Ghost of An Author

As much as an author tries to remove themself from a book, to give the characters their own identity, there are always ghostly traces of the original imagination in a book.

In some books it's obvious: a sense of style, a love of cats, an interest in Norse mythology.

In some books the traces are barely noticeable: a favorite color, a preferred perfume, the city where the author's heart was first broken.

For me I've noticed a trend to mention food. If you follow me on Twitter you know that regular food updates are the norm. Not because I'm dieting (it starts with the word DIE - I'm just not interested), but because a good portion of my day revolves around food.

One of my favorite authors write COOK BOOKS for goodness sake!

For me, food is intertwined with life. Everyone needs food. Everyone has memories tied to food. More than color or music, food speaks to us. Eating is the universal language, and everyone speaks it in their own way.

Is it any surprise that food sneaks into my books?

One of my characters cooks when she's angry. Another character is starving. In some books the food is part of the culture, how they eat is part of what makes the world unique. Food is always in the background. Always important.

What's it for you? What always sneaks into your books?

Population Size, Money, and What They Have to Do With Culture

Money can't buy happiness. Or class for that matter.

In fact, trade used to be a dirty word. So why is money something you need to worry about when you're building a fictional culture? And what does the population size have to do with anything?

When it comes to expansion and colonization of new worlds in a science fiction work money is everything. Money is what decides this planet here is getting colonized and this one isn't. Money decides whether this space station is fixed or scrapped.

Jack Campbell used this theme in his Lost Fleet series. Various planets and space stations had been abandoned, some with people still living there, because they were no longer cost efficient. The accountants bottom line became a hurdle the main characters had to overcome.

Money and Culture

1. Where does the money come from? For every society you create you need to know where there cash flow comes from. Do they have a tourist industry? Do they export something important? Are they dependent on another planet or culture for survival?

How does that affect your character? Can you make a plot point out of this? If not, no worries, it's good for you to know anyways.


2. Who controls the money? Usually the people in power are the ones who control, produce, and distribute the money at the basic level. So who is in charge of your civilization?


3. How many people have this money? This is where population size comes in, the more people you have the more money your ideal society should have. Change the equilibrium and you have a world ripe for chaos, poverty, and other financially based woes. Always a fun backdrop for your novel. :o)

4. If you don't have money what do you use to maintain trade? Not all cultures use money. Some are basic trade societies where one egg gets you a half-cup of milk. Others are like the city of Agora in The Midnight Charter where a piece of your soul might pay part of your rent. All the dark and chilling possibilities of what you could use instead of cash or credit make for a wonderful list of plot twists.

After all, the MC's annoying neighbor doesn't need her spleen *that*much, does she?

Architecture of an Alien Planet

When you step into someone's home what's the first thing you do? Scan for exits and security cameras... right, of course, I forgot the audience. What's the second thing you do?

You make a judgment call on the style. Are there bright lime green walls or warm earth tones? Does the room suggest that the owner is cheerful or in need of serious therapy?

The worlds and cultures you create should have the same affect on readers. Or, rather, the designs and architecture you describe should.

Designing Cultural Aesthetics

1. Consider the Species: Human races are all built the same, yet we have had over the millenniums a wide variety of furniture. Some people sit on the floor, some lay down to eat, some prefer standing for everything. Now consider the variations if the species in question isn't human.

I love the part of Orphanage where they are looking for straight lines to find the enemy base on the basis that human doors all use straight lines. Another character points out that these are aliens, they don't use straight lines. Never forget that: Different species use different designs.


2. Consider the Environment: Early human cultures created buildings out of the local materials and that tended to resemble local features. As long as the culture in question is fairly advanced you can go crazy with the shapes, but remember the limitations of what the builders have. What material is available? How can the material move? How are they manipulating (cutting, gluing, bending) the material?



3. Consider the Function: This is always a hard one for me because I think "chair = sit" - not always. While working on Twisted Metal I realized I really needed to underscore the different cultures the MC is visiting by giving her different furniture. I love the Felinium, the cat people, because like cats they love to lounge. They're furniture is wide and edge free. Perfect for sprawling across.

