Culture Share: Brazil - Write About Your City (A Challenge)

This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Fábio Fernandes discusses the city of São Paulo, Brazil


Write About Your City (A Challenge)
by
Fábio Fernandes



One of my most recent stories (still unpublished as I write this piece – June 3rd, 2011) is called The Remaker. It’s based on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote. Basically (easy, I won’t give any spoilers) it deals with a future writer who revels in rewriting works by famous authors of the past, and how this can be done (and why someone even would do this) in the mid-21st Century.

But, even though this is the major plot point in my story, it is by no means the most important thing of it - or, at least, it’s not that how I envisioned it to be. For this story takes place in São Paulo, Brazil.

Most of you who read these words have never been to São Paulo, or to any Brazilian city. I don’t know if you are aware of my country and how big it is, and of its diversity. To this day, I still find out people that sincerely believe all of us Brazilians live right in the middle of the jungle, and we are not familiar with electricity, for instance.

How, I thought when I was writing The Remaker, can I show people that São Paulo is a city almost as big as Tokyo and almost as full of cultural and ethnic diversity as New York City? Not an easy task without resorting to clichés. So I focused on the story. And so it resulted that the first version portrayed almost every scene happening in closed quarters: a university library, a mall, the apartment of the protagonist, a café in downtown, a quaint, old-fashioned printing press, a bookstore, and a few other places. Interesting markers, and, I thought then, good markers in that they would show the non-Brazilian audience that São Paulo is a city like any other civilized city in the Western world. Yay for us!

But I didn’t think it was enough. For, in doing so, how São Paulo would be any different from Now York, London, or Paris? (among other things, lots of cafés in those cities, if you ask me.)

Besides, São Paulo offers a particular challenge for the writer. If you already watched the beautiful animation RIO (if not, go see it, I strongly recommend it) , you will see the beaches, the Carnival, and the huge, beautiful statue of Christ the Redeemer. It is indeed a beautiful statue, and every time I go to Rio to visit my parents, I like to walk in the beach with my mom in the sunset to shoot the breeze, talk about family, personal projects, and life, drink coconut water and look at the statue from a distance – at night it is wonderfully illuminated. (You should visit it someday.)

But São Paulo is another thing entirely. It is a megalopolis, an industrial city. Not a tourist place – though it has some of the most interesting Modern Art museums of the Americas, as the MASP (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo), and its only visible monuments (aside from some very beautiful statues) are its huge buildings. The city is home to the main international event in Latin American athletics, the Saint Silvester Road Race, to the Brazilian Grand Prix of Formula 1, and several cultural events like the São Paulo International Film Festival (now in its 35th edition), the Virada Cultural (a once-a-year grand extravaganza featuring theater, classic and pop music, movies, book readings and signings – all for free during 24 hours straight), and the Gay Pride Parade, considered in 2006 the biggest pride parade of the world by the Guinness Book of World Records with an estimated 2.5 million participants. And did I mention that Brazil has the biggest Japanese community in the world outside Japan, most of which is based in São Paulo? And this is – really – just the tip of the iceberg.

The Remaker is in a slush pile of a magazine. I’m not sure if I managed to improve the perception of the foreign reader regarding the uniqueness of my adopted city. One thing is for sure: I still didn’t do everything I wanted to do with São Paulo. (Neither I was expecting to do it in one story.) But eventually I think I’ll be able to write a mosaic of stories in São Paulo, a set of near future stories where I can take the reader by the hand and show her the labyrinths of the largest city in the western and southern hemisphere, and the world's seventh largest city by population. It’s no small feat.


Fábio Fernandes is a writer living in São Paulo, Brazil. A university professor and translator, he is responsible for the Brazilian translations of several prominent SF novels including Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and A Clockwork Orange. His short stories have been published in Brazil, Portugal, Romania, England, and USA, and in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded. There's another story coming up in The Apex Book of World SF, Vol. II, ed. by Lavie Tidhar, later this year. He writes a column for SF Signal on e-books and e-readers.

"Foot Assignments" - how idioms and metaphors bring your world to life

I've written about idioms before. I've explained them to my kids plenty of times. "That's an expression," I'll say. "It means this..."

