Illnesses, Ailments, and Medicine: A "Dive into Worldbuilding!" hangout summary with VIDEO

It always feels a bit odd to me to come into a hangout with a smile saying "Let's talk about Illness!" but that's what we did last week.

Illnesses and ailments often get oversimplified in worldbuilding - a sort of "massive plague or nothing at all" situation. It's not as though no character has ever been portrayed as having a cold/flu (Glenn Cook has done it), but that minor ailments and physical inconveniences tend to be treated as unnecessary and distracting. Meanwhile, in real life, people get sick and have to deal with it.

In fiction, must illnesses and ailments always be plot-related? It's certainly possible to treat them in an unnecessary and distracting way - but it's also possible to do this well. We all agreed that the events that occur in books should have consequences, and illnesses should be no different.

I talked a bit about the situation in my novel, For Love, For Power. The noble caste is severely inbred, so every family has at least one person with something slightly wrong (heart condition, hyperthyroidism, mental illness, etc.). Furthermore, they are all deathly susceptible to viruses that for other castes would be more like the flu. In this book, all of these things are part of the larger picture of the caste's decline, and so including them was very important.

Often in genre we have quests and big tasks that must be performed, which would be hampered by illnesses and ailments.

We don't often see dental problems, vision or auditory problems in fictional worlds.

Pat pointed out that treating yourself for an illness is pretty rare. It's important to ask, "Where are the doctors/healers/midwives?" Kameron Hurley's Beldame Apocrypha was mentioned as a great example of a book with hedge witches. Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake also features a healer. Janice Hardy's series The Healing Wars features an entire economy based on magical healing and the taking and giving of pain.

I pointed out that First Aid kits were an invention of the great Clara Barton, and so it's worth thinking about what kinds of things people might carry with them for healing purposes. Ointment? Are there any first aid-related movements in this world that would make kits available?

There's also a lot of history in which people are treated for illnesses and the treatments kill them. People used powdered mummies to ward off plague - but some of those had died of plague, which only spread the plague further. You still see weird treatments today, many being propagated via the internet.

People believed in miasmas and humors and didn't understand the functions of organs. How much knowledge about the human body and germ theory is present in your world?

Reggie mentioned her own work in which she has village healers who help when home remedies don't work. They sometimes use magic, but sometimes use herbs and potions, etc. I liked the idea of a multi-pronged solution to health problems.

Pat mentioned that she's working with the idea of a disease that causes a disconnect between a person's recognition of faces and their feelings about a person. She said this would lead to a delusion that everyone had been replaced by impostors, and cause a paranoia plague.

Take a look at your world and its health care resources. Are those resources scarce? Which ones are? Who gets good care and why? Is it all about money? Can you trust people in the hospital to take care of you, or will you get turned away for social reasons?

People might want to restrict medical care for the "wrong sort" of people, but contagious disease makes that a ridiculous proposition for public health.

Pat brought up that if you get medical care, you might be incurring obligation or an ongoing relationship with the person who provides that treatment. You might have to pay off bills after death, or be obliged to serve someone for life.

What is the situation for mental illnesses in your world? Is care available? Are the illnesses well understood? Are there limitations on care? Is there a stigma associated with mental illness?

What about drugs? Are there controlled substances? What does drug addiction look like? The substances used will depend on the time period, as will the kinds of medicines used for the treatment of illness. Opium and laudanum were used at a certain point. In Tintin we see chloroform and quinine used constantly. The Romans used poppy seeds, and the native American Indians used willow bark. There is also a wide world of poisons out there. People didn't learn how to tell reliably whether someone had been poisoned until the 1920's. There are also medicines that people have used to treat people which will actually be more harmful than helpful (such as mercury).

It can be exciting to see people figure things out about what makes an effective medical treatment. Medical experimentation can be cool, or it can be scary, or both.

We didn't even get a chance to get into all the details of cultural practices surrounding health and health beliefs before we ran out of time!

Today's hangout topic is going to be Economics of Resources and Magic. We'll be on Google+ at 11am Pacific today. I hope you can attend!

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Research - Applying it to Fictional Worlds: A "Dive into Worldbuilding!" hangout summary with VIDEO

Last week we talked about Research - and found that it wasn't nearly as dry a topic as many thought coming in!

We started off talking about optimal research methods. There are substitutes for finding a person who is an expert on your topic, having a conversation and asking questions - but none are nearly as good, especially if you are dealing with cultural details. If you're going to be using Wikipedia, it's a great first source but you need to find contrasting sources, given that it can be inaccurate and/or tampered with.

If you are going to be dealing with a culture from an outsider's viewpoint, you might have an easier time. Most research sources turn out to be outsider viewpoints. Finding insider viewpoints is much harder. This is why conversations with real people can be great. However, if you're looking for something historical, it's good to go back to literature of the time to look for details. Putting yourself inside the viewpoint of a character who is unlike you can be hard. Research helps, but there is also an imaginative leap involved. Sometimes this leap is easier than others. If your narrator is the same as your character, there can be more challenges involved.

