Find your tribe part 2: Writing groups

February is secret weapons month here at The Prosers. At first I was going to write about weapons development for fiction because I'd revealed all of my secret weapons, hadn't I? But then I realized that no one had written about writing groups on the blog before, including me. So I'm going to raise the hem again and show you the last little bit.

Why groups?

If you want to develop as a writer it's not enough to just write until your fingers bleed. You must strive to do better with each story. But Nina, you say, how do I know what I need to work on? Well this is where other people come in. Preferably other people who also read a lot in your genre. And while your family and friends may be a source of great joy they most likely won't be able to give you the sort of hard feedback you need. A good group will have writers at around the same level of proficiency with slight variance. That way everyone can benefit from each other and really know what the others are going through craft and career wise.

Groups can also form around a similar agenda. Right now I'm in two writing groups; one that meets twice a week to chat and write and another that formed around the idea that all of us have novels that we want to workshop. Since one of my goals in writing and in life is to win the Writers of the Future competition and this will hopefully be my final year of eligibility, I'm looking to start a third group with people trying to accomplish the same goal. A group can console you when you're down, celebrate your victories with you as well as spur you on to greater achievements.

All writing groups were not created equal

Not all writing groups will work for all people. If you need the critique you get to be mostly encouraging and you end up in a group that is all about the straight talk with zero pussyfooting, you'll end up miserable and vice versa. If your group consists of literary types and you're all about the purple unicorns? Back away slowly. You love urban fantasy and your group is filled with people who vehemently dislike the first person POV. Not your implementation of it, just the very concept of someone writing in a first person point of view? That is probably not the group for you. The same goes the other way of course. A gorup of YA and urban fantasy writers is probably not the place for you if you consider the very idea of first person to be unprofessional.

All of this is basically to say that if you've tried being in a group before and found the experience frustrating, it may just be a factor of you being in the wrong group. So try, try again.

How can I get one?

So right now, I'm in two writing groups both of them a direct result of having taken Mary Robinette Kowal's class Writing on the Fast Track. I was in the class my friend Andy has dubbed "the human trials" which is to say the second time Mary ran the class. The first class had formed a writing group and kindly took us under their wings. The second happened after Mary thought to bring all her alumni to one Facebook group. 

You can find writing groups on social media, bars, coffeeshops, colleges, libraries. Pretty much anywhere that writers congregate. Or you can form one of your own! Anything can happen. Go into the light.

8 Character Archetypes of Chuck

With MaryAnn's departure from the blog, we have a bit of a hole on Tuesdays, and I'm fixing that. This is Sheena, in case you were wondering. I've moved to Tuesday!

Recently I read this article, and it CHANGED MY way of writing forever. So helpful for story structure, and world building. Read it, and then come back, or read this and then read that. Or just go read books, your call.

EIGHT CHARACTER ARCHETYPES OF CHUCK.

1. Protagonist: Chuck Bartowski. He is the Hero, the every man, and adorably played by Zachary Levi.

I actually thought I understood this one, but after thinking about the article, and analyzing my own writing, I've learned a lot about heroes. The Hero, doesn't have to be the view point character, (like in Sherlock Holmes) but the Protagonist is the one whose shoulders sits the story, the one who grows the most, and the one who is directly opposite the Antagonist.

The Protagonist needs to have a goal. In Harry Potter, Harry's goal is to defeat the guy who killed his parents. When choosing your Protagonist, its usually the one who battles the big bad at the end. In the end, it's Harry and Voldemort. But Chuck is a reluctant hero. He doesn't have large goals or ambitions, which is a character flaw, not a story flaw, but they had to balance this flaw by giving him small manageble goals.
Speaking of Which...

2. Antagonist: On the show, every episode is called Chuck verses the (insert Antagonist). Every episode has a beginning, middle, and end, because in every one Chuck battles something. A terrorist is going to attack at Chuck's sister's wedding. Chucks goal-- to stop terrorist from attacking at Ellie's wedding. Beginning. Middle. End.

