Today I went through and discovered all the wonderful comments you all had put here, which I hadn't yet had a chance to moderate! So now they are all up and I will respond... Thank you, and sorry. Coming off the completion of my novel I've been feeling a bit burnt out and I hope I'll be able to resume being on top of things very shortly.
This weekend I'm looking forward to attending FogCon in Walnut Creek, CA. I really hope any of you people who are local will be able to attend. I know there are going to be some stellar authors present. I have panels on Saturday and Sunday as follows:
Saturday 10:30 am Best Alien Ever
Come hear me join Ann Wilkes, Theresa Mecklenborg, and Chaz Brenchley talk about classic aliens and what makes aliens awesome.
Saturday 8:00 pm Reading
I'll be reading alongside Steve Boyett. I'm really looking forward to this because I'll be giving a sneak peek at Chapter 1 of my new novel.
Sunday 10:30 am Make Your Reading a Performance
Come discuss sharpening your reading skills with me, Mickey Phoenix, Madeleine Robins, Greer Woodward, and Ann Wilkes.
Sunday 1:00 pm Let's Design Some Aliens
Just what it says. Come design aliens with me, Vylar Kaftan, Erin Hoffman, and Phyllis Holliday!
I'm also back doing my weekly worldbuilding hangouts. I hope to have a couple of reports up in the next few days. This coming Wednesday, April 4, I'm going to be talking in detail about the world of Varin and about the novel I just finished - taking questions and specifically dealing with worldbuilding challenges I've worked on there. I hope you can join me!
Friday, March 30, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Maps: Why to use them, and how to create them in Excel
One of the things that I've discovered is very helpful for worldbuilding and description is the creation of maps. I am pretty good at visualizing things in my head - far better than my husband, for example, when someone says, "okay, so imagine if we put this piece of furniture here, and moved that one over there..." On the other hand, when it comes to imagining complex spaces and how lots of different rooms intersect and feed into each other, I can get lost.
So it was really obvious to me that I needed a map of Varin... I drew it out years ago, looking at all the different climatic regions and where the cities were located, where the Roads between the cities led, and what the coasts looked like.
I'm afraid that was a picnic, however, compared to trying to map the cities and the buildings. The city of Pelismara remains mostly in my head, because it is quite large and has five vertical levels. One day maybe I'll discover either that someone is dying to map it for me, or that there's some awesome computer program that can do it. For now, I have sketched maps of the grounds of the Eminence's Residence, the basic layout of the Residence itself and some of the landmarks here and there.
Yesterday, I decided I'd better tie down precisely the layout of the suite that my characters live in in my newly completed novel. It is very complex, and in order for it to work properly everything has to line up, because it has two areas: the noble family's dwelling, which has to be relatively compact compared to what people often imagine for rich people's homes, and then the servants' areas, which have to articulate with the rooms used by the nobility but also make independent sense. I was reviewing my mental sense of the place and realizing that I had two overlapping models for at least one of the rooms, and wasn't sure where closets were, etc. etc. So I sat down and tried to draw it with a pencil, and it was a mess. Once I'd re-sized things several times and started wanting to move things around a bit, I was ready to scream.
So I went into Excel. To use Excel for mapping, take all the columns and re-size them so that they are 0.2 inches wide. This will mean that instead of big long rectangles, you're working with tiny squares. I have tried this before but it was a bit unwieldy, and last night I discovered how to make it much easier. Don't try to use borders at first. Map your spaces using the "fill" tool. I used an algorithm of one square = one square foot. That way I could select a space, keep the mouse held down and look in the upper left corner and let Excel tell me exactly its dimensions (in columns and rows), and then fill it with color, move it around, expand it by using the format copying paintbrush, or shrink it by moving other pieces over it. Once you have you layout, add the borders at the end to mark walls and doors (if they are thin enough). I've actually had to count one-foot-thick stone walls, so I'm building them in the same way I did the rooms.
It was the easiest time I've ever had wrestling with this complex map. I hope the technique may help you with similar challenges.
