In my post on Saturday, one of the things that was cited as an example of bad worldbuilding was the lack of bathrooms:
"You give me in excruciating detail the pyramids, palaces and every other prominent place within a thirty-mile radius, but there are no bathrooms or toilets anywhere."
Well, I do have something to say about that. The reason why bathrooms or toilets are not present is that no one feels they are relevant. And guess what? Most of the time, they are not. It would be easy for an author to consider them unpleasant and skip over them for that reason. There are people out there who really want to create "gritty" worlds and will make sure to include toilet details for that reason, but not everyone falls into this group.
However.
When you're writing a story, you can count on your reader to use inductive reasoning rather than deductive reasoning. Why is this important? Because with inductive reasoning, a lack of evidence for something can in fact imply that that thing doesn't occur, or doesn't exist.
Extrapolating from this, you can imagine that we don't want anyone to conclude erroneously that there are no toilets in this world. How do we fix this without spending undue time on it?
The easiest thing to do is to use small instances of cleanliness issues. I'm thinking of Nya in Janice Hardy's The Healing Wars series, who at a certain point dips a sock in the lake to clean her face. Immediate implication: she has no bathroom. Janice also mentions bathrooms in the case of Nya's friend Aylin, who lets Nya use a communal bathroom down the hall where she lives. The result is that the mention of cleanliness and the bathroom will imply attendant issues of toilets without the author actually having to go there. Of course, there will be places in your story where the lack of a toilet may actually be relevant (as in a long ride, etc.) and an oblique reference to stopping behind a tree might not go amiss.
In my current novel in progress, For Love, For Power, an unusual amount of time is spent in bathrooms. No, it's not particularly gritty or dirty! For this story, the bathroom focus is on bathing, and it serves a specific purpose: it is often an ideal setting for me to explore concepts of privacy, safety, and intimacy that differ greatly between social groups, and are highly relevant to the story. In fact, my characters head to the bathroom in the two opening chapters.
In chapter 1 my main protagonist, Tagret, gets caught in a mob panic when a concert crowd witnesses a death and concludes that the virus Kinders fever might be "loose" in the room. It's perfectly reasonable for him to hurry home and get straight into the bath... and having his brother pick the lock on his bathroom door and interrupt him is the perfect introduction to the nature of their relationship.
In chapter 2 my second protagonist, Aloran, is about to interview for a job as manservant to Tagret's mother. The nature of the position of manservant is highly relevant to the kind of delicate issues he'll be facing with the family, and to many of his personal struggles in the book, since the Lady won't have an easy time accepting his service - so during the chapter I try to show the range of his duties. The business end of it gets covered in the job interview, where he's tested for his bodyguarding skills and his ability to judge social situations. However, he's also expected to wash his mistress without becoming emotionally involved, and that's the sort of thing that benefits from a bit of show-don't-tell. So before he heads off for his interview I have a young classmate of his ask him to help with practice for the bathing exam. The students at the Academy are required to demonstrate that they can bathe the person they find most attractive without showing signs of emotional involvement - so off they go to the showers where Aloran coaches his friend through the process that he has mastered, but his friend is still struggling with.
The juxtaposition of these two situations, each of which is only a tiny section of the chapter in question, provides a useful and highly relevant contrast between the characters and the social groups they belong to. Each one also sets up expectations for where the different characters will feel discomfort in the story as it continues.
So in your story, particularly if you're writing a novel which will cover a lot of ground (because story-relevance has to be a lot stricter in short stories!), I urge you at least to consider the question of bathrooms. To mention them often might be gratuitous, but to omit them entirely can appear ridiculous. And as you can see, in some cases they can be a great ally in helping you explore questions of intimacy!
It's something to think about.
Showing posts with label worldbuilding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label worldbuilding. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Watching out for the "Wrong" Emotion (also a Worldbuilding Post)
Yesterday my commenter Linda got me thinking when she talked about "standard emotional content" and said that "too much of the wrong emotions" can be bad for a story. She concluded, "The emotion has to be appropriate for what's happening in the scene and how the character is to be portrayed."
As a character-based writer, I have a hard time relating to the phrase "standard emotional content." However, it's easy enough for me to guess that it means people in a story feel what they are supposed to feel when they are supposed to feel it. They're being chased, I guess, so they feel panic, or they're doing X Y or Z so they need to feel this that or the other.
I certainly do suppose that if one sidetracks off the action into a navel-gazing emotional reverie that it would appear inappropriate. Needless to say, this is not what I do in my action sequences.
But what I'd rather think about today is what "the wrong emotion" might mean.
I suppose I could begin with the idea of not being in touch with one's characters. I think it's always valuable to be in touch with a character's mental states, and in fact this is the major reason why I write chronologically - because emotions and mental states tend to grow out of one another, and to concatenate.
When you're working in another world, particularly one with a different kind of social contract, I think it's worth spending extra time. Because in the worldbuilding context it's actually quite easy to end up with the "wrong" emotion, accidentally. I'm going to divide this into two different types of emotional errors: 1. errors of emotional type and 2. errors of degree.
Errors of emotional type occur when you're writing along and you have a social situation, and your character ends up feeling how an Earth resident would feel in that situation rather than how a native of your world would feel in that situation.
Think about how you feel in different social situations. The content of those social situations has a lot to say about what is an appropriate way to feel. What do you find comfortable and normal? What do you find embarrassing? Chances are people in your world won't quite agree, particularly depending on their social status relative to yours. A poor person won't probably feel comfortable speaking to a noble person at all, though they might feel perfectly comfortable addressing a group of peers.
In Varin, members of different castes have different emotional reactions to different situations. My noble boy Tagret would feel slighted if his mother didn't look at him when she talks to him; my servant-caste boy Aloran feels very uncomfortable if he is looked at by nobles at all, and prefers to be out of his Lady's line of sight when she speaks to him. If I were to associate Californian standards of emotional reaction to eye contact to him, this would most definitely be a "wrong emotion"!
People in Varin have such different emotional reactions from our own that I have to make sure at the start of my story to establish a sort of emotional compass for readers by putting them into unusual, Varin-based emotional situations early on and letting them experience how the characters react.
One example is the scene where Tagret goes to a concert with his friends and is looking around at girls - but making sure that when the girls get close he stops looking at their faces so that their bodyguards won't see him as a threat. He's not allowed to talk directly to a girl, but must speak to her bodyguard - and feels divided about speaking to the bodyguard, because he's experiencing the excited emotions he would have when speaking to the girl at the same time that he's feeling nervous about speaking with a bodyguard who could potentially beat him up.
Another example is the scene where Aloran is asked to help one of his Service Academy classmates prepare for an exam - but it's a washing exam, where the students are required to prove they can wash the body of the person they find most attractive without showing any signs of discomfort or emotional involvement. Aloran coaches his classmate through it and is perfectly calm through the whole thing, and very sympathetic to his classmate's discomfort, because he went through the same experience.
Errors of degree occur when we give a character an emotional reaction that is either too weak or too strong for the context within the world. These are subtle and often quite difficult to avoid. I tend to think of them in terms of overreactions and underreactions, and they pattern pretty predictably with what is normal for our own experience. An overreaction will occur when we have a character who is quite accustomed to a particular type of experience react as strongly as we would in the same circumstances (which for us are not normal). An underreaction will occur when we have someone fail to find anything odd about a circumstance which for us is entirely normal, but which for them is highly unusual and might even be shocking. The best way to combat them is always to keep our emotional compass for the fictional world on hand, and think through reactions carefully as we go.
To use the examples I mentioned above, if I were to have Aloran feel very awkward about having someone else wash him, then that would be an overreaction. If I were to have Tagret feel nervous, rather than shocked, about having a girl speak to him directly, that would be an underreaction.
The most common errors of degree that I notice in the stories I read are the kind that are related to questions of social power and privilege - poor people who hate those above them too much, and don't fear them enough, or noble people who spend a lot of effort and anger reviling the people below them when most of the time they wouldn't give them much thought at all.
When I'm writing along, these kinds of world-related emotional errors are the kind of thing that can make the story stop in its tracks. If you are getting an "odd feeling" from a scene or sequence, or if critique partners are raising their hands, take a look through for emotional errors. Errors of emotional type are much easier to find than errors of emotional degree. But being aware of the possibilities will help you to keep the emotional content of your story on track, and feeling real.
As a character-based writer, I have a hard time relating to the phrase "standard emotional content." However, it's easy enough for me to guess that it means people in a story feel what they are supposed to feel when they are supposed to feel it. They're being chased, I guess, so they feel panic, or they're doing X Y or Z so they need to feel this that or the other.
I certainly do suppose that if one sidetracks off the action into a navel-gazing emotional reverie that it would appear inappropriate. Needless to say, this is not what I do in my action sequences.
But what I'd rather think about today is what "the wrong emotion" might mean.
I suppose I could begin with the idea of not being in touch with one's characters. I think it's always valuable to be in touch with a character's mental states, and in fact this is the major reason why I write chronologically - because emotions and mental states tend to grow out of one another, and to concatenate.
When you're working in another world, particularly one with a different kind of social contract, I think it's worth spending extra time. Because in the worldbuilding context it's actually quite easy to end up with the "wrong" emotion, accidentally. I'm going to divide this into two different types of emotional errors: 1. errors of emotional type and 2. errors of degree.
Errors of emotional type occur when you're writing along and you have a social situation, and your character ends up feeling how an Earth resident would feel in that situation rather than how a native of your world would feel in that situation.
Think about how you feel in different social situations. The content of those social situations has a lot to say about what is an appropriate way to feel. What do you find comfortable and normal? What do you find embarrassing? Chances are people in your world won't quite agree, particularly depending on their social status relative to yours. A poor person won't probably feel comfortable speaking to a noble person at all, though they might feel perfectly comfortable addressing a group of peers.
In Varin, members of different castes have different emotional reactions to different situations. My noble boy Tagret would feel slighted if his mother didn't look at him when she talks to him; my servant-caste boy Aloran feels very uncomfortable if he is looked at by nobles at all, and prefers to be out of his Lady's line of sight when she speaks to him. If I were to associate Californian standards of emotional reaction to eye contact to him, this would most definitely be a "wrong emotion"!
People in Varin have such different emotional reactions from our own that I have to make sure at the start of my story to establish a sort of emotional compass for readers by putting them into unusual, Varin-based emotional situations early on and letting them experience how the characters react.
One example is the scene where Tagret goes to a concert with his friends and is looking around at girls - but making sure that when the girls get close he stops looking at their faces so that their bodyguards won't see him as a threat. He's not allowed to talk directly to a girl, but must speak to her bodyguard - and feels divided about speaking to the bodyguard, because he's experiencing the excited emotions he would have when speaking to the girl at the same time that he's feeling nervous about speaking with a bodyguard who could potentially beat him up.
Another example is the scene where Aloran is asked to help one of his Service Academy classmates prepare for an exam - but it's a washing exam, where the students are required to prove they can wash the body of the person they find most attractive without showing any signs of discomfort or emotional involvement. Aloran coaches his classmate through it and is perfectly calm through the whole thing, and very sympathetic to his classmate's discomfort, because he went through the same experience.
Errors of degree occur when we give a character an emotional reaction that is either too weak or too strong for the context within the world. These are subtle and often quite difficult to avoid. I tend to think of them in terms of overreactions and underreactions, and they pattern pretty predictably with what is normal for our own experience. An overreaction will occur when we have a character who is quite accustomed to a particular type of experience react as strongly as we would in the same circumstances (which for us are not normal). An underreaction will occur when we have someone fail to find anything odd about a circumstance which for us is entirely normal, but which for them is highly unusual and might even be shocking. The best way to combat them is always to keep our emotional compass for the fictional world on hand, and think through reactions carefully as we go.
To use the examples I mentioned above, if I were to have Aloran feel very awkward about having someone else wash him, then that would be an overreaction. If I were to have Tagret feel nervous, rather than shocked, about having a girl speak to him directly, that would be an underreaction.
The most common errors of degree that I notice in the stories I read are the kind that are related to questions of social power and privilege - poor people who hate those above them too much, and don't fear them enough, or noble people who spend a lot of effort and anger reviling the people below them when most of the time they wouldn't give them much thought at all.
