Societal Expectations and Real World Cultural Baggage in Speculative Fiction

A few days ago, I posted a quote that expressed a rather negative view of our current system of education  (in American and around the world).  First, I’d suggest you watch the anime mentioned in the title of the work from which the quote is excerpted: “Kare Kano”.  This show was also known as Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo in Japanese, and “His and Her Circumstances” in English.  It really gives you an understanding of where the quote is coming from.  Of course, it’s 26 episodes or about 12 hours long.  So, I also hope to elaborate on that in this post and the ones that follow.  You won’t be required to watch the anime to understand the post.  That would be ridiculous.  But I still think it would help.

Now, you might wonder what this has to do with writing science fiction and fantasy–or anything else, for that matter.  The answer is “nothing”.  And “everything”.  It also might have something to do with fact that I’m researching for a near-future SF story dealing with education and society.  Bear with me.

Every society has two important things that make it what it is: expectations and acceptations.  Expectations are pretty obvious, the things one is expected to do to make it in society.  In the modern world, these often include education, occupation, and reproduction.   Acceptations are a little more complicated.  They are culturally wide-spread opinions on what are “acceptable” deviations from the norm.  Being a child film star instead of going to normal school is an acceptation of modern American(US) society.  Becoming a drug dealer is not.

It doesn’t really matter in practical terms what an individual believes, because social pressures are usually strong enough to override individual opinions..  But it most certainly matters in personal terms.  Being forced to conform to a blanket set of expectations can be very damaging to a person.  For instance, in modern America, there is still a great deal of prejudice towards homosexual orientations.  Society expects that a man will pair up with a woman and have children.  When individuals deviate from these expectations, there are consequences, generally negative, in response to those unaccepted actions.

But think about this, there are also ways to positively violate societal expectations.  If someone drops out of college to join a rock band, there would normally be negative reactions, but if they become wealthy or famous or both, suddenly everyone is praising them.  Sort of the old “I’ll show them!” ideal.  But even with numerous examples of this, the negative perception of such behavior still exists, because “normal” people cannot do these things.  You might call these exceptions.  If one drops out of school and becomes a wealthy prostitute or pimp, even that “success” does not justify their deviation.

That’s how it works in the real world.  And on the surface, that’s how it works in fiction.  Especially mainstream, earth-based fiction.  But what about speculative fiction?  All too often, we drag our baggage along with is into stories ostensibly set in other worlds, dimensions, countries, even if the natural expectations and acceptations would normally be different in those settings. 

On the one hand, it could be argued that the whole point of fiction is to explore our own issues.  But I would counter that that doesn’t require us to transport all of our 21^st century Earth attitudes into past or future worlds.  You can still address contemporary issues in fictional settings.  All it takes is a little imagination.  And I know the spec fic community—and the writing community in general—has that.

It’s actually a very common discussion topic on web-based spec fic communities whether or not that ham-fisted projection is acceptable in good fiction.  If we look at contemporary foreign literature (and this applies not matter what is “foreign” to you), we can see that these authors can write a story in which we sympathize with character issues that don’t derive exclusively from our own culture.  Look at how popular Japanese cultural exports are in America.  An enormous number of manga, anime, and light novels are translated both officially and unofficially into American English.  Is Japan a radically different culture?  Not in the modern world.  But they do have a different set of cultural expectations, acceptations, and exceptions.

When writing a story, it’s very important to consider what is “normal” within that setting, and what is exceptional or discouraged.  It used to be that people from the lower classes were discouraged from pursuing higher education—or any education at all.  It used to be in our culture that music was a special activity, for a small number of people, and now it’s a part of most curriculums.  And before that, it was a community activity.

These sorts of societal pressure have an enormous impact on us as people, and the same should be true for characters in your story.  Examining and exploring these issues before you begin to write can cut down a great deal on the clichés common to many spec fic stories, such as the plucky princess, the genius peasant,  the scholarly whipping boy, the child seer/mage, and the feisty girl thief.  Assuming they don’t fit in the context of the story, of course.

And, of course, for those characters that do fall outside of the mold, it can create a more deep and realistic sense of tension between them and society.  And it can open up a wide array of themes for the story to explore: gender, age, race, class, etc.

