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“You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” ~Frederick Buechner
History/Travel Summary
 Then when the
basics are done, move into other realms. How does your character move from past
to future, and back again, or from dimension to dimension? Does she require
specials words, or totem, a machine, or assistance from another? Does she
disintegrate and re-form? Make the transport as simple as possible. Then
brainstorm all the possible things that could go wrong. Decide whether there is
a risk every time, or only in improbable circumstances.
Whether you use
man-made or magic-made they need to be believable, and again 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, whether in transportation or other uses.
If it’s
difficult to decide where to start, use a real life category such as medical or
a sport to copy as part of a
journey. For example choose a vegetable or fruit that if eaten in great
quantities or not eaten at all can produce serious side effects, such as the
scurvy sailors experienced out on the high seas. Or choose a sport that needs to build up to its peak such as
swimming or running. What damage can be done if an athlete doesn’t follow the
rules and tries to push himself beyond physical preparedness?
Share: What is
the most memorable travel scene to you in either movies or novels? Why?
Merry Christmas!
More Ways to Travel
Vehicle travel, water travel, animal
travel. Begin to keep a
resource journal, both for now and future novels. First write down each
category of transportation. Then make a list under each with two columns: one
fantastical and one reality.
Pick out a few
from each category that fit your location. If your story is in a building such
as the opera house like Phantom of the
Opera, then you don’t need a large ship, but you do need a boat to navigate
the underground canal.
Choose a movie
in your genre category and mark down how each form of travel is navigated. How
does that contribute or impede their abilities. For example in the movie John
Carter of Mars, two races use air travel but one race refuses to fly. Make
notes of the hindrances and look for ways they can become plot conflict in your
version.
Share: What is the most fantastical on your list? What is the
most practical for your world?
Transportation Cont’d
 Air travel. What exists? The usual planes,
helicopter, and hot-air balloons, or magic carpets, flying horses, jetpacks,
giant birds and floating ships? Can the skateboard act like a flying carpet?
Is your space
ship made of metal or is it a living creature? In the series Firefly the crew is always dealing with
their spaceship home, Serenity, which needs constant attention to function. In
fact the ship’s mechanic, Kaylee, came on board in the first episode solely due
to her intuitive knowledge of how to repair Serenity. The crew need Serenity
for transportation and without a crew Serenity cannot fly.
However in the
series Farscape, Moya is a living
ship, a fifth generation Leviathian once free, then captured by the
Peacekeepers, a militant regime, and now home to renegades fleeing the corrupt
empire. Moya has allowed her passengers to stay, but has the ability to defend
herself against unwarranted actions by the crew. They need her, but she doesn’t
need them for transportation.
Compare these
long-term relationships with other sci-fi movies or shows where transportation
is simply a vehicle and has no emotional value at all.
If you have a
central mode of air-travel, brainstorm a spectrum from no emotional connection
whatsoever to a living, being, co-character, and then choose which location on
that spectrum works best for your character and your story. What plot points
can impact your story because of potential difficulties?
Share: What basic transportation does your character use and how
invested is he its survival?
History and Transportation
What forms of
transportation exist in your world? Start with the basics. Make a general list:
foot travel, air travel, vehicle, water or animal travel or other. Are some
divided by economics or class hierarchies? Are they natural to your world or
have some been superimposed? For example, in the movie Avatar the earth has brought heavy machinery to the planet Pandora.
Which ones will
your heroine be using? Does she have access to all? Make her a list of methods
common to her. How does dislocation affect her? Will there be any distinctions
or oddities? Has a person so used to an entourage around them not even know how
to push a button in an elevator? Go through each category and look for details
that can forward your plot or characterization.
Foot travel. What kind of gait does she have? Will
she walk, skip, hop, or run? Can she run fast—will she need to? How will she
accelerate? Barefoot, spiky heels, leather boots, sneakers or ?? and in what
circumstances. What is the next step up: roller blades, skateboard, or scooter?
In a writing workshop
at Mount Hermon one year, author Lauraine Snelling demonstrated just how
insightful watching a person walk indicates their emotional situation. She
would call four or five people up at a time and whisper their attitude to them
alone, and then have them walk around the room. The audience had to guess what
was happening.
Share: Give one mini sketch for foot travel mode in a
lighthearted or humorous circumstance, and one for a dramatic encounter. Which
was easier to communicate?
Cities Cont’d
 Another way to
build history into your world, and to find great ideas, is to track a city over
a long time period alongside its changes. For example, study a city that made a
major transition from rugged camp conditions into a cosmopolitan world center. Or
you can go into the opposite direction: a once major city is now a shadow of
its former appeal. What caused the downfall—corruption or public indifference
or a little of both?
If an entire
city seems overwhelming, choose one neighborhood.
The fame need
not be in location only, but perhaps as a center for the arts, or sports or
medicine or industry. What brought it to fame and why did it lose its
‘authority’?
Give your cities
a connection historically too either through education, or commerce or
religion. Jerusalem is a holy city for Christians, Jews, and Muslims, but not
all their holy sites are in the same location. However some are. Has the city
been ‘owned’ by so many different cultures that each can claim a heritage to
it. What kind of conflict can become attached to your protagonist?
Copy one facet
of a famous world city across our own timeline and use it to tie your own city
together. For example, Alexandria Egypt and its famous library, the
architecture in Prague Czechoslovakia, or Paris France for art.
