Randy Ellefson's Blog, page 39

How to Invent Characteristics of Gods

Alignment

Anyone who’s played role playing games is familiar with the concept of alignment, or good vs. evil. This oversimplified way of viewing gods helps classify, organize, and balance them so we don’t have too many evil ones, for example. A degree of balance is preferred unless our story requires an imbalance.

We’ve seen “neutral,” but what does this mean? Neither good nor evil? Or does it mean a pacifist position of non-interference in the machinations of gods or species? Such pacifism is less interesting, but it can create resentment among species who call upon a god who won’t answer their prayers, possibly resulting in atheists. By contrast, does a neutral god intervene to stop aggressors from upsetting the balance of good and evil? This can be the attitude of species, too, not just gods.

While “good” and “evil” are widely accepted, the words appeal to younger fans. A more sophisticated audience might appreciate other words that mean the same thing without seeming immature. Some options are “benevolent,” “kinder,” or “helpful” instead of “good,” and “nefarious,” “sinister,” or “feared” instead of “evil.” Readers will get the point without feeling like they’re being talked down to.

Those we consider blatantly evil, like Adolf Hitler, likely didn’t view themselves that way. Our evil gods might bristle at such a distinction and smite anyone who says such a thing—an act which suggests they are indeed evil. Like us, these deities may rationalize the worldview that gets them called that. A god of domination might believe others need to be ruled, justifying abuses of tyranny, but a god of hate likely can’t justify their outlook and might accept being called evil. Giving some thought to this can make our deities more interesting and lead to stories and myths about their interactions.

 

Identifiers

Aside from naming our gods, there are other ways to identify them.

Titles

Deities have titles like “God of War,” “Lord of Despair,” or “The Weeping God.” They can have multiple titles or nicknames, particularly if they oversee more than one area of life. In stories, use only one title at a time to avoid an info dump. One story can reveal one title, another story a different one. We can invent these when needed, skipping this during world building, but always remember to take something invented in a tale and add it to your file on that subject.

Patronage

Gods are sometimes the patron of activities. These can be professions like hunters, farmers, or blacksmiths, or something more general like lovers or children. Who the god patronizes is revealing of their outlook. Look at your god’s attributes to decide who they would patronize and who would be praying to them the most. There can be different levels of patronage, such as a god of war favoring all warriors but bestowing greater favors on knights.

Symbols

Symbols are useful for storytelling and gaming. They can be emblazoned on armor, buildings, ships, space stations, and uniforms, or worn as talismans, even branded into flesh. Each scenario tells the audience, and even other characters, something about location or people, allowing easy characterization. Keep symbols, such as a whip suggesting a god of torture, easy to describe in under one sentence. They are usually fairly obvious because residents aren’t trying to be creative like us and those with no artistic ability need to draw them. This helps us avoid exposition.

How to Invent End of Time Myths

http://www.books2read.com/creatinglife

This section of chapter 2, “Creating Gods,” from Creating Life, discusses how to invent end-of-time myths and using Earth analogues to do so.

Other Stories

We can also mirror Earth mythologies of gods doing things to each other and mortals. This includes playing tricks, seducing or falling in love, fathering children, attempting murder, and overthrowing the power structure. Anything we mere mortals do is fair game, and myths are often cautionary tales designed to warn a species against certain behaviors. The myths instruct us and our children how to behave. But on our world, many of these stories will have some truth to them because the gods are real. When inventing each myth, determine what’s true about it and what isn’t. After inventing the story, revisit it, imagining other options and keeping one a secret to reveal later.

Gods have possessions, like anyone. We can create myths where an item fell into mortal hands through theft, misplacement, or even gambling, and caused havoc, possibly resulting in a physical place where strange things happen. This is a great way to invent areas of interest; I’ve devoted a chapter to it in Creating Places (The Art of World Building, #2, “Creating Places of Interest”). Our characters can recover these items, often not on purpose or even realizing it at first. What happens when the god learns someone has it?

