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“You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” ~Frederick Buechner
Core
Cosmos/Cosmology
 Whether we plan it or not our worldviews will
rise to the surface. Are our characters’ general perspective ‘glass is half
empty’ or ‘glass is half full’? Do they see through Eyeore’s POV, or a
Pollyanna disposition. Obviously this affects our overall story question such
as, will the dystopia end in complete annihilation, or will a root of promise
bloom at the end? But it also impacts the inner and outer conflicts and
introduces a strong source of conflict throughout heresy and history as well as
language and culture. And the root values influence the basic perspective of
coinage.
Deliberately choosing a worldview that either
coincides with our personal beliefs, or challenges them gives the setting an
edge, even if the actual foundation is never even mentioned. Its reality
filters the essence throughout the details. What is our world’s creation story?
How far from its roots has it stayed or strayed?
Theories
of the Universe, by Gary F. Moring, introduces four main
concepts that impact our view of the universe today, and upon which we can
borrow templates for our imaginary worlds to strengthen mythic connections.
Over the next few posts we’ll look at a very generalized and much reduced
synopsis of each and a few heartbeat characteristics of each.
The oldest and first two epics interestingly
enough parallel a similar structure but from opposite positions. The creation
of Mesopotamia is told in seven units in the Enuma Elish, a story of seven generations of a family of gods,
filled with passion, gore, feuds, murder and fury. Moring chooses not to expand
on the “horrible account” however he
points out that many early civilizations related their myths to family
dynamics.
For example, Greek literature has made us
familiar with the ongoing strife of Olympian gods and goddesses with Zeus as ruler.
What is not as familiar is that Zeus is the third generation of rulers. He
warred against and defeated his father, his uncles and his own siblings in
order to gain control. The level of graphic detail is much reduced in these
stories, unlike in Enuma Elish, but the
principles behind the battlegrounds for power and prestige along with disregard
for human life is still the primary focus.
Exercise:
Put together a
three generational genealogical pattern for a direct descendant family in your
story world—whether one member in the present time is a key character or not.
Make the entire pattern based on an ongoing grasp for power and control. How
far have they gone to ruin each other financially or socially or morally?
Share:
What part of your version did you find intriguing? What part made you very
uncomfortable?
Coinage--Economic Roots--Example
 Knowing the coinage and economic roots can move
your plot along in interesting ways. For example, in the movie The Count of Monte Cristo conflict is
tied into the system from the very beginning. Alongside the financial and
social system is a barter system that seeks to gain influence in various means.
Edmond Dantes is duped by Napoleon into passing
on a letter. The magistrate, Villefort, acknowledges Edmond’s innocence until
he discovers that the letter was meant for his father. Villefort then uses the
barter to put Dantes away for life in prison; both for his own political safety
and as a favor to Fernand Mondego, a childhood friend of Dantes, who despite
his own wealth and status is eaten up by jealousy for anything Dantes achieves.
Although the viewer does not see the full
results until the end of the movies, both men extend their pact and use the
barter in increasing ways to solidify their greed as they grasp for influence
and power. Fueled by his own revenge Dantes uses their very system to force
them into accountability. He squeezes them financially to ruin and public
display.
The moral compass and reasoning differs between
all three men, but all are able to use the coinage system of their era to
achieve their desired ends. And all are in conflict with each other adding
critical tension to reach the crisis and climax points.
Exercise:
Use
either this movie or another of your choice, plot out the turning moral turning
points/decisions for one of these characters that had a direct effect
financially or socially for them.
Share:
What is another well known novel or movie that you consider a good example of
weaving conflict through coinage roots?
Coinage—Economic
Roots
 Who controls the economy? Is there a hierarchy that
matches the political rule, or one that is counter to it? Does it run its
economy as a free trade society, a company store system, and/or a black-market?
Is it a system that has roots into your world’s
ancient culture and history, or has it been commandeered by outsiders that have
imposed their system? And does their system actually work better or worse—again
according to whose set of values.