When I'm writing along, these kinds of world-related emotional errors are the kind of thing that can make the story stop in its tracks. If you are getting an "odd feeling" from a scene or sequence, or if critique partners are raising their hands, take a look through for emotional errors. Errors of emotional type are much easier to find than errors of emotional degree. But being aware of the possibilities will help you to keep the emotional content of your story on track, and feeling real.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
TTYU Retro: Focus your Worldbuilding Efforts
As I am traveling today, I'm putting up a Retro post on worldbuilding today - I hope you enjoy it!
*******
You're creating a world. You want to write a story in it, and you want it to feel real. How best do you go about that?
Well, you have to have all the underlying basic principles down. Climate, ecology, economy, etc, etc, etc. It all has to fit together and make sense. But a lot of that stuff isn't precisely relevant to your plot. The temptation might be to explain things - and that leads you into trouble. You want people to believe in you, yes. But don't tell them things and ask them to believe. If you show those things effectively, then they'll believe in spite of themselves.
I'm sure you've all heard this "show don't tell" advice before. I have a whole post on its different meanings, but I'm not trying to access all those meanings today. I just want to say that if you can bring your worldbuilding efforts into sharp focus, you can achieve that "show don't tell" feeling, and a little bit of worldbuilding can go a long way.
A good place to start explaining this is with a short story. Say your story is short, so you don't have room to try to explain the world - and yet, you want to make sure that the world feels large. One really good way of doing this is picking a single object to start with. This object has to be one that has high relevance to the character - but not necessarily to the plot. I recommend everyday objects. Not something like a fork which has become nearly generic, but something that is slightly off what in the real world we would consider normal. Maybe it's a ceremonial object, or an object of significance to the main character. Maybe it's this Roman "Swiss army knife" that Astrid Bear pointed out to me on Facebook.
The reason why I enjoyed the Roman knife-tool was that it was so detailed. So much to be learned from its discovery about the habits of the person who carried it. The fork and spoon. The blade. The spike which may have been used to remove the meat from snails. The toothpick; the spatula.
If you can pick one highly relevant, salient object, its nature can imply many things about the world around it. In my story, "Let the Word Take Me," (Analog July/Aug 2008) I gave my alien girl two objects like that - a ceremonial knife, and "sun armor." Here's a quote:
On top [in the artifact case] was a ceremonial knife in a scabbard of intricately worked grazer-leather, with a leaf-shaped blade and a hilt wound with stone beads. Underneath was a mass of white feathers. Lifting the top layer, he found himself unfolding a hooded coat of perforated leather densely clad with yorro plumage. ... David suspected it was an heirloom; the unblemished feathers were layered without gaps, but the leather inside showed that patches had been resewn, and two of the worn tie-thongs had been replaced.
I spent this many words describing the two objects because of what they said about the technology level and culture of the people who had made them. Find the right object, and its significance will radiate outward, accomplishing far more than general descriptions on a larger scale.
The fact of the matter is, while this technique is very convenient in short stories where you have fewer words to work with, it is equally effective for longer works. The objects don't have to be ceremonial or have special importance. They can be small things that the characters consider quite mundane. A lot of large-scale principles become evident in the tiny details of the everyday. Focus your worldbuilding efforts and you can get a lot of power out of a very few words.
It's something to think about.
*******
You're creating a world. You want to write a story in it, and you want it to feel real. How best do you go about that?
Well, you have to have all the underlying basic principles down. Climate, ecology, economy, etc, etc, etc. It all has to fit together and make sense. But a lot of that stuff isn't precisely relevant to your plot. The temptation might be to explain things - and that leads you into trouble. You want people to believe in you, yes. But don't tell them things and ask them to believe. If you show those things effectively, then they'll believe in spite of themselves.
I'm sure you've all heard this "show don't tell" advice before. I have a whole post on its different meanings, but I'm not trying to access all those meanings today. I just want to say that if you can bring your worldbuilding efforts into sharp focus, you can achieve that "show don't tell" feeling, and a little bit of worldbuilding can go a long way.
A good place to start explaining this is with a short story. Say your story is short, so you don't have room to try to explain the world - and yet, you want to make sure that the world feels large. One really good way of doing this is picking a single object to start with. This object has to be one that has high relevance to the character - but not necessarily to the plot. I recommend everyday objects. Not something like a fork which has become nearly generic, but something that is slightly off what in the real world we would consider normal. Maybe it's a ceremonial object, or an object of significance to the main character. Maybe it's this Roman "Swiss army knife" that Astrid Bear pointed out to me on Facebook.
The reason why I enjoyed the Roman knife-tool was that it was so detailed. So much to be learned from its discovery about the habits of the person who carried it. The fork and spoon. The blade. The spike which may have been used to remove the meat from snails. The toothpick; the spatula.
If you can pick one highly relevant, salient object, its nature can imply many things about the world around it. In my story, "Let the Word Take Me," (Analog July/Aug 2008) I gave my alien girl two objects like that - a ceremonial knife, and "sun armor." Here's a quote:
On top [in the artifact case] was a ceremonial knife in a scabbard of intricately worked grazer-leather, with a leaf-shaped blade and a hilt wound with stone beads. Underneath was a mass of white feathers. Lifting the top layer, he found himself unfolding a hooded coat of perforated leather densely clad with yorro plumage. ... David suspected it was an heirloom; the unblemished feathers were layered without gaps, but the leather inside showed that patches had been resewn, and two of the worn tie-thongs had been replaced.
I spent this many words describing the two objects because of what they said about the technology level and culture of the people who had made them. Find the right object, and its significance will radiate outward, accomplishing far more than general descriptions on a larger scale.
The fact of the matter is, while this technique is very convenient in short stories where you have fewer words to work with, it is equally effective for longer works. The objects don't have to be ceremonial or have special importance. They can be small things that the characters consider quite mundane. A lot of large-scale principles become evident in the tiny details of the everyday. Focus your worldbuilding efforts and you can get a lot of power out of a very few words.
It's something to think about.
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!
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.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Put your secondary world to the test
I had a pretty funny experience yesterday (one day early for April Fool's, I guess). I had gone to the grocery store for a few items, and as I passed the pharmacy I remembered I had just sent one of my characters to the pharmacy in my book. I stopped my shopping cart right in front and started studying it, trying to see what aspects of it were going to be common to the world of my book, and what aspects of it would be different. The poor pharmacists, not having dealt with a writer staring at their workplace before, finally asked if I needed help. I told them what I was up to.
They seemed a bit bemused by my explanation.
Here's the thing, though. A pharmacy in a secondary world isn't going to be like a pharmacy in ours, especially if all the social conditions underlying it are different. For my world, I can't go back to the historical Earth model of the apothecary, because it won't fit. I have to figure out what would make my pharmacy right for the world I'm working with.
Here was my detailed pharmacy logic: to look like a pharmacy, it has to have a front counter, a person responsible for dispensing medications, and shelves of medications. However, in my Varin world, there's a strict caste separation that keeps the drug designers and manufacturers - members of the knowledge workers' caste - from working with the product sellers - members of the merchant caste. Thus, none of the bottles can be branded. They are labeled by contents, and by whether any special caste-based dispensation laws apply to them (members of the nobility are restricted in their use of certain medications, such as birth control). Then, because this pharmacy is designed specifically for use by medically trained members of the servant caste, the front counter worker is not a knowledge worker, but another servant - a warden, whose special function is to serve as guardian of the pharmacy's contents.
This location is "onscreen" for a single small scene, and is in primary focus for roughly 225 words. But because I want my world to be whole in all of its details (and I'm a little nuts), I care. I care about
1. giving the place common characteristics with our world that make it recognizable as a pharmacy, and
2. giving the place three special details that make it distinctly Varini (warden, unbranded bottles, caste-restriction labels).
Frankly, I would recommend this type of thinking to anyone working with a secondary world or alien environment. If it's a place your character walks by with hardly a glance, the information may not be important enough to spend time on. However, if your character is interacting with the place (as mine is), the contrast you set up between the familiar and the strange will make the difference between the place feeling bland, and the place feeling right. Don't take anything for granted. Put your world through its paces; chase it around corners and into nooks and crannies.
For each environment your character must interact with, here are some things to think through:
They seemed a bit bemused by my explanation.
Here's the thing, though. A pharmacy in a secondary world isn't going to be like a pharmacy in ours, especially if all the social conditions underlying it are different. For my world, I can't go back to the historical Earth model of the apothecary, because it won't fit. I have to figure out what would make my pharmacy right for the world I'm working with.
Here was my detailed pharmacy logic: to look like a pharmacy, it has to have a front counter, a person responsible for dispensing medications, and shelves of medications. However, in my Varin world, there's a strict caste separation that keeps the drug designers and manufacturers - members of the knowledge workers' caste - from working with the product sellers - members of the merchant caste. Thus, none of the bottles can be branded. They are labeled by contents, and by whether any special caste-based dispensation laws apply to them (members of the nobility are restricted in their use of certain medications, such as birth control). Then, because this pharmacy is designed specifically for use by medically trained members of the servant caste, the front counter worker is not a knowledge worker, but another servant - a warden, whose special function is to serve as guardian of the pharmacy's contents.
This location is "onscreen" for a single small scene, and is in primary focus for roughly 225 words. But because I want my world to be whole in all of its details (and I'm a little nuts), I care. I care about
1. giving the place common characteristics with our world that make it recognizable as a pharmacy, and
2. giving the place three special details that make it distinctly Varini (warden, unbranded bottles, caste-restriction labels).
Frankly, I would recommend this type of thinking to anyone working with a secondary world or alien environment. If it's a place your character walks by with hardly a glance, the information may not be important enough to spend time on. However, if your character is interacting with the place (as mine is), the contrast you set up between the familiar and the strange will make the difference between the place feeling bland, and the place feeling right. Don't take anything for granted. Put your world through its paces; chase it around corners and into nooks and crannies.
For each environment your character must interact with, here are some things to think through:
- Is this character doing something that readers will recognize from the real world?
- What elements of the activity will be familiar?
- What elements of the activity will be unfamiliar?
- What kind of people are present there, and what function do they serve?
- How might large-scale physical differences between our world and this world influence the conditions in this location (this might be architecture, economy, natural resources, etc.)?
- How might large-scale cultural differences between our world and this world influence the conditions in this location (this might be population, manners, rules, etc.)?
- Can you find two or three specific details to include which will reflect these differences?
- Is there a comparable setting you can visit in the real world to get detail ideas?
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Guest Post Today!
I thought I should point out to my readers that I have a post up today at Janice Hardy's blog, The Other Side of the Story. My post is called "Is world building in stories different from world building in novels?" If that question interests you, head on over!
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop: Foregrounding and Backgrounding Information
Welcome back to the Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop! I can hardly believe we're now in week 6 already. Today's entry comes from Rachel Udin. Thanks for submitting, Rachel. As I generally do, I'll start by marking up this 500 word excerpt with blue to show the words that are giving me world entry information. Here we go:
***
The sound of footsteps echoed in the palace, almost distant to my ears. I realized that the sound of the footsteps were my own and the echo was the slap of my sandals against the marble floor of the open hallway to the men's quarters. The dream-vision still engulfed me, leaving me with the singular purpose of seeing my older brother, Hanuman.
I glanced up into the sky through the pillared pointed archways and saw that the moon was high so I knew the time to be the middle of the night.
I saw the guards in front of the men's chamber doorway, who were sleeping. I ducked their crossed spears and held my thick braid tight, so it would not swing into them. I continued running, letting my sandals slap until the hallway opened to a tall vaulted ceiling and then I reached the door of my older brother.
Servants caught me there and they held me back as I pound on the door. They were male servants--but they dare not touch me too much lest they soil my name and incur the wrath of my father, the King.
"Then you must call for him," I demanded.
"Princess, it is late."
"This urgent--I must see him now."
A servant slipped into Hanuman's quarters.
I neatened my black braid. My bangles jingled. I had not realized I had grabbed them. I saw now that I was still in my night clothes, but shrugged it off.
Hanuman came out in his night wear, tired and yawning.
"Older Brother, I must speak to you--because we must leave."
Hanuman held his forehead and then looked at me through his stupor. "Another dream vision? Must we follow this one, too?"
"You must come with me."
"Younger Sister Shakti--it is the middle of the night. The King will be furious to find that you've come to the men's quarters again."
