The other day I ran across the following question from Strange Horizons editor Jed Hartman on Facebook:
"Are Russian authors as enamored of matryoshkas as English-language authors who write fiction set in Russia seem to be?"
My ears immediately perked up. I'm sure you have probably already grasped the issue: an author unfamiliar with a culture is trying to set a story in that culture, and is looking for details that will help back up the setting. What can he/she place in the room? Where can he/she have a character go, which will richly suggest setting and context?
The matryoshka example demonstrates one of the traps inherent in this process. It is easy for outsiders to a culture to draw conclusions about what objects would be in a room based on their own limited experience of the culture, often from movies or stories, or just common knowledge in their own culture about what the foreign culture is like.
I have personally been on the other end of this. When I was studying in Japan, I got asked all kinds of questions about what I was like... which turned out to be questions about what all Americans were like. All Americans? Seriously - are all Americans "like" anything? I would say in a country this large and diverse, there are a very few things we can really point to and say "all Americans are like this." But I was asked more than once, "How many guns do you own?" And on numerous other occasions I was asked questions that began, "Since you're a Christian..." Please notice the very very large assumptions inherent in any questions of this nature. I would, quite awkwardly, find myself in the position of having to speak for every American when I am absolutely certain that is a position for which I am unqualified.
Obviously this is an issue that doesn't apply solely to setting - it applies to many other categories as well. However, since I'm thinking about setting here, let's take this a little further.
What kind of details do you need? Well, for real world settings and cultures, you need to have done your research. I'm an anthropologist and very much into the idea of field work and representation of the insider, so I would recommend going and finding a member or three of the culture you'd like to work with, and finding out what really goes into a room. This is one of the reasons that I set up the Writer's International Culture Share - because it's a lot of work going out and finding people, and I love having so much specific, detailed information from unusual cultures available in one place.
Be aware that if you feel certain you know what must be there, but have never actually walked into that setting, you are probably wrong. There is an enormous difference between cultural insiders and cultural outsiders: they will notice different things. Different languages let us categorize things differently, and different cultures lead us to think different things are normal. That's why I often will go back to literature, such as Japanese literature in translation from the time period I'm working with, in order to determine what insiders would be paying attention to.
Okay, so you're writing a scene and you are trying to set it in ancient Heian Japan, and you want to depict the setting. You'll probably want to indicate the season (spring, fall, summer, winter, rainy season), whether or not your character is indoors (he/she might be noticing temperature, after all), because seasons are very important to the Japanese (then, and even now). If you're looking for particular objects or vistas associated with the season, then go back to Japanese poetry in translation, and you'll discover things like the association of the moon with the autumn, for example. If there is a woman involved there will likely be privacy screens in the room. If it's winter, there will be a brazier to help keep people warm. Depending on who the people are and what they're up to, you may find writing materials in the room, short tables, brushes and ink blocks, inkstones, etc.
I always like to start with a set of core insider objects. But that isn't always enough. You can start with the things your character will notice, but it's also a good idea to keep in mind someone else: your audience. Chances are you're not also writing your story for Heian Japanese insiders, and therefore there may be details - important ones - that an insider wouldn't notice but that your reader will fill in incorrectly without guidance. This might include something like the fact that the floors are either polished wood or tatami mats, and that people don't wear shoes indoors. In a case like this, pick out a few details that you feel are important to note, and then hide them. Take them and set them in the background by making them part of a description of a character's action, or incidental to something else that is important to the character. That way they won't take on too much importance in the character's mind, but they'll be sitting there available to the reader so that later when you mention the character falling on the rush mats, they won't go, "Huh?"
This distinction between insider details and audience details also applies to fictional worlds of the fantasy and science fictional variety. The people of Varin will always notice a person's caste, and will notice distinctions within their own caste but typically not that of others. On the other hand, they live underground but don't tend to take much notice of that; I have to sneak it in here and there. They also have very little wood, and large pieces of wood are extremely expensive - that one I can either show someone noticing, as when a servant notices that the family he's interviewing with has a gaming table and chairs made of real wood, or sneak in, as when I put in a word here or there to remind readers that tables and chairs are typically made of brass or steel, and doors of steel or bronze (thus combating specific real-world expectations).
It's something to think about.
Showing posts with label insiders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insiders. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop: Orienting by marking insiders vs. outsiders
Welcome to week 13 of the Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop! This week's entry comes from Siri Paulson. Thanks for submitting - it was great to see a couple of new entries come in this week! As I generally do, I'll begin by highlighting in blue all the words that I use to pick up worldbuilding information, and directly following the excerpt, I'll talk about how those words give me entry into the world.
***
Athneh shifted position on the carpet where she sat cross-legged. "Herbs from the fish-kin!" she cried. "Healing herbs for all your ills!" Around her on the market quay, City-dwellers hurried on without stopping. It made her edgy.
A Ferrican stopped before her. She raised her eyes past the crenellated hem of his tunic to the bow in his hand. "Expecting trouble, sir?"
"I need a protection charm," he said in accented Kemetian. That wasn't exactly an answer, but it wasn't a denial, either.
Guilt warred with shame. "I...I have none, sir."
"But you're a fish-kin. Or are you an Islander trying to make a profit off fake magic?"
Athneh gasped, the insult rendering her speechless. Her people might live on the Islands too, but they weren't the same as the Islanders. Even Ferricans knew that.
Ruri leaned over from behind the weavings she had spread out next to Athneh's carpet. "She's all out of the charms you want, sir. They've been popular today."
Athneh shot her friend a grateful glance. "That's right," she said to the Ferrican. "But I have herbs to make your mind sharper and your movements faster. Would those tempt you?"
"Fine, but be quick."
Athneh blinked. Ferricans were normally chatty. She took several bunches from the assortment before her and wrapped them in a cloth. "Brew two pinches of this into a tea and drink it. If you're in a hurry, use cold water, but the effect will be less pronounced. Don't use more than two pinches per day or you'll get the shakes. Any questions?" She put the herbs into a small sewn bag and looked up at him.
"How much?"
"Two packets of salt, sir."
The Ferrican dropped the packets into her hand and took the bag. He glanced from Ruri to Athneh and then their husbands in the small boats tied up behind them. "Be careful, fish-kin. The Kemete have cut off negotiations with the City. Everyone's waiting to see what they do next."
