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Where Gillian expects much argument
Mar. 22nd, 2007 09:01 pmToday my mind has fallen into the safe old paths of worldbuilding. Except they're not safe.
Right now I'm contemplating the relationships between historical fiction, literary fiction and speculative fiction. An easy way of getting into get into heaps of trouble.
When I'm talking to speculative souls, they're often interested in the orbit of a planet and in its specific gravity. At convention panels people say over and over that the science must work. And historians and re-enactment bods (including me) at convention panels keep saying "And don't forget towns need water and castles can't be built from stone unless the stone can be sourced."
All this is good and necessary and just. The world or country or village a tale is set in needs a feeling of reality and so having horses that get tired or need feeding and having castles positioned usefully is important. Speculative fiction writers usually focus on certain building blocks and these tend to be the exact ones that don't overlap so much with other genres, so some speculative fiction writers assume that other writers don't do worldbuilding.
Historical fiction writers (or at least the ones I know and work with) look for telling detail and in their search they reconstruct places and pasts. The process of reconstruction isn't nearly as different from the process of construction as some poeple think.
The trick is that none of the worlds are fully real - but every single one of them aims to feel real to readers. That phrase 'telling detail' says it all - a good writer paints enough of the picture to make the reader think that there is an amazing depth. Sometimes there *is* an amazing depth; sometimes the writer is simply very good at implying that depth.
And I've said all this before.
My thought today is that literary fiction writers also go through this process. The focus of the books is a little different, so the worlds they build up need different detail. Because the focus tends to be much narrower and to encompass the finer detail of lives more frequently, a good piece of literary fiction will build up the minutiae of a world. The path that Fred* walks to school and where bullies lie in wait is the worldbuilding that leads to one of the issues that Fred must deal with as an adult (the scars of a tormented childhood).
Every single novel uses worldbuilding. The shape and specifics of the worldbuilding and the choices a writer makes to create her or his world are where genre differences appear.
Right now I'm learning a heap about how I can build better worlds for my fiction by reading and teaching across genres - there are tricks that historical fiction writers take for granted which would improve a lot of fantasy novels I've read, and notions of the size of a world and the sweep of society that would help in some historical fiction novels. The small lives that I have recently been encountering in literary fiction remind me that every character needs a history (unless they're created ex nihilo) and that little events can lead to big motivations which would be perfect in their consequences for an epic fantasy.
Since I like using codes to remind myself of my thoughts, my code for this is "Jane Austen." Why? Because Jane Austen was a consummate worldbuilder. She built her worlds so wonderfully that we're all in continual danger of forgetting how artifical they are. Jane Virgo reminded me of that, in the testing we're doing for the Regency Gothic Banquet for Conflux later in the year**. She told me yesterday that there's not much mention of food in Austen's novels, but a whole heap in her correspondence. I think we sort of worked out that dinner parties were used by Austen in her fiction as a tool for advancing social relations and plot development and that the food wasn't important. It wasn't 'telling detail' for her.
I think my aim for my work this year is going to be to see how far I can make people blur that line betwen created world and reality. I will use my Ptolemaic map and I will use my ghost stories and I will build up such a real alternate Canberra that people walk down the streets and expect to see what I've said they will. That will be my "Jane Austen" apprenticeship - after that, maybe I'll apply the same principles to medievalish fantasy fiction. Take the rich and detailed lives of a modern literary novel and see how far I can deceive people into thinking they are fully real.
So many things in so much of fiction come down to good worldbuilding.
* Admission: My Wednesday students are building Fred at the moment. He has red hair, hates rain and lives in Deakin.
** gratuitous advertisement
Right now I'm contemplating the relationships between historical fiction, literary fiction and speculative fiction. An easy way of getting into get into heaps of trouble.
When I'm talking to speculative souls, they're often interested in the orbit of a planet and in its specific gravity. At convention panels people say over and over that the science must work. And historians and re-enactment bods (including me) at convention panels keep saying "And don't forget towns need water and castles can't be built from stone unless the stone can be sourced."
All this is good and necessary and just. The world or country or village a tale is set in needs a feeling of reality and so having horses that get tired or need feeding and having castles positioned usefully is important. Speculative fiction writers usually focus on certain building blocks and these tend to be the exact ones that don't overlap so much with other genres, so some speculative fiction writers assume that other writers don't do worldbuilding.
Historical fiction writers (or at least the ones I know and work with) look for telling detail and in their search they reconstruct places and pasts. The process of reconstruction isn't nearly as different from the process of construction as some poeple think.
The trick is that none of the worlds are fully real - but every single one of them aims to feel real to readers. That phrase 'telling detail' says it all - a good writer paints enough of the picture to make the reader think that there is an amazing depth. Sometimes there *is* an amazing depth; sometimes the writer is simply very good at implying that depth.
And I've said all this before.
My thought today is that literary fiction writers also go through this process. The focus of the books is a little different, so the worlds they build up need different detail. Because the focus tends to be much narrower and to encompass the finer detail of lives more frequently, a good piece of literary fiction will build up the minutiae of a world. The path that Fred* walks to school and where bullies lie in wait is the worldbuilding that leads to one of the issues that Fred must deal with as an adult (the scars of a tormented childhood).
Every single novel uses worldbuilding. The shape and specifics of the worldbuilding and the choices a writer makes to create her or his world are where genre differences appear.
Right now I'm learning a heap about how I can build better worlds for my fiction by reading and teaching across genres - there are tricks that historical fiction writers take for granted which would improve a lot of fantasy novels I've read, and notions of the size of a world and the sweep of society that would help in some historical fiction novels. The small lives that I have recently been encountering in literary fiction remind me that every character needs a history (unless they're created ex nihilo) and that little events can lead to big motivations which would be perfect in their consequences for an epic fantasy.
Since I like using codes to remind myself of my thoughts, my code for this is "Jane Austen." Why? Because Jane Austen was a consummate worldbuilder. She built her worlds so wonderfully that we're all in continual danger of forgetting how artifical they are. Jane Virgo reminded me of that, in the testing we're doing for the Regency Gothic Banquet for Conflux later in the year**. She told me yesterday that there's not much mention of food in Austen's novels, but a whole heap in her correspondence. I think we sort of worked out that dinner parties were used by Austen in her fiction as a tool for advancing social relations and plot development and that the food wasn't important. It wasn't 'telling detail' for her.
I think my aim for my work this year is going to be to see how far I can make people blur that line betwen created world and reality. I will use my Ptolemaic map and I will use my ghost stories and I will build up such a real alternate Canberra that people walk down the streets and expect to see what I've said they will. That will be my "Jane Austen" apprenticeship - after that, maybe I'll apply the same principles to medievalish fantasy fiction. Take the rich and detailed lives of a modern literary novel and see how far I can deceive people into thinking they are fully real.
So many things in so much of fiction come down to good worldbuilding.
* Admission: My Wednesday students are building Fred at the moment. He has red hair, hates rain and lives in Deakin.
** gratuitous advertisement