An Audience of One: Worldbuilding Easter Eggs I Plant to Entertain Myself

Yesterday I did a signing with Sage Walker whose book, THE MAN IN THE TREE, just came out last week. This is a gorgeous science fiction novel that I highly recommend. For the purists, the science is impeccable. An asteroid is equipped with propulsion and manipulated to create a living space inside that will eventually be a self-sustaining biosphere with a population of 200,000. By the time this generation ship reaches its planetary destination in 200 years, those people will be ready to colonize the new world. But when the story begins, the ship, Kybele, is nine days from leaving orbit with a population of 30,000 people. These people are the best of the best, who've worked and struggled to be among those granted a position on the Kybele. None of them will live to see the new planet, but they'll live and eat like billionaires during their time aboard ship - and give their progeny an opportunity like no other.

Except a man has been found murdered. Unless they find the murderer before leaving orbit - a meticulously timed departure - they'll be taking someone twisted with them. Someone who may have sabotaged Kybele herself. And the guy in charge of tracking down the murderer may be in danger of falling in love with the chief suspect.

So yummy!

One of the things I really love about this book is all the worldbuilding work Sage put into it. Not all of it is on the page, but it's all there in the supporting framework. Hearing her discuss the details is amazing. (Yes, she's a friend of mine.)

It's not all on the page because the reader doesn't need to know everything the author knows. In fact, if an author puts EVERYTHING about the world on the page, it bogs the book down beyond readability. However, the author still needs to know it, or the world comes across as tenuous, false, or hollow. Worst case scenario, fundamental contradictions may be missed.

Our topic this week is worldbuilding as its own reward. What worldbuilding we do that isn't necessarily about the story itself.

Really, as I said above, a ton of worldbuilding never makes it into the story. But this topic is asking which bits we do purely to please ourselves.

I'll tell you mine. I slip in little homages to authors I love. Or sometimes to work by friends. I named a castle seamstress for an author friend who helped me with that scene. I borrowed a cameo appearance of a fantastic bird from one of my favorite fantasy books. I chortle to myself as I sneak in jokes that are so inside I doubt anyone would ever get them besides me.

Sometimes I imagine some future scholar ferreting out some of these references. Others I know no one will ever "get." And that's okay. It's mostly me, having fun with the thing I love to do.

But if you all ever suspect you've caught one, be sure to let me know!

The Gaps in the World

I'm sitting beside someone playing The Division. It's a computer game set in NYC just after Christmas - a Christmas wherein someone infected dollar bills with a genetically engineered virus. He put the bills in circulation and the virus wiped out a broad swath of the population. The premise of the game is that it's January. The player is an agent in a clandestine organization called The Division. The player is activated as a means of reclaiming the city and lending aid to the remaining survivors.

Amazing world building. The story tellers/game developers seriously thought through the threats, the challenges, and the ways people would react to the disaster. They really considered how long it would take for essential services to break down - how long it would take official government agencies to sweep in and cordon off the city before they, too, started dying.

But there are some serious gaps, if not in world building, then in logic. All of the firetrucks and police cars have their lights on and flashing. The cars are abandoned, their hoods crumbled, but their batteries are still good, by God! However. People have been dead for so long that all the dogs in the city have become feral. The single biggest miss by the dev team? The dogs aren't roving in packs.

Do you know how long it takes dogs to revert to feral? It's a researchable parameter. Not to mention that anyone who's watched a single National Geographic episode knows that dogs are social animals. They require a pack. In our homes, the accept their human families as pack substitutes. Were that family suddenly taken away and a dog had to fend for itself, it would have to have another pack. The dog would automatically seek other humans and ask for help. If that didn't work and the dog didn't simply starve, it would, for its own psychological survival, have to join a pack of other free-roaming dogs.

It seems like a little thing, doesn't it? But it's indicative, to me, of some lazy world building within the game. Someone simply went, "Cool element! Feral dogs!" But no one bothered to ask a simple question. "Hey. If the dogs went wild, why are the crumpled cop cars still flashing red and blue? I mean their car batteries died in the first 72 hours, right?"