Ruri opened her mouth, Athneh went to elbow her, and a horn from the City walls made them both jump. Athneh whipped her head around to see the sentry on the south wall, facing the coast of Kemet across the strait, wind his bronze horn a second time. The Ferrican ran off.
"Quickly!" called Jorlath from the boat he shared with Ruri. "We've got to get out of here!"
Ruri, gone almost as pale as the Ferrican, began to roll up her weavings without a word.
Brin said mildly from the other boat, "Perhaps it would be better to stay within the walls."
Athneh shivered. The very idea made the City seem smaller, despite the whitewashed buildings that rose three or even four storeys. She had always liked the gentle curves of the walls and roofs, the window-boxes overflowing with flowers from the Islands and the river delta of Kemet and beyond, but now all she wanted was to be on the open water that surrounded the City.
***
The first piece of world information we get here is the name, Athneh. Alternate-language names really establish difference fast! One word, and instantly we're not in Kansas any more - probably science fiction or fantasy. We can tell that we're not dealing with aliens or high tech pretty quickly though, because of carpet and cross-legged. The fact that our character is selling herbs and calling out her wares gives me a sense that we're dealing with lower technology, and evidence is building for a fantasy scenario. The term fish-kin also has a fantasy feel to it because if the word "kin," so I'm not surprised when we find that the herbs being sold are healing herbs for all your ills. (I should remark, though, that words like these have been used for unusually flavored sf, notably by Michael Flynn). We get our first sense of physical setting beyond the carpet and the herbs (which suggest climate) with the words market quay and City-dwellers. The word City written with a capital letter gives me some cultural information to add to that provided by the girl calling out her wares on the market quay, indicating that life here centers around a particular city (that I'll be looking to find out more about).
Next comes the word Ferrican. The ending -an suggests this is some kind of affiliation word, most likely a nationality. The crenellated hem of his tunic suggests his culture through fashion. The bow suggests military technology level. Also, Athneh uses sir to be deferential, providing social information. It's not clear how much this indicates that the Ferrican must be revered, however, because using "sir" also is natural between a merchant and customer. We get our first hint of magic with protection charm. Kemetian is clearly a language, though who it naturally belongs to is not clear. Soon the piece starts to indicate social strife between different groups, when the Ferrican accuses Athneh of being an Islander trying to make a profit off fake magic. This at the same time suggests that real magic is possible. We are told that this is a serious insult, and we see some of Athneh's ideas about what people in this world know about each other, something which continues later with Ferricans were normally chatty. The instructions for brewing the tea give hints of culture, and her description of the shakes hints about knowledge of the body in this world. The Ferrican then buys the herbs with two packets of salt, a very distinctively different form of currency.
More social information keeps coming. Soon we get husbands in the small boats tied up behind them, a glimpse of daily practices. Then politics ensues with the Kemete cutting off negotiations with the City. Toward the end of the excerpt we get a physical description of the the walls of the city, its whitewashed buildings and window-boxes, and an indication of the larger surround with river delta of Kemet.
All right. At this point I'm going to shift gears and go into my brown-marked think aloud commentary. I don't intend these to be any kind of corrections, but I'll share my thoughts and any confusion I might have.
***
Athneh **[I'm thinking fantasy here, though the language pattern isn't so traditional that I can immediately rule out sf or some world language I don't know] shifted position on the carpet where she sat cross-legged.**[Clearly she's human; if she weren't, I'd expect some hint here.] "Herbs from the fish-kin!" she cried. "Healing herbs for all your ills!" **[Calling out and selling healing herbs gives me another fantasy nudge. I'm not sure whether I'm looking at real magic yet or not.] Around her on the market quay,**[interesting location.] City-dwellers **[I think the quay is in or near the City, but I'm not sure about their precise relation] hurried on without stopping. It made her edgy.
A Ferrican **[this seems either like a nationality (first guess) or social affiliation like a monastic or military affiliation] stopped before her. She raised her eyes past the crenellated hem of his tunic **[I see him quite clearly] to the bow **[is this a fashion, or a weapon? It's not clear for another few words; an adjective might clarify this] in his hand. "Expecting trouble, sir?"**[She treats him deferentially, but this could just be because of her job, not his]
"I need a protection charm," **[so there's magic here.] he said in accented Kemetian. **[A language - but whose language? Not native for him, apparently, but it comes a bit out of the blue and makes me shift gears when I'm busy on the lookout for what "Ferrican" means.] That wasn't exactly an answer, but it wasn't a denial, either.
Guilt warred with shame. **[wow, a pretty extreme reaction to just not having what he wants. What did she do? Who could be is holding her to this standard?] "I...I have none, sir."
"But you're a fish-kin.**[oh okay. I thought she might be fish-kin, but she could just have been a merchant selling their stuff.] Or are you an Islander **[yet another social group. It's starting to give me difficulty orienting myself.] trying to make a profit off fake magic?"**[fake magic implies that real magic is possible, and interesting confirmation of the hint earlier.]
Athneh gasped, the insult rendering her speechless.**[Another extreme reaction. Athneh seems very sensitive, and I wish I had some hint, from her judgment, of why this was such an insult. Otherwise it feels like we're being handed the information that this should be offensive.] Her people might live on the Islands too, but they weren't the same as the Islanders. Even Ferricans knew that.**[This goes a little way toward fixing my sense of who the Islanders are, but I still know nothing about them to back up her sense of insult. I do get the hint that she doesn't think too highly of Ferricans, though.]
Ruri leaned over from behind the weavings she had spread out next to Athneh's carpet. **[Oh, so she's not alone here. Is this a friend, or just a fellow merchant? It's not clear.] "She's all out of the charms you want, sir. They've been popular today." **[I'm not sure if she's telling the truth, because of the way Athneh reacted.]
Athneh shot her friend **[oh, a friend.] a grateful glance. "That's right," she said to the Ferrican. "But I have herbs to make your mind sharper and your movements faster. Would those tempt you?"**[I wonder why she didn't go straight to this, rather than admitting she didn't have what he wanted. It makes her come across as less experienced as an herb-seller. Is she very young?]
"Fine, but be quick."