I came a little to myself and realized that I had come to the men's quarters again, but the dream-vision was too strong and shook me. I could see the Gods beckoning me to action through their incarnated forms. The soft sounds of Sita's voice told me the message while Rama watched. I repeated the words. "Across the sea, my husband is waiting for me. He has been waiting a long time."
Hanuman rubbed his eyes. "Father will never agree. He will find you a husband. Don't fret--you are only fifteen."
He was rambling again. He yawned wide.
"You helped me last time--"
"And I regret it. Let it wait until morning. Why not bother me when the sun is well into the sky and the naan is just baked in the oven?"
He stretched again and shut the door behind him. I pound on it.
The soft click of sandals came down the corridor. I turned my head and saw the servants from my chamber--few as they were--headed by the mistress of the women's quarters.
***
This piece quickly places me in a human world with the phrase sound of footsteps. The word palace makes me think fantasy, but is somewhat less restrictive in sense than "castle." I'm going to be looking for more evidence of the type of palace as we go forward. We get some interesting information in slap of my sandals, because it suggests this climate is warm. Marble floor fits with "palace" but doesn't give us much more to narrow down the type of building we're in; open hallway to the men's quarters does more. "Open hallway" is an unusual phrase, and makes me think the writer is describing something specific. In addition, we're clearly in a culture that has men's and women's quarters in its palaces, which rules out any European-based models. I'm intrigued by the idea of the dream-vision, but the name Hanuman is the first unequivocal evidence that we're in an Indian-inspired setting. The second piece comes somewhat later, with the moment when her bangles jingled, and a third with her name, Shakti. It's interesting, because the environment sets up a mood before I can pinpoint the type of location; the names then put a specific name to this location.
At this point I'm going to go through this piece again, marking it with my comments. Those of you who have read previous entries to the Workshop will know that these are not corrections. They are my thoughts and reactions as I go through, which I'll then discuss below the excerpt.
***
The sound of footsteps echoed in the palace, [this phrasing suggests the protagonist is in the palace listening] almost distant to my ears. I realized that the sound of the footsteps were my own and the echo was the slap of my sandals against the marble floor of the open hallway to the men's quarters. [This sentence quickly puts us in the location, even though I don't have a clear picture of what an open hallway is.] The dream-vision still engulfed me,[this makes me suspect that the palace and the running are part of a dream-vision; in dream visions we often feel disoriented and realize where we are, and often feel a sense of purpose] leaving me with the singular purpose of seeing my older brother, Hanuman.[I wonder why she wants to see him]
I glanced up into the sky through the pillared pointed archways and saw that the moon was high so I knew the time to be the middle of the night.[This sentence establishes architecture and time, but I think you can do more with it. Perhaps also use it to drop hints about culture and Shakti's purpose... How does she measure time? Does she worry how Hanuman will react since it's the middle of the night?]
I saw [this filtering contributes to a dreamy quality, as if we were in a vision] the guards in front of the men's chamber doorway,[I pictured a closed door here, but this is clearly not the case] who were sleeping. I ducked their crossed spears and held my thick braid tight, so it would not swing into them. I continued running, letting my sandals slap [did the guards not hear this?] until the hallway opened to a tall vaulted ceiling and then I reached the door of my older brother.
Servants caught me there and they held me back as I pound on the door. They were male servants--but they dare not touch me too much lest they soil my name and incur the wrath of my father, the King.[This is very interesting world information, but I think you can do more. See if you can tie this piece back to Shakti and her purpose by having her draw a conclusion from it.]
"Then you must call for him," I demanded.
"Princess, it is late."[I'm glad to see this. This fits with her father being the king, but it's also new information, because kings can have more offspring than just princes and princesses. (She could conceivably have been a concubine's daughter.)]
"This urgent--I must see him now."
A servant slipped into Hanuman's quarters.
I neatened my black braid. My bangles jingled. I had not realized I had grabbed them. I saw now that I was still in my night clothes, but shrugged it off.[Interesting that she is concerned with her appearance here. I wonder why - can you relate it to her intent?]
Hanuman came out in his night wear, tired and yawning.
"Older Brother [we're in a culture where people call one another by family relation names; I like this], I must speak to you--because we must leave."
Hanuman held his forehead and then looked at me through his stupor. "Another dream vision? [This was the first place where I realized the action couldn't be taking place in her dream vision.] Must we follow this one, too?"
"You must come with me."
"Younger Sister Shakti [this seems a very formal appellation, especially considering how sleepy he is. It may be culturally accurate, but it stands out and might be interpreted as deliberate feeding of the name information. Any way you could split this up?]--it is the middle of the night. The King [isn't he their father? Interesting that they must refer to him so formally.] will be furious to find that you've come to the men's quarters again."
I came a little to myself and realized that I had come to the men's quarters again,[yes, that's clear. What does it mean?] but the dream-vision was too strong and shook me. I could see the Gods beckoning me to action through their incarnated forms.[I'm not clear what incarnated forms means here. Does it mean she can see them physically right now?] The soft sounds of Sita's voice told me the message while Rama watched. I repeated the words. "Across the sea, my husband is waiting for me. He has been waiting a long time."
Hanuman rubbed his eyes. "Father [oh, so they can call him Father] will never agree. He will find you a husband. Don't fret--you are only fifteen."[Hanuman here seems to be giving us information: Father has to approve marriage; he has to find the husband; she is fifteen. While this is all valuable, I wonder if you can do more. What exactly does Hanuman guess that Shakti is worrying about? He would probably think she's having the usual worries of fifteen-year-old unmarried girls...and what are those? There would be a particular way of assuaging such fears.]
He was rambling again.[she thinks he's rambling?] He yawned wide.
"You helped me last time--"
"And I regret it. Let it wait until morning. Why not bother me when the sun is well into the sky and the naan is just baked in the oven?"[this is a cute expression and very flavorful (mmm, naan!)]
He stretched again and shut the door behind him. I pound on it.
The soft click of sandals came down the corridor. I turned my head and saw the servants from my chamber--few as they were--headed by the mistress of the women's quarters.[From this I deduce she's about to be in trouble. Can we see not just what she sees, but also feel her reaction?]
***
I really enjoyed this piece. Throughout, I felt the presence of small very specific details. Because of these details, I never doubted that the writer had a very specific location in mind, so I was ready to wait and look for evidence of what that location was. I didn't have any trouble with jumping to unwarranted conclusions (like, say, concluding that I had to be in a medieval European palace). I saw a couple of places where more cultural information was asking to be inserted (like how these people measure time), but in general I felt a sensation of trust for the writer knowing what environment she was describing. So this is very awesome.
You may notice that I've put in several places above the words "you can do more." I'm asking that you consider taking a next step in creating really thorough worldbuilding: shifting the information from foreground to background. You have an entire separate paragraph dedicated to Shakti determining the time of night - but if she's motivated by a singular purpose, she wouldn't give so much attention to the time of night. It appears to be there especially to carry world information in the form of the window architecture. That's what I mean by foregrounding the worldbuilding information. But the solution is not taking out the information (because I love the information!). What I suggest you do is take Shakti's motives and purpose - the main thrust of the story - and put them into the foreground, while shifting the architecture into the background. Think about why she's checking the time of night. Give her a purpose in doing that, and have her draw conclusions from what she sees. She looks out - it's midnight, so... what? Her brother will be mad (again)? If you do this, her worries and purpose will be in the foreground driving the story, and the worldbuilding information will sit back in a very comfortable and unobtrusive place.
I'd like to see you do the same thing with the information about the servants. Have her behave bravely and scornfully with them, and justify her behavior with the fact that they can't really hurt her without incurring the king's wrath. The same thing can also be done with the details of her hair and clothes. Why would she be concerned about her appearance? Is it her brother's reaction that concerns her?
Each place you see worldbuilding information inserted for its own sake, it takes the foreground - but it's actually not that hard to slip it into the background, provided that you let it serve as a foundation for some action or motivation of the protagonist.
The last instance that I want to draw attention to is what Hanuman says. I've seen a lot of lines like this, and they're not at all bad, and they carry some good information (protagonist's age, social rules/details). But they can be given more dimension, if you can think through precisely what it is that Hanuman thinks she's worrying about. Right now he's telling her she shouldn't worry, and telling the reader she's fifteen and her father will choose her husband. Okay. But does he think she's worried because she thinks she's too old to marry/becoming a spinster at age 15? That is much more emotionally fraught. Let him try to reassure her and imply what it is that someone in this society would be worrying about. It will really give this line added dimension.
Rachel, I'm so glad you submitted this piece, because I really enjoyed it - and because the question of foregrounding and backgrounding is one that I've spent a lot of time working on in my own writing. Especially when you have a detailed world, it's easy for information to try to sit on its own and pull attention off the main conflict. If you can add in the judgment and motivations of the characters as the primary foregrounded thing, though, then you can keep all the fabulous information and have it serve your story purpose (it serves you) rather than having to take time off from advancing the story to get world information (you serve it). The sense of realism will be greatly enhanced.
The constructive discussion is open!
***
The sound of footsteps echoed in the palace, almost distant to my ears. I realized that the sound of the footsteps were my own and the echo was the slap of my sandals against the marble floor of the open hallway to the men's quarters. The dream-vision still engulfed me, leaving me with the singular purpose of seeing my older brother, Hanuman.
I glanced up into the sky through the pillared pointed archways and saw that the moon was high so I knew the time to be the middle of the night.
I saw the guards in front of the men's chamber doorway, who were sleeping. I ducked their crossed spears and held my thick braid tight, so it would not swing into them. I continued running, letting my sandals slap until the hallway opened to a tall vaulted ceiling and then I reached the door of my older brother.
Servants caught me there and they held me back as I pound on the door. They were male servants--but they dare not touch me too much lest they soil my name and incur the wrath of my father, the King.
"Then you must call for him," I demanded.
"Princess, it is late."
"This urgent--I must see him now."
A servant slipped into Hanuman's quarters.
I neatened my black braid. My bangles jingled. I had not realized I had grabbed them. I saw now that I was still in my night clothes, but shrugged it off.
Hanuman came out in his night wear, tired and yawning.
"Older Brother, I must speak to you--because we must leave."
Hanuman held his forehead and then looked at me through his stupor. "Another dream vision? Must we follow this one, too?"
"You must come with me."
"Younger Sister Shakti--it is the middle of the night. The King will be furious to find that you've come to the men's quarters again."
I came a little to myself and realized that I had come to the men's quarters again, but the dream-vision was too strong and shook me. I could see the Gods beckoning me to action through their incarnated forms. The soft sounds of Sita's voice told me the message while Rama watched. I repeated the words. "Across the sea, my husband is waiting for me. He has been waiting a long time."
Hanuman rubbed his eyes. "Father will never agree. He will find you a husband. Don't fret--you are only fifteen."
He was rambling again. He yawned wide.
"You helped me last time--"
"And I regret it. Let it wait until morning. Why not bother me when the sun is well into the sky and the naan is just baked in the oven?"
He stretched again and shut the door behind him. I pound on it.
The soft click of sandals came down the corridor. I turned my head and saw the servants from my chamber--few as they were--headed by the mistress of the women's quarters.
***
This piece quickly places me in a human world with the phrase sound of footsteps. The word palace makes me think fantasy, but is somewhat less restrictive in sense than "castle." I'm going to be looking for more evidence of the type of palace as we go forward. We get some interesting information in slap of my sandals, because it suggests this climate is warm. Marble floor fits with "palace" but doesn't give us much more to narrow down the type of building we're in; open hallway to the men's quarters does more. "Open hallway" is an unusual phrase, and makes me think the writer is describing something specific. In addition, we're clearly in a culture that has men's and women's quarters in its palaces, which rules out any European-based models. I'm intrigued by the idea of the dream-vision, but the name Hanuman is the first unequivocal evidence that we're in an Indian-inspired setting. The second piece comes somewhat later, with the moment when her bangles jingled, and a third with her name, Shakti. It's interesting, because the environment sets up a mood before I can pinpoint the type of location; the names then put a specific name to this location.
At this point I'm going to go through this piece again, marking it with my comments. Those of you who have read previous entries to the Workshop will know that these are not corrections. They are my thoughts and reactions as I go through, which I'll then discuss below the excerpt.
