And its time to talk about sex and worldbuilding. Which, if you think is going to be exciting and arousing, indicates you are either sadly deluded, or really into worldbuilding to a level few are. You make the call, I won’t judge.

Sex in many ways is like air, and not in that it’s part of life and sometimes involves wearing a mask. It’s more the fact that it’s so omnipresent that we can miss out how important it is. We think we know how important it is because we just assume we do – until we really think about it.

Sex is part of being human (it’s why you’re here to be human), so we can get used to it like we do seeing and smelling and touching. That of course means we can miss its complexities, and that means we miss it when creating our worlds.  When you miss something so important in your worldbuilding, you’re far worse at it.

So even if you never delve much into sexuality in your settings and stories, it’s probably there in the background, and it might be in the foreground and you don’t know it.

So first of all, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of sex and worldbuilding – biology.

And let’s take a look at three basic things you may face – sexual biology that is familiar, sexual biology that is similar to our world, and completely different species.

But first, let’s remember what sex is for.

The Purpose Of Sex

Sex is about information – progenitors are able to transmit information about themselves in a way that allows it to be used to create new life.  In the case of humans, the DNA of the parents provides the blueprint for a new person to develop in the body of one of the partners.  No matter what kind of creatures you build, sex comes down to information being used to create new life – even if in the case of simple creatures its the information being copied in simple cellular division.

Sex in many ways is like a conversation, though in the case of the aforementioned simple animals, it’s rhetorical.

So when you start thinking about the biology of sex in your setting, always remember it comes down to information.  However it gets more complicated . . .

. . . really, when you think of it all life is about information.  It’s locating food or holding a rally that leads a country to victory in a war.  It’s about smelling out a predator or about listening for the right tone to tell you your significant other is cheesed off.  Life is input and output and retention and processing of information.

In turn, we can also see how living creatures don’t really have distinct boundaries among their organs and instincts and thought processes.  Someone seeking out a mate or a good meal will rally every resource they have to find it.  Our desire for an adrenaline rush can make us seek out thrills skydiving – and in turn someone had to actually rally their mental abilities to invent skydiving.

Now when you add in sex, the core “conversation” of life, you can realize how complicated writing it can be.  That’s the original part of life – the ability to pass itself on.  It’s affected every part of our lives as humans, and ties into our familial instincts, our habits, or ability to form social relations, and even our boundaries.  Sex is everywhere in its own way.

Thus, even from biological points of view, writing about sex becomes complicated because it’s at the core of a living being and because its likely to touch on far more than simple reproduction.

In the end, I find that when writing about sex and designing its point in your world it keeps coming back to these lessons:

• Living creatures propagate themselves.  At the core a species is about transmission of information.
• Living creatures lack boundaries among their component biologies – which is understandable because why should they be there?
• Because of this it is likely that sex for any species you may write will go beyond the boundaries of reproduction and into all aspects of life.
• This in many ways makes sense as, again, sex is a form of communication/transmission and that is what life is about.

Now with that being said, let’s move on to the three basic kinds of sexuality you may end up designing in your worlds.
Situation Normal

First of all if you’re writing about people that are for all extents and purposes human, i may seem pretty easy to write about sex and ignore it all together. It’s just standard. It’s normal. It’s background noise, though perhaps with an uninspired soundtrack.

This is where things tend to go wrong because we don’t pay attention.

The biology of sex for humans introduces any numbers of complicators that may play into your story. Just a few examples:

• Issues of contraception.
• Issues of social diseases.
• The duration of pregnancy.
• Complications of pregnancy.
• Biological issues due to sex organs, from ovarian cysts to enlarged prostates.
• Biological transformations such as puberty and menopause.

If you’re going to do any kind of setting with regular people, the biology of sex is likely to come up, even if it’s just figuring someone hauls off and kicks another character in the junk. They may be minor, but they may be there.

In most cases, writing “humans like us” and sex really focuses not on the biology (with which we have passing familiarity) but psychology and culture. That may lull you into a false sense of security.

