So I promised I’d introduce everyone to the members of Crossroads Alpha, the site alliance the Sanctum is part of.  Let’s check out Comics Bulletin!

Comics Bulletin and I go back a ways – I used to do a column for them a few years ago on professional issues and comics.  I’ve known the founder, Jason, for even longer.  CB has maintained quality over the years, and has expanded into a lot of promising areas.  It’s a good site with a big base of people backing it.

In the case of Seventh Sanctum, I like it because it gives people here a reliable place to go for comics news, a place for hopeful writers here to write about the subject (I’ll introduce you), and articles that may be useful to hopeful comics professionals (I know you’re out there).

So enjoy, and get to know a member of the Alliance!

– Steven Savage

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack]

Thanks to heavy worldbuilding you’ve got your setting, and in that setting you’ve got intelligent life (probably). Now that you’ve got sentient species in your universe,it’s time to work on their Culture and probably Civilization.  I’m capitalizing deliberately, by the way for when I’m getting abstract.

Culture and Civilization are something we talk for granted because we’re used to living in them all the time. But they’re also huge elements of world building because of what they are – and taking them seriously is important because they are massive definers of intelligent life.

Culture And Civilization – What Are We Talking About here

So once again we get into just what’s under discussion. I’ll go and give some quick summaries, but of course we’re talking about concepts people have debated for ages. So these are viewpoints towards applying these concepts to worldbuiilding, not to answering age-old questions.

Culture – Culture are those things sentient life learns and passes on amongst its members so they function, work, relate, interpret, and so on together. Simply, it’s the acquired knowledge, language, communications, and so forth that let intelligent life function and function with each other.

Civilization – Civilization is when you really kick things into high gear Culture-wise. You start building things, establishing centers, and writing your culture deep into your physical environment – and usually writing in general. I’d say that you need a culture to have a civilization, but then again there’s some pretty interesting world building to be had by violating that rule . . .

Metaphor-wise I think of Culture is the operating system and programs that run in a sentient being’s mind. When we start seriously connecting cultured people together and modifying the environment, establishing things that last over time, then you’ve got a giant interlinked system like a manufacturing system, computer network – that’s Civlilization. Yes computer metaphors are a bit cold for discussing such things, but i find they’re effective – and distant enough that I’m not using metaphors for culture and civilization that are too close to those actual things.

You can also see why they’re vitally important in writing:

• First of all, they are things that we’d expect intelligent life to have. Admittedly as of this writing the only intelligent life we humans have to compare any world building to is us, but still you go with what you know.
• Culture, obviously, affects how your characters see the world and how they’ll interact with it.  It gives perspective.
• Because Culture is how intelligent life (well, again, humans) gets perspective, its part of how each character is a Lens on your world. Knowing your setting’s culture or cultures is not just good world building, it’s indispensable for storytelling. If a culture is hard to comprehend that may require some delicate writing, game design, etc. – and may produce an epic tale of a truly unique world that sucks people in.
• Culture and Civilization are huge parts of the stories you’ll tell in your world, and in some ways are the stories. They are the reasons people do what they do, the reason things happen, the reasons for certain implications. A simple look over any story, book, novel, etc. will show how much motivation and happenings are because of the structure of a culture and/or the civilization it built.
• We expect them. Because they are something we’re so used to their very lack will sit ill with an audience – unless that lack is, again, part of the setting and you engage in drawing people into that setting.

So with this said, let’s get to building.

Crafting Culture

Creating the culture or cultures in your worlds is probably something you’re doing automatically. But I find it helps to have an idea of what we’re doing to keep us inspired, focused, and not loosing track of what we’re doing.

Culture is that which intelligent life creates, relates with, and passes on. It is language, rules, ideas, symbols, relations, and so forth, those things that let us function and function together. Think of it as a kind of “improved genetics” where intelligent life has the power to change and grow itself, and pass those changes on.  These changes alter and improve not by generations, but by interactions between individuals and the environment.

(I’d even go so far to say truly intelligent life has to have Culture for it to do much. Having seen how we humans create culture almost instinctively, I think our limited sample set here makes an impressive example).

So this gives us a starting point for designing Culture – it’s how people (be they human or not) work together in the present and the future and communicate and store information. Yes, it’s a cold metaphor, but effective.

