I highly recommend this article by eminent science fiction author Mike Flynn - and not just because I appear in it several times! Mike surveyed many of his friends to learn where they got their ideas for stories, and he's got a lengthy, wonderful and inspiring post for you all to enjoy.
Check it out!
Friday, April 27, 2012
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Link: Language is cultural, not biological
I loved this article, which I received from NPR today. Linguist Daniel Everett has worked for years with the Pirahã people of the Amazon, and become convinced that culture is the defining shaper of language, rather than some inborn biological structure (take that, Universal Grammar!).
A quote:
In between, Everett found that the Pirahãs have no words for "please," "thank you," "you're welcome" or "I'm sorry." They have no color words, but instead deploy phrases such as "it is temporarily being immature" for green. They have a limited kinship term system, one that does not distinguish between parent and grandparent or brother and sister. And their sentences lack recursion. This means there are no embedded clauses, as in the English sentence "Bring me the fish that Mary caught."
And this doesn't mean that their language is somehow "primitive." Read the article and learn why. I'm going to be looking forward to seeing more articles in this series.
A quote:
In between, Everett found that the Pirahãs have no words for "please," "thank you," "you're welcome" or "I'm sorry." They have no color words, but instead deploy phrases such as "it is temporarily being immature" for green. They have a limited kinship term system, one that does not distinguish between parent and grandparent or brother and sister. And their sentences lack recursion. This means there are no embedded clauses, as in the English sentence "Bring me the fish that Mary caught."
And this doesn't mean that their language is somehow "primitive." Read the article and learn why. I'm going to be looking forward to seeing more articles in this series.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Psychology in Worldbuilding: a Google+ hangout report
We had an interesting discussion of psychology in worldbuilding, focusing mainly on the question of how psychology relates characters to their surrounding circumstances. I was joined by Jaleh Dragich, Kyle Aisteach, Brian Dolton, and Glenda Pfeiffer. There were some technical difficulties which meant that Erin Peterson only joined us for a few seconds, and Deirdre Murphy couldn't get in. I wish I could explain these! Technology can be fickle at times, so sorry about that.
The idea for the discussion came from my recent blog post about character intelligence. My guests called it the "idiot plot," where otherwise intelligent people suddenly make really bad decisions, or act in a way inconsistent with their general level of intelligence. Jaleh mentioned an example from Body of Proof where a doctor sees her love interest go down with a knife to the gut and just sits there trembling and saying "hang on." She's a doctor. She's trained for this kind of thing, you know?
Over the course of the discussion, we discussed three major layers of character psychology, all of which are very valuable to consider as you're teasing out character motivations for a story. For the purposes of this report, I'll list them up front and then elaborate on the discussion below. They are:
Of course, there are plenty of reactions that are learned, or are responses to experience. This is the backstory layer, and in this the group decided to include cultural knowledge as well as personal life experience. A character's cultural background sets up expectations that let them define what is appropriate or inappropriate behavior, what kind of people are worthy or rude, etc. This kind of thing makes an enormous difference in how they will react to events. I also include Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in this layer, because it sets up a set of fundamental fears and intense reactions as a result of specific traumatic experiences.
I have a character, Tamelera, who suffers a great deal of stress and fear because of her husband's abuse. She is disinclined to trust men - and as a result, in the course of the story she has difficulty trusting her male servant, especially since he was chosen for her by her husband. Interestingly, however, once she comes to trust him on the basis of his servant status, this allows her to get past her fear of men in his particular case.
Kyle mentioned a character he's worked with who is a Chinese man set in a world where the US has lost a war with China (and atrocities have been committed on both sides). The main character is angry with Americans for killing his parents, which sets him up for a struggle when he must work with an American character who was involved in the attack that killed him, in order to save Americans... Kyle is making the character's job a bit easier by giving the two a common enemy (a good strategy when trying to reconcile enemies). In this vein I mentioned Ken Liu's Hugo and Nebula-nominated story, "The Man who Ended History." If you're looking for an example of a story with complex character psychology, this is an excellent example.
Family issues can also be central to a character's psychology. Kyle gave us an interesting personal example involving Murder in the Cathedral. Apparently he had a low opinion of the three knights involved in the assassination when he was involved in the play, but his opinion changed when he learned he was actually distantly descended from them. Jaleh talked about working with a character whose father had been publicly declared a traitor and executed, which gave her a far better reason for a second character to get involved and care for her - Jaleh simply had the second character be a person formerly acquainted with the character's father. This transformed the narrative because it gave the characters proper motivation to care about one another.
This brings us to the layer of current circumstances, which includes any kind of events that have occurred within the course of the story, but particularly those which have just occurred and which influence a character's mental state and agitation level. Kyle related to the problem of how mental states can influence behavior, noting that severe stress can cause people to make idiotic decisions. He said he wouldn't recommend that someone climb out after swimming the English channel and then try to perform brain surgery.
