This post originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on August 28th, 2014.
I’ll come right and say it: I’m tired of elemental systems that shamelessly rip from the Greek, Chinese, or Japanese, especially when they do so without really understanding what these people were getting at. Like, if you’re going to go with Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, would it kill you to read a little Empedocles, and maybe Aristotle or Proclus or something? Just doing that would give your system a blast of fresh air to differentiate it from the rest of the crowd.
But all this, it’s been done already. Like I want to say to every fantasy author who refuses to move beyond Tolkien, can we do something else now? I’m sure that somebody can play the old hat and make it look like new, but Sturgeon’s Law applies doubly-well when it comes to beating dead horses: most of it is sheer, undiluted crap.
The second half of this article will discuss some lesser-used elemental systems but first I want to discuss, you know, making your own. Discard your assumptions and everything you know or think you know about the universe. Get into the mindset of the culture that this system is embedded in, whether it’s magical or purely philosophical, and ask yourself “What would make sense to these people?”
Not everyone used the same elements. That’s why we have different systems to begin with. And— this cannot be emphasized enough— question all your assumptions. “Would they really think that this thing was fundamental or important, or is that just an idea that I’m bringing to the table?”
Limyaael gives a few examples of this philosophy in action: “Perhaps your own imaginary culture is very heaven-oriented, and chooses as the elements sun, stars, moons, and cloud. Perhaps the sky, earth, and sea are considered elements, and nothing else is, because nothing else is a place that humans can travel through. Perhaps snow and ice are important to northern cultures, but not to southern ones.”
But remember: “If you’re trying for a serious tone, the twee addition to elemental magic ruins it, especially when it has nothing in common with the other elements. Restrain yourself.”
Limyaael, incidentally, was (I think) referencing the Babylonian system in that second example of hers: it also included “wind,” for a total of four elements, and “sky” was analogous to the aether in the Greek system. It was non-terrestrial stuff (in one of my projects, where elementals seem to be partly influenced by cultural perceptions of their element, Sky elementals kind of resemble astronaut zombie things whose suits may only be “suits”).
There are three systems that I’ve dabbled notably in. The first is based on the Chinese Bagua or trigrams: Heaven, Wind, Water, Metal, Earth, Thunder, Fire, and Wood. The second was written for an entry in my Culture Column series: Absence, (three-dimensional) Space, Sky, Fire, Earth, Water, and Flesh. As the article explains each one was thought to lead to the next, and the thought process manages to be both logical for the culture and pretty unlike anything else that I’ve seen before.
The third, which doesn’t have a good presence anywhere on the web, was very biocentric and based on Bone (inanimate substance), blood (animating force), flesh (animate substance), fear (the compulsion away from things), and desire (the compulsion toward things). The latter two come into play because, in a possibly materialistic twist on the concept, the mind was considered to be just as much a part of the world as anything else, and it was decided that everything could ultimately be understood as either “wanting to get something” or “wanting to avoid something.”
Flesh, or animate substance, could exist without an animating substance, as demonstrated by the existence of things like earthworms and jellyfish, which apparently didn’t have any blood to speak of. On the other hand, things that did have blood could be counted on to become inanimate if they lost too much, so obviously there were some beings that needed an animating substance and some that were solely Flesh.
(I’ve said it before, but feel free to take any of the ideas that I drop in public)
If you’d like some homework then here’s a project for you: Figure out a system used by a people who reasoned that if the universe was born from chaos or void, then the real fundamental elements were absences, not presences. Before fire there was cold. Before light, darkness.
What else would there be in this system?
IRL elemental systems
The classic (and Classical) elemental system is Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. Aether was added by Aristotle, who reasoned that because the first four elements were corruptible but no change had ever been observed in the Heavens, the universe beyond must be made of another, incorruptible “quintessence.”
Aristotle assigned as well special qualities to the basic four: Air and Fire were hot, Air and Water were wet, Earth and Fire were dry, and Earth and Water were cold. Proclus thought that the elements had special qualities but gave his own system: Fire was sharp, subtle, and mobile and Earth was blunt, dense, and immobile. These could be considered “more fundamental” than the other two because they were fully opposed and shared no qualities. Air and Water were almost transitional: Air was mostly like Fire but lost sharpness in exchange for bluntness and Water went one step further, losing subtlety to denseness.
Jābir ibn Hayyān left out Aether and added “the stone which burns,” sulphur (representing combustibility) and mercury (metallic properties). Paracelsus built upon Hayyān’s additions and discarded the original system entirely in favor of sulphur (flammability), mercury (volatility), and salt (solidity). In burning wood, mercury/cohesion left in the form of smoke, the fire was the manifestation of flammability (which acted upon the mercury/volatility in the wood), and what remained in the form of ash was the salt, or solidity, of the wood.
In some astrological systems, the opposing forces were Air/Water and Earth/Fire. The Tibetan system was like the Classical but the fifth element was (three-dimensional) Space.
The Japanese Godai, which were broader and more symbolic than the Classical: Earth was solid things, Water was all liquid, Fire was that which destroyed, Air was moving things, and Void was things that were outside of normal experience.
The Chinese Wu Xing were also symbolic, more steps in a process than ever-distinct substances, and they are often translated as “movements” or “phases.” Wood fed Fire, which created Earth, which held Metal, which was used to hold Water, which nourished Wood. On the other side, Wood (roots) divided the Earth, which absorbed Water, which quenched Fire, which melted Metal, which chopped Wood.
If you base your system off of either of these then see what you create when you keep in mind that they’re not just the Classical Greek system with an element or two added on or switched out.
What else could you draw on? Howabout:
- The four (or five) humors: Sanguine/Blood, Melancholic/Black Bile, Phlegmatic/Phlegm, and Choleric/Yellow Bile (with the optional “Leukine,” associated with white blood cells). If you’re going for some kind of magic system, emotional powers based on the humors haven’t been overdone yet.
- The four (or five) cardinal directions: North, East, South, and West (with the optional “Center”). This may seem weird but if you’re inspired by the Tibetan emphasis on Space then you can be assured of having fresh territory to trod if you figure out how to base the elements entirely on Space.