***
The sound of footsteps echoed in the palace, [this phrasing suggests the protagonist is in the palace listening] almost distant to my ears. I realized that the sound of the footsteps were my own and the echo was the slap of my sandals against the marble floor of the open hallway to the men's quarters. [This sentence quickly puts us in the location, even though I don't have a clear picture of what an open hallway is.] The dream-vision still engulfed me,[this makes me suspect that the palace and the running are part of a dream-vision; in dream visions we often feel disoriented and realize where we are, and often feel a sense of purpose] leaving me with the singular purpose of seeing my older brother, Hanuman.[I wonder why she wants to see him]
I glanced up into the sky through the pillared pointed archways and saw that the moon was high so I knew the time to be the middle of the night.[This sentence establishes architecture and time, but I think you can do more with it. Perhaps also use it to drop hints about culture and Shakti's purpose... How does she measure time? Does she worry how Hanuman will react since it's the middle of the night?]
I saw [this filtering contributes to a dreamy quality, as if we were in a vision] the guards in front of the men's chamber doorway,[I pictured a closed door here, but this is clearly not the case] who were sleeping. I ducked their crossed spears and held my thick braid tight, so it would not swing into them. I continued running, letting my sandals slap [did the guards not hear this?] until the hallway opened to a tall vaulted ceiling and then I reached the door of my older brother.
Servants caught me there and they held me back as I pound on the door. They were male servants--but they dare not touch me too much lest they soil my name and incur the wrath of my father, the King.[This is very interesting world information, but I think you can do more. See if you can tie this piece back to Shakti and her purpose by having her draw a conclusion from it.]
"Then you must call for him," I demanded.
"Princess, it is late."[I'm glad to see this. This fits with her father being the king, but it's also new information, because kings can have more offspring than just princes and princesses. (She could conceivably have been a concubine's daughter.)]
"This urgent--I must see him now."
A servant slipped into Hanuman's quarters.
I neatened my black braid. My bangles jingled. I had not realized I had grabbed them. I saw now that I was still in my night clothes, but shrugged it off.[Interesting that she is concerned with her appearance here. I wonder why - can you relate it to her intent?]
Hanuman came out in his night wear, tired and yawning.
"Older Brother [we're in a culture where people call one another by family relation names; I like this], I must speak to you--because we must leave."
Hanuman held his forehead and then looked at me through his stupor. "Another dream vision? [This was the first place where I realized the action couldn't be taking place in her dream vision.] Must we follow this one, too?"
"You must come with me."
"Younger Sister Shakti [this seems a very formal appellation, especially considering how sleepy he is. It may be culturally accurate, but it stands out and might be interpreted as deliberate feeding of the name information. Any way you could split this up?]--it is the middle of the night. The King [isn't he their father? Interesting that they must refer to him so formally.] will be furious to find that you've come to the men's quarters again."
I came a little to myself and realized that I had come to the men's quarters again,[yes, that's clear. What does it mean?] but the dream-vision was too strong and shook me. I could see the Gods beckoning me to action through their incarnated forms.[I'm not clear what incarnated forms means here. Does it mean she can see them physically right now?] The soft sounds of Sita's voice told me the message while Rama watched. I repeated the words. "Across the sea, my husband is waiting for me. He has been waiting a long time."
Hanuman rubbed his eyes. "Father [oh, so they can call him Father] will never agree. He will find you a husband. Don't fret--you are only fifteen."[Hanuman here seems to be giving us information: Father has to approve marriage; he has to find the husband; she is fifteen. While this is all valuable, I wonder if you can do more. What exactly does Hanuman guess that Shakti is worrying about? He would probably think she's having the usual worries of fifteen-year-old unmarried girls...and what are those? There would be a particular way of assuaging such fears.]
He was rambling again.[she thinks he's rambling?] He yawned wide.
"You helped me last time--"
"And I regret it. Let it wait until morning. Why not bother me when the sun is well into the sky and the naan is just baked in the oven?"[this is a cute expression and very flavorful (mmm, naan!)]
He stretched again and shut the door behind him. I pound on it.
The soft click of sandals came down the corridor. I turned my head and saw the servants from my chamber--few as they were--headed by the mistress of the women's quarters.[From this I deduce she's about to be in trouble. Can we see not just what she sees, but also feel her reaction?]
***
I really enjoyed this piece. Throughout, I felt the presence of small very specific details. Because of these details, I never doubted that the writer had a very specific location in mind, so I was ready to wait and look for evidence of what that location was. I didn't have any trouble with jumping to unwarranted conclusions (like, say, concluding that I had to be in a medieval European palace). I saw a couple of places where more cultural information was asking to be inserted (like how these people measure time), but in general I felt a sensation of trust for the writer knowing what environment she was describing. So this is very awesome.
You may notice that I've put in several places above the words "you can do more." I'm asking that you consider taking a next step in creating really thorough worldbuilding: shifting the information from foreground to background. You have an entire separate paragraph dedicated to Shakti determining the time of night - but if she's motivated by a singular purpose, she wouldn't give so much attention to the time of night. It appears to be there especially to carry world information in the form of the window architecture. That's what I mean by foregrounding the worldbuilding information. But the solution is not taking out the information (because I love the information!). What I suggest you do is take Shakti's motives and purpose - the main thrust of the story - and put them into the foreground, while shifting the architecture into the background. Think about why she's checking the time of night. Give her a purpose in doing that, and have her draw conclusions from what she sees. She looks out - it's midnight, so... what? Her brother will be mad (again)? If you do this, her worries and purpose will be in the foreground driving the story, and the worldbuilding information will sit back in a very comfortable and unobtrusive place.
I'd like to see you do the same thing with the information about the servants. Have her behave bravely and scornfully with them, and justify her behavior with the fact that they can't really hurt her without incurring the king's wrath. The same thing can also be done with the details of her hair and clothes. Why would she be concerned about her appearance? Is it her brother's reaction that concerns her?
Each place you see worldbuilding information inserted for its own sake, it takes the foreground - but it's actually not that hard to slip it into the background, provided that you let it serve as a foundation for some action or motivation of the protagonist.
The last instance that I want to draw attention to is what Hanuman says. I've seen a lot of lines like this, and they're not at all bad, and they carry some good information (protagonist's age, social rules/details). But they can be given more dimension, if you can think through precisely what it is that Hanuman thinks she's worrying about. Right now he's telling her she shouldn't worry, and telling the reader she's fifteen and her father will choose her husband. Okay. But does he think she's worried because she thinks she's too old to marry/becoming a spinster at age 15? That is much more emotionally fraught. Let him try to reassure her and imply what it is that someone in this society would be worrying about. It will really give this line added dimension.
Rachel, I'm so glad you submitted this piece, because I really enjoyed it - and because the question of foregrounding and backgrounding is one that I've spent a lot of time working on in my own writing. Especially when you have a detailed world, it's easy for information to try to sit on its own and pull attention off the main conflict. If you can add in the judgment and motivations of the characters as the primary foregrounded thing, though, then you can keep all the fabulous information and have it serve your story purpose (it serves you) rather than having to take time off from advancing the story to get world information (you serve it). The sense of realism will be greatly enhanced.
The constructive discussion is open!
Saturday, February 5, 2011
An interesting resource for naming fictional countries
I ran across this link yesterday and it struck me immediately as a great source of ideas for worldbuilders. It's a map of our world - but the countries are labeled with literal translations of their names. I have been discussing this on Facebook, and a few of the translations have come into question - for example Aliette de Bodard pointed out that a better translation for Vietnam might be Southern People rather than Southern Land - but still it's valuable from a worldbuilding point of view. If you've ever felt held back by the idea of naming yet another country either randomly or by calling it "land of the people," this will give you some ideas for alternate approaches.
Also, when naming countries keep in mind that not all countries keep the names given to them by the indigenous people who live there - some have names superimposed by their more powerful neighbors!
Also, when naming countries keep in mind that not all countries keep the names given to them by the indigenous people who live there - some have names superimposed by their more powerful neighbors!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop: Managing the Juxtaposition of Normal and Abnormal
Welcome back to Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop (Week 3)! For those who are visiting for the first time, I do these sessions every Wednesday, using 500 word excerpts generously provided by my readers. If you're interested in submitting, you can find the link on the left underneath my photo, or here (which will take you to that same page). I'd love to see what you're working on!
I had a question from someone on the forums regarding whether I should take submissions of descriptions of people's worlds, rather than excerpts from stories using those worlds. While I think I might have some things to say about a world description/outline, I think the story excerpts are what I can work with most effectively. I'm always looking for submissions, so please do pass the submission link on to your friends and neighbors!
This week's submission comes from David Marshall, who has worked with me on worldbuilding before - long ago when I was first doing worldbuilding workshops in a quite different format. Thanks for submitting, David! As in previous weeks, I've marked the worldbuilding words and phrases that I notice in color, but this week I'll be using two colors. I'll bet you can tell why; I'll discuss it below the excerpt.
***
The black marble slabs that paved the entrance hall cracked under my feet. This required a great deal of effort on my part, for my cloven hooves were sharp-edged and petite, and not really made for stomping on stone. And even though my batlike wings were still immature, more delicate fairy-gauze than leathery flight membrane, I was so angry that they kept slashing the air and lifting me off the ground.
Not very far off the ground, but far enough to spoil any chance of a good, hard, satisfying stomp.
I forced my wings to fold, and the sacred things promptly sprang open again! I lashed my barbed tail, snarled, and tried to keep my feet firmly on the ground. With limited success.
I tried stalking down the hall, but what I achieved could more accurately be described as bouncing. Wherever I grounded, I left cloven hoofprints with a halo of radiating cracks like stylised lightning bolts.
I had undergone the tortures of Inhuman Health & Hygiene classes, so I understood what the metabolic sparks shaking my body were supposed to do. Some day soon, those irritating sparks that bubbled through the ichor in my veins would become a raging inferno of potent alchemical reactions, ensuring my reaction to any given situation would be either Fight, Flight or Fornicate.
But how the heaven would an alchemical know which F-word was most appropriate in any given situation?
I had grown long-limbed and lean over the past year, but I hadn't filled out into anything like my mother's dangerous curves. And I still wasn't used to the way my body had changed. The way my body was still changing. I was always tripping over, or bumping into things.
Sometimes I felt like my body was a fallen empire that had fractured into a bunch of warring city-states. If this was puberty, you could keep it.
Mother said I would fill out soon enough. She said I would develop finer control over my muscles and limbs. You're too eager, too impatient, she said. Give it time, she said. You're just a late burner, she said.
She said other things, when she thought that I couldn't hear her. She said that I remind her of a stiletto, slender yet dangerous, but wielded by an untrained, clumsy hand.
Well, this stiletto had just been sheathed, after being ichor-stained once too often.
At least my mother was working late. Again. I had at least four hours to kill before I had to explain myself. Again.
Time enough to think of some excuse. Surely.
'Arriach!'
My wings collapsed, slamming so hard against my back that I feared that they were going to break my ribs, wrap themselves around my spine, and come to rest in my lungs. My tail whipped up under my skirt, in an attempt to find an even less dignified hiding place. Electric sparks crackled across my skin, raw magic earthing itself in my squirming embarrassment.
***
David is being ambitious - and deliberately humorous, I believe - by creating two worlds at once. One of these worlds, referenced by the purple words, is relatively normal to us. It's the world of the spoiled teen girl, using words like "petite" and "Health&Hygiene classes" as well as "puberty" and "F-word." The other one, referenced by the blue words, is not normal. It's a devil world with black marble floors, cloven hooves and magic. The total effect of the excerpt thus lies in the juxtaposition of one world with the other. I'll comment in the text below - please excuse all the crazy colors; it just worked out that way!
***
The black marble slabs that paved the entrance hall cracked under my feet. **[At this point there's no reason for me to believe that marble slabs in the entrance hall and feet are inconsistent, world-wise. I imagine a castle, perhaps an evil one, and a person there in trouble. A pretty quickly accessed setting, if not an elaborated one.] This required a great deal of effort on my part, for my cloven hooves were sharp-edged and petite**[this qualifier seems external to her. Does she wish to be seen as petite? Can you indicate that?], and not really made for stomping on stone. **[The great deal of effort comes as a surprise, which I think was your intent, since it appears to imply that the cracking of the slabs was accomplished by the feet. However, there is a direct contradiction between "feet" and "cloven hooves" as I see it.] And even though my batlike wings were still immature, more delicate fairy-gauze than leathery flight membrane, I was so angry **[this is the first phrase where we see the subject pronoun "I," and it tells us only that she is angry, which we already knew.] that they kept slashing the air and lifting me off the ground.