The economy may not play an important role in
your world, but you’ll need to know the basics. It can provide several conflict
moments just in routine situations. Think of a time you planned to eat out and
then realized your forgot your wallet. What options did you have? What
emotional stress did you undergo?
Exercise:
1.
Outline a company store system that the
whole community has agreed upon as the best solution. Begin with a Robin Hood
type leader.
2.
What are the potential strengths? What
are the potential weaknesses?
3.
Now jump ahead a century or two and have
the system run as a way to enslave the community financially by greed driven
leader.
4.
Somewhere in an old ledger the community
finds the original documents and provisions. What does it give them courage to
do?
Share:
Do they return to the original moral compass, become the next tycoon, or change
the whole system?
Elidor
Cont’d
 So the children arrive at the street, now
demolished. Only an old church remains. In this odd place a fiddler appears in
the distance playing strange music. A plastic football snaps lead in the church
window. One by one the children disappear until only Roland is left in the
empty church where the fiddler finds him. Roland runs out the door back towards
the street. “But he never reached the sidewalk for the cobbles were moving
under him. He turned. The outline of the church rippled in the air, and
vanished. He was standing among boulders on a seashore, and the music died into
the crash of breakers, and the long fall of the surf.
With each major transition in the story the
disbelief, the impossible, is emphasized.
They find the treasures in the Mound, when danger forces them back into
their own time with the treasures: the jeweled sword, golden stone, and pearled
cauldron, which all change.
“In his hand Roland held a length of iron
railing; Nicholas a keystone from the church. David had two splintered laths
nailed together for a sword; and Helen an old, cracked cup, with a beaded pattern
molded on the rim.”
The tone of dealing with the impossible
heightens the action as well as the mystery. When the electric appliances start operating on their own,
even the unplugged ones, they consider telling their parents; but even they
don’t believe the treasures are causing it. Over and over the children try to
ignore, forget, disbelieve the strange circumstances surrounding them, but with
each impossible occurrence they are forced back into their relationship with
Elidor.
They finally accept that their reality and
Elidor’s world have intermingled, even in its impossibility, and now begin to
seek a solution that mingles the two. “But if the Treasures are in Elidor, we’ll
be left in peace.” They go back to the demolished church dragging the treasures.
They figure out the clue and at the end, “The children were alone with the
broken window of a slum.”
They started in the broken demolished street and
they ended in the demolished street. Everything about the magic stayed
contained within the limits of their comprehension and ability to process and
act. And yet the possibility of failure also faced each decision.
So regardless of the age of your characters the
magic must remain true to itself in all its characteristics. It too must cost.
Take time to plan out the repercussions.
“Drifter's gold is for me to spend --
For I am a vagabond.”
Don Blanding (A Vagabond’s House)
Exercise:
1.
Write your own version of these two
lines.
2.
What does it cost the drifter lose or
gain in your version?
Share:
your two lines.
Cost
of Magic
All use of magic costs.
Whether you use man-made or magic-made, the
actions and choices need to be believable, and they must follow the rules you
set up for them. No last minute, “oh look what else this can do too.” Decide
early on what are the levels of safety and what are the levels of danger. How
many times can a person cross dimensions before needing a re-boot, or cannot go
back at all?
Begin simply and then build on it as needed so
as not to have it become so complicated that you lose yourself and your reader
in the technical aspects. Is it a ticking clock like Cinderella’s midnight, or
a magic potion that requires a fallen star?
For example, in his MG story Elidor, Alan
Gardner uses disbelief to first bridge the children’s entrance into the land of
Elidor and, then later, Elidor’s entrance into their world. The characters
repeatedly insist these things can’t be happening, that there must be an
explanation, like a dream. Roland alone continues to insist on examining the
odd occurrences in their landscape, and trying to find a solution.
David says,“And he’s been reading books. He says it could all
have been what he calls ‘mass hallucination,’ perhaps something to do with
shock after the church nearly fell on us. He says it does happen.”
“And I suppose the mud we scraped off was a mass
hallucination,” said Roland.