English is full of little expressions that aren't literal, and a lot of these make reference to metaphors. I have a list of English examples in the post linked above and I'm not going to do a lot here, but take for example "I'm off to the rat race." That expression is all about metaphor. A person is a rat. Life, or at least work, is a race for rats. The metaphor then comes along with a whole set of implications about how the person feels about heading off to "the rat race," that it's pointless, exhausting, demeaning, etc. Depending on the character of the person who uses them, and how that person feels about work, for example, the implications of the expression may be interpreted somewhat differently.

This is an enormous opportunity for worldbuilders.

Some idioms might be cute, and some might be serious, but any way you approach them, they are incredibly illuminating of a culture and characters who belong to it. I personally feel that idioms are so closely linked to the culture of which they are a part that, if they are used outside their original cultural context, they stick out of a story when I'm reading it. If you're creating a world, you should be giving serious attention to idiomatic expressions.

One type of idiomatic expression is the aphorism - a phrase intended to give people behavioral guidance. "The early bird gets the worm" is used constantly in English, but this set of words, in this order, is so recognizable as belonging to our culture that I would hope I'd never run across it in a story world not directly linked to our own. If there are no birds, or there are no worms, you're in serious trouble. And even if there are, and your people place value on rising early or acting early, don't use it just as is. Change it. What are the primary motivators for your people to be getting up early, or acting fast? Create something that makes reference to that. Off the top of my head I'll give you this: "First arrow names the kill." This would be a society in which people hunt with arrows and whoever has their arrow hit first gets to receive some kind of honor. I'd work out the details with naming as I went. Story cultures can also have their own special values that will be honored with aphorisms. In Varin, the servant caste is guided by the expression, "Imbati, love where you serve." This is a big deal for members of the caste who have to struggle with their own identity and with cruel masters, etc.

Another type of special phrase arises around extremely common activities. In this context I think instantly of the phrases "log on" and "log off"... I mean, seriously. "Log"? I'm thinking this use of "log" goes back to the idea of a captain's log, but what you've got now is something where the expression is used so often that we don't really think about what the individual words mean, only what the phrase as a whole refers to. Because of the underlying connection to idiosyncratic activities of our own world history, this kind of phrase can't always be imported wholesale into a story world (hey, there's another expression!). Whenever you have a really common activity in your world (and it may not be common or have an associated idiom in ours), see if there's a special way people would refer to it, and how that might be connected to cultural details or cultural metaphors. I have used two different phrases involving the word "foot" in this context. In "Cold Words" (Analog Oct 2009) I had Rulii use the phrase "take foot" instead of "arrive." In my Varin world the servants don't "run errands" but "take foot assignments." This kind of tiny alteration can really help your world feel like it doesn't have to owe anything to ours, and can also create a wonderfully unique atmosphere.

I found myself listening in the other day on a forum conversation about a world that was using Chinese culture as its basis, and the writer was very concerned about whether to use Chinese idioms. Here's another very fascinating question. My own bias would be to say this: if your culture isn't actually a version of a culture, don't use actual idioms from that culture. Those idioms are going to broadcast the fact that this culture is at very least a fantasy or science fictional analog of Chinese culture (to use this example). Then if other aspects of the culture are non-Chinese, or if the language they use is not Chinese-derivative, the idioms will stick out by a mile. You can always alter or "translate" idioms. If you want to retain a Chinese flavor, one thing you can always do is have idioms play the same cultural role in your story world as they do in China. This is a link on the meta-level that won't actually require you to link your story world directly to China, but will give it some flavor that people will link with China. After all, one of the parameters of idioms is how often they are used and what they are used for.

I'll let you all think about this while I go off and take some foot assignments.


Note for Wednesday Worldbuilding fans: I have a couple of new entries that have come in, and I am planning to take them on, I hope within the next couple of weeks. Thanks for submitting!

Using details for setting: insider details and audience details

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.

Syntax and Flow (Should we learn linguistics in school?)

Yesterday I came across a really interesting, long, detailed article in Writer's Digest which tried to analyze the concept of "flow" in writing. It was so interesting that I have to pass it on - the article is here.

Essentially the analysis put forward by the writer here is that readers feel the text "flow" well when the author keeps a high level of variety in the syntactic structure of sentences. That means sentences aren't just simple subject-verb constructions, or even subject-verb-conjunction-subject-verb ones (compound sentences) but also use subordinate clauses in various ways and keep everything mixed up. I highly recommend you read the entire article because it gives extensive examples of how famous authors do this.

