Ulff Lehmann's Blog: Blogging Lot - Posts Tagged "planning"

Looking at the title, it could be to a pretentious book on writing... what is easy, one may ask, and rightfully so.

There are texts I can immerse myself in, and then there are others that make swimming against waves feel easy. I don't know if I'm a good person to ask for a critique, mainly because I'm such a hard ass regarding my own prose and my compulsive need for stuff to make fuckin' sense!

For example: a story I read involved vampires, and their lack of a reflection. So along comes an Ulff, asking a silly question like "why don't they have reflections?" If the answer goes along the line of "because no vampire has a reflection," I go postal. Sure, vampires in classic literature cast no reflection, that is the canon, for Dracula movies! Not sure if Stoker makes an effort to explain the reason, or if he had a reason at hand for reference. The issue is this: that's Stoker's bloody vampire who doesn't cast a reflection! What's the point of copying something another writer has done before and not make it one's own?

So I asked again, "Why do your vampires cast no reflection?" What followed was a lengthy brainstorming session in which we finally determined that everything that has a soul (or whatever) also cast a reflection, even the trees have souls, just ask a shaman. A vampire is a soulless thing and thus does not show in a mirror. Sure, we hadn't addressed furniture and clothes, bet they also had souls, or maybe we came up with a different explanation, the point I was trying to make is that everything needs to make sense... if the world is a disc on the back of four elephants riding the back of a giant turtle in space, the sun better wander through the gloom in between two elephants, hopefully not singeing them in the process, to pop up on the eastern side come the next morning. Silly? Yes, definitely, but also logical. If your fantasy world is like this, it needs to make sense, even in the insanity of a flat world on the back of a bunch of elephants.

If there's acid rain fucking up the world so badly that people need to wear protective clothes, then the food consumed needs to grow where? Sure, for the casual reader it don't matter where the taters come from, but I am far from the casual reader. I read, sadly I must say, with an editor's eye and a world builder's heart. Stuff needs to make sense...

If you have a city, and you've established there is no sewer system, cuz the people have yet to invent it, or maybe they forgot how to, like almost everyone when Rome collapsed, where does the shit go? Well, and the piss, but you get the picture. Chamber pots need emptying. And they usually just open the window and pour the shit out. Which, of course, gives the village a nice morning aroma.

Now a stinking village is barely important for any plot, but it does make for nice, um, flavor text. Think about it, the protagonist is bone tired, has spent some time in a swamp and is just looking for a bed of straw and some fresh water to wash off the stink of rotting grass. After a long soak, he collapses in a friendly farmers barn and wakes, not from the cock crowing on the dung heap, but from a nightmare he was drowning in the swamp's muck. To top it all off, the farmer's wife, empties their chamber pot atop the dung heap. Ah the simple life in the countryside, now the protagonist remembers why he hates leaving the city!

Is it necessary? Probably not. Will most readers notice? Um, nope. But it feels good to have not only the world fleshed out a tad more (outside the city, it's a fucking jungle) but added a bit to the protagonist's personality. (why yes, he is a city person)

Most of the novels I've read do the proper thing and tune out when the characters take a leak or dump, given that that's the puritanical way of doing stuff, no wonder, but imagine the shit they might be missing out on. Pun intended, and if all people were puritanical peons, intent on pretending their shit smelled like roses, they might be right, but chances are the good folk of Westeros never heard of Puritans, and if they did, they would laugh them the fuck out of King's Landing. So characters in a world with non-christian religions rarely have the pious laughing stock.

In ancient times, people met in communal shit-houses, shared gossip and sports news and the gods know what else while emptying their bowels. Deals were brokered whilst sharing toilet paper (or the equivalent). That bit of knowledge alone is gold for a story. Of course there'd be communal toilets, people talk with each other, even when taking a dump. These community toilets led into the sewer and the water flowing there took the shit to the ocean or river.

Sure, I don't wanna school folks on the history of latrines, but if you know that much more about your world, an obstacle like "how does X find out about the plot to assassinate the king?" can be solved quickly, and rather dirtily. X was looking for his money bag which he lost while taking a dump, now in the sewers he overhears two people planning the damn thing.

If you know stuff like that, sometimes finding the solution to a completely different problem is that easy!