Athneh blinked. Ferricans were normally chatty. **[This one has already been established as rude, so I'm not sure why she'd be surprised here.] She took several bunches from the assortment before her and wrapped them in a cloth. "Brew two pinches of this into a tea and drink it. If you're in a hurry, use cold water, but the effect will be less pronounced. Don't use more than two pinches per day or you'll get the shakes. **[I like the sense of medical knowledge she's showing here. That is a nice, and unusual, addition to the world.] Any questions?" She put the herbs into a small sewn bag and looked up at him.
"How much?"
"Two packets of salt, sir."**[hm, alternate currency - cool. I'm not sure how far we are from the sea, since only "quay" has told me anything about the possible nearness of water to this location. I'd be surprised to see salt as currency so close to the sea where people could make their own, but maybe there's a larger political group in the area which has established the use of this currency.]
The Ferrican dropped the packets into her hand and took the bag. He glanced from Ruri to Athneh and then their husbands in the small boats tied up behind them.**[wow, I'm revising my sense of Athneh's age here, and also my sense of the nearness of water! I really like the gender-relations and culture information in this though.] "Be careful, fish-kin. The Kemete have cut off negotiations with the City. **[I link this with Kemetian, the language he spoke, through grammar, but I have little sense of who these people are, or where.] Everyone's waiting to see what they do next."
Ruri opened her mouth, Athneh went to elbow her, and a horn from the City walls **[I am guessing they are outside the City at this time.] made them both jump. Athneh whipped her head around to see the sentry on the south wall, facing the coast of Kemet across the strait,**[oh, so Kemet is not far away. I still can't figure out where they are relative to the walls, though this seems to indicate they're probably inside.] wind his bronze horn a second time. The Ferrican ran off. **[Does she have a guess as to his purpose or where he might go?]
"Quickly!" called Jorlath from the boat he shared with Ruri. "We've got to get out of here!"**[I see his fear. It might be nice to have a sense of what kind of place he thinks is safer.]
Ruri, gone almost as pale as the Ferrican, began to roll up her weavings without a word.
Brin said mildly from the other boat,**[Is it not Athneh's boat?] "Perhaps it would be better to stay within the walls."**[Oh, so they are inside the walls?]
Athneh shivered. The very idea made the City seem smaller, despite the whitewashed buildings that rose three or even four storeys. **[I wish I'd seen some of this earlier, because it's hard for me to orient to her idea of changing locations when I don't have the location firmly established already.] She had always liked the gentle curves of the walls and roofs, the window-boxes overflowing with flowers from the Islands and the river delta of Kemet**[Is this where the flowers are from? Somehow I put it as something she liked (i.e. I guessed it was in the main clause not the subordinate clause] and beyond, but now all she wanted was to be on the open water that surrounded the City. **[This makes me wonder how far it is, and why it would be better to be there than within the walls. Potentially cool insight into her thinking, but I'm not quite able to tie it down.]
***
First of all, let me thank Siri for submitting - thanks, Siri! I liked a lot of things about this piece, as you can see. You're ambitious here, giving us a lot of social groups, affiliations, potential strife, insult, etc. all of which is good. What I did find, though, was that I was doing a lot of hopping about from one piece of new information to the next, wishing for more orientation, more description, more detail (I felt disoriented quite early, certainly by the time the Ferrican spoke in Kemetian). I don't think that it's a question of just adding more, however, because it would be easy for the storyline of a potential attack on the city to be lost in a flood of details. What I'd like to see is a stronger sense of alignment with Athneh. So that her reactions don't seem extreme and so that your explanations don't feel external to her, I'd like to see you get closer to her, and try to put things in terms of her awareness of insiders and outsiders. Okay, so she's sitting on a quay calling out her wares, herbs from the fish-kin. But is the quay her home territory? Is it familiar to her? And are the fish-kin her people? Just placing an adjective or two, giving us a detail about the nearness of the water being comforting to her, though the walls make her feel hemmed in, for example - that would do a whole lot to show her identity and ground her judgments of the things around her.
She would react to the Ferrican in accordance with how her people view Ferricans - I'd like to know whether a Ferrican is a type of City-dweller, such as a member of the military, or a traveler from a foreign land which might have an independent reputation in the eyes of fish-kin. The language Kemetian threw me off - why would he be speaking it? Because it's a lingua franca? Because he's been sent by Kemetians? What would Athneh guess about him? She'd certainly have a strong emotional reaction if she's hearing the language of the enemy, particularly if speaking Kemetian is unusual. The reference to Islanders comes out of the blue, since there are no Islanders here and I'm not sure how they are relevant to the larger conflict; I'm thinking the whole insult sequence might be left out of this piece and saved for sometime later. We aren't grounded enough in Athneh's worldview at this point for her sense of insult to strike us naturally; instead I'm feeling like I'm being informed of the value of the insult. It could be very effective, though, if used later when I have more knowledge of the complex relations in this world.
It can often be helpful to go through and categorize everything in a scene in terms of whether it is an insider object/concept or an outsider object/concept. Particularly in an interesting situation like this where there are lots of conflicting social groups. Athneh's judgments of "mine" and "yours," of "homelike" and "foreign" can then serve as valuable signposts for the reader. You can also explore a me/you/they relation, such as having fish-kin be "we," City-dwellers "you" and Kemetians "they" (I'm not sure where the Ferrican fits into this, but you might have a better sense of that).
Please don't feel any pressure to reveal the whole picture of social complexity so early in the story. The longer the list of players, the more valuable it is to start with as few as possible, and let the main character slowly introduce us. I've dealt with this a lot, because of having a society with seven caste levels. You should have seen my readers' heads spinning when I tried to introduce them all at once! I think you've got a lot of really cool stuff here, and tons of social information to impart, so I'd really encourage you to start by orienting us to a very basic insider/outsider sense when we first meet Athneh, (I'd probably begin with fish-kin vs. City and use her judgment of physical details to help ground the location as well) and then slowly complicate it each time another person or event enters her life.
I hope you find my comments helpful. Readers, you are welcome to comment constructively below.
***
Athneh shifted position on the carpet where she sat cross-legged. "Herbs from the fish-kin!" she cried. "Healing herbs for all your ills!" Around her on the market quay, City-dwellers hurried on without stopping. It made her edgy.
A Ferrican stopped before her. She raised her eyes past the crenellated hem of his tunic to the bow in his hand. "Expecting trouble, sir?"