Mental states can also influence moment-by-moment plausibility of characters' reactions. My character Tagret gets caught in a mass panic trying to get out of the ballroom, and when he gets home, the First Houseman tells him something has happened with their caretaker (a servant). At that point, due to previous events, Tagret is very agitated and worrying about people in the panic, and he immediately makes an incorrect guess that the caretaker was somehow caught in the panic. When the First Houseman tells him that the caretaker has resigned his position, it takes a second for Tagret even to realize what he's talking about. Characters need to change gears sometimes without being rushed. In fact, the importance of ongoing mental states is one of the things that motivates me to write in strict chronological order, rather than hopping around through the story. Jaleh notes that it's still important even if you work like she does, filling in the early parts of the story to get to a fully envisioned and written ending. (Kyle notes that he does this too).
If you're looking to have mental illness come into the picture, I recommend you do some specific research on different kinds of conditions and their symptoms. A great example of a book that features a lot of carefully integrated mental illnesses is C.S. Friedman's This Alien Shore, which even includes a planet where everyone has some kind of mental problem - and those are perceived as sources of unique talent. My own experience was that my antagonist, Nekantor, began just as a sort of vaguely mean and evil guy, but became a far more interesting character when I figured out that he was mentally ill with paranoia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. If you want your characters to be "insane," do your research - you'll be able to take their behaviors a lot further without losing plausibility, because they will have a grounding in actual psychology.
This brought us to the question of antagonist psychology. Kyle said, "Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, 'I'm going to be evil today.'" Brian says the antagonist always should see himself as the hero of his own stories, and observes that people generally have reasons for what they are doing - even terrorists. I urge all of you reading this not ever to allow yourself a blind spot for the psychology and motivations of your antagonist. One of my guests (Jaleh?) recommended the following book: Bullies, Bastards, and Bitches: How to write the bad guys of fiction. Kyle mentioned the bad guys of Greek tragedy, who had to be heroes, because they would change from good guy to bad guy between one play and another. Antigone features a conflict between someone doing the right thing for the country and someone doing the right thing for her family.
Do look beyond protagonists and antagonists, too. Not every character needs to have a complex psychology, but knowing the thoughts and motives of secondary characters can really lift the interactions you portray from simplistic to complex and real-seeming.
Thanks again to all my guests - and to my readers, I hope to see you at a future hangout!
The idea for the discussion came from my recent blog post about character intelligence. My guests called it the "idiot plot," where otherwise intelligent people suddenly make really bad decisions, or act in a way inconsistent with their general level of intelligence. Jaleh mentioned an example from Body of Proof where a doctor sees her love interest go down with a knife to the gut and just sits there trembling and saying "hang on." She's a doctor. She's trained for this kind of thing, you know?
Over the course of the discussion, we discussed three major layers of character psychology, all of which are very valuable to consider as you're teasing out character motivations for a story. For the purposes of this report, I'll list them up front and then elaborate on the discussion below. They are:
- Fundamental personality
- Backstory/personal history
- Recent current circumstances
Of course, there are plenty of reactions that are learned, or are responses to experience. This is the backstory layer, and in this the group decided to include cultural knowledge as well as personal life experience. A character's cultural background sets up expectations that let them define what is appropriate or inappropriate behavior, what kind of people are worthy or rude, etc. This kind of thing makes an enormous difference in how they will react to events. I also include Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in this layer, because it sets up a set of fundamental fears and intense reactions as a result of specific traumatic experiences.
I have a character, Tamelera, who suffers a great deal of stress and fear because of her husband's abuse. She is disinclined to trust men - and as a result, in the course of the story she has difficulty trusting her male servant, especially since he was chosen for her by her husband. Interestingly, however, once she comes to trust him on the basis of his servant status, this allows her to get past her fear of men in his particular case.
Kyle mentioned a character he's worked with who is a Chinese man set in a world where the US has lost a war with China (and atrocities have been committed on both sides). The main character is angry with Americans for killing his parents, which sets him up for a struggle when he must work with an American character who was involved in the attack that killed him, in order to save Americans... Kyle is making the character's job a bit easier by giving the two a common enemy (a good strategy when trying to reconcile enemies). In this vein I mentioned Ken Liu's Hugo and Nebula-nominated story, "The Man who Ended History." If you're looking for an example of a story with complex character psychology, this is an excellent example.
Family issues can also be central to a character's psychology. Kyle gave us an interesting personal example involving Murder in the Cathedral. Apparently he had a low opinion of the three knights involved in the assassination when he was involved in the play, but his opinion changed when he learned he was actually distantly descended from them. Jaleh talked about working with a character whose father had been publicly declared a traitor and executed, which gave her a far better reason for a second character to get involved and care for her - Jaleh simply had the second character be a person formerly acquainted with the character's father. This transformed the narrative because it gave the characters proper motivation to care about one another.
This brings us to the layer of current circumstances, which includes any kind of events that have occurred within the course of the story, but particularly those which have just occurred and which influence a character's mental state and agitation level. Kyle related to the problem of how mental states can influence behavior, noting that severe stress can cause people to make idiotic decisions. He said he wouldn't recommend that someone climb out after swimming the English channel and then try to perform brain surgery.