- The seven chakras: Time/Space, Dark/Death, Aether/Light/Life/Lightning, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth.
“My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days, a time of peace when the Avatar kept balance. But that all changed when the Nitrogen Republic attacked…”
Your turn: What’s another elemental system that you’ve found or made yourself?
NOTE: I am addressing Mary Sues in this column, which often involves questions of definition. As Mary Sues (and the male counterpart Gary Stu) are often a continuum, I wanted to clarify my definition. My definition is of an “author’s pet” – a character who gets vastly preferential treatment by the author in a way that distorts the story. Thus I am discussing them entirely in the negative.
A Dark Mary Sue? Most people would say that Mary Sues often darken things as it is. They may make works into pandering creations that are hard to enjoy. An author or game creator may be worried that, after so many Mary Sues, a new character idea will be seen as an ego-fulfillment vehicle. Wether they annoy us in literature or gaming or make us worry how others view our works, they’re there, worrying us.
In the worlds we build, we may even be cautious about how we design heroes, heroines, and supporting characters. We take that extra effort to make sure they’re not Mary Sues, or even that they’re not perceived as such. For all people may enjoy a good wish-fulfillment story, there are times they can be quite harsh on other tales (namely ones not fulfilling their fantasies).
So we’re careful with our heroes and our heroines. Perhaps very careful.
But maybe they’re not the ones we should be keeping an eye on.
Through The Looking Glass Darkly
When you’re busy scrutinizing your cast you might miss where else Mary Sues pop up. These authors pet, Mary and Gary are tricky little devils, and maybe you should be looking at the other side of your cast.
Because sometimes they’re the villains. Not in the ruined-my-story-sense but in the fact that real Mary Sues and Gary Stus can be the bad guys. The Villains. The Antagonists. The characters raging at the meddling kids and their pet.
Sometimes they can be even more annoying than Mary Sue heroes. Watching a likable, interesting heroine deal with a well-armed overblown author’s favorite Dark Mary Sue is a great way to kill interest in the story. When the threat is so bad you can’t see anyone realistically coping with it, or so beautiful-powerful-great that you feel like you’re reading ad copy, there goes interest in your tale.
Needless to say if you’re a dedicated worldbuilder, they devastate your setting just as sure as any Mary Sue can. Mary Sues, authors pets, distort the world and make it unbelievable as the author’s blatant biases are more important than an understandable setting. Your suspension of disbelieve flies out the window pretty quick when a Mary Sue makes his/her appearance.
Of course this may be an odd statement – a Dark Mary Sue? Aren’t Mary and Gary supposed to be beautiful, perfect, wonderful, loves, etc.? How do you do that to the character everyone is supposed to root against? How do you Mary Sue-ify them?
Theres something peculiar to many of us writers and worldbuilders, perhaps all of us, in that one time or another we create an author’s pet. Maybe it’s a wish-fulfillment, maybe it’s identification, maybe its a power trip. Mary Sues are powerful, lucky, have it all, and are something we, sadly, get attached to.
But none of these qualities say that Mary Sue or Gary Stu have to be good guys. You’ve probably seen a few of their ilk that were so annoying you wondered why the hell they were the heroes and heroines.
In my experience, a Dark Mary Sue or Gary Stu make it even easier to make their stories a power trip and use of authorial fiat. Consider:
- The villain has to be a threat. It might get awful tempting to step into their shoes or make them an author’s pet.
- The villain has power. If you’re on a power trip, then it’s going to be awful easy to fall into the trap of Mary Sue-ing them.
- Villains are great for angsty backstory and redemption tales, which can be awful tempting to play with a wee bit much.
- Villains get a lot of attention, and it’s fun to have attention – and thus one may Mary Sue the villain.
- Villains are bad guys and lack moral restraints (in some cases). It can be fun to write a character without inhibitions or to fulfill one’s fantasies.
- Marketing. It seems everyone loves a bad guy/girl/woman/robot.
If this starts reminding you of some characters here or there, then you understand what I mean. Ever see a particularly foul character be strangely popular with some people? You get the idea – far more dangerous you may make your own.
Dark Mary Sue’s actually irritate me more than regular Mary Sues – they seem to lean more towards wish fulfillment, provoke even more excuses, and drag the story down – especially if the hero is just someone for the villain to push around.
Things To Watch Out For
So here’s a few signs you have a Dark Mary Sue on your hands:
- The hero/heroine are constantly outsmarted by the villain and are basically a punching bag.
- The villain is so charming, suave, debonair, and likable they don’t need an Army of Evil – they should just be able to make a good case of why they should rule everyone.
- The villain has inexhaustible resources, yet there’s no reason in your world to have said resources.
- The villain is so lucky, you figure they should just try and win the world in a game of Poker.
- People dislike the villain as they’re too perfect. THe perfection is more annoying than their actual crimes.
- The villain is giving voice to things the author thinks a wee bit too much.
See these traits in your villain? Get out the Mary Sue detector and give them a careful examination. YOu may have a Dark Mary Sue on your hands.
Closing
A Dark Mary Sue is a real kick in the worldbuilding, as well as just a poor thing to create as an author. It’s also a bit easy to miss if you’re not looking for it.
Have I see these? Oh, yes I have, and they’ve always crawled up my nose. There’s something partially sad to see an author make a bad guy the author’s pet and have it affect their work or misdirect their talent. Also there’s only so often you can hear “He/she is just misunderstood” before you want to say “no, this character is a psychopathic a-hole.”
I also think that Dark Mary Sues can eclipse good villains or morally ambiguous heroes – the areas of really good writing and worldbuilding. I can think of a few characters like that I’m quite fond of, and I’d rather not see their bad names besmirched, if you know what I mean.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
So we’e talking heroes and villains. Usually at some point we’re talking conflict and outright violence in this case, even if its not physical. However when it gets physical, I want to address a rather poorly handled archetype which I call The Deadly Hero
The Deadly Hero is that character who is a killing machine who leaves a wake of bodies, but is also considered the hero (if only by the author and fans). Now admittedly if said bodies are soulless killer robots and such, probably no harm no foul, but usually they’re living creatures and sentients. Oddly, in much writing it doesn’t seem to matter.