"I need a protection charm," he said in accented Kemetian. That wasn't exactly an answer, but it wasn't a denial, either.
Guilt warred with shame. "I...I have none, sir."
"But you're a fish-kin. Or are you an Islander trying to make a profit off fake magic?"
Athneh gasped, the insult rendering her speechless. Her people might live on the Islands too, but they weren't the same as the Islanders. Even Ferricans knew that.
Ruri leaned over from behind the weavings she had spread out next to Athneh's carpet. "She's all out of the charms you want, sir. They've been popular today."
Athneh shot her friend a grateful glance. "That's right," she said to the Ferrican. "But I have herbs to make your mind sharper and your movements faster. Would those tempt you?"
"Fine, but be quick."
Athneh blinked. Ferricans were normally chatty. She took several bunches from the assortment before her and wrapped them in a cloth. "Brew two pinches of this into a tea and drink it. If you're in a hurry, use cold water, but the effect will be less pronounced. Don't use more than two pinches per day or you'll get the shakes. Any questions?" She put the herbs into a small sewn bag and looked up at him.
"How much?"
"Two packets of salt, sir."
The Ferrican dropped the packets into her hand and took the bag. He glanced from Ruri to Athneh and then their husbands in the small boats tied up behind them. "Be careful, fish-kin. The Kemete have cut off negotiations with the City. Everyone's waiting to see what they do next."
Ruri opened her mouth, Athneh went to elbow her, and a horn from the City walls made them both jump. Athneh whipped her head around to see the sentry on the south wall, facing the coast of Kemet across the strait, wind his bronze horn a second time. The Ferrican ran off.
"Quickly!" called Jorlath from the boat he shared with Ruri. "We've got to get out of here!"
Ruri, gone almost as pale as the Ferrican, began to roll up her weavings without a word.
Brin said mildly from the other boat, "Perhaps it would be better to stay within the walls."
Athneh shivered. The very idea made the City seem smaller, despite the whitewashed buildings that rose three or even four storeys. She had always liked the gentle curves of the walls and roofs, the window-boxes overflowing with flowers from the Islands and the river delta of Kemet and beyond, but now all she wanted was to be on the open water that surrounded the City.
***
The first piece of world information we get here is the name, Athneh. Alternate-language names really establish difference fast! One word, and instantly we're not in Kansas any more - probably science fiction or fantasy. We can tell that we're not dealing with aliens or high tech pretty quickly though, because of carpet and cross-legged. The fact that our character is selling herbs and calling out her wares gives me a sense that we're dealing with lower technology, and evidence is building for a fantasy scenario. The term fish-kin also has a fantasy feel to it because if the word "kin," so I'm not surprised when we find that the herbs being sold are healing herbs for all your ills. (I should remark, though, that words like these have been used for unusually flavored sf, notably by Michael Flynn). We get our first sense of physical setting beyond the carpet and the herbs (which suggest climate) with the words market quay and City-dwellers. The word City written with a capital letter gives me some cultural information to add to that provided by the girl calling out her wares on the market quay, indicating that life here centers around a particular city (that I'll be looking to find out more about).
Next comes the word Ferrican. The ending -an suggests this is some kind of affiliation word, most likely a nationality. The crenellated hem of his tunic suggests his culture through fashion. The bow suggests military technology level. Also, Athneh uses sir to be deferential, providing social information. It's not clear how much this indicates that the Ferrican must be revered, however, because using "sir" also is natural between a merchant and customer. We get our first hint of magic with protection charm. Kemetian is clearly a language, though who it naturally belongs to is not clear. Soon the piece starts to indicate social strife between different groups, when the Ferrican accuses Athneh of being an Islander trying to make a profit off fake magic. This at the same time suggests that real magic is possible. We are told that this is a serious insult, and we see some of Athneh's ideas about what people in this world know about each other, something which continues later with Ferricans were normally chatty. The instructions for brewing the tea give hints of culture, and her description of the shakes hints about knowledge of the body in this world. The Ferrican then buys the herbs with two packets of salt, a very distinctively different form of currency.
More social information keeps coming. Soon we get husbands in the small boats tied up behind them, a glimpse of daily practices. Then politics ensues with the Kemete cutting off negotiations with the City. Toward the end of the excerpt we get a physical description of the the walls of the city, its whitewashed buildings and window-boxes, and an indication of the larger surround with river delta of Kemet.
All right. At this point I'm going to shift gears and go into my brown-marked think aloud commentary. I don't intend these to be any kind of corrections, but I'll share my thoughts and any confusion I might have.
***
Athneh **[I'm thinking fantasy here, though the language pattern isn't so traditional that I can immediately rule out sf or some world language I don't know] shifted position on the carpet where she sat cross-legged.**[Clearly she's human; if she weren't, I'd expect some hint here.] "Herbs from the fish-kin!" she cried. "Healing herbs for all your ills!" **[Calling out and selling healing herbs gives me another fantasy nudge. I'm not sure whether I'm looking at real magic yet or not.] Around her on the market quay,**[interesting location.] City-dwellers **[I think the quay is in or near the City, but I'm not sure about their precise relation] hurried on without stopping. It made her edgy.
A Ferrican **[this seems either like a nationality (first guess) or social affiliation like a monastic or military affiliation] stopped before her. She raised her eyes past the crenellated hem of his tunic **[I see him quite clearly] to the bow **[is this a fashion, or a weapon? It's not clear for another few words; an adjective might clarify this] in his hand. "Expecting trouble, sir?"**[She treats him deferentially, but this could just be because of her job, not his]
"I need a protection charm," **[so there's magic here.] he said in accented Kemetian. **[A language - but whose language? Not native for him, apparently, but it comes a bit out of the blue and makes me shift gears when I'm busy on the lookout for what "Ferrican" means.] That wasn't exactly an answer, but it wasn't a denial, either.
Guilt warred with shame. **[wow, a pretty extreme reaction to just not having what he wants. What did she do? Who could be is holding her to this standard?] "I...I have none, sir."
"But you're a fish-kin.**[oh okay. I thought she might be fish-kin, but she could just have been a merchant selling their stuff.] Or are you an Islander **[yet another social group. It's starting to give me difficulty orienting myself.] trying to make a profit off fake magic?"**[fake magic implies that real magic is possible, and interesting confirmation of the hint earlier.]
