Worldbuilding: Talking with Joshua
Fantasy readers are aware that there is no one type of fantasy. Dividing books up into subgenres can be tough all the more vexatious when one shows once labored over list to a couple of friends, just to hear, "How could you put those two together? This one belongs in that column," to which the other friend - of course - replies, "No, this series here belongs in column C, and as for the top two in column A, well, I don't know how you got that. But I’d put them in column D."
So when I say dark fantasy with complex characters and world intersecting with the scope of epic fantasy, I'll bet anyone reading this post with, with examples I'd never thought of. But sometimes certain titles will show up in similar lists.
One author who exemplifies the above, for me, is Martha Wells. Chaz Brenchley, who sometimes writes as Ben Macallan. And Joshua Palmatier, who writes as Benjamin Tate. I read WELL OF SORROWS when it came out, and though it’s a tad darker than I usually read, I was pulled in hard by the complexity of the world-building. So I was on the watch for the next book in this story arc, which came out recently--LEAVES OF FLAME.
I approached Joshua with the idea of talking about worldbuilding and fantasy, leading to an e-mail exchange that I thought I would share here. I hope it will inspire a discussion - or at least offers of examples so readers who like this type of fantasy can find some recommendations.
Since it’s longish, I’ll include it after the cut.
Sherwood: We both like to write character-driven novels. Maybe we should start there, with "character-driven." As I once heard someone ask in a panel, "What do you mean by that? Aren't all genre novels full of characters taking action?"
Second, talk about how your characters come to you. Do you sit down and list traits you want to work with in a protagonist and antagonist, or do your characters walk into your head fully formed, and you are there to tell the story, background and traits provided by your subconscious?
Joshua: Well, first off, I would agree that novels are full of characters taking action, so when we say that a novel is “character-driven” what I think we all mean is that the focus is on the characters involved, on their emotions and reactions, rather than on the plot. I also think it means that the plot itself derives from the character actions, rather than the plot driving the characters.
In my first novel, THE SKEWED THRONE, the main character, Varis, is a young girl barely surviving in the slums. Throughout the extent of the book, we see the world through her eyes and her needs and wants and desires. She has no other drive (initially) except to survive. She doesn’t care about much beyond that, and so the focus of the book is on what actions she takes in order to survive and how those actions are affecting her.
Everything that’s happening in the world outside of her own experiences-the political maneuverings of the Mistress and her First, the work of the assassin Seeker Erick who befriends her, the deals made by the merchant Borund-all of that is secondary to her. It’s important to the book, of course, to the plot and the world as it unfolds. . . but it isn’t important to the REAL story that the reader is following, which is Varis herself. All of that is, essentially, backdrop to Varis’ story. That’s what makes the book character-driven, in my opinion.
The same thing holds for novels that aren’t necessarily focused so intently on one single character, books like your own INDA series or my current WELL series. In both of these series, we have a central figure (Inda for you and Colin for me), but the novels have a much larger scope. We get to see points of view outside of those main characters throughout the series. The stakes are higher because the repercussions will occur on a larger scale-affecting kingdoms and empires, rather than just a few characters-but I don’t think that makes the books less character driven. Again, the plot is essential to the novel, and the repercussions of the decisions made by the characters are larger, but it’s the characters themselves that the reader is following. They want to know what will happen to the character next, not what will happen to the kingdom.
It’s all about the focus-is it on the character or is it on the plot? What is the reader reading for? I am almost always reading to see what happens to the characters, with the plot as the backdrop. But there are many novels out there where the plot is in the foreground and the characters are backdrop. (Interestingly, the ones that pop to mind are mostly urban fantasy and science fiction, rather than fantasy.)
I think the answer to the second question-where my characters come from-is why I write character-driven fantasy in the first place: my characters come to me more or less fully formed and ready to tell their stories.
I’m an “organic” writer by nature, meaning I rarely outline or plot anything out in advance. I usually sit down to the computer with a scene somewhere down the road-a goal post-and an initial scene already trying to play out in my head. In this initial scene, the characters are already there, and they already know what they want to do. I may not know the characters very well at this stage, but that’s the whole fun of writing for me: to get to know the characters and see exactly where they take me. So I sit down (when I feel that I’m ready) and I start writing, heading from that initial scene toward the other goalpost. Sometimes, the characters and plot diverge from where I thought they were going and I never reach that goalpost. Often, I’ll reach it, but in a way that I never expected. In all cases, though, I never have anything about the characters written out or planned out ahead of time; no traits written down, no character sheet sketched out, nothing like that. I just . . . write. I let the characters live.