You know the story. It’s an FPS game come to life as enormous amounts of corpses pile up and the character is still considered the hero, still perhaps considers themselves heroic, still acts the part. After a while however something seems wrong, seems off . . .
It is. The Deadly Hero kills worldbuilding as well as legions of people.
The Crux of The Conflict
So what’s the problem? The good guy kicks backside and wins? That’s how it works? So why does this seem . . . off in our worlds?
Beyond gore, gratuitous action, and so on I think the Deadly Hero who acts without repercussion or affect grates on our senses of continuity. After a while the bodycount is like a videogame score, and there’s just no fallout from it.
The world doesn’t matter, the setting is unreal, and the Hero all the moreso for the contrast.
Just consider the impact of violence in our real world.
- Violence is unpredictable. A running battle of spells in a crowded city is going to have civilian casualties – having violence be super-surgical and precise seems wrong, and the more there is the less believable (unless you go out of your way to address that).
- Violence produces reactions. I don’t care how heroic you think you are, that huge pile of cadavers might make me wonder if you’re the good guy, and I can’t see their badges that indicate they belong to Evil Inc. until the autopsy.
- People assess risks. The violent, even the good, may make us wonder if they’re safe. If you’ve got super battle psychic powers that may be well and good, but the secret organization you work for is going to notice the levels of death and maybe wonder if you’re safe to work with . . .
- Violence affects people. Ask anyone who has been in a fight, gone to war, killed. Read a biography. Study PTSD. Violence affects us personally, and the person who commits violence is affected as well.
- If you’re not affected, something may be wrong. A character who kills without mental and emotional repercussion may be insanely dangerous -or just insane.
- Violence takes effort. I mean if nothing else you have to rest, recharge, and buy bullets.
The Deadly Hero, I think, rubs people wrong as it’s death without repercussion or even lip service. A story without repercussion is a story without a working world, and the hero feels abstract and removed from the setting. At that point it’s just a list of things happening against a meaningless backdrop.
Also the Deadly Hero way too often is just a form of wish-fulfillment. The badass without repercussions is a form of pandering – and a sadly obvious form of pandering at that. Poorly written is bad enough, but outright pandering really means your worldbuilding is for naught, its just setting up targets.
I recall once someone talked lovingly of ‘The Punisher” comic. To which I noticed that, realistically, the character would inevitably kill a lot of innocent people (if only by accident) and that everyone who showed up dead would not necessarily be a known criminal and thus upset the public.
They didn’t get it.
Avoiding The Trap
The Deadly Hero is a trap that’s a bit too easy to fall into, and I’d credit the prevalence of this kind of story in the media. There’s also media that veers into this territory but doesn’t go all the way – but following in the footsteps of said media means you may veer all the way.
But if your world and a realistic setting are important, you want to avoid the trap of the Deadly Hero – and a common one it is. Here’s a few pieces of advice
- Make sure violence has appropriate repercussions.
- Make sure the hero’s reactions to violence are appropriate.
- Make sure other characters in your world react appropriately to violence.
- Make sure the cost of weapons, armor, repair, etc. are worked into the story.
- Think of what a hero is. If you are wrting an admirable character, you’ll need to explore their reasons and reactions to violence – which is a fascinating experience as a writer. You’re poorer if you don’t – why would someone kill, and for what reasons is a great part of a tale and a world.
In short you avoid the trap by making sure the world works and functions appropriate, diving in to the repercussions and richness of the setting and character. In time, this makes not just a believable story, but a better world and characters.
A Side Note: The UHB is still annoying
When I first wrote this column I noted a character I really was tired of was the Uncaring Heroic Badass or UHB. The UHB is the grim, deadly, antisocial, unlikeable character who is the hero that the author wants us to root for even though they’re an a-hole.
My opinion hasn’t changed. The UHB is really a power trip consisting of:
- I’m tough and can defeat anyone. Don’t you want to be me?
- I don’t care about anyone or anything. Aren’t I cool for not caring.
Really, the UHB isn’t a hero. They’re a sociopath in a costume, meant for pandering, and still freaking annoying.
Fallout From The Flareup
Writing a violent and deadly hero is totally possible – as long as you understand the repercussions of violence and the character. This requires deep thought – and avoiding tropes.
If anything, I’d say tropes about violence are some of the worst challenges we face in writing (along with sex, religion, and politics). It’s almost like we get invested in them, and we need to overcome them.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
So let’s talk Heroes and Villains and your world.
I should note that when I talk Heroes and Villains I’m using that to pretty much mean the same thing as “Protagonist” and “Antagonist.” Why? Because it’s a hell of a lot easier to write “Hero and Villain” and sounds a tad less academic. I’ve got enough trouble going academic as it is.
So for the duration of my digressions, I hope you’ll forgive the simplicity.
But hey you have your main character(s) right? They’re the heroes and villains, correct? They’re the ones you focus on, right? The hero, especially, is the main character, right?
Not necessarily.
You may have a main character but they may not be a Hero. Oh there may be a Hero, but it’s not your main character.
For some writers, this is a problem, and it brings up an important issue in telling the stories of your world.
A Critical Definition
As noted earlier, when you’re writing, your Main character(s) of your story are essentially viewpoints on the world. In a few cases if you use a first-person writing style, quite directly so. But just because the story is from their perspective it may not mean they’re the Hero or Vllain.
When I try and define Hero and Villain, Protagonist and Antagonist, one thing that is critical is that the Heroes and Villains have effect. If your Hero is the main character the story is told from the perspective of someone affecting the setting. A Villain is the same way.
They may be morally different, but both are rather active, even if reluctantly or reactively (in the case of some Anti-Heroes).
In a way, Heroes and Villains are defined by a sense of Agency, of the ability to act and direct and change things. It may not be in a good way, or an effective way, or a competent way. They may fail, but their activity upon the environment is what makes them Heroes and Villains as much as their motivation.