It's fascinating. I've definitely noticed in my reading that there's a contrast between syntactically complex and simple prose. I agree with the author of the article that there is often an unfair distinction drawn in which "simple" is supposed to be better. However, simple words/concepts and simple syntactic structure are not at all the same, and don't come across the same way. What makes certain types of academic writing hard to digest is partly complex syntax, partly complex vocabulary, and partly the assumption that people already possess a large amount of previous knowledge.

It's worth learning your sentence structures, folks. It's worth having them under control, so they work for you and not the other way around.

I remember writing papers and having my parents' help back when I was in school. I remember the way they used to coach me, and how every so often I would think, "Is this wrong? Are they helping me too much?" But thinking back on it now I realize that they weren't really working with me on the concepts or vocabulary so much as they were coaching me to use more complex syntax. Suggesting, for example, that I start a sentence with "If.." or "When..." or "Because..." upon occasion rather than always starting with the subject. I can tell you that their contributions were very valuable to my internalizing complex syntax, which was really not something we dealt with much in class!

Sometimes I wonder how one might take English classes and move them a step or two closer to being linguistics classes. I know I've often wished that I could have learned in junior high or high school what I finally learned in graduate school about patterns of structure in language (including repetition and the sense of cohesion), and how they influence our perception of a story. The thing I would change first is that constant sense of "teaching the right way to do it." Prescriptive grammar irks me no end.

In our life and our reading, we're exposed to all kinds of language use. All kinds of dialects, dialogues, and discourses. Just about every social group has its own special language use that it uses to mark membership and get its jobs done. We should - we should - be trained to engage in discourses beyond the casual. But for me it's like the question of learning languages. Teach me a language, and another language, and I know two languages. Teach me how to recognize and understand the differences between the languages I know, and I can not only recognize new ones, but learn as many as I want, and choose how to put them into my own mouth and into my writing. I can write an academic paper, or write a casual email, or sit down and write a story that involves aliens and mark their language as unique by how they use English syntax.

That's when it gets fun, people.



I also wrote about syntax in my article How Syntax Can Help You!

How do you find the time to write?

I get asked this question a lot. I think it's a really important one for all sorts of writers, because unless you're a self-supporting full-time writer, you've always got something else going on. Maybe it's your day job. Maybe it's running a household and/or raising children, doing volunteer work, etc. (as it is for me). Maybe you're in school and at the whim of the school year, meeting everyone else's demands while trying to maintain your own goals.

Believe me, it can be hard.

In the end, the way you write is up to you (because who else understands your needs better?) - but I thought I'd share some things I have learned in the process of trying to balance full-time motherhood with writing.

1. Write when you can. Don't figure that it's a waste of time to start if you only have fifteen minutes, because if the Muse is on your side, those fifteen minutes could be gold. Over time, you can train yourself to improve your readiness for short stints like this.
2. Stick up for your writing time. One of the most important things in getting writing done is making sure that you - and as many people as possible around you - consider your writing a priority. If you don't insist that it be included in planning, it generally won't, and then the "gas law of activities" will most likely force you to covert writing stints or extremely late nights and exhaustion.
3. Write when you can't. Thinking counts too! If it's impossible for you to access a computer or even a notepad for several hours, play around with the story in your head. You can work on plot, character, planning, and even words this way. Store it up and get ready to let the fingers fly the next time you get time alone. This is also a great way to make sure you're getting exercise, because using your body gives your brain a great opportunity to play.
   
4. Watch out for distractions. Everyone is different, but I can't write (at least, I can't write new material) when the television is on, or when I'm listening to certain kinds of music. The fact is that the TV is a devourer of time, and you can lose two hours before you even realize it. Most often when people ask me how I can get so much done, I simply say, "I don't watch TV." This isn't strictly true - but I never ever turn on the TV for myself. I watch it with my kids, or when my husband is already watching. Yes, so I miss out on stuff, but I can always pick it up on DVD later and plan a time to watch. Activities that allow you to think are good; ones that fill your mind with fluff are bad. And you might be able to edit during a busy time even if you can't create.
   
5. Seek out inspiration. This is somewhat the reverse of #4 above. Take your writer's eye with you everywhere. Read books in your field, or watch television and movies that stimulate your writer's vision - none of that is wasted time.
6. Consider having goals. If you're in a really tough period - like that sleepless one I had for about a year after each of my kids was born - goals can be more demoralizing than helpful, so be careful with this one (see #7 below). However, I've found that having a loosely held goal rate keeps me from forgetting about the task at hand. A chapter a week. Or just a scene. A sentence. Or just "I'll think about it sometime today," if you're in a storm and need to keep the hatches battened down. I find I feel happier and get more done when my writing is a constant presence in my life.
   
