding willing assassins from among their ranks.
I love finding conflicts within social groups who are expected to be "of a certain type." They don't have to be the main focus of the story, or even in full view, but they feel real because that's what happens in social groups in real life.
When you're doing your worldbuilding, particularly if you're working with a model that involves "types" of people (be they aliens, elves, soldiers, etc.) keep your eye out for new discoveries. Often critique questions will help you to uncover things that you didn't see before. And often you'll find that the people you've created are incredible assets for helping you figure stuff out. Use them, and their judgments, as much as you can.
Those of you who have been worldbuilding for a while shouldn't be surprised by this - there's always more to discover about a world, particularly if it's an extensive one. This discovery was prompted by my fabulous beta reader, Jamie Todd Rubin, who sensibly asked (not a verbatim quote), "If all the nobles are going to go around trying to kill each other's sons in this section, where are the police? What are they supposed to do about it?"
Good question! I'm going to start by addressing the Varin question, but then explain a bit about what I think it means for worldbuilding generally, so bear with me.
Now, it's not as though I don't understand how the Varin police work so much as a question of how they deal with this particular situation - a highly unusual one that only occurs during the fight over who will become the next Heir to the throne. The limiting factor in the police's effectiveness is that Varin, though it's a high-technology world of cavern cities, is in decline and doesn't have telephones (if you'd like me to explain that, let me know in comments, but it would require another post). So they have beat cops under normal circumstances.
And under abnormal circumstances...
Well, I've decided the Arissen-caste police can't condone this sort of assassination free-for-all, but they know they aren't going to be able to stop it from happening. So they're going to do a few things to enhance people's safety:
1. Close sections of the city to pedestrian traffic. No point in letting innocent bystanders become collateral damage here. All the nobles keep to a central set of neighborhoods on the fifth (deepest) level of Pelismara, and maybe one or two on the fourth level, so those neighborhoods are restricted to all but essential traffic during Heir Selection.
2. Increase the number of police on the beat in the core neighborhoods. Now, any time I decide to place people somewhere, I'm always interested in how they might be feeling about their new duties. The Arissen police feel jumpy about being assigned to these areas, and are rather irritated with the nobility for causing everyone so much trouble. It all seems rather pointless to them - but they would feel proud if they had the chance to catch a nobleman out, so they are quite attentive.
3. Rely on the servant caste to provide information. All of the nobles are constantly escorted by bodyguard/personal assistants of the Imbati servant caste. The Imbati are known for their truthfulness, if also for their adherence to Oaths of silence. The police find them frustrating, and know it's pretty pointless to question those who work directly for a noble suspect. But they can question the servants of the intended victims. Those servants may not be available for questioning right away, since they are obliged to deliver their masters to engagements on time, but they do provide excellent information.
Here's the thing. In Varin, because of the caste system which covers everybody, I always find myself trying to determine what kind of people to place where. Back when I was creating the pharmacy, it was "what caste is the person who will take the role of pharmacist"? The other day when I was creating a private restaurant for nobles, it was the same. In a restaurant for the general population, you'd find merchants - no big surprise. But merchants are too low in caste to interact directly with the nobility, so what does a private restaurant look like? Well, I decided it was more like a gentleman's club, populated by the servant caste and a few stray members of the artisan caste selected for their expertise (e.g. the sommelier was an artisan).
The things that people do for a living can be made to fit into the vocations of different castes, but not always in expected ways. Just because a person is a member of a particular caste group (or other social group), and his/her social role is restricted, doesn't mean that role must fall into a super-tiny set - at least in the complex urban setting I'm working with. When I place the people, and try to fit an Earthly role into the Varin setting, I learn a whole lot about how Varini conceptualize that role just by determining which castes are involved.
One entertaining thing I figured out when considering the police question was that there's an inherent conflict within the Arissen caste (which covers soldiers, police, firefighters, guards, etc.). The city police are supposed to keep the assassination free-for-all under control. They are Arissen, but so are the special bodyguards assigned to the candidates for Heir - and so are the assassins! There's a wealth of opportunity there for strife between castemates, as when the police are frustrated with the cavalier attitude of the special bodyguards who don't help collect evidence as well as they should, or when the police and bodyguards wonder how it is that the nobles keep finding willing assassins from among their ranks.
I love finding conflicts within social groups who are expected to be "of a certain type." They don't have to be the main focus of the story, or even in full view, but they feel real because that's what happens in social groups in real life.
When you're doing your worldbuilding, particularly if you're working with a model that involves "types" of people (be they aliens, elves, soldiers, etc.) keep your eye out for new discoveries. Often critique questions will help you to uncover things that you didn't see before. And often you'll find that the people you've created are incredible assets for helping you figure stuff out. Use them, and their judgments, as much as you can.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Worldbuilding: What's on the page?
Are you one of those worldbuilders who has files and files of material that you've developed about your world? Have you spent years on it? Have you tried to fill in every box in the checklists about ecology, economy, culture, language, etc.?
That's wonderful. Congratulations on all your hard work. Those files will be a fantastic resource, just so long as they don't turn against you.
Here's what I mean. Sometimes, as the writer, you can know your world too well - so well that you don't notice when your world isn't making it onto the page. The words that you write can evoke so much for you personally that you mistakenly believe they do the same thing for all of your readers. Having reams of information sitting in your head can blind you to this.
This is one of those cases when it's vitally important to listen to beta readers and critique partners. What you really need is someone who doesn't have all the files, and who hasn't sat with you for hours and hours to hash out world details. The best possible option is to have someone who has never seen your world before. EVER. Hand that someone the story, so that what you hear back about is only what is actually on the page.
