We had a very enjoyable discussion of how to go about figuring out your world after you've already started - or even finished! - writing a story in that world. As usual, the report will be up next week. Here's the video, if you'd like to check it out:
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Metaphors in Worldbuilding: A Google+ hangout report
I was joined for this discussion by Glenda Pfeiffer, Harry Markov, Kyle Aisteach, Deborah Ross, Brian Dolton, and Lesley Smith. There was some good news on the technical front, which was that I figured out how to do the lighting appropriately so people could see me!
We started the discussion by defining metaphors and similes (in the most basic sense). A metaphor generally takes the form "X is Y," where you say that one thing is another. It serves the purpose of drawing an association between the two things, including the images and emotions brought up by each. Examples include "Love is a war," or "My love is a flower." Similes are a lot like metaphors, except they say "X is like Y." A simile has the same kind of emotional associative effect, with a somewhat different phrasing. Examples of these include "she was as beautiful as the sunrise," "He was as tall as a tree," "It was so dark, it was like the inside of a cave."
Metaphors, as I mentioned in my post a little while ago, are often much sneakier than the examples above. They can be difficult to detect because they "hide" inside the verbs we use, and the phrasings we employ. If you ever talk about magic "flowing" you are saying that magic is like water even if you never use those words to make it explicit.
Writers get a lot of advice about using interesting action verbs in English, and those verbs are very often metaphorical. Examples include barrelling down the hall, rocketing away, taking off, etc. When you use those phrasing, it creates a link in your mind between the thing that literally rockets, barrels, etc. and the thing you are describing. Be careful with this, because in a medieval setting you won't want to say that something "rocketed." That verb does not have its meaning of "going dramatically fast" without the image of the rocket to back it up, and thus using it in the wrong context can become a dramatic anachronism (unless for some reason your medieval people have independently invented rockets!).
Brian made the excellent point that the genre of sf/f is one in which metaphors must be used with care, because you have to be certain that readers can't accidentally interpret your metaphors literally. Kyle provided a great example with the idea of people "hovering." If you are in science fiction, they might literally be hovering off the ground - so how can you be sure? Of course, once you're well into a story and have the setting established it's less of a problem, but at the beginning you can really confuse readers. I mentioned an article that I've written for the new magazine Blue Shift (which will be appearing this year!) about how science fiction writers first let readers know that the world they are experiencing is not like our own. Taking metaphors literally is one of the major strategies they employ (for the other four, you'll have to read the article...)! Therefore, if you are not planning to use metaphor in this manner, you really have to let people know.
Metaphors are also very useful as the basis for a magic or technology system. Though not all magic systems follow rules, it's helpful for your story to keep them relatively well-behaved, and metaphors can be a great tool for accomplishing this. The most common metaphor I can think of is that of "magic is water," but the Harry Potter books also use "magic spells are projectiles." These metaphors guide the way that you describe the action and appearance of magic when it occurs. I have two stories that I wrote in which magic behaves like ink, and the "magic wand" is actually a writing implement that produces ink which then forms itself into things. As for technology metaphors, Tron gives a good example of "the virtual world is a space inside a container." Sometimes the virtual is described as being "above" reality - but when we change the metaphor, we can change the feel of the story dramatically. My current story takes the virtual and treats it as something you "overlay" upon your own reality, and thus (I hope!) creates a sense of the virtual as more invasive and less contained.
Deborah commented that "one interesting variation is the difference in metaphorical thinking between humans and non-humans (aliens or animals). For example, a scent-oriented species like dogs would have very different metaphors than we sight-oriented simians."
Harry noted that this difference holds not only between species but between cultures. He is currently working with a post-apocalyptic water world, where people live on boat houses "with no land in sight." Thus his metaphors are influenced by the fact that they are constantly in motion and have an intimate relationship with water (as their friend, their enemy, etc.). To them it is like a living thing with hunger. "The sea is a harsh mistress" is literal. Deborah suggested they would have their own ways of indicating direction and distance, and many words for different types of water, waves, etc. This took us in the direction of the idea of Eskimos having many words for snow, which has been cited for many years as one of the differences between languages. People do indeed use more diverse words when they feel they can draw meaningful distinctions in something that is common, say qualities of snow, or waves.
I brought up an example of when I was working with a scent-oriented species. I was asked several times by different acquaintances what I did when I couldn't say that something "smelled like cinnamon." Comparing scents to other familiar scents is a common tool for conveying details of smells, but it doesn't always work in a fantasy or science fictional environment. The question to ask, whenever you're working with an alien culture, is "What is meaningful? What is worthy of comparing to something else?" You can sometimes compare something to an alien animal, and use that alien word without translating, so long as it has semantic support from the rest of the metaphor (meaning that readers can be led to guess what the general sense of the metaphor is).
In English, we have a lot of metaphors based on meaningful activities - even if they aren't as meaningful now as they were historically. One example is that of nautical metaphors, coming from the era of travel on ships (particularly wooden ships, we suspected). These often slip by without being noticed, because they are used so often. Things that are literally descriptive at one point in a people's history will later be used as metaphors, and sometimes will completely lose connection to the original context. Kyle suggested "going under" and "that sinking feeling" as possibly nautical. I - accidentally! - came up with "having no moorings" and "being anchored" as metaphors for lack of connection. Clearly, it's possible to talk about anchors without using the literal context of boat anchors... and Glenda told us she could "get on board with that"! Kyle suggested our conversation had "gone adrift."
This is a great trend to take advantage in a fictional cultural context. When David Peterson was working on the Dothraki language for Game of Thrones, he did a lot of work with horse-based metaphors and language based on the horse culture of the Dothraki.
Of course, English has horse-related metaphors, too. Our language has an incredible diversity of metaphors, and in fiction, we often narrow down the diversity of metaphors. However, that kind of focus is helpful to create a particular "feel" in your fictional world.
Metaphor is also very helpful for informing you about how a character thinks about something. The political use of metaphor is very powerful. Modern political parties will have focus groups to determine how they will talk about a particular topic, so as to cause specific emotional reactions among those listening. "Makers" and "takers" has been used very effectively. People who enter negotiations thinking of them as "war" will be less likely to strive for a win-win situation. In a worldbuilding situation, it's useful to think about what kind of metaphors people use for their lives, because it will influence how they interpret others' behaviors. I try to make sure to put this kind of difference in my stories. "Our entire metaphorical life is different from yours and it will have the following effect on every single interaction that we have." Although authors often identify single phrases to use as the basis for misunderstanding, it can also be taken to the next level. Metaphors lead us to understand how people categorize the world. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (also called Linguistic Relativity) is suggested reading for this topic, but it essentially states that a person's language deeply influences the patterns of their thought. How do you create the categories? How do you decide what boxes to put people and situations in? My wolf character thought of his whole life as a hunt, so his colleagues were huntmates, and followers could say "I'm following at your hind haunch, and I wish I could be at your shoulder."
Kyle noted that you can see dramatic differences even in our own history. The metaphors used in Anglo-Saxon literature are very different from those we use today. He suggested they used the ship metaphors, but many transformational and agrarian metaphors. Inanimate objects speak all the time in riddles. "In their world view, a book was an animal. It was made out of the bark of the tree; the sheets were vellum, made out of animal skin, it was written with a quill pen... it was an animal." This made me think of the animism in Shinto religion that influences how they think about objects. A lot of legends have to do with neglect causing objects to take on their own spirits and start misbehaving.
Deborah noted that old technologies still remain in our language.
Metaphors give us insight into the normal, and the familiar. Most often they will be comparing something familiar with something new. Often I will reverse metaphors to change which part of reality is new. My underground folk will talk about nature (new) in terms of technology and human culture (familiar), where in our own lives we most likely compare human things (familiar) to natural things (new). So to give an example, where we would say "her hair was like a waterfall," giving the familiar image of her hair a wild and refreshing feeling; they would be more likely to say something like "the rock face gleamed like a clean plate," trying to fit something very large into a world-concept that only admits much smaller, more human things.
Brian brought up Norse poetry and the kennings they use. Myth is often brought into descriptions of common, everyday objects. For example, gold is "Freya's tears," and the wrist is "the wolf joint" because the wolf Fenris bit off Tyr's hand. Brian noted that these metaphors do two jobs at once, because they show metaphor and also build more depth to a mythology (they can come in layers). Japanese poetry uses similar principles, so that each word does three or four jobs. Referring to the moon also makes it the fall season and brings a sense of wistfulness; cherry blossoms refer to spring, but also transient beauty and regret. The strict structure of the poem means that using highly associative words is most effective.
