WORLD BUILDING
I haven't talked about world building, but in most ways, it is the same as character building using the three-tiered structure. The premise and plot give you certain requirements, then you build your world to fit them.
World building can also involve creating the back story of a novel. Back story is what happens before the novel begins that will influence the events and characters in the novel.
In a mystery, for example, the world building would involve the murder and the world around the murder victim as well as the crime solver. If the victim is a professional rodeo bull rider, the life of the rodeo would be the world you must create.
Using the Big Question in your world building also forces you to create a depth that you might not have otherwise because you are forced to think of both sides of the question in relation to the world.
For STAR-CROSSED, I knew I needed a planet where men have been disenfranchised so I asked myself a series of questions. The first was-- Why would such a human society evolve?
As an answer, I decided an incurable plague whose primary victims were men quarantined Arden for several hundred years. The quarantine would not only hide the slavery from other human planets, but also permit the government to keep outside influences to a minimum.
To repopulate the planet, the colonists decided that the remaining men were state property whose sole task was reproduction. This system developed into a corrupt, inhuman harem bureaucracy.
My next question was a tougher one--What would a society like this be like? Children and pregnant women would, obviously, be revered and protected after such a devastating plague.
As time passed, men would lose all status socially and all claim of being the stronger sex. In women's minds they would be poor weak dears incapable of anything but sex. Even language choices would change. Words like "father" and romantic "love" would no longer be used.
A woman's last name would indicate the mother, not the father, and religious terms would change. God would be female, for example. Family life would be strong, generations of women bonding together for the sake of their girl children.
On a larger scale, the changes would not be so benign. The harem system would be a social corrupter. Men's sexual favors would be used as bribes, and those who control the harem and the chance for children control the world.
Corruption and incompetence would spread throughout the society. Those in power would use propaganda to insure women's poor opinion of men and men's blind subservience to their role as bed slaves. Drugs to control sex drive and will would force rebellious men to cooperate.
The emotional void men fill in women would be partially replaced by female bonding, but the remaining void would be an emotional cancer eating away at society.
I now had my society, but what would the planet Arden be like? I wanted to avoid a planet radically different from Earth because those differences would change human society even more, and I wanted my emphasis to be on the society, not the planet.
I decided to make Arden Earth like, but I added alien touches--a sprinkling of pink trees and bushes, vicious predators which forced odd architectural changes in buildings, and native foods.
I chose to make Arden's gravity a bit heavier than Earth's for a specific plot reason. I intended to introduce my Earthman hero Tristan and his best friend Kellen to the planet, and I wanted them to be inferior in strength to the local women. A stronger gravity gave Arden women that physical advantage.
No comments:
Post a Comment