One day we're researching explosives and the next we're looking at in situ permeability in igneous rocks, and you just know there's some pattern-matching AI at the FBI spitting out probabilities for targets like Mt. Rushmore.
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worldbuilding
07 February 2010
17 January 2010
The inexplicable dematerialization of dandelions
There is a sense in which you as a fiction writer--and maybe even as a human--live in every world you create. Worldbuilding for a story ought to be about more than the creation of places, people, and things. It ought to be about making those things real in some sense. You have to make your world real before you can be completely comfortable writing in it, comfortable enough to invite readers along for a holiday there--a holiday, I am hoping, with lots of hideously awful stuff happening. The world can be a great place, the story better have some bad stuff at its heart and a protag willing or forced to confront it. Or no one's going to read it.
I've written about worldbuilding before--about map making, characters who write notes, drawing and painting character and scene studies, but this time I'm going to focus on two things: what I'm calling "deep history" and, second, the creation of characters who have no intention of setting foot inside your story, but come on give them a chance to write press releases for you.
Deep history is what was going on in your world long before your characters showed up or did anything really fun. The idea here is to pick a few historic things that might stand out--a war, plague, religious crusade, or maybe not so deep in the past, things like a book that changed a character's life, a family member, friend who saved your character from something particularly horrible. Use these to deepen the life of your character. It doesn't have to be a world-shattering event. It can be something fleeting or simple, the day your character saw a fox in the woods, the taste of a candy from that store on 2nd Avenue that your character has never been able to find again. It can be something personal, the quiet death of a nation's president your character met when she was eight years old on a capitol city tour, or something closer to home: termites and carpenter ants eating through your character's house--a home that has been in the family for five generations, and your character has to pull it together because the rest of the family fell apart. Think about how these things might affect your character later in life. And you don't have to spell it out too clearly for the reader. You character has commitment problems? Trust your reader to take the steps to connect the loss of the character's family home while a child to not being able to hold onto anything or anyone when he's an adult, and trust the reader to sympathize with your character.
Profundity works. It's in our nature to look for the profound in every day events. It's easy to see how complex the world is. The difficulty is in trying to see how simple it is. I think it has something to do with our love of patterns, our need of patterns to make things fit inside our own heads, and the more complex the pattern, the better we feel when we see it. Again, though, simplicity is in seeing the patterns of patterns and the--no, no, I'm just throwing some crazy ass enigmatic fraud enlightenment at you to see if you're actually reading this and paying attention. So, anyway, we like complexity--that is true. Your characters and your readers are the same way--especially if they're human. Give it to them. Characters are driven by more than revenge, money, power, love. Those are just the big labels, but there are hooks deep in your character's mind that make those things desirable, and sometimes you have to reveal those things to make them make sense to the reader as well as your character. This is where the deep history thing can play a significant role. Bring out the points, the little dots of light, the quick shadows in your world's or your character's history, and your reader will do all the connecting for you. Again, it can be big--your character's brother was the assassin of the Archduke Ferdinand of your world and started an entire war. Or significantly small, that one summer when no dandelions bloomed in the fields. What caused that anyway? Weird, man, remember that? Your character does. It totally freaked him out and it affects him to this day--that's why he joined a cult , you know. The inexplicable dematerialization of dandelions.
People are weird and your characters are no exceptions. Exceptions to this rule are, frankly, boring.
Another thing I want to look at are characters who contribute to your world, provide advice--maybe through books, web sites, email chain letters, secret codes, but never actually enter the story in the flesh. They can be co-workers, friends or family from a character's past. They can be your character's boss, pushing things along from a distant office, bunker, command center in orbit. It may not be anyone who interacts with your character at all, but sends along information for the world, and for the reader--plausibly delivered. It may not even be someone who appears in anyway in the story. A character who isn't named, who's contributions are there for the author only, characters who simply help the world get a better hold on the writer's mind. Your world can only be as real to your reader as it is to you, and you need these behind-the-scenes characters to show up and help you see it, to speak to you, to...
...write press releases.
Here's a press release I just wrote for an SF story I'm working on, with the event in the release is something that happened in the not too distant past. What's cool about press releases--and I say this as if I know what the hell I'm talking about--is that they can be a great source for worldbuilding material. Their structure--title, event description, some detail, quotes from important people, and a paragraph about the organizations mentioned--makes it easy to create opinions, show someone's success, failure, or back peddling. Write a few.
Here's one of mine:
The Winderrill platform employs Open City's hexmesh flexible pattern design, which allows the entire facility to adjust to wave motion, even in rough seas. The company plans to double the size of the Winderrill habitat every three months, beginning with fifteen of the joined hexagon-shaped platforms in November, fourteen of which are solar dedicated. The first phase of agriculture, aquaculture, and crew facilities will begin in March. Winderrill is deep moored 940 km off the coast of Massachusetts, and will have permanent berthing for two ABS +A1(E) class Offshore Support Vessels.