You could be exceedingly evil, but if you’re in a coma due to your last drug binge in your lair of evil, you’re not really an Antagonist. You’re more an After-School Special for supervillains.
You could be exceptionally heroic, but if that results in no direction and activity, then you’re not really the Hero, are you? Yes you may be a nice guy, but you’re not really the Hero, you’re a well-meaning victim of circumstance.
Sense Of Agency, Sense of Story
Thus when you are deciding on your story, if you’re telling a tale of Heroism and/or with villainy, Heroes and Villains require agency, initiative and direction. If they do not act, they are merely acted upon and at best responding, and even then poorly.
This is a critical definition, as a few things happen to those who make tales that can ruin the sense of Agency.
- We focus so much on worldbuilding, our characters bounce round like pinballs. Ever read a book that seemed to be an exercise in tourism? You get the idea.
- We conjure up characters to tell the story or have it happen too. The Hero is there so stuff happens and things get done, but they’re not a character, not part of the world. They’re a camera with legs, making your tale the equivalent of a found-footage movie.
- We spend too much time inside the Hero’s head we forget to make them a person. You don’t notice how unfurnished a room is if you keep looking out a window.
Now in a few cases if your Villain is a phenomena like a plague or something, then the Villain can lack agency in a human sense. Their “agency” comes from pure brute force and circumstance. But if you’re writing from a hero’s point of view and they have no initiative they’re no Hero.
You’ve probably read stories like above. Someone gets all the hero trappings but never does anything, never shows any initiatives. Never does anything. It’s boring – you find yourself wishing for a Mary Sue/Gary Stu because at least they’d do do stupidly overblown stuff.
(And if you can write a story where the Hero is a faceless force and the Villain has a sense of agency, I want to talk to you.)
However sometimes your main character doesn’t always have a sense of agency. In a few cases, this is actually OK.
The Narrative Character
If a main character is not a hero, not a person with a sense of Agency, then in many cases that can be quite lame. It’s not interesting to read about someone bouncing around. It’s annoying to just watch things happen to someone in a world, even if the world is well written.
Except in some cases, I do think this is a valuable form of storytelling – if done consciously.
Sometimes the main character isn’t a Hero, it’s what I call a Narrative Character. A Narrative Character is someone who relates what is happening but has little role in shaping what is going on. That may not sound interesting at the start, but I believe it can be done well if handled properly. Thus, I think in cases where this is deliberately chosen, this is a legitimate form of storytelling.
Now I should note that I think truly Narrative character, the victims of circumstance, are relatively rare. Usually they’re on a scale between Narrative Character and Hero. The exceptions are usually narrative stories, where someone is reiterating what’s going on.
But it’s a legitimate choice if you do it right.
I feel some of the best examples of Narrative Characters are often found in horror stories, especially those about people in the grip of unfathomable evil. Their narrative ability both explains the horror but also communicates their sheer overwhelming sense of being trapped. Lovecraftian tales often do this quite well.
Though I wouldn’t limit the idea of the Narrative Character just to horror.
Make Your Choice and Move On
So when writing and picking perspectives, remember that Heroes and Villains have a sense of Agency. If your main character lacks suck, there’s either a flaw in your choices, or you’re really writing a Narrative Character.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
So last time we chatted about worldbuilding I mentioned that I think that it is a skill – but a skill like some of the management professions. Worldbuilding is the ability to combine skills, knowledge, and so on to produce a setting. The worldbuilding skill lets you build a world, relying on various other things you know and do and can find, much as a manager rallies people.
Now as noted I think it’s a skill that can be identified and thus improved – which is fairly obvious as we can compare world quality and seek to improve the quality of those we build. But there’s only so much you can do with your worldbuilding ability before you have to improve what it relies on – all the other things you know and can do.
Much as a good manager needs good people a good Worldbuilder calls on a huge amount of other talents to make their setting. In fact, that leads to a problem I want to address . . .
Different Foundations (Not of the Asimov Kind)
So let me get this out of the way: worldbuilding relies on rallying your different abilities and knowledge to build a world. That means that no one does it alike, no one is the same, and everyone has advantages and problems. This makes improving oneself rather complicated.
Tolkein’s worldbuilding was the result of knowledge of myth and a love of creating language, and possibly his desire to make thesauruses cry. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is a mix of sharp wit, cultural knowledge, parody, and an understanding of the human condition. The world of Psycho-Pass is one focused on extrapolating technology and psychology.
(This is just about solo worldbuilding, look at the crazy-quilt composite worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, and WH40K).
Every worldbuilder is different. They have different inclinations and abilities to call on. They also have different gaps. What you, as a worldbuilder are good at and bad at is going to be different than anyone else on the planet. You will do some things better than anyone else – and find ways to screw up no one else could imagine.
Because everyone is so different, this makes it rather challenging. You wish to improve the various knowledges your worldbuilding calls on – but where do you start when there’s no obvious path?
What Do You Improve?
So, beyond your core worldbuilding skills, what others should you get, develop, improve, or at least get to functional mediocrity? This is a challenging question and an overwhelming one.
It’s overwhelming because:
- Where do you start? There’s so much you could learn and there’s not really a clear path.
- Role models can be challenging to look at because even if you admire them, you’re not them. I may love Grant Morrison and Terry Pratchett and so on but I’m not them. Even if some of them pointed to clear paths, they may be too radically different from you.
- There may be so many gaps. Even if you want to fix something, where do you start?
Ages ago I just would have shrugged and said “I dunno learn things and have fun with it.” But in time I can see it as a real issue.
However, having watched authors, friends, and myself work on worldbuilding, I have found a few major rules that’ll help:
1) Go with what you know. You will never ever know everything you need to be perfect, so work with what you know and with improving what you know. Build on your strengths.
By improving your strengths, be they genealogy or language, you are working on improving skills in a less-stressful, more personal way and using what you’ve already got in your head. In many cases, diving deep into one subject connects you to others past a certain point, just as Biology and Chemistry come together, or psychology and history intertwine.
2) Fill in the gaps when you need. Admit when you have gaps and work on filling them in – don’t ignore them or be ashamed of them. Just learn to realize when you don’t know something it’s OK to fill it in – and it won’t be perfect, just good enough to do the job.