How To Invent Creation Myths

A pantheon will have a mythology, whether it’s featured heavily in stories or just mentioned by characters or in narration. To avoid exposition, incorporating the myths into a tale is the best way to mention them. This is one area we can stall on inventing, but creation myths and end-of-world myths are among the most important to work out; minor myths can be invented when needed. Even if our world doesn’t have gods, these myths will exist, as our awareness of our own mortality has us contemplating the birth and death of everything, not just ourselves. Any story about incidents among the gods, or between gods and their species, can also become a myth people either believe or not.

Creation Myths

http://www.books2read.com/creatinglife

This section of chapter 2, “Creating Gods,” from Creating Life, discusses how to invent creation myths and using Earth analogues to do so.

Are Your Gods Vulnerable?

http://www.books2read.com/creatinglife

This section of chapter 2, “Creating Gods,” from Creating Life, discusses how and when to make your gods vulnerable to each other or the species, and what the consequences can be for everyone.

Where and How Long the Gods Live

Relationships

We can create relationships, familial or not, based on god traits. A god of love and a god of hate can be twins, as can the gods of life and death. The god of winter and demigod of snow can be parent and child. While these are a bit predictable, symmetry is appreciated and easier to remember. Gods can be friends and enemies, too. This often results from conflicts of character and desires, just like with people. If these boil over into arguments that become myths, this helps justify the intensity of bonding or resentment. Not every god in your pantheon needs details worked out, but a few will create the impression of depth we’re after.

Where Do They Live?

Deciding where your gods live will have an impact on stories if your characters ever need to visit them. In theory, it shouldn’t be easy to reach gods; otherwise, every guy with a cause will beg for help. A useful tradition to follow is that one must prove one’s worthiness through an arduous trek to the god.

Do the gods live apart from each other or all together in a city? I recommend avoiding something as obvious as a mountain top because readers will be reminded of Mt. Olympus. On the other hand, the god of the sea living underwater makes too much sense to ignore, but we can still have him do something less common, such as dwell on an island; after all, how is anyone supposed to visit him underwater, or is that what he’s trying to avoid?

Are the gods in the mortal world, like your planet, or in a magical realm similar to an afterlife? What sort of guardians protect the path there? What price must someone pay, literally or figuratively, to get there and back? You can base your decisions on ideas from existing mythologies about travel to other dimensions, such as Charon, but a guy ferrying people across a dangerous river for a price is another idea that’s too well-known to use without inducing eye rolling.

If the gods are believed to live in the sky, what happens in a world technologically advanced enough to explore the heavens and discover there are no gods up there? They would likely alter their beliefs to compensate for this. But it could be interesting if the gods are real and are indeed up there. Maybe this is the reason advanced technology was sought. There could be important questions the gods must be asked.

Lifespan

Where did your gods come from? “Nowhere” is a valid, if not entirely interesting, answer. On Earth, we don’t talk much about where God came from so much as where we did. We can avoid this question altogether and few will question it. We don’t actually need a reason, but something is usually better than nothing unless the idea doesn’t hold up. We may never have a chance to mention it in stories anyway.

Our gods could’ve come from another world that they’ve abandoned or destroyed. Is your new planet their second or third chance to get it right? Maybe the gods are fleeing enemies, or they are the terror of the cosmos that other pantheons flee. Did they leave a planet full of life behind? That planet could be the one you’re setting up now. If the gods abandoned a world, decide what’s happening there now. Is that where Earth’s God went? Is He too busy setting up other worlds to drop in?

Consider what the origins of your gods say or imply about them. In Greek mythology, the gods came from the giants before them, but if gods can be born, they can presumably be killed, too. If your gods can die, what happens when one does? Maybe the one who killed them can replace them. A magic or technological weapon might be needed to do it. Perhaps only other gods have the power to destroy one. Maybe they can only become injured. Or imprisoned—and what happens when this occurs? What kind of prison can hold a god? Decide where it is located, how is it guarded and by what. Does their influence over the world stop as long as they’re locked up?

Power Among the Gods

http://www.books2read.com/creatinglife

This section of chapter 2, “Creating Gods,” from Creating Life, discusses how to create different power levels among the gods of a pantheon. Various means can be used to achieve this in a sensible manner.