So it was really obvious to me that I needed a map of Varin... I drew it out years ago, looking at all the different climatic regions and where the cities were located, where the Roads between the cities led, and what the coasts looked like.
I'm afraid that was a picnic, however, compared to trying to map the cities and the buildings. The city of Pelismara remains mostly in my head, because it is quite large and has five vertical levels. One day maybe I'll discover either that someone is dying to map it for me, or that there's some awesome computer program that can do it. For now, I have sketched maps of the grounds of the Eminence's Residence, the basic layout of the Residence itself and some of the landmarks here and there.
Yesterday, I decided I'd better tie down precisely the layout of the suite that my characters live in in my newly completed novel. It is very complex, and in order for it to work properly everything has to line up, because it has two areas: the noble family's dwelling, which has to be relatively compact compared to what people often imagine for rich people's homes, and then the servants' areas, which have to articulate with the rooms used by the nobility but also make independent sense. I was reviewing my mental sense of the place and realizing that I had two overlapping models for at least one of the rooms, and wasn't sure where closets were, etc. etc. So I sat down and tried to draw it with a pencil, and it was a mess. Once I'd re-sized things several times and started wanting to move things around a bit, I was ready to scream.
So I went into Excel. To use Excel for mapping, take all the columns and re-size them so that they are 0.2 inches wide. This will mean that instead of big long rectangles, you're working with tiny squares. I have tried this before but it was a bit unwieldy, and last night I discovered how to make it much easier. Don't try to use borders at first. Map your spaces using the "fill" tool. I used an algorithm of one square = one square foot. That way I could select a space, keep the mouse held down and look in the upper left corner and let Excel tell me exactly its dimensions (in columns and rows), and then fill it with color, move it around, expand it by using the format copying paintbrush, or shrink it by moving other pieces over it. Once you have you layout, add the borders at the end to mark walls and doors (if they are thin enough). I've actually had to count one-foot-thick stone walls, so I'm building them in the same way I did the rooms.
It was the easiest time I've ever had wrestling with this complex map. I hope the technique may help you with similar challenges.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Completion, and Resonance: why the first chapter is like the last
I finished For Love, For Power last night. It's hard to describe how I feel about it - not only is it a wonderful feeling, but the intense focus and drive required to get to this point has released, leaving me feeling rather shaken. Part of the reason for this is that I've been working on Varin for so long, but this is the very first time that I've completed a novel in this world using all of my skills as a mature writer.
When I got to the last chapter, something interesting happened. I discovered that I needed to go back and look at the first chapter again. In fact, I sent the first chapter off to my lovely and amazing friend Janice Hardy, and she gave me some comments about it, and then I revised the whole first chapter before beginning the last.
If you've been writing for any significant length of time, you've probably heard people say that last chapters should come full circle, and that they should resemble first chapters in some critical way. I think there are a couple of main reasons for this. The first is completion; the second is resonance.
Completion is what I'm calling the internal logic of story arcs, which brings the final chapter to reflect upon the first. The grand arc of the story will involve the inception of something - a quest, a goal, a process - in the first chapter, and then achieve completion in the last. The quest will be completed, the goal achieved, the process will resolve itself into a new state. If you get to your last chapter and you find that you've veered off into some place where the ending has no clear relation to what happened at the beginning, you might have a problem. In my own case, looking at where my protagonist arrived at the end of the story showed me where the endpoint of his overall arc was, and that helped me to go back and clarify what his initial state should be, and launch him into it more effectively.
Resonance is a language issue, and something that I feel instinctively. Essentially what it means is that little phrases from the beginning of the book should show up in your last chapter. These can be small, but they are terribly important for the overall effect on the reader. I'll give you two examples. In Chapter 1, Tagret's brother walks in on him while he's bathing to tell him about political developments, and with each advance in his logic he keeps saying, "and you know what that means..." Then in Chapter 36 he's whispering to Tagret and he says, "and you know what that means..." again. Part of the resonance comes from the repetition of the phrase. The other part comes from the change that the reader observes in Tagret's reaction to it, because in Chapter 1 he basically blows him off, while in Chapter 36 he responds, "Tell me." What it does is act like a waving flag to show the reader that what they expect has actually occurred: between the beginning and end of the book, things have fundamentally changed. And speaking of change, in the first chapter Tagret is going to a concert hoping that the music he hears will make a difference in his life - he has a moment where he whispers to himself (and to the evening), "Change everything." Then in the last chapter - and the last line - he gets to say "We're going to change everything." His entire thematic story arc is encapsulated there, and thus the parallel phrases cause a resonance that extends all the way back through the entire book.