OpenCityProject.org CEO Alanna Delmoro said, “Open City Project is uniquely positioned to meet the world's growing need for agricultural and aquacultural resources in a manner consistent with its energy and environmental priorities. We believe our innovative approach to building and operating large scale self-sustaining production-positive deepwater platforms will benefit the world.”
“We look forward to continuing to work with U.S. Naval operations, other agencies both US and international, and all stakeholders to demonstrate how the Winderrill platform will exceed all production, safety, and environmental standards,” said Ms. Delmoro.
About OpenCityProject.org
Open City Project is a Boston-based non-profit corporation specializing in the design, construction and operation of open ocean agriculture and aquaculture facilities. For more information about Open City Project, please visit: http://www.OpenCityProject.org.
Finally, the best thing about worldbuilding: you don't have to build much of your world to begin writing in it. It builds on itself, you define one piece of the world and that leads to another piece. Worldbuilding also works wonders when you're stuck on a scene or character motivation. Save and close the doc, and dig into your world a bit more. Hey, write a press release.
I've written about worldbuilding before--about map making, characters who write notes, drawing and painting character and scene studies, but this time I'm going to focus on two things: what I'm calling "deep history" and, second, the creation of characters who have no intention of setting foot inside your story, but come on give them a chance to write press releases for you.
Deep history is what was going on in your world long before your characters showed up or did anything really fun. The idea here is to pick a few historic things that might stand out--a war, plague, religious crusade, or maybe not so deep in the past, things like a book that changed a character's life, a family member, friend who saved your character from something particularly horrible. Use these to deepen the life of your character. It doesn't have to be a world-shattering event. It can be something fleeting or simple, the day your character saw a fox in the woods, the taste of a candy from that store on 2nd Avenue that your character has never been able to find again. It can be something personal, the quiet death of a nation's president your character met when she was eight years old on a capitol city tour, or something closer to home: termites and carpenter ants eating through your character's house--a home that has been in the family for five generations, and your character has to pull it together because the rest of the family fell apart. Think about how these things might affect your character later in life. And you don't have to spell it out too clearly for the reader. You character has commitment problems? Trust your reader to take the steps to connect the loss of the character's family home while a child to not being able to hold onto anything or anyone when he's an adult, and trust the reader to sympathize with your character.
Profundity works. It's in our nature to look for the profound in every day events. It's easy to see how complex the world is. The difficulty is in trying to see how simple it is. I think it has something to do with our love of patterns, our need of patterns to make things fit inside our own heads, and the more complex the pattern, the better we feel when we see it. Again, though, simplicity is in seeing the patterns of patterns and the--no, no, I'm just throwing some crazy ass enigmatic fraud enlightenment at you to see if you're actually reading this and paying attention. So, anyway, we like complexity--that is true. Your characters and your readers are the same way--especially if they're human. Give it to them. Characters are driven by more than revenge, money, power, love. Those are just the big labels, but there are hooks deep in your character's mind that make those things desirable, and sometimes you have to reveal those things to make them make sense to the reader as well as your character. This is where the deep history thing can play a significant role. Bring out the points, the little dots of light, the quick shadows in your world's or your character's history, and your reader will do all the connecting for you. Again, it can be big--your character's brother was the assassin of the Archduke Ferdinand of your world and started an entire war. Or significantly small, that one summer when no dandelions bloomed in the fields. What caused that anyway? Weird, man, remember that? Your character does. It totally freaked him out and it affects him to this day--that's why he joined a cult , you know. The inexplicable dematerialization of dandelions.
People are weird and your characters are no exceptions. Exceptions to this rule are, frankly, boring.
Another thing I want to look at are characters who contribute to your world, provide advice--maybe through books, web sites, email chain letters, secret codes, but never actually enter the story in the flesh. They can be co-workers, friends or family from a character's past. They can be your character's boss, pushing things along from a distant office, bunker, command center in orbit. It may not be anyone who interacts with your character at all, but sends along information for the world, and for the reader--plausibly delivered. It may not even be someone who appears in anyway in the story. A character who isn't named, who's contributions are there for the author only, characters who simply help the world get a better hold on the writer's mind. Your world can only be as real to your reader as it is to you, and you need these behind-the-scenes characters to show up and help you see it, to speak to you, to...
...write press releases.
Here's a press release I just wrote for an SF story I'm working on, with the event in the release is something that happened in the not too distant past. What's cool about press releases--and I say this as if I know what the hell I'm talking about--is that they can be a great source for worldbuilding material. Their structure--title, event description, some detail, quotes from important people, and a paragraph about the organizations mentioned--makes it easy to create opinions, show someone's success, failure, or back peddling. Write a few.