7. Be patient with yourself. Keep in mind that every bit of your effort counts for something. Even just a few words that all seem wrong are helping you better understand what you'd prefer to do next time. Even a few stray thoughts that you can't properly remember are likely to contribute to your subconscious vision for a story. Frustration is normal, but don't chastise yourself for getting nothing done, or for getting less done than you'd hoped - that will most likely lead to you stopping altogether and waiting for a "time when I'm not busy." There is never a time when I'm not busy. So if I have to set my ideal schedule back by a week or two, I try to do so while saying to myself, "Well, there's always next week." Furthermore, there's no point in whipping yourself if you sit down at the computer and no words come out. Try to send your thoughts in another direction, or better yet, walk away from the scene and go for a walk where you can breathe fresh air and look at trees while you think.
8. Believe in yourself and in what you're trying to achieve. Remember that it is worthwhile. Writing is a noble calling, and a beautiful one. It is engrossing and enthralling. Yes, it's also hard, but this is a classic case of a skill best developed through practice, and through seeking out opportunities to learn and grow.

It's something to think about.

Culture Share: Bulgaria - May 6th Saint George, Martyr and Dragon Slayer

This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Harry Markov discusses Saint George's Day, May 6th, in Bulgaria.

May 6th is an important day for Bulgaria as we celebrate Saint George, who in Bulgaria is referred to as the Dragon Slayer or the Victorious (though literally from Bulgarian that one should be Victory Bringer). Saint George is the patron of farmers and shepherds. By default, all the people having names that remotely resemble George have a Name’s Day and celebrate: these include Georgy (Bulgarian version of said name ), Gergana, Gergina, Gloria, Gancho, Ginka, Ganka, Gabriella, Genady, Gosho, Genovena and many more.

Saint George’s Day is a big deal in Bulgaria for several reasons. For starters, Saint George is a saint of significance in the Christian pantheon. Because of his brilliant military career, Saint George’s Day also coincides with Day of Bravery and the Bulgarian Army. The tradition is alive and well - on the morning of May 6 all the news stations provide live feed from the army’s parade in the capitol as soldiers march to Alexandr Nevski’s Church. The ritual I noted this year was the blessing of the battle flags, though specific attention was paid to the Navy and their battle ships. I suppose that this specificity has to do with the legend that a healing water gushed after a church in the saint’s name was raised on the site where he killed the dragon.

It’s because of that particular feat why Saint George is one of the most recognizable saints in the Eastern-Orthodox mythology. In itself the legend doesn’t shock at all as it’s pretty straight to the point. In a true Greek fashion, we have a city located near a lake, which in turn was the home for this dragon. The dragon was a fierce poison breathing monster, whose breath could kill a person even from a solid distance. As a means to keep the beast away from the city, which had become the dragon’s go-to location for meals, the city ruler decided that each day a child would be left at the lake’s shore, inventing the first take-out delivery service for dragons anywhere (in Christian mythology).

Improper jokes aside, it was the city ruler’s young daughter to be eaten by the dragon, when Saint George appeared on a white horse and slew the dragon in the name of God as it emerged from the waters. This act – no one could previously kill the beast – was meant as a miracle so that God could convert the whole city into his followers. I suspect this particular myth served as the foundations for the knight on a white horse, who slays dragons and saves princesses.

Saint George is honored as a martyr. You remember the bit about his military career? Well, in fact, George served as a Roman soldier under the Emperor Diocletian. George proved himself to be a brave and honorable soldier, but that didn’t mean much when Diocletian decided to clean his army from Christians. Initially, George was picked to head the team that would be in charge of finding and killing Christians, when he himself revealed his love for God.

Diocletian tried to convert his best soldier to Roman beliefs, but when no offering convinced George to abandon Christ, tortures and decapitation followed. It was during these torture sessions that George performed countless miracles. He survived inhuman lashings, spending three days in a quicklime pit, poison and even swords grating his whole body. During his trial an angel appeared in order to heal George and in the end, at the command of the Emperor, he even resurrected a dead man.

Note: For the sake of being accurate, one must know that the “g” in all the names is not the “dʒ” sound like in the English George, but the normal “g” as in ‘guy’


Harry Markov lives in Varna, Bulgaria. This post originally appeared at his blog and is reprinted here with his permission.