It's something to think about.
When I got to the last chapter, something interesting happened. I discovered that I needed to go back and look at the first chapter again. In fact, I sent the first chapter off to my lovely and amazing friend Janice Hardy, and she gave me some comments about it, and then I revised the whole first chapter before beginning the last.
If you've been writing for any significant length of time, you've probably heard people say that last chapters should come full circle, and that they should resemble first chapters in some critical way. I think there are a couple of main reasons for this. The first is completion; the second is resonance.
Completion is what I'm calling the internal logic of story arcs, which brings the final chapter to reflect upon the first. The grand arc of the story will involve the inception of something - a quest, a goal, a process - in the first chapter, and then achieve completion in the last. The quest will be completed, the goal achieved, the process will resolve itself into a new state. If you get to your last chapter and you find that you've veered off into some place where the ending has no clear relation to what happened at the beginning, you might have a problem. In my own case, looking at where my protagonist arrived at the end of the story showed me where the endpoint of his overall arc was, and that helped me to go back and clarify what his initial state should be, and launch him into it more effectively.
Resonance is a language issue, and something that I feel instinctively. Essentially what it means is that little phrases from the beginning of the book should show up in your last chapter. These can be small, but they are terribly important for the overall effect on the reader. I'll give you two examples. In Chapter 1, Tagret's brother walks in on him while he's bathing to tell him about political developments, and with each advance in his logic he keeps saying, "and you know what that means..." Then in Chapter 36 he's whispering to Tagret and he says, "and you know what that means..." again. Part of the resonance comes from the repetition of the phrase. The other part comes from the change that the reader observes in Tagret's reaction to it, because in Chapter 1 he basically blows him off, while in Chapter 36 he responds, "Tell me." What it does is act like a waving flag to show the reader that what they expect has actually occurred: between the beginning and end of the book, things have fundamentally changed. And speaking of change, in the first chapter Tagret is going to a concert hoping that the music he hears will make a difference in his life - he has a moment where he whispers to himself (and to the evening), "Change everything." Then in the last chapter - and the last line - he gets to say "We're going to change everything." His entire thematic story arc is encapsulated there, and thus the parallel phrases cause a resonance that extends all the way back through the entire book.
It's something to think about.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
My thoughts on "Farewell Chapters"
I wrote a post over at my author website about how it feels to get so close to the end of a major project that takes years. I'm writing my three "farewell chapters" now, and it's a challenge. Go here for more... :)
TTYU Retro: Combating Writer's Envy
I was inspired by this post that I found through Elizabeth Craig on Twitter, a fantastic one called "When Going Green's Not So Cool: A Writer's Antidotes for Envy". My favorite antidotes were: enjoying the things you love, and exercising. I highly recommend those for all writers, especially since a lot of us (including me) need to exercise more.
I personally find that I'm not immune to jealousy, but that my jealousy is rather limited in scope. My jealousy will make me feel upset at myself, but not angry with others (I feel lucky about this). Even when I notice a bestseller whose work I don't particularly like, I figure that person has found something that a lot of people like - I just may not have grasped what that thing is.
The other thing I continue to believe is that writing is not a competition. It's not about whether my writing is better than someone else's. It's not about two writers with similar styles trying to fit into the same too-small market niche. It's simply about whether I find an editor who finds that my work speaks to him/her, and whether readers then are willing to pay for what I do. Honestly - why should I worry about whether I'm similar to my favorite authors? When I read, I don't say, "Ursula LeGuin is my sf author, and there isn't room for anyone else." The more someone's work is like hers, the more likely I will enjoy it too. Reading appetite is not finite. Reading quality work does not satiate; it only makes you hungrier for more brilliance.