What's cool about this, is that it gives Chuck the ability to grow. Once he's defeated a villain, he learns from it, and he can fight bigger bad guys, and worse circumstances.  What weakens this choice, is that the bad guys can be sort of one dimensional and weak, because you don't have a whole story to learn about them, so it makes the victory at the end of the series be less about satisfaction and justice. Generally speaking, in Chuck it was about cool fight scenes, and personal victories. Still good, but definitely something they had to fight against.

When choosing an Antagonist, choose someone who is directly opposite of the Hero's goals, the person who is standing in the way of their goal. If Harry's goal is to defeat the guy who killed his parents, then understandably, Voldemort may take issue with that. But villains need to have goals too. Goals that are completely opposite of the Hero's goal. So Voldemort's goal, is to destroy the boy who defeated him.

3.Sidekick: Morgan Grimes.


This is a Character whose goals are completely in line with the heroes. There main goal in life is the same as the Hero, or completely in line with the Hero's goals. Ron Weasly's goals were to make his family proud, and as his family were against Voldemort, then Ron's goals matched Harry's goals.

Sidekicks are awesome. They give the hero likability, a history, a buddy to talk to while on adventures, someone to discuss plot type stuff with, and someone to save. Sidekicks were a big aha moment for me. I love a good internal monologue, but a sidekick can say all those other things the character is thinking, so it can be dialogue.

Sidekicks rock!

What's awesome about Morgan, is that he grew alongside Chuck. They start out pretty equal. Same job, same history, but as Chuck grows, Morgan didn't keep up.  This similarity/ contrast shows how far Chuck has come, but eventually, Morgan found ambition, direction, a pretty girl, and even the intersect, in my favorite episode of the show ever.

4.Skeptic : John Casey.

Look how skeptical he is!

Skeptics are the opposite of a sidekick. While sidekicks are like, "Yeah, let's go do it. Everything you say is awesome!", Skeptics are like..."Everything you say is stupid, and stay in the car." Skeptics are important, because sometimes the hero is stupid, and you the writer need to protect them from their own shortcomings. Skeptics give you a voice for your most critical reviewers. If you worry that a character might come off whiny or weak, have the Skeptic say, "You're whiny or weak," and that skeptical reader will be like, "Oh, it's a character trait, not that the writer doesn't know that this character is whiny and weak." See useful in the dictionary.  Skeptics and Sidekicks have a cool dynamic. That's why Morgan and Casey work so well together. They are opposite on the character archetype wheel, but, and this is important, they have the same goals as the Hero. They just think maybe they could do it better. 

So there's conflict, but they have to learn to get along, which leads to loads of fun.

5. Guardian: Sarah Walker

The Guardian is the Gandolf of the group. Their goal is different, because their goal is simply to protect the Hero. They can believe in the Hero's goal, but their motivation springs from wanting to keep the Hero safe. They are the moral standard, and decide what is right or wrong, and also who you can trust. They are the touchstones for the story.

Because of this, Guardians often leave or die, because at some point the Hero needs to be strong enough to protect themselves. 

But Sarah can't die, because Sarah is also the love interest. Love interests are always one of these archetypes. Sometimes they're the Skeptic, and the witty banter shows that the Hero can keep up. Sometimes they are the Sidekick, whose goals are completely entwined, or Emotion, or Reason, or sometimes even the Antagonist whose goal is completely contrary to the Hero. 

But the love interest gives the character another 1/2 which makes them equal to the hero of the story. 

Antagonists are already equal on the character wheel, so if you're writing a love story where the love ends, make the two characters each other's Antagonists, so the balance remains.