Athneh gasped, the insult rendering her speechless.**[Another extreme reaction. Athneh seems very sensitive, and I wish I had some hint, from her judgment, of why this was such an insult. Otherwise it feels like we're being handed the information that this should be offensive.] Her people might live on the Islands too, but they weren't the same as the Islanders. Even Ferricans knew that.**[This goes a little way toward fixing my sense of who the Islanders are, but I still know nothing about them to back up her sense of insult. I do get the hint that she doesn't think too highly of Ferricans, though.]
Ruri leaned over from behind the weavings she had spread out next to Athneh's carpet. **[Oh, so she's not alone here. Is this a friend, or just a fellow merchant? It's not clear.] "She's all out of the charms you want, sir. They've been popular today." **[I'm not sure if she's telling the truth, because of the way Athneh reacted.]
Athneh shot her friend **[oh, a friend.] a grateful glance. "That's right," she said to the Ferrican. "But I have herbs to make your mind sharper and your movements faster. Would those tempt you?"**[I wonder why she didn't go straight to this, rather than admitting she didn't have what he wanted. It makes her come across as less experienced as an herb-seller. Is she very young?]
"Fine, but be quick."
Athneh blinked. Ferricans were normally chatty. **[This one has already been established as rude, so I'm not sure why she'd be surprised here.] She took several bunches from the assortment before her and wrapped them in a cloth. "Brew two pinches of this into a tea and drink it. If you're in a hurry, use cold water, but the effect will be less pronounced. Don't use more than two pinches per day or you'll get the shakes. **[I like the sense of medical knowledge she's showing here. That is a nice, and unusual, addition to the world.] Any questions?" She put the herbs into a small sewn bag and looked up at him.
"How much?"
"Two packets of salt, sir."**[hm, alternate currency - cool. I'm not sure how far we are from the sea, since only "quay" has told me anything about the possible nearness of water to this location. I'd be surprised to see salt as currency so close to the sea where people could make their own, but maybe there's a larger political group in the area which has established the use of this currency.]
The Ferrican dropped the packets into her hand and took the bag. He glanced from Ruri to Athneh and then their husbands in the small boats tied up behind them.**[wow, I'm revising my sense of Athneh's age here, and also my sense of the nearness of water! I really like the gender-relations and culture information in this though.] "Be careful, fish-kin. The Kemete have cut off negotiations with the City. **[I link this with Kemetian, the language he spoke, through grammar, but I have little sense of who these people are, or where.] Everyone's waiting to see what they do next."
Ruri opened her mouth, Athneh went to elbow her, and a horn from the City walls **[I am guessing they are outside the City at this time.] made them both jump. Athneh whipped her head around to see the sentry on the south wall, facing the coast of Kemet across the strait,**[oh, so Kemet is not far away. I still can't figure out where they are relative to the walls, though this seems to indicate they're probably inside.] wind his bronze horn a second time. The Ferrican ran off. **[Does she have a guess as to his purpose or where he might go?]
"Quickly!" called Jorlath from the boat he shared with Ruri. "We've got to get out of here!"**[I see his fear. It might be nice to have a sense of what kind of place he thinks is safer.]
Ruri, gone almost as pale as the Ferrican, began to roll up her weavings without a word.
Brin said mildly from the other boat,**[Is it not Athneh's boat?] "Perhaps it would be better to stay within the walls."**[Oh, so they are inside the walls?]
Athneh shivered. The very idea made the City seem smaller, despite the whitewashed buildings that rose three or even four storeys. **[I wish I'd seen some of this earlier, because it's hard for me to orient to her idea of changing locations when I don't have the location firmly established already.] She had always liked the gentle curves of the walls and roofs, the window-boxes overflowing with flowers from the Islands and the river delta of Kemet**[Is this where the flowers are from? Somehow I put it as something she liked (i.e. I guessed it was in the main clause not the subordinate clause] and beyond, but now all she wanted was to be on the open water that surrounded the City. **[This makes me wonder how far it is, and why it would be better to be there than within the walls. Potentially cool insight into her thinking, but I'm not quite able to tie it down.]
***
First of all, let me thank Siri for submitting - thanks, Siri! I liked a lot of things about this piece, as you can see. You're ambitious here, giving us a lot of social groups, affiliations, potential strife, insult, etc. all of which is good. What I did find, though, was that I was doing a lot of hopping about from one piece of new information to the next, wishing for more orientation, more description, more detail (I felt disoriented quite early, certainly by the time the Ferrican spoke in Kemetian). I don't think that it's a question of just adding more, however, because it would be easy for the storyline of a potential attack on the city to be lost in a flood of details. What I'd like to see is a stronger sense of alignment with Athneh. So that her reactions don't seem extreme and so that your explanations don't feel external to her, I'd like to see you get closer to her, and try to put things in terms of her awareness of insiders and outsiders. Okay, so she's sitting on a quay calling out her wares, herbs from the fish-kin. But is the quay her home territory? Is it familiar to her? And are the fish-kin her people? Just placing an adjective or two, giving us a detail about the nearness of the water being comforting to her, though the walls make her feel hemmed in, for example - that would do a whole lot to show her identity and ground her judgments of the things around her.
She would react to the Ferrican in accordance with how her people view Ferricans - I'd like to know whether a Ferrican is a type of City-dweller, such as a member of the military, or a traveler from a foreign land which might have an independent reputation in the eyes of fish-kin. The language Kemetian threw me off - why would he be speaking it? Because it's a lingua franca? Because he's been sent by Kemetians? What would Athneh guess about him? She'd certainly have a strong emotional reaction if she's hearing the language of the enemy, particularly if speaking Kemetian is unusual. The reference to Islanders comes out of the blue, since there are no Islanders here and I'm not sure how they are relevant to the larger conflict; I'm thinking the whole insult sequence might be left out of this piece and saved for sometime later. We aren't grounded enough in Athneh's worldview at this point for her sense of insult to strike us naturally; instead I'm feeling like I'm being informed of the value of the insult. It could be very effective, though, if used later when I have more knowledge of the complex relations in this world.
