Blood & Rhetoric

We’ve been working on worldbuilding and culture over at Forward Motion’s 2YN class recently, and it’s got to me to thinking about glossed over aspects of culture and society when it comes to many fantasy novels.

Food is a major one.

Our society takes for granted certain foodstuff and naturally doesn’t give much thought to where and how a particular vegetable or fruit was cultivated and when it actually gained popularity as food for people rather than livestock or prisoners or the very poor.

Many fantasy novels don’t take into account that many of the foods we consider common today, were virtually unknown until Columbus introduced them to the new world, and even then, many were disdained for a long time after the fact. The potato and corn are perfect examples of this. Potatoes didn’t actually become a standard staple in our diet until the 1780’s. Corn didn’t achieve popularity until even later, the 1840’s, and both vegetables were not considered fit for your average person.

(The very poor and prisoners don’t count as “person” by the way in this definition.)

These foods were known and enjoyed in Latin America of course, but it took a while for that popularity to spread.
Other foods like this include: lettuce, tomatoes, peaches, broccoli, carrots, pumpkins, squash, strawberries and etc.

And, yes I did have to Google a few of these things to verify the bare facts, but even without knowing exact dates of inception, I know that when I read about Princess Moerghanna sitting down to her delicious meal of a leafy green salad followed by steak and potatoes, that unless her story takes place until well after the start of the 1700’s that the author didn’t do the research.

Furthermore, the peasant characters in fantasy eating a steady diet of meat is just as unrealistic.

And spices? Dude, don’t get me started on spices.

Not everyone will be as nit picky about these things. But I am, and I assume just as many others are.

So now as I start to build a culture around my characters and infuse it with food and textiles and other necessary things, I have to keep all these things in mind.

I don’t like anything that pulls me out of a story, and prologues/flashbacks can do that quite often as they usually take the form of a huge infodump where multiple names and dates and gods and events are thrown at the bewildered reader with reckless abandon.

And until I care about the characters and their plight; all that infodumping just reads BORING and my eye skips ahead until there’s something actually happening.

There are of course exceptions and blah blah blah — standard disclaimer and all that — but when the prologue/flashback fails, as it does often, it sticks out more memorably then when it works.

I’m writing about this because I’m struggling with this in my current WIP.

These people have a history, a religion, rituals, ceremonies, styles of dress, symbolism etc. and so do the other people and cultures living within their society and I want that to come across in the story without it slamming anyone across the head.

How does the writer accomplish this? What’s the fine line between being descriptive and just plain reciting facts like a text book?

One thing I do know for sure, is that I don’t like having every detail or foreign thing explained to me when I’m reading a fantasy novel. I like being ignorant in that respect, and figuring out the foreign thing on my own and being shown its meaning and function through story and action, not expository essay.

The same goes for setting. With a foreign world or city it’s easy to want to explain every nuance, but I’d rather get a sense of the world through my own mind’s eye and not read it in excruciating detail.

I suppose this is why first drafts and red pens go so well together.

NOTE: This was originally written for a 2YN course, but it fits perfectly with a scene for Blood Baptism. I like it so I’m posting it, and this is the last I’m going to talk about that project, lest I jinx it.

Peace.

The truth of what one says lies in what one does.

Someone said that to me once, but for my soul’s sake I hope that statement is just another of the idealistic nothings thrown about by ascetics or the men in power who behave one way publicly and another privately. Though I did believe it once when I first became a priest. When I was a young man. That was long ago.

I do not hate the poor souls we escort across miles of country to their cruel fates; the executioner does not hate those he executes, it’s simply duty. Once a year we make this pilgrimage through the towns and cities, through the endless country. The guards will eventually shackle those we lead, perhaps when we reach the first settlement, but out here in the vast plains there is no need. There is nowhere for them to go. Each one of them is marching towards their inevitable death. Each one will submit to fate’s hand in the same manner, their lives extinguished at last in the great fires at Lyphos. They are criminals we are told. I do not question that verdict.

I watch them now; watch the rage play across their features, burning them hallow.

The rage will always come first and burn the brightest as they plot revenge, plot escape. Rage will always consume itself, quenched by its own ardor as it turns to despair when the hunger gnaws at their bellies, when the sun blisters their parched lips and they feel the futility of their situations.