The atmosphere is set even before the strange
events begin to occur. The four
children are trying to keep busy so they won’t get bossed around at home
packing for their move the next day.
The youngest, Roland, finds a postal map, turns a dial and they decide
to find the street. When the
streets become more and more deserted and Roland voices concern, he is reminded
that he’s always imagining things.
Exercise:
Set up a situation where a main character experiences evidence of magic for the
first time and explains it away using concrete logical thinking.
Share:
What happens when she realizes that what is happening cannot be explained away.
Coinage
Introduction Cont’d
 There is a story in the New Testament, where a
widow gave only two pennies and Jesus told those around him that she had given
the greatest offering because she had given all she possessed, while the others
only gave of their surplus. For what reason in your world would someone give up
everything they had, regardless of the consequences?
The world’s setting as backbone comes down to
value. What costs mind, body and soul?
“It
may be that place can focus the gigantic, voracious eye of genius and bring its
gaze to point. Focus then means awareness, discernment, order, clarity,
insight—they are like the attributes of love. … Indeed, as soon as the least of
us stands still, that is the moment something extraordinary is seen to be going
on in the world.” Eudora Welty
A few weeks back you chose an art form close to
your protagonist’s heart and looked at ways it could be shared across cultures.
Within our own earth’s history lineage we have read or experienced evidence of
a regime that sought to destroy all previous evidence of art whether burning
books, smashing century old sculptures, banning music or shredding paintings.
Look at ways your people’s heart heritage must be driven underground in order
to survive. How does that affect the cost of keeping the art from becoming
extinct? Or the cost to the regime to contain to banish it?
Exercise:
Do one version under the serious circumstances above and one version as a
lighthearted comedy of errors.
Take the art activity from the previous
exercise and make a list of all the steps involved from creative draft to
public sales. Or choose a new one that is part of your character’s gifts and
talents.
Next make a list of all the materials
needed. If this were a barter culture set a ‘value’ to each item, both for
buying or selling.
For example, are paintbrushes easily accessible
and cheap because children gather material the landscape and make them? Or is
it almost impossible to find quality material for the brush portion and
therefore make them so exorbitant an artist must keep them under lock and key?
Are gourmet cooks willing to literally ‘kill’
for a specific type of pan?
Share:
Which ingredient in your story was the most difficult to find? Why?
But I am rich with the wealth of Sight,
The coin of the realm of dreams…”
Don Blanding (A Vagabond’s House)
Coinage
Introduction
Coinage is defined (in worldbuilding) both as
the legal money of a country and “something valued or used as if it were money in a particular sphere.”
It has strong links to culture and to heresy (in a few weeks) as its importance
supports, or denies, the personal connection of the people who use it.
What is the main form of currency—potions,
trade, or money? If money—is it paper, or metal. What are the levels of
currency? What is considered the poorest and of no consideration? What is
desired more than anything else? Is barter acceptable or not?
In a desert land, water is the most precious
commodity. In outer space often whatever is required to keep the spaceships
moving has the highest priority.
However each person also has a definition of a
value personal to himself or herself as the quote above suggests.
Exercise:
1. Make a list of the
various currencies your story world uses. If in doubt, begin with a simple
exchange at a town marketplace. How does each vendor expect payment for goods?
Does he charge differently for local or tourist, wealthy or poor?
2. Begin a section in
your research record keeping of what types of currencies are used where,
especially if you will be developing several locations and or worlds.
Share:
What would your hero or heroine never sell regardless of treasure?
|
Whether we plan it or not our worldviews will
rise to the surface. Are our characters’ general perspective ‘glass is half
empty’ or ‘glass is half full’? Do they see through Eyeore’s POV, or a
Pollyanna disposition. Obviously this affects our overall story question such
as, will the dystopia end in complete annihilation, or will a root of promise
bloom at the end? But it also impacts the inner and outer conflicts and
introduces a strong source of conflict throughout heresy and history as well as
language and culture. And the root values influence the basic perspective of
coinage. 