How to Create a Pantheon

Pantheons

A pantheon is a mythological collection of gods. They are often related by familial ties and recognized by the culture that invented them but not usually by others. While creating multiple gods is more work, dynamic relationships among deities is more entertaining and can drive plot. We can start with a list of traits, such as truth, courage, love, hate, patience, curiosity, peace, greed, fear, sloth, deceit, and wrath. We can use phenomena like gods of storms, war, and death. We don’t have to choose one approach or the other, but mixing them could make our pantheon seem random and not well thought out. One solution is to decide that traits lead to phenomenon, or vice versa. For example, the god of wrath becomes the god of storms. This is expanded on further in the last section of this chapter, “How to Create Gods.”

A pantheon allows characters to show personality by the god(s) they pray to, especially for priests. As our characters investigate catacombs, ancient ruins, or a modern megalopolis, they will see symbols of the gods, encounter overzealous priests, or even visit a theocratic society. These elements can affect the decisions they make, such as not entering a given room due to the symbol of the god of torture on it. Even unrecognized symbols from an unknown pantheon can be useful for creating an unsettling feeling.

Our pantheon might have more than one afterlife (covered in Cultures and Beyond, The Art of World Building, #3), whether it’s as simple as heaven and hell or more complicated, where different deities have conceived different rewards and punishment and oversee them personally. Deities can have a role in how people are judged, whether they can be redeemed, and if the living can visit the dead, or vice versa. When we assign gods different roles, we can create conflict in how (and if) they choose to do their jobs.

A pantheon is often not organized in any particular way, with the exception of familial relationships, should they exist, but if we assign certain traits to every god, we can group them that way. For example, maybe every god is associated with a season, element, or color. This causes multiple gods of spring, fire, or indigo. This may impact their ability to affect elements, their priests similarly affected. A god or priest of fire might suffer more from water-based attacks. Some people also organize their gods by good and evil.

Creating Gods in Fantasy and Science Fiction

Chapter 2 – Creating Gods

Whether we write fantasy or science fiction, chances are sooner or later we’ll need a god or gods. At the least, our characters might want to pray, swear, threaten damnation, or utter thanks. And when someone is born, dies, or reaches a milestone, gods are often praised.

Gods are typically credited with the reason for everything existing, but starting our world building with them is optional. Our gods can be real or wishful thinking, but in fantasy and SF, they are typically portrayed as real and taking an active role in the lives of the world’s residents. Different religions spring up from different beliefs about even a single shared god, so before we can create religions, decide on deities.

Did the gods create our world on purpose or was it a byproduct of a “big bang” origin, and they stumbled upon it? Did they shape the land a certain way or just let it do its thing over millennia? Are they active, causing the seasons, night and day, and the winds, or do they just manipulate these forces?

Appendix 1 is a template for creating a god. It includes more comments and advice, and an editable Microsoft Word file can be downloaded for free by signing up for the newsletter.

In Science Fiction

In SF, characters may travel between many worlds, each having a pantheon, which is not to say that we need an extensively developed pantheon for each world. Rather, a general feel for the presence of religion and actual gods appearing can be all that we need, plus a few names.

There’s an idea that science kills religion, the premise being that the more scientific discoveries are made, the less need we have of religion to explain things. While there’s some truth to this, religion shouldn’t be ignored. People still often believe in deities. Some might say that less educated, more rural people fall into this category, but many of our greatest scientists believe in God. Writing SF on possibly highly-developed worlds doesn’t absolve us from inventing religion, which will never really go away. Our characters can live/arrive on a world dominated by religion despite science.

One way to work religion into SF is to consider world view issues. Planet-hopping characters may believe that gods created the universe and therefore these deities will also rule other planets. Discovering on arrival that no one’s heard of those gods will cause distress. They may try to claim the new planet’s god X is really their home planet’s god Y. Or they may be so incensed that they try to wipe out the inhabitants of this wayward planet. Or convert them. Christian missionaries tried to spread God’s word around Earth, so why not do the same on a planetary level?