By comparison, furniture in a militaristic culture tends to be purely functional. Raw metal with unfinished edges, utilitarian designs, monochromatic color schemes are all hallmarks of a society to busy with other things to think about enjoyment and comfort.

When you play interior designer for these alternate realities consider what the characters need them for. The background is part of the story too, it needs to have a purpose, and it needs to reflects the needs of the characters.


4. Consider the Personality: Just like individual homes on Earth have different colors and decorations that reflect the personalities of the people inside the architecture and interiors of your creation need to reflect the general views of the people living there.

Think of Lothlorien in Lord of the Rings, houses in trees, right? Consider the fluted buildings in Nova War (I won't wait for you to go read but I suggest you grab a copy when you're done here. You'll need to order it from the UK), there are no doors, there are no roads. Why? Because the natives fly. They don't need something as mundane as stairs.



Funky chair found here.

Creating Tradtions in Fictional Cultures

Today's guest post is written by the talented Danyelle Leafty. She is the author of the Fairy Tale Survival Guide and the creator of beautifully layered fantasy and fairy tale novels. She was kind enough to step in today and talk about how she creates cultures and traditions for her alternate realities.


An important aspect of world building is fashioning traditions based on the world’s different cultures. The world building part will likely be much more in depth than the parts that will actually make it into the story, but it will add another layer to the story.

So, where to begin?

As I pondered this question, two thoughts hit me at the same time. For the tradition to work, it needs to have two things: belief patterns and relevancy.


Belief patterns:
What makes up the belief patterns of a society? Some immediate things that come to mind are: religion, geography, superstition, and coping strategies.

~ What one believes, especially one’s personal moral code, will affect how one thinks and perceives the world.

~ Where one lives will also affect one’s perceptions. For example, holidays, especially if travel is slow and arduous, are going to vary wildly between rural and urban places. People in the city are unlikely to have harvesting/planting festivals, while those in the country are not likely to observe holidays that honor Important People that have no connection to their lives or land.

~ What do people consider portentous, luck and unlucky? And why? It’s helpful to research common superstitions in our world to get a feel of what a superstition is grounded on and why they persist long enough to become traditions.

~ To incorporate coping strategies into traditions, one must look at the history of the people. For example, in the US during the cold war, schools routinely practiced bomb safety in the form of an alarm sounding and the teachers directing the students to go under their desks. Logic, in the form of facts, doesn’t enter here. Being under a desk is hardly going to do anything if an atomic bomb lands on or near the school. But logic, in the form of We Must Act in Order to Cope, is what’s at play here. Some of these traditions are short-lived, while others enjoy long and healthy lives.


Relevancy:
What things matter to the people in the story? What things affect them on a daily basis? Geography and socioeconomics will also play a role here. Also, customs and traditions are going to vary on a smaller, familial scale.

A person’s perceptions and worldview will affect how a tradition is relevant to them personally, and how they observe it.

An important thing to remember is that customs are also not static things, never-changing statues created to honor something until wind, time, and war wear them away to pale memories of themselves.

Customs reflect the mindset of the people that practice them, and people are forever changing, shifting from hue to hue as time passes. What meant something specifically to someone a hundred years ago, is likely to have a different meaning—if one at all—to someone now.

Worldbuilding: What’s the Point?

We interrupt your scheduled reading on worldbuilding for science fiction with a very important question: Why worldbuild at all? What’s the point?

Take a moment to really think about this. Write it down, even, if you like. What do we worldbuild?

Quite possibly, there will be as many answers to this question as there are readers of this post. Some of these might include things like this:

To make our story seem more realistic
To draw readers into the story
To build the inner logic of the story
Because it’s fun
Because if we’re writing in an alternate world, it’s necessary
Because if we’re writing in the ‘real’ world, it’s still necessary
Relatedly, so we know what the world we’re writing about looks like
To encourage suspension of disbelief – the more ‘real’ a world feels, the more likely we are to believe in it.