This means you learn to fix gaps in knowledge without worrying about it – and develop your research skills. If anything, research is a another “metaskill” like wolrdbuilding every worldbuilder should have.
3) Have fun. Part of #1 is to run with what you know and enjoy and use that to be a better worldbuilder. The enthusiasm an take you down the rabbit hole more than once into some interesting and useful areas of knowledge.
By building and using what you enjoy you’ll be a better worldbuilder. It also relieves the pressure and keeps things from being too formalized – which can kill imagination.
4) Use everything. Learn to rally everything you know, learned, understand, or even have vague knowledge about. Building a world is a gritty, hands-on business, so when you have something that pops into your head use it. I’ve used everything from my knowledge of cooking to obscure historical tidbits.
Leveraging everything you have calls upon all your diverse levels of knowledge. I turn, it may lead you to new areas of skill improvement, or ideas of what you can improve. It also may help “fill in gaps” in other areas – maybe your knowledge of music is lame, but your experience with a real-life band lets you write about musicians well.
When you choose what worldbuilding skills, working with what you have, having fun, and learning to fill in your gaps (and finding what you need to fill in) is a good rule to use for improving the knowledge and abilities that let you worldbuild.
Accept The Gaps
You also have to accept you can’t know, understand, and so everything.
This is challenging. We’ve seen very talented worldbuilders who seem to know everything (to us). We’ve seen amazing creations that humble us. We figure we’ll never be as good as them.
The truth is you’ll never be like them – because we’re all different. But as good? Not so. We’re all good in different ways.
Even the authors I greatly admire are ones I can also target for criticism (I shan’t for the sake of propriety). I’ve written on this enough, been obsessed with worldbuilding enough, that the gaps jump out at me. It’s only my own sense of enthusiasm that keeps me from constantly picking myself apart when I make settings or give advice, because I’m not perfect.
You are going to do some things poorly, you are going to do some things mistakenly, and you’re going to make some doozies of errors. You can’t prevent this.
You can’t prevent this because you’re human, you don’t know everything. Building a world is playing god(dess) and you’re only human, so your qualifications are somewhat limited.
So what you can do is get better as worldbuilder, get better with all the skills and knowledge you call upon, and keep moving on. You can do more good and screw up less.
I’d even say that barreling ahead helps reduce errors. If you stay engaged, keep making good settings, keep working t it, all your other advantages may help make up for, cover up,or even repair your gaps.
Worrying about it constantly isn’t going to help – that just wastes time and energy.
Things You Might Want To Improve
OK, I gave you advice on what to improve skills-wise, but here’s a grab-bag of things I think help worldbuilders in general. Consider it inspiration if you’re really looking for where to start
- Biology – Biology of any kind gives you knowledge of a variety of things from how people react to drugs to obscure things about diseases. It’s great for designing races as well.
- Chemistry – Most people don’t know much about chemistry, but it’s a fascinating fields – considering so much of the world is chemistry. Good for worldbuilding when you want to deal with specific reactions, chemical issues, etc.
- Culture and Traditions – Wether it’s relevant to your story or not, knowledge of a given culture helps you understand people. It also gives you ideas for building fictional cultures, of course – if nothing else you may get inspired by the cultures you do know.
- Economics – Economics is an ill-appreciated area of knowledge, and its practitioners don’t always engender confidence. But as its an area few people understand, understanding it is great for designing settings as you’ll have knowledge of something that others don’t, letting you create suprising depth.
- Food – Most writing on food I find is poor as most people don’t know food, from how to cook to its history. Knowledge of food helps you flesh out cultures, produce believable writing on issues like diet and famine, and more. Just ask yourself how much of history is merely people trying to eat . . .
- History – Knowing the history of anything helps you not just use that knowledge, but use the general understanding of people and situations. History gives you a sense of cause-and-effect, which is a huge part of world building.
- Literature – Like music, literature gives you an understanding of people and how they communicate. Also probably a pretty good thing to know about if you’re a writer anyway.
- Medicine – Medicine tells you a lot about how people get hurt and sick and well as treated. That in-depth knowledge can be useful for worldbuidling, writing on diseases, or understanding injuries and their recovery. Many people have erroneous assumptions about medical issues, so it also helps you make more realistic worlds – in surprising ways.
- Music – Music is a huge part of cultures and most people take it for granted – understanding it means you don’t. I’d also add the history of music is often fascinating and inspiring.
- Psychology – Knowing people is great as you’ll probably be writing people. It also introduces you to a variety of colorful and interesting people (sometimes the very practitioners themselves) that can inspire you.
- Religion and Philosophy – Most people know less about religion and philosophy as it’s filtered through their own religion and philosophy. Knowing how people think, worship, deal with ethics, etc. gives you a lot to call on for worldbuilding, and a perspective that keeps you from being trapped by as many assumptions. As religion and philosophy is a core part of many cultures, it also gives you a big leg up on designing cultures.
- Zoology – Zoology is a gold mine of ideas for worldbuilding, from writing about real animals to extrapolating fictional ones. Just general reading on zoology can give you plenty of crazy ideas as planet Earth contains and has contained some pretty wild animals. An evening spent just watching nature documentaries can let you populate several alien worlds.
So there’s a few things I figure you may want to know as a worldbuilder. I hope it inspires you.
Concluding And Moving On
You’ll never get all the skills you use to build a world together. You have to focus on the right ones to compliment your general worldbuilding skill. Accepting your limits lets you charge ahead with what you do best.
Being yourself.
After all, I’d say the worldbuilders so often invoked were very much themselves – and it seems to have worked for them.
Besides being yourself is the one thing you can do right.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
So we’ve covered biology, psychology, society, and how they tie to sex. My fundamental thesis is that sex is best viewed as a primal form of communication for life, and thus logically infuses all aspects of said life. Life, in short, transmits.
But there’s one more element of sex and your setting to consider beyond these – then come the metaphysical, mystical, and divine. If your world has a supernatural (or perhaps “metanatural”) component, then sex is going to impact that too. Sex is part of living beings, living beings deal with metaphysical realities, ergo it’s going to be something you have deal with as a world builder.