The last thing I hope writers will remember is that statistics only operate effectively on large numbers. The fact that 99% of submissions get rejected at a particular magazine should not deter you; whether your story succeeds is about your story, and that editor, and it has nothing to do with anyone else.
Keep up hope, and keep submitting. So long as there are readers hungry for stories, there is room for more authors.
I personally find that I'm not immune to jealousy, but that my jealousy is rather limited in scope. My jealousy will make me feel upset at myself, but not angry with others (I feel lucky about this). Even when I notice a bestseller whose work I don't particularly like, I figure that person has found something that a lot of people like - I just may not have grasped what that thing is.
The other thing I continue to believe is that writing is not a competition. It's not about whether my writing is better than someone else's. It's not about two writers with similar styles trying to fit into the same too-small market niche. It's simply about whether I find an editor who finds that my work speaks to him/her, and whether readers then are willing to pay for what I do. Honestly - why should I worry about whether I'm similar to my favorite authors? When I read, I don't say, "Ursula LeGuin is my sf author, and there isn't room for anyone else." The more someone's work is like hers, the more likely I will enjoy it too. Reading appetite is not finite. Reading quality work does not satiate; it only makes you hungrier for more brilliance.
The last thing I hope writers will remember is that statistics only operate effectively on large numbers. The fact that 99% of submissions get rejected at a particular magazine should not deter you; whether your story succeeds is about your story, and that editor, and it has nothing to do with anyone else.
Keep up hope, and keep submitting. So long as there are readers hungry for stories, there is room for more authors.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Link: How did Shakespeare's English sound?
I found this great article today about the sound of Shakespeare's English in his own time. You should go check it out and hear the three recordings they've put up on the site. Real fun!
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Religion in Worldbuilding: A Google+ Hangout Report
This was an engaging, in-depth discussion. I was joined by Barbara Webb, Brian Dolton, Glenda Pfeiffer, Harry Markov, Jaleh Dragich, Jules Sharp, and Bryan Thomas Schmidt. As Harry drops in from Bulgaria and Jules from Australia, one of us remarked that "the sun never sets on Juliette's hangouts." I confess I loved this. Now, on to the discussion!
I began by mentioning that the first time I became aware of the possibility of using religion in fictional worlds was when I read Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. With the enormous influence that religion has on culture, behavior and discourse, it's actually surprising that more secondary worlds don't feature it. Harry registers the opinion that if you're writing in a secondary world, religion should be present, at least in the background. He mentioned that magic and religion were actually seen as two sides of the same phenomenon, even in the real world, and that in fantasy it makes sense to draw a link between magical power and the priesthood. He's not actively using religion in his current writing, but does have an urban fantasy where people have magic powers that are linked to deities. In another of his worlds, religion is outlawed because of the history of persecution associated with it.
Barbara is fascinated by religion and its use in fantasy, but feels that not enough of a line is drawn in fantastical settings between faith and religion. In a world where gods are real, is there any faith? What is "faith" in such a context? Also, she mentions that churches are often taken for granted as a part of religion, when they need not necessarily be so.
Brian says that in his world, people believe in the religion and its powers as real, but readers are left to decide for themselves whether the religion is "real" or not - and the evidence is ambiguous between one conclusion and the other. He mentioned that he finds it annoying when he sees worlds where everyone follows the same religion - particularly if they all follow it the same way.
Monoculture in religion (as in any context) may be a sign of lazy worldbuilding.
But not necessarily always. I described my own development of the Varin world and its religions: the general religion of Varin is based on the stars, whereas the undercaste has its own religion based on the glowing trees and will-o'-the-wisps that are found there. The first religion is entirely faith-based, and the second is based on fact, but nobody realizes it. There was a point, however, in my development of the world, where I realized everyone except the undercaste held the same religious beliefs, and instead of diversifying them, I decided to use this as a basis for backstory. As a result, my sense of the origins of the Varini entirely changed. At this point they are former religious fugitives from lands on the other side of their planet - but their religion was shared, as was their persecution, and that was how a multinational group of people wound up populating Varin and having a single shared religion.
