Saturday, September 15, 2012

Background

I really admire people like Tolkien and Sherwood Smith who spend years building a deep, complex world.  My writing method is exactly the opposite.  I start with characters, then ask myself `where do these people want to live?' and build from there.  Once in a while I'll begin with a situation, and spend weeks (or months.  Or years.) trying to decide exactly who would be caught up in it. 

One of my biggest jobs in a second draft (the first draft is to get the plot in order) is to add setting details; making sure I don't have doorknobs when there should be latches or buttons instead of laces, seeing to it that the weather pattern fits the season, all that good stuff. 

The story setting is, to me, a bit like watching a photo develop.  At first there's a blank, then the first gray smears appear through the chemicals.  As you watch, the smears darken and sharpen into actual shapes until finally you're looking at a clear photograph.

9 comments:

  1. That's a nice way of putting it. {Smile}

    I've found that both world-building and character-bulding requires some balance. Too much of the wrong detail has locked me into decisions that get in the way of the story. Not enough detail, and the story isn't vivid enough to come to life. It's a balancing act, at least for me. {Smile}

    Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

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  2. Sorry it took me so long to comment back. (Busy week). Yeah, definitely a balancing act. For a long time I wrote `talking head' stories with pretty much no background at all. Thankfully I grew out of it, but I still find background to be one of the more difficult aspects of writing. That's one of the reasons I don't plan to EVER try my hand and historical fiction. The background is practically the point of the story. That would drive me crazy. :)

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  3. I don't plan to write historical fiction, either. It's not one of my fortes. I have two sorts of fiction I do very well: non-fiction and pure fantasy. In non-fiction, I concentrate on what actually is, leaving any "what-ifs" to the reader, and it turns out fine. In fantasy, I concentrate on what-if, pretty much ignoring what actually is any time it's inconvenient, and it turns out great. Everything else I've tried, especially realistic fiction and science fiction, gets "This is not one of your better stories. Maybe you should work on something else." {lop-sided but amused Smile, pause, chuckle, SMILE}

    Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

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  4. I think science fiction would be really hard because you'd have to know something about machines and computers and stuff to be convining. I'm really bad with both.

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  5. It kind of depends on the type of science fiction. In my favorite, computers and machines aren't nearly as important as planets, ecosystems, and biological and cultural adaptation. But then you have to know all about those. I'm... only close on the cultures. That leaves an awful lot to learn. {rueful smile}

    Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

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  6. Ah. That's true. I don't read much sciense fiction, though I do enjoy watching it.

    Ecosystems are hard. I tried once to write a fantasy set on an entirely different world, but I got a bit stuck trying to figure out what everyone ate. I'm not sure a berrying bush with seeds that can be ground into flour, and herd beasts that are basically hairy cows are enough to form a balanced diet, even if you also eat the roots of the berrying bushes, and turn their bark into tea.

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  7. A lot of folks think of technology first when they think of science fiction, but there's more to science fiction than technology. If that weren't true, we could talk about technological fiction and mean the same thing. {Smile}

    Yeah, ecosystems are hard. We eat a wide variety of things, and really need to. In your example, you probably do need more variety than that for a balanced diet. Fortunately, you don't have to tell folks everything your characters eat. If you don't say you're giving an exhaustive list, most readers will assume you're only giving examples, or mentioning particularly important foods. {Smile}

    Ecosystems are still hard. So is making an enviroment, a culture, and a race of people match. Especially if you don't want to read about pseudo-Bedouin in a desert, or pseudo-lions in a savannah. I'd rather read non-fiction about Bedouin and lions. In my science fiction, I'd rather read about the Vulcans of Star Trek, who fit their hot, dry desert world without being a close copy of any desert-dwelling species or people. Unfortunatley, fits like that are hard to find. {Smile}

    Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

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  8. Yup, and hard to invent, particularly if you're going to do it right. I can't stand to be slap-dash, so I'd want to do this right. With a degree on anthropology, I think I'd brush up on the culture, but I didn't do enough physical anthropology to cover the biological adaptation, so I'd have to learn that fresh. At least Dad could point me to some good references. He used to teach a course in evolution since he retired. He hasn't kept up in the field, but he knows where to start, and thinks he can keep me out of too much trouble.

    That leaves the planet. I found a reference written for science fiction writers which tells how to make sure the planet is in it's star's habitable zone, and how that might affect the planet's day length... but it doesn't help with climatology at all, and it's climate that drives physical adaptation; I know that much. Not that I should be surprised the book doesn't cover climatology. It was written by a planetologist who's watched his field move from astronomy to geology. {pause} I took both intro to geology and intro to physical geography. Climatology wasn't mentioned in geology at all; if they study it, it's esoteric enough not to get into such a basic text and course. In geography, I think it took three chapters; I know it was more than one. So I need to learn about a subfield of exo-geography. Unfortunately, I have a sneaking suspicion that the field either hasn't been invented yet, or has barely begun. That means the texts are probably pretty esoteric, assuming advanced knowledge you woudln't expect an anthropology major to know.

    {sigh} Maybe I'd better work on something else. As much as I want to read more of this, I want to read more family-oriented fantasy and multi-cultural fantasy just as much. Thanks to studying cultural anthropology and living in Hawai'i, I have much more of the background to write both of those. {Amused Smile, wink}

    Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

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