Got spirits and sorcery? Sex is going to come into the equation as your sentient races interact with such things.
Now this goes into so many potential areas I’m just going to cover the basics – since your worldbuilding will doubtlessly have its own elements that are unique to your work. I’m just trying to get things going here.
But first . . . (more…)
(This post is ironic in light of the recent Supreme Court decision, but at the same time quite illustrative)
So last time I discussed the complex elements of sex and society. Sex is a kind of primal element of living creatures, and thus affects how they develop, interact, and work together. Sentient creatures, so my thesis goes, are basically about communication, and sex is just the first form of it. Because it is so core to living beings, sex infuses a lot of what sentient beings do – or the complex structures that evolve and develop as they make societies and civilizations.
Now when it comes to worldbuilding cultures and society, reproduction and sex will inevitably be a part of what you create, because you don’t have members of a society without making more members of society – and all the complications that ensues. Sex may be simple in principle, but it gets pretty complex.
So to help you devise the sides of your society that involve sex (and tangentially that’ll be a lot), here’s a list of areas to consider. This is not a complete list, just a way to get you to develop the traditions, language, and so on for your society.
The fact that this is not a complete list gives you an idea of what you may face.
But First . . .
But first, let’s ask the thorny question – when designing a civilization or a culture or a society, just how much do you need to think about all of this? When you consider all the traditions, habits, words, and so on that involve sex it can be pretty exhausting to try and detail how a society handles sex. So how much do you need to do so you can get on to other stuff?
I mean yes, you can’t spend all your time thinking about sex, even when you feel you could if it was about you having it. You’ve got magic and solar systems and the like to design.
In this case, I advise a few things:
- Understand the basic attitude the society has about essential sexual issues.
- Detail the elements relevant to “manifest” that attitude clearly.
- Know “just a bit more” than you think your reader will need to know.
#1 is really important because, if you need to figure something out, you’re primed to figure out the answers for things you didn’t think of.
And with that said, let’s get going . . .
Society And Sex Checklist
So here’s areas that you’ll need to consider when designing sex and societies in your world. As noted it’s not complete, but it should be enough to keep you going.
Lineage: Most forms of reproduction we may conceive involve close lineages – someone is the offspring of so-and-so, who is the off-spring of such-and-such, going back in time. Sex means someone gets out there and produces the generation that produces the next one.
Just consider the battles over kingships and inheritances you’ve seen or read about. Or think about the obligations people have in your culture towards family members.
Is lineage (who’s the family of whom) important in your setting? If not, no worry – but if it is important (or instinctual) then how does it affect society, traditions, laws, and so on?
Exercise: Ask how many times you’ve dealt with lineage-based issues in your life – wills, inheritance, paternity, etc.
Birth: At some point a new life comes into being. So what does the society do then? Considering how much reproducing a society may do, there’s going to be a lot to do and thus . . . traditions, rules, and more.
Birth means you suddenly have a new member of society – and if your’e anything like humans, one that’s rather vulnerable and needs to be raised. It also brings in the complications of lineage, medical issues, validation of said lineage, health, and more. Birth is so complicated people may forget what the person giving birth is going through.
So it’s very likely a society is going to construct a lot of traditions and policies around birth. Birth is sort of the end result of sex – and the beginning of a lot of other questions.
Exercise: Last time you or a close friend or relative had a child, what social, religious, and cultural activities did you engage in? What purpose did they serve (if any)?
Raising Children: Once you’ve got new members of society, your various races and beings and societies are going to raise them. Perhaps there is, again, some difference between the people you write and we humans, but if not, then you’re back to the issue – raising kids.
In this case, you have to ask what raising children does – and following my theme of communication, it’s about taking new members of society and integrating them into said society. It’s helping them become functional, giving them a place, and telling them who they are.
On top of that,it’s also going to be influenced and influence other elements of society. It’s the morals to be passed on, the education, the principles. Raising Children is the end result of sex, and in the way what societies all come down to passing things on. It’s not just genes.
Exercise: How did you get raised to be who you are – and what worked and what didn’t? Why did the traditions and things you experienced exist (even if it wasn’t a good reason).
Puberty (or the lack): Puberty among humans is something we take for granted because we’re used to it. Every joke or lamentation about it seems so standard that we miss what it is – a child beginning the transformation into an adult, and an adult capable of reproduction. That’s actually pretty impressive, but we tend not to think about it.
It’s likely any species you design has some kind of change into having fall maturity and reproductive capacity. If this isn’t part of a species you design, then that alone brings in a lot of complexities. Have a sentient species that can reproduce right after birth and you have some seriously complicated issues. I mean at that point you’ve got human Tribbles.
But I’m going to focus on puberty or the equivalent in your settings, assuming a setting you created has creatures that take time to reach physical, mental, and sexual maturity.
Consider what puberty means. It means the transformation of a creature into a more mature form, which includes reproductive capacity. A society is going to have to cope with that because that’s a big change. It’s almost like the person is evolving into something else just within their lifetime.
Come to think of it, unless maturity comes in a proper order or all at once, sexual, mental, and physical maturity may arrive at different times. As we can see in humans, they don’t always line up – and if there’s something like that in your species, it gets more complicated. You can certainly see plenty of examples in human society where these things get complicated (just look at the arguments over sex education in America)
Exercise: Think of the different rituals you’ve seen for puberty, the different initiations (formal and otherwise), and social concern for adolescents. Now think of what that means for a society you develop.
Adulthood: If you’ve got some kind of maturing process (Puberty) at some point a creature in a society becomes an adult. That’s another level of complication.
Adulthood brings up a huge amounts of issues a society must cope with. When does someone become mature? What is needed for them to be a functional adult? How is this adulthood communicated to people? What rules about sex change at maturity?
Adulthood is when you get handed the keys to society as it were, so most societies consciously or unconsciously, in an organized or disorganized manner, need to have systems and institutions to pull that off. Needless to say plenty of interests – and competing interests – come into play.