Not very far off the ground, but far enough to spoil any chance of a good, hard, satisfying stomp.
I forced my wings to fold, and the sacred **[This and "heaven" below fit well with humorous devilry as direct opposites of the words that would be used in the teen girl world.] things promptly sprang open again! I lashed my barbed tail, snarled, and tried to keep my feet firmly on the ground. With limited success.**[Is she trying to break the floor, or trying not to break the floor? It's not clear to me.]
I tried stalking down the hall, **[To accomplish what?] but what I achieved could more accurately be described as bouncing. Wherever I grounded, I left cloven hoofprints with a halo of radiating cracks like stylised lightning bolts.**[This makes it sound like she thinks they look cool, but I thought she was irritated with the bouncing.]
I had undergone the tortures of Inhuman Health & Hygiene classes, so I understood what the metabolic sparks shaking my body were supposed to do. Some day soon, those irritating sparks that bubbled through the ichor in my veins would become a raging inferno of potent alchemical reactions, ensuring my reaction to any given situation would be either Fight, Flight or Fornicate.
But how the heaven would an alchemical know which F-word was most appropriate in any given situation?**[This is commentary on her physical state. The juxtapositions here are amusing but I'm missing a sense of the meaning and drive of her current situation.]
I had grown long-limbed and lean over the past year, but I hadn't filled out into anything like my mother's dangerous curves. **[Interesting perspective on her mother.] And I still wasn't used to the way my body had changed. The way my body was still changing. I was always tripping over, or bumping into things.
Sometimes I felt like my body was a fallen empire that had fractured into a bunch of warring city-states. **[This makes me wonder where our devilish creature would come up with this idea.] If this was puberty, you could keep it.**[This whole phrasing fits in the teen girl world.]
Mother said I would fill out soon enough. She said I would develop finer control over my muscles and limbs. You're too eager, too impatient, she said. Give it time, she said. You're just a late burner, she said.**[This is a nice phrasing of juxtaposition]
She said other things, when she thought that I couldn't hear her. She said that I remind her of a stiletto, slender yet dangerous, but wielded by an untrained, clumsy hand.
Well, this stiletto had just been sheathed, after being ichor-stained once too often.**[makes me wonder what just happened. Should I be wondering what just happened, or what will happen now?]
At least my mother was working late. Again. I had at least four hours to kill before I had to explain myself. Again.
Time enough to think of some excuse. Surely.
'Arriach!'
My wings collapsed, slamming so hard against my back that I feared that they were going to break my ribs, wrap themselves around my spine, and come to rest in my lungs. **[I wonder if this kind of hyperbole is part of her personality!] My tail whipped up under my skirt, in an attempt to find an even less dignified hiding place. Electric sparks crackled across my skin, raw magic earthing itself in my squirming embarrassment.
***
Overall I think this piece has a lot of good juxtaposition points in it. A great deal of humor and interest can come from this kind of two-world management - though I'd be careful of all-out contradictions, which can come across as the writer having a joke on the reader. I'm seeing a missed opportunity for world-building, however, in the lack of drive from the protagonist. If she is our ambassador (to borrow a phrase from week 1), then I don't think she's doing all she could to help us understand her world, because she's not doing much acting, or choosing, or judging of her own actions.
The two worlds here are clearly drawn, but only in relation to one another and a situation, not a person with a problem. It's important to see this protagonist as the subject of sentences early on, to allow her to show us just what kind of problem a person bridging these two worlds would have - rather than focusing on body parts or development alone to draw the contrast (which creates distance despite the first person narration). I think this would add to the humor rather than detracting from it, and draw the world juxtaposition more clearly by giving us a more solid grounding in the protagonist's character. She is the reason that the juxtaposition exists, and it is her world, and her sense of that world that brings the two contrasting sides to unity.
The other thing that your protagonist can do, which she isn't doing to full effect here, is give us a sense of what is normal and what is not normal in her world. What is normal in one of the worlds presented here is not normal in the other - so what is normal to her? The things that someone considers normal will typically not be at the top of her mind, or indeed noticed at all, unless they have been called into question in a specific way. Revealing the nature of this young (ahem!) lady's problem may be just what you need to show us what about her normal life has been called into question. The myriad great juxtapositions here are inadvertently pulling us to greater distance from her because they don't allow for any sense of normality within the context of her judgment. However, if you give her a problem to solve and something to do, those things that are normal to her can fall into their proper background context (even if they are quite striking). And you probably won't need everything you have here for the first 500 words, so you can save a lot of this great stuff for later story action, when more directly relevant elements of her life are called into question.
Thanks for being our brave Week 3 submitter! I hope you find these comments helpful. The constructive discussion is open.
I had a question from someone on the forums regarding whether I should take submissions of descriptions of people's worlds, rather than excerpts from stories using those worlds. While I think I might have some things to say about a world description/outline, I think the story excerpts are what I can work with most effectively. I'm always looking for submissions, so please do pass the submission link on to your friends and neighbors!
This week's submission comes from David Marshall, who has worked with me on worldbuilding before - long ago when I was first doing worldbuilding workshops in a quite different format. Thanks for submitting, David! As in previous weeks, I've marked the worldbuilding words and phrases that I notice in color, but this week I'll be using two colors. I'll bet you can tell why; I'll discuss it below the excerpt.
***
The black marble slabs that paved the entrance hall cracked under my feet. This required a great deal of effort on my part, for my cloven hooves were sharp-edged and petite, and not really made for stomping on stone. And even though my batlike wings were still immature, more delicate fairy-gauze than leathery flight membrane, I was so angry that they kept slashing the air and lifting me off the ground.
Not very far off the ground, but far enough to spoil any chance of a good, hard, satisfying stomp.
I forced my wings to fold, and the sacred things promptly sprang open again! I lashed my barbed tail, snarled, and tried to keep my feet firmly on the ground. With limited success.
I tried stalking down the hall, but what I achieved could more accurately be described as bouncing. Wherever I grounded, I left cloven hoofprints with a halo of radiating cracks like stylised lightning bolts.
I had undergone the tortures of Inhuman Health & Hygiene classes, so I understood what the metabolic sparks shaking my body were supposed to do. Some day soon, those irritating sparks that bubbled through the ichor in my veins would become a raging inferno of potent alchemical reactions, ensuring my reaction to any given situation would be either Fight, Flight or Fornicate.
But how the heaven would an alchemical know which F-word was most appropriate in any given situation?
I had grown long-limbed and lean over the past year, but I hadn't filled out into anything like my mother's dangerous curves. And I still wasn't used to the way my body had changed. The way my body was still changing. I was always tripping over, or bumping into things.
Sometimes I felt like my body was a fallen empire that had fractured into a bunch of warring city-states. If this was puberty, you could keep it.
Mother said I would fill out soon enough. She said I would develop finer control over my muscles and limbs. You're too eager, too impatient, she said. Give it time, she said. You're just a late burner, she said.
She said other things, when she thought that I couldn't hear her. She said that I remind her of a stiletto, slender yet dangerous, but wielded by an untrained, clumsy hand.
Well, this stiletto had just been sheathed, after being ichor-stained once too often.
At least my mother was working late. Again. I had at least four hours to kill before I had to explain myself. Again.
Time enough to think of some excuse. Surely.
'Arriach!'
My wings collapsed, slamming so hard against my back that I feared that they were going to break my ribs, wrap themselves around my spine, and come to rest in my lungs. My tail whipped up under my skirt, in an attempt to find an even less dignified hiding place. Electric sparks crackled across my skin, raw magic earthing itself in my squirming embarrassment.
***
David is being ambitious - and deliberately humorous, I believe - by creating two worlds at once. One of these worlds, referenced by the purple words, is relatively normal to us. It's the world of the spoiled teen girl, using words like "petite" and "Health&Hygiene classes" as well as "puberty" and "F-word." The other one, referenced by the blue words, is not normal. It's a devil world with black marble floors, cloven hooves and magic. The total effect of the excerpt thus lies in the juxtaposition of one world with the other. I'll comment in the text below - please excuse all the crazy colors; it just worked out that way!
***
The black marble slabs that paved the entrance hall cracked under my feet. **[At this point there's no reason for me to believe that marble slabs in the entrance hall and feet are inconsistent, world-wise. I imagine a castle, perhaps an evil one, and a person there in trouble. A pretty quickly accessed setting, if not an elaborated one.] This required a great deal of effort on my part, for my cloven hooves were sharp-edged and petite**[this qualifier seems external to her. Does she wish to be seen as petite? Can you indicate that?], and not really made for stomping on stone. **[The great deal of effort comes as a surprise, which I think was your intent, since it appears to imply that the cracking of the slabs was accomplished by the feet. However, there is a direct contradiction between "feet" and "cloven hooves" as I see it.] And even though my batlike wings were still immature, more delicate fairy-gauze than leathery flight membrane, I was so angry **[this is the first phrase where we see the subject pronoun "I," and it tells us only that she is angry, which we already knew.] that they kept slashing the air and lifting me off the ground.
Not very far off the ground, but far enough to spoil any chance of a good, hard, satisfying stomp.
I forced my wings to fold, and the sacred **[This and "heaven" below fit well with humorous devilry as direct opposites of the words that would be used in the teen girl world.] things promptly sprang open again! I lashed my barbed tail, snarled, and tried to keep my feet firmly on the ground. With limited success.**[Is she trying to break the floor, or trying not to break the floor? It's not clear to me.]
I tried stalking down the hall, **[To accomplish what?] but what I achieved could more accurately be described as bouncing. Wherever I grounded, I left cloven hoofprints with a halo of radiating cracks like stylised lightning bolts.**[This makes it sound like she thinks they look cool, but I thought she was irritated with the bouncing.]
I had undergone the tortures of Inhuman Health & Hygiene classes, so I understood what the metabolic sparks shaking my body were supposed to do. Some day soon, those irritating sparks that bubbled through the ichor in my veins would become a raging inferno of potent alchemical reactions, ensuring my reaction to any given situation would be either Fight, Flight or Fornicate.
But how the heaven would an alchemical know which F-word was most appropriate in any given situation?**[This is commentary on her physical state. The juxtapositions here are amusing but I'm missing a sense of the meaning and drive of her current situation.]
I had grown long-limbed and lean over the past year, but I hadn't filled out into anything like my mother's dangerous curves. **[Interesting perspective on her mother.] And I still wasn't used to the way my body had changed. The way my body was still changing. I was always tripping over, or bumping into things.
Sometimes I felt like my body was a fallen empire that had fractured into a bunch of warring city-states. **[This makes me wonder where our devilish creature would come up with this idea.] If this was puberty, you could keep it.**[This whole phrasing fits in the teen girl world.]
Mother said I would fill out soon enough. She said I would develop finer control over my muscles and limbs. You're too eager, too impatient, she said. Give it time, she said. You're just a late burner, she said.**[This is a nice phrasing of juxtaposition]
She said other things, when she thought that I couldn't hear her. She said that I remind her of a stiletto, slender yet dangerous, but wielded by an untrained, clumsy hand.
Well, this stiletto had just been sheathed, after being ichor-stained once too often.**[makes me wonder what just happened. Should I be wondering what just happened, or what will happen now?]
At least my mother was working late. Again. I had at least four hours to kill before I had to explain myself. Again.
Time enough to think of some excuse. Surely.
'Arriach!'
My wings collapsed, slamming so hard against my back that I feared that they were going to break my ribs, wrap themselves around my spine, and come to rest in my lungs. **[I wonder if this kind of hyperbole is part of her personality!] My tail whipped up under my skirt, in an attempt to find an even less dignified hiding place. Electric sparks crackled across my skin, raw magic earthing itself in my squirming embarrassment.
***
Overall I think this piece has a lot of good juxtaposition points in it. A great deal of humor and interest can come from this kind of two-world management - though I'd be careful of all-out contradictions, which can come across as the writer having a joke on the reader. I'm seeing a missed opportunity for world-building, however, in the lack of drive from the protagonist. If she is our ambassador (to borrow a phrase from week 1), then I don't think she's doing all she could to help us understand her world, because she's not doing much acting, or choosing, or judging of her own actions.
