Someone asked for a post on world-building, so I proposed this topic sentence:
When you set a story on another planet or in another culture, there should be differences between that culture and ours, and those differences should be consistent and of some consequence.
As you see, it deserved to be rejected, because it isn’t about world-building as much as it is world-realization.
I think what they had in mind was more along the lines of If your world has two moons, how does that affect the deep sea fishing? or something like that.
So let me talk about my topic here and now.
An imagined world has to have some familiarity to it, or the reader has nothing to hold onto, I grant you that. Something familiar gives the reader a way to enter into sympathy with your characters. It gives the reader some feel for what’s safe and what’s dangerous, when which emotion is appropriate, when your characters are behaving well and when they’re behaving badly.
But, if the characters and action could be lifted from your book and plunked down in mid-town Manhattan in the early 21st Century, why bother imagining a different world?
That’s what I mean by cultural differences. That’s why Tolkein had hobbits live in snug rounded homes tucked inside hills and elves live in treehouses. That’s why Jasper Fforde has home DNA-sequencing kits (among many other differences) in his Thursday Next novels. There are differences between those worlds and ours, and those differences are not just cosmetic.
Your differences must have consequences. Terry Pratchett has dwarves moving to the big city, so he has restaurants and fast-food purveyors expanding their menus to cater to dwarvish tastes. In STARSHIP AND HAIKU, Somtow Sucharitkul has the Japanese people learn that they are direct descendents of whales and the consequences are enormous.
Possibly most important, the differences must remain consistent. By that I mean that, if your warrior and your poet end up sounding and acting exactly like Generic Hero Character instead of thinking and acting uniquely, that had better be a conscious decision and not just a lapse in concentration.
I thought that was worth writing about. I hope you do, too.
Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes
Are you trying to give your competition (me) pointers, now?
I think it’s worth reading; therefore, I deem it worth your writing it! I don’t think I ever need to worry about creating a generic hero character (well, not half so much as I ought to worry about creating an elf with my ears, or somthing), but this world-building business – let’s just say I have wormholes I could drive a truck through. If only my characters could navigate a spaceship through them… Eureka! I forgot to give any of them astronaut lessons. Dang it. I knew I was forgetting something…
You can create elves with your ears? Awesome! I usually have to use my fingers.
Driving trucks through wormholes…. Is that the story you’re working on? If not ….
~grabs the idea and runs~
Sort of an Ice Road Truckers Meets the Eagle Nebula… stay out of my wormholes, you!
I wouldn’t touch your wormhole with a ten-foot light saber.
Okay, here’s your idea back. ~hands it to Holly with grubby fingerprints all over it~
By the way, what’s a 10-foot light saber weigh? Is that anything like the variable-length switchblade laser? I have one of those.
And would you measure that beam on or beam off? Light has mass, right? So it must weigh more, beam on. Does a light saber generate light or is it an accumulator of particles?
:: gingerly turns the idea over to Pel Darzin for further processing :: You know, InterstellarPol is gonna be all over this, now. Better write fast.
INTERSTELLARPOL!! I LOVE IT!!!
A light saber is an excitation of particles/waves within a defined area. It doesn’t generate light, it IS light. That’s why it doesn’t weigh much. Because it’s, you know, LIGHT.
You’re welcome.
So, Ms. Allen, let me see if I understand this lesson: If I excite my particles within a defined area, I won’t weigh much? ‘scuse me… I’m going to go see if my, ahem, tutor can explain that one to me. Maybe I’ll challenge him to a duel… wouldn’t that just beat all heck out of SparkPeople?
THANK YOU.
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