This brought us (of course) to the Star Trek episode Darmok, where an entire alien language was based on the idea of referring to characters and situations in a shared mythology. In a sense the Tamarians' language concept is a sort of logical endpoint for the use of metaphors in language: language has been so entirely taken over by metaphorical reference to mythology that nothing else is left. Whether or not every detail of the language design in that episode "works" realistically or not, it's fascinating because it speaks to something in our own language use that we don't often consider. To someone who knows the stories that underlie a culture, metaphors are simple to understand. To an outsider, however, they can be entirely opaque.
Brian mentioned how often English uses metaphors from Shakespeare, comparing things to Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet. The King James Bible is similar; Deborah mentioned the Talmud and references to its stories in Jewish culture. This can sometimes be called "intertextuality," i.e. bringing a reference from one text into another. This happens a lot more than we realize. In psycholinguistics class, I learned that every time you hear a word, it brings up every single time you've ever heard it (and the context it came with). Words become generic when they have too many usages, and thus emotionally charged instances of their use become lost in a flood of other associations. Kyle pointed out how quickly a word can enter the language, like the phrase Catch-22, which was found so perfectly appropriate that it caught on immediately. Brian spoke of his own use of intertextuality, where he has people in his fictional work who refer to plays and works of literature in the history of his own world. "As rich as Martos" is understandable even without knowing who Martos was. At the same time, the use of a phrase like this deepends one's understanding of the historical and cultural background of the fictional world. Harry brought up how movie quotes move into the general language. Catch phrases convey an attitude, like "Hasta la vista, baby," "I'll be back," "Inconceivable," "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Use of quotes like these can define social communities, almost like passwords. If I give you half a quote, and you provide the other half, then we can have a conversation because we're both Princess Bride fans.
Metaphors work two ways. It's not just that one term informs the other; both feed into one another. One unfortunate instance of this recently was a writer who described their dogs as "canine-Americans." Unintentional as the effect was, it upset a lot of people, precisely because of the two-way street of metaphorical meaning. The phrase "X-American" brings up all the instances in which it was used, a large number of which describe immigrants to the US, and racial groups; then the bleed-back of meaning led to readers feeling that immigrants and racial groups had somehow been associated with dogs.
Metaphors are extremely powerful tools, and I feel that examining their properties consciously is a good way to avoid both the pitfalls of unintended meaning and those of political demagoguery.
Harry brought up a fascinating example of how metaphors can change meaning across cultures. He spoke of a reality show in which Jessica Simpson referred to tuna as "Chicken of the Sea." Apparently the phrase caught on in Bulgaria among his English-speaking friends as a way of making fun of stupid people. We were all surprised, because we knew about the American tuna fish brand, "Chicken of the Sea," but Harry had never heard of it. It was interesting to see how the meaning of the phrase could be re-construed. When you transfer a metaphor from one context to another, it can lose its original reference, and take on a totally different meaning.
Another example of semantic drift is "Coney Island." Coneys were originally rabbits, and I'm pretty sure that the island was named for rabbits, but it is now associated with the amusement park on the island. Thus, Genda remarked, hot dogs can be called "coneys."
At that point I returned to the idea of metaphorical meaning going two ways, because it can be particularly useful in worldbuilding. If you have (for example) a group of people and you want to associate a particular feeling with them, you can other characters in your world use their name as a metaphor. One example from my Varin world would be to say "that's as incongruous as an Imbati sharing a secret." By saying this, you not only learn about the incongruity of the larger situation, you also learn something about Imbati (which you might not have known before). Thus, using metaphors in this way can give added dimension to groups of people, situations, or places in your world. As you begin the story, most of the meaning will transfer from the surrounding context into the term you've invented, but as you go further along in the story, you can start to turn it around and use the invented term to inform readers about other things in the book. Teaching metaphors to readers over the course of a story can be fun!
Harry summed up that he usually uses metaphor to create an emotional atmosphere in his sort stories, such as the one he's working on, where the sole survivor of an enormous wave will see water as loathsome, unwelcome, associated with death, pain, guilt, etc.
Deborah Ross said that she felt the careful use of metaphor often becomes a casualty of quick, superficial, and poorly-edited writing. I think this is particularly the case with deeper metaphors, extended metaphors, metaphors that inform the way that a world works - the ones that are more complex than just "slapping a simile on it." Often, we find new, more complex metaphorical opportunities in the revision stage, rather than the composing stage. One's subconscious often will create patterns of repetition in metaphor that can be enhanced in revision. Kyle suggested that we have to be careful not to baffle the reader with unsupported metaphors, or metaphors that have too much basis in a created world rather than in our own. Harry mentioned that when you work with post-apocalyptic settings, references to the past can be useful but can also function as a crutch.
Thanks to everybody who took part in this fantastic conversation! This week, today at 11am PST, we'll discuss how to build a world to fit a story, i.e. how to construct a world once you've already got the story going. I hope you can join us!
We started the discussion by defining metaphors and similes (in the most basic sense). A metaphor generally takes the form "X is Y," where you say that one thing is another. It serves the purpose of drawing an association between the two things, including the images and emotions brought up by each. Examples include "Love is a war," or "My love is a flower." Similes are a lot like metaphors, except they say "X is like Y." A simile has the same kind of emotional associative effect, with a somewhat different phrasing. Examples of these include "she was as beautiful as the sunrise," "He was as tall as a tree," "It was so dark, it was like the inside of a cave."
Metaphors, as I mentioned in my post a little while ago, are often much sneakier than the examples above. They can be difficult to detect because they "hide" inside the verbs we use, and the phrasings we employ. If you ever talk about magic "flowing" you are saying that magic is like water even if you never use those words to make it explicit.
Writers get a lot of advice about using interesting action verbs in English, and those verbs are very often metaphorical. Examples include barrelling down the hall, rocketing away, taking off, etc. When you use those phrasing, it creates a link in your mind between the thing that literally rockets, barrels, etc. and the thing you are describing. Be careful with this, because in a medieval setting you won't want to say that something "rocketed." That verb does not have its meaning of "going dramatically fast" without the image of the rocket to back it up, and thus using it in the wrong context can become a dramatic anachronism (unless for some reason your medieval people have independently invented rockets!).
Brian made the excellent point that the genre of sf/f is one in which metaphors must be used with care, because you have to be certain that readers can't accidentally interpret your metaphors literally. Kyle provided a great example with the idea of people "hovering." If you are in science fiction, they might literally be hovering off the ground - so how can you be sure? Of course, once you're well into a story and have the setting established it's less of a problem, but at the beginning you can really confuse readers. I mentioned an article that I've written for the new magazine Blue Shift (which will be appearing this year!) about how science fiction writers first let readers know that the world they are experiencing is not like our own. Taking metaphors literally is one of the major strategies they employ (for the other four, you'll have to read the article...)! Therefore, if you are not planning to use metaphor in this manner, you really have to let people know.
Metaphors are also very useful as the basis for a magic or technology system. Though not all magic systems follow rules, it's helpful for your story to keep them relatively well-behaved, and metaphors can be a great tool for accomplishing this. The most common metaphor I can think of is that of "magic is water," but the Harry Potter books also use "magic spells are projectiles." These metaphors guide the way that you describe the action and appearance of magic when it occurs. I have two stories that I wrote in which magic behaves like ink, and the "magic wand" is actually a writing implement that produces ink which then forms itself into things. As for technology metaphors, Tron gives a good example of "the virtual world is a space inside a container." Sometimes the virtual is described as being "above" reality - but when we change the metaphor, we can change the feel of the story dramatically. My current story takes the virtual and treats it as something you "overlay" upon your own reality, and thus (I hope!) creates a sense of the virtual as more invasive and less contained.
Deborah commented that "one interesting variation is the difference in metaphorical thinking between humans and non-humans (aliens or animals). For example, a scent-oriented species like dogs would have very different metaphors than we sight-oriented simians."
Harry noted that this difference holds not only between species but between cultures. He is currently working with a post-apocalyptic water world, where people live on boat houses "with no land in sight." Thus his metaphors are influenced by the fact that they are constantly in motion and have an intimate relationship with water (as their friend, their enemy, etc.). To them it is like a living thing with hunger. "The sea is a harsh mistress" is literal. Deborah suggested they would have their own ways of indicating direction and distance, and many words for different types of water, waves, etc. This took us in the direction of the idea of Eskimos having many words for snow, which has been cited for many years as one of the differences between languages. People do indeed use more diverse words when they feel they can draw meaningful distinctions in something that is common, say qualities of snow, or waves.