These are all fantastic answers. But guess what? None of them, not one, gets to the core of why we really worldbuild.

Why do we worldbuild?

To create conflict.

Sure, sometimes it’s necessary for us to do things like map out the character’s house so we don’t have the sun shining through the room’s only window to wake them up in the morning, and then later mention how they like to curl up in the afternoon sun in the room’s only window and read. It’s useful to have an idea of how the politics of a culture functions, and to know the reasons behind their value system, and the type of clothes that they’re going to be likely to wear, and, and, and…

But all that aside, there’s a reason for the worldbuilding that makes it into the book: conflict.

Conflict is the blood of fiction; without conflict, we have no story. Characters want things, situations conspire to withhold things, cars break down, demons attack, things happen. Conflict.

Some of you may be scratching your heads in puzzlement. How is worldbuilding supposed to create conflict? How can I tell? Easy. Ask this question: Does this make my character’s life harder? If the answer is a bwa-HA!-inducing yes, then that’s a piece of worldbuilding that should be allowed into your book. This is the easy test, and the only test, because there’s nothing inherently conflict-filled about any piece of worldbuilding, unless it relates to your character/s.

Some examples.

A pond full of alligators. Although you might think there is, in and of itself there’s nothing conflicty about this piece of worldbuilding. It’s just a pond, even if it does happen to be full of large mouths with sharp teeth. So, does this make my character’s life harder? If there’s an object they need that somehow gets in the pond, if they end up having to cross the pond, if they use the pond as a place to ditch a dead body with the cops will later have to try to retrieve or hunt down, the answer is a resounding YES!!

If, however, the character merely walks past the pond and contemplates the nature of teeth in mouths, the answer is more ‘Hmm, not really.’

A pen. In contrast to the alligators, a pen seems tame indeed. Hardly likely to be a source of conflict. So why include it? What if it’s not a pen at all, but a shot of poison? What if it’s a magical object that will come in handy later on?

Not writing fantasy or mystery? Still not a problem.

The pen has been moved on the desk, which is a signal someone’s been there that shouldn’t have been. The pen belonged to a great-uncle and is a constant reminder to your character of everything he’s trying to be – and failing at. The pen was a specially-engraved birthday present and your character is in big trouble because they lost it. And on and on.

This illustrates nicely the fact that anything at all can be a source of conflict, if it’s important to the story. And really, that should be the measure by which we judge everything we include in our story – is it important? Is this information really and truly necessary, or can we live without it? Is what we’re saying significant, and does it matter?

Take a look at your work and see – are you worldbuilding because you think it’s fun (which can lead to infodumps), or is what you’re building something that will enhance the story in all the ways that matter?

Worldbuild. Enjoy it. Just make sure you build your worlds with conflict.


Amy Laurens is a writer of mostly YA fantasy. She lives with husband and dog, one of whom bashes the laptop’s keyboard to get attention. Her story With This Ring is currently available at the Tower of Light Fantasy magazine, and you can find out more about her at http://ink-fever.blogspot.com

Creating an Alien Language

Nearly seven thousand languages are spoken on planet Earth. The number more than triples if you consider all the variations for regional dialect, age-dependent slang, and the growing variations of language spawned on the web.

Now multiply that by the number of planets in any given science fiction novel.

That's a lot of languages for you to create to make your manuscript authentic. The good news is you probably don't need to go that far.

J.R.R Tolkein did create languages for his works (two complete that I can name), but he was also a professional linguist and could build languages off of other languages he already knew.

You are going to write (probably) in English. A majority of your text should be in the native language of the reader, let's say 96%. The other four percent will be italicized words, new terms, relevant slang, and common phrases the reader will learn by the end of the book.

Italicized Words: The rule of thumb is that any word in a foreign language gets italics so the reader doesn't dive for their dictionary. Names of characters are exempt from this rule. So are words that are commonly used. For example, the word crepe is French, we're very familiar with crepes in America (or at least in my house) and so I wouldn't italicize the word in the phrase, "We ate crepes for breakfast." Crepes is a proper noun.

