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:

1. Is this character doing something that readers will recognize from the real world?
2. What elements of the activity will be familiar?
3. What elements of the activity will be unfamiliar?
   
4. What kind of people are present there, and what function do they serve?
5. 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.)?
6. 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.)?
7. Can you find two or three specific details to include which will reflect these differences?
8. Is there a comparable setting you can visit in the real world to get detail ideas?
   

It's something to think about.

Do more research to give the impression of less "research"

Recently I've read a couple of fiction works, whose names I won't mention, in which I could "feel the research." Perhaps you've run across something like this - a piece of prose with a historical or foreign setting in which you could do a tally of details and everything checked out correct, but somehow it felt effortful. Or though the setting was all present, the characters seemed to float on top of it rather than moving through it.

I could call this a problem of anachronism, but that usually implies something glaring that stands out and doesn't belong in its time period. This isn't something glaring. When I'm in my anthropological mood I'll call a piece like that "not culturally situated."

Very often, it's a problem of attitude. The author's research has given them the architecture, the physical details of rooms and everyday objects - but it hasn't had as big an influence on the way the characters think and speak. Small turns of phrase will stand out as wrong. Or it will be difficult for me to imagine how a person with the upbringing that this protagonist must have had (given the era/location) would reach a state of mind like the one the author wants us to accept. Straining against the status quo - a common phenomenon in a piece like this - is not the problem. It's the assumptions that underlie the WAY this person wants to challenge the status quo that make it successful, or unsuccessful.

Here are a few thoughts on how to avoid having a story that feels full of research, rather than seamlessly melting into the period intended.

1. Don't create an extensive checklist of "stuff." Have a key object or building here or there, and make sure to use of details that aren't obvious or easy - but don't overload the reader.

2. Move beyond Wikipedia. While it can be a wonderful and convenient source, Wikipedia will typically only give you one angle on your location or time period. Look for others, such as...

3. Look to literature or primary sources for inspiration. Literature written in the time period will give you a sense of the language used in your setting, and will also reflect the philosophies and attitudes of the time/location. Primary sources like personal accounts etc. can give you even more of this, if you can find them.

4. Watch your dialogue, judgments and internalization. Check expressions against the Oxford English Dictionary, if necessary, to know when they came into use. Check your characters' moods and the moods of your scenes, and how your characters define them. What words to they use internally to describe their own mental states? Do they reflect how people of that time and location would have described them? Or have any expressions crept in that are inconsistent with the culture or time period?

Even if you can only find one primary source or piece of literature to go on, it will make an enormous difference. In the Heian period in Japan people used to describe the shedding of tears as causing their sleeves to become wet, generally in a very gentle and pensive way. In another period, frantic weeping might have been attributed to hysteria. Nowadays we would describe such things entirely differently.

The setting you choose for your story is far more extensive than just a collection of objects, fashions, and architectural trends. It goes deep into the psyche and language of the people who populate it. When you capture that in your writing, the sense of reality you achieve will be far more powerful, and any departures from it will become far more striking.

It's something to think about.

Building materials

Since I accidentally posted my stub draft of this yesterday, I've decided to make it my official re-opening post!

One thing I was struck by when in France and the Alps (France, Italy, Switzerland) was that most buildings were not made of wood, but stone. Of course, if you look around when you're there, it's easy to see why. There are rocks. Lots of them, available everywhere. Reason number two, a rock wall makes very good insulation, and when it's cold and snowy, that's a really serious advantage. We stopped in a restaurant in the Italian city of Chatillon, and the lower floor had walls of rock that came up into low arches, while the upper floor had higher walls of rock topped with wooden beams and ceiling. Then on top of the roof, the tiles were made of - you guessed it - rock. Most of the roofs in town looked like snake backs because of the overlay pattern of diamond-shaped tiles.

This has consequences. Buildings made of rock stick around for a very, very long time. People become accustomed to the sense of permanence around them. It infuses itself into the culture and into people's self-awareness. My friend Dario says he feels like something's missing when he can't see the evidence of permance, of history, around him.

Of course, any people will build with the available materials to suit local conditions. If there's a lot of good mud available, you can make brick walls - but if there's no stable soil, then there's no point in trying to build a heavy wall on it. Or if there are constant earthquakes (or even occasional ones!) there are distinct hazards involved in building with brick.

When you're creating a society, think about what the environment offers for building. A place built with locally available materials will have a sense of rightness, and that sense of rightness will be evident in the attitudes of its people. A place built with imported materials will be somewhat different. If properly planned, it can really stand out. If done badly, it can be laughable, or a disaster. If done with materials imported by humans across space (for example) it can look entirely out of place - another way to "stand out."