I brought up an example of when I was working with a scent-oriented species. I was asked several times by different acquaintances what I did when I couldn't say that something "smelled like cinnamon." Comparing scents to other familiar scents is a common tool for conveying details of smells, but it doesn't always work in a fantasy or science fictional environment. The question to ask, whenever you're working with an alien culture, is "What is meaningful? What is worthy of comparing to something else?" You can sometimes compare something to an alien animal, and use that alien word without translating, so long as it has semantic support from the rest of the metaphor (meaning that readers can be led to guess what the general sense of the metaphor is).
In English, we have a lot of metaphors based on meaningful activities - even if they aren't as meaningful now as they were historically. One example is that of nautical metaphors, coming from the era of travel on ships (particularly wooden ships, we suspected). These often slip by without being noticed, because they are used so often. Things that are literally descriptive at one point in a people's history will later be used as metaphors, and sometimes will completely lose connection to the original context. Kyle suggested "going under" and "that sinking feeling" as possibly nautical. I - accidentally! - came up with "having no moorings" and "being anchored" as metaphors for lack of connection. Clearly, it's possible to talk about anchors without using the literal context of boat anchors... and Glenda told us she could "get on board with that"! Kyle suggested our conversation had "gone adrift."
This is a great trend to take advantage in a fictional cultural context. When David Peterson was working on the Dothraki language for Game of Thrones, he did a lot of work with horse-based metaphors and language based on the horse culture of the Dothraki.
Of course, English has horse-related metaphors, too. Our language has an incredible diversity of metaphors, and in fiction, we often narrow down the diversity of metaphors. However, that kind of focus is helpful to create a particular "feel" in your fictional world.
Metaphor is also very helpful for informing you about how a character thinks about something. The political use of metaphor is very powerful. Modern political parties will have focus groups to determine how they will talk about a particular topic, so as to cause specific emotional reactions among those listening. "Makers" and "takers" has been used very effectively. People who enter negotiations thinking of them as "war" will be less likely to strive for a win-win situation. In a worldbuilding situation, it's useful to think about what kind of metaphors people use for their lives, because it will influence how they interpret others' behaviors. I try to make sure to put this kind of difference in my stories. "Our entire metaphorical life is different from yours and it will have the following effect on every single interaction that we have." Although authors often identify single phrases to use as the basis for misunderstanding, it can also be taken to the next level. Metaphors lead us to understand how people categorize the world. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (also called Linguistic Relativity) is suggested reading for this topic, but it essentially states that a person's language deeply influences the patterns of their thought. How do you create the categories? How do you decide what boxes to put people and situations in? My wolf character thought of his whole life as a hunt, so his colleagues were huntmates, and followers could say "I'm following at your hind haunch, and I wish I could be at your shoulder."
Kyle noted that you can see dramatic differences even in our own history. The metaphors used in Anglo-Saxon literature are very different from those we use today. He suggested they used the ship metaphors, but many transformational and agrarian metaphors. Inanimate objects speak all the time in riddles. "In their world view, a book was an animal. It was made out of the bark of the tree; the sheets were vellum, made out of animal skin, it was written with a quill pen... it was an animal." This made me think of the animism in Shinto religion that influences how they think about objects. A lot of legends have to do with neglect causing objects to take on their own spirits and start misbehaving.
Deborah noted that old technologies still remain in our language.
Metaphors give us insight into the normal, and the familiar. Most often they will be comparing something familiar with something new. Often I will reverse metaphors to change which part of reality is new. My underground folk will talk about nature (new) in terms of technology and human culture (familiar), where in our own lives we most likely compare human things (familiar) to natural things (new). So to give an example, where we would say "her hair was like a waterfall," giving the familiar image of her hair a wild and refreshing feeling; they would be more likely to say something like "the rock face gleamed like a clean plate," trying to fit something very large into a world-concept that only admits much smaller, more human things.
Brian brought up Norse poetry and the kennings they use. Myth is often brought into descriptions of common, everyday objects. For example, gold is "Freya's tears," and the wrist is "the wolf joint" because the wolf Fenris bit off Tyr's hand. Brian noted that these metaphors do two jobs at once, because they show metaphor and also build more depth to a mythology (they can come in layers). Japanese poetry uses similar principles, so that each word does three or four jobs. Referring to the moon also makes it the fall season and brings a sense of wistfulness; cherry blossoms refer to spring, but also transient beauty and regret. The strict structure of the poem means that using highly associative words is most effective.
This brought us (of course) to the Star Trek episode Darmok, where an entire alien language was based on the idea of referring to characters and situations in a shared mythology. In a sense the Tamarians' language concept is a sort of logical endpoint for the use of metaphors in language: language has been so entirely taken over by metaphorical reference to mythology that nothing else is left. Whether or not every detail of the language design in that episode "works" realistically or not, it's fascinating because it speaks to something in our own language use that we don't often consider. To someone who knows the stories that underlie a culture, metaphors are simple to understand. To an outsider, however, they can be entirely opaque.
Brian mentioned how often English uses metaphors from Shakespeare, comparing things to Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet. The King James Bible is similar; Deborah mentioned the Talmud and references to its stories in Jewish culture. This can sometimes be called "intertextuality," i.e. bringing a reference from one text into another. This happens a lot more than we realize. In psycholinguistics class, I learned that every time you hear a word, it brings up every single time you've ever heard it (and the context it came with). Words become generic when they have too many usages, and thus emotionally charged instances of their use become lost in a flood of other associations. Kyle pointed out how quickly a word can enter the language, like the phrase Catch-22, which was found so perfectly appropriate that it caught on immediately. Brian spoke of his own use of intertextuality, where he has people in his fictional work who refer to plays and works of literature in the history of his own world. "As rich as Martos" is understandable even without knowing who Martos was. At the same time, the use of a phrase like this deepends one's understanding of the historical and cultural background of the fictional world. Harry brought up how movie quotes move into the general language. Catch phrases convey an attitude, like "Hasta la vista, baby," "I'll be back," "Inconceivable," "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Use of quotes like these can define social communities, almost like passwords. If I give you half a quote, and you provide the other half, then we can have a conversation because we're both Princess Bride fans.
Metaphors work two ways. It's not just that one term informs the other; both feed into one another. One unfortunate instance of this recently was a writer who described their dogs as "canine-Americans." Unintentional as the effect was, it upset a lot of people, precisely because of the two-way street of metaphorical meaning. The phrase "X-American" brings up all the instances in which it was used, a large number of which describe immigrants to the US, and racial groups; then the bleed-back of meaning led to readers feeling that immigrants and racial groups had somehow been associated with dogs.
Metaphors are extremely powerful tools, and I feel that examining their properties consciously is a good way to avoid both the pitfalls of unintended meaning and those of political demagoguery.
Harry brought up a fascinating example of how metaphors can change meaning across cultures. He spoke of a reality show in which Jessica Simpson referred to tuna as "Chicken of the Sea." Apparently the phrase caught on in Bulgaria among his English-speaking friends as a way of making fun of stupid people. We were all surprised, because we knew about the American tuna fish brand, "Chicken of the Sea," but Harry had never heard of it. It was interesting to see how the meaning of the phrase could be re-construed. When you transfer a metaphor from one context to another, it can lose its original reference, and take on a totally different meaning.
Another example of semantic drift is "Coney Island." Coneys were originally rabbits, and I'm pretty sure that the island was named for rabbits, but it is now associated with the amusement park on the island. Thus, Genda remarked, hot dogs can be called "coneys."
At that point I returned to the idea of metaphorical meaning going two ways, because it can be particularly useful in worldbuilding. If you have (for example) a group of people and you want to associate a particular feeling with them, you can other characters in your world use their name as a metaphor. One example from my Varin world would be to say "that's as incongruous as an Imbati sharing a secret." By saying this, you not only learn about the incongruity of the larger situation, you also learn something about Imbati (which you might not have known before). Thus, using metaphors in this way can give added dimension to groups of people, situations, or places in your world. As you begin the story, most of the meaning will transfer from the surrounding context into the term you've invented, but as you go further along in the story, you can start to turn it around and use the invented term to inform readers about other things in the book. Teaching metaphors to readers over the course of a story can be fun!