It's proof that misses don't have to be great big hairy things. It's the little things that build up over time and really start to bug people. Ask Walking Dead fans whose visages harden and whose lips thin ever so slightly whenever the Rick and the group drive past an obviously cultivated field or a mowed lawn 2 years after the zombie apocalypse. (Also, why do the cars still start? Have you ever had gasoline varnish in an engine after a single season??)

World building is very much akin to the cultural iceberg - we only see the tiny bit above the surface, but there's an entire huge structure underpinning what we see. That invisible structure requires deep thinking if you're going to be creating it. It is where the 'why' comes from for your world. If the 'why' is firmly in place, a writer is less likely to miss the kinds of world building elements that'll get books tossed across the room.

I, personally, have a pet peeve about time travel stories. I have yet to see a movie with time travel as an element that didn't shoot itself right the timeline. (Meaning the story creates an Asimov Paradox even after Isaac Asimov described the paradox so writers could avoid it.)

What world building/consistency misses rub your fur the wrong way?

Worldbuilding: Kids and Elderly

When it comes to world building, there are many things that don't get much consideration. Often, the storyline is completely about able-bodies adults, most of whom are in the prime of their life. But what about the younger and older generations?

Those with high level Life Experience...the Elderly:

I'm far from 'elderly' but as a mid-forties mom, I've been around the block. I want to share my lessons with my boys to help them avoid repeating my mistakes or wasting time. Of course, sometimes they don't want to listen, and sometimes I don't understand the things they are talking about. (Like anything Xbox, technical, etc.) This is, in essense, where the elderly typically get lumped/typecast in a story. But the non-twenty-and-thirty-somethings have much to offer.

Examples:

Even Bilbo Bagginns at 111 was pretty kick ass, though that was because of the ring. Wizards are typically older, but still very vital, if Gandalf is any indication--especially his fight with Saruman. Han Solo and Leia and Luke are passing of the torch with heartbreaking grace. Personally, I loved that scene in Battleship where the old vets run the museum ship and attack the enemy. I thought that was fantastic, showing their input remains vital...but then as a former VFW bartender, vets are special to me. 

Outside of those charaters, when I think of elderly characters, I think of Dragonslayer.

Ralph Richardson played Ulrich, the wizard. Spoiler: after giving cryptic instructions to his apprentice, he allowed himself to be killed. The instructions were for his resurrection. Because he was too old to make the journey. And because wizards are sneaky shits.

Ask yourself: 

If you're worldbuilding, consider what hardships and benefits the older generation might have. How can you use this or show this in your story? Does a supporting character have a grandpa they have to help as well as the hero? If the heroes gramma is a major motivator, does the hero/ine see that gramma is focused on them instead of their own woes, and if so what impact does this have on hero/ine? What gut emotional impact can you bring to your story by allowing a glimpse or hard scrutiny of the elderly around the hero/ine?

Those with minimal Life Experience...the Kiddoes:

The fun here is watching them discover something for the first time, or seeing them putting it all together in their head and having their own opinions and ideas about it, whatever 'it' is.

Examples:

The Harry Potter series covered a great scope of childhood, from magic candy, magic sports, and magic school pressures. Rowling hit on family issues good and bad, peer pressure, clothes, grades, everything. Stranger Things has zeroed in on some pretty intelligent kids (D&D gamers, so creative but truly thinking) from the 80s and I dig their story and characterization. 

But those are both modern-era. What about kids in medieval-type times? Oh, yeah. George RR Martin has shown the perks of bloodline, deaths for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the surprise of being sacrificed, and the upside of being dangerous and 'overlooked.'  As for futuristic, space? I dunno. Does Wesley Crusher count?

Ask yourself: 

In your world, how are children viewed? Are they educated, well fed, and do they have toys? Are they spoiled, lazy and distracted? Or are they taught to revere information? Are they given choices when they are understandably too young to understand the consequences? They are typically all about self-discovery. How can you step aside from that in your world and bring something fresh to the page?