Of course, then what you have to do (and it can be hard) is trust their judgment. Allow them to tell you what they don't understand, and try to believe them.
So how do you make sure that the world you know so well is actually coming out on the page, back when you're in the midst of drafting, and not to the point where you're receiving criticism yet?
The best suggestion I can come up with is to do what I'd call "fully engaged worldbuilding." That means leaving off talking about your world in isolation, and going to the story and the characters. Forget "what is true" about your world. Start thinking about what is relevant to one single scene, one single object, one single character. Think about a person's misconceptions, prejudgments, bad judgments, and how those might grow out of the background you've imagined. Think about tiny situations. Look at the world in its daily operation. Dig in as far as you can, and then when you're finished, go back and dig even farther.
Don't worry if it takes a while. This stuff comes in layers. Until you've reached one layer, often you can't see that there's another one below it.
Right now I'm dealing with Varin, which means I'm looking at a very complex caste system - seven levels, each of which has its own cultural values. Frankly, I'd be toast if I hadn't written files and files about what I know. I've rewritten aspects of it so many times I can hardly count them, but I'm still discovering things. My discoveries always come from things that are small, and they always depend on context (usually caste context).
1. Focus on the story, and particularly on small things, when you work on your own.
2. Get someone to read your work who is entirely ignorant of what you want to achieve.
After all, you've done all that work! The least you can do is make sure that your readers get to see what your world is really like.
That's wonderful. Congratulations on all your hard work. Those files will be a fantastic resource, just so long as they don't turn against you.
Here's what I mean. Sometimes, as the writer, you can know your world too well - so well that you don't notice when your world isn't making it onto the page. The words that you write can evoke so much for you personally that you mistakenly believe they do the same thing for all of your readers. Having reams of information sitting in your head can blind you to this.
This is one of those cases when it's vitally important to listen to beta readers and critique partners. What you really need is someone who doesn't have all the files, and who hasn't sat with you for hours and hours to hash out world details. The best possible option is to have someone who has never seen your world before. EVER. Hand that someone the story, so that what you hear back about is only what is actually on the page.
Of course, then what you have to do (and it can be hard) is trust their judgment. Allow them to tell you what they don't understand, and try to believe them.
So how do you make sure that the world you know so well is actually coming out on the page, back when you're in the midst of drafting, and not to the point where you're receiving criticism yet?
The best suggestion I can come up with is to do what I'd call "fully engaged worldbuilding." That means leaving off talking about your world in isolation, and going to the story and the characters. Forget "what is true" about your world. Start thinking about what is relevant to one single scene, one single object, one single character. Think about a person's misconceptions, prejudgments, bad judgments, and how those might grow out of the background you've imagined. Think about tiny situations. Look at the world in its daily operation. Dig in as far as you can, and then when you're finished, go back and dig even farther.
Don't worry if it takes a while. This stuff comes in layers. Until you've reached one layer, often you can't see that there's another one below it.
Right now I'm dealing with Varin, which means I'm looking at a very complex caste system - seven levels, each of which has its own cultural values. Frankly, I'd be toast if I hadn't written files and files about what I know. I've rewritten aspects of it so many times I can hardly count them, but I'm still discovering things. My discoveries always come from things that are small, and they always depend on context (usually caste context).
- Pharmacy: my servant character had to go to a pharmacy, which had me thinking about how a pharmacy would work in their world as opposed to ours. I posted about this earlier. It was different because it was a school pharmacy for students with medical training rather than a public pharmacy.
- Money: two of my noble characters had to argue over a bet that one of them made with a member of the soldier/guard caste. During this interaction, the guard pulled out a coin, and I had to go figure out how money would work. I also realized that the noble characters would never have seen cash before (they use cards), but because the guard likes to bet, he carries it all the time and finds their naivete very amusing.
- Architecture/map layout: for a fight scene, I had to figure out how a neighborhood was laid out. When I got right down to it, I realized that space is at such a premium that there are no alleys between buildings, only behind them. To get behind an attacker, one of my main characters had to go through a shop, exit the rear door, travel through the back alleyway all the way to the end of the block, and come back around.
- Oppression: out of my realization about the layout of neighborhoods above came an understanding of institutionalized racism (actually caste-ism) in my story. The alleyways that bisect city blocks are only traveled by tradespeople and garbage collectors, and they are considered to belong to the undercaste. This is why undercaste folk are in a position to worry about running into Highers (tradespeople and shopkeepers) but the vast majority of Highers are able to ignore the undercaste completely because they are not even walking on the same streets, and the undercaste always enter a shop from the back.
- Language: there's so much to this one that I can hardly even touch it. However, I will point out that I was paying very close attention to the use of titles in the last chapter I wrote, deliberately shifting the way one character referred to another from a fully caste-appropriate appellation to a somewhat more intimate one.
1. Focus on the story, and particularly on small things, when you work on your own.
2. Get someone to read your work who is entirely ignorant of what you want to achieve.
After all, you've done all that work! The least you can do is make sure that your readers get to see what your world is really like.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Culture isn't uniform!
Way back in the very early life of this blog (in 2008!) I wrote a post about making sure your characters aren't all the same. Not surprisingly, the post was called "Don't make them all the same," and I encourage you to go back and look at it.
Today's post deals with culture, but it has the same message. Not only aren't different cultures the same as one another (on a very fundamental level), even cultures that are spoken of as if they were uniform aren't really uniform.
American culture. Which one? From the point of view of Australians or Japanese, our culture is what they see on the television and in the movies. I remember having to explain over and over when I was living as an exchange student in Japan that just because they hear stories about Americans who own guns doesn't mean that every American owns a gun. Just because they hear Americans talk about Christianity doesn't mean every American is a Christian. As my Aussie husband has remarked, "America has Utah, and it has Nevada, and the two are side by side."