 

Quote of the Night

Prospective valedictorians take heed:

“A child’s future should not be defined by how much longer they must work their ass off until they can do what they enjoy—because the answer is ‘forever’.”

~Kare Kano: Reflections on a Compulsory Education

 

World-building—And Why It Matters

One of the first things you’ll hear on going to a writing forum dealing with the genres of Speculative Fiction is that “characters and stories are more important than world-building.” Which, on the surface, is absolutely correct. You could create a fictional world twenty-thousand times as deep and fascinating as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and if you didn’t have a story with characters that took place in it, you’re not going to sell a book. At least, not a commercial fiction book.

But think about this, you could come up with the most fast-paced, suspenseful story ever written, and if the characters are cardboard, you won’t sell it. The same goes for having the most fascinating and intricate characters in the history of story-telling. If you don’t have a story, something for those characters to do, you won’t convince anyone to pay you for writing about them. So, we’ve concluded that no one aspect of a story make up for a lack in the other two.

But wait, didn’t I just quote Generic SFF Writing Forum Member as saying that both character and story are more important than world-building? Well, yes, I did. You can’t sell a story without a story, and it isn’t a good story without good characters. But the question is, how do you create a good story? With good characters? I would like anyone who would buy a story that was exactly the Borne Identity set in 435 BC Japan to raise their hand.

Now, for those of you who didn’t raise your hands, why not? (The rest of you can GTFO.) One reason might be that it makes absolutely no sense. You can’t set a story that’s identical to the Borne Identity in 435 BC Japan, because the story is set in Zurich, relies on the real-world geography of Zurich, and includes a great deal of not only Swiss, but also 20th century culture, that just didn’t exist in Japan (and still doesn’t, and never will) in the 5th Century BC. That makes sense, right?

Now, you could set a similar story to the Borne Identity in 5th century BC Japan. Perhaps an ambitious warlord or clan leader is using deadly proto-ninjas to assassinate his adversaries. (Yeah, it’s cliché, and historically inaccurate, but that’s not the issue. Well… okay, it’s exactly the issue.) But a similar story is still not the same story, right? There are going to be differences, most of them enormous, at least as far as the details go.

You might still be able to throw in some amnesia, and espionage, and a romantic subplot, but there won’t be any car chases, or guns, or long-range communications technology (e.g., cell phones). The characters and the setting, and probably many themes, will be informed by an entirely culture and perspective. And readers will expect the writer to be accurate in those things.

How does a writer do that? They research. A lot. Even the most seat-of-the-pants writer will be constantly checking their ideas against reality. They may decide to ignore it in very important areas, but they will know they are doing so.

In fantasy, or at least, secondary world fantasy, the writer does not have that enormous pool of reality to compare the story to. Instead of research, they do world-building. Everything that your normal, non SFF writer can look up on Wikipedia? You have to make that stuff up.
Of course, you do get the advantage of flexibility. Whereas an author writing in a well-known period of earth will have to fudge things—even when they know some readers will bite their head off for it—an SFF author has a lot more freedom to make shit up.

But, lest the reader still find plot holes you could drive the Deathstar through, you must be internally consistent. And that’s where all that effort you spent world-building comes in. Now, you can borrow a lot from real life: gravity, thermodynamics, human beings—but for most of the history and culture and geography, you can only get inspiration. Same for characters. You have to sew it together yourself from whole cloth. All of it…

Er, well–as much as you need for the story anyway. How much that is will depend on the scope of the story, but considering that most SFF written today has relatively large scope, you’ve still got a lot of work to do.

“But wait! It’s hard enough to come up with a plot and characters. Why must I create an entire world, as well?”

What? You thought SFF was easy? Reality check!

Making shit up is hard, but you have to know all of this stuff because your story and characters have to fit in the world in which they live. Remember our talk about setting the Borne Identity in 5th Century BC Japan? Setting matters—a lot. Now, there are many approaches, many methods, many ways to do this creation.

Some authors spend a few months working this stuff out at the beginning. Some people mix it together with the story and characters as they go along. Some people go back and revise once they have the basic draft of their story on paper. But you’ve got to do this work sometime. We can discuss the advantages of the different methods later. For now, you just need to understand why this stuff matters. In the next post, we’ll discuss how to decide which aspect to cut when they conflict.