Share: Which city did you choose to study?
History Cont'd
Cities
 In
week one you did a freewrite and list exercise with cities. In week two you
looked at building habitat with its legends and history and landmarks. Here you
pull them together to decide which cities in your world are to have prominence,
based on history then and history now.
Choose
three cities: one modern, one middle-aged, and one ancient within your world’s
timeline. What is the key historical focus of each city/town? If it lost its
prominence—why? Was it once a major seaport and is now a land-locked desert?
Another
approach is to look at the ‘ghost towns’ of your country. Were they bustling
towns based on gold or another mineral and when they dried up everyone left? Or
perhaps a new form of transportation made a once major city obsolete, like the
railroads did in many countries as they bypassed some well known towns for others. In what areas did a population leave due to changes, such as many stage-coach routes lost their livelihood when the railroads took over.
Share: Which historical focus gave the strongest emotional
connection?
History in Place Writing assignment:
1.
Choose a place in your novel and describe it with its history. Integrate what
was there by first describing both the present, and the absent, and then the
present and the past.
2.
Or take a setting out of a folktale, fairy tale or actual history in another
town/era/culture that bears the same thematic ‘map’ and use it doing the above
exercise.
For
example: many stories have travelers lost in a forest. Maybe the forest in your
town is still young so borrow an ancient one as its back history.
3.
After you have chosen and written one from an “historical” viewpoint, rewrite
it from a family history perspective within the same framework.
Share:
What worked well? What was difficult?
History as Perspective
 Another key factor in presenting history is to identify
perspective. A fun practice is to study world scenes from different artists in
different centuries and note what they highlighted in their subjects and what
they kept muted. How did they interpret the moment they wanted to share? What
kind of statements might they have
been making?
Click to the following links of two paintings in Wikipedia
and resist reading all the background until after you’ve read the visual for
yourself, and answered the following questions for each scene.
Describing a scene. (Interpretation)
1.
What are some possibilities for organizing and
discussing this visual text in Hogarth’s Street Scene?
kinds of facial expressions, noise-sound-music, theme of poverty,
people at once crowed and isolated, social-class divisions, religious and other
symbols, modes of amusement.
2. What assumptions can we make about this ‘world’ based on this moment in
time?
Share: What is your emotional impression
of one scene?
History
 Even if
it is a “new world’ it brings with it the influence that marked the journey.
For example the new beginnings for the first immigrants to America and to
Australia suffered extreme deprivation. Yet the societal mix of each group was
entirely different. Many first settlers to America were fleeing religious
persecution, but still maintained loyalties to England. Generally they still
had some choice to go or not. However many of the first settlers to Australia
were forced to go as laborers, convicts and bound servants.
Another
important factor for historical background is to consider what is being left
out. For example, we read or see a violent fight between two groups of people,
with or without distinction by class or race or apparent vocation or aliens,
and there is no evidence of law enforcement whatsoever. What are possible
questions?
Over the next few blogs we’ll examine three critical
reading exercises that help us access a sense of history. First look at the
example and then repeat the ‘reading’ with material from your own world
research either using a photo or painting or narrative description.
The first you’ve already done with the photo by Hopper several weeks ago. But
now repeat the exercise, and choose a photo you’ve selected for your world.
Consider one city, or one landmark within a particular city. For example, is there a
national monument that draws a pilgrimage?
Exercise
Describing
a place.
a.
How has the author organized the space?
b.
What is the attitude or feeling portrayed?
c.
What features are employed?
d.
What is unique?
For each give a specific example.
Share: Which
detail did you emotionally connect to?
History Introduction
 “Place in fiction is the named, identified, concrete, exact, and
exacting and therefore credible, gathering spot of all that has been felt, is
about to be experienced, in the novel’s progress. Location pertains to feeling;
feeling profoundly pertains to place; place in history partakes of feeling, as
feeling about history partakes of place.” Eudora
Welty
According to this quote history and setting are
not meant to be dull, dusty tomes but living and breathing credible locations.
What is the civilization? Is it in decline or
in ascent? What is the regime? What difference does it make if we don’t know?
For example, in episode one, Serenity, why did Joss Whedon pick the first scene
in Firefly to show a battle from
several years earlier? What difference does it make to see it all in actions as
opposed to a brief narrative story opening with lines of a diary?
We have all had years of reading history and
sometimes still not really understood, and then we see a photo or painting from
that era and everything suddenly makes sense. We see the multi-faceted layers.
So another decision that needs to be
incorporated is what is the level of historical importance to your world and
what are the key factors that you want to maintain as influence?
Exercise:
1.
Make a list of the first three questions above
and answer them with as many specific details as you have at the moment. If
you’re undecided then list both possibilities.
2.
Next, thinking in terms of atmosphere that we’ve
already discussed, answer the fourth question for each of the three categories
and write out a brief reason why.
For example, a couple on a road trip take a detour to see an
historic site—an old western town, so
gives us all the mythic sensory details that resonate with that setting. Answer
also=in decline. Regime= non-existent—or
the hideout for modern day smugglers or underground aliens or avenging ghosts. For
the non-existent regime then we don’t need to know. The setting can simply be a
potential symbol of their dried up relationship. However for either of the
other regimes you must know what and why because that choice will affect your
entire novel.
Share: Did any of
your answers surprise you? What detail did it bring into clarity?
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