You shouldn't be surprised to learn that Japanese culture varies a lot also. There are a myriad dialects across the Japanese islands (as should be expected given the length of time that the population has lived there). The Japanese are particularly proud of their regional delicacies, but the differences go beyond just that.
In fact, culture isn't necessarily uniform even in a single location. In a tiny town dominated by a printing plant, you might have a microculture for the people who work at the plant which distinguishes itself from the people who work in service positions for the plant workers. In a major US university you'll have African American groups and Asian American groups as well as groups based on religious affiliation, hobbies, etc. People align themselves based on professions, religions, neighborhoods - almost anything can become the basis for alignment, or realignment. When I was an undergraduate one of the major issues that came up was that the Asian American group was splintering into subcomponents - the Filipinos and the Chinese, the Koreans and the Japanese were starting to want their own groups. In the US we often talk about the culture of a company, or the culture of sports, etc.
So let's say you're creating a fictional culture. It could be aliens, or elves, or humans in a secondary world - that part doesn't matter. The characters that you create will differ enormously based on the culture they are a part of, but also upon the subcultures they belong to. And here's another thing - different subcultures aren't necessarily even aware of one another's existence, even when they interact all the time. Let's say that you have one group that works as servants to another group - the master group will know a lot about the servant group as pertains to their interaction with the master group, and the expectations for intergroup relations. However, they may not know much if anything about the norms for relations inside the servant group, when the master group is not present. People can live side by side and interact constantly but have no idea how members of another cultural group think.
I encourage you to think this through as you build a world. A character doesn't behave the way he/she does because he/she is a member of X labelled group. That character is a product of his/her own experience and has layers of cultural awareness. That character will also have ideas about how other groups work - and those ideas probably overlap with other groups' views of themselves, but they probably miss a lot too.
I have a big trilogy in my future (something I wrote before when I wasn't as good a writer!) and I'm having ideas for it on and off continually (which is why I'm sure I'll go back to it). One of the things that's developing is the social structure and the intra-cultural contrasts. It's a Varin trilogy, so it's set in a society with seven caste levels. I used to have three point of view characters, but now I have four planned, and contrast is the reason for this. It's going to look like:
Today's post deals with culture, but it has the same message. Not only aren't different cultures the same as one another (on a very fundamental level), even cultures that are spoken of as if they were uniform aren't really uniform.
American culture. Which one? From the point of view of Australians or Japanese, our culture is what they see on the television and in the movies. I remember having to explain over and over when I was living as an exchange student in Japan that just because they hear stories about Americans who own guns doesn't mean that every American owns a gun. Just because they hear Americans talk about Christianity doesn't mean every American is a Christian. As my Aussie husband has remarked, "America has Utah, and it has Nevada, and the two are side by side."
You shouldn't be surprised to learn that Japanese culture varies a lot also. There are a myriad dialects across the Japanese islands (as should be expected given the length of time that the population has lived there). The Japanese are particularly proud of their regional delicacies, but the differences go beyond just that.
In fact, culture isn't necessarily uniform even in a single location. In a tiny town dominated by a printing plant, you might have a microculture for the people who work at the plant which distinguishes itself from the people who work in service positions for the plant workers. In a major US university you'll have African American groups and Asian American groups as well as groups based on religious affiliation, hobbies, etc. People align themselves based on professions, religions, neighborhoods - almost anything can become the basis for alignment, or realignment. When I was an undergraduate one of the major issues that came up was that the Asian American group was splintering into subcomponents - the Filipinos and the Chinese, the Koreans and the Japanese were starting to want their own groups. In the US we often talk about the culture of a company, or the culture of sports, etc.
So let's say you're creating a fictional culture. It could be aliens, or elves, or humans in a secondary world - that part doesn't matter. The characters that you create will differ enormously based on the culture they are a part of, but also upon the subcultures they belong to. And here's another thing - different subcultures aren't necessarily even aware of one another's existence, even when they interact all the time. Let's say that you have one group that works as servants to another group - the master group will know a lot about the servant group as pertains to their interaction with the master group, and the expectations for intergroup relations. However, they may not know much if anything about the norms for relations inside the servant group, when the master group is not present. People can live side by side and interact constantly but have no idea how members of another cultural group think.
I encourage you to think this through as you build a world. A character doesn't behave the way he/she does because he/she is a member of X labelled group. That character is a product of his/her own experience and has layers of cultural awareness. That character will also have ideas about how other groups work - and those ideas probably overlap with other groups' views of themselves, but they probably miss a lot too.
I have a big trilogy in my future (something I wrote before when I wasn't as good a writer!) and I'm having ideas for it on and off continually (which is why I'm sure I'll go back to it). One of the things that's developing is the social structure and the intra-cultural contrasts. It's a Varin trilogy, so it's set in a society with seven caste levels. I used to have three point of view characters, but now I have four planned, and contrast is the reason for this. It's going to look like:
- Imbati #1
- Imbati #2
- Akrabitti #1
- Akrabitti #2
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Thoughts on Writing Series
I've been thinking about series for a number of reasons lately. One is that the Scribechat folks were discussing series this past Thursday; another is that they were discussing Janice Hardy's Healing Wars series, and I've been lucky enough to be on the inside of the struggles surrounding putting that series together (struggles which ended quite victoriously, I might add). A third is that I've been encountering series issues in my own writing.
A series is when you have more than one story set in the same world. Generally this also means that the books in the series also have other things in common. Characters, or plotlines, or themes, or all of the above. They can be stand alone shorts which follow one another, or stand-alone novels which follow one another, or they can even be different parts of one massive story.