So when worldbuilging “normal” humans, take a moment to inventory any issues of sex that may come up. A quick list is:

• What diseases exist that are sexually transmitted or involved? This will also affect culture.
• What areas of sexual transformation are affected by the setting. In an era of malnutrition puberty and pregnancy will be aversely affected, for instance.
• What other environmental or setting factors may affect sexuality biologically. This can radically affect your setting – if a virus is causing sterility in your setting, you need to design it to explain why there is a population left in your setting.
• How do cultural and psychological and even metaphysical elements affect sexuality – attitude, access to contraception, etc. Biology is a powerful thing, but these other factors will affect it.

Even in writing a real-world setting, don’t always assume you know enough about sexual biology to write. A little research is in order if it’s remotely part of your story. Because of many issues (psychological and cultural) you may know less than you think.

 

Sex And The Possibly Single Almost-Human

Then you get into settings or setting elements where you have almost-humans. Your standard fantasy races, the thing-on-the-forehead-but-human-otherwise aliens, and so on. You know, the beings in the setting that are are for most intent human but a bit different.

It’s often tempting in dealing with almost-humans to do two things:

• To make their sexuality just like humans.
• To throw in a twist or something extra, but treat them just like humans.

Both approaches are a mistake. The first is to ignore all other factors that make your species different – unless you’re quite sure there aren’t any (then you may be OK). The second is to forget that small changes can have vast repercussions, especially when you deal with reproduction.

Imagine a human-like race where the gestation period was half the time, completely changing the effect it’d have on the role of women. Lower the sex drive of a species and it might limit their spread (as often seems to be a trope of fantasy dwarves thanks to Tolkein). A few minor changes to your “almost human” races and you have major repercussions to deal with.

In handling the biology of near-human species I find a good way to deal with it is to stop thinking of them as near-human and focus on them as species that has familiar elements. These familiar elements provide you a lot of useful reference points, and from there you can extrapolate on what the differences mean.

Think of it as having a known path, and that makes it easy to figure out where you deviate from it and what happens when you do. This isn’t my favorite method (see below), but is useful.

A few examples:

• Maybe you have increased fertility due to a hostile environment. In turn as a species tames its world population may be a problem quicker. There’s something to deal with in your story.
• Perhaps you do limited gestation periods. That would affect the role of women in society as they’re less limited. It also would probably increase fertility for obvious reasons.
• What if species have no case of menopause or reproductive limits in their lifespan. If couples can easily have children until death it’ll change ideal ages for marrying and conceiving.

However, remember you are creating a different species. Past a few minor changes here and there, you may really be inventing a new species. When things get different from regular humans to any degree, you’re really just designing a completely new species . . . and you might just want to start here to begin with.
Loving The Alien: The Sexual Biology of Non-Humans

And this is where it gets complicated. More complicated – creating a totally new species in your setting and dealing with their sexuality.

In designing a species from scratch, in not having a “human with funny ears” you’re going to enter into a very crazy world. Designing your own species can be tough as is, and when you get to sexuality it’s going to be a challenge because, as noted, sex is so complex and connected to other things in the case of living beings.

Just think how complex sex is for humans, biologically. Now inventory all the non-human species you know about and think about their sexual biology. Now realize you’ve got to create something like that. It’s enough to make you loose interest in sex.

Welcome to the cold shower of world building original species.

So I won’t lie, if you’re going to populate your world with definite non-humans it’s going to require some thought. There is some advice I can provide:

1. Remember sex is about transmission and propagation, but it is likely to tie into other elements of any species, as noted above.
2.  Read up on the sexual biology of other creatures and note how they work. It’ll give you ideas, and in some cases probably horrify you beyond words.
3. Determine how far you have to go. Building realistic species (or building species realistically) can be very addictive and you can go pretty far down any rabbit hole of biology, be it sex or something else.

The key to designing good sexual biology is, like many things, to know how much you have to do then take it a little farther to make sure you know enough.

I’ll just have to leave that up to you.

Sex Is Important

Hope I haven’t scared you off, but sex is a complicated issue, as we all know, however it’s incredibly important to do in your worldbuilding.

It’s why there is a population to experience it.

It’s a part of our own lives so readers will notice its absence.

It’s part of life itself.

It might just be one of your biggest challenge as a worldbuilder. But if you’re able to tackle it, you’ll be rewarded with a very believable world.

Of course once we talk biology, we have to talk about psychology, and that’s next . . .