When building a culture you’ll want to focus on:

1. What are the values of the traditions, languages, etc. In short, why did they develop or were they developed?
2. How is culture passed on and why is it passed on – how are its elements seen as valuable?
3. How does the culture deal with disruptions – or with parts of it wearing out?  Does it have the ability to adapt?
4. What keeps the culture functioning – if it doesn’t have it’s own safeguards, it could malfunction, which of course would be an interesting tale.
5. How does it reflect the beings that have the culture – how is it “part” of them. How did their traits affect it?
6. How is it “prosthetic” – how does it make up for any limits the sentient beings who are part of the culture have?

You can also drill down into the specifics of culture, like religion, language, and so forth. We’ll see about doing that later, but for now this should get you thinking.

Next, let’s think of what happens when you extend culture into something more permanent, civilization.

Civilization – Going Big

Civilization is when Culture settles down and really gets going. In a lot of cases literally – Cvilization is when people put down roots, build things, and make a more solidified place to “be.” It’s what happens when Culture gets physical in the forms of cities, temples, written language, and more.

It’s hard to extract Civilization from Culture, but in general Civilization seems to be associated with intense physical infrastructure. So for the purposes of this essay, I’ll consider Civilization to be when Culture becomes more established both physically and intellectually.

Not all your intelligent life in your setting will have Civilization. Culture exists before Civilization, and one doesn’t need organization, centralization, or much of a physical infrastructure to have Culture. In fact, the first question you have to ask about any intelligent life you design is how far are they into Civilization from just having Culture. A population of nomads or wanderers may have Culture but not what we’d recognize as Civlization.

So you might be able to stop here. But just in case . . .

When Culture gets solid, then you have Civilization. Civilization in your settings brings in so many other issues that, like culture, one could write hundreds of thousands of words on the subject. But as a handy guide to save you from that, here’s a quick checklist for designing your civilization.

• Civilization is culture solidified. You’ll want to know at what point (if any) a culture started putting down the roots, policies, buildings, and so forth that turned it into a civilization.
• * Civilizations are about stability.  They may fail at it, but in general they seem to involve having stability.
• * Civilization changes the environment. Farms require irrigation, buildings require quarried stone, industries pollute the air, and so forth. Civilization has impact – and impacts not often expected. Kinda messes with that whole stability thing, but there you go.
• * Civilization extends Culture. A Civilization can wield more cultural influence, and indeed is usually larger than any independent Culture.
• * Civilizations are much more complex than Culture. It’s safe to say few people in aCcivilization know how it works. So you’re going to need a gods’ eye view as well as understanding individual perspectives. You also need to make sure a civilization is believably complex in your world building.
• * Civilizations are linked to technology – they require technology to be established, and of course help evolve it.

Big Job, Big Perspective

So when it comes to designing Culture and Civilization you’ve got quite a job cut out for you. So beyond all the other advice, here’s what I recommend.

Read about real cultures and real civilizations.

Reading about other cultures than your own, about civilizations that have come and gone, that are and on their way up or out, gives you an intuitive grasp of how people and their social structures work. At some point you’ll probably get a good enough grasp to build your world or get out of a case of world builder’s block. But read.

Besides, it’ll broaden you as a writer and a person.

Closing

Culture and Civilizations are inevitable in your world when you’re building your setting’s intelligent life. They’re part of being an intelligent species, and you not only can’t avoid them in most cases, you really don’t want to as they drive the plot.

It’s challenging, but with work and good study, you’ll be up for it. My guess is if you’re doing any world building you already started it.

– Steven Savage

Hey gang, it’s another update.  Two actually

Crossroads Alpha

The short form is that a group of friends and I decided to work together as an alliance of sites, Crossroads Alpha.  The idea is to pool talent and knowledge, network sites, and work together in a way that compliments each other.  Seventh Sanctum is part of it because it provides creative tools and encourages creativity.

The long form?

Two friends and I had been discussing how we could work together to support each other.  Each of us had our own sphere (comics, games, creativity and careers), and so on.  Also we’d each known the challenges of working on a website and realized having people to work with is a great idea – the rewrite of Seventh Sanctum really only originated from bouncing ideas off of friends and getting their advice.  Our sites are independent, but cooperating.

So the idea is that we’d ally together, build a name for the alliance, and cooperate.  The Affiliate Bar at the top is how we link together beyond sharing talent, advice, and support.  It also gives us room to introduce others we know that have their own unique sites and visions into the alliance.

In the case of Seventh Sanctum, it provides a site that focuses on utility and tools, assisting creativity.   That’s a great compliment to sites based on media like comics and games.

On the flipside, I’m interested in sites for Sanctumites that will help them with using their creativity.  Yeah I have MuseHack, but working with a comics and a game site gives people here access to  sites that may help them use their skills – so as you can guess one of my big hopes is we find people who have writing and art sites . . .