So what is absolutely essential to make readers care enough to follow a series?
1. A compelling world.
The world doesn't necessarily have to be physically large to carry a series, though a large world does leave lots of room for exploration. However, there must be something about the place that fascinates - something that keeps readers asking questions. Janice Hardy's pain-related economy definitely does this for me. I read books and books in Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, and I think what got me about that one was the idea of the link between humans and dragons that grew in response to the ongoing threat of Threadfall. The draw for me in Tolkien's books is the history of Middle Earth and its different peoples, and the complexity of their interaction. I'll also be more inclined to read more in a particular world if I feel that there are things going on beyond the borders of the page (i.e. the world does more than simply serve the plot) - so that if our heroes turned right instead of left, they might encounter something new and interesting.
2. Characters you care about.
This is absolutely essential. Some series even rest on the shoulders of a single individual. Whoever your characters are, people have to care about them and what they want, why they want it. They need to care that the good guy win and the bad guy lose, or they won't keep reading. I would even go so far as to say that it's important to give the proper attention to your minor characters. If you achieve huge success with your series, who knows how many opportunities there might be to spin off characters?
I don't believe that a series must stick with the same character set (necessarily). However, there should be a link between the characters of one book and those of another if they are to be perceived as part of the same timeline. Bilbo Baggins had a small role in The Lord of the Rings, but still he was there. I'm currently attempting the same thing with a prequel-to-trilogy that I'm putting together. The characters from the book I'm currently writing - Nekantor, Tagret, and Aloran - aren't going to have point of view material in the trilogy that follows. But they are terribly important to the precarious situation in which the society finds itself, and to which the next three point of view characters are going to make the biggest difference.
I really think those are the only things that are absolutely necessary. Other factors are more flexible.
People often talk about a slump in the second book of a series, much in the same way that they talk about a slump occurring in the middle of a novel or shorter story. I think in some sense these are manifestations of the same phenomenon, but at different levels of complexity. Certainly if the series is one integrated story, the problem is similar. The middle section has to have its own interest and momentum, even though it doesn't get to have the "splash" associated with initially discovering the world. It has to have its own compelling reasons to exist, even if it's not going to be able to solve everything. Stakes in a second book have to be higher, but not so high that you have nowhere to go with a third book. There has to be enough that readers haven't yet discovered, both about the world and the characters, to make it worth continuing.
I don't consider myself an expert at this yet, but as I learn from people like Janice, and approach my own sequels and series (at both long and short lengths), I'm finding myself wanting to analyze and write down what I feel I do know about the process. And I thought it might be useful to share those thoughts with you.
Here are some great thoughts on series revision from Janice Hardy over at The Writing Cave.
A series is when you have more than one story set in the same world. Generally this also means that the books in the series also have other things in common. Characters, or plotlines, or themes, or all of the above. They can be stand alone shorts which follow one another, or stand-alone novels which follow one another, or they can even be different parts of one massive story.
So what is absolutely essential to make readers care enough to follow a series?
1. A compelling world.
The world doesn't necessarily have to be physically large to carry a series, though a large world does leave lots of room for exploration. However, there must be something about the place that fascinates - something that keeps readers asking questions. Janice Hardy's pain-related economy definitely does this for me. I read books and books in Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, and I think what got me about that one was the idea of the link between humans and dragons that grew in response to the ongoing threat of Threadfall. The draw for me in Tolkien's books is the history of Middle Earth and its different peoples, and the complexity of their interaction. I'll also be more inclined to read more in a particular world if I feel that there are things going on beyond the borders of the page (i.e. the world does more than simply serve the plot) - so that if our heroes turned right instead of left, they might encounter something new and interesting.
2. Characters you care about.
This is absolutely essential. Some series even rest on the shoulders of a single individual. Whoever your characters are, people have to care about them and what they want, why they want it. They need to care that the good guy win and the bad guy lose, or they won't keep reading. I would even go so far as to say that it's important to give the proper attention to your minor characters. If you achieve huge success with your series, who knows how many opportunities there might be to spin off characters?
I don't believe that a series must stick with the same character set (necessarily). However, there should be a link between the characters of one book and those of another if they are to be perceived as part of the same timeline. Bilbo Baggins had a small role in The Lord of the Rings, but still he was there. I'm currently attempting the same thing with a prequel-to-trilogy that I'm putting together. The characters from the book I'm currently writing - Nekantor, Tagret, and Aloran - aren't going to have point of view material in the trilogy that follows. But they are terribly important to the precarious situation in which the society finds itself, and to which the next three point of view characters are going to make the biggest difference.
I really think those are the only things that are absolutely necessary. Other factors are more flexible.
People often talk about a slump in the second book of a series, much in the same way that they talk about a slump occurring in the middle of a novel or shorter story. I think in some sense these are manifestations of the same phenomenon, but at different levels of complexity. Certainly if the series is one integrated story, the problem is similar. The middle section has to have its own interest and momentum, even though it doesn't get to have the "splash" associated with initially discovering the world. It has to have its own compelling reasons to exist, even if it's not going to be able to solve everything. Stakes in a second book have to be higher, but not so high that you have nowhere to go with a third book. There has to be enough that readers haven't yet discovered, both about the world and the characters, to make it worth continuing.
I don't consider myself an expert at this yet, but as I learn from people like Janice, and approach my own sequels and series (at both long and short lengths), I'm finding myself wanting to analyze and write down what I feel I do know about the process. And I thought it might be useful to share those thoughts with you.
