Pomegranates and Bats: Details in Revisions

[blairmacg]

Sand of Bone heads off to its editor and final reader tonight, so I'm taking a little break in order to let me brain think about something else for a bit.

I am not a structured worldbuilder. Before writing, I do not sit down to answer a hundred questions about culture, religion, navigation, textiles, government, livestock, gender relations, history

Comments

[queenoftheskies]

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that most of the nit-picking goes on with science fiction and historical fiction of various kinds. (Once again, I could be wrong there.)

I think details like the one you mentioned add depth to the story without throwing in so much detail that the reader gets bogged down. I have to stop reading books that, to me, are over-written with more detail than story.

I'm so happy for you! How exiting that you're so close to publishing! This is such a great novel!

[blairmacg]

I think the nitpicking depends on the reader more than the genre. The difference between fantasy and SF, I think, is that there are actually fewer readers who understand pre-industrial life than *believe* they understand science. It never occurs to most folks to think about seasonal food availability, the time involved in clothing construction, or the effort and organization it takes to travel twenty miles on foot!

And details can indeed overwhelm. I think of them as parts of a tapestry. I want the entire picture to look awesome and complex. I don't want the first reaction to be, "Too much red thread!" :)

[elenbarathi]

"there are actually fewer readers who understand pre-industrial life than *believe* they understand science."

Except SCAdians, and even in the SCA, there's a tendency to think "Hey, this stuff's not so hard." Well, no, it's not, when one can choose when and how much to do it, and doesn't have to do ALL The Things all the time, come winter, come war-time, come plague, famine, tyranny, pregnancy. Fine to deal with our well-fed, well-sheltered, veterinary-attended modern horses with their professionally-made tack, but those are not the horses of the pre-industrial age

[blairmacg]

Most folks would have trouble walking 20 miles today, though, let alone knowing what they'd need (and not need) to bring. There isn't much of a frame of reference.

And it's indeed *very* different to live pre-industrial for a weekend than for lifetime. The practicalities of food acquisition and storage alone is daunting, and takes far more skill and effort than most imagine. Every natural disaster demonstrates how little thought most put into it.

(Digression: I'm a staunch believer in the responsibility able folks have to be prepared for emergencies, thus allowing limited resources to go to those who are unable to prepare.)

[elenbarathi]

Twenty miles is a pretty long haul for a single day, it's true - call it 2 miles per hour, with an hour for lunch and a couple of good breaks, that's 12 hours; one would certainly be very ready for supper and bed after that.

On the other hand, two miles an hour is not a very strenuous pace (assuming decent weather and terrain.) A great many folk today would complain bitterly if they had to walk one mile, and would be totally outraged if anyone expected them to cover 20 between dawn and dusk, but that doesn't mean they couldn't do it if they had to - aye, and get up the next day and cover 20 more.

*shrugs* I'm 56 years old, thirty pounds overweight, with high blood pressure, a surgically-repaired knee, and arthritic feet. Fifteen miles is about as far as I want to walk in a single day any more, but I could do twenty if I had a reason - LOL, such as being lost as hell, with no choice but to keep walking till I found my way, as sometimes happens

[blairmacg]

Watching and learning from my Amish neighbors was extremely educational. Certainly some of them use some modern conveniences, but mostly to make it easier to interact with the English, not to survive. If the End of the World comes, it's the Amish who will have all the skills they need to survive -- farming, hunting, animal husbandry, food preservation, carpentry, smithing, all non-electric supporting skills, and strong community.

Surviving in the mountains would depend on what climate of mountains. Sierra Nevadas provide far different resource bases than, say, Appalachians. But the shore is certainly an easier environment in which to survive!

[elenbarathi]

What we've got here is the Olympic Mountains rising up out of the temperate rainforest. It's not that there's no food up there - there's deer, elk, black bear, invasive mountain goats - but they'd be hunted to extinction in a single season if the hunting wasn't so strictly regulated

[blairmacg]

If neighbors of the Amish were smart, they'd guard Amish homesteads against violence as if the homes were their own. And I do know some folks who would indeed take on the role of protector.

Hmm. (wanders away to must about storylines...)

[elenbarathi]

That's certainly true, but I think well-intentioned bureaucratic officialness would be a more immediate threat to their orderly way of life than violence. The kind of mind-set that goes with the job of enforcing long-term martial law tends not to be the kind that groks the value of cultural diversity