Am I holding back from what the story demands?

You've seen it in your own reading. The story conflict is progressing, and you think it's going to lead you to a really incredible, horrifying, mind-blowing place... and then it never goes there. The scene cuts when you don't want it to and suddenly you're in a different point of view on the outside looking in; or the climax you were expecting turns into something else, which will necessarily be an anti-climax because of the amazing thing you thought you were going to see.

So how do you recognize it - and avoid it - when it happens in your own writing?

There are two ways to approach this: from the personal direction, and from the story direction. From the personal direction, you need to take a look at yourself and identify your own areas of sensitivity - those areas where you're most likely to hold back. For me the main areas are death, sex, and violence. Probably no big surprise. Because I'm very sensitive about those things, it can make them very effective in a story when I use them properly, because the intensity of my reaction to them will come through in the writing. However, my sensitivity means that I'm not the best judge of when I have gone too far, or when I haven't gone far enough.

So, having identified the areas that I need to look out for, I then take a look at the story and try to determine what the story demands. A lot of my sense of this develops while I am writing, and my instincts to follow the principles of the society I'm working with, or the conflict that I'm developing, will take me up to the edge of a sensitive issue - and drop me there wondering what to do next. A big scene of violence isn't something I can just write and plop into my story. It's unnecessary, and gratuitous. But if I'm digging in deep, following the characters, their psychology and their motivations in the context of the restrictions that society puts on them, I can arrive at a point where such a scene grows naturally into the story, and indeed, is demanded by the story so that the feeling of anticlimax doesn't result.

I'm at a point like this right now in For Love, For Power, which is why I'm writing about it.

My story says, "write a scene where Nekantor's gang roughs up prostitutes in a brothel that caters to the noble caste." My admittedly prudish mind says, "eek!"

This is where I go to the next suggestion: get an outside judge. If you can, find someone who is an ideal reader for the piece you're putting together, who knows the vibe of your story and can understand where it's going on its own terms (and not the ones in your head). Again if you can, try to talk it out with them and gauge what level you want to set the scene to - before you've actually attempted to write it.

In my case, I went to Janice Hardy, because she gets this book (and has from the very first partial draft). She pointed out to me a couple of things that are working in my favor: 1. Nekantor is the antagonist, and 2. he doesn't see the world the way I would see it. I think I can use those things to make sure that the moral compass of the story isn't lost when we come into this section, and do a better job of striking it just right. It's not only what happens in the scene that's important, but how the context surrounding it, and the judgments surrounding it, cause it to resonate with the whole.

Of course, I could just try writing something, and wait for the critique stage, for someone to say, "why didn't so-and-so do this?" or "that scene wasn't what I was hoping for." However, I have a terribly hard time hazarding a guess at a scene. I prefer to approach this issue earlier in the process, because my first drafts tend to lose cohesion if I don't work things like this out in advance.

I don't know about you, but I find that the stories I create grow quickly beyond what I expected when I designed them. It's in the nature of the stories. Working in science fiction and fantasy allows a writer to set up principles on an abstract or idealistic level, and then grow them into a world where they can be operationalized on the ground. So how strong are these principles, and how broadly generalized across the culture? That's a question to ask yourself in worldbuilding, as you move toward making the story happen. Once you've decided how far the principles go, however, I think you shouldn't be afraid to discover where they lead you. If you get there and feel unsure, as I often do, ask for outside judgments. When you find exactly the pitch, tone, and approach to make the scene work - and not just work, but sparkle - it will be worth it.

Bathing in Japan

I remember before I actually went to Japan, I'd always kind of known that Japanese families bathed together. And given my cultural background (and ignorance) I'd figured that was like what I did when I was really little, having baths with my mom. This is not how it works.

Let me start by saying there's a really terrific reason for taking baths in Japan, as opposed to showers. They don't tend to have central heating in their homes. This means that when I was living with my first host family, I had days when I woke up in the morning with my nose hurting from being so cold; once I checked with a thermometer and discovered it was 3 degrees C in my bedroom. Unfortunately, this was also the period when I didn't feel comfortable with the Japanese way of bathing, and I froze myself silly by trying to take showers. After I moved in with a family that took time to explain things and be friendly, I was sane and used the bath.

Every house or apartment I've visited in Japan, no matter how small, has had a bathroom. The traditional Japanese bathroom is all tiled (or at least water-friendly) and has water sources on the walls outside the bath itself. The bather goes in, washes head to toe in the bathroom, rinses off, and then at the very end steps into the bathwater, which is mostly for relaxing and warming up. It makes more sense (at least to me) for people to share the same bathwater when they're each getting clean first.

