Did you tune into Twitter last Wednesday to see my discussion with SF/F Writer Chat? I’m sure there’s a transcript of it somewhere around the internet and I’ll get it to you as soon as I can, but I’d genuinely like to know if you were around to see it.
If you choose to answer Sam Sykes with the affirmative, turn to page 8.
If you choose to answer Sam Sykes with the negative, turn to page 43.
Page 8:
A topic came up with our discussion on real life historical cultures and how they factor into fantasy writing. Specifically, the question was how much research goes into creating a fictional society?
My personal answer? Very little.
Keep in mind that I can only answer personally, as I’ve no idea how other writers do it, but that’s about the size of it for myself. I don’t like having real world analogues with which to compare to. It feels less fantastical to me if someone can go “oh, so they’re basically just like Muslims/ancient China/gold rush diseased miners.” That’s not to say I don’t borrow from existing or historical cultures and use them as a jumping-off point. Far from it; history books are some of the greatest troves of material for using as inspiration. And no one from that historical society can complain about it…because they’re dead.
It can’t be overstated how much reader reaction is out of the writer’s control, though. No matter what you write, people will see what they see. But you can certainly make it harder for them to justify their conclusions.
The kind of research that goes into the cultures I write, though, comes less from architecture, rules of decorum, etiquette and more from national character. I think less about what the society does and more about why they do it. My general opinion of putting things into fantasy is that you can put as many assblasting dragons and sexy plants and religious fanatics as you want, but you have to have a reason, biological or cultural, as to why they do that. That reason doesn’t always have to come up. That reason could never come up. But you, as the author, have to know why they do that. And writing from that position of knowledge means the character of that society is so much more defined, because you’re writing with confidence.
I occasionally get asked about the shicts and they’re as good an example as any. What are they? Native American? Elves with copies of Mein Kampf?
Shicts, for the most part, are defined by their paranoia. They don’t so much hate humans as fear them terribly (for reasons that you can read more about in Black Halo–oh so much shicty goodness in those pages), and their actions are driven by this fear. Their society is built around protection from the disease, their methods of warfare revolve around a genuine belief that they cannot coexist with humanity.
Of course, this doesn’t really come up in Tome of the Undergates as our only glimpse into shictish life is Kataria. And, based on our experiences with Kataria, we have a hard time understanding shicts as anything but murderous racists. Kataria certainly seems to think it works that way, thus begging the question if she really understands her own society.
Pow. Characterization. Look at that. My God.
But it can’t be overstated that this style works for me and me alone…and maybe someone else. The fact is, you certainly can get away with borrowing more heavily from a historical culture and you can tell an amazingly excellent story out of it, as Jim Butcher and George R.R. Martin’s success can attest. It’s all about finding your own thing and what works for you.
And just like that, I’ve rendered all the above advice completely useless. It’s a burnt earth policy, baby. I’m Moscow and you’re Napoleon and you ain’t gettin’ none of my fine goods.
But let’s hear from you, as readers and writers alike, what do you look for in a fantastic culture? Are you more comfortable with cultures that are more familiar or do you prefer something totally out there? How much research goes into writing your worlds? What do you do with them?
Tell me. Tell me everything.
Page 43
You are eaten by a grue.
If you need a day job, you should really be a writing teacher. You could do seminars, online, local college…any venue really. But you should do it.
Unless, of course, you are independently wealthy, in which case, continue as is and ignore the suffering of those struggling to learn.
I would, but I don’t handle power well.
At all.
Fantasy – whilst not wholly, definitely to a large degree – reflects the world as we know it. It’s a genre that is uniquely placed to deal with and discuss the big social issues of the modern day. The reason readers no longer want good and evil, is because in this age of home-grown terrorists, the lines have been blurred, and in trying to understanding this we want our fiction to reflect this.
As a result, I think if you’re going to talk about, for example, Al Queda, then you’re best doing that in a thriller or crime novel. If however, you want to talk about religious extremism, or the fear of other cultures in general, fantasy is fertile ground for exploring that theme. It’s what Tolkien called applicability rather than analogy.
So what I want from a fantastic culture is something than reflects, inverts, provokes thought about cultures and social issues in the real world, not so I can make a 1-to-1 correlation, but so that I might be given a new perspective of the world I live in.
At the same time, though, a total analogue is rather ineffective at discussing these matters. If you were to have a group of religious terrorists called Bal Blaeda, for example, it would seem too close. It’s the same reason allegories don’t really go over well in fantasy fiction: people feel like they’re being talked down to unless you specifically set out to write an allegory and advertise it as such.
Beyond that, though, I agree. People want to take something out of a fantasy and they’ll often take out something entirely different than what you intended.
I definitely like to see unique cultures in fantasy. That said, when I actually write cultures in fantasy, I constantly pluck hilarious/awesome/thought-provoking/sexy images from reality and just… paint them up. Sometimes, I just want Chinamen working on the trans-continental railroad; and just because they’re called Blorknatons and they’re working on the Tringledangle Floatyspacetarmac, doesn’t mean they’re not Chinamen working on the railroad.
…on account of the nitro.
But I’m a whimsical person, the kind that finds the adorable and desirable in the iniquities and gross boners of history. This is probably a bad way to construct anything resembling serious fiction, but with a suitably sufficient amount of fantastical-literary-paint, the offensiveness of real-world analogues usually disappears beneath a pall of fantasy-cuteness/quaintity.
I think.
Adrian sort of hit on it. It depends what you want to do. If you’re aiming to say something specific about Chinese people working on the railroad, then you don’t need a lot of literary paint. If you want laborers working on a project, you might be toying with weird shit.
I do a fair bit of research, but mostly for cultural elements to riff off of in the world being created. I have a Maater’s in cultural anthropology which is pretty useful for the task of world-building, and I try to think about the kinds of cultural behavior that would most likely flourish in context. I don’t like to do pastiches of cultures, but make something that is both resonant and intriguing to the reader. It’s really fun to do.
Argh. Master’s! For the love of punk rock! Too much research on rock slabs and imperial cults makes me something something. . . .
Sam, I appreciate your doing the interview earlier this week. Here’s the transcript link http://bryanthomasschmidt.blogspot.com/2010/12/science-fiction-fantasy-writers-chat-on.html
I have lived and worked in many foreign cultures. And I married a foreigner, so this subject fascinates me. There is nothing more world broadening than seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. We can never get more of a glimpse as we can never become them, but those glimpse are like gold. I use it all the time in my writing. Yes, we as writers have to know those motivations. But I think understanding how cultures interact, how different socioeconomic and religious groups interact, etc. is key to writing believable worlds. Because of our own world, we readers tend to expect realistic worlds to have these various subsets and seeing them represented in stories in a way which reflects what we’ve witnessed in our own lives makes the world come to life, pop off the page and play as realistic to us.
I was going to comment, but I got eaten by a grue. What an experience.
Feeling better now, though, if semi-digested.
One of the weirdest critiques I ever received was from a woman who, based on no more than a handful of pages, decided I was writing a fantasy version of Native American culture (she never bothered to specify which Native American culture. Apparently she assumed they were all the same) and proceeded to lecture me on every aspect that I got “wrong.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my original springboard (in terms of inspiration rather than specific detail) was early Celtic. Though the names should have been a giveaway…
Like I said, it can’t be stressed how much all of this is out of your hands. People will be determined to see what they want to see.