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This week: Histories Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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One of my challenges [as a writer] is to make sure that I'm giving the reader details that the character cares about rather than details that I care about. I'd say that's key to world-building.
-Jessica Andersen
Subcreation is not just a desire, but a need and a right; it renews our vision and gives us new perspective and insight into ontological questions that might otherwise escape our notice within the default assumptions we make about reality.
-Mark J.P. Wolf, Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation
'Oh, man,' Azdra'ik said. 'This is what our eldest saw. This is what our legends say. Who could know, but us?'
-C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror |
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So, you're building a world, a backstory for your fantasy or science fiction epic. Great! Keep at it. Worldbuilding takes a long time, but is absolutely worth it in the end. That is, if there is an end.
Part of worldbuilding, of course, is knowing how your world, perhaps even your universe, came into existence. You've spent a lot of time on this, thinking about it, figuring how it fits in with the events and characters you'd like to turn into a story.
But.
Over time, things get lost, obscured, glossed over, forgotten. Consider our own world, and its many cultural creation stories . Each is simultaneously a reflection of, and a foundation for, its culture and its worldview.
So, say you have at least two cultures on your world (there are probably more, but bear with me for the sake of discussion). One, the Odali (whose name in their language translates as "The People"), are absolutely certain that the world is the sleeping body of a hibernating dragon, whose first breaths created the suns, and who sometimes stirs in her sleep, causing earthquakes and eruptions. The other, the Krattuk (whose name in their language translates as "The People"), know the truth: that the world was created by Sami, the giant powder-blue bunny, when he pooped.
The two tribes meet, and go to war - hey, in our world, tribes have warred over far less than the giant-powder-blue-bunny-poop theory.
Meanwhile, you, the author, know that the world was created through natural forces from an accretion disk around a nascent star. But that's not important to the story, so you never tell us, and as the Krattuk win the war, the dragon is forgotten... until she wakes up a century later, angry at having been neglected.
It is, of course, not just creation stories that will have different versions. Any historical event, major or otherwise, is bound to have two or more perspectives. History is written, so they say, by the victors; it's also written by whoever shouts the loudest. Consider the traditional interpretation of Columbus' first voyage, in contrast to its postmodern deconstruction, for example.
So, yeah - not only do you have to come up with the facts of some past event, you also need to create different histories of it, told from different points of view, maybe containing facts, maybe not. Fortunately, you won't have to do this for every past event in your world; just the ones that have some bearing on the story. |
Some acts of the imagination:
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Fantasy: January 14, 2015 Issue [#6771]
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