6. Contagonist: Bryce Larkin.

Contagonists are tricky. I'm not completely sure I understand this correctly, but contagonists are the heroes of their own story. They have their own goals, that aren't opposite the Hero, but maybe lay perpendicular to the Hero, and alter the Hero's story. Draco Malfoy's goals were to make his parent's proud (same as Ron's) but because his parents were aligned with the Antagonist, Draco and Harry ran cross purposes.  Aragorn was in the middle of his own journey when he met the Frodo and altered Frodo's journey, but his story continues, even separate from the Hero.

Bryce Larkin altered Chuck's life by giving him the intersect, but his goal wasn't to alter Chuck's life, it was to do his job and hide the intersect. The alteration to Chuck was just after effects of Bryce's goals and choices. Contagonists can be good guys or bad guys, but while their character affects the entire scope of the story, it doesn't effect the story structure itself. A contagonist can be defeated or made useful in the first half of the story and it go on. But their story, or secondary plot, won't be complete until their goals are met or until the character dies.

The Contagonist is opposite the Guardian, because they are making their decisions without regard to the Hero. Because they're opposite the Contagonist and the Guardian have an interesting and equal relationship. But as it's farther away from the hero than sidekick and skeptic, the conflict is less. Gandalf and Aragon are friends, Draco and Dumbledore don't hate each other, etc.

7. Reason: Devon "Awesome" Woodcombe

and 8. Emotion: Ellie Bartowski

I'm clumping these together, because while opposite, these two archetypes have a similar purpose. When the Hero needs to solve a problem based on logic, they visit Reason. When the Hero needs to solve a problem emotionally, they visit Emotion. Both are important, and both are equal. They are perfectly in balance. But because they are steps away from the Hero, they are lesser characters, and the conflict between them is less. Because of this, you can pair them. I've seen them as The Hero's parents, or in this circumstance, a married couple. But they also can be very separate, and never even meet.

That's one of the things I've learned though. I always see a character as how it relates to the Hero, but as equals, some of the the best relationship dynamics can be from secondary or tertiary characters. When I went through my WIP, I paired up the equal characters and found some really cool dynamics between them, and uncovered a secret that fixed a plot hole. So I hope this is useful to you.

Now the article goes on to say that not every story has all of these characters, or sometimes they are combined. The emotion character is also the Guardian, or the Skeptic also the Reason, or the Antagonist, or so forth.

This has made me want to analyze every book I've ever read, especially the ones that have really stuck with me. It's amazing how many of them fit this archetype, and the balance that comes when they do. 

Try it on your WIP.

~Sheena

Creating Languages

I’m a big podcast listener. One of my favorites, PRI’s TheWorld, is an international news program. One of the subjects they focus on from time to time is the state of languages around the world. Last week, they featured a story about languages created by fantasy authors.

Here's the whole story, if you're interested, and here is a link to the transcript. But you don't need to listen to it to follow the rest of my post.

Their main focus was Tolkien, of course. But they also presented interviews with Ursula LeGuin and China Miéville.

Here is my favorite quote from the interview, where the reporter is talking to China Miéville about a language he created for his novel Embassytown.

It’s a language that mimics language of the garden of Eden, where the word is the thing. In other words, there’s no difference between an apple, and the word for an apple.The Ariekei can’t lie.

“If they want to use figurative speech at all they have to construct a situation which they can then refer to,” says Miéville.“If you wanted say ‘oh I feel like an angry lion today’ you would have to get a lion and make it angry. Otherwise you couldn’t say it because it didn’t exist.”

Now THAT would make for some interesting arguments!

Though I’m fascinated and awed by the idea of creating my own languages, I can’t say the idea holds much appeal to me. It sounds to me like way too much work. I mean, I haven’t even grasped the nuances of pacing and character yet! I've so far failed at even coming up with good curse words or sayings unique to my fantasy worlds.

I’ve actually been thinking a lot lately about stages of writing. When I was a very beginning writer, the idea of research made me nervous. Research, to me, seemed like a hindrance to the process and the flow of the writing I was doing, something to get in the way with the task I love.

The fact that I was in graduate school at the time may have had something to do with that particular view on research.