Here are some great thoughts on series revision from Janice Hardy over at The Writing Cave.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Cheerios and Space - and Language and Culture?
Here's an interesting little article about "the Cheerios effect" (I kid you not), in which Cheerios in a bowl of milk will clump together and aggregate at the sides of the bowl - and how this relates to space!
I think this article is particularly interesting because of the way it shows that simple everyday effects can be observed on vastly larger scales. The underlying truths of a world (physical laws in this case) are observable on multiple different levels.
This is also true of language. The most fundamental principles of a language, whether strictly grammatical or pragmatics-related, can generally be observed even in very small recorded samples of speech in that language. As examples I'd give grammatical gender in French and Spanish, and casual versus formal speech style in Japanese (though there are many more). I find the speech style example particularly interesting because it has social consequences, not just grammatical ones. This is where you start seeing that this phenomenon also reaches into the area of culture.
I've been writing this week in my Varin world, and rejoicing at the fact that I'm so much a better writer now than when I first designed it. The reason why? Well, because when you first design a world it's really easy to lay out a lot of general principles about how the society works. It's much harder to explore how those general principles play out on the smaller scale of individual interactions.
If you say, "The nobility are isolated and think they're better than anybody else," it's easy to have them go around acting too broadly. They dress and speak loudly, they insult others, they just basically act like arrogant snobs in a really really obvious way. I am embarrassed to say that this is what they were like when I first wrote them. However, this isn't really how things work. These are people like everyone else, and they should have just as many arrogant snobs among them as other social groups do - which is to say, not everyone. A single individual's main personality traits should be at the fore (as for example, my relatively modest and kind protagonist, Tagret); their cultural bias should be reflected on the small scale in their unconscious reactions.
To explore a bit further into the Varin example, the nobility of Varin typically don't mix with any caste but the servant caste, who are an integral part of their everyday life. They can be either polite or impolite to their servants depending on the person. They have dealings with the officer caste (police, army, fire brigade etc.) in certain fixed contexts. However, they almost never see anyone of lower caste than that. An insensitive nobleman or noble lady, having to deal with merchants or artisans, might express distaste, but someone like Tagret feels mostly out of his depth, like he doesn't know what to do with them. He tries to be polite but at the same time will try to distance himself from them, unconsciously, to remove himself from the discomfort of not knowing the appropriate way to treat these people socially.
If your world has social principles, treat them as respectfully as you would the laws of physics. Don't just slap them on over the top. Realize that just like the Cheerios effect, they will have repercussions that go all the way down to the smallest interactions, including the subtleties of the ways people talk to each other.
I think this article is particularly interesting because of the way it shows that simple everyday effects can be observed on vastly larger scales. The underlying truths of a world (physical laws in this case) are observable on multiple different levels.
This is also true of language. The most fundamental principles of a language, whether strictly grammatical or pragmatics-related, can generally be observed even in very small recorded samples of speech in that language. As examples I'd give grammatical gender in French and Spanish, and casual versus formal speech style in Japanese (though there are many more). I find the speech style example particularly interesting because it has social consequences, not just grammatical ones. This is where you start seeing that this phenomenon also reaches into the area of culture.
I've been writing this week in my Varin world, and rejoicing at the fact that I'm so much a better writer now than when I first designed it. The reason why? Well, because when you first design a world it's really easy to lay out a lot of general principles about how the society works. It's much harder to explore how those general principles play out on the smaller scale of individual interactions.
If you say, "The nobility are isolated and think they're better than anybody else," it's easy to have them go around acting too broadly. They dress and speak loudly, they insult others, they just basically act like arrogant snobs in a really really obvious way. I am embarrassed to say that this is what they were like when I first wrote them. However, this isn't really how things work. These are people like everyone else, and they should have just as many arrogant snobs among them as other social groups do - which is to say, not everyone. A single individual's main personality traits should be at the fore (as for example, my relatively modest and kind protagonist, Tagret); their cultural bias should be reflected on the small scale in their unconscious reactions.
To explore a bit further into the Varin example, the nobility of Varin typically don't mix with any caste but the servant caste, who are an integral part of their everyday life. They can be either polite or impolite to their servants depending on the person. They have dealings with the officer caste (police, army, fire brigade etc.) in certain fixed contexts. However, they almost never see anyone of lower caste than that. An insensitive nobleman or noble lady, having to deal with merchants or artisans, might express distaste, but someone like Tagret feels mostly out of his depth, like he doesn't know what to do with them. He tries to be polite but at the same time will try to distance himself from them, unconsciously, to remove himself from the discomfort of not knowing the appropriate way to treat these people socially.
If your world has social principles, treat them as respectfully as you would the laws of physics. Don't just slap them on over the top. Realize that just like the Cheerios effect, they will have repercussions that go all the way down to the smallest interactions, including the subtleties of the ways people talk to each other.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Names have meaning
How many of you have ever been in the position of picking up a Baby Names book, or looking at one of the many Baby Names services online? I know I have. When I go to a place like that, the primary thing I'm looking for when I go there is the meaning of names.
I did a post on naming very early on in the history of this blog; it's here. The gist of the essay is that names have meaning, so it's a good idea to think through the language background of the names you use, whether they are created names or not. The sounds in a name will be associated with very specific emotional reactions for readers, so it's important not to choose them without thinking that through. It's also a good idea to think through whether there are language groups in your world, and whether the names you've created fit with those (as part of a consistent phonological system).
But there's even more to it than that. Names don't just have the meaning we find for them in a book; I suspect that search for the meaning of names in books is actually something very American (British or Australian readers might be able to comment about whether it's also something English). Names speak to our membership in a particular cultural group.
Names tell us far more than just what a person is like. They tell us who that person is affiliated with.
