xliii - Day 14 - How do you map out locations, if needed?

I had a visual arts teacher in my last year of high school that insisted we reference real-world models or examples of everything we were going to commit to paper.  Up until that point I had a romanticised idea of how artists worked: they had an idea, and without ever leaving the comfort of their own minds, somehow that idea materialised of its own volition.  It had never occurred to me that if someone wanted to paint or draw a rock, that one would actually look at real rocks or pictures of rocks.  It seems self evident now, especially when I put it that way, but there's an undeniable mystique about the creative process.

I'd been interested in writing for years, though I had mainly done it by myself for fun.  My English teachers had been very supportive of the interest, but I hadn't received any real education in writing beyond the basics all high school kids get: spelling, grammar, and the fundamentals of composition (primarily academic).  Having someone, even if it was in another discipline, outline a distinct process was a pivotal step in my development.

So, how do I map out locations?  I borrow or steal outright from the real world.

There's no reason not to rip the sign off the front of the pub I used to visit in university and pop my characters into it.  For the places I can't just insert, there's a reasonably good body of work about our environment (both natural and manufactured) and why it is the way it is.

Extrapolation is a key skill in the creation of speculative fiction.  Whether I'm any good at it or not, there's no reason not to try to keep at least one foot on the ground when I'm making up places for my characters to visit.

xlii - Day 13 - What's your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?

Please accept my apologies.  Once again, I failed to register the difference between "Save" and "Publish" so that this post sat in my queue for a week.  I'll post the next day's question and answer tomorrow!

I have to address my first impression of this question before trying to answer it at face value.

A writer shouldn't try to write "cultures", a writer should try to write "characters".  Individuals.  Influenced, of course, to lesser or greater degrees by their own culture and any they might encounter on their journey, but, and I can't stress this enough, independent actors.  To think of culture without focusing it through the lens of character strikes me as a recipe for cookie-cutter (or clichéd) characterisation at best or unquestioning acceptance of discriminatory stereotypes at worst.

Of course, it would be hypocritical of me to pretend it couldn't happen to me.  One of the reasons the human mind is remarkable to me is its ability to seamlessly fill holes in the "big picture".  Without even knowing it, we grab pieces of information and stuff them into the lattice work of our understanding of the world.  There may come a time when my own untested assumptions are brought to light, and it's going to be at least a bit embarrassing. After all, I'm undertaking an art form intended to shine light into those holes.

But that's not addressing the question. I can, in fact, answer it in the way I'd like to believe it was intended.

I created a culture for my fantasy setting based on elements cherry-picked from various points in French history.  Social structure and dress influenced by the Franks, and the regional dialects influenced by Old French.  Environmental and other influences made the people compact and mean, like wolverines. In retrospect, they answer the question of what it would be like if a whole people had a Napoleon Complex.

The reason I think they're so fun to write is because stories are about conflict, and this particular people has conflict at its very core.  Each and every interaction with them, even between themselves, has such potential to go in any direction that it just opens up possibilities having them around.

xli - Day 12 - In what story did you feel you did the best job of world-building?

No contest, it has to be my first novel, the fantasy I wrote several years ago. Before even recording my characters' first steps, I'd already taken weeks upon weeks building the world they were going to travel.

I once heard a joke that fantasy stories always seem to start with the author scribbling a map. I'm not sure if it's true, but my first novel definitely did. It started as a rough outline of continents, and then piece by piece I added elements. Based on (admittedly very high level) research about Earth, I sketched out tectonic plates and the corresponding mountain ranges. Then currents, both air and water, based on which I extrapolated climate. I spent a few weeks immersed in atlases, sifting through temperature and precipitation charts.

With the broader geographic strokes taken care of, I moved on to populating the world. Plants would correspond to earth equivalents, with regions reminiscent of Northern Europe having vegetation much like the vegetation of, you guessed it, Northern Europe. I've also heard a joke that fantasy is like science fiction but with trees instead of space ships. Granted, there are definitely more trees (lots) in my story than ships (none), but it's not a story about trees, so if it walks like a maple and talks like a maple, I may as well just call it a maple and tell you all about the character that got shot by a crossbow next to it, instead.

Animals followed the same reasoning, though with more room for improvisation. A few made-up beasts roamed the pages, creatures conceived with plausibility in mind. At some point in the late eighties or nineties someone in Hollywood decided to rationalize how dragons could exist and that approach to fantasy wildlife stuck with me.

The cultures started off as small tribes, one chosen by each of the seven deities. From that point I charted their evolution and expansion, noting the major events in each culture's history that would influence its progression and shape its interaction with its neighbours. Their means of dress and methods of subsistance were drawn from cultures from across our own globe. Then, their relationship to the supernatural, their gods, and most importantly, their view of magic.

Strangely, the only concept I hadn't fleshed out completely was the nature of magic, how it functioned. I knew how everything was tied back to the magical forces in the world, but I hadn't decided on how it was going to be manipulated, but that started coming to me as the story progressed.

xl - Day 11 - Who is your favorite/least favorite character to write?

On the surface this one's a bit tricky because I don't exactly have a stable of recurring characters. There are only two, at least at this point, who appear in more than one story I've written. You've already been introduced to Ira Mastema, the other is Richard DiFalco. Both are important characters in the novel I belted out in November and re-appear in the short story I finished just over a month ago.

Fortunately for me, Mastema, or at least Mastema at different points of his evolution, answers both questions. 

Mastema was the second character I developed for SALIGIA, after Sam Benson, the protagonist. This happens quite frequently in my writing. Villain and hero share a connection and as a result, the two characters are developped in tandem, or one immediately after the other. Throughout the process of writing the novel, I had enough of a grasp of Mastema to know how he would be propelling the plot forward, but came to realise I didn't know why.

It didn't matter that much when my main focus was making the plot work.  A while after finishing the first draft of the novel, I decided to flesh out part of the back story. Mastema made another appearance, and again the hows were easy enough to lay out, but the whys eluded me. Trying to make a living, breathing character out of a complete question mark is frustrating, to say the least.

I can't remember the moment it changed, but change it did: while poking around his back story, I started to realise what made the man tick. There's some interesting material in that back story, and I think I can turn him into an interesting and engaging "bad" guy. But up until that point it felt like I was trying to navigate a block of solid concrete through an obstacle course.