But since then, I’ve come to think of research differently. It stopped being a hindrance and turned into a joy, a learning opportunity. I stopped regarding it as something I had to do to impress editors, and instead became something I wanted to do in order to delve deeper into these worlds boiling in the back of my mind. Now I have a long list of things I can’t wait to look up and learn about.

It gives me hope. Sometimes I chide myself for not doing everything perfectly the first time. But as I keep arguing, writing is a process, a skill. Perfection doesn’t come right away. It's a cumulative effort: the more I know, the more I want to learn.

So I’ll keep a hold of those links, just in case.

What worldbuilding or other intricate writing skill do you hope to someday achieve?

Details, Details

I hope I’m not stepping on MaryAnn’s toes, here. I was so inspired by her post about world building, I thought I’d share a little of what I’ve learned about filling in the nitty gritty details of the worlds we create. Who knows, maybe I’ll do a few running posts about this.

So, today:

World View and Word Choice

I've found that for characters to be real to me, they need to have a past, even if it's only intimated and not spelled out. Characters need to have been shaped by the world they lived in – the geography, the politics, the people, the struggles they faced (or didn’t). This, to me, is one of the components of the all important ‘Voice’ we hear so much about these days. It’s not just the attitude (snarky or otherwise) the author writes in, it’s how the characters see the world, and therefore react to it.

Ideally, this core understanding of the character's world view should be woven into the storyline. And one way I’ve found to do it is simply by the word choices you make when writing.

Examples

Okay, I may be a) narcissistic (I hope not), b) foolhardy (probably), or c) too exhausted to dig up stuff from published books (bingo), but I decided to try to use a few examples from my current WIP (may it be finished soon) to illustrate my point. Now, I’m not saying I’ve written this masterfully, or even correctly, but I hope you get the gist of what I’m trying to say about word choice helping to build a picture of a character's world view.

Here goes…

For some background on my WIP, MOTHER OF PEARL, see the query here (it’s also a wip, and I’m gratefully accepting any and all advice on it).

I’m in a little bit of a challenging situation – maybe even in over my head -  with this story. You see, each chapter is split into two parts, the first from Pearl’s point of view (third person, tight), and the second from Dyln’s (first person). To create two distinct voices telling one story, I've had to keep in mind each of their perspectives and the personal experiences that would have shaped their lives.

So…

Dyln is from a coastal country. When I write him, I try to have him view things through the lens of his upbringing, and keep the way he speaks and thinks grounded in the idioms he would likely be familiar with. So, when he’s trying to tell Pearl about the irrelevance of his position in the world, instead of saying ‘I’m common as dirt,’ it seems more appropriate for him to say,

 ‘I’m common as sand.’

Likewise, when he’s just beginning to realize that he likes Pearl (and he’s still in pretty deep denial about it), an inner monologue starts with a reference to what he was familiar with:
 

Thoughts of Pearl washed up at the edges of sleep and in the midst of boredom.  

I'd hoped the imagery of waves pushing onto the shore would remind the reader of his background, and maybe even why he was in the process of deceiving Pearl so thoroughly.

Pearl, on the other hand, has spent her life hidden away in a deep desert. When she, along with her mother and Dyln, are kidnapped from her home, she’s sure they’ve got the wrong girl – there’s no way she could ever be the heiress to an underwater kingdom. The men place her in a wooden crate  for transport, where she has time to think about the possibililty of escape and saving those she loves. Ultimately, she realizes that for now, the only thing she can do is try to pretend, no matter how absurd, to be this princess.

The bar grated back, the door swung open. Torchlight streamed in, blinding Pearl to anything outside. “Come out.” It was the rough voice of the scarred man. What courage she had gathered melted away. Pearl shrank back. She’d wanted her freedom from walls so long, and now all she could do was huddle in the tiny space and wish the door would close again.

“Come out,” the man said again. He would fish her out like a mouse from an empty barrel. Princesses, or pretended princesses, should not be fished out quaking in fear. If she was going to do something to save her mother and Dyln, she needed to do it now.