 

Oh, My God, it’s a Flying Carpet! Or: Believable Relationships with Magic.

In the last post I talked about the relative frame of reference in regards to magic. Quick refresher: A relative frame of reference is the knowledge and experience of a single character. In this case, their knowledge of—and experience with—magic in the world of the story. Each character has a different one. And the reader has an absolute frame of reference (in most cases). And that’s where we run into trouble with character reactions.

A lot of you may be familiar with a joke whose punch-line goes: “Oh my god, a talking sausage!” The humor comes from the fact that this line is itself in fact uttered by a linguistically capable sausage.

A lot of readers and writers have this idea in their heads that characters in high magic worlds cannot be surprised or awed by magic. After all, it’s everywhere, even if they can’t use it themselves. Flying broomsticks, and fireballs, and talking flamingos… whatever. But just like our friend the talking sausage these characters are perfectly capable of being surprised by such things. In the real world, many people are still in awe of perfectly normal things: A quadruple axle in ice-skating, a launching rocket, stage magic, a particularly impressive floor routine at the Olympics, anyone who can play La Campanella. It’s not just about whether we are familiar with something. There’s also whether we are capable of it ourselves, and also the remove at which we experience it. We’ve all seen moon landings on television, but to be face-to-face with a person who has walked on the lunar surface is still somehow incredible.

Maybe the King does sponsor 13 mages of the “Adept” level, but so what? If all a little street rat has seen are hedge witches treating headaches, one of those adepts calling a thunderstorm to kill an orc raiding party is still going to be quite impressive. I can get quite a few bulls-eyes on the YMCA archery range, sure, but I certainly don’t have as many fan-girls as Legolas, an entirely fictional character. The point I’m trying to make here is be very careful how you judge a characters reaction to the fantastic. Just because you’ve seen 37 dragon-slaying elf-lords, that doesn’t mean our humble heroine has the same experience. Now, if she were married to a dragon-slaying elf-lord, that’s a different story.

Just because we’re reading about a high magic world doesn’t mean everyone has exactly the same exposure. We had silks for hundreds of years before your average housewife could afford to buy one at all, much less without bankrupting herself. Even in a world with magic refrigerators, the fantastic can still amaze.

All right, enough of my ranting and raving. How can we create believable relationships with magic for our characters?

Step 1:  Know what your character has seen or experienced.

Are they a total noob? Have they never even seen a sympathy lamp1, much less someone calling the wind? Even the tamest fire-calling will probably shock them. But perhaps they’ve talked with snakes and found themselves on roof-tops unknowing of how they arrived there. They might not be entirely shocked when an invitation to England’s magical boarding school arrives in the mail. Are they the arch-mage of Glockenspiel? Perhaps even a divine visitation is nothing more than another damn form to fill out and alphabetize.

There will be characters in your fantasy running from one end of this spectrum to the other, and you have to somehow make them all work. There’s a lot of guess and check here, no simple rules or formulas. A particularly imaginative child may not be at all shocked to find a faun and light-post in the back of the wardrobe, while her older siblings might be rather dismissive of the girl’s claims.

Step 2:  Decide what your character knows.

Even if your character can’t use magic themselves, they may be familiar with a great many of its principles. Lore-masters, priests, and worldly mercenaries all have the opportunity of falling into this category. If they do use magic, they could be at any step on the ladder of mastery: a lazy apprentice barely able to levitate an apple2, a jaded playboy known throughout his people as a flamboyant master3, or even a maxed-out journeyman resentful of his small ability. Wherever he is, how much he knows will inform his responses. He may be contemptuous of a clumsy apprentice’s first fireball, and wildly jealous of a child-prodigy’s Greater Demon Summoning. He may be surly and capricious towards others, or earnest and benevolent in pursuit of his lowly duties. Every character is different, but it’s important to consider how their personality affects relationships with other magic-users (or non-users) and with magic itself. Knowledge is one type of pecking order, and strength another, and you should know where the character stands in both.

Step 3: Know what your character feels.