Mental states can also influence moment-by-moment plausibility of characters' reactions. My character Tagret gets caught in a mass panic trying to get out of the ballroom, and when he gets home, the First Houseman tells him something has happened with their caretaker (a servant). At that point, due to previous events, Tagret is very agitated and worrying about people in the panic, and he immediately makes an incorrect guess that the caretaker was somehow caught in the panic. When the First Houseman tells him that the caretaker has resigned his position, it takes a second for Tagret even to realize what he's talking about. Characters need to change gears sometimes without being rushed. In fact, the importance of ongoing mental states is one of the things that motivates me to write in strict chronological order, rather than hopping around through the story. Jaleh notes that it's still important even if you work like she does, filling in the early parts of the story to get to a fully envisioned and written ending. (Kyle notes that he does this too).
If you're looking to have mental illness come into the picture, I recommend you do some specific research on different kinds of conditions and their symptoms. A great example of a book that features a lot of carefully integrated mental illnesses is C.S. Friedman's This Alien Shore, which even includes a planet where everyone has some kind of mental problem - and those are perceived as sources of unique talent. My own experience was that my antagonist, Nekantor, began just as a sort of vaguely mean and evil guy, but became a far more interesting character when I figured out that he was mentally ill with paranoia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. If you want your characters to be "insane," do your research - you'll be able to take their behaviors a lot further without losing plausibility, because they will have a grounding in actual psychology.
This brought us to the question of antagonist psychology. Kyle said, "Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, 'I'm going to be evil today.'" Brian says the antagonist always should see himself as the hero of his own stories, and observes that people generally have reasons for what they are doing - even terrorists. I urge all of you reading this not ever to allow yourself a blind spot for the psychology and motivations of your antagonist. One of my guests (Jaleh?) recommended the following book: Bullies, Bastards, and Bitches: How to write the bad guys of fiction. Kyle mentioned the bad guys of Greek tragedy, who had to be heroes, because they would change from good guy to bad guy between one play and another. Antigone features a conflict between someone doing the right thing for the country and someone doing the right thing for her family.
Do look beyond protagonists and antagonists, too. Not every character needs to have a complex psychology, but knowing the thoughts and motives of secondary characters can really lift the interactions you portray from simplistic to complex and real-seeming.
Thanks again to all my guests - and to my readers, I hope to see you at a future hangout!
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Tomorrow's hangout on Google+
Please come and join me on Google+ tomorrow at 11am PDT. We'll be having a discussion of suspension of disbelief in worldbuilding - i.e. how easy or hard it can be to get people to believe in what you're showing them. This is a topic that I think has a lot to do with concepts of "show, don't tell," which apply to worldbuilding just as much as to anything else. I hope you'll come and join us!
TTYU Retro: Do characters really need to be likeable?
I've seen multiple discussions recently, in various locations, of whether characters in stories need to be likeable. At last I was inspired by Janice Hardy's post yesterday on what makes one POV "better" than another to write out my thoughts.
I don't personally think that all characters have to be likeable - not by a long stretch. I can see the point of those people who say much of a story may be lost if everyone has to be likeable. But I do remember feeling that I just couldn't stand the characters of "Seinfeld" - and for that reason I couldn't be bothered watching them for more than five minutes without feeling they'd robbed me of valuable time. What is the critical criterion?
My answer is going to seem overly simple, but I think characters have to be relatable, not likeable. There has to be some quality about them that makes you feel like you recognize them, and that they are real.
So what makes a character relatable?
This is a question that I've done a lot of thinking about. I write science fiction and fantasy, and that involves creating lots of alienness - alien languages, fantasy cultures, characters who are not human and characters temporally or physically (even physiologically) far divorced from our day-to-day experience. I don't get to work with the girl or boy next door, unless that person is about to encounter something really unexpected! However, in my writing I always strive to give my readers the insider's viewpoint. That means that if I want the story to succeed, particularly if I want to push a reader out of his or her usual way of thinking, it's absolutely essential for me to try to achieve that relatability, in order to invite reader investment in even the most unusual characters.
Every point of view character should have at least one relatable element - even antagonists. It's also likely that you'll want to find relatable elements for non-point of view characters. This kind of element could be:
From "Let the Word Take Me":
David Linden is a kid who is trying to win the approval of his father.
Allayo is a gecko-like alien. She is deeply principled and understands her life through her faith.
From "Cold Words":
Rulii is a 6'4" wolflike alien. He is discriminated against as an oppressed minority, and has paid a steep price for the power to help his people: he's addicted to a cocaine-like substance because it keeps him from shivering and thereby losing his ability to work toward justice.
From "At Cross Purposes":
Lynn is an engineer who loves her work and resents a boss who doesn't understand what she does.
Tsee is an otter-like alien. She would do anything to protect her twin brother, and she loves science and beautiful things.
From my WIP "For Love, For Power" (with special thanks to beta reader Jamie Todd Rubin for pointing this out):
Tagret is a privileged boy who loves his mother, suffers because his mother and father hate each other, and experiences awkwardness in trying to approach the girl he likes.
Aloran is born a servant, but believes in gender equality and becomes angry when he sees anyone abused.
Nekantor is a power-hungry boy (the antagonist) who suffers from mental illness including paranoia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
From this list you may notice that I find character psychology to be a great ally. Even a character like Rulii who seems very strange, or someone very unlikeable like Nekantor, can be relatable. Funny enough, suffering for a recognizable reason - and by that I mean really experiencing distress - has huge potential for increasing relatability.
What about your characters do you find relatable? Are they likeable? Do you see a difference?