– Steven Savage

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/.

Cracked notes some pretty popular universes have got to be seriously crappy to live in if you’re an average person.

Middle Earth.  Star Trek.  Marvel. Westeros.  Star Wars.  Not exactly idea.

CREATIVE QUESTION: In your fictional universe(s) what’s it like to be an average person?

– Steven Savage

Now and then in my writing I discuss the benefits of Worldbuilding in real life, such as improving record keeping and the like. Truth be told there are other benefits than the more technical and procedural skills, but I never really thought about it much or where to put them. Then I realized, I could write a column on it.

Yeah, I know. Should have thought of that early.

So, let’s take a break from good and evil, science and technology, politics and religion, and discuss just why all these elaborate setting-creations, timelines, and notes benefit you beyond your ability to create a good game or comic or story. This is how Worldbuilding improves you and your abilities in general ways, ways of insight and dare I say it, character.

This may sound a little weird. You may truly enjoy that giant mecha slam-bang universe you created, but you hardly think transforming robots really is going to make a difference in who you are or how you see things.

Actually, you’re wrong. Having done world building myself (in complete and far more unfinished projects), having analyzed it, having talked to writers and artists, I’ve been amazed how the act of world building actually improves people as people. They become, in a way, better and more insightful.

If you’re aware of it, of course, then you can appreciate it, use it, and enhance it. I’m not saying everyone should sit down and create an epic sci-fi universe or fantasy epic, but I’m noting that it does more than you may think.

If you know it, you can use it.

Here’s where it helps. (more…)

We’ve talked Utopias, their rarity, and how and why to create them in our worlds. We’ve talked Dystopias, their commonality, and why to create them anyway despite their near-omnipresence. I’d like to discuss a related, similar issue in worldbuilding – what happens when “good” and “bad” parts of the setting meet.

It’s an area near to my heart because stories and games, tales and legends, are often written on the borders, the liminal spaces, the transitions. It’s where the richness grows, when things cross over.  Even a conflict or a difference is a chance for rich worldbuilding and storytelling.

Also because mostly when the Good and the Bad collide it’s often implemented in a manner that’s terrible.

So, let’s start out with what often goes wrong when Light and Dark decide to unload a can of whupass. Sometimes you have to put up the warning signs before someone goes off the worldbuilding road. (more…)

Previously I discussed Utopias. They’re not always popular, often poorly done, and are best handled by doing real world building first. Seeking to force a Utopia into your world tends to be about as successful as forcing it in real life.  If you don’t get that joke, please avoid any participation in politics until you do.

So now we’ll talk their opposite, Dystopias. You know how those go – they’re awful, terrible, explore the darker parts of human nature. A few even roll post-apoclapytics into the Life Sucks Stew for a complete course of misery.

However while Utopias don’t seem to be that popular for a variety of reasons I covered, it seems that a lot of worlds I see these days are just overloaded with Dystopias.

Which makes building good ones a bit more difficult . . .

Dystopia-A-Go-Go

I often wonder why Dystopias are so popular in fiction, at least modern fiction and modern popular fiction. As I write this in 2014 it seems like the shelves are filled with terrible worlds, often but not entirely in the realm of Young Adult Fiction. I’m starting to think adults might want to speculate what kind of world they’re leaving to young people here, but let’s focus on why there’s so many.

So why do we have so many dystiopias? I’ve been thinking about that one for awhile.

• Conflict and challenge are important to getting interest in fiction, so Worldbuilding with a dystopia means instant conflict. Conflict means interest.
• Dystopias also appeal to people’s morbid curiosity. When you see something horrible you wonder how bad it can get.
• Dystopias also appeal to curiosity since there’s almost always the mystery of “how come this is so awful.” Curiosity is a powerful thing.
• People may have trouble visualizing a better world, but can easily visualize a bad one. They may thus find Dystopias more believable – even when they’re not.
• Dystopias may also seem more believable to people because of real-world examples – human history has had quite a few terrible societies.
• That set of historical examples also provides plenty of material to use in building dystopias, so you have a pretty big construction set.
• Dystopian settings may be seen or portrayed as “more realistic” because of the above examples – and the strange tendency in Western culture to believe “dark” is “realistic” or “mature.”