Whether the gods are real or not is another matter to consider. If real, are they happy with a species gaining so much power that they can leave the world the gods created for them? If they created the universe, maybe they’re okay with it because those gods rule the other planets as well. If the gods didn’t create the universe and only rule their area of it, maybe they encourage our characters to colonize other worlds and galaxies, or the peaceful lives they live are shattered by alien invaders coming to convert them. Is there a proxy war going on between these gods and those of other worlds? Our gods could provide the technologies being used to travel.

In SF, sometimes the gods are actually advanced aliens masquerading as gods, as in Stargate SG-1. This can be useful for having “gods” that can be killed, perhaps to the surprise of the mortals they rule. The discovery of the truth can be psychologically powerful. We’ll need to figure out where the aliens came from and why they’re doing this.

In Fantasy

In fantasy, gods often put in appearances that leave little doubt that they exist. In antiquity, there are numerous myths of Norse and Greek gods being jealous of humans, tormenting, killing, and having children with us. The Christian god is the one who keeps quiet. We can choose either approach, but gods who affect events are more useful. Their followers can be the ones impacting life, whether these are your main characters or their enemies. A common use for gods is to have a priest lay hands on wounded people and ask their god to heal them. We need deities for this. A developed pantheon helps us flesh out the priest character’s personality as we decide who they pray to.

If our world has multiple humanoid species, do we want each species to have their own gods or to share all of them? The latter reduces the numbers we must create, but the former allows for more variety. Each species can have their own creation and end-of-world myths, for example. We might invent gods that are tailored to a species, rather than all gods being universal and therefore less specific. To minimize the quantity invented, we can decide each species only has a few gods, not twenty each. We might also decide that some gods are universal while others are more tailored to a species. This works well if a subgroup of gods invented that species, their combined attributes influencing the result. That species can worship all the gods but have more allegiance for their creators.

The Problem of Exposition

The Problem of Exposition

The objection to exposition is that authors cause a loss of momentum when they stop the story to explain a setting or even a character, then resume on the other side. Authors of older books sometimes wrote pages upon pages of exposition; I usually skip over this. Modern audiences expect a story to keep moving. I’ve had beta-readers give me grief about exposition as short as a four-sentence paragraph. This seems a little harsh to me, and you’ll have to use your own judgment. Whether or not an explanation is too much is a personal choice. Keep in mind when inventing something that requires explanation that many readers will skip these passages, or an editor might strike them entirely.

How is an author to get across needed information? That’s a writing question more than a world building one, but an old standby is the ignorant character who keeps asking what something means only to have another character explain it to them. Overusing this is a poor style choice. The technique is especially prominent in films without a narrator, though some shows use heavy voice overs to explain things. Like it or not, some exposition will always be needed. We just don’t want a death certificate for our stories to have “Death by Exposition” on the cause of death line.

Show vs. Tell

One way around exposition is to reveal world building details as an integral part of a story. For example, my story “The Garden of Taria” exists so I can reveal an aspect of a humanoid species (querra). However, that’s my goal as an author. It’s not a reader-centric goal of a story about characters, which is what we want.

So I created a character, Taria, who seeks refuge from a chaotic world in the ordered sanctuary of her home. The querra keeps invading her house whilst helping himself to her possessions and food. He makes a mess everywhere and doesn’t respect property. All of this is what I wanted to show. Their arguments reveal querran outlook as I’d desired, but this doesn’t come as exposition. It’s dialogue and behavior. Their conflict causes both characters, and maybe the reader, to question human ideas on property, possession, capitalism, and wealth. In other words, I’m showing this world building element, not telling it. The story is about characters and issues, achieved with world building.

And that’s what we want.

Other Methods

We can also include more details in a glossary with each published work. Since perusing it is optional, readers with greater curiosity will do so while those who don’t care are freed from exposition overkill. Tolkien did something similar with The Lord of the Rings, which includes multiple appendices.

A related solution is to create a website all about our world, linking to it from our glossary or even the text of our stories. Each time a new item is mentioned in a tale, the word is a hyperlink to the corresponding page on the website. This is also optional for our readers, who may love being able to do this; they might also be annoyed/distracted by the sight of a hyperlink in a novel unless this sort of thing becomes common.