Jaleh told us that she feels strange using Christianity-based religion. She has a story set in something like the real world, but with a "tweaked" real-world religion. "The Church" in this context is like the Catholic church, but only loosely. It's in the background, though people use its power and authority to influence broader events in a sort of inquisition. There is a delicate balance between chaos and order which involves divine entities in combination with natural forces, and people who work to keep this balance. The bad guy, meanwhile, uses the Church's name to create chaos. She also sees it as having a Celtic influence as in Lugh and Balor.
Harry remarked that often people will have a church as the representative of organized religion and its power, but that this is very Christianity-based and not all religions in the world are like this - so similarly, not all religions in secondary worlds should be like this.
If you're designing a religion, it's good to consider whether there is a "Church," and whether there are source texts like the Bible or Koran, the Buddhist sutras, etc. Consider also where the authority lies, and who is licensed to speak for God, or channel a deity of one form or another. Is the divine force invisible, unified and everywhere? Is it linked to physical or celestial phenomena, or objects of special significance (for example, relics or natural features like trees or stones)? Are its deities patrons of particular activities in daily life? In the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, deities are relatives of the protagonist! It's also important to ask who and what organize behavior. Does the religion set out a set of ethical and moral rules? What kind of politeness behavior does it require? What kinds of taboos does it establish? Keep in mind that religion has an enormous effect on the way that people think and speak - this is a great tool for creating flavor in your world.
Barbara remarked that she doesn't often see enough variety in taboo. She feels that too often, people simply follow the Abrahamic taboos without questioning or varying them, and that there isn't enough questioning of why taboos exist. A lot of Judaic taboos were originally about cleanliness and stopping disease.
Glenda pointed out that some taboos are explicitly targeted at competing religions, such as the way the First Commandment states "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."
Commandments are an excellent example of how behavior can be regulated by a religion, but it isn't always necessary to have them put in such a fixed format. A lot of religions function on the basis of traditional daily practices that aren't written down.
Harry said that he felt the commandments were a way for people to exercise control over society in ancient times, thus creating and contributing to a healthy and functioning society. Tying an ethical and moral code and to something beyond the self with implied punishment for transgression probably made a lot of sense in societies that didn't yet have laws and a legal system.
In fact, there can be an inherent conflict between the ethical and moral codes of behavior based on a particular religion, and those of a secular legal system - we can see that in the conflict between the Roman laws and the Christian tenets which is recounted in the Bible (not to mention that we can see it happening around us right now).
Are there rewards or punishments? Barbara asked. As you work to create your religions, consider what those might be. Are there Heaven and Hell? Is there shunning and ostracism (Jaleh)? How about karma (Harry)?
Next we turned to the question of religion's influence on language. Taboo is a salient example, but metaphor is also heavily influenced. I read a fantastic article recently in National Geographic talking about the way the King James Bible influences the way we speak today (read it here). This is the basis for what I call "secular religion," the way that religious imagery is retained in language for emotional and metaphorical use even if the beliefs themselves are not held by the people using the expressions.
Brian noted that most religions have names for their god or gods, but that Christianity does not (or at least not one that can be used), something which he called a "huge linguistic coup" because it allowed them to claim other deities as instances of their own. Harry noted that it can be difficult to use the singular word god without appearing to refer to the Christian God, and that people go out of their way to specify "gods" or "the divine" when trying to describe this without confusion.
Of course, we then got the question of swearing by gods. This was so much fun that we decided to do Swearing generally at (today's) hangout. There are a thousand examples. "Goodness gracious me!" "Oh God" "For the love of God" People invoke gods often, and often without even thinking about it. Jaleh says she knows a bunch of old English curses because her husband is involved in the reenactment of an ancient battle. Jules commented on books that feature religion and swearing, in that it can be difficult to attain the visceral effect of swearing when all of your words are essentially translated. One way to counteract this is to give your swear words a lot of surrounding grammatical support that resembles how such words are used in our own world. "Holy ____" is pretty darn generic, though, so don't stop there. "____'s bones" or "____'s boots" can work, and so can "___'s balls" or "as ____ is my witness." It's important to have a diversity of these constructions, and to think about how they might relate to class.