Does your character see all healers as saints, or all mages as sinners? Do they have religious objections? Emotional ones? Did a mage murder their father? Are those who need magical assistance pathetic? Have they succeeded without magic in a field where mages pre-dominate? Have they ever felt in debt to a mage? Begged for help? Been spurned? These questions and many more affect how they relate to magic and those who use it. Attitude is a very important factor in how a character feels. Those who look on magic with contempt will not be impressed by displays of skill. Those who have been harmed with not admire it. Those who have been spurned or let down may hate it with all their soul. And those whose lives it has saved may view all mages (deservedly or not) as angels, saints, or heroes. But you’ll never know how your character feels or responds if you don’t know explore those feelings.

Step 4: Know how your character views magic.

This is the final and most complicated question to answer. Does your character see magic as a means to power? Does anything go? Do they have ethics or morals? Perhaps magic is the tool of demons… or a gift of the gods. Maybe there are no built-in penalties for “misusing” it. Or maybe the slightest deviation from protocol will bring divine retribution. What are the rights and wrongs of magic as far as your characters are concerned. Would they support bring back the dead? Stealing souls? Healing the sick? Fighting wars? All of these questions can help predict what sorts of conflicts will arise among your characters. (Emotion will, too, of course.)

Truthfully these steps can be done in any order, but I’ve lined them up in the way that seems most sensible to me. You can’t know what they know unless you know what they’ve experienced, and same goes for ethics and emotion (which I’ve put after knowledge/ability since that is often a major part of attitude.

So, those are the main four things that will determine how a character responds to magic. Whether creating your own character or reacting to another’s, it’s important to keep these things in mind. One’s own prejudices and experiences are irrelevant to whether a character has responded believably or not. All that matters is the character.

Since I spent half this post ranting about high-magic worlds, I suppose I’ll have to explain that term, and it’s opposite, “low-magic” worlds, next post. To avoid a dry and boring series of definitions, we’ll take a look at how to decide which is best for your story, and I’ll support the discussion with examples from various fantasy books I’ve read.

1 A reference to Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind, regarding the two forms of “magic”, one of which is common and well-known, and the other which is rare and mysterious to non-Arcanists.

2 Darian, from Lackey’s Owl trilogy is a village boy who begins with very weak magic. Levitating fruit is one of the exercises set him by his master.

3 Firesong from Lackey’s Mage Winds and Mage Storms series is a powerful and learned mage of the Tayledras, with a reputation for romantic flings and a childish attitude.

 

Magicology: Frames of Reference, Part 2

Last post (which was posted far too long ago) I rambled on about “frames of reference” and POV and how fantasy writers need to get with the program and come up with some useful jargon, and…  Well, you read the post, right?  Right?

Remember how I divided things into relative and absolute frames of reference?  The absolute frame is a simple concept; relative frames are not.  So today, I’m going to delve into just what I mean about multiple frames of reference and how they are useful. 

But first, I want to make an important distinction:  A “perspective” is a narrative device, a frame of reference is a world-building one.  A perspective in fiction is how a character relates to the story.  A frame of reference is how they relate to the world in which the story takes place.   There’s a difference.

(As far as I am concerned, a “point of view (POV)” is a structural device and refers to either first, second, or third person past, present or future.  A perspective is strictly which character (or the narrator) we are following at any given time.  Other writers may have different ideas.  That’s okay—whatever works for them.  In posts here, we will be using my definitions.)

Now, what makes relative frames of reference complicated is that each character has one—just like each person in the real world has their own ideas and opinions.  It’s not hard to get lost among all of these frames, and a common critique of bad characterization is that all the characters “felt/sounded the same”.  This is a very common criticism in regards to dialogue.  And there I am drifting off-topic.  Back to magic.