Finally, there is one thing that differs Dystopias from Utopias. Both may be written with agendas (as I noted with Utopias), but I believe the above factors mean that agenda-created Dystopian worlds may seem more believable and the agenda of the author may not be visible. It may even be welcome because it came in a “mature” manner (in short as part of a horrible setting that some may see as realistic).  Dystopias let you get away with more.

Now this popularity may make it easier to create a Dystopia and make it part of your setting, your game, your book, etc.

That’s the problem.

A Warning On Dystopia

Because Dystopias are so popular, so common, they’re actually a danger for you as a writer. Thus, a few warnings for you, cultivated from my observation over time of how many of them are in literature and games (and poorly executed).

If you are thinking of creating a dystopian setting, keep these things in mind:

• These are easy to do because there’s so many. It may be tempting and easy to make one in a setting for no good reason.
• Dystopias are also tempting as people see them as “realistic.” That temptation can lead you to taking your setting in a dark way believing its realistic – and it may be anything but.
• There are so many accepted tropes on Dystopias that its all to easy to pile a few on, meaning even an attempt to make an effective Dystopia can fail if you resort to tropes – which is very easy unconsciously.
• Dystopias can conceal agendas that you’re accidentally working into the story. Readers/players may detect them easily while you may not see them, combining embarrassment with poor world building.  Yes, you may see how other people put agendas into their Dystopias – be aware you may do it too.

So now with these warnings, let’s ask a question . . .

Why Build A Dystopia?

The simple answer – do it if it’s appropriate. Just as I mentioned in Utopias.

In a lot of cases it just works. I’m no fan of the overload of Dystopias in today’s media, but sometime your setting and world building may lead you to conclude that “yeah, this part of the setting is going to be awful.” Run with it – in fact this is the best way to run with it as you reached that conclusion honestly.

I also find that, much as building more ideal settings, building a good Dystopia is a real way to expand your world building skills. Making a good one as opposed to a pile of tropes is a real challenge. Extremes are educational.

Dystopias are also fascinating because if you can build a believable setting that is believably terrible, then you’ve really achieved something. Bad Dystopias are just as ridiculous, just as able to remove believability, as bad Utopias or general bad settings. Good ones? That’s a challenge.

Dystopias are also interesting to explore historically – namely, how did something end up being so awful? This is always great fun to explore as a world builder because you explore so many different options, histories, and psychologies.

Finally, extremes are just fun to explore as a world builder, good or bad, high-tech or low-tech.

So if you decide it’s time to make your setting an awful spectacle of misery then what happens now? What should you do?

Of course I have an answer.

Putting Together Dystopia

So, if you’re going to build a Dystopia (as much as one designs suffering and misery). What do you do?

Just like Utopia, you need to sit down and do some work and make a real setting. Good, bad, neutral, whatever world building is world building, a creation of thinking things over, tying things together, and figuring out how things work. It’s all good world building

Yout biggest barrier will likely be the tropes and cultural issues mentioned above. Don’t take those for granted, because they seem to be bloody everywhere. Take it from an old geek, it’s like those bad post-nuclear games and tales I saw over and over in the 80’s.

But as for specific advice:

• Dystopias can be intentional or untintentional – and indeed one person’s Dystopia may be another’s Utopia. It’s important to ask how it came about – and how conscious or unconscious it was. In a few cases you’re really writing post-apocalyptic stories, which is another kettle of dead fish.
• A real Dystopia is identifiable – it has an identity and a duration and is not a transitory state. That’s another distinction from post-apocalyptic which often has a strong transitory element.
• A Dystopia, as terrible as it is, has to be sustainable for it to be identifiable and have duration. You’ll have to figure out how such an unpleasant setting exists and maintains itself by resources, social cohesion, etc.
• Dystopias also require you to explore the psychology of people in them. People may not be happy, but they’re likely contributing to the situation somehow or maintaining it aware or unaware. Because a Dystopia needs to be distinct and somewhat sustained, its likely people are contributing it or at least not opposing it.
• Dystopias also present the interesting question of how they react to change. Change may be embraced or resisted, but how does your terrible/unpleasant setting deal with it?
• Did the people making this society know what they were doing or not? How do those who maintain it now react to it?