A website might be overkill unless we’re a successful writer, but it can help invest readers in our world and possibly draw in new ones. The size of the website is up to us. It can just be a few pages or a longer glossary associated with our book’s page. For me, the online version is the master glossary, the one in a book being far shorter and tailored to that story. For examples, you can see mine at Llurien.com.

The Value of Influences

During world building, we can become so focused on inventing something new that we try not to be influenced by anything we’ve seen before. While this is admirable, we can inadvertently deny ourselves something precisely because someone has done it, which means we’re still being influenced. True freedom to invent means not worrying about similarities at all and using every possible good idea, with the caveat that we must avoid copyright infringement.

For example, I avoided inventing an underground species because I figured they’d just be dwarves by another name, because they’d be short. They have to dig most passages and homes, and this will inhibit their vertical growth, or they’ll all have stooped backs. I let myself be influenced in the negative, avoiding something useful until I realized that a dwarf is far more than just height and habitat.

Aspire to create a species that looks and lives however you want them to. If a physical adaptation is based on habitat, this is good. If it makes sense for our forest-dwelling species to have pointed ears and slanted eyes, then so be it, even though elves are like that. Incidentally, pointed ears don’t have a biological basis and don’t improve hearing; such criteria can help us eliminate or add features. When you notice that you want to do something that reminds you of someone else’s creation, question why theirs is like that. If the feature doesn’t make sense, ditch it. The most powerful influences are the ones we don’t even realize we have.

Question everything.

How To Create Depth

A Question of Depth

A single, detailed world provides a richer, more diverse, immersive experience for an audience, but we must remember that they want a story, even in gaming. World building is always subservient to this, and yet when we spend many hours doing it, we’re tempted to include more of what we’ve created than is required for our story. We’re too close to our work. It can be prudent to take breaks from world building and remember that it isn’t the ultimate goal.

Audiences don’t want stories about our world building. They want stories about people and conflicts. These should be layered within our setting, not used as an excuse to show off what we’ve invented. There are ways to achieve this.

For example, when I created the Coiryn Riders, a group of military horsemen distinct from knights, I went overboard. I ended up with a fifteen-thousand-word file of details on their ranks, advancement, training, usages, equipment, and more. I could never get all this across in an average novel even if I wanted to (and I don’t). But there are many ways I can use them.

I could have a lead character become a Coiryn Rider and show his rise through the ranks over the course of a novel series, revealing many details about the horsemen and what it’s like to be one. As minor characters, they also serve as heralds, so one might be tasked with traveling alone through hostile lands. They are supposed to be given safe passage, which provides an opportunity for a King’s Herald to be killed by an enemy power, inciting war. One might use his military skills as part of an adventuring group I’m featuring. I can have my main characters encounter a group of Coiryn Riders on nearing a city, revealing that the riders routinely patrol perimeters, or in their role as heralds, deliver warnings of nearby threats. They are also cavalry in army war scenes.

That’s several possible uses. I wouldn’t want to try jamming all of this into one story. Instead, I can spread it out across many tales over the course of my career. By having worked out so many details in advance, I run little risk of contradicting myself with later works set on Llurien, a problem that inventing/publishing piece by piece exposes us to.

The Coiryn Riders were not invented for a specific tale. They were invented for their own sake as something that exists on Llurien, filling a role or need. When I’m assembling a cast or story idea, I include them if they can help me achieve my story goals. And when there’s no use for them, they don’t get a mention. I’m not tempted to include extraneous world building. I know I’m going to write many stories in my career and sooner or later I’ll show many facets of these horsemen, collectively painting both a broad and a detailed picture. Doing so arguably creates the greatest depth of all. And it prevents me from walloping my audience with a ton of unnecessary info at any given time.

When we create a world to tell a single story, we don’t have that option. We might be more tempted to ramble on about our world building. Or we don’t invent those things at all because we won’t be using them, which predisposes our world to lack depth. But we need to have a well-realized world (just not go too far), for the same reason we invent character backstory—it helps flesh out our depiction of the world, and helps our readers to understand it.