Primary sources (journals, recordings, etc.) are great resources for research. So are documentaries, books, and non fiction books.

Reggie mentioned that physiology impacts point of view. Research on Earth animals can help with this kind of detail.

Personal experience in a subculture or field of study (like Jay Werkheiser's expertise in Chemistry, or mine in anthropology and linguistics) is a great resource.

How much research should you really do? We hypothesized a fictional world with two moons, but had various viewpoints on how much research should be done on how two moons would affect worldly details like climate, tides, etc. If there will be no mention of any phenomena linked to the two moons, it makes sense not to go into great research detail. However, different story markets like to see different levels of research accountability (Analog, for example, would definitely want you to know about the planetary consequences of double moons).

Science fiction can seem to be a genre requiring more research than fantasy, but that's mostly an illusion. J.K. Rowling did an enormous amount of research when she was putting together the Harry Potter books, on everything from etymology to witchcraft, etc.

Accuracy in small details can be a great treat for experts among your readership. Easter Eggs!

It is easy, however, to get lost in the process of research to the detriment of the story. Keeping a strict criterion of relevance is very important to stay focused on your story. Research topics can grow out of a story, but stories can also grow out of research topics as well.

Worldbuilding, and the research involved in it, is different for novels and short stories, but not as different as one might imagine. I referenced my post about story worldbuilding being like walking through a house looking out windows, while novel worldbuilding involved leaving the house and knowing about what was outside.

As an example of intensive research by an author, I talked about Stina Leicht, who did years of research on Northern Ireland and the Troubles before (and while) writing her series The Fey and the Fallen. She even took lessons in Irish Gaelic. That research shows - in spades - in her work.

When you are working in a secondary world, it's often helpful to write short pieces set in various areas of the world as a form of research. Research on general scientific topics can be very helpful, but applying it to the secondary world requires a different mindset. I find myself doing mini-ethnographies of different social groups in my Varin world, for example.

Some more great sources include:

Libraries
News
Nonfiction books (read widely!)
Children's nonfiction, for topics we have very little experience with
Public lectures and interviews (radio or podcast)

Thanks to everyone who attended! Here's the video:

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Elysium by Jenn Brissett: a Dive into Worldbuilding (interview) hangout summary with VIDEO!

First I have to offer a big thank-you to Jenn Brissett for coming and talking with us about her book! We discussed Elysium, which will be coming out very soon from Aqueduct Press.

Since the book features a very layered and complex reality, I started by asking about her process of discovery in learning about it. She explained how it grew in complexity as it went on, and she had to be very careful about keeping it under control! She starts writing beginning with the character, and the story, and then she builds out and creates the world based on that. She says it's much like the way that cities are built, organically.

She began with difficulties in a relationship between characters, and then swapped genders, and then as she went it became a memorial to New York. Thematically, it began to explore aspects of the experience of 9/11. A lot of what really excited her was being able to dig in and explore broadly, to see how far the story could be pushed in various directions.

In the book, she creates an amazing sense of constant flux and change that gives readers a sense that the ultimate reality behind the story is not what readers are seeing in any single piece of the story, but of a much deeper significance. She uses as a unifying theme the history of the Roman emperor Hadrian and his relationship with his lover Antinous. This image of deep loss to the point of insanity functions as an anchor for the story, and the story revisits that loss over and over in different forms, which she refers to as a "spiral narrative." The idea of revisiting loss over and over connects deeply to the feeling of New York after 9/11. People disappeared for various reasons, but loss was everywhere; it connected with Jenn's own experiences of running her bookstore and having clients disappear without any knowledge of what had happened to them. It also connected with the fact that memorials of the event cause people to relive the loss and trauma every year. Brissett explained that the 9/11 connection flowered out of the book naturally. She describes New York as a "city of renewal." It has renewed itself many times.

Brissett explained that the way the theme of 9/11 blossomed naturally out of the book, as an aspect of it but not the primary focus, was one of the true strengths of science fiction as a genre, that "there are so many aspects of life that you can explore." Authors end up finding things subconsciously that they have layered into the scenarios they have created. It's important to be able to explore real issues in a non-real way. I said that science fiction and fantasy are like playgrounds where we can play with dangerous stuff without hurting people as badly. It's a unique way to address difficult issues that people need to process. The book itself is an examination of love and loss in a larger context than just this single event.

Brissett is very detailed and specific about sensations and emotional connections in her writing, and it's one of the strengths of the book that keeps readers tied into the story in spite of all the flux. She talked about the switches of genders and character relationships etc. She described each piece as ending when the person gets to the part where the mourning process begins. It switches "just when you're getting a chance to absorb the blow," creating a rhythm within the story.