So that’s it.  Me and my crew are working together and helping each other out and hopefully find other ways to do do some neat stuff.

The Poll

The poll is closed – and it was very helpful!  I’ve still got to analyze all the results, but I’ve got some general ideas, have already started a new generator, and have people interested in writing for the codex!

There’s actually a lot I didn’t expect about what people wanted or needed, so it’s going to be very helpful – and there’s a few things I never thought of or had considered ages ago and then forgot, such as a planet generator (yeah, I know, duh) or a fashion generator.  It gives me some good things to go on in the future.

There is also a new generator in the works, mostly based on one person’s suggestion that just got me going “hey . . .” so we’ll see.  Making these things is always easier when something fires off my imagination.

– Steven Savage

It’s a new year, it’s a new review.  To ease back into reviewing, let’s look at somewhat lighter fare.

In 1984, the idea of a pre-packaged campaign world for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was still new.  TSR had a house settings, The World of Greyhawk, based on Gary Gygax’s home campaign.  The idea first came from Tracy and Laura Hickman, who wrote two modules for TSR hoping to be paid for them after Tracy lost his job; instead, he was hired.  He worked with several people at the company, including Margaret Weis, decided to create a new setting, one not seen before, one where TSR could tie together a campaign setting, a series of modules, and a tie-in novel trilogy.  The result was Dragonlance.

To make Krynn, the world where the Dragonlance campaign would be set, different, the creators removed all divine magic from the world’s recent history.  The result of the removal would mean that classes that depended on powers granted by deities – clerics, paladins, and druids – would be severely hampered at the start.  The first modules, the name for published adventures, focused on the return of the gods of Krynn and set up the epic battle between Good and Evil.  The modules’ events were mirrored by the first Dragonlance trilogy, written by Weis and Hickman.

The novels and the modules were based on the playtest campaign, where TSR staffers took the roles of the main characters – Tanis Half-Elven, Caramon and Raistlin Majere, Goldmoon, Flint, Tasslehoff, Tika, Laurana – and the results noted.  Some changes occurred.  Tasslehoff, one of the halfling-like race of kender, had managed to pick up a ring of invisibility; the writers realized that the combination would get a little to close to a certain hobbit for Legal’s comfort.  The first novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, hit the New York Times bestseller list.*  The novel did two things; it let players, including the Dungeon Master, get a feel for both the world and the plotlinem; and, it served as an introduction to AD&D to people who had never played but were curious.

A lot of the success of Dragonlance came from the characters.  All of them were flawed in some way, and not all of them were good.**  There was friction within the group, characters made poor decisions that came from their motives and goals, yet the fellowship could still come together to thwart evil.  The setting expanded, in game material, in novels and short stories, in video games, and in comics.  When D&D went to its third edition with new owner Wizards of the Coast, Margaret Weis Productions licensed and released a compatible version of Krynn.

In 2008, Paramount licensed the rights to make an animated Dragonlance feature from WotC.  The movie, based on Dragons of Autumn Twilight, was to be the first of a trilogy based on the original Chronicles.  With Kiefer Sutherland as Raistlin and Lucy Lawless as Goldmoon, the production team went for star power to draw in viewers while filling the rest of the cast with experienced voice actors***.  The animation team made sure that the characters resembled their likenesses from the Larry Elmore covers.  However, the movie had some issues.  The animation, a mix of 2D and 3D techniques, clashed.  The main characters were 2D, but had to fight such three-dimensional monsters as draconians and dragons.  The 2D animation also became choppy in parts, jumping without a in-between work.  The differences were jarring.  The visuals for several spells also didn’t match the what the original descriptions in the Player’s Handbook.  In particular, Fireball doesn’t smash into targets; it explodes instead.  The Fireball spell as cast by Fizban resembled the lower level spell, Flaming Sphere.

Another problem was the running time; ninety minutes was just not long enough to cover Dragons of Autumn Twilight properly.  The novel spent time with world-building, setting up the intricate balance between the different races and nations, introducing the elements that made Krynn a different campaign setting.  One character’s death was moved to a different part of the story after the passage through Mount Nevermind, the home of the tinker gnomes, was removed entirely.  The death becomes far more dramatic, though.  Insufficient running time is an ongoing problem for novels depicting epics.  Books can pack in a lot of information in their pages; it takes skill to be able to figure out what can and cannot be removed, and is much easier when there is no Book 2, 3, or, in the case of A Game of Thrones, 7.  Blade Runner and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World both managed to extract the core story from the original works.  Unfortunately, Dragons of Autumn Twilight became shallower with the removal of material.