It's something to think about.
I don't personally think that all characters have to be likeable - not by a long stretch. I can see the point of those people who say much of a story may be lost if everyone has to be likeable. But I do remember feeling that I just couldn't stand the characters of "Seinfeld" - and for that reason I couldn't be bothered watching them for more than five minutes without feeling they'd robbed me of valuable time. What is the critical criterion?
My answer is going to seem overly simple, but I think characters have to be relatable, not likeable. There has to be some quality about them that makes you feel like you recognize them, and that they are real.
So what makes a character relatable?
This is a question that I've done a lot of thinking about. I write science fiction and fantasy, and that involves creating lots of alienness - alien languages, fantasy cultures, characters who are not human and characters temporally or physically (even physiologically) far divorced from our day-to-day experience. I don't get to work with the girl or boy next door, unless that person is about to encounter something really unexpected! However, in my writing I always strive to give my readers the insider's viewpoint. That means that if I want the story to succeed, particularly if I want to push a reader out of his or her usual way of thinking, it's absolutely essential for me to try to achieve that relatability, in order to invite reader investment in even the most unusual characters.
Every point of view character should have at least one relatable element - even antagonists. It's also likely that you'll want to find relatable elements for non-point of view characters. This kind of element could be:
- a relatable goal - e.g. wanting to fall in love, or wanting monetary or other success, wanting freedom or justice, wanting to create or protect family, or even just wanting to keep a full stomach and a roof over their heads, etc.
- a relatable external conflict - e.g. being up against racial or other discrimination (in the case of sf/f, we often see "other"), facing peer pressure, facing bullying, dealing with bureaucracy, dealing with a rival for the same goal, etc.
- a relatable personal characteristic (good or bad) - e.g. being deeply religious, being dedicated to one's work, having a disability, experiencing self-doubt, depression, or a recognizable mental illness, trying to pursue a virtuous life, being haunted by one's past mistakes, caring deeply for others, being unable to make a decision, etc.
From "Let the Word Take Me":
David Linden is a kid who is trying to win the approval of his father.
Allayo is a gecko-like alien. She is deeply principled and understands her life through her faith.
From "Cold Words":
Rulii is a 6'4" wolflike alien. He is discriminated against as an oppressed minority, and has paid a steep price for the power to help his people: he's addicted to a cocaine-like substance because it keeps him from shivering and thereby losing his ability to work toward justice.
From "At Cross Purposes":
Lynn is an engineer who loves her work and resents a boss who doesn't understand what she does.
Tsee is an otter-like alien. She would do anything to protect her twin brother, and she loves science and beautiful things.
From my WIP "For Love, For Power" (with special thanks to beta reader Jamie Todd Rubin for pointing this out):
Tagret is a privileged boy who loves his mother, suffers because his mother and father hate each other, and experiences awkwardness in trying to approach the girl he likes.
Aloran is born a servant, but believes in gender equality and becomes angry when he sees anyone abused.
Nekantor is a power-hungry boy (the antagonist) who suffers from mental illness including paranoia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
From this list you may notice that I find character psychology to be a great ally. Even a character like Rulii who seems very strange, or someone very unlikeable like Nekantor, can be relatable. Funny enough, suffering for a recognizable reason - and by that I mean really experiencing distress - has huge potential for increasing relatability.
What about your characters do you find relatable? Are they likeable? Do you see a difference?
It's something to think about.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Social Stereotypes in Worldbuilding: A Google+ Hangout Report
This turned out to be a fantastic discussion. I was joined by Janet Harriett, Erin Peterson, David Peterson, Bryan Schmidt, Kyle Aisteach, Elizabeth Arroyo, and Glenda Pfeiffer to talk about social stereotypes.
The reason I decided on this topic was because I'd just the day before had an extensive conversation about social stereotyping with my children, over the Tintin stories by Hergé (which they both love). We're a family which strives for a great deal of social awareness and self-awareness, and the two of them didn't bat an eye when I told them we shouldn't stereotype. But it became more subtle when I started talking about the stereotypes that appear in Tintin and also in Astérix, and how one might look at those and draw the wrong conclusions. I ended up having to explain what caricature was as well, since neither of them had encountered the term. Thus it was that I ended up talking about stereotypes in worldbuilding.
In fact, stereotypes can be exceedingly useful to science fiction and fantasy writers, because we often focus on social issues and, for example, take existing social boundaries and make them more extreme, more codified, in order to bring them to a reader's attention. There are lots of caste systems, downtrodden groups, etc. out there who are helping readers to engage with questions regarding similar groups in the real world. Of course, social structures are quite complex in the real world, more like complex Venn diagrams with subsets and overlaps then discrete and identifiable groups.
Bryan mentioned the idea that people will often criticize others for doing something that they themselves would do, and feel guilty for. In fact, I had just recently encountered a study suggesting that homophobia has a strong basis in the externalization of self-hatred (here). As Jaleh eloquently put it, "we recognize our faults in other people."
At that point we decided to take a look at kinds of social categories. Jaleh mentioned wealth as an important social category. Bryan mentioned tribal divisions in Ghana. Erin talked about how we build narratives to make sense of those elements of our world with which we're less familiar.