She uses index cards to do her planning. This was a book where she had planned gender swaps from the beginning, but it changed as the writing continued. The index cards helped her to look for options among the ideas and images she'd come up with, and find the most natural place to go next inside the story. Playing with the parts felt like playing with the puzzle. She described enjoying particularly when the two characters both became children.

She described her next book as being based on the story of Demeter and Persephone. Elysium uses all kinds of relationships - male lovers, female lovers, father and daughter, father and son, brothers, etc. She is saving mother and daughter for the next book!

There is an interesting pattern of repetition within the book as well, recurring images that draw connections across the different iterations of the loss scenario. Brissett said she enjoyed rewriting song lyrics for the book. She did get personal permission to use a poem by Saul Williams as a tribute to the world of hip-hop "before it was hip-hop."

Brissett describes her book as a struggle, a deliberate sort of controlled chaos. She wanted the feeling of chaos, but also a feeling of control. I noticed that there were a lot of things people didn't understand, and had no hope of understanding - an interesting contrast with stories that rely on the idea of solutions to problems. We like to have a feeling of control but we generally don't know on a certain level, and we just have to deal with it. She described finding someone to love as the most important thing to do in life.

I asked whether there was particular recurring imagery that she wanted to share her thoughts on. There are elk, owls, etc. and many images of wings. She described wanting to show nature invading a computerized space. She's fascinated with the idea of how quickly cities would degrade without people maintaining them, and also the idea of animals that appear in an urban space like New York. She used many images of wings to explore the idea of flight as well as having a different perspective on the city from above.

One of the most fascinating aspects of this story was not just the gender-swapping, but the way that each scene changed the social structures and rules of the societies around the main characters. Brissett described doing research on the Vestal Virgins in order to create one of the worlds she uses in the scenes within the book. She deliberately wanted to switch power structures over what one sex can do, and one sexuality can do.

There is a very interesting reversal in Elysium of the normal pattern in which readers keep track of what changes between one scene and the next. Because so much changes between scenes, on a large scale the reader ends up tracking the patterns of stability in the book - the patterns of what does not change.


I wish Jenn Brissett all the best with her book launch! Go pick up Elysium by Jenn Brissett when it comes out this year from Aqueduct Press.

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Place Names and Geography: A "Dive into Worldbuilding!" hangout summary with VIDEO

This was an enjoyable discussion following on from our discussion of character names into place names and geography. Many of the issues of sound and association are similar to those we spoke about in the discussion of character names, here.

Sometimes we leave out place names to create a more diffuse sense of place and to help people feel immersed, as though the location belongs to them. Sometimes we use specific places. Sometimes we pick a real-world region, but not a specific city. A specific name can send someone looking on a map. Sometimes we can choose names, like Springfield, that come across as generic, or recombine parts of known place names to create names like Midwich, plausible but not anchored.

If you are thinking of a place name, do some research and figure out where it may have appeared before.

Morphology, the study of parts of words, can be very helpful for place names. Suffixes like -burg and -ville are called morphemes, and can be very useful. You can also create your own suffixes to indicate place.

In Britain, a lot of place names have specific meaning in context. The same is true for Native American Indian names for places, which are often linked to local landmarks and other features of place. The English re-naming of locations created a dissociation between the land and its place names by overlaying an imported context.

Uniformity is to be avoided, because it gives a sense of perfect newness, or of monocultural imposition. However, linguistic consistency is important if you are using a conlang.

When it comes to geography, it's important to consider issues like climate and biomes. Research is critical for developing this aspect of your story. Geographical features like mountains can be good for adventure, but they should make sense within a larger system. If you have a mountain range and one side of it is wet and the other dry, it's good to know why that is the case. Consider your planet's rotation, and consider placing your story in the southern hemisphere (because the fact that we have more land in the northern hemisphere is just coincidence).

Brian noted that before the Renaissance, the placement of north vs. south on the top/bottom of maps was not standardized, and you often saw other approaches. (And different projections!)

If you place your story on a different planet, or in a different place on our planet, consider how that might change the night sky. On our planet, different stars are visible, and they move differently, depending on whether you are in the northern or southern hemisphere, or near the equator. On other planets, stars could potentially vary in brightness, concentration, etc.

Thanks to all who attended!

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Check it out - Not Our Kind: Tales of (Not) Belonging, and "The Valiant Heart"!

So... I have a story in this, and I want you to help me make it happen:

When I was approached by editor Nayad Monroe, I was instantly fascinated by the idea of this anthology, and so I was thrilled when the story I submitted got accepted! Now that it's up at Kickstarter I've discovered who else is in the Table of Contents, and I'm blown away:

Wes Alexander, Alex Bledsoe, Maurice Broaddus, Jennifer Brozek, Amanda C. Davis, Sarah Hans, Janet Harriett, Tyler Hayes, Michael Haynes, Erika Holt, Gary Kloster, Marissa Lingen, Remy Nakamura, Andrew Romine, Ekaterina Sedia, Lucy A. Snyder, Reinhardt Suarez, Juliette Wade, Tim Waggoner, Damien Angelica Walters... OMG!