A third issue came from the rating.  Dragons of Autumn Twilight is a swords and sorcery tale.  Swords and axes mean bloody corpses, and blunt weapons like maces and staves aren’t much better.  The movie received a PG-13 rating because of the “fantasy action violence”, and while charred, featureless corpses were allowed, blood was reduced, to the point where swords were clean even after striking goblins.  Fortunately, the draconians could be stabbed; on death, the creatures turned to stone.  Still, to avoid the R rating, the blood needed to be cleaned up some.

With Dragons of Autumn Twilight not faring well, it appears that the next two books, Dragons of Winter Night and Dragons of Spring Dawning will not be adapted, at least as animated features.  Cindi Rice, the co-executive producer, estimated that a live-action adaptation of the book would cost around US$75 million.  While that is far less than many of the blockbusters that failed in 2013, Dragonlance doesn’t have the namespace among the general public that would get studios to take the risk to finance the adaptation.

The animated Dragons of Autumn Twilight comes out as a “nice try”.  Ignoring the animation issues, the running time was the biggest drawback, not giving viewers the time to properly experience the setting or the story.

Next week, the adaptational news round up.

* TSR’s publishing arm did well with fiction and was willing to take risks that other publishers wouldn’t.  The Edgar-winning novel, Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb, was first published by TSR after McCrumb passed her manuscript along to Margaret Weis.
** Or even Good; Raistlin, in particular, started with a Neutral alignment and shifted to Evil over the course of the novels.
*** This isn’t to say that the leads weren’t inexperienced.  Both Sutherland and Lawless had a number of voice acting prior to Dragons of Autumn Twilight, though they weren’t primarily known for such work.

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack]

I’m going to start by assuming the setting of your story has intelligent life in it. If not, well that sounds like a challenging write, and feel free to skip this part until you need it.  Or don’t because hey, you never know.

Now first, allow me to define intelligent life, so we’re on the same sheet of virtual paper here. Intelligent life is that form of life that can process information, adapt and retain this information, pass this information on to others, and possesses a level of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Intelligent life is essentially a kind of conscious computing, even if I personally dislike that simplistic terminology.

I would especially argue that intelligence contains a level of self-awareness as intelligence life as we think of itis self-modifying and self-directing. You can’t separate intelligence from consciousness, because someone has to “be in there” to be intelligent. “I think therefore I am” is also “I know I am as I think.”

With that all-to brief (and doubtlessly incomplete) journey into the philosophy of intelligence, let’s continue a to why it’s important. I’ll also try not to overdo the words “intelligent life,” but no promises here. (more…)

And I’m back!  Crazy holiday, plenty of fun, busy returning to work, you know the story.  So where are we now?

Well first, the poll thing is definitely working out for the site, so I have a poll up asking people what they’d like to see in 2014 and how they’d like to participate.

Yep, participate.  The Codex isn’t just going to be me posting, I’d like to get other folks involved to share advice, ideas, reviews, and more.  It’s not only fun, it can be a great creativity, career, and community boost as well.  So let me know if you’d like to jump on board the crazy train of Seventh Sanctum!

I got a little exhausted with the last generator (which was really informative), so I’m picking my next one carefully.  That’s ALSO in the poll, and I think I want to add some regularity to generator development and updating, but I’m still getting a framework around it because it’s a pretty creative endeavor that doesn’t sit well on a schedule (yet).  This quarter also promises to be a bit busy as my next book is coming out, so I’m pacing myself.

We’ll also have some other interesting event in the next week or two (no, it’s NOT new contests) so stay tuned . . .

– Steven Savage

Happy New Year!

Last week, I looked at what happened in 2013.  This week, time to figure out what could happen.

This year coming, 2014, will be the make-or-break year of the blockbuster.  There are a number of forces acting on movies right now, including the need to use the foreign market to make a film profitable and the growing number of financial flops from 2013.  Sure, not every movie will succeed, but big budget failures can force a studio over the financial cliff.

First, the foreign markets.  Several recent blockbusters, such as Battleship and Pacific Rim relied on international sales to turn a profit.  A few others, notably The Lone Ranger, bombed in both domestic and international markets.  International markets introduce additional problems in making a film.  What will sell an American audience on a movie could very well turn away audiences elsewhere.  G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra turned the all-American special forces team into an international effort because the international market gets turned off by American-style patriotism.  At the same time, the international market, in particular, China, wants to see familiar characters.  Original works like Pacific Rim don’t generate the interest as The Amazing Spider-Man or Man of Steel do.  The Lone Ranger, as mentioned last week, isn’t on the pop culture radar anymore.