That isn’t to say that I don’t struggle occasionally with a character or two. Sometimes it’s harder to get in the head of some characters over others. I think this happens most often when the character I’m attempting to write about is so significantly different from who I am that it’s hard for me to grasp their motivations and desires. Do you find this happens with some of your own characters? And is your writing technique significantly different than mine?
Sherwood: I have definitely had that problem. Another problem has been when I think I see what a character is doing, or maybe the plot requires a certain action. But when I get there and write it something feels false. That can bring the entire book to a screeching halt until I figure out the character’s truth, which has to take precedence over the conveniences of the plot.
Hmmm. I guess that's what you mean by character-driven over plot-driven. I assumed that 'plot-driven' meant sticking to the currently popular formula in a given genre. I hasten to say that there is nothing wrong with sticking to the formula. It is very clear from the popularity of such books that many readers want to know what they are getting before they sit down to read. They want predictable actions and reactions.
And in the larger sense, many fantasy writers do adhere to reader expectations. Or at least, I do. That is, if this story forms in my head and which everybody ends up dead and the tone is depressing or dreary, I don't bother writing it. I don't want to read that, and I don't want to write that. There are enough great writers who provide excellent tragedy for readers who like it. I like my happy endings.
But that is enough about me. Let's talk more about you and your books, and about writing in general. One thing that I noticed when I read WELL was that the world was terrific in its detail and believability. I really love books with interesting world building - I just grabbed Martha Wells’ new book, THE SERPENT SEA.
Question time! In books with this kind of detailed, vivid, “lived-in” world, the world itself seems to be a character. Or is that only in my head?
Joshua: I don’t think that’s in your head, no. I hadn’t really thought of it that way when my first book came out, but a fan at a signing pointed out that the slums, which I called the Dredge, felt so real to them that they thought it was alive. That’s when I realized I was treating the setting and the world as a character. I actually think that’s essential for a “realistic” world-it has to be something that shifts and changes throughout the course of the book, just as the characters shift and change.
I get frustrated with fantasy novels where you go through three books, nearly 1000 pages (if not three times that) and when you close the book the world is back to where it started in book 1. Upheaval, especially upheaval of a magical nature, which is usually what’s driving a fantasy novel, is going to irrevocably change the cultures of the world, even if it’s a subtle shift.
Sherwood: YES!
Joshua: I want this change to be seen, not just over a series, but over the course of one book. War, magic, a shift in power-all of those things are going to affect the world. A culture’s outlook will shift, the economics may alter, even sections of a city destroyed in a battle will cause change. Authors need to think about these changes.
That’s what I love about your books. The world of INDA feels “lived in” as you say. I can see the economics and politics shifting as Inda (and his cohorts) make decisions, have their pirate fights or their wars, and form new relationships and break old ones.
A lot of building up the “character” of the world is creating believable cultures, ones that are detailed, yet fluid enough they can change and adjust to the changing world around them. How do you create your own intertwined cultures? How do you make them so rich?
Sherwood: That’s the result of a mixture of strong image and a lot of reading. For example, Inda’s country came to me while I had a fever right around the time I turned fifteen. First the map, then a side-story, then Senrid’s story (a descendant of Inda) right after. The images were all there, but how everything got that way nagged at me for years and years.
By the time I hit college, all I knew about Inda was that his name wasn’t Elgar, he was blamed for a lot of stuff he didn’t do, and forgotten for stuff he did do, and again, there was the map I’d made with ‘Elgar Strait’ on it, when I was nineteen.
I knew that eventually I would be telling the story of the Elgar Strait, and as I read more and more history, I began to resonate with images, motivations, cultural and economic movements. Oh, so that’s why this place looks the way it does . . . so that’s why I’ve independent cities . . . so if this is how cultures evolve, what if magic did this . . . the more I read, the clearer I could see the underpinnings of my world, beginning with the realization that if numerous countries agree on the naming of a body of water, then there must be a shared experience behind the story.
Unfortunately, this is not an efficient way of world-building, because life is short, and the time comes when we can no longer evolve stories over twenty-five and thirty years!