Harry summed up that he usually uses metaphor to create an emotional atmosphere in his sort stories, such as the one he's working on, where the sole survivor of an enormous wave will see water as loathsome, unwelcome, associated with death, pain, guilt, etc.
Deborah Ross said that she felt the careful use of metaphor often becomes a casualty of quick, superficial, and poorly-edited writing. I think this is particularly the case with deeper metaphors, extended metaphors, metaphors that inform the way that a world works - the ones that are more complex than just "slapping a simile on it." Often, we find new, more complex metaphorical opportunities in the revision stage, rather than the composing stage. One's subconscious often will create patterns of repetition in metaphor that can be enhanced in revision. Kyle suggested that we have to be careful not to baffle the reader with unsupported metaphors, or metaphors that have too much basis in a created world rather than in our own. Harry mentioned that when you work with post-apocalyptic settings, references to the past can be useful but can also function as a crutch.
Thanks to everybody who took part in this fantastic conversation! This week, today at 11am PST, we'll discuss how to build a world to fit a story, i.e. how to construct a world once you've already got the story going. I hope you can join us!
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
TTYU Retro: Checklist for creating alternate social and cultural norms in a fictional world
You've created a world. The "people" there, human or not, don't live like we do. How do you go about writing their lives - their manners, their rules, etc. - without sounding either pedantic or overblown? It's not as easy as it looks, but I hope this checklist will help you to get a good start.
1. Identify social and cultural parameters
Some of you may already have done this, i.e. listed out the social rules by which the people of your world live. If you have not, it's worth doing. This single step in itself can be a long process, as there are a lot of areas in which cultural parameters operate. I'll list some of the areas, just to give you some inspiration. Greetings and manners, architecture, food culture (preparation and consumption), economic roles (work), taboo behaviors (verbal, physical), education, elites (economic, educational, etc), religion, folklore, etc., etc.
There's a lot out there, and if your world is comprehensive enough, it will be enough for your story to get lost in. To make sure that doesn't happen, make sure to...
2. Organize and prioritize your parameters
Of all the possible cultural parameters you might have come up with, not every one is going to be equally important to your story when you write it. Is there a particular cultural artifact, or set of assumptions, behaviors, or practices that are going to be central to your main conflict? Are any assumptions going to take a back seat, but still be important to themes of the work? It's a good idea to have a list, or at least a clear sense in your head as you start, what these parameters are going to be. Culture is so huge and complex that focus is really important.
3. Identify "problematic" parameters
The extreme version of a problematic social or cultural parameter is one that will be difficult for readers to accept. Perhaps they'd say something like, "I just can't believe that people would not want privacy here." Problematic parameters are the ones that don't fall easily into a set of existing real-world expectations. Either something is normal that shouldn't be, or something that we consider normal is abnormal.
4. Develop a multi-pronged strategy for how you as author will disseminate cultural knowledge
There are several ways to "get social and cultural information across." Use them all. If you use just one, I guarantee it will come off as weird, so try to balance the ways you get things across. Ask yourself:
a. which information will be evident in the setting?
For example, architecture says a lot about the history of a people. The presence of both classical stone buildings and apartment blocks of ultralight concrete implies a long history of technological development as well as respect for the legacy of the past.
b. which information will be integral to character behavior and judgment?
Manners and politeness will show up in dialogue and character judgments. It will show up in where the person goes, and how (where do they access transportation, for example?). It will show up in whether they notice "that person isn't where they should be," or "that person's clothes really mean he's showing off," etc.
c. which information will be taught?
Teaching should not be done by the author to the reader (unless you have an explicitly storytelling/teaching narrator). If something needs to be taught, it should show up in a natural teaching context within the society: teacher to student, adult to child, or insider to outsider, etc. There may be fixed methods (curriculum) by which such teaching is accomplished. I have a caste whose members, when in doubt, recite lessons to themselves. I don't do this with everyone, but it fits with the educational style of this particular caste group.
In each of these cases, the question of normal and abnormal is absolutely critical - normal and abnormal as defined by the point-of-view character(s). Any cultural detail that you explicitly describe will come across as "marked," or not entirely normal. If it's stuff that your people actually consider to be unusual, then fine. If it's stuff they consider normal, then you have a problem.
5. Make sure that the normal is defined by lack of attention, rather than attention.
To define something by lack of attention, you have to deliberately redirect attention onto something else. That something else can be a conflict between characters that causes them to say things to one another that they already know. It can be a "secondary detail," or some related characteristic within the normal parameter that has particular meaning - such as a hairstyle on a dark-haired head, if everyone has dark hair. It can be avoidance behaviors - say, when people of a lower class deliberately avoid particular types of interaction with members of a higher class in order to avoid unpleasantness.
Note: I constantly - and I mean constantly - see abuse and discrimination of oppressed groups indicated by direct insults or by direct conflict between the groups. Try to avoid this unless the presence of this conflict is the inciting event of your story for some reason. Oppressed people go very, very far out of their way to avoid conflict of this nature. You will be doing yourself a huge favor if you show the possibility of this conflict in avoidance behaviors and the characters' internal fears, and only show direct conflict in emergency situations. Because this stuff only happens when the people concerned are unable to avoid it.
6. Remember to defeat real-world expectations deliberately.
We have all kinds of "sets" that naturally go together in our expectations. "If there's a TV, there must be a phone" is one example. "If people are having intimate relations outside of an existing monogamous relationship, that must be bad," is another. The one I run into is, "If there are nobles living in a caste system, it has to be medieval." As author, you have to defuse these contexts deliberately. Show the different path technology took in your world. Or have characters casually discussing what would be taboo behavior for us. Or make sure to put electric lights on the first page just to say to the reader, "This is not medieval! SEE?" Just leaving it in the background is not enough, because our expectations are very, very strong. Maybe you've seen that internet meme with the message where only the first and last letters of each word are in the correct places, and everything in the middle is mixed up? And you can still read it? That is because the strength of your previous knowledge and expectations will be enough to build the word just on the basis of first and last letter (and maybe a hint of middle content). Believe me, only one or two details will cause an entire set of technologies, or morals, etc. to come into play. If you don't want them in play, you have to slap them down on purpose, as early as possible.
I could go into greater detail, but I hope this gives you a basic framework to work from. Good luck with creating your fictional societies!
1. Identify social and cultural parameters
Some of you may already have done this, i.e. listed out the social rules by which the people of your world live. If you have not, it's worth doing. This single step in itself can be a long process, as there are a lot of areas in which cultural parameters operate. I'll list some of the areas, just to give you some inspiration. Greetings and manners, architecture, food culture (preparation and consumption), economic roles (work), taboo behaviors (verbal, physical), education, elites (economic, educational, etc), religion, folklore, etc., etc.
There's a lot out there, and if your world is comprehensive enough, it will be enough for your story to get lost in. To make sure that doesn't happen, make sure to...
2. Organize and prioritize your parameters
Of all the possible cultural parameters you might have come up with, not every one is going to be equally important to your story when you write it. Is there a particular cultural artifact, or set of assumptions, behaviors, or practices that are going to be central to your main conflict? Are any assumptions going to take a back seat, but still be important to themes of the work? It's a good idea to have a list, or at least a clear sense in your head as you start, what these parameters are going to be. Culture is so huge and complex that focus is really important.
3. Identify "problematic" parameters
The extreme version of a problematic social or cultural parameter is one that will be difficult for readers to accept. Perhaps they'd say something like, "I just can't believe that people would not want privacy here." Problematic parameters are the ones that don't fall easily into a set of existing real-world expectations. Either something is normal that shouldn't be, or something that we consider normal is abnormal.
4. Develop a multi-pronged strategy for how you as author will disseminate cultural knowledge
There are several ways to "get social and cultural information across." Use them all. If you use just one, I guarantee it will come off as weird, so try to balance the ways you get things across. Ask yourself:
a. which information will be evident in the setting?
For example, architecture says a lot about the history of a people. The presence of both classical stone buildings and apartment blocks of ultralight concrete implies a long history of technological development as well as respect for the legacy of the past.
b. which information will be integral to character behavior and judgment?
Manners and politeness will show up in dialogue and character judgments. It will show up in where the person goes, and how (where do they access transportation, for example?). It will show up in whether they notice "that person isn't where they should be," or "that person's clothes really mean he's showing off," etc.
c. which information will be taught?
