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JWTroemner.com

Tag: worldbuilding

  • On Names: Imaginary Worlds

    jwtroemner

    So what lured me down this rabbit hole in the first place?

    If you know anything about me, you’ll know that most of my thoughts either start or end with writing. 

    My most recent book, the Dealmaker’s Gambit, takes place in the world of Koleth– and that world is built largely on a foundation of constructed languages. 

    One of the main characters of that story, Zag, belongs to a supernatural group of people known as the Zader— at least, that’s what they’re called some of the time.

    Tales of Koleth: The Dealmaker’s Gambit

    See, Dealmaker takes place primarily within the borders of the Remishi Alliance, a coalition of nations united by a common primary language. But there are other countries in this world. Kiha, another main character, is originally from Mata and natively speaks Abuian. Meanwhile another story I’m working on in this world begins in the nation of Zakilu, where the primary language is Situ. 

    People like Zag exist all over the world of Koleth, and have for as long as there have been people in those places– and so, each language has its own word to refer to them. For simplicity’s sake I avoided getting into the weeds of it all with Dealmaker with little trouble, but with this new project, I’m finding I can’t put it off much longer.

    So what do I call people like Zag, and what does it mean if I do?

    In Remishi, Zag would be a Zader, meaning gentry or nobility— it’s a term that calls back to the Remishi people being subjugated by powerful Zader (“those political assholes,” as Zag refers to them), who created a hierarchy that put themselves at the top, prompting a violent revolution that toppled the previous regime and put humans on top. And in light of that history, what once was a term of deference has become something very close to a slur. 

    Meanwhile the Situ people have a decidedly more neutral relationship with the same group of people. Their word for them is Shikna, meaning merchants, and their role is often to linger on the fringes of society and trade in magic to give the people what they want or need– but always for a price, and with little sympathy for quibbles like buyer’s remorse. Like many of our world’s traditions about faeries, genies, and witches, the Shikna are beings to be treated with caution and respect, and preferably with a lawyer present. 

    For the sake of simplicity, I put some serious thought into nixing Shikna as a term and using Zader instead, no matter the setting. Which got me thinking.

    See, the Remishi Alliance is in many ways imperialistic. As much as they insist that they stay within their borders, they push their hegemony on the nations around them. And that eagerness to export their culture is baked into their interactions with the people who have to deal with them– their trade regulations which dominate the sea, their fashions which aren’t particularly practical in other regions, their systems of government, their philosophy and morality, even their calendar. And given all of that, there’s something downright insidious about using a slur to refer to a powerful and capricious being just because the term is popular a few countries over. 

    It’s fraught, and it’s fraught in a way that people in the real world deal with every day. I can’t even begin to cover the sheer breadth of the complexity of the issues at hand on my own– entire books have been written on the subjects by people far more qualified than me– but I’d like to at least be able to acknowledge that it’s a thing, and do so thoughtfully and with intention. 

    This is the last installment of a four-part series on choosing names and why they matter.
    Part 1: A Person by Any Other Name
    Part 2: Politics of Place
    Part 3: A Take on Taxonomy
    Part 4: Imaginary Worlds

  • On Names: Politics of Place

    jwtroemner

    How do you refer to the island nation in the Pacific Ocean, roughly around 41* S, 175* E?

    In 1642 it was named Staten Land by Dutch Explorer Abel Tasman, in 1645 Dutch Cartographers renamed it Nova Zeelandia in reference to a Dutch province, and “British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicized the name to New Zealand.” (NewZealandVacations.com)

    But if you ask a whole lot of people– particularly the people whose ancestors lived there before the Dutch came around– they might instead refer to it as Aotearoa, which is a name being pushed for with greater momentum in the last several years thanks to the efforts of Māori activists, with many around the world starting to adopt Aotearoa New Zealand to refer to the land. Though even that name doesn’t tell the whole story.

    Photo by Tyler Lastovich on Pexels.com
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  • A Worldbuilding Balancing Act, or: my beef with Beau Brummell

    jwtroemner

    I’ve talked a little bit about the research that goes into writing fantasy stories. Even if the world you’re writing in is not at all the one we live in, I tend to think it’s safe to pull at least a little bit from our world’s history.

    Would people with this technology level in that climate be wearing these fashions? Can these crops be grown on a large scale in that environment? Would those weapons still be used if that technology is available?

    For me, I try to anchor my setting to a rough analogue of a specific time and place, because that makes research a whole lot easier. For example: I’m anchoring my current story to Europe in the mid-1800s, so it’s safe to assume that the same factory setup that is manufacturing, say, guns, is also manufacturing clothing. Because factory-produced cloth is going to be cheaper and have different qualities than homespun clothes, certain fashions are going to change– also, factory workers won’t be able to wear certain clothes that could potentially get caught in the machines, etc.

    Without the influence of a major change like aliens or grand-scale magic, it’s safe to assume that certain shifts in things like food, fashion, etc, can move predictably over the years.