I would love to blab on, but I am reining myself in, aware of the length of this exchange. So how about I end with this: tell us a bit more about WELL OF SORROWS, and its sequel, LEAVES OF FLAME-what kind of reader were you writing for? Or do you just write, and let readers sort themselves out?
Joshua: Ha! Well, I don’t really have a “target audience” in mind when I sit down and write, I just write. I let the readers sort themselves out. But if I had to say what the target audience was for WELL OF SORROWS and LEAVES OF FLAME (and of course the third book BREATH OF HEAVEN), I’d say it was the dark, epic fantasy audience. I don’t really think of my books as dark, I think of them as being realistic, but that seems to be how most of my readers describe them. They’re certainly gritty and I’m not afraid to make the fighting realistic, or afraid to kill of significant characters. So there’s a sense that no one is safe in my books. But unlike the THRONE books I wrote previous to this, the new series is definitely more epic in nature. It spans not just two continents and multiple POVs, but a significant amount of time as well.
The main concept behind WELL OF SORROWS was to combine epic fantasy with the settling of a newly discovered continent. The driving image was of covered wagons heading out into unexplored plains, and that’s how the novel starts: the main character, Colin, twelve years old, has been forced to come to the coastal settlements on the coast of the new world. But the family doesn’t find what they’re expecting in this raw, new land, mostly due to political reasons. They’re forced to head out into the unexplored plains in a wagon train, and of discover a strange, beautiful but deadly world. They run into new races of people, both friendly and not, and discover a dangerous magic that changes Colin irrevocably, magic that makes him invaluable when the three main races clash on those same plains. I wanted to capture the majesty of seeing a new world for the first time, but also bring out the realities and hardships of such a time, especially when dealing with races and magics that are unknown. It’s “settling the American West” with a fantasy twist.
I’m excited about this series, especially now as I write the third book BREATH OF HEAVEN, where all of the plot threads that began in book one are now starting to come together. I always get a sense of euphoria when finishing a novel, and that sense is heightened tenfold when a series is drawing to a close. All of the characters and all of the plotlines heading toward that ultimate climax-it sends a shiver through me even thinking about it. It’s the main reason that I write-to discover the stories that live inside me, and to get that totally legal high. I hope that my readers get that same tingling sensation when they read my books. *grin*
And so I will close this interview with the cover art for LEAVES OF FLAME-I think it’s stunning. Questions, comments, recommendations?
So when I say dark fantasy with complex characters and world intersecting with the scope of epic fantasy, I'll bet anyone reading this post with, with examples I'd never thought of. But sometimes certain titles will show up in similar lists.
One author who exemplifies the above, for me, is Martha Wells. Chaz Brenchley, who sometimes writes as Ben Macallan. And Joshua Palmatier, who writes as Benjamin Tate. I read WELL OF SORROWS when it came out, and though it’s a tad darker than I usually read, I was pulled in hard by the complexity of the world-building. So I was on the watch for the next book in this story arc, which came out recently--LEAVES OF FLAME.
I approached Joshua with the idea of talking about worldbuilding and fantasy, leading to an e-mail exchange that I thought I would share here. I hope it will inspire a discussion - or at least offers of examples so readers who like this type of fantasy can find some recommendations.
Since it’s longish, I’ll include it after the cut.
Sherwood: We both like to write character-driven novels. Maybe we should start there, with "character-driven." As I once heard someone ask in a panel, "What do you mean by that? Aren't all genre novels full of characters taking action?"
Second, talk about how your characters come to you. Do you sit down and list traits you want to work with in a protagonist and antagonist, or do your characters walk into your head fully formed, and you are there to tell the story, background and traits provided by your subconscious?
Joshua: Well, first off, I would agree that novels are full of characters taking action, so when we say that a novel is “character-driven” what I think we all mean is that the focus is on the characters involved, on their emotions and reactions, rather than on the plot. I also think it means that the plot itself derives from the character actions, rather than the plot driving the characters.
In my first novel, THE SKEWED THRONE, the main character, Varis, is a young girl barely surviving in the slums. Throughout the extent of the book, we see the world through her eyes and her needs and wants and desires. She has no other drive (initially) except to survive. She doesn’t care about much beyond that, and so the focus of the book is on what actions she takes in order to survive and how those actions are affecting her.