It can often be helpful to go through and categorize everything in a scene in terms of whether it is an insider object/concept or an outsider object/concept. Particularly in an interesting situation like this where there are lots of conflicting social groups. Athneh's judgments of "mine" and "yours," of "homelike" and "foreign" can then serve as valuable signposts for the reader. You can also explore a me/you/they relation, such as having fish-kin be "we," City-dwellers "you" and Kemetians "they" (I'm not sure where the Ferrican fits into this, but you might have a better sense of that).
Please don't feel any pressure to reveal the whole picture of social complexity so early in the story. The longer the list of players, the more valuable it is to start with as few as possible, and let the main character slowly introduce us. I've dealt with this a lot, because of having a society with seven caste levels. You should have seen my readers' heads spinning when I tried to introduce them all at once! I think you've got a lot of really cool stuff here, and tons of social information to impart, so I'd really encourage you to start by orienting us to a very basic insider/outsider sense when we first meet Athneh, (I'd probably begin with fish-kin vs. City and use her judgment of physical details to help ground the location as well) and then slowly complicate it each time another person or event enters her life.
I hope you find my comments helpful. Readers, you are welcome to comment constructively below.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Insiders and Outsiders
This is another post that I've been planning for some time, but I decided this week that I should complete it, given the continuing discussion surrounding Norman Spinrad's article entitled "Third World Worlds" (the original text of which can be found here if you're curious what the furor has been about, and a compiled list of responses can be found here). As with my last post on the Myth of the Native Speaker, this is less a direct response to the debate than an aspect of anthropology, linguistics and writing that I feel is relevant.
I'm talking about the difference in perspective between someone on the inside of a cultural group, and someone on the outside. This is an issue I've given a great deal of thought to when working with my fictional societies, but it seems clear to me that it's relevant beyond just fiction, applying also to any time you're working with a real life social group, or speculated future group.
I think there would be little debate over the idea that in order to portray a social situation vividly, a writer needs to do research. If that situation happens to be fictional, the writer would do well to think through all the things they might discover if they did research. If we're talking about Japan, you'll want to know about the genkan where people take their shoes off before entering a house, and you'll want to know about manga and about the large number of convenience stores and vending machines, about enka singing and about Japanese-English pop rock, etc... all kinds of things that might go into creating a sense of the environment.
Research on its own, though, isn't enough. There's also point of view, which differs critically if you're a person who has grown up in this environment as opposed to being someone who visits it. Insiders versus outsiders.
In some cases the distinction may not even be as simple as just insiders and outsiders. In Japan, there is a very interesting cultural phenomenon I've noticed, of foreigners who live in Japan but who interact primarily with Japanese people who love to hang out with foreigners. Between the two groups a new group culture has been created: one that's uniquely Japanese and yet doesn't actually capture what someone would encounter if they lived with a host family. It's a "foreigner-Japanese" culture, or perhaps it's similar to the sort of mixing environment that has given rise to pidgins across the world. It was in this sort of context that I encountered Japanese people who told me that I spoke Japanese "too well." For whatever reason, my ability to understand Japanese was threatening to someone who wanted the different social contract that existed between the Japanese and non-Japanese participants in this social group. So being an "insider" in that specially defined cultural group is entirely different from being an "insider" or an "outsider" to Japanese society in a more general sense.
For writing purposes, I think it's important to ask the question: what makes the difference between an insider and an outsider perspective? We can feel the difference when we read it, but where does it actually arise?
It arises in language - specifically, the words and usages we choose when we write our stories.
If we're trying to achieve the sense of an insider perspective, either for a world culture or for a fictional culture, it's important to extend our research into the sensitive area of listening to language. It's easy to think of language as a tool for delivering messages, but it's easy to underestimate the sheer number of messages that it can deliver at once. The way that I ask someone to lend me a pen does more than just ask someone to lend me a pen. It conveys other messages about my perceived social relationship to the person I'm speaking to; it conveys the perceived importance of pens; it conveys the fact that in my society, pens exist; it conveys how I feel about being caught without one, etc. Sentences carry messages about judgment and emotion, and about how reality is divided into objects, concepts and categories.
I think the history of Anthropology is somewhat relevant to this question. The early anthropologists weren't exactly like Indiana Jones, but they typically considered the societies they visited, described and judged them from the perspective of their own cultural viewpoint (s). This was a context in which casting aspersions of savagery was far easier than it is today. More modern anthropology draws a distinction between "etic perspectives" and "emic perspectives," that is, outsider perspectives and insider perspectives. Modern anthropologists strive to understand how a group of people defines itself, rather than contenting themselves with observing details of its behavior and judging them from the outside.
Listening to language - i.e. listening to the group members talk about themselves and about outsiders - is critical to the process of understanding the group and how it defines itself. The listener (writer or anthropologist) can listen for overarching cultural metaphors and values, categories that are widely applied, how words are used to label people and objects and how that influences people's perception of them. Words that seem familiar can be applied to things in an unfamiliar way.
This is the kind of thing that we as writers can take advantage of as we write stories. We can tap into our understanding (from literature or personal experience) of the cultural metaphors of a group and bring those to bear when writing a character from that group. I remember discovering Kij Johnson's The Fox Woman and being impressed not just with the settings and objects that filled her fantasy Japan, but also the kinds of things that her characters worried about. The concerns they had, their definitions of success and failure, their justifications for action, and what motivated them to keep going forward in their lives, fit extremely well with my experiences of Japan, Japanese people and literature. It felt real, and spoke to me.
When we try to create an insider perspective, sometimes it's harder than other times. I suppose, though, that the object is not so much to pass for an insider as to create a story that speaks to readers in a meaningful way (interesting thoughts on this at OF Blog of the Fallen, here). And if the perspective is not quite what we'd expect from a full insider, that may indeed give us different kinds of insights - as I remarked in my discussion of what non-native speakers can bring to language and to stories.
I'd like to finish by talking more concretely about insider and outsider language. In my own stories, I usually try to create both insider and outsider points of view that I then contrast with one another. I think this is because of how I've been struck, throughout my experience in anthropology and life in general, by misunderstandings and the divergent ways different cultures invest meaning in what they say. The result is that I'm often looking for ways to describe the same objects and experiences while investing them with divergent value (as in my "different value" posts).
Here are a couple of basic principles to keep in mind. (You may notice that A and B are arbitrary, and can be switched without changing the basic principle.)