Creating generalized categories and assigning things to them is an adaptive trait. To put this in concrete terms, if we saw a lion and weren't able to put it into the larger category of "lion" because it was younger and lacking a large mane, or because it was strangely colored or formed in some way, then we would be killed by it. There is also a social value to rankings and group membership. In this, biology and social structure can be linked, as in Kyle's example where it was found that in Rhesus monkeys, the effectiveness of their immune systems was linked to their social rank. It has been established that humans are able to detect people more genetically distinct from them by their smell. From here it's a surprisingly small leap to the point where we start saying things like, "Rich people are X and poor people are Y."
Erin suggested that social class is one category we feel able to discuss because it doesn't fall under the umbrella of political correctness the way that race and ethnicity do. Social class in America is an interesting topic in fact, because part of American discourse relies on denying its existence - in part because of the early social distancing from England and its class structure. Jaleh mentioned the importance of the idea of the American Dream, in which people can rise above their initial class assignment and become wealthy. Kyle noted that England's social classes are not simply based on wealth, since you can have East End rich cockneys and destitute barons. This brought up the question of Old money and New money. Just because we can attain a level of wealth does not mean we can be accepted into the group of people socially established as the rich. I mentioned Richard Sheridan's play, "The Rivals," which featured the hilariously fascinating character Mrs. Malaprop. She engages in constant malapropisms, which is to say that she tries to imitate the language of the upper classes, but constantly gets it wrong in hilarious ways. She's a pretender.
Pretenders are actually a fascinating topic. These are people outside a group who try to take on the social features of an insider, but are insulted for attempting to do so - a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. It's not just money that makes a pretender, either. I mentioned that Ashley Judd's recent article on women and beauty features an incisive example of this. Women are divided into beautiful and not beautiful, and everyone should try to be beautiful, but must not seen to be trying too hard. And if a woman like Judd appears to be beautiful beyond the accepted age, then people look for ways to disqualify her beauty, by theorizing that she's cheating in some manner (surgery, etc). So if you aren't beautiful, you're toast. But if you are, chances are you're cheating and you're still toast. And if you are beautiful, that's the only important thing about you... Argh. Ashley Judd says it so much better than I can here, so go and read the article.
We moved at that point into discussing the kinds of ways that social status can get marked. Janet mentioned how it's really important to know which fork to use for what, if you want to prove your social worth. Jaleh talked about who sits above and below the salt cellar at the table. She even showed us a really cool crystal salt cellar from the 1930's. David mentioned an example from the stories of Bertie Wooster where there was incredibly complex consternation about who should sit where at the table. There's always the question of who sits at the head of the table (a very very old question), and even at the Round Table one can still consider who sits at the leader's right, and at his left. Handedness is another feature that has been stereotyped for centuries. Kyle mentioned that in Murder by Death, a rearrangement of the seating of people at the table spares the protagonist from death.
It is extremely common for people to use exclusion as a method to create a sense of inclusion. The examples above merely scratch the surface, and in secondary worlds there are many opportunities to use unusual criteria for inclusion and exclusion. One can always use politeness style (friendly vs. standoffish) as a criterion, but there are many possible variations even in this.
Jaleh recommended Tamora Pierce's Magic Circle books as some with an interesting use of class distinctions. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is an example of class distinction featured in a classic book.
The role of Bohemians among the upper classes came up as an example of the question of patronage of artists. How accepted would be patronage of artists? Probably more accepted than social association with them.
There is also the question of language distinctions, as in My Fair Lady (mentioned by Jaleh, David and Janet). These have to be treated carefully, especially if you're using existing dialects. The Phantom Menace did some intentional (if clunky and stereotypical) things with dialects, such as giving an Asian-flavored dialect to the Trade Federation, and having the Gungans use a stereotyped Jamaican accent.
Stereotypes are startlingly convenient. Kyle mentioned that they are used extensively in TV and film in situations when the writers don't want something to stick out. A cab driver in a TV show is very likely to be Arab and male because if he weren't, the cab driver character would pop out as unusual and watchers might expect the character to do unexpected things. This is fascinating to me - simultaneously understandable and uncomfortable, because it reveals how audiences expect certain people(s) to be invisible in their places within society.
Lastly we considered the difference between a stereotype and an archetype. Erin suggested that an archetype was the prime exemplar of a category, while a stereotype was applied to every member of the category. Archetypes are the "ideal" members of a category, the way that we might imagine an eagle as the ideal bird. Kyle also said that archetypes are a literary device.
In a secondary world, we can actually teach readers to share the stereotypes possessed by our characters, and this can be a very useful trick in establishing the social model that governs the world. It's important, though, not to overuse them and not to suggest that the character's stereotype is an entirely valid assessment of your world's social order. Much as stereotypes are prevalent yet problematic here, they should be prevalent yet problematic in our secondary worlds, too.
The reason I decided on this topic was because I'd just the day before had an extensive conversation about social stereotyping with my children, over the Tintin stories by Hergé (which they both love). We're a family which strives for a great deal of social awareness and self-awareness, and the two of them didn't bat an eye when I told them we shouldn't stereotype. But it became more subtle when I started talking about the stereotypes that appear in Tintin and also in Astérix, and how one might look at those and draw the wrong conclusions. I ended up having to explain what caricature was as well, since neither of them had encountered the term. Thus it was that I ended up talking about stereotypes in worldbuilding.