I remember considering what kind of names to pick for my kids. I wanted names that were unique, but not names that were made up. I considered French names quite seriously, because I've always loved their sound. I also considered Japanese names, because my husband and I have close sentimental ties with Japan - but there I ran into a problem. I realized if I gave my child a Japanese name, that could lead to very specific assumptions about their background, i.e. people would guess that they were either Japanese or Japanese American. More so than with European names, which are in some sense part of the American heritage, Japanese names stick out to the common listener as something that must have a literal connection to ethnicity or nationality. In the end, we went the cultural heritage route and chose names with Celtic origins.
This phenomenon goes far beyond just nationality questions. Names like John, Simon, Luke, Peter, etc. aren't just "classic," they're names of Christian disciples. Names like Elizabeth, Catherine, William, George, and Henry are English royalty. Names like Lakeesha and Latasha might make you think instantly of African-American culture - but interestingly enough, they can also be found among Mormons.
Another twist to this is the question of whether names have literal meanings. Some social groups use names that have literal meanings in the language spoken. Native American names spring to mind as an example of this - as in "Dances with Wolves." I think also of "Onyesonwu" from Nnedi Okorafor's new book, "Who Fears Death" (that's literally what the character's name means - cool stuff!). So having a character with a name that has literal meaning may be another way to express that character's affiliation with a particular language group or cultural group.
Strangely enough, I hardly ever see names take on this type of social significance in fictional worlds. I consider this a lost opportunity.
Try asking yourself: Is my fictional society divided into social groups? What kind of names might each group use, and would those names be uniquely recognizable as belonging to one group or the other? Say you have a person who is a member of one group, but has to pass for a member of another - do they also have to change their name? What happens if they don't think to do that? Do the people they meet say, "That's strange; she has a XXX name"?
I've found a place where I want to try this in my Varin world. An undercaste member has to try to disguise herself as a member of another caste, but forgets that she should probably change her name. When she gives her name to a man she meets, he's going to pick up on the fact that her name isn't typical for his social group. However - and this is my own twist on it - he's not going to pick it for an undercaste name. Because of historical circumstances, some of the undercaste names are also common to the ruling caste - so he's going to pick the name as one with associations to the nobility. Which then gives me an opportunity to have her stammer about how her parents weren't meaning to be so pretentious, etc.
In any case, this is something you might like to think about - a great opportunity to deepen your world in an uncommon way. I encourage you to consider it.
I did a post on naming very early on in the history of this blog; it's here. The gist of the essay is that names have meaning, so it's a good idea to think through the language background of the names you use, whether they are created names or not. The sounds in a name will be associated with very specific emotional reactions for readers, so it's important not to choose them without thinking that through. It's also a good idea to think through whether there are language groups in your world, and whether the names you've created fit with those (as part of a consistent phonological system).
But there's even more to it than that. Names don't just have the meaning we find for them in a book; I suspect that search for the meaning of names in books is actually something very American (British or Australian readers might be able to comment about whether it's also something English). Names speak to our membership in a particular cultural group.
Names tell us far more than just what a person is like. They tell us who that person is affiliated with.
I remember considering what kind of names to pick for my kids. I wanted names that were unique, but not names that were made up. I considered French names quite seriously, because I've always loved their sound. I also considered Japanese names, because my husband and I have close sentimental ties with Japan - but there I ran into a problem. I realized if I gave my child a Japanese name, that could lead to very specific assumptions about their background, i.e. people would guess that they were either Japanese or Japanese American. More so than with European names, which are in some sense part of the American heritage, Japanese names stick out to the common listener as something that must have a literal connection to ethnicity or nationality. In the end, we went the cultural heritage route and chose names with Celtic origins.
This phenomenon goes far beyond just nationality questions. Names like John, Simon, Luke, Peter, etc. aren't just "classic," they're names of Christian disciples. Names like Elizabeth, Catherine, William, George, and Henry are English royalty. Names like Lakeesha and Latasha might make you think instantly of African-American culture - but interestingly enough, they can also be found among Mormons.
Another twist to this is the question of whether names have literal meanings. Some social groups use names that have literal meanings in the language spoken. Native American names spring to mind as an example of this - as in "Dances with Wolves." I think also of "Onyesonwu" from Nnedi Okorafor's new book, "Who Fears Death" (that's literally what the character's name means - cool stuff!). So having a character with a name that has literal meaning may be another way to express that character's affiliation with a particular language group or cultural group.
Strangely enough, I hardly ever see names take on this type of social significance in fictional worlds. I consider this a lost opportunity.
Try asking yourself: Is my fictional society divided into social groups? What kind of names might each group use, and would those names be uniquely recognizable as belonging to one group or the other? Say you have a person who is a member of one group, but has to pass for a member of another - do they also have to change their name? What happens if they don't think to do that? Do the people they meet say, "That's strange; she has a XXX name"?
I've found a place where I want to try this in my Varin world. An undercaste member has to try to disguise herself as a member of another caste, but forgets that she should probably change her name. When she gives her name to a man she meets, he's going to pick up on the fact that her name isn't typical for his social group. However - and this is my own twist on it - he's not going to pick it for an undercaste name. Because of historical circumstances, some of the undercaste names are also common to the ruling caste - so he's going to pick the name as one with associations to the nobility. Which then gives me an opportunity to have her stammer about how her parents weren't meaning to be so pretentious, etc.
In any case, this is something you might like to think about - a great opportunity to deepen your world in an uncommon way. I encourage you to consider it.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Worldbuilding, or world growing?
I was thinking about how I go about building my worlds - I've done quite a few by this time, each to different extents. So how is it that one goes about beginning a world? Where does it start, and where does it end?