And any grammarian with a better rule is free to chime in their opinion in the comments box.
New Terms: Raise your hand if you know what a plasma cannon is. Jedi, anyone? How about a Klingon? New terms are phrases that are commonly used in your world and are part of the everyday language. They don't usually need italics because they are common. They should be unique to your universe if possible.


Relevant Slang: I have an entire rant about why a character can't use the word (checks to see if MeeMaw Brooks is following this blog - no? Good.) "hell" if there is no religious background in the book. Most of western swear words are considered coarse or objectionable because of religious taboos.

When you choose emphatic words, curse words, or slang for your world make sure you use words that are relevant.

Examples:
"shards, shells, by the egg, by the First Egg" - Used by Anne McCaffery in the Dragon riders of Pern series. Dragons are the center of the culture and it shows in the language

"flame, burn that, red hot" - Used by Christopher Stasheff in the novel We Open on Venus where the locals live in fear of fire.

There are others. Most series introduce their own slang. It helps a book stand out in your memory.


Common Phrases: Like the new terms, Comm Phrases are something that's regularly heard. Words of power to open a magic box, a command phrase in an "old" language, a formalized greeting that's part of the culture all fall under this heading. You should probably italicize these words and if your fans don't use this as a greeting at the convention ten years from now the phrase wasn't catchy enough.


So... How do you make your language relevant?

1. Design Ahead - Have a clear idea in your head what the language will sound like. If there are accents, mention them. They add flavor to the manuscript.

2. Use Sparingly - I have read books in languages I wasn't born speaking. I can do it, but I imagine it's hard to query a novel written in High Bucklandish With Attached Buck to English Dictionary. Do yourself a favor, and try to write most of the novel in a language your readers know.

3. Get Creative - Don't just change the accents and throw in italicized gibberish, change the sentence structure. Maybe your alien talks like Yoda, or speaks only in parables. Or maybe that's how your humans sound. Only you know so have fun with it.

4. Torture Your Character - Do you lack tension? Throw in a language barrier. It's a fun way to abuse your main character and sow dischord and confusion..

Suggestions? I'd love to hear them! Share your thoughts in the comments box.

Rage Against the Monoculture

Monoculture (n.): A single, homogeneous culture without diversity or dissension.


Last week I posted a Defense of the Monoculture Future. Now, let's look at it from the other side. The chances of having a single planet with only one culture present is low. Exceptionally low. So low that writers who resort to this better have a really good excuse or else.

The monoculture description works in a couple of places for science fiction writers:

1 - The main character is an outsider who only sees one city and assumes the whole planet is that way. This is viable, especially if your MC is kind of dumb. Or doesn't watch anything like TV. Or is very young.

2- There was colonizing force that monitored the immigration of new colonists. There would be a strong Founder's Effect. This is possible, and even likely if the colony is young.

3- The planet's culture is ruled to an extreme edge where everyone receives the same news, entertainment, education, and fashion. This could be possible if there is a dictatorship or other very controlling government.


In all other cases, the culture is going to vary.

Culture varies by language, architecture, tradition, population size, and source of livelihood. If you have a port city with people speaking multiple languages, architecture and tradtion influenced by multiple nations, and an income based on trade the culture won't be the same as the town up the mountainside with two hundred people whose livelihood relies on the breeding of small purple pom-poms.

It's easy for a writer to cop out and say that the whole planet has one culture. And I might believe it, if the species in question is a hive mind. But there's such wild variance in human nature that I don't think you could sum up an entire world in just a few phrases.


But, I'm not here to rant about bad writing. I want to prevent bad writing. This week I'll be doing a post each day on some different aspect of culture, how to manipulate it to get the world you want, and what aspects to bring out in your writing.

The planned posts will cover: Language, Architecture and Design, Traditions, Population Sizes, and Money.

If you have a suggestion for the list or some aspect you think needs to be covered please let me know. :o)


Photos are copyrighted to and courtesy of their respective owners: pagoda, triplets, Kremlin.