Unlike waves on the shore, a mouse in an empty barrel would be something Pearl would have likely encountered, even with her sheltered life. It's entirely in keeping with her world view. And, in fact, barrels of stored food were mentioned in the second chapter, so there’s already an image of this possibility embedded in the reader's mind.

My thinking (and hope) is that by adding these small details and turns of phrase, the voices of the characters and their world will come across as richer and more authentic than they otherwise would have.

Hope this tip helps.

~Susan

Creating Believable Societies

My oldest has been obsessed with Avatar the Last Airbender cartoon lately, and I’ve been sick this week, so not only have I allowed my kids to watch a little more TV than normal, I’ve been watching it with them.  I was very happy that they wanted to watch something that I love so much.

I’ve blogged about the series before, but I think that there are so many great lessons from this series that I have a few more blog posts written in my head that I might share soon as well.  But this time I watched the series, I paid close attention to the world-building.

The world-building is excellent in this series.  It matches the tone and spirit of the story being told, which is far more important than being realistic.  There is a lot thought and details that went into to creating the world, but for this post, I want to look at the societies that were created and why they worked.

I’ve blogged before about world-building basics, but this time, I want to focus on how to make those made up societies feel real using examples from Avatar the Last Airbender.

1.  Think about how your speculative element would affect the day to day life in your societies.

There has to be a reason why your story cannot be told in our world.  It could be a complex magic system or a different history or religion, but there has to be something otherwise why not just place the story in our world, sure make the world building a lot easier.  J

No matter what the elements are in the story that necessitates an alternate world, how those elements affects the society must be thought out carefully.  The society will feel real if it has logically adapted to those speculative elements.

For example:  in Avatar The Last Airbender, there are four kingdoms each based on the element (water, earth, fire, and air) that individuals in each race can bend (manipulate).  I found it interesting how the bending of the different elements affected the society of each nation.

The location of each nation is related to their bending element.  The Water Nation had tribes at the North and South poles, surrounded by water and ice.  The Wind Nomads had temples on mountains and cliffs.  The Fire Nation settled on a string of islands created by volcanoes, and the Earth Nation lived pretty much everywhere else.

I also love how the bending plays into the day to day life of the societies.  How the walls surrounding the great cities in The Earth Kingdom don’t have any gates, earth benders bend the earth in the walls to let people in and out, and the Northern Water Tribe does the same thing with walls of ice.  The mail delivery system in the Earth Kingdom city of Omashu uses a system of tubes and shoots that requires earth bending to get packages up, and the Fire Lords throne is protected by a wall of flames.  These little details of using bending in the daily lives of the people in different nations is what makes the world feel real.

It is important to think about the magic in the world or the technology or religion or whatever elements you add to the world you’re creating and decide how the people would use them to adapt, and how those elements would affect the daily lives of those live in that world.

There is no right or wrong, only what is logical.  There are a million different ways the creators of Avatar could’ve gone, for example:  the water tribe could’ve settled on islands or a rain forest or on floating cities on lakes or oceans, but the settling at the poles makes perfect sense too.  All you need to do is choose a logical direction and add those little details, and the society will feel real even if it is far from realistic.

2.  Don’t make any race either all good or all bad. 

This is extremely important.  Nothing feels more false to me than one society being brilliant, moral, and perfect in every way while another is brutish, selfish, and the epitome of evil.  There is going to be good and bad in all societies just like there is good and bad in all people.  Avatar did a great job showing this balance.

The Fire Nation commits genocide on the Air Nomads before the story begins.  They believe they are superior to all the other nations and are trying to conquer the world.  This seems pretty evil, but the Fire Nation itself is not shown as evil only misled by the Fire Lord.