In fact, stereotypes can be exceedingly useful to science fiction and fantasy writers, because we often focus on social issues and, for example, take existing social boundaries and make them more extreme, more codified, in order to bring them to a reader's attention. There are lots of caste systems, downtrodden groups, etc. out there who are helping readers to engage with questions regarding similar groups in the real world. Of course, social structures are quite complex in the real world, more like complex Venn diagrams with subsets and overlaps then discrete and identifiable groups.
Bryan mentioned the idea that people will often criticize others for doing something that they themselves would do, and feel guilty for. In fact, I had just recently encountered a study suggesting that homophobia has a strong basis in the externalization of self-hatred (here). As Jaleh eloquently put it, "we recognize our faults in other people."
At that point we decided to take a look at kinds of social categories. Jaleh mentioned wealth as an important social category. Bryan mentioned tribal divisions in Ghana. Erin talked about how we build narratives to make sense of those elements of our world with which we're less familiar.
Creating generalized categories and assigning things to them is an adaptive trait. To put this in concrete terms, if we saw a lion and weren't able to put it into the larger category of "lion" because it was younger and lacking a large mane, or because it was strangely colored or formed in some way, then we would be killed by it. There is also a social value to rankings and group membership. In this, biology and social structure can be linked, as in Kyle's example where it was found that in Rhesus monkeys, the effectiveness of their immune systems was linked to their social rank. It has been established that humans are able to detect people more genetically distinct from them by their smell. From here it's a surprisingly small leap to the point where we start saying things like, "Rich people are X and poor people are Y."
Erin suggested that social class is one category we feel able to discuss because it doesn't fall under the umbrella of political correctness the way that race and ethnicity do. Social class in America is an interesting topic in fact, because part of American discourse relies on denying its existence - in part because of the early social distancing from England and its class structure. Jaleh mentioned the importance of the idea of the American Dream, in which people can rise above their initial class assignment and become wealthy. Kyle noted that England's social classes are not simply based on wealth, since you can have East End rich cockneys and destitute barons. This brought up the question of Old money and New money. Just because we can attain a level of wealth does not mean we can be accepted into the group of people socially established as the rich. I mentioned Richard Sheridan's play, "The Rivals," which featured the hilariously fascinating character Mrs. Malaprop. She engages in constant malapropisms, which is to say that she tries to imitate the language of the upper classes, but constantly gets it wrong in hilarious ways. She's a pretender.
Pretenders are actually a fascinating topic. These are people outside a group who try to take on the social features of an insider, but are insulted for attempting to do so - a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. It's not just money that makes a pretender, either. I mentioned that Ashley Judd's recent article on women and beauty features an incisive example of this. Women are divided into beautiful and not beautiful, and everyone should try to be beautiful, but must not seen to be trying too hard. And if a woman like Judd appears to be beautiful beyond the accepted age, then people look for ways to disqualify her beauty, by theorizing that she's cheating in some manner (surgery, etc). So if you aren't beautiful, you're toast. But if you are, chances are you're cheating and you're still toast. And if you are beautiful, that's the only important thing about you... Argh. Ashley Judd says it so much better than I can here, so go and read the article.
We moved at that point into discussing the kinds of ways that social status can get marked. Janet mentioned how it's really important to know which fork to use for what, if you want to prove your social worth. Jaleh talked about who sits above and below the salt cellar at the table. She even showed us a really cool crystal salt cellar from the 1930's. David mentioned an example from the stories of Bertie Wooster where there was incredibly complex consternation about who should sit where at the table. There's always the question of who sits at the head of the table (a very very old question), and even at the Round Table one can still consider who sits at the leader's right, and at his left. Handedness is another feature that has been stereotyped for centuries. Kyle mentioned that in Murder by Death, a rearrangement of the seating of people at the table spares the protagonist from death.
It is extremely common for people to use exclusion as a method to create a sense of inclusion. The examples above merely scratch the surface, and in secondary worlds there are many opportunities to use unusual criteria for inclusion and exclusion. One can always use politeness style (friendly vs. standoffish) as a criterion, but there are many possible variations even in this.
Jaleh recommended Tamora Pierce's Magic Circle books as some with an interesting use of class distinctions. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is an example of class distinction featured in a classic book.
The role of Bohemians among the upper classes came up as an example of the question of patronage of artists. How accepted would be patronage of artists? Probably more accepted than social association with them.
There is also the question of language distinctions, as in My Fair Lady (mentioned by Jaleh, David and Janet). These have to be treated carefully, especially if you're using existing dialects. The Phantom Menace did some intentional (if clunky and stereotypical) things with dialects, such as giving an Asian-flavored dialect to the Trade Federation, and having the Gungans use a stereotyped Jamaican accent.
Stereotypes are startlingly convenient. Kyle mentioned that they are used extensively in TV and film in situations when the writers don't want something to stick out. A cab driver in a TV show is very likely to be Arab and male because if he weren't, the cab driver character would pop out as unusual and watchers might expect the character to do unexpected things. This is fascinating to me - simultaneously understandable and uncomfortable, because it reveals how audiences expect certain people(s) to be invisible in their places within society.