The two worlds here are clearly drawn, but only in relation to one another and a situation, not a person with a problem. It's important to see this protagonist as the subject of sentences early on, to allow her to show us just what kind of problem a person bridging these two worlds would have - rather than focusing on body parts or development alone to draw the contrast (which creates distance despite the first person narration). I think this would add to the humor rather than detracting from it, and draw the world juxtaposition more clearly by giving us a more solid grounding in the protagonist's character. She is the reason that the juxtaposition exists, and it is her world, and her sense of that world that brings the two contrasting sides to unity.
The other thing that your protagonist can do, which she isn't doing to full effect here, is give us a sense of what is normal and what is not normal in her world. What is normal in one of the worlds presented here is not normal in the other - so what is normal to her? The things that someone considers normal will typically not be at the top of her mind, or indeed noticed at all, unless they have been called into question in a specific way. Revealing the nature of this young (ahem!) lady's problem may be just what you need to show us what about her normal life has been called into question. The myriad great juxtapositions here are inadvertently pulling us to greater distance from her because they don't allow for any sense of normality within the context of her judgment. However, if you give her a problem to solve and something to do, those things that are normal to her can fall into their proper background context (even if they are quite striking). And you probably won't need everything you have here for the first 500 words, so you can save a lot of this great stuff for later story action, when more directly relevant elements of her life are called into question.
Thanks for being our brave Week 3 submitter! I hope you find these comments helpful. The constructive discussion is open.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Worldbuilding is not just Fantasy: the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
In the last two weeks since I started my worldbuilding workshop (Submit here!), I've run into a number of comments about worldbuilding on the forums where I've announced it. One of those comments is that genre people should head over here and check out the workshop. Of course, I do actively encourage this! But the flip side of a comment like that is that if you're not writing science fiction and fantasy, you must not be doing worldbuilding, so you might as well give it a miss.
I couldn't disagree more.
Every story builds a world. The only difference is that a mainstream world has many more known or expected elements. So, if you're building a fantasy or science fictional world, each word that contributes to worldbuilding will be expanding or refining the reader's sense of what that created world is like. The reader can't reasonably assume that all rules of our own world will apply, and will continue to have a sense of the fantasy world expanding. By contrast, it doesn't take more than a few words to establish that we're in a mainstream world. Each word that contributes to the world thereafter comes with a lot more automatic baggage. Thus, our focus in mainstream shifts quickly away from "what world are we in?" and starts to focus more on the specifics of the location and time period, and on the particulars of the milieu we're exploring.
To demonstrate the importance of worldbuilding in mainstream fiction, I've decided to do a little worldbuilding analysis - in roughly the same style as my workshop - on a book which immediately impressed me as having fantastic worldbuilding: Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Think about it. The title alone doesn't tell you what world we're in - I could easily imagine a science fiction or fantasy book with the same title. Imagine if you found this book and had read no clues as to when and where it takes place. How much could you learn about the world of the book in the first 500 words?
In fact, you could be certain it occurs in our own world within the first three words - "A Friday in November" - since these time measurements are restricted to our own world. But it doesn't end there. This book may have been written by a Swede, but it wouldn't necessarily be set in Sweden. So what I've done below is taken the first (roughly) 500 words of the book and blue-highlighted the words that I feel contribute to an ongoing sense of world, time period, specific location, and social context. Some of them provide new information to refine our sense of location. Others simply confirm and reconfirm what has already been established, but are words that might be used differently for worldbuilding in a genre work. Either way, they are everywhere. Take a look:
***
A Friday in November
It happened every year, was almost a ritual. And this was his eighty-second birthday. When, as usual, the flower was delivered, he took off the wrapping paper and then picked up the telephone to call Detective Superintendent Morell who, when he retired, had moved to Lake Siljan in Dalarna. They were not only the same age, they had been born on the same day – which was something of an irony under the circumstances. The old policeman was sitting with his coffee, waiting, expecting the call.
"It arrived."
"What is it this year?"
"I don't know what kind it is. I'll have to get someone to tell me what it is. It's white."
"No letter, I suppose."
"Just the flower. The frame is the same kind as last year. One of those do-it-yourself ones."
"Postmark?"
"Stockholm."
"Handwriting?"
"Same as always, all in capitals. Upright, neat lettering."
With that, the subject was exhausted, and not another word was exchanged for almost a minute. The retired policeman leaned back in his kitchen chair and drew on his pipe. He knew he was no longer expected to come up with a pithy commentary or any sharp question which would shed new light on the case. Those days had long passed, and the exchange between the two men seemed like a ritual attaching to a mystery which no-one else in the whole world had the least interest in unravelling.
The Latin name was Leptospermum (Myrtaceae) rubinette. It was a plant about four inches high with small heather-like foliage and a white flower with five petals about one inch across.
The plant was native to the Australian bush and uplands, where it was to be found among tussocks of grass. There it was called Desert Snow. Someone at the botanical gardens in Uppsala would later confirm that it was a plant seldom cultivated in Sweden. The botanist wrote in her report that it was related to the tea tree and that it was sometimes confused with its more common cousin Leptospermum scoparium, which grew in abundance in New Zealand. What distinguished them, she pointed out, was that rubinette had a small number of microscopic pink dots at the tips of the petals, giving the flower a faint pinkish tinge.
Rubinette was altogether an unpretentious flower. It had no known medicinal properties, and it could not induce hallucinatory experiences. It was neither edible, nor had a use in the manufacture of plant dyes. On the other hand, the aboriginal people of Australia regarded as sacred the region and the flora around Ayers rock.
The botanist said that she herself had never seen one before, but after consulting her colleagues she was to report that attempts had been made to introduce the plant at a nursery in Göteborg, and that it might, of course, be cultivated by amateur botanists. It was difficult to grow in Sweden because it thrived in a dry climate had to remain indoors half the year.
***
If I were to comment about the process of world entry for me, it would look something like this:
- I figure out that we're in the real world by word #2.
- I figure out that we're in a region of the world where birthdays are celebrated by word #18.
- I figure out that we're in an era following the invention of the telephone by word #37.
- Word #51 is our first direct hint that we're in Sweden; for someone unfamiliar with the place, like me, it serves to show that we're not in a place I'm familiar with.
- The certainty that we're in Sweden arrives for me with word #139, "Stockholm," and word 313, "Sweden."
Other blue-marked words confirm these deductions and start pointing me toward the genre of the book (thriller), as well as the nature of the narrator (detail-oriented observer and examiner of evidence).
This book would not function as it does without these words. Our own writing must reflect the world we've chosen - real world or created world - in details, continually, or it will start to feel vague and disconnected.
Call it worldbuilding or what you like; it's not solely a genre issue.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop: Making the Amnesiac Work for You
Welcome to Week 2 of the Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop! I'm not always going to be counting weeks like this, but it feels good to be past week one and know that my methodology is going to work for all of you. As I did last week, I'll start by picking out worldbuilding words in color, then discuss some of the issues, and then go back through the excerpt with my thoughts and chit-chat.
This week's excerpt comes from Megs, who describes her world as "a doozy to walk into." Let's give it a shot.
***
Surfacing was hard. Her mind spiraled slowly upward through the dim fog of unconsciousness. Her eyelids cracked open and a wave of nausea crawled over her. Her stomach heaved, but she held it in and sat up, battling her own weak limbs and empty body.
She waited for her vision to clear.
Pale rose chiffon curtains hung down around her on a wide, soft bed. The coverlet was silken smooth with fire red and gold threads weaving circles of light and dark—joy and pain, her mind whispered—beneath her hands. Light streamed faintly in through the layers of sheer fabric all around her. No way out. She caught a shaky breath and lifted her hand to the chiffon, letting her fingertips touch it, see where she could barely see from the heaviness weighing down her eyes and hurting like a spreading ache throughout her entire body.
Her stomach rebelled again and she leaned over the side of the bed and emptied the emptiness in her stomach onto the stone slabs of the floor, etched with their ruby and flashing gold.
"You're awake."
She did not look up.
"I had hoped you would wake soon." A man's smooth, rich voice rolled over her, dark and deep, a low murmur beneath it drawing her out.
A flash of fire in her gut, her mind recoiling, sharp resentment spiking. She did not know why. She did not answer.
The man chuckled low, rumbling in his throat. "I have been waiting for you," he said.
Her hand clutched the chiffon curtain, grinding fingers into sweaty palms, marking the spread, scoring the curtain. She heaved again, then shook with the effort of staying alive.
Emptiness threatened to swallow her up.
Nothing. Nameless. Cryless. She swallowed at the emptiness inside her, heaving from the emptiness, losing what was not there to lose.
The man did not speak.
She answered, "You are?" The word was soft, lilted out in a heavy voice, strange to her empty ears. The language... It was nothing like the language of this man with his low, rumbling, smooth, drawing—manipulative, her mind whispered—voice.
"Ah." The man drew forward.
She felt him nearing her, drew her body up with effort and pulled away, but he was there, so close, his eyes and hair dark, skin fair, smile curving the lips pleasantly, dark clothes, hand rising and cupping her chin to make her look at him finally.
"You have come out of a place of darkness, my child," he said soothingly. "You are home now."
She stared at him wide-eyed, breath rasping between them, staring into the dark and knowing eyes.
A place of darkness...
It is something else, her mind whispered. A place—
But there it stopped. Words stilted. Memory bent.
His hand was warm against her skin and she leaned back her head just slightly, eyelids shuttering. She yanked her chin away and looked up at him with eyes of resentment, an unnamed fury boiling beneath her skin.
***
In this excerpt, we've got many fewer worldbuilding cues than the last one, but it's important to keep in mind that the avid SF/F reader is going to be thirsty for the world and surrounding context. Therefore, you can expect that they will extrapolate from anything available. Though many readers will come to a story with expectations (or at least having seen the cover!), I'm going to approach this as though I have no previous idea of what kind of story this is.
The first paragraph gives me "surfacing" and "wave," which tells me this is a world where people know water; "dim fog," suggests some possible climates and natural environments, but so far we could be almost anywhere, even a science fictional alien world. That's why I marked "eyelids" and "stomach," because they're suggestive of human anatomy. Indeed, people who are working with aliens often go to extreme lengths to mention strange elements of physiology, so these unremarkable body parts actually are a pretty solid indicator that our protagonist is human.
Our first concrete world indicator is the chiffon curtains. These could actually be present in our own world, as could the bed, but a silken coverlet has a very fantasy feel to it, and the red and gold threads contribute to that effect (I don't see a lot of red and gold silk in the homes I visit!). The next useful piece of information is the stone slabs of the floor. My vision immediately expands outward and I have her in a castle. I could be wrong - after all, this could be a rich merchant house with a stone floor, but castle is the first prototypical location on my list that fits with a stone floor under a curtained bed with silken covers. Especially once the word "ruby" is used (though I don't think there are actual rubies in the etched floor - are there?).
I'm also getting something interesting in the language. There are obviously two groups involved here, and two languages, and our protagonist speaks both of them. That added to the rage and hatred she feels for the man in the room suggest there may be enmity between these two groups, though we don't yet know much about it. It also makes me pretty sure that the man isn't telling the truth when he says that she's home. It gives me considerable curiosity about what will happen next (well done, Megs!).
As I read this scene, I can't help remembering that scene in the film, The Bourne Identity, where Jason Bourne is sitting at a diner and listing all the things he knows he can do, but can't explain. It's the contrast between what the amnesiac remembers, and what he or she doesn't remember, that teaches the reader the most. Most importantly for the purposes of world entry and grounding the reader, an amnesiac can generally still judge his/her surroundings in spite of considerable confusion and lack of specific memories. It's those judgments that will teach readers the most and make the author's job easier.
Okay, my thoughts and comments are below. For those just joining the workshop, please be aware that these are not corrections. It's more of a think-aloud critique exercise than anything else. Because I'm working with an amnesiac narrator, I'm going to be talking a lot, because I want to make sure we're noticing as many opportunities as possible.
***
Surfacing was hard. Her mind spiraled slowly upward through the dim fog of unconsciousness. Her eyelids cracked open [we might feel more grounded here if you used the subject pronoun "she" and let her open her own eyes. Our lack of a sense of place here seems to stem from her unconscious state, suggesting that we're in her head, but using a body part instead of a personal pronoun keeps us feeling more distant and less grounded.] and a wave of nausea crawled over her. Her stomach heaved, but she held it in and sat up, battling her own weak limbs and empty body.