The story they have from me is called "The Valiant Heart":

A nobleman of Varin, Pyaras, has fallen in love with Captain Melín, a woman of of the Arissen officer caste. He believes their relationship is secret and safe, but then Melín's adjutant challenges her to a duel to the death, and Pyaras is called before the Eminence himself to account for his actions in turning traitor to the noble Race. The two elope, believing that once he has Fallen to become Arissen, he will be out of the Eminence's reach and they can be happy together. But other Arissen are not so willing to see a gutless nobleman among them, and Pyaras must fight for his new identity. Will his heart be valiant enough?



 

Naming Characters: A "Dive into Worldbuilding!" hangout summary with VIDEO

We had a fantastic discussion of character naming. Most of the participants began with the idea that they name characters on gut instinct, but we quickly started digging into what lies behind those gut instincts - and the resulting discussion was very interesting! There's so much hidden in our subconscious...

Very often, people like to have the name reflect the nature of the character. The choice of a name like "Cain" or "Thor" says something very specific, because these names already exist and bring along context ("baggage") with them. We made a list of six factors that can contribute to a choice of name.

1. intertextuality (a name that has occurred before in another context, literary or not)
2. onomatopoeia (emotional/semantic associations sound of the vowels and consonants making up the name)
3. etymology (the origins of the name-parts making up the word suggest meaning, as in Voldemort, wanting death)
3. personal experience with people who have the name
4. similarity to actual words (in English or another language)
5. ethnic or foreign language associations (the name is common to a particular cultural group)
6. gender associations (the pattern of female names ending in "a" for example)

We knew of several cases where authors had deliberately tried to break the gender-name pattern link. Using gender-neutral names can be confusing for some readers, but it worthwhile in many contexts, and overly uniform use of a particular gendered name pattern is unrealistic.

Morphology can be part of names. This is when different pieces of meaning get added onto a name through the addition of meaningful affixes (prefixes, suffixes, etc). Brian gave us the example of "Sim" which would have the suffix "on" added to it for males and "el" for females. There can also be honorific suffixes added. A great example of this from N.K. Jemisin is the following:

"My name is Yeine. In my people's way I am Yeine dau she Kinneth tai wer Somem kanna Darre, which means that I am the daughter of Kinneth, and that my tribe within the Darre people is called Somem."

We discussed how, if you are choosing to use names associated with a particular nationality or cultural group, it's a really good idea to research those names (start on Google, but don't stop there!). Tolkien used names that had actual literal meanings in the elven languages he created. My Varin world has names from at least three different language groups.

You can also take a look at alliteration if you have a reason to link names, and considering the metric compatibility (rhythm) of names is also valuable. Kimberley gave us the example "Brighton and Rice."

We looked at the phenomenon of Apostrophes! in fantastical names. They are overused, but still can make sense if they are motivated, like the apostrophes that abbreviate the Dragonriders' names in Anne McCaffrey's Pern books. In general, though, names don't need distracting decorations.

We also spoke about whether we should care if readers pronounce our names correctly. If the language used is an existing world language, then accuracy is a really good idea, especially for audio/podcasts. I myself made a recording of myself saying all the Japanese words in my Clarkesworld story "Suteta Mono de wa Nai" to make the task easier for the (awesome) narrator Kate Baker. Generally, if mispronunciation of the names in your book makes you cringe, consider having a pronunciation guide as part of the book.

It's best not to let names get too similar to each other. Often it's helpful not to have the same first letter for more than one character name - if you get three people in the same room, all with names starting with M, it can be very confusing. You can also vary number of syllables, and final consonants.

Sometimes you'll find you need to alter a name mid-process, when it comes into a context where it bears too much similarity to another name. This happened to me quite recently when I discovered Yaniss and Innis were too similar in sound, so I changed the first name to Yanir. I also went through a process of spelling-changing when readers had trouble with the name Tagret, reading it as "Target." I tried a whole bunch of alternatives before landing on "Tagaret" (like Margaret).

We also spoke briefly about nicknames. Some people hate seeing them in fiction; others don't. Some cultures use nicknames a lot, while others tend to do so less. Nicknames are full of interesting information about community membership and relationships. They can mark people as insiders. They can also give people a very different feel for a character, revealing something about the difference between the way outsiders view them, and the way insiders do.

Join us next week, Thursday, 8/9/14 to meet guest author Jenn Brissett and learn about the worldbuilding in her new book, Elysium!

Here's the video:

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