There are two main ways that the relative frames of reference can affect a character in regards to magic:

1.  Their reaction to it-  Are they amazed, indifferent, or possibly contemptuous.  They could also be prejudiced or hostile or fawning or respectful.  The greater the difference in their knowledge of magic—whether theoretical, ethical, or emotional—the more likely their reaction is to be strong or intense.  If there’s less difference, they’ll have less of a response.  Pretty basic, right?  It’s actually more complicated than that, and in my next post, (which is already written this time, so no long wait), I’ll discuss character reaction to magic, and why many people have mistaken impressions as to what is and is not a realistic response.
2. What they can do with it-  Are they good, gifted, hopeless, or helpless?  I know, this is fantasy.  There’s a lot of emotional symbolism involved in the narrative representation of magic.  But from a purely theoretical standpoint, knowledge is power.  No matter how strong you are (if this is aa consideration at all), you can’t win if you can’t do anything.  I’d like to leave the issue of “power vs. part of me” that often springs up here out of the discussion.  For now, “magic” isn’t “as natural as breathing (in the literal sense)”, but rather “something learned and perfected through study and training”… even if there are natural “gifts” involved.  The point here is that the more you know, the more you can do.  And knowing means learning, and learning means studying.  Hogwarts here we come! (Okay, not so much.)

You may have noticed from reading the above that knowledge is a very important part of the frame of reference.  The more you know, the more you can innovate.  (You can innovate knowing nothing as well, but you’re more likely to fry your brain—or at least fry something).

So, knowledge is power.  Right there you’ve discovered a way to make your fantasy magic system different from around 99% of the magic systems out there.  A great deal of fantasy (most bad, but some good) focuses on gaining “power” in the physical sense.  Increasing the characters’ “strength”.   It’s what a lot of fantasy writers and readers refer to as “RPG” fantasy.  And that paradigm makes sense for an RPG,  where learning new spells, and fighting, and acquiring new and better gear,  and grinding… er, “increasing your stats” (yeah, whatever) is all part of the fun.  But the fun in fantasy is the story, the conflict.  Eighteen swordfights in a row would be boring.

Now, magical conflict relies on a power differential.  But by the principle above, it’s perfectly acceptable to convert this to a knowledge differential.  You can’t hurl fireballs and call lightning if you don’t know the spell.  Lackey’s Herald Mage trilogy makes good use of this concept when one character is defeated (okay, killed) by a “mage-storm” which wears away at his magical shield.  But in a later book, we learn such an attack can be rendered ineffective if you leave the shield “un-grounded” and thus free to spin right along with the attack in question.

So, that explains how you can use the second effect of frames of reference.  The first is a bit tougher, and requires more subtlety and finesse.  I think it might be best to leave until the next post.

 

Magicology: Frames of Reference, Part 1

Or, how to talk about something so that everyone is talking about the same thing

I was reading a lovely discussion on NaNo, and there was a bit of an issue with the definitions of “rules” versus “limitations”. I thought it might be interesting to look at how different terms are applied to fantasy magic systems and how we can harness and mold these terms to discuss magic systems more usefully.

See, the first problem with any discussion on world-building in general—and magic systems in particular—is the lack of a set of formalized terms. Writing has these: POV, Main Character, Protagonist, etc… This allows writers to talk meaningfully about different aspects of the “craft”. But what about for magic systems? What we have for this “craft” is a set of broadly defined terms re-tasked with specific meanings by every author or world-builder or game designer who makes use of them.

And this leads to a big fat mess. What is a “mage”? Someone who casts spells? Someone who manipulates energy? What is a “sorcerer”? Or a “charm”? Depends on the story we’re dealing with. But it shouldn’t have to. That’s one reason behind the prevalence of the neutral term “magic user” which ignores the magic system involved and focuses on the fact that the character in question can use magic. Anything else is just cosmetics. It’s pointless to talk about “sorcerers” when there are so many different conceptions out there. You can’t really talk about magic intelligently in this sort of environment.  Keep in mind this isn’t about how magic is presented in the story, it’s about writers and readers talk about magic.

So, how can we talk about magic systems more intelligently? We first have to establish frames of reference. Let’s begin by distinguishing between the way magic is talked about by the characters of a world–or relatively, and how it is talked about by world-builders–or absolutely.

So, in the absolute frame of reference, we have an absolute magic system (obviously). “Absolute magic system” refers to the workings of the magic as understood by the world-builder. The world-builder creates this system to regulate the magic. In the relative frame of reference, we have the “relative magic system”. This is the characters’ conception of how magic works. (And we can actually have several of these, but we’ll get to that in a later post.) Have we got this distinction down? I hope so.  It’s important.