I tend to think about levels of detail and experience. If a character brings attention to the existence of something, then I automatically guess that person is an outsider; if instead a character expresses a judgment that presupposes the existence of something, I consider that evidence that the character is an insider.
Here are a couple of examples from fictional worlds I've been working with.
Example 1: (physical features)
The species called "Cochee-coco" has a noticeable facial feature. When a human sees this species, her first gut reaction is that they look like otters. However, she then notices that they have no eyebrows, but a bare patch of "pebbly" skin that goes from their eyes up to their ears. For the human character, this facial feature acts as a confirmation that these creatures are not familiar Earthlike creatures, but aliens that humankind has never encountered before. When a Cochee-coco sees this feature, she doesn't bring attention to the feature itself, but gives it its own special name (brow-character) and mentions what the qualities of this feature say about the people who have it: the two people she's looking at are quite masculine (indicating that masculinity is one of the meanings this feature can convey) and that they aren't related because the patterns they have in this skin are different (indicating that family relation is another meaning of the feature). You can see this is a deliberate departure from the Star Trek situation.
Example 2: (manners)
In my Varin world, there is a caste called the Imbati who are servants - but high-level servants, so they serve the nobility as body servants and bodyguards, but also serve as political assistants and secret-keepers. They also are lawyers (servants of the Courts) and bureaucrats (servants of the State). In their role as guardians of information, they've developed manners surrounding the asking of questions. As an author, I want to make it clear to my readers that this rule affects Imbati life, but I have to be careful about how I make it clear - because it doesn't make sense for either the nobility or the servants to "tell" the reader about the rule (here we are again with "show don't tell"). So in the point of view of a noble boy I have him asking the servant a question in exasperation, then saying, "no, don't answer that" and apologizing for having "poor Imbati manners." I'll also add that he can do this because he's more self-aware and respectful of servant ways than most of the nobility. Then in the servant point of view I have to treat it a different way. I have the servant character giving another character permission to ask a question, and then I have the servant notice the mischievous look his girlfriend gets "when about to ask a question without permission."
Example 3: (setting/practices)
The undercaste of my Varin world are downtrodden - no surprise there. But I've spent quite a long time looking for ways to push beyond the obvious evidence for their downtrodden-ness. I have decided that though they are offered health care at clinics, they prefer not to get it there because they're abused by the staff. But if it's normal for them not to go to doctors, it's unlikely that they'll mention it. Instead, since being sick is a departure from the norm, they would talk about what they actually do when they're sick (getting help from neighbors, drinking from natural mineral springs in the vicinity, etc.). A person who actually dealt with doctors on a daily basis through work or other means would be pitied.
We have to work hard when dealing with the portrayal of fictional worlds, because we can't rely on our subconscious sense of belonging to make the language behave the way it needs to. But as I mentioned in my post about the myth of the native speaker, subconscious instincts can be both help and problem.
When dealing with world cultures, as opposed to fictional cultures, it's often easy to rely on one's instinctive, unconscious abilities in pragmatics to express the meanings that we invest in objects, people, and practices. But keep in mind that we have to push away from our subconscious when dealing with other cultures, because it can diminish the effectiveness of our portrayal of them. This is where you see the real skill of a sensitive researcher come into play. No matter what culture you belong to, you need to spend some time closely observing, and especially listening to, the cultures you hope to portray from the inside. Authors who can keep themselves attentive to the meanings created by insiders of a world culture will be able to create a similar effect of their own, while at the same time bringing their own insights to the story.
It's something to think about.
I'm talking about the difference in perspective between someone on the inside of a cultural group, and someone on the outside. This is an issue I've given a great deal of thought to when working with my fictional societies, but it seems clear to me that it's relevant beyond just fiction, applying also to any time you're working with a real life social group, or speculated future group.
I think there would be little debate over the idea that in order to portray a social situation vividly, a writer needs to do research. If that situation happens to be fictional, the writer would do well to think through all the things they might discover if they did research. If we're talking about Japan, you'll want to know about the genkan where people take their shoes off before entering a house, and you'll want to know about manga and about the large number of convenience stores and vending machines, about enka singing and about Japanese-English pop rock, etc... all kinds of things that might go into creating a sense of the environment.
Research on its own, though, isn't enough. There's also point of view, which differs critically if you're a person who has grown up in this environment as opposed to being someone who visits it. Insiders versus outsiders.
In some cases the distinction may not even be as simple as just insiders and outsiders. In Japan, there is a very interesting cultural phenomenon I've noticed, of foreigners who live in Japan but who interact primarily with Japanese people who love to hang out with foreigners. Between the two groups a new group culture has been created: one that's uniquely Japanese and yet doesn't actually capture what someone would encounter if they lived with a host family. It's a "foreigner-Japanese" culture, or perhaps it's similar to the sort of mixing environment that has given rise to pidgins across the world. It was in this sort of context that I encountered Japanese people who told me that I spoke Japanese "too well." For whatever reason, my ability to understand Japanese was threatening to someone who wanted the different social contract that existed between the Japanese and non-Japanese participants in this social group. So being an "insider" in that specially defined cultural group is entirely different from being an "insider" or an "outsider" to Japanese society in a more general sense.
For writing purposes, I think it's important to ask the question: what makes the difference between an insider and an outsider perspective? We can feel the difference when we read it, but where does it actually arise?
It arises in language - specifically, the words and usages we choose when we write our stories.
If we're trying to achieve the sense of an insider perspective, either for a world culture or for a fictional culture, it's important to extend our research into the sensitive area of listening to language. It's easy to think of language as a tool for delivering messages, but it's easy to underestimate the sheer number of messages that it can deliver at once. The way that I ask someone to lend me a pen does more than just ask someone to lend me a pen. It conveys other messages about my perceived social relationship to the person I'm speaking to; it conveys the perceived importance of pens; it conveys the fact that in my society, pens exist; it conveys how I feel about being caught without one, etc. Sentences carry messages about judgment and emotion, and about how reality is divided into objects, concepts and categories.