Lastly we considered the difference between a stereotype and an archetype. Erin suggested that an archetype was the prime exemplar of a category, while a stereotype was applied to every member of the category. Archetypes are the "ideal" members of a category, the way that we might imagine an eagle as the ideal bird. Kyle also said that archetypes are a literary device.
In a secondary world, we can actually teach readers to share the stereotypes possessed by our characters, and this can be a very useful trick in establishing the social model that governs the world. It's important, though, not to overuse them and not to suggest that the character's stereotype is an entirely valid assessment of your world's social order. Much as stereotypes are prevalent yet problematic here, they should be prevalent yet problematic in our secondary worlds, too.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
TTYU Retro: Never "just description" - making description subjective
Description is never just description.
It took me quite a long while to figure that out. I suppose when one first starts writing, one begins by exercising one's access to words and images, and thinking of the most beautiful, or the most visceral, or the most fill-in-the blank way to describe what one imagines. When you're using your own voice as an omniscient storytelling narrator, that can work just fine. However, once I started writing in close points of view, I started to realize that every time I went into a "description," I'd lose the sense of closeness. And that was a problem I had to fix.
The fact is that description is always subjective in some way. It is literally impossible to capture every detail about something in the real world. Every time we notice and name an object, that is a subjective choice. Every time we put an adjective on something, that is also a subjective choice. Subjectively, we decide what is noticeable and what is too normal to draw anyone's attention to.
If you keep this in mind, then it becomes possible to discover just how subjective your descriptions can be. Particularly if you work with close point of view, the identity of your character is going to change the way that things are described. Every word you choose is an opportunity to show something about your character.
To make this more concrete, let's play with it a little. I have a room in my work-in-progress, and I just had my main character walk into it. That means I had to describe it. But before I show you how I described it for him, I'll describe it in a few different ways (all third person, just for the sake of consistency).
As myself:
The Hall of the Eminence is a long, rectangular room with stone walls, columns and ceiling arches in the style of a European cathedral. The arches are decorated with mosaic tiles of variegated blue with occasional tiles in gold. Crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling. The floor is covered in a white silk carpet patterned with the green swirling insignia of the Grobal caste. There are embroidered hangings on the walls, and there is a wooden dais at the end where sits the carved wooden throne of the Eminence.
This description is very informational and makes reference to the real world. It shows no positioning words to indicate any physical point of view. I might as well be hovering above it, or nowhere near it at all. I'm certainly not interacting with it in any way. It reads like a blueprint - good for my personal notes or outline, but useless for the story.
As a member of the merchant caste walking in alone, having never seen the place before:
The room made him want to shrink and retreat. Its arches stretched probably two stories high, and with every step of these ordinary shoes, he risked defiling a symbol of nobility. The chandeliers above and the embroidered hangings on the walls all around would have fetched a pretty price at the Exchange, but nothing compared to the wood of the stage at the far end. Not to mention the throne itself - a single piece of wood so large it would bring more than the worth of his entire family.
This description has a lot more to it. There's an emotional reaction to the sight of the room, and the person assesses its size ("probably two stories"). There's positional information ("the far end"). He draws a contrast between ordinary and noble. His actions have social consequences (defiling). He also shows his own idiosyncratic knowledge base and his personal priorities as he assesses the worth of various objects in the room.
As a fugitive:
She whipped around a corner and burst through the first door she found. Damn - just her luck she'd find the one room in this place where there was nowhere to hide. The place was bright and open, and even the wall-hangings were too flat, too high off the floor to give any cover. Maybe that stage with the big throne? She sprinted toward it, but it was worse - wooden boards that thudded under her feet, sure to announce her presence to any pursuers. With so many doors all around, they could come from anywhere!
Unlike the last person, this person has an urgent purpose in the room. She doesn't care about the richness of the room, but swears about finding a place so large and open. I can let her assess possible hiding spots, and thereby get in a little about the room, but really she doesn't care much about what's in it. She judges what she encounters, and pays no attention to the value of anything except as it serves her goal.
As my protagonist:
Tagret straightened up fast. The Hall of the Eminence was packed with potential enemies. To be on guard, he needed his eyes open. And to be the man Mother wanted everyone to see, he had to stand gracefully, making the high mosaic arches of the ceiling his portrait-frames, and the crystal chandeliers his spotlights. Father's hand stayed on his arm as the rest of their party came in. From the wall-hangings all the way to the dais with the wooden throne, the crowd glittered in ostentatious clothing, muted somewhat by the grieving yellow of mourning scarves. More and more eyes watched him as people entered through the doors around the Hall, clustering by Family. From this vantage point he couldn't see anyone he could clearly identify as either Sixth Family, or Ninth. Eleventh seemed like it might be in the far corner.
Tagret cares far more about people and the interaction he's entering than he does about the place, which is very familiar to him. Therefore, all the information about the room itself is backgrounded to his other concerns. In this scene, the conflict all comes from the interaction, so there's no reason for him to give any direct attention to the physical location at all. However, it's important for readers to know what the place looks like, so I let Tagret use the room's features incidentally to serve his own focus. He's also taller than most people in the room, so he has a pretty good view across the crowd, which affects how he describes it.