Teaching should not be done by the author to the reader (unless you have an explicitly storytelling/teaching narrator). If something needs to be taught, it should show up in a natural teaching context within the society: teacher to student, adult to child, or insider to outsider, etc. There may be fixed methods (curriculum) by which such teaching is accomplished. I have a caste whose members, when in doubt, recite lessons to themselves. I don't do this with everyone, but it fits with the educational style of this particular caste group.
In each of these cases, the question of normal and abnormal is absolutely critical - normal and abnormal as defined by the point-of-view character(s). Any cultural detail that you explicitly describe will come across as "marked," or not entirely normal. If it's stuff that your people actually consider to be unusual, then fine. If it's stuff they consider normal, then you have a problem.
5. Make sure that the normal is defined by lack of attention, rather than attention.
To define something by lack of attention, you have to deliberately redirect attention onto something else. That something else can be a conflict between characters that causes them to say things to one another that they already know. It can be a "secondary detail," or some related characteristic within the normal parameter that has particular meaning - such as a hairstyle on a dark-haired head, if everyone has dark hair. It can be avoidance behaviors - say, when people of a lower class deliberately avoid particular types of interaction with members of a higher class in order to avoid unpleasantness.
Note: I constantly - and I mean constantly - see abuse and discrimination of oppressed groups indicated by direct insults or by direct conflict between the groups. Try to avoid this unless the presence of this conflict is the inciting event of your story for some reason. Oppressed people go very, very far out of their way to avoid conflict of this nature. You will be doing yourself a huge favor if you show the possibility of this conflict in avoidance behaviors and the characters' internal fears, and only show direct conflict in emergency situations. Because this stuff only happens when the people concerned are unable to avoid it.
6. Remember to defeat real-world expectations deliberately.
We have all kinds of "sets" that naturally go together in our expectations. "If there's a TV, there must be a phone" is one example. "If people are having intimate relations outside of an existing monogamous relationship, that must be bad," is another. The one I run into is, "If there are nobles living in a caste system, it has to be medieval." As author, you have to defuse these contexts deliberately. Show the different path technology took in your world. Or have characters casually discussing what would be taboo behavior for us. Or make sure to put electric lights on the first page just to say to the reader, "This is not medieval! SEE?" Just leaving it in the background is not enough, because our expectations are very, very strong. Maybe you've seen that internet meme with the message where only the first and last letters of each word are in the correct places, and everything in the middle is mixed up? And you can still read it? That is because the strength of your previous knowledge and expectations will be enough to build the word just on the basis of first and last letter (and maybe a hint of middle content). Believe me, only one or two details will cause an entire set of technologies, or morals, etc. to come into play. If you don't want them in play, you have to slap them down on purpose, as early as possible.
I could go into greater detail, but I hope this gives you a basic framework to work from. Good luck with creating your fictional societies!
Monday, February 25, 2013
The Understory Revision
I've been working on a rather tricky revision for the last few weeks. After receiving critique on "Mind Locker," I decided I had a better - much better - idea for what should be going on behind the scenes. I didn't want to change the main character. I didn't want to change the bad guys, or the secondary characters, or most of the plot. I wanted to change what the bad guys were up to, and why.
I have described this to friends as being like the trick where someone pulls out the tablecloth from underneath a completely set table, while trying not to disturb anything. Like this.
Now, in the instructions for pulling a tablecloth out from under a set table, it says you have to make sure that each of the dishes has something in it so that it won't fly away. I actually have that. I'm very happy with my protagonist, Hub Girl, and her voice and attitudes on life. I'm very happy with my antagonists' placement in the plot. Heck, I was even happy with the sequence of scenes I had set up.
In those instructions, it also says not to have any wrinkles in the tablecloth.
I mean, come on. This is a story draft. Let's just say, it's got a few wrinkles (darn).
So what happened when I tried to change the understory was that things got rearranged a bit, and one of the "dishes" flew off the table, and now I'm having to put it back together with the following kinds of changes:
1. Backstory detail
It's really important to seed your larger problem early on in the story by using small detailed evidence. I had to look at the opening interactions between the characters, and change some of the details of how my protagonist met one of her friends. I made sure that her friend had been touched by the larger problem, so that evidence of it was present, but its significance was not understood yet by either of the two characters.
2. One entire scene change
You know that scene where the protagonist first gets a meaningful sniff of the larger plot, and someone tells her there's something bigger going on that she'd better care about or else? Yeah, that one. Gone. Totally changed, because what was going on is different and there is no way that she'd actually have a conversation with the person I'd had her converse with. One of the first hints that the story could be better (a lot better) was this big, early, plot-driven conversation, where Hub Girl found herself talking to someone she'd never in a million years take the risk of talking to without an extreme motive. And she didn't have an extreme motive.
She was going to need one, too. So when I cut that scene out and built another one, I tried to show more of her life, and the forces that kept her trapped, so that when she felt motivated to act, the reasons for it would be clear. I also used this new scene to show her taking control of those parts of her life that she can control, and acting. In particular, showing what she's capable of, and what her limits are. Both of those things are terribly important. If I don't show her hacking, you have to just take my word for it that she's a hacker and can do this stuff. Less believable. If I don't show her trying to rescue a friend, and failing, you might be tempted to believe that she's the kind of character who believes in "no friend gets left behind" (she does) and would risk her life (she does), guns blazing (uh, no, not in a million years). I find her more interesting because she is both powerful (as a hacker) and helpless (a skinny kid with no chance of reasonably challenging a larger, armed opponent). She still encounters a key bad guy in this scene, but doesn't seek him out or interact with him personally. It would simply be too great a risk for her.
3. Retooling every motivational connection - the problem of drive
I like to think of each scene as following the previous one in a logical progression. Hub Girl encounters this, so she does this, where this happens, so she does this, which causes this to happen, and forces her to do this... etc. It's this kind of logic, internal to the main character, that creates a sense of her being in control and driving through the story. This in turn helps readers feel motivated to keep reading. The change in the initial encounter with the baddies changed everything about her motivation going into scene 3. And the further she went, the more she learned about the underlying situation, which was different, so I've found myself having to rethink exactly what she learns and how her motivation changes to take her into the next scene. This for me has been a bit like realigning all the place settings that do remain on the table. I'm not actually changing who Hub Girl talks to and where, but the why is totally different, and I have to make sure not to drop plausibility. The draft had that one spot where her actions were potentially unconvincing, and it led everything off track. This draft has to be tight, and well-thought-through, so that it doesn't stray off at a different spot.
4. Rewriting dialogue
The dialogue in this story is really important. When you talk with a bad guy, they tend to tell you things about what they're up to. Now, I'm rejecting the idea of the bad guy monologue for this story, but I still have to give Hub Girl some information. Here's an example, from her first encounter with the Locker:
Draft 1:
Hub Girl: "Get outta my head! If you hurt Fisher --"
Locker: "I can't be interrupted. I'm doing something important, you understand?"
Hub Girl: "I heard. War on the Arkive. Else why'd you lock everybody?"
Locker: "Stupid urchin. Can't tell the difference between war and Spy versus Spy. Stay out of it, or I'll lock you all."
Draft 2:
Hub Girl: "Get outta my head! Give us Fingers back!"
Locker: "Sorry, girl, I've got big enemies, and I need her more than you do. Stay out of it, or I'll lock you all."
Notice that the second one is a lot shorter. The whole "war on the Arkive" thing is gone, because that's no longer what's going on behind the scenes. Besides which, it was a piece of information someone else had provided to Hub Girl, and having her just believe him was a stretch. Neither was it a particularly good motivator for Hub Girl, since she doesn't care that much about the Arkive (read: City internet) itself. She cares about herself and her friends. The key motivating phrase in the second version is "big enemies." This one really fits with Hub Girl and the life I imagine for her - and it fits with how she's menaced both by the police and the Locker. She knows what happens when there are big enemies about:
"When big enemies fight, it's us little ones that get crushed."
5. Consistency Cleanup
At this point I'm almost through redoing all the big motivators, and the things people say to one another. I know there's going to be another round of edits after those changes are made, just to make sure that everything surrounding them lines up properly. The silverware on the table will have to be realigned, basically. That I figure will be easier than some of this bigger stuff I've been dealing with.
I'm excited about the results so far. And I hope that these thoughts may help you on some of your own revisions.