Everything that’s happening in the world outside of her own experiences-the political maneuverings of the Mistress and her First, the work of the assassin Seeker Erick who befriends her, the deals made by the merchant Borund-all of that is secondary to her. It’s important to the book, of course, to the plot and the world as it unfolds. . . but it isn’t important to the REAL story that the reader is following, which is Varis herself. All of that is, essentially, backdrop to Varis’ story. That’s what makes the book character-driven, in my opinion.
The same thing holds for novels that aren’t necessarily focused so intently on one single character, books like your own INDA series or my current WELL series. In both of these series, we have a central figure (Inda for you and Colin for me), but the novels have a much larger scope. We get to see points of view outside of those main characters throughout the series. The stakes are higher because the repercussions will occur on a larger scale-affecting kingdoms and empires, rather than just a few characters-but I don’t think that makes the books less character driven. Again, the plot is essential to the novel, and the repercussions of the decisions made by the characters are larger, but it’s the characters themselves that the reader is following. They want to know what will happen to the character next, not what will happen to the kingdom.
It’s all about the focus-is it on the character or is it on the plot? What is the reader reading for? I am almost always reading to see what happens to the characters, with the plot as the backdrop. But there are many novels out there where the plot is in the foreground and the characters are backdrop. (Interestingly, the ones that pop to mind are mostly urban fantasy and science fiction, rather than fantasy.)
I think the answer to the second question-where my characters come from-is why I write character-driven fantasy in the first place: my characters come to me more or less fully formed and ready to tell their stories.
I’m an “organic” writer by nature, meaning I rarely outline or plot anything out in advance. I usually sit down to the computer with a scene somewhere down the road-a goal post-and an initial scene already trying to play out in my head. In this initial scene, the characters are already there, and they already know what they want to do. I may not know the characters very well at this stage, but that’s the whole fun of writing for me: to get to know the characters and see exactly where they take me. So I sit down (when I feel that I’m ready) and I start writing, heading from that initial scene toward the other goalpost. Sometimes, the characters and plot diverge from where I thought they were going and I never reach that goalpost. Often, I’ll reach it, but in a way that I never expected. In all cases, though, I never have anything about the characters written out or planned out ahead of time; no traits written down, no character sheet sketched out, nothing like that. I just . . . write. I let the characters live.
That isn’t to say that I don’t struggle occasionally with a character or two. Sometimes it’s harder to get in the head of some characters over others. I think this happens most often when the character I’m attempting to write about is so significantly different from who I am that it’s hard for me to grasp their motivations and desires. Do you find this happens with some of your own characters? And is your writing technique significantly different than mine?
Sherwood: I have definitely had that problem. Another problem has been when I think I see what a character is doing, or maybe the plot requires a certain action. But when I get there and write it something feels false. That can bring the entire book to a screeching halt until I figure out the character’s truth, which has to take precedence over the conveniences of the plot.
Hmmm. I guess that's what you mean by character-driven over plot-driven. I assumed that 'plot-driven' meant sticking to the currently popular formula in a given genre. I hasten to say that there is nothing wrong with sticking to the formula. It is very clear from the popularity of such books that many readers want to know what they are getting before they sit down to read. They want predictable actions and reactions.
And in the larger sense, many fantasy writers do adhere to reader expectations. Or at least, I do. That is, if this story forms in my head and which everybody ends up dead and the tone is depressing or dreary, I don't bother writing it. I don't want to read that, and I don't want to write that. There are enough great writers who provide excellent tragedy for readers who like it. I like my happy endings.
But that is enough about me. Let's talk more about you and your books, and about writing in general. One thing that I noticed when I read WELL was that the world was terrific in its detail and believability. I really love books with interesting world building - I just grabbed Martha Wells’ new book, THE SERPENT SEA.
Question time! In books with this kind of detailed, vivid, “lived-in” world, the world itself seems to be a character. Or is that only in my head?
Joshua: I don’t think that’s in your head, no. I hadn’t really thought of it that way when my first book came out, but a fan at a signing pointed out that the slums, which I called the Dredge, felt so real to them that they thought it was alive. That’s when I realized I was treating the setting and the world as a character. I actually think that’s essential for a “realistic” world-it has to be something that shifts and changes throughout the course of the book, just as the characters shift and change.
