More thinkies about worldbuilding and race
I have to say, I am grateful that this whole imbroglio popped up. I'm sad that it hurt so many people, and angry (really pissed off) at the reactions of a lot of people I thought I could respect, I'm really grateful that it peeled my eyelids open.
I'm having a TON of fun with this. I mean, I thought I was in for a serious chore. I've already written THREE BOOKS and now I'm going to go back, re-build the cultures (and anyone who's read my stuff knows how IMPORTANT the cultures and races are to the story... that kinda makes what I did worse >.<) and the RE-WRITE all the chapters, fixing and inserting and just generally shaping it up? That sounds like WORK!
I am having a BLAST.
I know SO MUCH MORE about my people now. There's so much little stuff now, so much stuff that just makes it so much realer.
Generally speaking, I had previously described the characters once or twice, inserted a few cultural things, and then decided to just let the reader build up the rest of it in their brains. And that's fine for a lot of stuff, but I think not this book. This stuff NEEDS to be in there. The cultural and racial differences are SO very important and vital to the story!
I had a list of certain traits and certain things that I knew about the races and really wanted to keep. Then I started researching what kind of pressures happen on a race, physically or culturally or environmentally, to cause them to develop those traits. Still using the real-world, of course, but it just feels so much more legitimate now. They don't have epicanthic folds because it goes with the kind of culture (*copy/paste anime Japanese here* :( ) I wanted them to have, but because of their cold, windy, brightly-reflective homeland. And that homeland puts all sorts of OTHER pressures and necessities on them. And after page after page of note-taking as I frantically googled and encyclopedia'd and took MORE notes and came up with MORE questions and googled THOSE and read up on THOSE... holy cow! There is SO MUCH I did not know about these people!
Like, here's an example. Lotion. Moisturizer. "WTF?" I hear you WTFing. Living in a cold, windy, plateau-tundra type of environment gives you dangerously dry skin. Like, your face cracks and bleeds. Moisturizing with either some sort of animal fat or rendered plant oil becomes essential to go on day to day without being in constant pain and danger of infection from deeply cracked skin. Peasants and workmen would of course have the worst of it, and end up using the cheapest and least effective version. So, working from the environment I've given them, WHAT is available for them to make moisturizer from? What kind of plants, what kind of seeds, what kind of animals? And from that I find out what they eat, what kind of plant and animal life there is in their country, what feeds on those animals and plants... so much. SO MUCH!
I'm just amazed at what a little worldbuilding will do for you. And it's ALL crap I should already have done, but it just makes the world SO MUCH more real. It's the difference between Tolkien's Middle-Earth (whose worldbuilding will always be one of the best in the world, despite the fact that he is a product of his sexist, racist, homophobic, imperialistic culture) and Lewis' Narnia (which I loved, but really, there was no worldbuilding; it was generic fairytale fantasy land.)
I'm really happy about this stuff. And grateful. So grateful. The race no longer resembled generic Pseudo!anime-Japanese plunked down into the middle of my world. They're much realer, much more different, and they have actual CONTEXT. It's priceless.
I'm having a TON of fun with this. I mean, I thought I was in for a serious chore. I've already written THREE BOOKS and now I'm going to go back, re-build the cultures (and anyone who's read my stuff knows how IMPORTANT the cultures and races are to the story... that kinda makes what I did worse >.<) and the RE-WRITE all the chapters, fixing and inserting and just generally shaping it up? That sounds like WORK!
I am having a BLAST.
I know SO MUCH MORE about my people now. There's so much little stuff now, so much stuff that just makes it so much realer.
Generally speaking, I had previously described the characters once or twice, inserted a few cultural things, and then decided to just let the reader build up the rest of it in their brains. And that's fine for a lot of stuff, but I think not this book. This stuff NEEDS to be in there. The cultural and racial differences are SO very important and vital to the story!
I had a list of certain traits and certain things that I knew about the races and really wanted to keep. Then I started researching what kind of pressures happen on a race, physically or culturally or environmentally, to cause them to develop those traits. Still using the real-world, of course, but it just feels so much more legitimate now. They don't have epicanthic folds because it goes with the kind of culture (*copy/paste anime Japanese here* :( ) I wanted them to have, but because of their cold, windy, brightly-reflective homeland. And that homeland puts all sorts of OTHER pressures and necessities on them. And after page after page of note-taking as I frantically googled and encyclopedia'd and took MORE notes and came up with MORE questions and googled THOSE and read up on THOSE... holy cow! There is SO MUCH I did not know about these people!
Like, here's an example. Lotion. Moisturizer. "WTF?" I hear you WTFing. Living in a cold, windy, plateau-tundra type of environment gives you dangerously dry skin. Like, your face cracks and bleeds. Moisturizing with either some sort of animal fat or rendered plant oil becomes essential to go on day to day without being in constant pain and danger of infection from deeply cracked skin. Peasants and workmen would of course have the worst of it, and end up using the cheapest and least effective version. So, working from the environment I've given them, WHAT is available for them to make moisturizer from? What kind of plants, what kind of seeds, what kind of animals? And from that I find out what they eat, what kind of plant and animal life there is in their country, what feeds on those animals and plants... so much. SO MUCH!
I'm just amazed at what a little worldbuilding will do for you. And it's ALL crap I should already have done, but it just makes the world SO MUCH more real. It's the difference between Tolkien's Middle-Earth (whose worldbuilding will always be one of the best in the world, despite the fact that he is a product of his sexist, racist, homophobic, imperialistic culture) and Lewis' Narnia (which I loved, but really, there was no worldbuilding; it was generic fairytale fantasy land.)
I'm really happy about this stuff. And grateful. So grateful. The race no longer resembled generic Pseudo!anime-Japanese plunked down into the middle of my world. They're much realer, much more different, and they have actual CONTEXT. It's priceless.