I did a bit of explaining about how people swear in Varin. Since they have nine different deities, each of which is patron of a different thing, they swear by the deity most relevant to what they are thinking of at the time. Romantic love it will be Sirin and Eyn, mercy it will be Heile, anger it will be Varin or Plis, justice it will be Mai. Because people swear without thinking, often which god they choose to swear by will divulge something about what they are feeling that they may not be consciously willing to divulge, as when one of my characters involuntarily swears by the Twins (who are patrons of homosexual love as well as other things like balance and loyalty) in an awkward circumstance.
Bryan Thomas Schmidt stopped in at the very end to talk about his book The Worker Prince, which is a retelling of the story of Moses and deals with questions of ideological bigotry. He said it's important to deal with faith, even if it's not necessarily actual real-world religion.
Thanks to everyone who participated. I'm now going to have to shift straight over into discussing Swearing at the hangout. I hope to see you there!
I began by mentioning that the first time I became aware of the possibility of using religion in fictional worlds was when I read Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. With the enormous influence that religion has on culture, behavior and discourse, it's actually surprising that more secondary worlds don't feature it. Harry registers the opinion that if you're writing in a secondary world, religion should be present, at least in the background. He mentioned that magic and religion were actually seen as two sides of the same phenomenon, even in the real world, and that in fantasy it makes sense to draw a link between magical power and the priesthood. He's not actively using religion in his current writing, but does have an urban fantasy where people have magic powers that are linked to deities. In another of his worlds, religion is outlawed because of the history of persecution associated with it.
Barbara is fascinated by religion and its use in fantasy, but feels that not enough of a line is drawn in fantastical settings between faith and religion. In a world where gods are real, is there any faith? What is "faith" in such a context? Also, she mentions that churches are often taken for granted as a part of religion, when they need not necessarily be so.
Brian says that in his world, people believe in the religion and its powers as real, but readers are left to decide for themselves whether the religion is "real" or not - and the evidence is ambiguous between one conclusion and the other. He mentioned that he finds it annoying when he sees worlds where everyone follows the same religion - particularly if they all follow it the same way.
Monoculture in religion (as in any context) may be a sign of lazy worldbuilding.
But not necessarily always. I described my own development of the Varin world and its religions: the general religion of Varin is based on the stars, whereas the undercaste has its own religion based on the glowing trees and will-o'-the-wisps that are found there. The first religion is entirely faith-based, and the second is based on fact, but nobody realizes it. There was a point, however, in my development of the world, where I realized everyone except the undercaste held the same religious beliefs, and instead of diversifying them, I decided to use this as a basis for backstory. As a result, my sense of the origins of the Varini entirely changed. At this point they are former religious fugitives from lands on the other side of their planet - but their religion was shared, as was their persecution, and that was how a multinational group of people wound up populating Varin and having a single shared religion.
Jaleh told us that she feels strange using Christianity-based religion. She has a story set in something like the real world, but with a "tweaked" real-world religion. "The Church" in this context is like the Catholic church, but only loosely. It's in the background, though people use its power and authority to influence broader events in a sort of inquisition. There is a delicate balance between chaos and order which involves divine entities in combination with natural forces, and people who work to keep this balance. The bad guy, meanwhile, uses the Church's name to create chaos. She also sees it as having a Celtic influence as in Lugh and Balor.
Harry remarked that often people will have a church as the representative of organized religion and its power, but that this is very Christianity-based and not all religions in the world are like this - so similarly, not all religions in secondary worlds should be like this.