Desperation will come last of all, and last the longest, and is hardest to watch, especially on the younger ones.

My eyes are drawn again to the twin sisters who walk slightly apart from the crowd. Pretty. The dark one is anyways, with her hand on her pale sister’s arm in a vice grip. Not classically beautiful, no, but there’s a sensuality to her features that would make the highbred, delicate ladies in the cities seem like withered roses in comparison. Shame about the other one, her unnatural skin already is beginning to blister in the high sun. She looks as if her dusky sister has drained all her life and colour. That one will not survive the long journey, weak as she is.

The dark one has that rage in her eyes and I wonder how long it will be before it breaks in her.

When the first crowd of villagers taunts her? When the first guard clamps his hand over her mouth and drags her into his tent? When she’s forced to abandon her dying sister?

The young ones always hold out the longest.

Jaded as I’ve become, something akin to pity stirs in me for these two wretched creatures. Their bodies have barely begun to ripen into womanhood. What grave offense had they committed that would merit this, the highest of punishments?

Suddenly I wish I could go to her and tell her the rage will only exhaust her weakened body. Tell her the defiance only makes the guards crueler. Tell her to submit to them when they take her tonight. Tell her it will be easier if she does.

As if aware of my scrutiny, the dark one looks at me. Her eyes don’t ask for anything, beg for anything, betray any real emotion. I realize then she has known all along I was there, watching her, and now she finally meets my gaze with a piercing look of her own. Hooded eyes, an aristocratic face. Her true age betrayed by a girlish body, though still a child to her ancient race.

She looks at me as if to demand I leave her be to whatever imagined privacy she has left. Leave her to her misery, to her futile anger and pain.

And with a jolt of recognition I suddenly realize it is not rage burning in her, but something else.

Something that will hurt her all the worse when she’s finally forced to abandon it.

I have two projects in the works right now. The first (Blood Baptism) is something I started two years ago and promptly abandoned after discovering, much to my chagrin, that writing a novel is really hard.

Revolutionary concept, I know.

The second (Song to the Moon) is almost three months in the works, and is being developed via Forward Motion’s 2 Year Novel writing course. We haven’t started writing the actual novel yet, but are posting “assignments” based on weekly classes. Right now we’re focused on developing characters and then posting snippets of writing about them.

It’s a wonderful course and I’m finding it incredibly helpful to approach writing in such a structured and methodical manner. I decided to apply the structure of 2YN to Blood Baptism, to see if it would help me with that tricky little piece of business.

See, two years ago, I was taking an English Lit. class at the University of Toronto, and much to my delight (and surprise) the professor was an amazing and brilliant man. Ever have the kind of teacher who made you look forward to class? Who constantly challenged your ideas and provided amazing insights into literature like you’ve never experienced before? Well this man was that teacher. He focused alot of the concept of mutual exclusives and it got the little wheels in my head turning. Mutual exclusives deal with one concept or ideal being pushed to it’s limit and thereby turning into it’s opposite. Like good and evil, or chivalry and machiavellianism.

That’s how Blood Baptism was born.

I wanted to take all the standard fantasy tropes and cliches and turn them inside out. The quest, good vs. evil, over-the-top-magic, the wise mentor, the innocent-turned-saviour, the EEEEVIILLLLL overlord — all the things that saturate the fantasy genre to such a tremendous degree — and approach them from an angle of realism. 

That is, realism within a world where those things could exist.

What would actually happen in a dystopian world fraught with unhealed scars, prejudices, and a malicious dictatorship, where an ancient prophecy was fulfilled and the trodded-upon placed its hope for salvation in the hands of two innocents? Well for one, not everyone in that society would buy into it; for another, success would most likely be impossible and failure a foregone conclusion.

Not a very shiny-happy premise, but I was obsessed by it. The actual execution was a mess for many different reasons, but I never forgot that story. So now I’m back at it again, and it’s finally coming alive.

Ideas sometimes need a longer gestation period than the writer would like. I’m hoping that Song to the Moon doesn’t have the same growing pains, but it’s too early to tell.

Either way, if you have a chance to participate in 2YN the next time around, take it. It’s free at Forward Motion or you can buy course developer Lazette Gifford’s 2YN book online.