I hope these examples give you a sense of how widely descriptions of the same thing can differ from one another. In your own writing, as you approach a description of a place, an object, or a situation, here are some things to think about:
It took me quite a long while to figure that out. I suppose when one first starts writing, one begins by exercising one's access to words and images, and thinking of the most beautiful, or the most visceral, or the most fill-in-the blank way to describe what one imagines. When you're using your own voice as an omniscient storytelling narrator, that can work just fine. However, once I started writing in close points of view, I started to realize that every time I went into a "description," I'd lose the sense of closeness. And that was a problem I had to fix.
The fact is that description is always subjective in some way. It is literally impossible to capture every detail about something in the real world. Every time we notice and name an object, that is a subjective choice. Every time we put an adjective on something, that is also a subjective choice. Subjectively, we decide what is noticeable and what is too normal to draw anyone's attention to.
If you keep this in mind, then it becomes possible to discover just how subjective your descriptions can be. Particularly if you work with close point of view, the identity of your character is going to change the way that things are described. Every word you choose is an opportunity to show something about your character.
To make this more concrete, let's play with it a little. I have a room in my work-in-progress, and I just had my main character walk into it. That means I had to describe it. But before I show you how I described it for him, I'll describe it in a few different ways (all third person, just for the sake of consistency).
As myself:
The Hall of the Eminence is a long, rectangular room with stone walls, columns and ceiling arches in the style of a European cathedral. The arches are decorated with mosaic tiles of variegated blue with occasional tiles in gold. Crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling. The floor is covered in a white silk carpet patterned with the green swirling insignia of the Grobal caste. There are embroidered hangings on the walls, and there is a wooden dais at the end where sits the carved wooden throne of the Eminence.
This description is very informational and makes reference to the real world. It shows no positioning words to indicate any physical point of view. I might as well be hovering above it, or nowhere near it at all. I'm certainly not interacting with it in any way. It reads like a blueprint - good for my personal notes or outline, but useless for the story.
As a member of the merchant caste walking in alone, having never seen the place before:
The room made him want to shrink and retreat. Its arches stretched probably two stories high, and with every step of these ordinary shoes, he risked defiling a symbol of nobility. The chandeliers above and the embroidered hangings on the walls all around would have fetched a pretty price at the Exchange, but nothing compared to the wood of the stage at the far end. Not to mention the throne itself - a single piece of wood so large it would bring more than the worth of his entire family.
This description has a lot more to it. There's an emotional reaction to the sight of the room, and the person assesses its size ("probably two stories"). There's positional information ("the far end"). He draws a contrast between ordinary and noble. His actions have social consequences (defiling). He also shows his own idiosyncratic knowledge base and his personal priorities as he assesses the worth of various objects in the room.
As a fugitive:
She whipped around a corner and burst through the first door she found. Damn - just her luck she'd find the one room in this place where there was nowhere to hide. The place was bright and open, and even the wall-hangings were too flat, too high off the floor to give any cover. Maybe that stage with the big throne? She sprinted toward it, but it was worse - wooden boards that thudded under her feet, sure to announce her presence to any pursuers. With so many doors all around, they could come from anywhere!
Unlike the last person, this person has an urgent purpose in the room. She doesn't care about the richness of the room, but swears about finding a place so large and open. I can let her assess possible hiding spots, and thereby get in a little about the room, but really she doesn't care much about what's in it. She judges what she encounters, and pays no attention to the value of anything except as it serves her goal.
As my protagonist:
Tagret straightened up fast. The Hall of the Eminence was packed with potential enemies. To be on guard, he needed his eyes open. And to be the man Mother wanted everyone to see, he had to stand gracefully, making the high mosaic arches of the ceiling his portrait-frames, and the crystal chandeliers his spotlights. Father's hand stayed on his arm as the rest of their party came in. From the wall-hangings all the way to the dais with the wooden throne, the crowd glittered in ostentatious clothing, muted somewhat by the grieving yellow of mourning scarves. More and more eyes watched him as people entered through the doors around the Hall, clustering by Family. From this vantage point he couldn't see anyone he could clearly identify as either Sixth Family, or Ninth. Eleventh seemed like it might be in the far corner.
Tagret cares far more about people and the interaction he's entering than he does about the place, which is very familiar to him. Therefore, all the information about the room itself is backgrounded to his other concerns. In this scene, the conflict all comes from the interaction, so there's no reason for him to give any direct attention to the physical location at all. However, it's important for readers to know what the place looks like, so I let Tagret use the room's features incidentally to serve his own focus. He's also taller than most people in the room, so he has a pretty good view across the crowd, which affects how he describes it.
I hope these examples give you a sense of how widely descriptions of the same thing can differ from one another. In your own writing, as you approach a description of a place, an object, or a situation, here are some things to think about:
- Does this place/object/situation have a special social significance to my character?
- Is it unexpected, abnormal, or otherwise unusual (will appear in description)? Or is it normal (less likely to appear; more likely to be backgrounded)?
- What is the current mood of my character?
- What is my character's goal and primary focus as he/she encounters this place/object/situation?
- Does the physical position and/or size of my character affect how he/she would describe it?
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