The next step after establishing a frame of reference is to consider how magic is perceived within these frames:

Through the absolute frame, a magic system is an artificial construct whose structure is known and carefully crafted to affect the plot in the desired fashion, or not. The rules as laid down in a magic system are absolute knowledge—completely true and uncontestable. As the world-builder, you must know how the external magic system is structured, what the rules are.

Through the relative frame, a magic system is an organic and natural construct whose structure is unknown and must be explored to gain practical benefits. This structure is often in the form of rules or theories that best explain what is known of magic at the time. They are mutable and “true” only insofar as they achieve the desired effects. This is what the characters know about magic. The world-builder must also know how each characters relative magic system is structured.  It’s part of that “point of view” thing writers are always rambling on about.

A relative magic system is constructed inductively—that is, the characters will take the facts at their disposal and try to create a generalization that explains these facts, what would allow these occurrences? An external magic system can be constructed either inductively or deductively—that is, the world-builder takes some chosen general premise and to discover what occurrences would this allow? Some world-builders start out with their goals for the magic system, and some start out with general premises they wish to explore, and some start out with a bit of both.  But rather than taking what is true as their premises, world-builders will take what they want to be true as their premises.

So, with just this single distinction, we have already cleared up a great deal. You may be thinking: “What, that’s it? I could’ve told you that!” Maybe you could have. I have yet to see anyone adhere to this distinction, even though it would be incredibly useful in all those interminable discussions on whether magic systems should have rules or not. Well, I bet the characters have rules, even if you don’t let anyone peak at your own. Including the reader.

And it’s good for more than just discussion. Many fantasy stories rely on the clever hero to take the limited resources at her disposal and figure out a loophole to let her defeat the villain:

“No man can kill me!”

“I am no man.”

I’m sure you all recognize that little gem. (I may have paraphrased just a teensy bit…)

Now, if you break your own rules (like soooo many bad fantasy authors), you look like a cheater or an idiot, or perhaps just absent-minded. But it’s perfectly acceptable to manipulate the disconnect between your understanding of magic and the character’s.  Many authors use this for lesser hurdles as well. MC just learning how to use magic? You can slip a small hurdle in there that could be overcome if they knew all the rules… but maybe they don’t. Or maybe you want them to look clever so they figure it out. 

A great example of this is from Pat Rothfuss’  The Name of the Wind.  (I feel there are significant flaws in the rest of the book, but the magic system is pretty sound, and an interesting take on “scientific” magic.)  There are spoilers here, so you may wish to skip this part if you haven’t read the book.  The inciting incident in Kvothe’s pursuit of becoming an Arcanist is seeing a traveler defend himself with “real” magic, as opposed to “sympathy”.  This involves invoking the wind by using it’s true name, thus the title.  Kvothe, not realising this is true magic, attempts to imitate the trick by using the connection between his own breath and the wind.  This almost kills him (protags have all the luck, ne?  You or I probably would have died) and he gets a nice big lecture about stupidity:  ”Don’t ever do something like that again!  Magic is daangerous! …etc”  Now, if one were to just throw in an actual consequence, that would be a pretty nice scene.

A little bonus for you all is that most of the material in this series can (and will) bend has been applied to any and every aspect of world-building. History, for instance. What people “know” happened and what actually happened are usually two (or three or four) very different things.  Which can lead to all sorts of interesting conflicts, like racism (well, okay, that’s a bit cliche) and heroes that really weren’t (Mistborn, anyone?) and false myths and prophecies.  For now, though, I’ll be applying them strictly to magic systems.   Next post, we will explore the “relative” frame of reference in more detail.

 

Respecting the Writer: Making Shit Up

I’m sure many fantasy writers have heard their genre described by readers and other authors as “making shit up.” As in, “I could write fantasy. It’s just making shit up.” I can’t answer for the reactions of every fantasy writer who’s heard this, but I know it always pissed me off. Making shit up? Well, yeah, that’s what *fiction* writers do… all of them. But this strange idea is only applied to those of us who write fantasy. Or sci-fi depending, but that’s a whole other post.