    And then something happens that throws a wrench in the works.

    Like a Mr. Beau Brummell.

    English dandy George Bryan Brummell (1778 -1840), known as Beau Brummell. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

    Before he marched onto the scene, men’s* fashion changed frequently, often matching the gradual changes in style, fabric, and sillhouettes you you see in women’s fashion of the same time. Shortly before him, one of the big hip things was for men to wear tight hoes and knee-length breeches so they could show off their saucy, sexy calves, matched with long coats that could just about count as a gown in their own right.

    A 1793 contrast between French fashions of 1793 (left) and ca. 1778, showing the large style changes which had occurred in just 15 years. Source: Wikimedia Commons
    At this time, Beau was still a teenager and not yet a fashion icon.

    But Beau was not a fan of the look of his day, and he was the 1800s version of an influencer. The influencer, in fact, when it came to men’s fashion.

    According to Wikipedia, “He became the arbiter of fashion, and established a mode of dress that rejected overly ornate clothes in favour of understated but perfectly fitted and tailored bespoke garments. This look was based on dark coats, full-length trousers rather than knee breeches and stockings, and above all, immaculate shirt linen and an elaborately knotted cravat.”

    He was so influential, in fact, that by 1815, you started seeing something familiar in the popular trends of the day:

    An illustration believed to be from 1815. Source: Wikipedia

    After this point, if you want to date the time period of an outfit (and historic fashion isn’t your special interest or profession), you pretty much need to base it of women’s* clothes, because western men’s formal clothes pretty much stagnated right here, save for small details. Lower-class and informal looks have more room for creativity, but only so much.

    (*in this post I talk about “men’s” and “women’s” fashions as I understand the categories existed in their time. I know bits and pieces about gender nonconforming presentation, historical nonbinary and agender people and the things they wore, but not nearly enough to speak about those subjects confidently.)

    So what’s this got to do with writing?

    Let me ask you: what does 19th century fashion look like in a world where Beau Brummell didn’t exist?

    You could make the argument that enough people were thinking about mass production, gunpowder, antibiotics, electricity, etc, that if the people we consider historically important today didn’t exist, somebody else would have eventually come up with those ideas. These kinds of advancements tend to build upon one another, with one technology presenting the opportunity for another.

    I can’t say the same about ol ‘Beau and what he did to men’s fashion.

    So what’s a writer to do? Do you stay with the historical trends and just handwave that some other dandy took Beau’s place as an influencer? Do you jut not mention coats and pants and hope people don’t notice? Do you examine pre-Beau trends and make up entirely new fashions that people might have worn if he hadn’t been around?

    That depends entirely on the writer and the story they’re telling.

    In my case, clothes and fashion don’t feature much in my story, so there’s nothing gained by my spending time, energy, and words coming up with new looks– and if the reader is already vaguely familiar with what I’m describing, then that’s reader time and energy that I don’t have to take up with my descriptions.

    Still, I have to wonder: what might fashion look like in a world without Beau?

  • Turning Conlangs into Culture: Worldbuilding through constructed languages

    jwtroemner

    This past weekend I gave a presentation at InConJunction in Indianapolis, and one of the attendees requested that I make it available online later on. So let’s give it a go!

    First of all:

    What is a Conlang?

    Conlang is short for “Constructed Language”, meaning any kind of artificially and intentionally created language. You’re probably familiar with them, considering that fiction is absolutely rife with them.

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  • On Questionnaires

    jwtroemner
    list
    This is meant to be tiny and unreadable so you get an idea of how long this list is. Please don’t strain your eyes.

    I’ve been on the writing corner of the internet for a while now, and I’ve got a long, involved history with questionnaires.

    Whether you’re crafting a single roleplaying OC or an entire world, you’ll find thousands of lists full of all sorts of questions.

    Those lists can be super short and to the point (“What does your character want? What are they willing to do to get it?”) or they can be enormous and inane (“Does your character prefer smooth peanut butter or chunky? Does your character dream in color? If your character was an animal, what kind of tree would they climb?”)

    For the past several days, I’ve been compiling a list of worldbuilding questions that I ambivalently look forward to applying to most of the countries in my upcoming world. I’m daunted because this is gonna be a ton of work, and I’ll have to repeat the process over and over and over again. At the same time, I’m excited because this kind of thing can create a much more intricate and interesting world.

    I have a piece of advice for you, though, if you chose to use questionnaires:

    Easily 90% of the answers to those questions– maybe even 99%– will not and should not ever actually make it into the story you tell.

    The specific answers to each question don’t matter as much as what they tell you about the bigger picture. Nobody cares what three items your character would bring to a deserted island, they care about what it says about that character– whether they would go for something practical, or something suited to a hobby or interest, or so on. Nobody cares what a country’s tax code looks like, so much as they care about the way the people respond to that tax code, whether with squeezing their employees harder or tax evasion or what have you.

    That’s where the story is. That’s what matters. The rest is just a tool to help you flesh out those details.