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This week: Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited.
-Alfred Adler
Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.
-Groucho Marx
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-Oscar Wilde |
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MARRIAGE
When it comes to ritual customs, the values and ideals of a culture are often best expressed through those ceremonies that mark life changes. Last month we covered death; this week, on what I hope will be a more upbeat note, the topic is marriage.
While most Western cultures today adhere to the "one man, one woman" marriage paradigm, generally between self-chosen adults, not all cultures share this view - today or in the past. Marriage is a social construct of complicated scope, and that which is considered right and proper in one culture may be taboo in another, and vice-versa.
At its core, marriage is simply a contract. While the terms of the contract may vary from culture to culture, or even from marriage to marriage within a culture, this contract binds people together legally and, usually, in a religious context as well.
As authors of fantasy and science fiction, we have the opportunity to explore different types of marriage than those we see around us in the real world. When writing about other worlds or times, it would be exceedingly naive to expect a society to adhere to the "woman and man meet, fall in love, get married and have babies" mythology of the contemporary Western world. There are myriad environmental, social, and psychological forces that force different paradigms than monogamy-by-choice.
Monogamy is the term for the Western cultural norm, whereas the term for plural marriages - in whatever combination - is polygamy, a word which has acquired unfortunate connotations of forced marriage and fringe religious groups. Polygamy can be polygyny (one man, multiple wives), polyandry (one woman, multiple husbands), or group marriage, which is applied to a marriage between more than one man and more than one woman. Choice also enters into the picture, because historically, marriages have often been arranged to serve some other function than expressions of the free will of the people involved, such as combining resources, or cementing trade deals - and this was not always seen as an affront to the participants.
It is up to us, as writers and world-builders, to consider certain questions about the cultural setting of our stories. As this relates to marriage, think about: What sorts of marriage customs are prominent in the culture? Is marriage even a cultural norm? Monogamous or plural? Are most marriages arranged by others, entered into freely by the participants, or some combination of the two? What about same-sex marriage? What happens if there's a shortage of women? Of men? Inside and outside of marriage, what are the sexual mores of a culture - or is marriage merely a legal union, and are extramarital affairs the norm? Entering into a marriage, what are the wedding customs of the culture? Is there provision for divorce? Are widow(er)s permitted to remarry? Are they obligated to? Do they marry for life, or are there term contracts of some sort? Perhaps most importantly, are marriage and love intertwined - or are they completely separate?
There seems to be too many questions to ask, let alone answer - but they are important to contemplate, lest your fictional culture be merely your own, set upon a different world. So take time, when creating your backstory, to at least have the basics in mind - if for no other reason than setting a romance in a culture that requires arranged marriages is a good route to classic tragedy. |
Marriage - or at least love - in other worlds:
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Last month, the topic was death.
Jay's debut novel is out now!  : Well-written, Robert. I thought this was a really interesting topic to address-- I'm handling a plot twist in a science fiction story that happens to be centering on death, and this was just what I needed to kick-start some of that. Thank you.
Take care and Write on!
Always good to be useful! 
Lauriemariepea  : thank you for a valuable and thought-provoking newsletter, robert. how a culture views death and afterlife illuminates their priorities, their values, their dreams...it's a lot to think about when creating a world inside a story.
you give us several good questions to consider, and i'm definitely hanging onto this for reference. thanks!
And I hope this issue helps, too.
Ruach : Wonderful newsletter! I'm having trouble myself with this idea, I don't know where to let the reader in on some secrets or how to do so. Old wise man, mysterious stranger, or ancient time of wisdom lol. I naturally put action in the beginning which is convenient because I won't have to change it but I worry I will lose ideas or forget them when they come up and then I ponder about when I will put them in and how. If you could help me that would be great! :)
This seems to be more about my next-to-last topic, which was keeping the backstory in the background. How you handle this will depend on your writing style - do you do better keeping notes in a separate file, or in the document with the actual story? Some authors use big whiteboards to remember important points; others might have stickynotes all over their workspace to which they can refer. All I know for sure is keeping it in your head rarely works; you need to put them down so you can concentrate on the big stuff: writing.
weeowl flying free! : Death and I know each other too well. I've recently come to grips that in a future novel in the series, my main characters love interest will have to die. This will be cathartic for me b/c the actual person who my character is off of, also died. I'm thinking the deaths will be similar so that I can FINALLY voice my opinion about the whole ordeal. this also opens the door for my main character to be drawn into the darkside of things. Death opens many doors in many ways in writing (at least.) Good article.
Thanks! This is an example of how "write what you know" can be applied to even fantasy fiction.
Thanks for all the comments! Until next month,
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Fantasy: May 14, 2008 Issue [#2394]
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