Worldbuilding: New Discoveries (use your people!)

I made a discovery about my world this week. I was very excited - I don't make lots and lots of new discoveries in Varin, because I've been working with it for twenty years now.

Those of you who have been worldbuilding for a while shouldn't be surprised by this - there's always more to discover about a world, particularly if it's an extensive one. This discovery was prompted by my fabulous beta reader, Jamie Todd Rubin, who sensibly asked (not a verbatim quote), "If all the nobles are going to go around trying to kill each other's sons in this section, where are the police? What are they supposed to do about it?"

Good question! I'm going to start by addressing the Varin question, but then explain a bit about what I think it means for worldbuilding generally, so bear with me.

Now, it's not as though I don't understand how the Varin police work so much as a question of how they deal with this particular situation - a highly unusual one that only occurs during the fight over who will become the next Heir to the throne. The limiting factor in the police's effectiveness is that Varin, though it's a high-technology world of cavern cities, is in decline and doesn't have telephones (if you'd like me to explain that, let me know in comments, but it would require another post). So they have beat cops under normal circumstances.

And under abnormal circumstances...

Well, I've decided the Arissen-caste police can't condone this sort of assassination free-for-all, but they know they aren't going to be able to stop it from happening. So they're going to do a few things to enhance people's safety:

1. Close sections of the city to pedestrian traffic. No point in letting innocent bystanders become collateral damage here. All the nobles keep to a central set of neighborhoods on the fifth (deepest) level of Pelismara, and maybe one or two on the fourth level, so those neighborhoods are restricted to all but essential traffic during Heir Selection.

2. Increase the number of police on the beat in the core neighborhoods. Now, any time I decide to place people somewhere, I'm always interested in how they might be feeling about their new duties. The Arissen police feel jumpy about being assigned to these areas, and are rather irritated with the nobility for causing everyone so much trouble. It all seems rather pointless to them - but they would feel proud if they had the chance to catch a nobleman out, so they are quite attentive.

3. Rely on the servant caste to provide information. All of the nobles are constantly escorted by bodyguard/personal assistants of the Imbati servant caste. The Imbati are known for their truthfulness, if also for their adherence to Oaths of silence. The police find them frustrating, and know it's pretty pointless to question those who work directly for a noble suspect. But they can question the servants of the intended victims. Those servants may not be available for questioning right away, since they are obliged to deliver their masters to engagements on time, but they do provide excellent information.

Here's the thing. In Varin, because of the caste system which covers everybody, I always find myself trying to determine what kind of people to place where. Back when I was creating the pharmacy, it was "what caste is the person who will take the role of pharmacist"? The other day when I was creating a private restaurant for nobles, it was the same. In a restaurant for the general population, you'd find merchants - no big surprise. But merchants are too low in caste to interact directly with the nobility, so what does a private restaurant look like? Well, I decided it was more like a gentleman's club, populated by the servant caste and a few stray members of the artisan caste selected for their expertise (e.g. the sommelier was an artisan).

The things that people do for a living can be made to fit into the vocations of different castes, but not always in expected ways. Just because a person is a member of a particular caste group (or other social group), and his/her social role is restricted, doesn't mean that role must fall into a super-tiny set - at least in the complex urban setting I'm working with. When I place the people, and try to fit an Earthly role into the Varin setting, I learn a whole lot about how Varini conceptualize that role just by determining which castes are involved.

One entertaining thing I figured out when considering the police question was that there's an inherent conflict within the Arissen caste (which covers soldiers, police, firefighters, guards, etc.). The city police are supposed to keep the assassination free-for-all under control. They are Arissen, but so are the special bodyguards assigned to the candidates for Heir - and so are the assassins! There's a wealth of opportunity there for strife between castemates, as when the police are frustrated with the cavalier attitude of the special bodyguards who don't help collect evidence as well as they should, or when the police and bodyguards wonder how it is that the nobles keep finding willing assassins from among their ranks.

I love finding conflicts within social groups who are expected to be "of a certain type." They don't have to be the main focus of the story, or even in full view, but they feel real because that's what happens in social groups in real life.

When you're doing your worldbuilding, particularly if you're working with a model that involves "types" of people (be they aliens, elves, soldiers, etc.) keep your eye out for new discoveries. Often critique questions will help you to uncover things that you didn't see before. And often you'll find that the people you've created are incredible assets for helping you figure stuff out. Use them, and their judgments, as much as you can.