Second, budgets.  Big budgets lead to big expectations.  The Hangover Part III had a US$100 million budget, the same budget The Phantom Menace had.  The latter had extensive special effects, pioneering some CGI techniques.  The former was a loud comedy with some special effects but not as extensive.  The Hangover 3 brought in US$200 million less than The Hangover Part II, which had a lower budget.  A quick look at some of the movies of 2013: Man of Steel had a US$225 million budget; Pacific Rim, US$190 million; Gravity, US$100 million.  Expectations for each of these movies were high.  Battleship had a US$200 million budget, but the writing was formulaic, Save the Cat-style.  For US$200 million, people didn’t want a series of checkboxes, they wanted a proper story with proper characters.

Several adaptation sequels are already being delayed.  City of Ashes, the second in The Mortal Instruments series has been pushed back to 2015 because of the poor reception of City of Bones.  The 50 Shades of Grey adaptation has been moved from August 2014 to February 2015, because of casting problems.

Casting may cause problems for other movies.  With 50 Shades of Grey, the fans weren’t enthused with either choice for Christian Grey, nor with any of the other cast members; they wanted the actors E.L. James had in mind, whether or not the actors would agree.  Over at Warner, the choice of Ben Affleck as Batman in the World’s Finest movie had Twitter exploding; fans were citing Daredevil as a reason the Batfleck was a bad idea.  Will disagreement over casting make a difference?  Time will tell.  I suspect that the Batman-Superman movie will have a audiences about the same size as Man of Steel.  With 50 Shades, it gets harder to predict.  Movies rated R don’t perform as well as those rated PG; the audience is limited by age, and 50 Shades will not be a movie for the under-10 set.  The studio, though, is hedging its bets; it will release the NC-17 version a few weeks afterwards, trying to get audiences to return for a second viewing.  Theatres will have to decide if they want the hassle of showing an NC-17 movie; unlike the R rating that allows accompanied minors in, NC-17 bars anyone seventeen and younger completely, even with a parent.  The nature of 50 Shades, though, should give most people an idea of what to expect, R or NC-17.

Studios won’t be as quick to adapt novels, especially debut novels.  Even though neither The Host nor City of Bones were big budget movies, both floundered at the box office.  The problem was that neither book were known to the general public* in the way Harry Potter was.  Given that studios are risk adverse and prone to following trends instead of being original, both movies were made in the hopes of recreating the success of Harry Potter, or at least Twilight.  Author appeal can work when the author has a large body of work, like Stephen King or Tom Clancy, but it doesn’t always work.  The Bourne movies have more recognition because of the character than because of the author, Robert Ludlum.  A flash-in-the-pan author may not see debut novels snapped up, not unless the work seeps out into the general public.

There are some bright lights, though.  Marvel has hit its stride, with Iron Man 3 maintaining the momentum of The Avengers.  Marvel is also willing to risk making movies of their lesser lights.  The company has seen B-level heroes succeed; prior to the Iron Man movie, Tony Stark wasn’t in the same league in popularity as Spider-Man, Wolverine, or the X-Men.  The biggest name in the Avengers Initiative leading up to The Avengers was the Hulk, who previously had a TV series.  With successes like the Avengers Initiative, trying out Guardians of the Galaxy makes sense and could lead to adapting the Infinity Gauntlet story.  Guardians of the Galaxy is the movie to keep an eye on; its success or failure won’t break Marvel Studios, not with the Avengers sequel coming up, but will determine whether comic book movies featuring B- and C-list heroes can be popular.  Marvel is also willing to experiment, working with Netflix to create series for their street-level heroes not already licensed out.

This coming year will be a year of change for studios.  Any movie already filming will be released; the work is too far along to stop, though delays are possible.  However, studios may start looking hard at the bottom line and start questioning whether that $200 million budget could be better spent and force filmmakers to do with smaller budgets.  Adaptations will continue; the foreign market is too big and too lucrative to ignore, but the decision about what gets adapted will be scrutinized more.  The blockbuster bubble won’t pop in 2014, but the weak points will be seen.

Next week, the first review of 2014.

* The general public could name characters from Harry Potter (beyond just Harry), Twilight, and The Hunger Games before the authors were approached with bags of money.  This didn’t happen with The Host, despite sharing its author with Twilight, or with The Mortal Instruments.