Adulthood, to bring it back to our subject, is also when the ability to sexually reproduce is recognized and perhaps even emphasized. The child is now a member of society, and that usually indicates some reproductive capacity. Society needless to say needs to recognize and prepare them for this – and maybe prepare itself.
Exercise: When did you find you were considered an adult – or what do you think your society requires you to do to be considered an adult.
Courtship: Reproduction leads to offspring, offspring grow and mature – and then have more offspring. So when designing your society, you’re going to then have to figure out how society deals with your species finding mates and reproducing – well if they have sex.
It sort of comes full circle.
Societies have an interest in courtship because it usually leads to social bondings (marriage, relationships) and thus children. Actually it can also lead to children without other social issues, which means that society at large is kind of concerned with that as well.
It doesn’t take much reading of human history to see just how much drama, ritual, writing, poetry, conflicts, and time is dedicated to courtship. That should tell you that when you’re designing a society, you gotta gear up and cover courtship. Probably in painful detail.
Exercise: Walk through advice sections of a bookstore and see how many are on anything related to courtship, from dating to weddings.
Marriage: Reproduction leads to children who grow, mature, court, and then bond/pair bond/get married/what have you. Sentient beings enter into some kind of reproductive relationship, so for the sake of your world building I’m just gonna call it marriage.
Societies obviously have an interest in marriage since that involves social bonding, reproduction, and the roles of people. The individuals in societies obviously have an interest as well. So you’ll have to figure out how your society deals with marriage.
Marriage traditions around the world vary, and they vary in history, but their sheer prominence tells you that humans think a lot about it. You can assume most sentient species will be likewise involved.
When it comes to marriages, it’s also important to be aware that expectations and traditions and elements of societies may not be verbalized or obvious. They can be so accepted and so integral and so common no one even knows they’re they’re. Marriage, when you get to it, gets into everyday life – and thus people may not even pay attention to it.
Also marriages have boundaries – which you’re not supposed to transgress. There’s things you don’t do (and you’ll notice those often involve sex in our human societies). These things can change (such as issues of premarital sex).
Exercise: How many people do you know define themselves or are significantly defined by their marital relationships? How many people are defined by those relationships (such as children)?
Conception: OK you get children who grow up, become adults, court, get married – and the system starts all over again. New life gets created.
This is sort of where all of societies’ attitudes about sex come together – the rules, issues, and traditions of creating new life.
. . . or not creating new life. Because birth control, non reproductive sex, and so on also come into the picture. As noted sex is likely to infuse the lives of sentient beings and evolve and be repurposed with them, so there’s also points where you don’t want conception. Just logging onto the internet will give you access to plenty of things about non-reproductive sex that you should definitely not be looking at at work.
Thus your society is going to have plenty of rules for conception, not conceiving, pregnancy, and the like. Simply at that point you’re starting to get to having a new member of society (or avoiding new members), so there will be policies, rules, and traditions. Probably extensive ones.
Exercise: How have attitudes towards sex and conception changed in your lifetime? The lifetime of your parents? Of your country’s history? Why?
Decrease/End of Reproduction: Finally, there’s a point where life forms stop reproducing. Now in some cases that’s death (yes, I know if we drag in cloning, but stick with me here), but in the case of humans at least we often lose reproductive capacity before that point. Because this involves various biological changes, it can be pretty prominent in other ways.
Consider humans. Menopause involves the ceasing of reproductive ability and hormonal changes. Look at the concern about impotence men may have. Just consider issues of royal and family linages affected by age.
Rituals, society rules, obligations, and so on may recognize, have penalties, or compensate for these changes. After all they’re be, to say the least, rather noticeable as people are having it happen to them.
This is an area where world builders don’t give enough thought, in my opinion. So I’m encouraging you to.
Exercise: Where have you seen people deal with a loss of reproductive capacity, how did they react, and what social rules were involved.
Onward And Forward
This is just a limited list of major social areas where a society is going to have rules that, directly or indirectly, relate to sex. It should give you enough to think of.
I can say that sex is an area that is usually not addressed in proper detail in much world building – it’s too easy to map what is known or put “a twist” on an idea, or to just resort to tropes, without really exploring. But a look at the fascinating history of traditions related to sex, courtship, rules, art, and more shows there’s a lot to build and create in your worlds.
Done right it makes richer, more believable worlds and characters.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
Of course when you deal with sex and psychology, it’s all because beings have to interact to reproduce. Where you bring together two more more beings with some mutual goals and drives (at least reproduction) then things get complex. These creatures have to interact, get along, and work together to survive – and thus reproduce. Once you have sex you eventually have a crowd and they’re going to need to work together.
In fact, working together benefits everyone. You need some level of cooperation among a species to A) reproduce and B) not kill each other off.
At some point, you start developing a society. Be it a pack level behavior or a human-like capacity to hyperadapt and run culture as if it was a program, sex leads to social behavior.
What can I say? Sex makes things complicated. But you knew that.
A Quick Note
I’m going to be talking social behaviors here, and I’ll be referring to this as society, since it’s likely that you’re focusing on sentients in your settings and because sentience is when things get more complicated and when we write. However a good chunk of this applies to less-sentient, animal-level behavior that has social behavior even if it’s not a society. I’ll refer to this as “society” for the sake of not constantly clearing this up.
In short, i’m using the word society in the broadest sense.
So What Is Society?
So let’s ask just what a society and social behavior does.
Society is how living organisms arrange themselves and communicate among themselves. No man is an island, and a creature living on its own is probably dead in the end. But a society allows for members to interact, share, survive, and prosper – oh and of course have sex.
When it comes to sex, society lets them hook up, reproduce, and carry on the line – and the society. You can’t separate the two if you think about it. Society lets you reproduce easier (and deal with the results of reproduction).
Sexual organisms at the very least need some social elements to let them connect, have sex, reproduce, and raise the young (as much as is needed). When you have sex you have society of some kind. Some creatures just take it farther than others – like humans.
Society is sort of the “next level” of psychology for a species. It’s that principle that lets them get organized, communicate, and pass on information – and genes.