Here's one of mine:
Artist rendering of first phase of Winderrill Platform towed into the Atlantic in November:
November 12, 2019
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OpenCityProject.org Launches Open Ocean Agri/Aquaculture Platform Winderrill
BOSTON, Mass. – Open City Project today announced that federal and state agencies have completed their review of Open City Project’s permanent ocean habitat license to own, construct and operate an offshore agri/aquaculture export terminal, and have deemed it complete. The project, known as Winderrill, is located 940 kilometers southeast off the coast of Massachusetts. The determination by the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and U.S. Maritime Administration initiates preparation of the agencies’ joint Draft Open Jurisdiction Security Statement/Environmental Impact Report (DOJSS/EIR), a comprehensive, independent assessment of the project.The Winderrill platform employs Open City's hexmesh flexible pattern design, which allows the entire facility to adjust to wave motion, even in rough seas. The company plans to double the size of the Winderrill habitat every three months, beginning with fifteen of the joined hexagon-shaped platforms in November, fourteen of which are solar dedicated. The first phase of agriculture, aquaculture, and crew facilities will begin in March. Winderrill is deep moored 940 km off the coast of Massachusetts, and will have permanent berthing for two ABS +A1(E) class Offshore Support Vessels.
OpenCityProject.org CEO Alanna Delmoro said, “Open City Project is uniquely positioned to meet the world's growing need for agricultural and aquacultural resources in a manner consistent with its energy and environmental priorities. We believe our innovative approach to building and operating large scale self-sustaining production-positive deepwater platforms will benefit the world.”
“We look forward to continuing to work with U.S. Naval operations, other agencies both US and international, and all stakeholders to demonstrate how the Winderrill platform will exceed all production, safety, and environmental standards,” said Ms. Delmoro.
About OpenCityProject.org
Open City Project is a Boston-based non-profit corporation specializing in the design, construction and operation of open ocean agriculture and aquaculture facilities. For more information about Open City Project, please visit: http://www.OpenCityProject.org.
Finally, the best thing about worldbuilding: you don't have to build much of your world to begin writing in it. It builds on itself, you define one piece of the world and that leads to another piece. Worldbuilding also works wonders when you're stuck on a scene or character motivation. Save and close the doc, and dig into your world a bit more. Hey, write a press release.
05 August 2009
DIY Steampunk Maps
Are you writing, drawing, gaming steampunk? Here's a quick and easy way to make--for personal use--a map for your stories, a world for your characters, streets for them to walk, landmarks to...uh...mark.
In one line: take an image of a 19th Century city map from one of the greatest sources of online maps, add your own airships, tall ships, machines, steam engines, mills, and other story specific brass and metal, put it all together, and print it out. Done.
Ready to begin?
First, say it with me now, "The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library is my friend." It's sort of an incantation before we get going. (The incredible collection at the BPL contains over 200,000 maps and 5,000 atlases from the 1400's to present).
Step 1. Find a map that fits your background, whether urban, pastures, seacoast, etc. I've settled on a wonderful bird's eye view of 1860s Boston from B.B. Russell & Co. Here's where I usually start--with a search of "bird's eye views" of cities: http://maps.bpl.org/search_advanced/?mtid=42&dl_pp=1
Step 3. Mod the map. For example, if you're going to have airships, your city is going to need mooring towers, beacon towers to direct flights, watch towers, guard towers (the shipping magnates who sunk all their cash in sailing ships don't like the air cargo ships eating into their markets), landing fields, floating docks, raised passenger platforms, all kinds of structures unique to an age of lighter-than air based travel.
In one line: take an image of a 19th Century city map from one of the greatest sources of online maps, add your own airships, tall ships, machines, steam engines, mills, and other story specific brass and metal, put it all together, and print it out. Done.
Here's an example. Click for the full view:
Ready to begin?
First, say it with me now, "The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library is my friend." It's sort of an incantation before we get going. (The incredible collection at the BPL contains over 200,000 maps and 5,000 atlases from the 1400's to present).
Step 1. Find a map that fits your background, whether urban, pastures, seacoast, etc. I've settled on a wonderful bird's eye view of 1860s Boston from B.B. Russell & Co. Here's where I usually start--with a search of "bird's eye views" of cities: http://maps.bpl.org/search_advanced/?mtid=42&dl_pp=1
Step 2. Draw or paint your own vehicles, machines, factories, places or things specific to your world. I drew balloons, airships, flying air-and-sea going ships. Draw these separately, in a paint app on your computer, or on paper and scan them in. (More about this below)
Step 3. Mod the map. For example, if you're going to have airships, your city is going to need mooring towers, beacon towers to direct flights, watch towers, guard towers (the shipping magnates who sunk all their cash in sailing ships don't like the air cargo ships eating into their markets), landing fields, floating docks, raised passenger platforms, all kinds of structures unique to an age of lighter-than air based travel.