Dystopias take some work to do. Good dystopias are just about as difficult as building Utopias.

Go Build The Worst

Hopefully that’ll help you in creating lousy and horrible worlds for your characters/players.

I think having seen so many bad/dervitive utopias, readers and gamers and such want something that’s really good. Applying good world building to Dystopias makes you a good world builder – and gives people something they’ll appreciate.

Even when it’s awful.

On purpose.

– Steven Savage

Let’s talk Utopias in the worlds you make.

Utopias seem to be less popular in fiction of all kinds as I write this in 2014. Sure we’ve got plenty of dystopias; it seems that there’s always a fire sale on at the Life Sucks Dystopia Department Store. But Utopias, not so much.

However, sometimes your worldbuilding is going to involve Utopias or at least Utopia lite. I’d like to address how to design good utopias, but first a little detour into just why I don’t think we see them. (more…)

Previously I discussed how pandering to your audience was a bad thing. It would break your world, confuse your technique, and risks humiliation – as well as the fact you’ll compete with people far better at selling out and far less ethical than you. i noted It’d be better to chose marketable premises or pick appropriate “views” on your world if marketing was important – and those can be rewarding approaches.

Having covered the danger of pandering to other people, I want to focus on the one person you want to avoid pandering to.

Yourself.

See it’s bad enough when you try and bound and twist your imagination just to tweak other people’s buttons. But when it’s yourself you’re pandering to, you enter a whole world of conceptual hurt. If you’ve ever read a book where the author was clearly writing with one mental hand down their psychological pants, you know what I mean. You how how their world (and their games or books or comics) look – a pile of wish fulfillment and personal delusions.

For some authors, you wonder if they didn’t even need you as an audience, – they were just going over their own fantasies. And when they do have an audience for their self-pandering creations . . . you’ve probably seen those.  The kinds of audiences people look at and just wonder if they know how they look.

Sure, sometimes self-pandering sells. It may cultivate an audience because you hit the setting sweet spot for people like you. But my guess is that’s probably not your ambition.

(Or if you want a fanatic audience, you want one of a good quality).

But the pandering worlds where the author lives their own fantasies trundle out. Let’s look into just what’s going on.

Why People Do This?

I’ve seen many a book, movie, comic etc. that was really just mental masturbation and personal pandering. It’s honestly something that’s fascinated me for some time – just why do people do this, especially because it can end in humiliation?

I’ve found these reasons:

• Ideology. Some books and tales are meant to express or support a given ideology. They’re really tracts, manifestoes, or rants with characters. Or things close to characters.
• Wish fulfillment. The author is basically enjoying living their fantasies. Sometimes this can actuallybe engaging if it’s done in fun, but can take weird or odd turns.
• “Told you so.” Some worlds are built as “counter settings” to something people disagree with. They want to respond to ideas, other works, etc. by building the opposite. Usually because their ego is involved – though I’m not going to argue with the idea of just exploring the opposite of an idea.
• Double down. Sometime people take an idea and then double down on it to make a point. ever read a book that seemed to be a previous pock turned up to 11? you get the idea.
• Assumptions. Some people think that what they like everyone likes, and pour themselves into their world. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re just humiliated.

You’ve probably seen these yourself, and seen some particularly humiliating examples. However, when you think about it, Self-Pandering is not only bad, it can be even more painful than regular pandering . . .

Where Self-Pandering Collapses

You’ve seen that book or game that just seems so . .. self-indulgent. They have a particular sense of disaster about them that’s often worse than the usual results of pandering to others.   Regular pandering, after all, at least thinks about the audience, but self-pandering has a particular way of blowing up.

These are the things that plays into those particularly incandescent explosions of bad continuity:

• Self-delusion. It’s easy to think that other people feel the way you do and want the same things. In turn, you may not see that you’re pandering to yourself and no one else.  This lets you get awfully far along before your worldbuilding collapses.
• Invisibility. People may not be deluding themselves about their own self-pandering, but they may not see it. They can’t see how they’ve projected their own wants and needs onto the world because they’re so used to them. Cases like this are actually a bit sad because they honestly don’t mean it – and I’m sure we’ve all done this.
• Obviousness. Self-indulgent world building is often so . . . obvious . . . that it’s outright humiliating. You may not see it due to the above two factors – and it can be crashingly painful when you do.  You may be the last person to see how you’re pandering to yourself.