Consider how having these social instincts contributes to survival. The ability to bond and socialize, social behaviors, allows creatures to further grow and survive. Highly social creatures are almost an organism all their own, each being a cell, moving forward, growing, and surviving – even as some cells are born and die.
In fact, society itself really is about the transmission of information. Behaviors, language, rituals, training all allow for survival but are also communicated due to social abilities. An individual, be it a poet or an animal that passes on a clever hunting trick, outlives their time and perhaps even their progeny by passing information along.
In a weird way, society is almost a “second level” of sex. An individual can have vast influence beyond their individual reproduction, and ideas, concepts, or even simple learned behaviors can echo for ages in descendants yet unborn.
As I said, living beings are all about communication. Sex is just the first kind.
But that leads a lot to explore, and when you talk sex and society, there’s a few things you’ll want to explore when you world build a society and the way it affects sex.
The Biological Level
On one level you have to ask how much of the social instincts creatures you design are innate and how they vary.
It’s very likely any reasonably complex sexual species is going to have some hardwired social instincts just so they can survive and reproduce. These may be rather basic, but are likely to extend beyond the individual psychology of raw sex drive and need. After all if they’re not hardwired enough, that drive probably isn’t going to get expressed very well.
This can get rather tricky as now you have to ask where the core biological drive ends and learned and social behaviors begin. Ask yourself, in your experience, what are the basic human social drives and you’ll see how complex it gets.
Note that these social instincts do not always involve sex. Sure sex is a big part of living creature’s behaviors (as we know) but they also have behaviors that help them get along. I suppose you could note once you start reproducing you’ve gotta start getting along.
EXERCISE: Look at the way you spent your day today. How many things did you do that were more learned than instinctive? How many were more instinctive than learned? That point you yelled at someone for cutting you off on the freeway may have been pure territorial rage . . .
The Developmental Level
The next question in designing sexual species’ social elements is asking what traits that have that can be developed that are part of social (and thus to an extent) sexual behavior. What are the creatures wired to do or able to do, but that is highly variable or can be “filled” up?
Human language is a classic example of this. It’s amazing, but we have this ability to create symbol systems and thus pass on information. These words you are reading are in a language that evolved for aeons, allowing us to employ our natural communications abilities.
A similar example in humans is developing social roles. Though we have complex, varied societies, we still seem inclined to form social bonds and roles. It’s as if we slot ourselves into them happily – even if said role is that of an outsider, we almost need others to announce how “outsidery” we are.
This is an extremely challenging area as you have to enter a liminal area between biological traits and the larger society beings form, to ask what they’re INCLINED to do. However I find this area very rewarding to explore as you have to enter this unsure area and really ask how the life forms you designed adapt – and in what parameters.
EXERCISE: Name five human skills/traits/abilities that you think are natural and hardwired, but are also highly developmental. What role do they play?
The Social Level
Ultimately, when you get to sentients or complex social beings, you end up with a society.
A society is a strange thing really. It’s composed of biological creatures with some hardwired traits, who have learned various things because they’re inclined to, and now pass the society they constructed along. Society is both something they give birth to and that is their parent (to keep the whole sex thing in the picture)
At the same time, a society is a powerful thing for a species to develop. It can literally be like a unified yet adaptable organism, it vastly outlasts any of its components, it can change quickly since it’s not as tied to biological components, and it can propagate information effectively. A society is the ultimate reproductive/communicative tool that can send probes to distant worlds, seed TV signals into space, and write words down that survive thousands of years later.
Thus when you design organsims that have sex, they develop individual psychologies, they have social instincts, and ultimately they create a society.
Which if you think about it makes sense. A society is built on communication and propagating information, and because of that it allows for survival, and thus reproduction (even if its not biological). A society is in a way the sophisticated triumph of sex, the primal communication.
Of course that gets complex, but first . . .
EXERCISE: In the next five minutes, list all the ways an identifiable society is like a living organism.
EXERCISE: Now that you listed the similarities between a society and a living organism, list the differences.
The Social-Sexual Level
The thing is that sex is hardwired into beings that reproduce. So ultimately the society that they evolved is going to involve sex because its so primal, so hardwired, so vital to living beings.
Once you toss a bunch of beings together, the hormones (or equivalent) get going and there’s mating behavior, competition, childrearing, and more. So society, that giant organizational tool of living beings is going to have to cope with sex and make sure it’s handled properly (well what people deem properly). Sex got us to society, and society will usually have something to say about it.
This makes perfect sense since sex is such a primal part of living beings. If you’re going to get along, this core urge and process will be regulated, encouraged, discussed, etc. Thats jut part for the course. Sex doesn’t happen in a vacuum, unless you’re writing some interesting spaceborn pornography – and even then its not a social vacuum.
So ultimately when you design living creatures and their society, sex is going to come into it all the time. YOu can’t avoid it because sex is how you got here.
EXERCISE: List all the sexual taboos in your culture you can think of. Why do they exist.
EXERCISE: What is the most nonsensical sexual taboo you’ve seen. Why did it exist, and who may think it made sense.
Conclusion
Once you have living creatures that reproduce you eventually get society. It seems that’s kind of inevitable because sex requires socialization, and society just kind of follows.
Ultimately this loops itself and the society has to handle sexual issues as well. It’s sort of a perfect oroborous really.
Of course, when you get to society and sex, there’s plenty of areas society has to handle, so we’ll get to that next . . .
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
OK we covered the biology of sex, which if I did my job, proved to be completely unarousing unless you have a major science fetish. If you do, then you’re welcome.
The thing with writing sex in your settings, with creating and understanding the sexuality of the beings and creatures in your setting, is that it goes beyond biology. Think of it as a continuity – the biology is just the start, but it leads to other things. Biology is the foreplay, if you want to dangerously skirt metaphors I have no intention of expanding on.
Once you have creatures reproducing, be they human or otherwise, once evolution kicks in (or the gods take charge or whatever) then you may have sentient creatures dealing with sex. That’s when things get a lot more complicated and less scientific.
Sex is part of our minds. For some of us, an extremely large part.
Now things get personal. Literally. (more…)
Create maps collaboratively – build worlds together.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