The easiest way to modify an image is with an image editor that supports layering (e.g., Gimp, PSP, Photoshop, ArtRage--prices range from free to hundreds of dollars) and a tablet and pen (e.g., Wacom Bamboo at around $70 USD up into the thousands). I have a couple tablets, both Wacoms, an Intuos 3 that's my larger stay-at-home tablet and a new Intuos 4 that's my portable tablet. (For the image editing and painting apps, Google the app name + "tutorial"--also, make sure you have at least a decent handle on how these apps use layers. There'll be a bit of learning if you've never used Gimp or Photoshop).
I recommend you also use a pen and tablet to draw any of the vehicles or machines that are part of your setting. It's just easier than drawing on paper and scanning--at least for me. Do what's easy for you. If you have a scanner and you don't have a tablet, draw and scan. I actually drew the airships below on my iPhone using the Brushes app (very cool $5 app) and exported them.
Feel free to use these--resize them and modify them--for your own stuff, especially if you just want to play around, give it a practice try before investing time and potentially money into a map project. I've included them with transparent backgrounds to make it easy to drop into your map.
Another way to do this, is to find the map you want, print out a large copy of it, and go to work directly on the paper with a pen, inks, paint. You have to be a little more careful (no undos), but this works just as well.That's it! If you create something and feel like sharing, link to your maps in the comments. I'd love to see them.
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk
http://brassgoggles.co.uk/blog/
http://www.steampunkmagazine.com/
25 July 2009
Kassandra's House is For Sale!
http://www.seacoastliving.com/
Now, where can I scrounge up 4.5 million and $46k/year in property taxes...oh, yeah, and another couple million to furnish the 24 rooms...
I posted a while back on the subject of using real world residences in your fiction:
Where do your characters live?
If you're writing in this world and not some other, do you have real places in mind when you write something like, Joe turned left at Nor'east Lane, and made his way down the sandy path to his cottage on the beach? And is it ever a real place? Some place you like? Your favorite house in the world?
Do your characters live somewhere nearby? Are you neighbors? Maybe a better question: would you like to be?
For the longest time, one of my main characters, Kassandra, has lived in a great big house at the end of Atlantic Avenue in North Hampton, New Hampshire. I've had a particular house in mind from the beginning, a place in Little Boars Head, one of my favorites along the coast of New Hampshire. All completely fictional, of course, but this is the house I imagine when I need to think about where Kassandra lives.
We were renting a place in North Hampton for a couple years, and all of this seaborn stuff comes from that too short a time when I could hear--from any open window--the Atlantic tides coming in.
19 July 2009
What am I working on? Give you one guess.
Okay, and one hint:
09 July 2009
13 June 2009
IF: unfold
I continue to tweak this one, starting out as from the perspective of someone looking over a vast forested landscape from above, and from there, drawing it deeper until we're now looking up at the figure at the crest of the tree from below. Also playing with the reflection.
That's what reflections do, right? Mirrors, prisms, the surface of water--they show you where and how reality can be unfolded.
This one's really big. Click here to see the full view.
06 June 2009
First scene painting of book 2
Got up early this morning, and went right to work painting this scene from the next book. Art Rage, tablet, about 3 hours. The boy's her student, holding an arm out in a let-me-handle-this motion, while his teacher has her arm protectively over his shoulder--and, just in case, the big ass gun over her shoulder.
Click for the full view:
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03 June 2009
Sun goddess
This is a couple year old digital work of mine that I recently touched up and cropped. It's a character study for my current series--that went by several titles, Pele, Fire Goddess, etc. Finally, it's time to bring this character to life--actually she's in the next book--the third in this series, but I'm plotting and thinking a book ahead. Not a main character, but she's part of the plot.
Click the pics for the full view.
Cropped:
Is it me, or is it hot in here?
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25 May 2009
Another novel done...with a whole new beginning
Really sorry to have missed WisCon this weekend, but I completed my fifth novel instead.
I'm still doing some cleanup, working through an edit pass, but, five months of hard work, a 110k words, and this one's done. I started thinking about this story about three years ago, started taking notes, creating characters, building worlds in 2006. There's actually one scene which started out in my journal about a year before that.
I painted this first character sketch of my protag late 2006, early 2007, along with a character interview, the end of which goes like this:
Interviewer: Thank you. This has been very helpful. How about we go for a cup of coffee when we're through here?
Character: [Smiling cheerfully] How about I kill you, consume all your bones, flesh and organs, and then go get a cup of coffee for myself with the cash in your wallet?
Interviewer: [Uncomfortable] Oh...uh...I guess I'll take that as a 'no'.
Character: [Surprised] Oh no. We can have coffee. I just thought we were throwing out some options.
Interviewer: [Wishing he hadn't brought up coffee.]
Chris Howard
SF & fantasy author of Seaborn, Illustrator of steampunk cities, software engineer
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