I’m sure you can think of several painful incidents like the above.  Hopefully none you’ve experienced – or at least experienced publically.

Avoiding Self-Pandering

So how do we avoid doing this to ourselves?  How do we avoid self-pandering and thus self-destruction in worldbuilding?

The prime rule I found is this – your world building should surprise you.

If while creating your world your conclusions shock you, if you find unexpected results, then you’re on the right track. If what you’ve made isn’t what you expect, that’s a sign that a world is truly evolving from your efforts, as opposed to being your desires codified in world format.

In fact, this is a good policy anyway – you don’t want your world to meet any kind of expectations. You want to find your imagination has brought it to life. you want it to transcend expectations. You want to be shocked.

Look for those moments of surprise. If you don’t see them there’s a chance you’re really not diving into your world. If you do see them, then it’s a sign of both good world building, but also a sign you’re either not pandering to yourself (or others) . . . and if you are you’re breaking through it.

I’ve had this happen several times in my worldbuilding and after awhile it’s delightful.  You know you’re onto something when things make you go “where did that come from.”  I find in time that such shocks are almost addictive as each one is a sigh that your setting is alive.

Shocking is what you want. In a good way.

A Few More Tips

Beyond the rule of “be shocked” there are a few more tips I can provide to help you avoid self pandering:

• Be aware. Just keep an eye out on your world building to look for self-pandering.  Be on the look out for regular pandering, but chances are if you’re doing that you’re aware of it.  And, hopefully, a bit ashamed.
• Learn to let your world be itself. As noted, a good world comes to life on its own – give it a chance.  Trust your creation.
• Disagreement is progress. When your world doesn’t work the way you expected, when it doesn’t always line up with itself, that’s progress. It may be that you’ve surprised yourself or found a flaw to fix.
• Run with your inspirations. Go on and explore and play with ideas. That fun, that joy, can keep you from getting dragged into pandering to yourself – and others – though it can backfire at times and become self indulgent.

Closing

Self-pandering is perhaps a greater enemy of good world building than pandering to others – as it plays into your ego and is missed due to a variety of reasons. Fused with other forms of pandering and it could be quite destructive.

But when you look for those shocking moments, those moments that surprise you, and when you practice good world building, you can avoid it.

– Steven Savage

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum, MuseHack, and Ongoing Worlds]

So you’re world building, but the world is basically like ours, or like a given historical place and time. You’d start building religions, but . . . you’re dealing with real religions that people practice and live right now (or the ancestors or descendants of those religions). You’re not so much creating them, but asking where they fit into your setting, what’s “real” and what you have to write.

There’s more “about” than “building.”  Sounds easy, right?  Not when you realize that when it comes to religion you have to . . .

1. Treat as a functioning part of your setting.
2. Know what you’re writing about.
3. Write/describe/handle it in a realistic way (or a way that seems realistic).
4. Deal with annoying people.

So you’ve got to design your “real” world, but also deal with ‘real” religions.  How do you handle these challenges?

Let’s address them one by one . . . (more…)

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum, MuseHack, and Ongoing Worlds]

(As noted in my past columns, this discussion of religion is focusing on the with some metaphysical or theological elements).

When I worldbuild, I confess building religions and so on are some of my favorite things to do. This of course is part of my own inclinations and interests in people, psychology, culture, and religious experiences. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm.

Fortunately, as I have such enthusiasm, I’ve got plenty of advice to share. Here’s a few things I’ve found help in doing religious world building. (more…)

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum, MuseHack, and Ongoing Worlds]

So let’s talk about creating and writing religions in your world. You may now start panicking.

Creating religions is challenging,as we all know. That sense of challenge, the burden, the awareness of all the effort it takes can bring us down in our world building efforts. Chances are even mention this is giving you flashbacks.

So before we explore writing religions and creating religions, I want to cover the challenges we world builders face – and discuss overcoming them. Will I cover all possible cases? No theres only so much I can do or remember, swear to . . .

. . . er anyway, lets’ go on and look a some of the challenges facing writing religion and common traps.

But First . . . (more…)