The beginning of a world should be a story (or the seed of one).
You can start a world without a story, but then you may be taking the risk that you might never find a story in it - and while that's great for some people, it would never satisfy me. My Varin world started with the idea that ancient kings were cast down and became an undercaste that then had to redeem itself (a story), except the regular fantasy explanations weren't satisfying me, so how would that really play out if the world worked in a realistically logical way? The world of Garini (Let the Word Take Me) began with the question of "Okay, you've got a language entirely created from references to canonical stories, so how would that really work and be passed on?" Aurru (Cold Words) grew out of the idea that rank and injustice should grow somehow out of the distinction between warmth and cold. In each of my linguistics stories the story is inherent within the language concept, because the language concept itself is a sort of punch line that the human characters will have to figure out somehow.
Thinking of the story idea as a world seed is actually a useful metaphor, because the intermediate process of world building is like growing a plant. The original story idea sends you in a direction, and then you'll discover it's branched into a sort of cultural (or physiological, or ideological, etc.) dichotomy, and then communities will start to associate themselves with divisions of thought, and then you'll discover patterns of life and behavior for those communities, and start to ask yourself all kinds of niggly questions that branch in every direction. If the world is alive, you should be able to discover smaller twigs and leaves growing from every branch you might care to consider. The other reason I like to think of worlds as living plants is because everything in your world should be connected. The climate influences the housing and the scarcity of resources which in turn dictates behavior and indicates what things will be fought over. This will create winners and losers and people with terrible things at stake. It's all connected. If it seems unconnected - like for example if you have two people whose names don't fit in the same phonological system - then it needs to be connected in a different way. In the case of Varin, I had taken for granted that the undercaste had a different religion from everyone else - and then when I looked closely at it, I realized there was an entire thousand years of backstory behind that. An entire opposite side of their world, which explained some of the divisions I'd created without realizing it. Just the way that people assume that others speaking to them will be engaging in conversation cooperatively, and draw conclusions based on that assumption, I encourage you to maintain a strong assumption that everything in your world has a reason behind it. This will suggest hidden depths that even you can't initially imagine, but which will reveal themselves to you if you consider them closely.
Not every story requires the same depth of world building. I admit I go pretty far with world building in general. I do climate and demographics and all those checklist things, plus language and culture. However, my short story worlds still don't get elaborated to the extent that my novel worlds do. Varin in particular took me (on and off) about 20 years of work.
Now, once you have your tree grown to the size it needs to be for you to understand the story, what do you do? How can you end the process of building and create a story without getting lost in all the branches?
My answer is, find a character. The character, with his or her upbringing, identity, and judgments, will create a microcosm of the whole world - and furthermore, will take that massive world of yours and reduce it to a comprehensible size. If you'll pardon me taking my metaphor a bit too far, it's like looking at one cell of your plant, and realizing that it's got DNA in there, that if you could look at it the right way, you'd be able to learn some things about what the plant was like. A character from one section of your world won't know every detail of every little corner of that world. But if you've built the connections well, then the view from the spot where that character lives will give tons of hints about the existence of a larger structure - the bigger, more meaningful entity that is their world.
There's a reason why I love to use first person point of view, and third person internal point of view. When you have a world that big, it's hard to manage it all, and keep its information from overwhelming what the story is about. It's the wonderful myopia of a culturally situated character that allows you to cut it down in a way that makes sense.
So start with a story seed, then grow your tree with as much care as you think necessary for the story's needs, and finally identify the single part, the character, who will allow you to create the most meaningful view of the whole. Maybe it shouldn't be world building at all, but world growing.
At least, that's how it feels for me.
The beginning of a world should be a story (or the seed of one).
You can start a world without a story, but then you may be taking the risk that you might never find a story in it - and while that's great for some people, it would never satisfy me. My Varin world started with the idea that ancient kings were cast down and became an undercaste that then had to redeem itself (a story), except the regular fantasy explanations weren't satisfying me, so how would that really play out if the world worked in a realistically logical way? The world of Garini (Let the Word Take Me) began with the question of "Okay, you've got a language entirely created from references to canonical stories, so how would that really work and be passed on?" Aurru (Cold Words) grew out of the idea that rank and injustice should grow somehow out of the distinction between warmth and cold. In each of my linguistics stories the story is inherent within the language concept, because the language concept itself is a sort of punch line that the human characters will have to figure out somehow.
Thinking of the story idea as a world seed is actually a useful metaphor, because the intermediate process of world building is like growing a plant. The original story idea sends you in a direction, and then you'll discover it's branched into a sort of cultural (or physiological, or ideological, etc.) dichotomy, and then communities will start to associate themselves with divisions of thought, and then you'll discover patterns of life and behavior for those communities, and start to ask yourself all kinds of niggly questions that branch in every direction. If the world is alive, you should be able to discover smaller twigs and leaves growing from every branch you might care to consider. The other reason I like to think of worlds as living plants is because everything in your world should be connected. The climate influences the housing and the scarcity of resources which in turn dictates behavior and indicates what things will be fought over. This will create winners and losers and people with terrible things at stake. It's all connected. If it seems unconnected - like for example if you have two people whose names don't fit in the same phonological system - then it needs to be connected in a different way. In the case of Varin, I had taken for granted that the undercaste had a different religion from everyone else - and then when I looked closely at it, I realized there was an entire thousand years of backstory behind that. An entire opposite side of their world, which explained some of the divisions I'd created without realizing it. Just the way that people assume that others speaking to them will be engaging in conversation cooperatively, and draw conclusions based on that assumption, I encourage you to maintain a strong assumption that everything in your world has a reason behind it. This will suggest hidden depths that even you can't initially imagine, but which will reveal themselves to you if you consider them closely.