To be fair, a lot of beginning fantasy writers think this, too. I’ve seen it everywhere. On several of the many writing forums on the web, in a few blogs that shall go nameless, over on the NaNo boards. Some of these people are honestly ignorant. They just don’t realize the kind of work that goes into creating a believable fantasy world. Others are lazy. They feel they can get away with making shit up, because who is there to catch them? The readers, sure, but the Fantasy Fabulation PoliceTM aren’t going to show up at their house and beat some work ethic into them.

And then, finally, there are the people who are on the “make it up as you go” side of the world-building debate. I mean them no disrespect. They’ve chosen a method and they feel it works for them. Whether or not someone has the chops for this sort of writing is a debate I’d rather not get into (again). Heaven forbid someone make subjective statements about someone else’s behavior. On the Interwebz? Shouldn’t happen.

But hey, I have no trouble admitting there have been many great books written like this. Not how I do it, but then, I haven’t sold tens of thousands of copies of over twenty different novels. I’m not going into the mechanics of world-building on the fly. I may be a punster when I write, but I have files and files of world-building material on paper, on disk, and in my head.

The point I haven’t gotten to here is that world-building on the fly is not the same as “making shit up”. I could make up a world in 30 seconds, and nine times out of ten, the reader would have thrown that book against the wall in half the time. People think getting a real-world city/religion/philosophy/branch of science right through research is tough. And it is. One mistake, and that community is all over you. But when you fuck up in world-building, the number of people who can–and will, believe me–get on your ass is exponentially greater.

Readers like a story to make sense. Why? Because then they know how to react to it. Awesome Fantasy Character #1482 is crushed by a fifty tone granite tomato(hey, this is fantasy): *atsiko weeps*. Two pages later, the author resurrects this character. *Atsiko screams and throws the book out the window.* Well, the window was closed, and I have to pay $200 for a new one. Now I’m doubly pissed off. If I had known how easy it was to bring characters back to life, I would not have cried. I would have winced, maybe. ‘Cause the Goddess knows getting squished by a fifty ton granite tomato hurts like hell. But if it doesn’t kill the person, why should the author trick me into wasting my emotional energy? Guess what would happen the next time someone died? Atsiko would flip through the lame-ass death speech (because they all are), confident that the character would return by the next chapter. If I didn’t already need a new window.

I’ve talked in other posts about how the reader doesn’t like being played with. It’s annoying, it’s frustrating, and if we are really engaged in the story, it can be emotionally draining. For the same reason you don’t make a book all action, you don’t constantly fuck around with the reader’s emotions. We also don’t like it if the author is an idiot. Ground glass is not poison people—it’s beach sand.

Now, to relate this back to our original topic:

1. Readers like to have a general idea of how much of ourselves we should invest in a given part of the story. That’s not to say we don’t like surprises. A predictable book is a boring book. But if anything is possible, nothing is interesting.** And a boring book is also boring.

2. Readers like to have a general idea of how easy it will be to solve a problem. That is, if the hero is surrounded by a thousand ravening orcs, the reader would like to know how much effort it will take to defeat them—or if the hero is just screwed. All the tension is gone if you take the cheap way out. So, what’s the way to accomplish these goals? How can you give the reader an idea that they know what is going on? By making sense. If you make shit up, it usually doesn’t make much sense. “Crap, I’ve written my hero into a corner. Wait, I’ve got it! If you say ‘bambino’, they esplode!” An extreme example, I’ll admit. Let’s try something more sensible. “My hero’s dropped his sword! And he’s not wearing armor. What’ll I do?!” Hint: don’t have him catch the sword. This looks cool until I put the book down to get a glass of milk. Then the fridge logic kicks in, and I remember that a sword is a wedge. What do wedges do? They wedge things apart. Like hands. Not to mention that, um… you know… this: gravity + human strength > human strength. Duh, author.

Sure, fantasy writers make things up. But they also do this thing called “being consistent”, which is a lot harder for most people to grasp. It’s not any less work to make stuff up than to use real stuff. It may even be harder. You don’t have to suspend disbelief for a story set in New York. But in Random Fantasy Kingdom #127?

Yes, readers, fantasy has to make sense, too—just its own kind of sense.

So, to sum up: Make sense, not shit. And have a little more respect for fantasy authors.

More on “Respecting the Reader” later.

**I’d like to thank Limyaael for making my point for me.