"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."
- Anton Chekhov
Sometimes called the Law of Conservation of Detail, the rule of Chekhov's Gun in writing makes a lot of sense. If you're going to write about something, write about something that actually matters to the story. Otherwise, why include that detail at all?
I could write a whole lot more about Chekov's Gun, but what I really want to write about is how it applies to world building--specifically in the use of sentient non-humans. Don't get me wrong, I love stories with elves, aliens, dwarves, robots, etc. (just look at my bookshelves). I'm just not inspired to write a story that has the human/other race conflict as one of the central themes of the story.
"But you could write a story with non-human characters and make some other conflict the central theme!"
Actually, I couldn't. Because of Chekhov's Gun. Remember, the principle of Chekhov's Gun is if you include something in your story, it should be important. And a whole other species of sentient beings is a lot bigger than a rifle hanging on the wall. Humans are easy. We're all human, and human interaction is our default setting. But non-humans are different, for precisely that reason. They aren't human. If you're just writing humans with pointy ears and calling them elves (or Vulcans), why do you need the pointy ears? There has to be something different enough about them to justify creating a whole other species--otherwise you might as well just write other humans. Once you've figured that out, you have to show how they are different than humans, and how they're the same. And if you've invested that much time and effort into explaining how your species is different from humans, those differences should be important to your story.
"But there are lots of stories with non-humans where the human/non-human interface isn't critical to the story!"
Possibly, but I can't think of very many, whereas I can think of any number of prominent sources that do:
Lord of the Rings: the differences between Men and Elves (namely immortality) is the entire motivating force behind the creation of the nine rings of Men. It's why the Elves managed to keep their rings of power. Oh, and it's the central premise behind the Aragorn/Arwen love story.
Dragonlance: Tanis Half-elven, the primary hero of the original trilogy, has--as his primary internal conflict--an inability to balance the human and elven sides of his lineage.
Discworld: this is an exception to the rule, sort of. While all of the Discworld novels have multiple species, not all of them feature inter-species relationships as a central theme--but a lot of them do.
X-Men: human/mutant relations is the central theme of well, everyone.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Sunday, December 8, 2013
World Building, Part 1
I have no new story, so I suppose it must be confession time. Well, sort of. I have been writing, I just haven't finished anything. I'm still working on the next bit for Violetta. I made some major revisions to the Fairy Tale (actually, I'm in the process of expanding the whole opening scene. But it's already longer than all of the original non-story bits put together, and I haven't even gotten to the fairy tale itself).
Really, though, most of what I've been working on is world building.
When most people think of world building, they're thinking of establishing the setting for a speculative fiction world (also known as science fiction or fantasy, but I like the term speculative fiction better, for reasons that I'll save for some other post). But actually, every writer engages in some degree of world building--even if they're writing about the real world. After all, if you're writing a story set in New York City, you have to describe the setting at least a little bit, or assume that your entire audience is as familiar with NYC as you are (and the closest I've ever been to NYC is watching the ball drop on New Year's Eve, so I don't have the slightest idea what it's like living there on a daily basis). So world building is important for everyone.
But there are real published authors whose work I admire that have written much better posts on world building than me, so instead of attempting to duplicate their work I'll just send you to one of their blogs:
Actually, Patricia Wrede's blog is a far better writing resource than mine, so you should just go there.
To this point, all of the story bits that I've posted have been set in the same Victorian Era fantasy Europe. Why? In part, because I like fantasy but I'm attempting to avoid the stereotypical medieval fantasy tropes--armored knights, woodsy elves, dwarven smiths, etc. Not because I don't like the medieval fantasy setting, but because it is (in my opinion) better suited for adventure stories that I'm not writing. Stories like the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, or Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, which are about how the characters affect the world around them. In those stories, the setting is a living, breathing character all its own. Narnia, Middle Earth, and Hogwarts are characters whose history and destiny we care about as much as (or more than) we care about Jane or Faramir or Ginny. Consider the town of Meryton in Pride and Prejudice, the setting for nearly the entire novel, yet we know nearly nothing about it, save that it is in Hertforshire and near London. Contrast that with the tower of Orthanc, which appears only a few times in the Lord of the Rings, and has nearly a page of text devoted to its description, to say nothing of the history of its construction, the battles fought around it, or its various occupants and owners. Don't get me wrong, I love to read those kinds of stories. But they aren't the stories that I'm inspired to write.
As I've said before, I like stodgy old books from the 18th and 19th century--whether it's Jane Austen or Wilkie Collins or Rafael Sabatini--and I enjoy writing stories set in that time period. In those stories, the setting is mostly flavor. But more than that, that setting is full of strong female characters. And I like writing strong female characters--whether they're snarky, like Elizabeth Bennet, practical mistresses of their fate, like Jane Eyre, or passionate and liberated, like Marianne Dashwood. But I also want to write stories where women can be the witty, sword wielding protagonists, where the damsel can rescue herself, and where the heroine doesn't have to marry the first rich, arrogant aristocrat that comes along.
I could do that in a medieval fantasy setting, but that's not the world I've built.
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