Some tubs have ways of keeping the water warm, and some don't. All the tubs are deep, though, because they're made for soaking, often up to the neck. I think the funniest thing that ever happened to us when my husband and I lived in Japan was that we each used the old-style bath belonging to some friends who lived on a tiny island off the north coast of Honshu. I was shocked to discover that the longer I sat, the hotter it seemed to get. I had no idea what to make of this, so I took a very quick bath; then my husband discovered the same thing. When we asked what was going on we were told that there was a real fire burning underneath the bathtub! Now I know what a lobster feels like... To make this particular bath pleasant you had to keep pouring in loads of cold water. Little did we know.

Then there are the public baths. These are mostly divided into men's and women's, but are not always. (In some natural hot springs you can even bathe with monkeys - now there's inclusiveness.) Many people will take a washcloth into the tub with them, to cover up critical areas, but in general I haven't noticed a great deal of embarrassment among the people who bathe together in this context. People can in fact be very friendly. I was adopted once by a group of elderly ladies who decided that as a foreigner I must not know how Japanese baths were supposed to work, and took it upon themselves to teach me. Because they were sweet and solicitous, I let them teach me even though I'd been through the directions a few times by then.

There is in fact some degree of modesty in the public bath context, but the taboo isn't about being naked. It's about having someone else see you get undressed. Outside the common bath area there are generally curtained stalls for the undressing part.

I decided to talk about this today partly because I found it culturally interesting, but also because I think it shows the degree of cultural difference that is possible surrounding a single activity. You see architectural differences in the bathroom; different shaped tubs; different ways of heating water; a separation of the function of the bathroom (washing) and the bath (soaking); different rules of behavior including gender separation, context for modesty, etc. This doesn't even include the rules about who gets to go first/next/last in the family bathtub.

So if you're working with an alien or fantasy culture, try putting some thought into the various details of activities in your newly created context. Including a "bath scene," or a scene that shows another common daily activity in detail, gives you a terrific opportunity to deepen the culture you're sharing with the reader.

Politics, Religion, and Pets

My friend Ann Wilkes was telling me recently that she never blogs about three topics if she can help it: politics, religion, and pets. I agreed with her, and then realized when you're doing a blog like this one, the topics are fair game - the only trick is not to localize them. So today for fun I'm going to share a couple of my thoughts on politics, religion, and pets (thanks, Ann!).

Politics:
Why are there so many dictatorships in SF/F? Maybe it has to do with the prevalence of medieval cultural models. I'm certainly not immune - I've come up with some of these types of societies. But the ones I think are more interesting are ones where the authors have really delved into what a monarchy means and how it influences society, or ones where monarchy is only one of the options in the world. I like Jacqueline Carey's fantasy Europe, for example, because she maintains differences in governments that parallel the those of the nations she's fantasizing. And of course I like Ursula LeGuin's approach. The Left Hand of Darkness has two major models, one a monarchy and the other a "commensality" that feels a lot like a communist state. In her Earthsea books she has multiple different types of governments depending on their location in the archipelago. If you're designing a society yourself, I encourage you to ask yourself why the rich are rich, and how they get their money. There are a lot more options out there than one.

Religion:
I usually think of religion in created worlds as a tool. A really, really useful one too. It helps you figure out how people swear (or not). It helps you figure out what kind of activities are taboo. It also helps to link people with their local climate and means of feeding themselves. Even more importantly, I think, it helps you figure out some really basic metaphors that people use to understand their world - because religion is full of symbols. Unity. Duality. Trinity. Multiplicity - it all depends on where you look. You can have a group of gods who bicker like family. Or two groups of warring gods. Or an omnipotent God who is tyrannical, or one who is merciful, and that difference will completely change how his/her/its followers think. Does life end with going to heaven? What do you have to do to get there? Are you looking forward to being sacrificed on the altar? My friend Aliette de Bodard had a great moment in one of her pieces where a person headed off to be sacrificed (rather gruesomely, I might add) was impatient with the protagonists for blocking his way. That is one of the kinds of moments that you always remember. Be it fantasy or science fiction, the more people act in accordance with their localized world view, the more I love it.

Pets:
I actually had a funny moment recently where I had to figure out if members of an alien society I was designing kept pets. The part that made it hard was, these guys are carnivores. I thought at first, why would they keep pets and not eat them? But on the other hand, they're social creatures; they might well keep pets to combat loneliness, for example. People do keep pet rabbits even in places where they are regularly eaten. So the final result was, I decided that some of them might keep pets.

Then there was yesterday, when my kids got their National Geographic Kids magazine and we were reading snippets about amazing cats (part of their Halloween themed issue). My daughter loved it, and so did my son - different cats, for different reasons. Animals are so much a part of our consciousness, even if they're not a part of our daily lives, that the first words we learn in children's books are things like "cow," "horse," "bear," "lion," etc. The list goes on and on, though we may never see these creatures in the wild in our entire lives. What, then, would be the significance of animals to a fantasy or alien group? What kind of behavior would be associated with each? Would fantasy people automatically say that foxes are crafty and snakes loathsome and sneaky, just as we do? I'm not sure.