The architecture of the place you're building has a lot more to say about your setting, and about its people, than you might realize. Think through it, because it will be worth the trouble.

I'll have more thoughts on this soon!

It's good to be back.

Where am I? - Setting versus Grounding

We all know that a good setting for a story is important. I love to build worlds, and I know many people who visit here do, too. Sometimes very extensive ones. Of course, that doesn't mean that mainstream writers don't have to work on their worldbuilding too - they're just building a version of the real world instead of an independent, alternate world.

When we talk about setting, we talk about all kinds of elements that a world has - climate, ecology, flora, fauna, human/sentient communities, demographics, economy, social structure, technology, etc, etc. Everything we think through in our worldbuilding process can be useful to the portrayal of a world in a vibrant way in a story.

Super. But setting on its own isn't enough to make a story take off - every story needs grounding.

This might best be explained with a metaphor.

As a writer, you want to take your reader on a journey. You want to grab them by the hand (or the hair, the shoulder, or the guts, depending on the kind of story) and pull them through the story with you. If you're like me and you want to create a really exciting hook, that means you want to grab them as quickly as possible and start pulling with as much force as you can. Grounding, then, is the difference between having them running alongside you and having them pulled to their deaths behind galloping horses. If you want the reader to come with you - especially at a very quick pace - you want to start by giving them a solid place to jump off from.

On a basic level, grounding is about who/when/where. Who am I (the narrator or protagonist)? Where am I (the physical location)? When am I (the chronological location)? Each of these things can be indicated or elaborated in different ways. The reader isn't looking for every detail of your worldbuilding here - only some basic orientation that can be provided by a personal pronoun (I, he, she) and a sense of voice (who), a description of light or of nearby objects (where/when).

You'll probably tell me at this point that not every story needs all this. What about stories where the narrator is disoriented, lost, disembodied, or otherwise compromised, and doesn't know where he is? What about the confused time traveler?

Well, you're right. The type of grounding required by a story depends on the story. If you're going to have a physical departure from a location, you need a sense (even a confused, internal guess) of what that location is. A pitch-dark place with a hard floor can be enough if properly conveyed. If you're going to have personal interactions, it's good to have a sense of who the narrator is.

Look at your story. Pay particular attention to the place where the conflict starts - the spot where the hook grabs and pulls in a direction. The nature and direction of that pull will tell you what information might be needed for grounding.

Let me give some examples from my recent experience.

I was reading a draft from one of my many writer friends recently, and felt confused. I thought the protagonist was standing in one place when she was standing in another. I looked back at the descriptions, and the sentence was clear: a different character was standing in the spot where I'd mentally put the protagonist. There was no ambiguity. But when I looked back over the previous paragraphs, they were all internalization - excellent grounding for the mental and moral position of the protagonist, but not of a physical position. Because the different character was located physically, I needed to ask my friend to give the protagonist a physical location as well.

When I was drafting my story, "At Cross Purposes," I discovered that first-round readers were confused at the start. Yes, I was trying for a very quick hook. I was also creating a story where two unexpected things happened one right after the other, and I didn't have enough information to have the two departures make sense as departures. I needed to go back and establish physical location (she's on a shuttle!) and ongoing activity (they're flying around servicing machines) in order for those departures to be more tolerable to the human brain (she discovers something that shocks her, and then it turns out not to be at all what she expected). If you think about it, a departure from expectations means little if you don't have any sense of what expectations are.

I'm currently working on a story with a narrator who is supposed to start as an enigma. Reading about him, you're supposed to wonder, "Who is this guy, precisely?" What you're not supposed to wonder is "What the heck is going on?" I was quite happy with my first sentence, which was, "Of course people write letters; I knew that from watching the monks." The grounding here is that we have a character (I) who watches monks, which implies he's at or near a place where monks live. The next hint as to setting was that the character expresses dislike of letters written in Chinese, because he doesn't care about court business - that at least lets us know we're dealing with Asian monks rather than European ones. Then someone writes the narrator a letter, and the letter is composed in a very particular style that is specific to an era of Japanese history. The problem was, the hints were too sparse and too indirect. I needed better location and time grounding if I wanted readers to accept the style in which the letter was written. So I added the name of the temple, Ninnaji. That gives readers a Japanese language hint, and then optional for those who know about temples and Japanese history, is the fact that Ninnaji is an existing temple in Kyoto which has been around since the Heian era. Then I added that my narrator had stolen the letter in Chinese from "the Emperor's messenger." While that's not specific to the Heian era, it at least is an indication that the time period isn't the present day, and I'm hoping it will get readers looking for further clues - in which case, the letter-writing style can be a clue rather than a mystery.

No matter what the setting, every story needs grounding, and the choice of grounding information is critical to the success of a story opening - so keep your eyes out for it.