Using the (Social) Tools You Have

I wonder if you've ever had this experience: you're reading a story set in a far-away world, either far future or far past or far distant in species or dimension, and despite this incredible distance and differences in every detail of their environment, protagonists in this environment seem to be motivated by modern world values. As you can probably guess, the most common version of this that I've run into is the female protagonist who protests the fact that she has no control over her life - easily imagining all the amazing things she could do if only every member of her family and her society and every institution around her weren't there to prevent it.

Call it a pet peeve, but this drives me crazy.

Let me be clear. I am not trying to say that people always accept their lot in life. Any time you have an imbalance of freedoms between one group and another, the group with fewer freedoms will most likely notice the difference, and certain members of that group will feel the need to protest or do something about it. Whether that protestation is quiet, or gets quashed, or turns into revolution depends on social and historical context.

What you'll find, though, is that that same social and historical context - the worldbuilding that so many of you work so hard to achieve - will have deep implications for how the downtrodden think about objecting to their status. Often enough, they won't object at all.

The powerless often have power in certain circumscribed areas. Noble women in the year 1000 AD in Japan led very closeted lives and were entirely protected and directed by their men - but. They learned how to protect themselves by finding powerful protectors among those men. This meant they knew which men to approach, which to allow close, and how to handle them. They knew how to use family alliances on both maternal and paternal sides in order to achieve security or advancement. They also knew how to use their skills with writing to gain prestige, or how to use their skills in memorization of classic poems to get attention. Classic poems may not seem like a big tool for social advancement, but you might be surprised how important they were in the Heian era Imperial court.

People learn to use the social skills they have. They see what works and what doesn't, and they pursue those areas where they can win small victories. Or big ones, as the case may be. Jacqueline Carey's Phèdre (Kushiel's Dart) uses all of her personal skills as a courtesan and a spy to get things done that you might not expect.

In fact, if you think about it, accidentally giving a culturally situated character modern expectations and sensibilities will not help but hurt them. Suddenly they'll appear to believe that they have absolutely no useful skills, and no avenues to escape the oppression they endure - which is not in fact the case. At the same time they'll be able to imagine possibilities that are both implausible and impractical for a person in their situation. So the chances that they'll be able to accomplish anything go down, and since their vision is too unrestrained, they'll be more frustrated than ever. In those circumstances the author may feel tempted to use modern means to give them opportunities for action, but that will only draw the story further away from the world and cultural/social situation that the author intended.

So I encourage you to think through how your characters use the social tools they have to get things accomplished. See if you can find a situated way for your character to work toward his or her own ends. If they can use gossip or information control, use that. If they can stealthily organize masses of people, use that. A character can take the social walls that limit them, turn them into shields and use them for protection.

If you let your characters use the social tools they have, they'll fit far better into their own worlds, and you'd be surprised how much they can accomplish.

Phedre no Delaunay: a Ridiculously Close Look

I've been talking a lot here about how people tend to speak and act in accordance with their histories, their culture and their language background. As a person who has always been somewhat frustrated to hear intangible things described on a general level, I thought it was about time for me to take this discussion to the level of words. So what I'm going to do is take a sample of a character's point of view and tell you why I think it works the way it does. In ridiculously close detail.

One of the nice things about real human discourse, i.e. the way people talk under normal circumstances, is that people can't stop representing themselves as they speak. They may try to influence that representation one way or another, but you can take almost any sample of recorded speech and pull meanings out of it.

My immediate thought: shouldn't the representation of a character's point of view be as rich, and as full of hints about background, world, and attitude? Well, it sure can be. I think this is what they call narrative voice.

Let's take a look at the character of Phedre no Delaunay, from Jacqueline Carey's novel Kushiel's Dart. I'll just start where her voice starts and give you a few analytical musings.

"Lest anyone should suppose that I am a cuckoo's child, got on the wrong side of a blanket by lusty peasant stock and sold into indenture in a shortfallen season, I may say that I am House-born and reared in the Night Court proper, for all the good it did me."

This is awesome in terms of multi-layering. It's effectively a statement saying "This is who I am." Not much, right? But it's so much more.

First word: "Lest". This already places us in a particular type of environment, with historical/classic overtones. Add to this the use of "got" for "conceived," and the appearance of the words "peasant," and "shortfallen season." These are uses of dialect to place the protagonist in a historical setting, specifically one where there there are peasants working the land. That's pretty precise already, for never having said anything explicitly about the historical time period. These dialectal words also place the protagonist as a member of the culture in this time period, as opposed to someone observing it from the outside. Maybe even implies that she's a bit earthy, to be talking about the circumstances of her conception with such gusto. (Earthy doesn't begin to describe it, of course.)

Next: "cuckoo's child." This phrase places us pretty solidly on earth, because though there might be birds roughly translatable as cuckoos elsewhere, the metaphor drawn from the way the cuckoo places its egg in another bird's nest is uniquely earthly, and also historical. (As is the associated "cuckold.")

Next: "House-born." The idea of a great House is one that many people are familiar with, and it has appeared in many SF/F contexts, but it does reliably suggest nobility of some kind (an unusual kind, in this case), a keen sense of pride in breeding in the protagonist, and the importance of lineage in the culture surrounding her. Since the association with nobility is so strong, Carey does well to follow this with:

"and reared in the Night Court proper." This phrase immediately answers the question of what kind of nobility we're looking at - her choice to use the word "the" suggests that the Night Court is both unique and well-known to our protagonist, while the word "Night" rouses curiosity. What could the Night Court be? How can I find out? (Keep reading, of course.) Establishing curiosity is one of the most important things an author can do in the first paragraph of a book.

Okay, so far so good. Let's look at some of the larger constructions in the sentence.

"Lest anyone should suppose..." For this one I'm less concerned with "lest" and much more with "suppose." To use a phrasing like this implies that whoever this protagonist is, there is a distinct possibility that someone actually might suppose that she's "a cuckoo's child." Otherwise, she wouldn't even mention it. Funny how the denial of a thing admits that it is a possibility.

Next: "sold into indenture" If this phrase were less specific, we might be inclined to think that something bad happened to Phedre but that we're looking at a metaphor for her unfortunate status. But "sold into indenture" is so specific that I think we can reasonably assume from this alone that she actually has been sold into indenture. Another big source of curiosity, at least for me. I shake my head and say, "She got sold into indenture? How?" And I keep turning pages.

Finally (but not exhaustively!): "for all the good it did me." Love this. It says "I have good breeding and noble upbringing but despite this I'm in big trouble." And what is more compelling than an interesting (not to mention attractive), well-grounded protagonist in trouble?

So in one single sentence Carey has given us:
1. historical setting
2. culture of protagonist
3. attitude of protagonist toward: nobility, breeding, sex, servitude
4. current employment of protagonist
5. sense of urgency (being in trouble)
6. curiosity, curiosity, curiosity

It's no wonder I was hooked.