I have described this to friends as being like the trick where someone pulls out the tablecloth from underneath a completely set table, while trying not to disturb anything. Like this.
Now, in the instructions for pulling a tablecloth out from under a set table, it says you have to make sure that each of the dishes has something in it so that it won't fly away. I actually have that. I'm very happy with my protagonist, Hub Girl, and her voice and attitudes on life. I'm very happy with my antagonists' placement in the plot. Heck, I was even happy with the sequence of scenes I had set up.
In those instructions, it also says not to have any wrinkles in the tablecloth.
I mean, come on. This is a story draft. Let's just say, it's got a few wrinkles (darn).
So what happened when I tried to change the understory was that things got rearranged a bit, and one of the "dishes" flew off the table, and now I'm having to put it back together with the following kinds of changes:
1. Backstory detail
It's really important to seed your larger problem early on in the story by using small detailed evidence. I had to look at the opening interactions between the characters, and change some of the details of how my protagonist met one of her friends. I made sure that her friend had been touched by the larger problem, so that evidence of it was present, but its significance was not understood yet by either of the two characters.
2. One entire scene change
You know that scene where the protagonist first gets a meaningful sniff of the larger plot, and someone tells her there's something bigger going on that she'd better care about or else? Yeah, that one. Gone. Totally changed, because what was going on is different and there is no way that she'd actually have a conversation with the person I'd had her converse with. One of the first hints that the story could be better (a lot better) was this big, early, plot-driven conversation, where Hub Girl found herself talking to someone she'd never in a million years take the risk of talking to without an extreme motive. And she didn't have an extreme motive.
She was going to need one, too. So when I cut that scene out and built another one, I tried to show more of her life, and the forces that kept her trapped, so that when she felt motivated to act, the reasons for it would be clear. I also used this new scene to show her taking control of those parts of her life that she can control, and acting. In particular, showing what she's capable of, and what her limits are. Both of those things are terribly important. If I don't show her hacking, you have to just take my word for it that she's a hacker and can do this stuff. Less believable. If I don't show her trying to rescue a friend, and failing, you might be tempted to believe that she's the kind of character who believes in "no friend gets left behind" (she does) and would risk her life (she does), guns blazing (uh, no, not in a million years). I find her more interesting because she is both powerful (as a hacker) and helpless (a skinny kid with no chance of reasonably challenging a larger, armed opponent). She still encounters a key bad guy in this scene, but doesn't seek him out or interact with him personally. It would simply be too great a risk for her.
3. Retooling every motivational connection - the problem of drive
I like to think of each scene as following the previous one in a logical progression. Hub Girl encounters this, so she does this, where this happens, so she does this, which causes this to happen, and forces her to do this... etc. It's this kind of logic, internal to the main character, that creates a sense of her being in control and driving through the story. This in turn helps readers feel motivated to keep reading. The change in the initial encounter with the baddies changed everything about her motivation going into scene 3. And the further she went, the more she learned about the underlying situation, which was different, so I've found myself having to rethink exactly what she learns and how her motivation changes to take her into the next scene. This for me has been a bit like realigning all the place settings that do remain on the table. I'm not actually changing who Hub Girl talks to and where, but the why is totally different, and I have to make sure not to drop plausibility. The draft had that one spot where her actions were potentially unconvincing, and it led everything off track. This draft has to be tight, and well-thought-through, so that it doesn't stray off at a different spot.
4. Rewriting dialogue
The dialogue in this story is really important. When you talk with a bad guy, they tend to tell you things about what they're up to. Now, I'm rejecting the idea of the bad guy monologue for this story, but I still have to give Hub Girl some information. Here's an example, from her first encounter with the Locker:
Draft 1:
Hub Girl: "Get outta my head! If you hurt Fisher --"
Locker: "I can't be interrupted. I'm doing something important, you understand?"
Hub Girl: "I heard. War on the Arkive. Else why'd you lock everybody?"
Locker: "Stupid urchin. Can't tell the difference between war and Spy versus Spy. Stay out of it, or I'll lock you all."
Draft 2:
Hub Girl: "Get outta my head! Give us Fingers back!"
Locker: "Sorry, girl, I've got big enemies, and I need her more than you do. Stay out of it, or I'll lock you all."
Notice that the second one is a lot shorter. The whole "war on the Arkive" thing is gone, because that's no longer what's going on behind the scenes. Besides which, it was a piece of information someone else had provided to Hub Girl, and having her just believe him was a stretch. Neither was it a particularly good motivator for Hub Girl, since she doesn't care that much about the Arkive (read: City internet) itself. She cares about herself and her friends. The key motivating phrase in the second version is "big enemies." This one really fits with Hub Girl and the life I imagine for her - and it fits with how she's menaced both by the police and the Locker. She knows what happens when there are big enemies about:
"When big enemies fight, it's us little ones that get crushed."
5. Consistency Cleanup
At this point I'm almost through redoing all the big motivators, and the things people say to one another. I know there's going to be another round of edits after those changes are made, just to make sure that everything surrounding them lines up properly. The silverware on the table will have to be realigned, basically. That I figure will be easier than some of this bigger stuff I've been dealing with.
I'm excited about the results so far. And I hope that these thoughts may help you on some of your own revisions.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Video: Metaphors in Worldbuilding
We had a great discussion of Metaphors and Similes in Worldbuilding today. As usual, I'll be putting up a full written report next week, but here's the video if you would like to get the blow-by-blow!
Making the Most of Holidays in Your World: A Google+ Hangout Report
I was joined by Erin Peterson, Lesley Smith, Janet Harriett, and Brian Dolton for this discussion. At first I had imagined that the topic of Holidays might be easily exhausted, but we discovered quite a number of interesting ideas in the course of the hour.
At the start I contrasted the idea of using existing holidays in a fantasy or science fiction world with creating new holidays for that world. I had encountered quite a few stories as a child where existing world holidays were imported into a fantasy, and hadn't really noticed it then - but these days it always seems odd to me when I find Christmas or other familiar holidays transplanted. Erin remarked that this doesn't just go for major holidays, but also for things like birthday parties and celebrations. I have seen birthday parties handled well, but usually they have been deliberately altered by the author to fit better into the setting, such as a futuristic birthday with special-ordered weather that I saw in a story by my friend Keyan Bowes. You have to ask yourself, "Why would people celebrate?" Also, "How easy would it be to celebrate?" Erin noted that in a medieval world, travel would be difficult, making it far less likely that people would get together. Logistical questions like this can be a big deal, and if they are ignored, the scenario is likely to look false. In my Varin world, where the nobles are inbred and the noble Race is dying out, birthdays look different because they are much more congratulatory and less "happy" - the greater concern is with a child's success in taking one step closer to adulthood and being able to provide the Race with children.
We had a brief discussion of the way that holidays are handled in World of Warcraft, where they are imported with a lot of their details intact (like Thanksgiving with turkeys) but given an entirely different underlying support within the game. If an author chooses to import a particular holiday, this kind of option must be considered. It's hard to import Christmas without Christianity - but if you rename it Winterfair, you can simply overlay a different meaning on the existing holiday.
As we then discussed, people in the real world have been doing exactly this for millennia. Brian called it "go ahead and celebrate, but now you're doing it to worship our god." Since it was Valentine's Day, Janet mentioned Lupercalia, one of at least two holidays I've heard mentioned as having been subsumed by Valentine's Day (the other one being Gamelion). Another interesting variation on this happens when a holiday is imported cross-culturally. Japan has imported Christmas, but it is less a celebration of Christianity than it is an opportunity to eat white cakes topped with strawberries, and on Christmas Eve it has become traditional to eat KFC fried chicken. Walking in the streets of Tokyo, I have come across life-sized statues of Colonel Sanders wearing Santa suits at Christmastime.
From there we moved on to creating holidays. I mentioned having created a sort of "Founder's Day" celebration for one of the religions of my Varin world. Lesley rightly pointed out that holidays don't have to be religious. They can have to do with natural things beginning and ending, as with New Year's Day and many other holidays. Brian mentioned that in the world he's working with, a former Empire had a group of scholars come together to invent a logical calendar independently of any religious motivation, but the calendar was then taken advantage of by the members of different religions, who used the "extra days" of the calendar as days of rest where naturally one would be expected to go to church (because you had time).
Deciding which days are rest days is also something worth doing in the world as you've created it. So is considering which people have made important contributions to the society and might be worth honoring with a holiday like Queen's Birthday (in the British Commonwealth) or President's Day (in the US). Whether these days are taken seriously and reverently or not is another separate question.