There are many instances where Aang and his friends save innocent Fire Nation citizens (once from Jet trying to flood a Fire Nation controlled village and another in the Painted Lady episode).  The previous Avatar was Fire Nation and he fought against the Fire Lord to protect the four nations and keep balance, and Aang comments on having Fire Nation friends before he was encased in ice for a hundred years.      ***SPOILERS  ***     Uncle Iroh is shown to be a wise, noble character who wants to stop the Fire Nation, and Prince Zuko eventually joins Aang’s side.

The show makes it very clear that the entire Fire Nation isn’t pure evil.

Also, the other kingdoms aren’t perfect either.  The Northern Water Tribe refuses to train Katara because she is a girl.  The Airbender monks threaten to remove Aang from his beloved guardian because they believe the guardian is too soft on Aang, and the corruption and conspiracies in the Earth Kingdom city Ba Sing Se reviles any of the evils of the Fire Nation.

The point is that the creators of Avatar show that all of the nations, just like all people, are flawed.  And this is important in making the world believable.

3.  Be aware of your own culture biases.

Just one more caution when creating a new society.  Be aware of your own culture biases.  We all have them.  Try to treat all cultures even fictional ones with respect.  One of the greatest things about writing is being able to see things from another’s perspective, and if you keep an open mind while world-building you might not just create a more interesting, complex world, you just might become a more tolerant and accepting person in the process.

~MaryAnn

P. S.  I also found this great post about world-building. Check it out.

Living in Twilight

DH and I spent this past weekend in Forks.
Unfortunately, it was 80 and sunny so we missed all the vampires lurking about as we hiked through the woods. We drove past the high school and didn't see any remotely pale and sparkly people (okay, I lie, there were plenty of pale people, just not quite that pale). We even made it out to La Push and got our picture taken at the treaty line between the vampires and the werewolves (yes, there is actually a road sign).

I'll admit, I'm not a huge Twilight fan. And we didn't come as pilgrims to this land of dark romance. We came on a scouting expedition.* We might have snickered a time or two at the tour buses making their rounds to various 'real and true' Twilight destinations. And once we definitely guffawed as a battered truck with a pit bull in the back passed us on the road. Over the tail gate was painted 'Twilight Sucks'.

But for this sleepy town with a population of <4000, Stephenie Meyers has accomplished something no one else ever could have; she brought this area to life. Even more, she brought her story to 'real and true' life. Almost every other store is named 'Twilight Something-or-Another'. Even the grocery story has its own Twilight section cordoned off (I almost chose the Bella Burger and the local burger joint). I don't think I can think of another book that's done to a town what Twilight has done to Forks.

And it's funny (even if I'm not a huge fan), how much of the books I remembered as we drove and hiked around. I listened to the birds, and twisted my ankles on the rocks and thought fleetingly of Bella and Edward in the forest. I smelled the salt of the ocean and felt the pounding of the waves and maybe just a little remembered that one scene where Bella almost got herself killed - again. And I was going to use this as a segue to worldbuilding, but I'm kind of losing my train of thought, and MaryAnn did such and excellent job (strange how the Proser's brains have been working the same direction so often these days, isn't it?), and I'll admit, I'm really, really tired.

photo by Bryan Bell

So, let me just say, creating the setting of a realistic world can be tough. If you can get out and physically experience a place similar to what you're writing, you will find little bits of inspiration that will come in no other way. Like the gnarled root I tripped over that looked like a goblin's face erupting from the ground (yes, it was creepy even in the daylight). Or the secluded beach we hiked to and the persistent warning that buzzed in the back of my head, because if we didn't get back to the trailhead in time we'd be trapped against the cliffs with the incoming tide. Oh, yeah, and don't forget to read the historical markers - did you know that the hot springs around Sol Duc were caused by two fighting dragons? They tore each others hides and the skin fell down as lichens over the forest, and when neither could prevail they sank into the earth to weep bitter, hot tears. Or so says the Native American legend - what an awesome story idea!