I get frustrated with fantasy novels where you go through three books, nearly 1000 pages (if not three times that) and when you close the book the world is back to where it started in book 1. Upheaval, especially upheaval of a magical nature, which is usually what’s driving a fantasy novel, is going to irrevocably change the cultures of the world, even if it’s a subtle shift.
Sherwood: YES!
Joshua: I want this change to be seen, not just over a series, but over the course of one book. War, magic, a shift in power-all of those things are going to affect the world. A culture’s outlook will shift, the economics may alter, even sections of a city destroyed in a battle will cause change. Authors need to think about these changes.
That’s what I love about your books. The world of INDA feels “lived in” as you say. I can see the economics and politics shifting as Inda (and his cohorts) make decisions, have their pirate fights or their wars, and form new relationships and break old ones.
A lot of building up the “character” of the world is creating believable cultures, ones that are detailed, yet fluid enough they can change and adjust to the changing world around them. How do you create your own intertwined cultures? How do you make them so rich?
Sherwood: That’s the result of a mixture of strong image and a lot of reading. For example, Inda’s country came to me while I had a fever right around the time I turned fifteen. First the map, then a side-story, then Senrid’s story (a descendant of Inda) right after. The images were all there, but how everything got that way nagged at me for years and years.
By the time I hit college, all I knew about Inda was that his name wasn’t Elgar, he was blamed for a lot of stuff he didn’t do, and forgotten for stuff he did do, and again, there was the map I’d made with ‘Elgar Strait’ on it, when I was nineteen.
I knew that eventually I would be telling the story of the Elgar Strait, and as I read more and more history, I began to resonate with images, motivations, cultural and economic movements. Oh, so that’s why this place looks the way it does . . . so that’s why I’ve independent cities . . . so if this is how cultures evolve, what if magic did this . . . the more I read, the clearer I could see the underpinnings of my world, beginning with the realization that if numerous countries agree on the naming of a body of water, then there must be a shared experience behind the story.
Unfortunately, this is not an efficient way of world-building, because life is short, and the time comes when we can no longer evolve stories over twenty-five and thirty years!
I would love to blab on, but I am reining myself in, aware of the length of this exchange. So how about I end with this: tell us a bit more about WELL OF SORROWS, and its sequel, LEAVES OF FLAME-what kind of reader were you writing for? Or do you just write, and let readers sort themselves out?
Joshua: Ha! Well, I don’t really have a “target audience” in mind when I sit down and write, I just write. I let the readers sort themselves out. But if I had to say what the target audience was for WELL OF SORROWS and LEAVES OF FLAME (and of course the third book BREATH OF HEAVEN), I’d say it was the dark, epic fantasy audience. I don’t really think of my books as dark, I think of them as being realistic, but that seems to be how most of my readers describe them. They’re certainly gritty and I’m not afraid to make the fighting realistic, or afraid to kill of significant characters. So there’s a sense that no one is safe in my books. But unlike the THRONE books I wrote previous to this, the new series is definitely more epic in nature. It spans not just two continents and multiple POVs, but a significant amount of time as well.
The main concept behind WELL OF SORROWS was to combine epic fantasy with the settling of a newly discovered continent. The driving image was of covered wagons heading out into unexplored plains, and that’s how the novel starts: the main character, Colin, twelve years old, has been forced to come to the coastal settlements on the coast of the new world. But the family doesn’t find what they’re expecting in this raw, new land, mostly due to political reasons. They’re forced to head out into the unexplored plains in a wagon train, and of discover a strange, beautiful but deadly world. They run into new races of people, both friendly and not, and discover a dangerous magic that changes Colin irrevocably, magic that makes him invaluable when the three main races clash on those same plains. I wanted to capture the majesty of seeing a new world for the first time, but also bring out the realities and hardships of such a time, especially when dealing with races and magics that are unknown. It’s “settling the American West” with a fantasy twist.
I’m excited about this series, especially now as I write the third book BREATH OF HEAVEN, where all of the plot threads that began in book one are now starting to come together. I always get a sense of euphoria when finishing a novel, and that sense is heightened tenfold when a series is drawing to a close. All of the characters and all of the plotlines heading toward that ultimate climax-it sends a shiver through me even thinking about it. It’s the main reason that I write-to discover the stories that live inside me, and to get that totally legal high. I hope that my readers get that same tingling sensation when they read my books. *grin*
And so I will close this interview with the cover art for LEAVES OF FLAME-I think it’s stunning. Questions, comments, recommendations?