Build a Story World

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?

Build a Story World

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. 

Build a Story World

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.

Build a Story World

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?