Then there are the days where we celebrate even when we don't have an official government holiday. Erin mentioned the Superbowl - which has quite a number of rituals associated with it even though it's not a day off. She describe driving swiftly across Los Angeles with no traffic on Superbowl Sunday, which is unheard of. Someone said there should be a zombie holiday, so I mentioned my friend Janice Hardy's lawn zombie, which she dresses up for the holidays. In Melbourne, Australia, they actually have an official day off on the first Tuesday of November for a horse race.
Another factor to consider in dealing with holidays is how they affect working people versus other people. Do people get paid more for working on a holiday? What kind of logistical support does the holiday have? (Do people simply drink at the office?) Are holidays split by social status, as with Boxing Day, which was traditionally the servants' day off after they'd worked all of Christmas Day? (Now people tend to go shopping and/or watch cricket, at least in Australia.)
Janet noted that how you celebrate a holiday depends on your location and worldview, and that there are differences in the way people celebrate between the Bible Belt and other regions of the US, such as whether people get a day off for Good Friday. My husband also noted this when he moved here, because Easter is more significant in Australia and everyone gets Good Friday and Easter Monday off. Janet then mentioned the idea of competing religious structures, which is entirely relevant to Easter, because everyone gets a break in the spring, but is it Spring Break? Or is it Easter Break? If there are multiple religions, whose holidays get the most honor? Yom Kippur is not a national holiday, for example. Do some holidays, which are less important in one religion, gain more importance because of their proximity to major holidays of another religion (like Hanukkah with Christmas)? Erin noted that though religions may compete, often the underlying culture is similar.
I thought the idea of competing religions was interesting because it's not something I often see in fictional worlds. Brian described how he's working with a world that has several religions with sub-factions. It can be challenging to portray that kind of complexity. We asked the question, "If you have a complex religious situation, does it require a novel to portray?"
Janet contends that it's possible to portray complexity well, even in a short story. She told us about a short story of hers where a child in a generational ship (which became generational accidentally) feels a lack of connection to Earth, and so when the others on the ship celebrate their departure day she goes into a holiday depression.
Holiday depression is a real phenomenon in our world, and worth considering. Often I think it comes from having an outsider feeling when holidays are often so much about family groups, intimacy and inclusion. There are also complex expectations of behavior associated with holidays, including expectations for what kind of emotional states you should be experiencing.
Erin remarked that often in fiction, only feast get-together are included, but that holidays are not just about food. What does the spirit of celebration involve in your world? It probably shouldn't be all happy and joyful times. There are plenty of solemn holidays as well, such as Lent, or Ramadan, Ash Wednesday, Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur. Memorial day was once a sad occasion. Often what you find in these holidays is a balance of joy and somberness. I've often heard Christmas or Winter Solstice spoken about as being a reason to have a party when it's dark and one would otherwise despair. I think it was Janet who mentioned Groundhog Day as being for "whimsy on a cold day." I mentioned how in Japan, Valentine's Day has been divided into "Valentine's Day" on February 14, and "White Day" on March 14. The first of the two is for girls to give chocolate to all the boys they like, and the second for only the boys who like those girls specially to give them marshmallows (can you tell I always thought this was a bum deal for the girls?). There are also family holidays like birthdays and anniversaries. Janet mentioned Guy Fawkes day and Bastille Day, which are named for important historical events. The beginnings and endings of wars are also celebrated. There is Independence Day. For adopted children, there may be both birthdays and Adoption Days.
There are all sorts of possibilities.
Thanks to everyone who attended and made this such an interesting discussion. Today at 11am PST we will be discussing the use of metaphor in worldbuilding (and writing of course!). I hope to see you there!
At the start I contrasted the idea of using existing holidays in a fantasy or science fiction world with creating new holidays for that world. I had encountered quite a few stories as a child where existing world holidays were imported into a fantasy, and hadn't really noticed it then - but these days it always seems odd to me when I find Christmas or other familiar holidays transplanted. Erin remarked that this doesn't just go for major holidays, but also for things like birthday parties and celebrations. I have seen birthday parties handled well, but usually they have been deliberately altered by the author to fit better into the setting, such as a futuristic birthday with special-ordered weather that I saw in a story by my friend Keyan Bowes. You have to ask yourself, "Why would people celebrate?" Also, "How easy would it be to celebrate?" Erin noted that in a medieval world, travel would be difficult, making it far less likely that people would get together. Logistical questions like this can be a big deal, and if they are ignored, the scenario is likely to look false. In my Varin world, where the nobles are inbred and the noble Race is dying out, birthdays look different because they are much more congratulatory and less "happy" - the greater concern is with a child's success in taking one step closer to adulthood and being able to provide the Race with children.
We had a brief discussion of the way that holidays are handled in World of Warcraft, where they are imported with a lot of their details intact (like Thanksgiving with turkeys) but given an entirely different underlying support within the game. If an author chooses to import a particular holiday, this kind of option must be considered. It's hard to import Christmas without Christianity - but if you rename it Winterfair, you can simply overlay a different meaning on the existing holiday.
As we then discussed, people in the real world have been doing exactly this for millennia. Brian called it "go ahead and celebrate, but now you're doing it to worship our god." Since it was Valentine's Day, Janet mentioned Lupercalia, one of at least two holidays I've heard mentioned as having been subsumed by Valentine's Day (the other one being Gamelion). Another interesting variation on this happens when a holiday is imported cross-culturally. Japan has imported Christmas, but it is less a celebration of Christianity than it is an opportunity to eat white cakes topped with strawberries, and on Christmas Eve it has become traditional to eat KFC fried chicken. Walking in the streets of Tokyo, I have come across life-sized statues of Colonel Sanders wearing Santa suits at Christmastime.
From there we moved on to creating holidays. I mentioned having created a sort of "Founder's Day" celebration for one of the religions of my Varin world. Lesley rightly pointed out that holidays don't have to be religious. They can have to do with natural things beginning and ending, as with New Year's Day and many other holidays. Brian mentioned that in the world he's working with, a former Empire had a group of scholars come together to invent a logical calendar independently of any religious motivation, but the calendar was then taken advantage of by the members of different religions, who used the "extra days" of the calendar as days of rest where naturally one would be expected to go to church (because you had time).
Deciding which days are rest days is also something worth doing in the world as you've created it. So is considering which people have made important contributions to the society and might be worth honoring with a holiday like Queen's Birthday (in the British Commonwealth) or President's Day (in the US). Whether these days are taken seriously and reverently or not is another separate question.
Then there are the days where we celebrate even when we don't have an official government holiday. Erin mentioned the Superbowl - which has quite a number of rituals associated with it even though it's not a day off. She describe driving swiftly across Los Angeles with no traffic on Superbowl Sunday, which is unheard of. Someone said there should be a zombie holiday, so I mentioned my friend Janice Hardy's lawn zombie, which she dresses up for the holidays. In Melbourne, Australia, they actually have an official day off on the first Tuesday of November for a horse race.
Another factor to consider in dealing with holidays is how they affect working people versus other people. Do people get paid more for working on a holiday? What kind of logistical support does the holiday have? (Do people simply drink at the office?) Are holidays split by social status, as with Boxing Day, which was traditionally the servants' day off after they'd worked all of Christmas Day? (Now people tend to go shopping and/or watch cricket, at least in Australia.)
Janet noted that how you celebrate a holiday depends on your location and worldview, and that there are differences in the way people celebrate between the Bible Belt and other regions of the US, such as whether people get a day off for Good Friday. My husband also noted this when he moved here, because Easter is more significant in Australia and everyone gets Good Friday and Easter Monday off. Janet then mentioned the idea of competing religious structures, which is entirely relevant to Easter, because everyone gets a break in the spring, but is it Spring Break? Or is it Easter Break? If there are multiple religions, whose holidays get the most honor? Yom Kippur is not a national holiday, for example. Do some holidays, which are less important in one religion, gain more importance because of their proximity to major holidays of another religion (like Hanukkah with Christmas)? Erin noted that though religions may compete, often the underlying culture is similar.
I thought the idea of competing religions was interesting because it's not something I often see in fictional worlds. Brian described how he's working with a world that has several religions with sub-factions. It can be challenging to portray that kind of complexity. We asked the question, "If you have a complex religious situation, does it require a novel to portray?"