Y U No Poo? Elements Left Out of Worldbuilding

Hygiene and basic bodily functions tend be glossed over in World Building...unless killing someone on the john is a plot point (hiya, GRRM). Rarely does our protagonist take time away from the action to brush their teeth, wash their hands, or pee. They only head to the loo when the setting of the bathroom is important (fist-fight, clandestine meeting, assassination, hiding from an assassination, etc.). Even then, it's only one potty visit for the whole novel. There are endless memes for 24: When Does Jack Bauer Pee (pretty sure Eric Carter's going to have the same problem, fwiw).

Anyone who has kids, a vindictive bladder, or a digestive system that functions like clockwork knows where the restrooms are and visits before jumping into the next adventure. Office, gas stations, Target, rest stops, port-a-pots at the farmer's market...real world logistics are planned around potties. In SFF worldbuilding? We'll send our fearless posse into the glacial canyon, covered in eighteen pelts of wild beasts they slaughtered and skinned with their own hands...and no one is concerned about copping a squat in sub-zero temperatures.

Or toilet paper. 

How many of our fearless heroes are running the gantlet with grungy butt?

We skip that shit (literally) because readers don't want to know, unless, again, it serves a plot point.

Now, showers, on the other hand, they are the literary stars of the bathroom. Giggity-giggity.

What Got Left Out? Classic Misses in SFF Worldbuilding

I love this photo of me on the Iron Throne, the much-sought seat in George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones and the ensuing books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. It's a testament to GRRM's meticulous worldbuilding (yes, I'm making it one word in this post because it should be) that people have gone to such lengths to reconstruct pieces of his imaginary world.

That's our topic this week - Children and the Elderly: what elements tend to get left out of worldbuilding?

Worldbuilding is something we talk about a lot in science fiction and fantasy (SFF - like the SFF Seven!). Arguably all fiction engages in world-building to some extent - the author must establish a reality in which the story occurs. Even a contemporary story takes place in a world of the author's construction, because salient details are included and other, hopefully unimportant ones, are discarded. This fictional world is often intended to replicate a real one, but often keen readers familiar with the reality will pick out errors and misses.

With an entirely fictional world, the author "builds" it from the ground up. Or from the core of the planet up. Or the center of the galaxy and up. You get my meaning. Even with that, details have to get glossed over. With my Sorcerous Moons series, for example, I wanted it to be an entirely alternate world. So much so that it has two moons - and I did substantial research on how two moons would look, their effect on the tides, and so forth. What I did NOT do is create an entirely new ecology. The flora and fauna are decidedly Earthlike, including the humanoid life forms.

That's not only unlikely. It's pretty much impossible. And I don't justify it. (So far no one has asked me to.) I engaged in what we fondly call "hand-waving." Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Sometimes hand-waving is lazy writing. But often it's necessary because setting a story in an alien world where the flora and fauna - including the hero and heroine - come from an entirely different evolutionary chain would overpower it. It might be fun to do, but it wouldn't be the same story.

Any time I see a movie or read a book where the characters end up IN some author's fictional world, I want there to be huge gaps. Like no sewer system beneath the city streets. Or no day care for the infants of the tribe of male and female warriors who've all apparently gone to war. No fictional world is so complete and seamless that absolutely every detail is covered. Even GRRM, a master of the craft, has never explained the seasonality of the world in A Song of Ice and Fire. Winters and summers that last for years, okay, but what's the climate mechanism there?

GRRM pulls that off because that mechanism isn't key to understanding the thrust of the story. And, really, a great deal must be left out in creating fictional worlds and societies or it would be unreadable.

Still, it can be instructive to look at what does get left out. SFF worlds can be conspicuous in lacking people who are chronically ill or disabled. There's some classic hand-waving - they have advanced medicine so everyone is perfectly healthy! There might be purple aliens, but no variations in skin tone of the homogenously white people from Earth. Entire races seem to exist with no children - or none between infancy (the vulnerable babe-in-arms) and late teens. Even the Star Trek attempts to show children on the starships never had obnoxious toddlers throwing temper tantrums and getting into everything they shouldn't.

It's a fun game to play, for both writers and readers: What Got Left Out? Sometimes it's deliberate. Sometimes it shows an author's blind spot.

Anyone want to play?