If you can't get out and experience a setting in person, though, Google is your best friend. Even Stephenie Meyer didn't really visit Forks when she wrote Twilight. Here's from her website:

For my setting, I knew I needed someplace ridiculously rainy. I turned to Google, as I do for all my research needs, and looked for the place with the most rainfall in the U.S. This turned out to be the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I pulled up maps of the area and studied them, looking for something small, out of the way, surrounded by forest... And there, right where I wanted it to be, was a tiny town called "Forks." It couldn't have been more perfect if I had named it myself. I did a Google image search on the area, and if the name hadn't sold me, the gorgeous photographs would have done the trick. (Images like these of the Hoh Rainforest (a short drive from Forks). Also see forks-web.com ). In researching Forks, I discovered the La Push Reservation, home to the Quileute Tribe. The Quileute story is fascinating, and a few fictional members of the tribe quickly became intrinsic to my story.

Your other best friend might well be Netflix. I love the huge selection of National Geographic specials they have. And watching Ken Burns's National Parks series opened my eyes to so many beautiful landscapes - and not static ones, but ones that changed through the seasons and through time, and because of the people who visited there.

Take home point, then,  before I collapse into bed, dream and be wild with your worldbuilding. Be open to using all your senses and use all the tools available to make your setting amazing.

~Susan

*Every year my dh leads an intrepid group of a dozen+ boy scouts into the wild (last year it was to a rattlesnake infested desert). This year he thought he'd scout out the Olympic Peninsula. After hiking by the beautiful Sol Duc Falls and the Hoh Rainforest, I think he's finally settled on a 30 mile hike down the coastal beaches where he'll only have to keep the boys safe from riptides, high tides, rockfalls and raccoons. Sigh. I love my dh.

World-Building Basics

Sometimes I feel like I’m an anomaly among Fantasy readers and writers.  Most readers and writers of fantasy I know love exploring new ideas and new worlds, but for me, I just like a good story.  I’m drawn to fantasy because there are no constraints and no boundaries in where a story can go.  I like that freedom and flexibility, but the world itself, I’m just not that interested in it except for how it affects the characters and the story.

I know I’m in the minority among fantasy readers.  Every time there is a discussion on world building on writing forums, I realize how much more everyone seems to be into it than I am.  It makes me nervous because I know how these things translate.  The more you understand the world of your characters, the history, religions, and cultures, the more subtle details leak in that add a richness and depth to the world.  

But sometimes writers can go too far and spend all their time exploring the what ifs of world-building and never actually get around to writing the story, or writers can let the quest for perfect, realistic world-building limit them from possibilities.   For example:  there was on discussion on a writer’s forum a while back where some people insisted that a truly matriarchal society could never have evolved because nowhere in any human society existing or no longer existing had there ever been a true matriarchal society, that evolutionary-wise a matriarchal society could only form if there was some imbalance, like in magic, that favored women. 

I have no idea if they are right or not, I don’t know enough about anthropology and history to argue effectively, but I don’t think it matters in building a fantasy world.  If a story calls for a matriarchal society, I see no problem with creating one.  It is called speculative fiction for a reason.  It’s okay to speculate.
 

Different stories call for different levels of realism in world-building.  There is the very realistic feel in the world of Robin Hobb’s The Farseer Trilogy, and a much more fantastical feel in Diana Wynn Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle.  Both worlds perfectly fit the stories being told. 

It is important for the world to be well-thought out, have an internal consistency and logic, and service the story being told.  Here are some suggestions I have in creating a world that feels real even if it is far from realistic.

 1.   Research.   Okay, you do need to do some research.  Human beings have always been very clever, and somehow they figured out how to survive without cell phones, refrigerators, cars, matches, and computers.  If you have a preindustrial world, you need to research how people lived back then.  Pick a society and learn all you can about how they managed to survive.  Use that society as a base, but don’t be locked into it.  I know this research is hard.  Especially when you need specific details to make your world feel real.  Sometimes you just have to learn as much as you can and then fill in the blanks. 

