Writing update: Skein

[kvaadk]

Reading what I've written I realized there was a problem: Everything is much too generic. Yeah, I think my rules of magic and the story itself are interesting and original, but unless I shake Skein up mightily, I am in danger of creating yet another interchangeable Euro-centric costume piece

Comments

[kuangning]

Have you considered using your wife's background and asking her to be your resource for the tales/culture? It's likely to go over better (and be much less culturally-appropriative) than taking bits and pieces of cultures you've no personal connection to, for exotic flavour.

[kvaadk]

Valerie is definitely my resource and teacher when it comes to understanding life here in the American south; particularly the low country. Thirty years of marriage and I still have much to learn. However when we were researching our pasts to write a history for our children, my wife and I discovered her ancestors were Mbundu. They were brought from Angola over a decade after the slave trade was declared piracy by the US government. Geographically and culturally her heritage is as distant from the peoples of West Africa as the Mayans are from the Anasazi or the Picts are from the Etruscans

[kuangning]

I'm not saying you don't feel a connection; it's obvious you do. Nor am I saying her connection to the places you mention are stronger. I suggested using her culture without specifying what that culture would be, and did so very carefully, because the point was not "your black wife should/will obviously know about ___" but "your world-building will go better if you have an inside/strong source and can get close to living with the lore you wind up using" rather than plucking out bits and pieces from some ~exotic~ culture for the stated purpose of making your world-building less generic. I thought it likely that once you and she started digging, you'd both get caught up in the whys and the hows, and when you were done, it would be just like writing about home with all its foibles and quirks. I want you, in short, to write about a place -- whichever place -- because you HAVE to write about THAT place; you love it and understand a good chunk of it and nowhere else will do. Not because you think your existing stories need some spice and

[kvaadk]

Ah. Misunderstood. Point taken.

[shaunaroberts]

I found your LiveJournal site!

I was trained as an anthropologist, and for me, it's not necessary for a fantasy to copy a definite culture to be believable. I just want all the parts to work together logically, with characters who think appropriately given the religious, political, and cultural milieu. For example, I would have no trouble if your culture was based on Mesoamerica yet had a wheel-IF they had were decent roads through relatively flat land. To keep the geography the same and yet have wheels would throw me out of the story.

I think perhaps the best reason to base a world on one specific human culture rather than mixing several cultures is that you don't have to start from scratch. You learn from reading up on the culture what constraints it has and how the culture solved them. You don't have to guess as you would if you mixed several cultures together or set a culture in a different climate zone.