If you're designing a religion, it's good to consider whether there is a "Church," and whether there are source texts like the Bible or Koran, the Buddhist sutras, etc. Consider also where the authority lies, and who is licensed to speak for God, or channel a deity of one form or another. Is the divine force invisible, unified and everywhere? Is it linked to physical or celestial phenomena, or objects of special significance (for example, relics or natural features like trees or stones)? Are its deities patrons of particular activities in daily life? In the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, deities are relatives of the protagonist! It's also important to ask who and what organize behavior. Does the religion set out a set of ethical and moral rules? What kind of politeness behavior does it require? What kinds of taboos does it establish? Keep in mind that religion has an enormous effect on the way that people think and speak - this is a great tool for creating flavor in your world.
Barbara remarked that she doesn't often see enough variety in taboo. She feels that too often, people simply follow the Abrahamic taboos without questioning or varying them, and that there isn't enough questioning of why taboos exist. A lot of Judaic taboos were originally about cleanliness and stopping disease.
Glenda pointed out that some taboos are explicitly targeted at competing religions, such as the way the First Commandment states "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."
Commandments are an excellent example of how behavior can be regulated by a religion, but it isn't always necessary to have them put in such a fixed format. A lot of religions function on the basis of traditional daily practices that aren't written down.
Harry said that he felt the commandments were a way for people to exercise control over society in ancient times, thus creating and contributing to a healthy and functioning society. Tying an ethical and moral code and to something beyond the self with implied punishment for transgression probably made a lot of sense in societies that didn't yet have laws and a legal system.
In fact, there can be an inherent conflict between the ethical and moral codes of behavior based on a particular religion, and those of a secular legal system - we can see that in the conflict between the Roman laws and the Christian tenets which is recounted in the Bible (not to mention that we can see it happening around us right now).
Are there rewards or punishments? Barbara asked. As you work to create your religions, consider what those might be. Are there Heaven and Hell? Is there shunning and ostracism (Jaleh)? How about karma (Harry)?
Next we turned to the question of religion's influence on language. Taboo is a salient example, but metaphor is also heavily influenced. I read a fantastic article recently in National Geographic talking about the way the King James Bible influences the way we speak today (read it here). This is the basis for what I call "secular religion," the way that religious imagery is retained in language for emotional and metaphorical use even if the beliefs themselves are not held by the people using the expressions.
Brian noted that most religions have names for their god or gods, but that Christianity does not (or at least not one that can be used), something which he called a "huge linguistic coup" because it allowed them to claim other deities as instances of their own. Harry noted that it can be difficult to use the singular word god without appearing to refer to the Christian God, and that people go out of their way to specify "gods" or "the divine" when trying to describe this without confusion.
Of course, we then got the question of swearing by gods. This was so much fun that we decided to do Swearing generally at (today's) hangout. There are a thousand examples. "Goodness gracious me!" "Oh God" "For the love of God" People invoke gods often, and often without even thinking about it. Jaleh says she knows a bunch of old English curses because her husband is involved in the reenactment of an ancient battle. Jules commented on books that feature religion and swearing, in that it can be difficult to attain the visceral effect of swearing when all of your words are essentially translated. One way to counteract this is to give your swear words a lot of surrounding grammatical support that resembles how such words are used in our own world. "Holy ____" is pretty darn generic, though, so don't stop there. "____'s bones" or "____'s boots" can work, and so can "___'s balls" or "as ____ is my witness." It's important to have a diversity of these constructions, and to think about how they might relate to class.
I did a bit of explaining about how people swear in Varin. Since they have nine different deities, each of which is patron of a different thing, they swear by the deity most relevant to what they are thinking of at the time. Romantic love it will be Sirin and Eyn, mercy it will be Heile, anger it will be Varin or Plis, justice it will be Mai. Because people swear without thinking, often which god they choose to swear by will divulge something about what they are feeling that they may not be consciously willing to divulge, as when one of my characters involuntarily swears by the Twins (who are patrons of homosexual love as well as other things like balance and loyalty) in an awkward circumstance.
Bryan Thomas Schmidt stopped in at the very end to talk about his book The Worker Prince, which is a retelling of the story of Moses and deals with questions of ideological bigotry. He said it's important to deal with faith, even if it's not necessarily actual real-world religion.
Thanks to everyone who participated. I'm now going to have to shift straight over into discussing Swearing at the hangout. I hope to see you there!
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