It is tempting to world-build off of other fantasy novels.  For example, Sam cooked rabbit stew while they were traveling to Mordor, so why not just have the characters make stew too, right?  Maybe not.  There is this awesome book by Diana Wynne Jones that every fantasy writer should read called The Tough Guide to Fantasyland.  If you’re a regular reader of second world fantasy novels, you’ll get some good laughs from it, but it is also very useful in seeing what not to do.  World-building off of the fantasy genre can give your world a generic fantasy feel and just perpetuate possible mistakes made by previous fantasy writers (hey, no one is perfect), which won’t make your world feel real.  If you want to know what your characters should eat on a trip, do some real world research, don’t just do what Tolkien did. 

           2. The story is king.  Okay, this isn’t always true.  Sometimes the milieu is the story, but I usually am not a fan of those.  In my opinion, the story should be the main focus and creating a realistic world should not interfere with the story you are trying to tell. 

If you’ve read a significant amount of epic fantasy, you know that gunpowder, cannons, and firearms are rarely seen even though most of the worlds are based on a pseudo-medieval world, and gunpowder did exist in medieval times (see here, here, and here).   There are lots of good theories for gun control in fantasy land, but I think that when you create a world you can decide when certain things were invented (within reason, you’ll probably need a really good explanation for computers to be invented before guns).  In other words, you can do whatever you want as long as you do so purposely and deliberately and to service the story, not ignorantly.  You do not have to recreate a medieval society (or whatever society you chose to base your word on).  So do the research, then decide which aspects work for your world and your story.  At least that is how I see it.


  3.  Make your characters behave logically in the world you created.  You can have a matriarchal society, a thirty year winter, wild magic that randomly changes the composition of inanimate objects, or dinosaurs roaming the country side, anything you want, but you have to think carefully about how these fantastical elements will affect the day to day lives of the people living there, and how they would adapt to them.  Similarly, your characters need to reflect their environment.  Think about how their culture affects who they are.

I think this is the most important aspect of world-building.  Nothing pulls me out of a story like characters not behaving logically in their environment.  A lot of times this is subjective.  As a parent, I had a hard time with the parents just letting the Capital take their children to fight to the death in Hunger Games.  I love the story, but that was a part of the world-building that I found hard to swallow.  Of course I don’t really know what it is like to live in poverty and be beaten down like the people in the districts, but I love my children so much.  I just can’t see myself ever letting either one of them go to a certain death without me fighting to save them.  I don’t understand why none of the parents ever fought back or why no district ever started a riot.  I’ve been to a few PTA meeting; I know how vicious parents will fight for their children’s futures.  :)

 4.     Rules and internal consistency.  Every world has to have rules.  If magic can do anything, then magic would be used to solve all problems and there would be no problems.  I’m a big fan of keeping a tight lid on what magic can do.  If you let magic be too powerful, you will have a lot of smart fans poking holes in your plot.  People do this a lot with Harry Potter (especially with not using time turners and polyjuice).  Not me though, I’m a true Harry Potter believer.  Still, I think it is a good idea to keep a tight rein on magic systems.

Once you have your rules in place, you got to keep them.  Internal consistency is key to believability.  Fantasy readers are pretty much ready to accept any fantastical element you can imagine, but if you break your own rules, you’ve lost them.  Being consistent with the rules of your world is far more important than being realistic.  So make up some good rules and never break them…unless you’ve engineered in a loop hole.

 5.     Details.  The more details you manage to work into the narrative, the more real your world will feel.  This is hard to do.  I struggle immensely with this especially since I don’t want to slow down the story for world-building exposition.  But the sign of a true master is the ability to work in these details without the reader even noticing.  I’m still working on it.  If I ever figure out how to do this successfully, I’ll let you know.  :)

Well, that is my take on world-building.  I’m far from an expert.  It definitely is an area I’ve struggled with, so I’ll leave you with some links to people who are far wiser than me.

B9anders

Janice Hardy

Holly Lisle

Happy world-building,

~MaryAnn