I think the history of Anthropology is somewhat relevant to this question. The early anthropologists weren't exactly like Indiana Jones, but they typically considered the societies they visited, described and judged them from the perspective of their own cultural viewpoint (s). This was a context in which casting aspersions of savagery was far easier than it is today. More modern anthropology draws a distinction between "etic perspectives" and "emic perspectives," that is, outsider perspectives and insider perspectives. Modern anthropologists strive to understand how a group of people defines itself, rather than contenting themselves with observing details of its behavior and judging them from the outside.
Listening to language - i.e. listening to the group members talk about themselves and about outsiders - is critical to the process of understanding the group and how it defines itself. The listener (writer or anthropologist) can listen for overarching cultural metaphors and values, categories that are widely applied, how words are used to label people and objects and how that influences people's perception of them. Words that seem familiar can be applied to things in an unfamiliar way.
This is the kind of thing that we as writers can take advantage of as we write stories. We can tap into our understanding (from literature or personal experience) of the cultural metaphors of a group and bring those to bear when writing a character from that group. I remember discovering Kij Johnson's The Fox Woman and being impressed not just with the settings and objects that filled her fantasy Japan, but also the kinds of things that her characters worried about. The concerns they had, their definitions of success and failure, their justifications for action, and what motivated them to keep going forward in their lives, fit extremely well with my experiences of Japan, Japanese people and literature. It felt real, and spoke to me.
When we try to create an insider perspective, sometimes it's harder than other times. I suppose, though, that the object is not so much to pass for an insider as to create a story that speaks to readers in a meaningful way (interesting thoughts on this at OF Blog of the Fallen, here). And if the perspective is not quite what we'd expect from a full insider, that may indeed give us different kinds of insights - as I remarked in my discussion of what non-native speakers can bring to language and to stories.
I'd like to finish by talking more concretely about insider and outsider language. In my own stories, I usually try to create both insider and outsider points of view that I then contrast with one another. I think this is because of how I've been struck, throughout my experience in anthropology and life in general, by misunderstandings and the divergent ways different cultures invest meaning in what they say. The result is that I'm often looking for ways to describe the same objects and experiences while investing them with divergent value (as in my "different value" posts).
Here are a couple of basic principles to keep in mind. (You may notice that A and B are arbitrary, and can be switched without changing the basic principle.)
- An outsider (say, from culture A) will notice things in an unfamiliar culture (B) when things that are typically meaningful in culture A differ in culture B.
- An outsider (A) may not notice things that differ in culture B when those things are not meaningful in culture A - but if they are meaningful in culture B, the culture B insider will probably notice the difference.
- An insider (of culture B) will not remark on the existence of things/practices/people that are normal to him/her, except when 1) those things/practices/people are seen by the insider to have a distinct value within an ongoing activity, or 2) when those things/practices/people diverge in some way from the insider's expectation.
- Sometimes a shared activity between members of culture A and culture B will involve things/practices/people that are unremarkable to both parties, particularly if the shared activity is something the two cultures developed together (but aren't currently refining).
I tend to think about levels of detail and experience. If a character brings attention to the existence of something, then I automatically guess that person is an outsider; if instead a character expresses a judgment that presupposes the existence of something, I consider that evidence that the character is an insider.
Here are a couple of examples from fictional worlds I've been working with.
Example 1: (physical features)
The species called "Cochee-coco" has a noticeable facial feature. When a human sees this species, her first gut reaction is that they look like otters. However, she then notices that they have no eyebrows, but a bare patch of "pebbly" skin that goes from their eyes up to their ears. For the human character, this facial feature acts as a confirmation that these creatures are not familiar Earthlike creatures, but aliens that humankind has never encountered before. When a Cochee-coco sees this feature, she doesn't bring attention to the feature itself, but gives it its own special name (brow-character) and mentions what the qualities of this feature say about the people who have it: the two people she's looking at are quite masculine (indicating that masculinity is one of the meanings this feature can convey) and that they aren't related because the patterns they have in this skin are different (indicating that family relation is another meaning of the feature). You can see this is a deliberate departure from the Star Trek situation.
Example 2: (manners)
In my Varin world, there is a caste called the Imbati who are servants - but high-level servants, so they serve the nobility as body servants and bodyguards, but also serve as political assistants and secret-keepers. They also are lawyers (servants of the Courts) and bureaucrats (servants of the State). In their role as guardians of information, they've developed manners surrounding the asking of questions. As an author, I want to make it clear to my readers that this rule affects Imbati life, but I have to be careful about how I make it clear - because it doesn't make sense for either the nobility or the servants to "tell" the reader about the rule (here we are again with "show don't tell"). So in the point of view of a noble boy I have him asking the servant a question in exasperation, then saying, "no, don't answer that" and apologizing for having "poor Imbati manners." I'll also add that he can do this because he's more self-aware and respectful of servant ways than most of the nobility. Then in the servant point of view I have to treat it a different way. I have the servant character giving another character permission to ask a question, and then I have the servant notice the mischievous look his girlfriend gets "when about to ask a question without permission."
Example 3: (setting/practices)
The undercaste of my Varin world are downtrodden - no surprise there. But I've spent quite a long time looking for ways to push beyond the obvious evidence for their downtrodden-ness. I have decided that though they are offered health care at clinics, they prefer not to get it there because they're abused by the staff. But if it's normal for them not to go to doctors, it's unlikely that they'll mention it. Instead, since being sick is a departure from the norm, they would talk about what they actually do when they're sick (getting help from neighbors, drinking from natural mineral springs in the vicinity, etc.). A person who actually dealt with doctors on a daily basis through work or other means would be pitied.
We have to work hard when dealing with the portrayal of fictional worlds, because we can't rely on our subconscious sense of belonging to make the language behave the way it needs to. But as I mentioned in my post about the myth of the native speaker, subconscious instincts can be both help and problem.
When dealing with world cultures, as opposed to fictional cultures, it's often easy to rely on one's instinctive, unconscious abilities in pragmatics to express the meanings that we invest in objects, people, and practices. But keep in mind that we have to push away from our subconscious when dealing with other cultures, because it can diminish the effectiveness of our portrayal of them. This is where you see the real skill of a sensitive researcher come into play. No matter what culture you belong to, you need to spend some time closely observing, and especially listening to, the cultures you hope to portray from the inside. Authors who can keep themselves attentive to the meanings created by insiders of a world culture will be able to create a similar effect of their own, while at the same time bringing their own insights to the story.
It's something to think about.
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