[I notice that even though we're restricted here by the half-conscious amnesiac narrator, there are about seven metaphors in these first two sentences. 1. surfacing. 2. mind spiraling. 3. unconsciousness as a dim fog. 4. eyelids cracking open, perhaps like eggs. 5. nausea as a wave/6.? nausea crawling. 7. battling against weak limbs/body. Metaphors offer a terrific opportunity to show the terms in which your narrator thinks. Her memory may be gone, but her categories of reality will not have changed. Already I can hazard a guess that she knows how to swim (possibly plot relevant) and that she's got a strong will (surely plot relevant). These metaphors can be even more powerful if you align them with her personality and background.] She waited for her vision to clear.
Pale rose chiffon curtains hung down around her on a wide, soft bed. [If she can recognize chiffon curtains, she's probably still capable of judging things as familiar or unfamiliar, agreeable or disagreeable. What does she think of the pale rose chiffon? Does it suggest wealth to her? Is that good or bad? Does it seem like something she ought to recognize but doesn't?] The coverlet was silken smooth with fire red and gold threads weaving circles of light and dark—joy and pain, her mind whispered [I like this. It makes me wonder whether there is some personal or cultural association between those colors and the emotions she identifies] —beneath her hands. Light streamed faintly in through the layers of sheer fabric all around her. No way out. [I'm surprised by this. Yes, the fabric is all around her, but it's not binding her and it's pretty filmy; light suggests there is an exit nearby. So I'm not sure where she's getting this impression. It could be an instinctive assessment of her situation, but if so, maybe you could put in a "but" to contrast it with the curtains/light description] She caught a shaky breath and lifted her hand to the chiffon, letting her fingertips touch it, see where she could barely see [her being unable to see seems surprising because she had waited for her vision to clear, and her previous impressions are for the most part visual. Maybe this is a resurgence of fatigue?] from the heaviness weighing down her eyes and hurting like a spreading ache [a simile provides another possible place to hint at her background through your choice of what to compare the pain to] throughout her entire body.
Her stomach rebelled again and she leaned over the side of the bed and emptied the emptiness in her stomach onto the stone slabs of the floor, etched with their [maybe an adjective of judgment here. Does she think they're pretty? overly extravagant?] ruby and flashing gold.
"You're awake."
She did not look up.
"I had hoped you would wake soon." A man's smooth, rich voice rolled over her, dark and deep, a low murmur beneath it drawing her out.
A flash of fire in her gut, her mind recoiling, sharp resentment spiking. [This is interesting, because she's got such an ambivalent reaction to this man. I'm curious particularly about the fact that he attracts her first, repels her second. This seems like it should be meaningful. I wonder if there's a way you can identify one of these reactions as the reaction of her confused self, and the other as that of her core self, somehow.] She did not know why. [This is also interesting, because this is the point at which she becomes self-aware, i.e. aware of her own ambivalence and lack of understanding] She did not answer.
The man chuckled low, rumbling in his throat. "I have been waiting for you," he said.
Her hand clutched the chiffon curtain,[this is another place where I think a "she" subject might improve our grounding. She's having an intense emotional reaction, but we're only given the external effects of it. In fact, we've already seen that she's capable of verbal internalization (joy and pain), but we haven't heard any internalization from her since then. Is this a continuation of her revulsion for the man? How does she feel about the idea that he has been waiting for her?] grinding fingers into sweaty palms, marking the spread[so is she also holding the spread?], scoring the curtain [how, with her fingernails?]. She heaved again, then shook with the effort of staying alive.[this surprised me, because the grounding so far hasn't shown her emerging from a deathlike state, so much as a sleeplike state. I think a better picture of her judgment of her own internal states, even if confused, could clear this up.]
Emptiness threatened to swallow her up.
Nothing. Nameless. Cryless. She swallowed at the emptiness inside her, heaving from the emptiness, losing what was not there to lose.
The man did not speak.
She answered, "You are?" The word was soft, lilted out in a heavy voice, strange to her empty ears. The language... It was nothing like the language of this man with his low, rumbling, smooth, drawing—manipulative, her mind whispered—voice.[This is one of the most interesting points in the 500 words for me (language geek!). Given what I know about the differences between native languages and learned languages, I'm not sure about her being surprised by the sound of the language she herself speaks. Maybe, surprised that she has unconsciously chosen not to speak his language (which would be the polite option)? Does she have some reaction to the language he's speaking when he starts to speak at first? It is very common for people who speak multiple languages to place different kinds of moods and values on each one; you could take advantage of this.]
"Ah." The man drew forward. [You've used "draw" to describe his voice pulling her; this reappearance of the same word gives me the gut impression that the pulling is happening in a different direction. Did you intend this?]
She felt him nearing her, drew her body up with effort and pulled away, but he was there, so close, his eyes and hair dark, skin fair,[are there races in your world? any emotional reaction to this combination?] smile curving the lips pleasantly, dark clothes,[perhaps a single detail or two to help us see him (and his world) more clearly by grounding a sense of fashion?] hand rising and cupping her chin to make her look at him finally.
"You have come out of a place of darkness, my child," he said soothingly. [what is his view of this place of darkness? Does it have some special significance (religious or other) that might be reflected in his wording of the dialogue?] "You are home now."
[as I said, I get the immediate impression that he's lying. Even if she's going to believe him, this moment of mental vulnerability might be a good place to have her feel uncertainty, if not actual disagreement.] She stared at him wide-eyed, breath rasping between them, staring into the dark and knowing eyes.
A place of darkness...
It is something else, her mind whispered. A place—[and an evaluation. Fear? Awe, for something religious? Maybe part of this is that she has a different sense of what darkness means, or that she thinks the darkness was possibly caused by him; these things can potentially be expressed in metaphor.]
But there it stopped. Words stilted. Memory bent.
His hand was warm against her skin and she leaned back her head just slightly, eyelids shuttering. She yanked her chin away and looked up at him with eyes of resentment, an unnamed fury boiling beneath her skin.[This is the same sequence we see earlier, of appeal followed by revulsion. I like the way you have the ordering match. I'd like to see some internalization cues to give me a clearer sense of her internal struggle.]
***
Thank you very much to Megs for her courage in sending in this excerpt! I hope you find my comments helpful.
I've spoken in the past on the blog about cultural metaphors for life and daily activities; those metaphors, and gut evaluations of the value certain types of situations - racial appearances, objects, materials, etc. are all potentially very valuable to you. When you are working with a self-aware character, they can form an under-layer of cultural identity; when, as here, you are working with a character who is amnesiac, they can provide the reader with valuable cues which nonetheless don't detract from the reader's conviction that the person truly does not remember who they are.
I welcome any questions, or constructive and supportive comments.
This week's excerpt comes from Megs, who describes her world as "a doozy to walk into." Let's give it a shot.
***
Surfacing was hard. Her mind spiraled slowly upward through the dim fog of unconsciousness. Her eyelids cracked open and a wave of nausea crawled over her. Her stomach heaved, but she held it in and sat up, battling her own weak limbs and empty body.
She waited for her vision to clear.
Pale rose chiffon curtains hung down around her on a wide, soft bed. The coverlet was silken smooth with fire red and gold threads weaving circles of light and dark—joy and pain, her mind whispered—beneath her hands. Light streamed faintly in through the layers of sheer fabric all around her. No way out. She caught a shaky breath and lifted her hand to the chiffon, letting her fingertips touch it, see where she could barely see from the heaviness weighing down her eyes and hurting like a spreading ache throughout her entire body.
Her stomach rebelled again and she leaned over the side of the bed and emptied the emptiness in her stomach onto the stone slabs of the floor, etched with their ruby and flashing gold.
"You're awake."
She did not look up.
"I had hoped you would wake soon." A man's smooth, rich voice rolled over her, dark and deep, a low murmur beneath it drawing her out.
A flash of fire in her gut, her mind recoiling, sharp resentment spiking. She did not know why. She did not answer.
The man chuckled low, rumbling in his throat. "I have been waiting for you," he said.
Her hand clutched the chiffon curtain, grinding fingers into sweaty palms, marking the spread, scoring the curtain. She heaved again, then shook with the effort of staying alive.
Emptiness threatened to swallow her up.
Nothing. Nameless. Cryless. She swallowed at the emptiness inside her, heaving from the emptiness, losing what was not there to lose.
The man did not speak.
She answered, "You are?" The word was soft, lilted out in a heavy voice, strange to her empty ears. The language... It was nothing like the language of this man with his low, rumbling, smooth, drawing—manipulative, her mind whispered—voice.
"Ah." The man drew forward.
She felt him nearing her, drew her body up with effort and pulled away, but he was there, so close, his eyes and hair dark, skin fair, smile curving the lips pleasantly, dark clothes, hand rising and cupping her chin to make her look at him finally.
"You have come out of a place of darkness, my child," he said soothingly. "You are home now."
She stared at him wide-eyed, breath rasping between them, staring into the dark and knowing eyes.
A place of darkness...
It is something else, her mind whispered. A place—
But there it stopped. Words stilted. Memory bent.
His hand was warm against her skin and she leaned back her head just slightly, eyelids shuttering. She yanked her chin away and looked up at him with eyes of resentment, an unnamed fury boiling beneath her skin.
***
In this excerpt, we've got many fewer worldbuilding cues than the last one, but it's important to keep in mind that the avid SF/F reader is going to be thirsty for the world and surrounding context. Therefore, you can expect that they will extrapolate from anything available. Though many readers will come to a story with expectations (or at least having seen the cover!), I'm going to approach this as though I have no previous idea of what kind of story this is.
The first paragraph gives me "surfacing" and "wave," which tells me this is a world where people know water; "dim fog," suggests some possible climates and natural environments, but so far we could be almost anywhere, even a science fictional alien world. That's why I marked "eyelids" and "stomach," because they're suggestive of human anatomy. Indeed, people who are working with aliens often go to extreme lengths to mention strange elements of physiology, so these unremarkable body parts actually are a pretty solid indicator that our protagonist is human.
Our first concrete world indicator is the chiffon curtains. These could actually be present in our own world, as could the bed, but a silken coverlet has a very fantasy feel to it, and the red and gold threads contribute to that effect (I don't see a lot of red and gold silk in the homes I visit!). The next useful piece of information is the stone slabs of the floor. My vision immediately expands outward and I have her in a castle. I could be wrong - after all, this could be a rich merchant house with a stone floor, but castle is the first prototypical location on my list that fits with a stone floor under a curtained bed with silken covers. Especially once the word "ruby" is used (though I don't think there are actual rubies in the etched floor - are there?).
I'm also getting something interesting in the language. There are obviously two groups involved here, and two languages, and our protagonist speaks both of them. That added to the rage and hatred she feels for the man in the room suggest there may be enmity between these two groups, though we don't yet know much about it. It also makes me pretty sure that the man isn't telling the truth when he says that she's home. It gives me considerable curiosity about what will happen next (well done, Megs!).
As I read this scene, I can't help remembering that scene in the film, The Bourne Identity, where Jason Bourne is sitting at a diner and listing all the things he knows he can do, but can't explain. It's the contrast between what the amnesiac remembers, and what he or she doesn't remember, that teaches the reader the most. Most importantly for the purposes of world entry and grounding the reader, an amnesiac can generally still judge his/her surroundings in spite of considerable confusion and lack of specific memories. It's those judgments that will teach readers the most and make the author's job easier.
Okay, my thoughts and comments are below. For those just joining the workshop, please be aware that these are not corrections. It's more of a think-aloud critique exercise than anything else. Because I'm working with an amnesiac narrator, I'm going to be talking a lot, because I want to make sure we're noticing as many opportunities as possible.
***
Surfacing was hard. Her mind spiraled slowly upward through the dim fog of unconsciousness. Her eyelids cracked open [we might feel more grounded here if you used the subject pronoun "she" and let her open her own eyes. Our lack of a sense of place here seems to stem from her unconscious state, suggesting that we're in her head, but using a body part instead of a personal pronoun keeps us feeling more distant and less grounded.] and a wave of nausea crawled over her. Her stomach heaved, but she held it in and sat up, battling her own weak limbs and empty body.
