I mentioned way back when that I rediscovered notes I made at some point on a political fantasy idea. It has the potential to contain all the elements I love to read and want to write: powerful and cunning politicians, grey characters, interpersonal conflict, unique family dynamics. The one thing it would be missing is interesting settings.
As it turns out, fantasy and historical fiction don't hold a lot of interesting (to me) micro-settings. Sure, fantasy can do grand, sweeping landscapes and epic battles between sorcerors like nobody's business, but due to being, essentially, set in the past, the day-to-day places where people can have a conversation are limited.
In ye olden days, people went to work and then they came home and they slept. Then they did it again the next day and the next, on and on, forever amen. Work and home and church on Sundays. Every so often they might have to visit the maker or procurer of a certain product, but mostly the baker was in the bakery. Maybe they would go to the pub or a joust, but when you compare that to the sheer amount of places to set a scene nowadays, it just doesn't hold up.
In a contemporary novel you could come up with a different setting for each letter of the alphabet then go round and do it again without repeating yourself. We have so many different ways to distract and entertain ourselves and so many different places to go to do them: arcades, banks, casinos, dry-cleaners, elevators, fun-fairs, grocery stores, hairdressers-- it's endless. With fantasy and historical fiction, you have places where people lived and places where people worked. The few extras that come to mind are seen so often they have become
The thing is, I love the plots that arise from the low-tech, feudal societies in fantasy and historical fiction, just not so much the limited setting options. I don't want to struggle to make another castle seem new and interesting, to show another carnival unlike all the others, but would the nobleman's daughter really wander through town stopping in at every workplace just so I could satisfy my desire for interesting settings? A blacksmith's might be fascinating to write (seriously, I really want to set a scene in a smithy) with sparks flying and the sweat dripping down MC's back from the blasting heat of the forge, but would MC really be there-- or at the bakery, the carpenter's, the apothecary, or the brothel? And would the blacksmith really go to all those places either? Everyone is confined by the times to their own little world of work and home.
Despite my naysayings, there's obviously nothing else for me to do but to try to make a castle that stands on its own (Hogwarts, anyone?), maybe avoid making the landscape a better-weather version of England, and let some of the freer characters (hello, prostitutes) go to some interesting places. Such is the writer's life to reinvent the wheel-- with spikes!
Have you ever had to reconcile yourself to any of the 'shortcomings' of your genre?
You made me think--thank you for this!
ReplyDeleteAs a YA writer, sometimes I miss not being able to be jaded. I mean teens can do angst, but to really be fed up of the world, you need to be at least 25. :)
ReplyDeleteMaybe multiple POV could help work in more settings in a realistic way? Although, then there's always the risk of excessive head-hopping. . . . This is a great post, and it's making me think more about how I can expand the world my characters are in. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteSuch a great point! I've just begun writing a political fantasy myself. I think to satisfy my own need for world-building and imagining other places, I've forced my characters to travel. I notice this in every fantasy story I start writing - they always want to leave home! I get to describe new places, new lands, but like you said, am restricted by the fact that it takes place in the past. It wouldn't ring quite so true if my protag attended ye olde joust and then went out to catch a matinee. Great post!
ReplyDeleteInteresting point! I'm sure this is why urban fantasy took off like a rocket, and fantasy with time travel. I remember writin g my first contemporary after years struggling with a fantasy, and being amazed at how EASY it was to write in comparison! - so much more could be borrowed from experience or places I hadn't yet been but wanted to go :)
ReplyDeleteI think if you use a general European medieval model then what you say is true. But how much there is to do also depends on how affluent the society is, so Roman Empire would have a lot more stuff going on (baths, festivals, sports, theatre). And if you use a Japanese or Chinese model, they had greatly different social structures and excuses to meet.
ReplyDeleteBTW did you know blacksmiths were the first banks? They would have large safes to keep precious metals in, and people would ask them to keep their valuables in there too (for a fee). They would get a paper receipt, which they could use as payment for goods, the start of paper money. I imagine it would be quite the meeting place.
mood
Moody Writing
@mooderino
The Funnily Enough
My last WiP was set in a quaint, beachy (fictional) town, which was all kinds of fun to incorporate into scenes and the plot. The WiP I'm working on now is a contemp set in a bit of an every-town, which is something I'm struggling with. Finding ways to spice up the setting is a definitely a challenge, but thanks for the reminder of how important a unique setting is. I'm feeling re-motivated!
ReplyDeleteI think you are taking the occupations of a "fantasy" society far too restrictively. For one thing, just as we have now, many people had to be multi-taskers (especially in smaller towns). Indeed, the smaller the town, the less likely you would be to HAVE a baker. You had people who went out and hunted their food, harvested herbs and medicinals from the woods, farmed, ran village councils (often sharing this duty with several neighboring village councils who would send tithes to their local lord)...
ReplyDeleteI really could go on, and this is only in a classic "medieval European" setting. Add in some kind of magic or mythology that creates cultural and social imperatives (example the way some corpses have been found in Italy with wedges of metal in their mouths presumed as a way to keep them coming back to life as vampires)....
The possibilities really are endless.
That doesn't mean that contemporary settings aren't good to use either. It's a taste thing, a comfort thing, an interest thing. But I think both have a lot to offer, and I'm not convinced that either one has more to offer than the other. Just different things....
Interesting! You're making me think now. I write commercial thrillers and two things my editor asked me to do was scale back the humor AND the violence. The humor because she felt it bogged down the pace (too much banter between the characters, which made for good laughs but slowed things down), and she thought the violence was creeping too close to "horror" territory.
ReplyDeleteHey Sophia, I've tagged you at mine. http://aclairedawn.blogspot.jp/2012/04/whys-7-lucky-anyhow.html
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