Not every story requires the same depth of world building. I admit I go pretty far with world building in general. I do climate and demographics and all those checklist things, plus language and culture. However, my short story worlds still don't get elaborated to the extent that my novel worlds do. Varin in particular took me (on and off) about 20 years of work.
Now, once you have your tree grown to the size it needs to be for you to understand the story, what do you do? How can you end the process of building and create a story without getting lost in all the branches?
My answer is, find a character. The character, with his or her upbringing, identity, and judgments, will create a microcosm of the whole world - and furthermore, will take that massive world of yours and reduce it to a comprehensible size. If you'll pardon me taking my metaphor a bit too far, it's like looking at one cell of your plant, and realizing that it's got DNA in there, that if you could look at it the right way, you'd be able to learn some things about what the plant was like. A character from one section of your world won't know every detail of every little corner of that world. But if you've built the connections well, then the view from the spot where that character lives will give tons of hints about the existence of a larger structure - the bigger, more meaningful entity that is their world.
There's a reason why I love to use first person point of view, and third person internal point of view. When you have a world that big, it's hard to manage it all, and keep its information from overwhelming what the story is about. It's the wonderful myopia of a culturally situated character that allows you to cut it down in a way that makes sense.
So start with a story seed, then grow your tree with as much care as you think necessary for the story's needs, and finally identify the single part, the character, who will allow you to create the most meaningful view of the whole. Maybe it shouldn't be world building at all, but world growing.
At least, that's how it feels for me.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Varin
When reading through my various entries here, you may find multiple (if oblique) references to the world of Varin and its characters. This is a world in which I continue to develop short stories and novels. The first short story set there will soon see publication: "The Eminence's Match," forthcoming in the anthology Eight Against Reality from Panverse Publishing.
Varin was my first really thorough mega-world. Its initial, most basic form came from a core story idea in the classic fantasy style, in which two members of an underclass discover their people were once kings and, with the help of the usurper king's abused servant, attempt to return their people to their lost status.
The Varin concept evolved beyond that first core idea because of my convictions about fantasy and magic, some of which I've discussed here at TTYU. For those who haven't read those posts, suffice it to say that I get frustrated with the unruliness of magic and the tendency of populations in speculative fiction to run true to type ("he's an elf/ a native of the planet Gaga/ etc. so that's why he acts the way he does"). Around the time that I became interested in anthropology and linguistics, I decided to depart from Varin's fantasy core and strive for a world of complete sociological realism, emulating the nuanced work of Ursula K. LeGuin. This led to the creation of the high-technology nation of Varin with its eight underground cities, and the wysps, as well as Varin's caste system (see below).
With Varin as a "real" world, I found many more stories began to grow out of it than ever before. I became able to delve into the national history and the background of each character. The original concept is now the middle portion of a more complete, fleshed-out timeline.
The Varin Caste System
Level 1: Grobal Nobility
Level 2: Arissen Officer Caste Level 3: Imbati Servant Caste Level 4: Kartunnen Artisan Caste Level 5: Venorai Laborer Caste Level 6: Melumalai Merchant Caste Level 7: Akrabitti Undercaste |
|---|
The caste system of Varin defines the identity and experiences of its people, and has done so for over 300 years. Castes are distinguished on the basis of employment, but caste membership is determined by birth, and those who marry outside of caste must fall to the status of the Lower partner. Dressing without a caste mark is dangerous, and "cross-marking," or the impersonation of a Higher, is punishable by imprisonment or death.
The strength of the system lies in the special pride that each caste level takes in the value of its societal role. Each caste has its own set of ideals and cultural ideologies, valuing different manners and behavior, and receives a different respectful greeting when greeted by those of Lower status. Internally, each caste is governed on a meritocratic basis, allowing the caste's most successful members to rise to positions of prominence.
The caste system has a single area of overlap with the distinction between Varin's two religions. The undercaste alone follow a religion based on wysps and shinca trees, the two forces that make life above ground unsustainable on the Varin continent. All others revere the Holy Celestial Family, deities based on the planets of their solar system, whose exploits are recounted in the Ancient Stories.
Copyright © 2008 Juliette Wade
Monday, January 7, 2008
Reviews of The Eminence's Match (2010)
- "The writing in "The Eminence’s Match" is first class. I loved Ms Wade’s style and her ability to bring her dysfunctional people to life. The story is fitting for an opening act for any best selling anthology. ... Her characters, seeing what they saw and feeling what they felt, made for a powerful reading experience." Frank Dutkiewicz
- "In "The Eminence's Match" by Juliette Wade, we meet the leader of a clan on a distant world who has a very human affliction: obsessive compulsive disorder. He's on a quest for the perfect man-servant, one he can bend to his will, who will not let anything be out of place – ever. Unless he finds the perfect servant, the halls of his palace will be soaked in blood. Almost as disturbing as the Eminence's cruelty is the new candidate's desire to please, and indeed love, this tyrant. The inner dialog and the fixations are portrayed most credibly." Ann Wilkes
- "In "The Eminence's Match" by Juliette Wade, we meet the leader of a clan on a distant world who has a very human affliction: obsessive compulsive disorder. He's on a quest for the perfect man-servant, one he can bend to his will, who will not let anything be out of place – ever. Unless he finds the perfect servant, the halls of his palace will be soaked in blood. Almost as disturbing as the Eminence's cruelty is the new candidate's desire to please, and indeed love, this tyrant. The inner dialog and the fixations are portrayed most credibly." Ann Wilkes
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