[I notice that even though we're restricted here by the half-conscious amnesiac narrator, there are about seven metaphors in these first two sentences. 1. surfacing. 2. mind spiraling. 3. unconsciousness as a dim fog. 4. eyelids cracking open, perhaps like eggs. 5. nausea as a wave/6.? nausea crawling. 7. battling against weak limbs/body. Metaphors offer a terrific opportunity to show the terms in which your narrator thinks. Her memory may be gone, but her categories of reality will not have changed. Already I can hazard a guess that she knows how to swim (possibly plot relevant) and that she's got a strong will (surely plot relevant). These metaphors can be even more powerful if you align them with her personality and background.] She waited for her vision to clear.
Pale rose chiffon curtains hung down around her on a wide, soft bed. [If she can recognize chiffon curtains, she's probably still capable of judging things as familiar or unfamiliar, agreeable or disagreeable. What does she think of the pale rose chiffon? Does it suggest wealth to her? Is that good or bad? Does it seem like something she ought to recognize but doesn't?] The coverlet was silken smooth with fire red and gold threads weaving circles of light and dark—joy and pain, her mind whispered [I like this. It makes me wonder whether there is some personal or cultural association between those colors and the emotions she identifies] —beneath her hands. Light streamed faintly in through the layers of sheer fabric all around her. No way out. [I'm surprised by this. Yes, the fabric is all around her, but it's not binding her and it's pretty filmy; light suggests there is an exit nearby. So I'm not sure where she's getting this impression. It could be an instinctive assessment of her situation, but if so, maybe you could put in a "but" to contrast it with the curtains/light description] She caught a shaky breath and lifted her hand to the chiffon, letting her fingertips touch it, see where she could barely see [her being unable to see seems surprising because she had waited for her vision to clear, and her previous impressions are for the most part visual. Maybe this is a resurgence of fatigue?] from the heaviness weighing down her eyes and hurting like a spreading ache [a simile provides another possible place to hint at her background through your choice of what to compare the pain to] throughout her entire body.
Her stomach rebelled again and she leaned over the side of the bed and emptied the emptiness in her stomach onto the stone slabs of the floor, etched with their [maybe an adjective of judgment here. Does she think they're pretty? overly extravagant?] ruby and flashing gold.
"You're awake."
She did not look up.
"I had hoped you would wake soon." A man's smooth, rich voice rolled over her, dark and deep, a low murmur beneath it drawing her out.
A flash of fire in her gut, her mind recoiling, sharp resentment spiking. [This is interesting, because she's got such an ambivalent reaction to this man. I'm curious particularly about the fact that he attracts her first, repels her second. This seems like it should be meaningful. I wonder if there's a way you can identify one of these reactions as the reaction of her confused self, and the other as that of her core self, somehow.] She did not know why. [This is also interesting, because this is the point at which she becomes self-aware, i.e. aware of her own ambivalence and lack of understanding] She did not answer.
The man chuckled low, rumbling in his throat. "I have been waiting for you," he said.
Her hand clutched the chiffon curtain,[this is another place where I think a "she" subject might improve our grounding. She's having an intense emotional reaction, but we're only given the external effects of it. In fact, we've already seen that she's capable of verbal internalization (joy and pain), but we haven't heard any internalization from her since then. Is this a continuation of her revulsion for the man? How does she feel about the idea that he has been waiting for her?] grinding fingers into sweaty palms, marking the spread[so is she also holding the spread?], scoring the curtain [how, with her fingernails?]. She heaved again, then shook with the effort of staying alive.[this surprised me, because the grounding so far hasn't shown her emerging from a deathlike state, so much as a sleeplike state. I think a better picture of her judgment of her own internal states, even if confused, could clear this up.]
Emptiness threatened to swallow her up.
Nothing. Nameless. Cryless. She swallowed at the emptiness inside her, heaving from the emptiness, losing what was not there to lose.
The man did not speak.
She answered, "You are?" The word was soft, lilted out in a heavy voice, strange to her empty ears. The language... It was nothing like the language of this man with his low, rumbling, smooth, drawing—manipulative, her mind whispered—voice.[This is one of the most interesting points in the 500 words for me (language geek!). Given what I know about the differences between native languages and learned languages, I'm not sure about her being surprised by the sound of the language she herself speaks. Maybe, surprised that she has unconsciously chosen not to speak his language (which would be the polite option)? Does she have some reaction to the language he's speaking when he starts to speak at first? It is very common for people who speak multiple languages to place different kinds of moods and values on each one; you could take advantage of this.]
"Ah." The man drew forward. [You've used "draw" to describe his voice pulling her; this reappearance of the same word gives me the gut impression that the pulling is happening in a different direction. Did you intend this?]
She felt him nearing her, drew her body up with effort and pulled away, but he was there, so close, his eyes and hair dark, skin fair,[are there races in your world? any emotional reaction to this combination?] smile curving the lips pleasantly, dark clothes,[perhaps a single detail or two to help us see him (and his world) more clearly by grounding a sense of fashion?] hand rising and cupping her chin to make her look at him finally.
"You have come out of a place of darkness, my child," he said soothingly. [what is his view of this place of darkness? Does it have some special significance (religious or other) that might be reflected in his wording of the dialogue?] "You are home now."
[as I said, I get the immediate impression that he's lying. Even if she's going to believe him, this moment of mental vulnerability might be a good place to have her feel uncertainty, if not actual disagreement.] She stared at him wide-eyed, breath rasping between them, staring into the dark and knowing eyes.
A place of darkness...
It is something else, her mind whispered. A place—[and an evaluation. Fear? Awe, for something religious? Maybe part of this is that she has a different sense of what darkness means, or that she thinks the darkness was possibly caused by him; these things can potentially be expressed in metaphor.]
But there it stopped. Words stilted. Memory bent.
His hand was warm against her skin and she leaned back her head just slightly, eyelids shuttering. She yanked her chin away and looked up at him with eyes of resentment, an unnamed fury boiling beneath her skin.[This is the same sequence we see earlier, of appeal followed by revulsion. I like the way you have the ordering match. I'd like to see some internalization cues to give me a clearer sense of her internal struggle.]
***
Thank you very much to Megs for her courage in sending in this excerpt! I hope you find my comments helpful.
I've spoken in the past on the blog about cultural metaphors for life and daily activities; those metaphors, and gut evaluations of the value certain types of situations - racial appearances, objects, materials, etc. are all potentially very valuable to you. When you are working with a self-aware character, they can form an under-layer of cultural identity; when, as here, you are working with a character who is amnesiac, they can provide the reader with valuable cues which nonetheless don't detract from the reader's conviction that the person truly does not remember who they are.
I welcome any questions, or constructive and supportive comments.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Vital Secondary Characters
A charming and unexpected thing happened to me last week. An acquaintance of mine who was reading "The Eminence's Match" told me that his favorite character in the piece was Harat. For those of you who have read the story, Harat is one of the secondary characters - the main character Xinta's exercise partner, who bunks with him in the school dormitory.
When I told my buddy Janice Hardy about this, she told me that she'd had notes from people who loved minor secondary characters in The Shifter - for those of you familiar with the book, one of them loved Kione the guard, and the other one really loved Soek the apprentice Healer.
In effect, you never know when someone might just pick one of your secondary characters as their favorite! Secondary characters can do so much to enhance your story that it's worth giving them some serious attention.
Maybe you've had the same experience I've had, when you read a book and the main character and his/her core group of friends seem to be the only people in the entire world, going about their business. This always disappoints me. I like to see a world that looks lived-in. There are going to be people in the mercantile street, or if there aren't, there should be a reason why. In a city, there are people working to keep the city going. People changing the lightbulbs. Hooligans and police, etc. etc. A world has a population which moves in patterns, patterns which are not necessarily aligned with those of your core group.
Keep in mind as you work that everyone who walks onstage in your story is there for a reason. It may be an institutional reason rather than a personal reason, but even the spear-bearer is there because he's got a job to do. You may not care about that spear-bearer's opinion on these people he's standing next to, but believe me, he's got one. The person who jumps out of the way of your swordsman, the person who gives useful information to your spy, the innkeeper who serves your questing party beer - each one is doing those things for reasons of their own. It's worth thinking a bit and knowing those reasons, because at very least it will help you to figure out their tone of voice and the expression on their face.
I encourage you to think about secondary characters from their own point of view; it's a valuable exercise even if you're never ever planning to give them their own narrative. As you can imagine, I do this a lot - and I actually have a secondary character whose opinions about one of the main protagonists are so important that I've decided to promote her to a point of view character.
Ask yourself what this person does when they're not on stage with the protagonist. What is his/her job? How did it bring him/her into this room? How does he/she feel about being there? Sure, there will be bit parts and people who don't need to stand out in the crowd, but the more interaction this person has with the main characters, the more important it is for you to know what he/she wants and how he/she judges what's going on. Readers can tell, instinctively, whether this secondary character of yours has a life outside the scene they're reading. It only takes a detail or two, or a slight shift in the wording of the dialogue, to give the impression of that life and bring extra dimensions to your story world. Besides, you never know when a secondary character will grow in importance and take on a key role in your story - or give you an opportunity to deepen their character and tighten the story at a later point.
Finally, ask whether and how your point of view character judges the people he/she encounters. I've spent quite a bit of time on the idea of a narrator as a guide; where your narrators put their attention is going to be a great way for readers to tell what's important in the story, and what isn't. If the narrator notices a single individual in the crowd, then that person automatically gains more importance. By having your narrator notice particular types of people and judge them in particular ways, you can create an effect that deepens your world, informs us about your character, and also plays into such issues as theme and plot.
Give your secondary characters some attention. Your readers will thank you for it.
When I told my buddy Janice Hardy about this, she told me that she'd had notes from people who loved minor secondary characters in The Shifter - for those of you familiar with the book, one of them loved Kione the guard, and the other one really loved Soek the apprentice Healer.
In effect, you never know when someone might just pick one of your secondary characters as their favorite! Secondary characters can do so much to enhance your story that it's worth giving them some serious attention.
Maybe you've had the same experience I've had, when you read a book and the main character and his/her core group of friends seem to be the only people in the entire world, going about their business. This always disappoints me. I like to see a world that looks lived-in. There are going to be people in the mercantile street, or if there aren't, there should be a reason why. In a city, there are people working to keep the city going. People changing the lightbulbs. Hooligans and police, etc. etc. A world has a population which moves in patterns, patterns which are not necessarily aligned with those of your core group.
Keep in mind as you work that everyone who walks onstage in your story is there for a reason. It may be an institutional reason rather than a personal reason, but even the spear-bearer is there because he's got a job to do. You may not care about that spear-bearer's opinion on these people he's standing next to, but believe me, he's got one. The person who jumps out of the way of your swordsman, the person who gives useful information to your spy, the innkeeper who serves your questing party beer - each one is doing those things for reasons of their own. It's worth thinking a bit and knowing those reasons, because at very least it will help you to figure out their tone of voice and the expression on their face.
I encourage you to think about secondary characters from their own point of view; it's a valuable exercise even if you're never ever planning to give them their own narrative. As you can imagine, I do this a lot - and I actually have a secondary character whose opinions about one of the main protagonists are so important that I've decided to promote her to a point of view character.
Ask yourself what this person does when they're not on stage with the protagonist. What is his/her job? How did it bring him/her into this room? How does he/she feel about being there? Sure, there will be bit parts and people who don't need to stand out in the crowd, but the more interaction this person has with the main characters, the more important it is for you to know what he/she wants and how he/she judges what's going on. Readers can tell, instinctively, whether this secondary character of yours has a life outside the scene they're reading. It only takes a detail or two, or a slight shift in the wording of the dialogue, to give the impression of that life and bring extra dimensions to your story world. Besides, you never know when a secondary character will grow in importance and take on a key role in your story - or give you an opportunity to deepen their character and tighten the story at a later point.
Finally, ask whether and how your point of view character judges the people he/she encounters. I've spent quite a bit of time on the idea of a narrator as a guide; where your narrators put their attention is going to be a great way for readers to tell what's important in the story, and what isn't. If the narrator notices a single individual in the crowd, then that person automatically gains more importance. By having your narrator notice particular types of people and judge them in particular ways, you can create an effect that deepens your world, informs us about your character, and also plays into such issues as theme and plot.
Give your secondary characters some attention. Your readers will thank you for it.
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