Janet contends that it's possible to portray complexity well, even in a short story. She told us about a short story of hers where a child in a generational ship (which became generational accidentally) feels a lack of connection to Earth, and so when the others on the ship celebrate their departure day she goes into a holiday depression.
Holiday depression is a real phenomenon in our world, and worth considering. Often I think it comes from having an outsider feeling when holidays are often so much about family groups, intimacy and inclusion. There are also complex expectations of behavior associated with holidays, including expectations for what kind of emotional states you should be experiencing.
Erin remarked that often in fiction, only feast get-together are included, but that holidays are not just about food. What does the spirit of celebration involve in your world? It probably shouldn't be all happy and joyful times. There are plenty of solemn holidays as well, such as Lent, or Ramadan, Ash Wednesday, Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur. Memorial day was once a sad occasion. Often what you find in these holidays is a balance of joy and somberness. I've often heard Christmas or Winter Solstice spoken about as being a reason to have a party when it's dark and one would otherwise despair. I think it was Janet who mentioned Groundhog Day as being for "whimsy on a cold day." I mentioned how in Japan, Valentine's Day has been divided into "Valentine's Day" on February 14, and "White Day" on March 14. The first of the two is for girls to give chocolate to all the boys they like, and the second for only the boys who like those girls specially to give them marshmallows (can you tell I always thought this was a bum deal for the girls?). There are also family holidays like birthdays and anniversaries. Janet mentioned Guy Fawkes day and Bastille Day, which are named for important historical events. The beginnings and endings of wars are also celebrated. There is Independence Day. For adopted children, there may be both birthdays and Adoption Days.
There are all sorts of possibilities.
Thanks to everyone who attended and made this such an interesting discussion. Today at 11am PST we will be discussing the use of metaphor in worldbuilding (and writing of course!). I hope to see you there!
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
When is it overwritten?
I've heard the word "overwritten" quite a few times but had always had a hard time putting a solid meaning on it. I figured it meant that the author was trying too hard. However, some time ago I came across this article, in which Alexander McCall Smith specifically says that overwriting involves too many words on the page (adjectives especially). A quote:
"Something is overwritten when there is just too much of it. This may be because the writer has laboured the point and made a mountain out of a molehill, or because too many words are used. As a result, descriptions are cluttered and the prose quickly becomes unreadable."
Here is the article, if you'd like to see more.
He goes on to say that English is so rich with possible synonyms that people want to use more than one, like overindulging in candy. I know I've done this before - it tends to come out in that place where we get to the end of a description, add a comma, and then add another description. Example off the top of my head.
His eyes were like the night sky, like the horrible depths of his soul.
Now, I have often gone back through descriptions and said to myself, "no double descriptions - cut one of those two out and leave the better one." However, when you take it back to the level of story function, I can think of contexts where two descriptions might work. Those might be spots where you're trying to show a character's ambivalence. The above example might be someone considering a man and thinking about how beautiful he is yet how evil. Sure it can be done differently. Better. More concisely. But I don't think a descriptive echo is always the wrong answer.
I have a tendency to be quite specific in description - but not all description. Only particular types. I look out for places where a reader's assumptions about the real world are about to lead them to wrong conclusions, and that's where I put the words. To close a hole in the story where someone might "fall out." Working in worlds that are not like ours means not being able to rely on as much previous reader knowledge. That means that sometimes more description is necessary.
I also want to look at his phrase "mountain out of a molehill." While I don't know precisely what he intended, the phrase evokes something quite specific for me in the writing context - something I'll call "straining to create intensity." There are points in a story when we want something big to happen. "The big reveal" is what they sometimes call it. "The big set piece." I think you know what I'm saying. What can sometimes happen is that we get to that point, find that it's not hitting with the appropriate BANG!, and try to amplify its effect by getting more flamboyant and intense in the way we write it. Sometimes that can be helpful, but sometimes it just makes us seem like we're yelling and waving our arms on an empty stage. For events to have impact, they need to be supported by the rest of the story.
This is a particular risk when you're trying to follow the adage, "start with conflict." In a movie, where the visuals are so important, you can afford to start with someone in the middle of a fight, or a car chase, or something, because it's just so cool to watch that you can handle waiting to figure out what it means and who's involved. But a lot of the significance of a written scene lies in its significance to the characters, and unless you know the characters, it's hard to feel that kind of sympathy. At the beginning of a story, we want conflict of the kind that effectively evokes personal qualities of the characters, so that we can get to know them. Too much pyrotechnics for someone we don't know can easily result in someone saying, "I don't care" and putting the book down.
A moment of true impact can be a single sentence, even a single word, if it's properly supported. It needs to be supported by our knowledge of the characters and their situation (story-internal information) as well as our knowledge of what kinds of experiences can be traumatic for individuals in our own world.
I wouldn't suggest that you be afraid to use adjectives, or adverbs, or any other part of speech. It's not that simple. It's enough (to my mind) to realize that these things can be easily overused, and to make sure you're conveying your meaning most effectively. Remember, you don't need to put five different descriptions on something - you should put one (maybe a complex one) which best fits with the characters, the world, and your intended emotional effect. Remember also that other parts of your story, like the character personalities, progress of events, or even repetitions of particular types of imagery, can provide a strong foundation and magnify the impact of what you describe.
It's something to think about.
"Something is overwritten when there is just too much of it. This may be because the writer has laboured the point and made a mountain out of a molehill, or because too many words are used. As a result, descriptions are cluttered and the prose quickly becomes unreadable."
Here is the article, if you'd like to see more.
He goes on to say that English is so rich with possible synonyms that people want to use more than one, like overindulging in candy. I know I've done this before - it tends to come out in that place where we get to the end of a description, add a comma, and then add another description. Example off the top of my head.
His eyes were like the night sky, like the horrible depths of his soul.
Now, I have often gone back through descriptions and said to myself, "no double descriptions - cut one of those two out and leave the better one." However, when you take it back to the level of story function, I can think of contexts where two descriptions might work. Those might be spots where you're trying to show a character's ambivalence. The above example might be someone considering a man and thinking about how beautiful he is yet how evil. Sure it can be done differently. Better. More concisely. But I don't think a descriptive echo is always the wrong answer.
I have a tendency to be quite specific in description - but not all description. Only particular types. I look out for places where a reader's assumptions about the real world are about to lead them to wrong conclusions, and that's where I put the words. To close a hole in the story where someone might "fall out." Working in worlds that are not like ours means not being able to rely on as much previous reader knowledge. That means that sometimes more description is necessary.
I also want to look at his phrase "mountain out of a molehill." While I don't know precisely what he intended, the phrase evokes something quite specific for me in the writing context - something I'll call "straining to create intensity." There are points in a story when we want something big to happen. "The big reveal" is what they sometimes call it. "The big set piece." I think you know what I'm saying. What can sometimes happen is that we get to that point, find that it's not hitting with the appropriate BANG!, and try to amplify its effect by getting more flamboyant and intense in the way we write it. Sometimes that can be helpful, but sometimes it just makes us seem like we're yelling and waving our arms on an empty stage. For events to have impact, they need to be supported by the rest of the story.
This is a particular risk when you're trying to follow the adage, "start with conflict." In a movie, where the visuals are so important, you can afford to start with someone in the middle of a fight, or a car chase, or something, because it's just so cool to watch that you can handle waiting to figure out what it means and who's involved. But a lot of the significance of a written scene lies in its significance to the characters, and unless you know the characters, it's hard to feel that kind of sympathy. At the beginning of a story, we want conflict of the kind that effectively evokes personal qualities of the characters, so that we can get to know them. Too much pyrotechnics for someone we don't know can easily result in someone saying, "I don't care" and putting the book down.
A moment of true impact can be a single sentence, even a single word, if it's properly supported. It needs to be supported by our knowledge of the characters and their situation (story-internal information) as well as our knowledge of what kinds of experiences can be traumatic for individuals in our own world.
I wouldn't suggest that you be afraid to use adjectives, or adverbs, or any other part of speech. It's not that simple. It's enough (to my mind) to realize that these things can be easily overused, and to make sure you're conveying your meaning most effectively. Remember, you don't need to put five different descriptions on something - you should put one (maybe a complex one) which best fits with the characters, the world, and your intended emotional effect. Remember also that other parts of your story, like the character personalities, progress of events, or even repetitions of particular types of imagery, can provide a strong foundation and magnify the impact of what you describe.
It's something to think about.
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