It's something to think about.

Swearing (dash it all!)

This topic came to me thanks to K. Richardson, whom I encountered on the forum at the Critters critique website. Many of you probably know it, but if you don't, and you're seeking critique for works of science fiction, fantasy, or horror, it's a great place to start. The question K. had was how to get her aliens to swear without using swear words from our own world, yet not have the substituted words sound silly.

I would start by asking, "what is swearing for?" Here are some of its purposes in our world:

1. to express emotion in moments of extreme stress or pain
2. to express dissatisfaction (a less extreme version of #1, I think)
3. to give evidence that one is telling the truth ("I swear by the sword of my father, Domingo Montoya")
4. to get attention (over a wide range - everything from making a word stand out to emotionally injuring someone)
5. to express alignment with particular social groups

Here's an example of how a difference in degree on #4 can cause trouble cross-culturally. I come from a cultural group in which the form of swearing I'd call "ugly words" is used to get attention and injure people emotionally. My husband comes from one where the same words are used to draw attention and even give a certain spice of fun to what is said. So when we first met, and before I figured out the difference, I'd be regularly appalled at what was coming out of the mouth of this otherwise entirely nice (and very interesting) guy.

If you're creating an alien society, you can always go with a model that has your aliens using swearing for similar purposes - but of course, the parameter is available to be played with, so there's no need to hold back!

Next, I'd ask about content. Different cultures use different kinds of swearing content, but these can include religious references, scatological or sexual references, ridicule of others by comparison with animals, etc. Some swear words (like the old fashioned "zounds!") are derived from religious sources but have been euphemized (in this case from the expression, "God's wounds!") to avoid blasphemy.

So back to the aliens. Religion-based swearing is going to depend on what their religion is, whether it has the good vs. evil dichotomy, and how their cosmology works. From the point of view of the hypothetical Gegogian, what would be a fate worse than death? And under what circumstances might someone wish it on someone else? If you're looking for ugly words, then what do these people consider ugly? Are sexual body parts considered taboo in the society, and would they be used for expletive purposes? If someone wants to swear truthfulness, what object or concept do they value so highly that they would not want to sully it by lying under oath?

If you're going to pepper your dialogue with swear words or phrases the way we do in English, it's good to keep them short. But if you want to expand the cultural role of swearing and turn it into a lengthy trash-talking contest, then by all means elaborate them. Personally I would hope such a contest would be relevant to the main conflict of a story, though, and not just there for pyrotechnics!

Tonight I don't have a lot of examples on hand from established fiction - I welcome comments, so tell me if you thought swearing was handled well, or in a funny way, or in a less than optimal way, in any of the books you've read. In my own writing I have one culture where they use wordless sounds for extreme emotion, and insult people by talking about their undesirable physical behaviors. I have another where people are expected to swear by one of a family of deities, and which one to use depends on how the situation aligns with the personality and job of the deity in question.

Exploring swearing and its cultural underpinnings is a great way to give spice and dimension to a world.

A taste of taboo

I think of taboos generally as zones of discomfort. There are lots of them, and they vary depending on the culture. I mentioned them in my earlier post on humor, because a lot of humor centers around taboo borderlines of various kinds, including (but certainly not restricted to) body parts, bodily functions, illness and death, race, religion - the list goes on and on. I think the movie that was the most bipolar ever for me was Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, exactly because it took aim at so many body taboo borderlines. Thus, when I liked the jokes, I loved them - and when I didn't love them, I was appalled by them (stomach upset has never been something funny for me!).

Monty Python's parrot sketch played with death, but managed to avoid any of the gross-out aspects of the topic and instead played with euphemisms. I love euphemisms, so I guess it's no surprise that the line "If he hadn't been nailed to the perch he would be pushing up the daisies!" had me incapacitated with giggles. People think of lots of ways to talk around taboo subjects, and as time passes, they continue to have to find more, because the association of any given euphemism with a taboo topic effectively contaminates it over time. Think of the number of different names that have been given to toilets and the rooms in which they reside. Or think of the number of different names that have been given to former slave and immigrant peoples of the USA, which have then been tossed out and replaced with others as they were judged too derogatory.

When I was living in Japan with my husband a movie came out that portrayed the final days of someone with a terminal condition. The odd thing about this movie for us was that it was a comedy, and one of the main jokes was the fact that the guy was dying and his family couldn't tell him. I'll admit I was a little shocked by this. However, when we asked our friends we learned that in Japan, doctors will not tell patients that they are dying because it would be too upsetting; instead they tell the family so that they will be able to prepare. This is something that makes my gut go "no!" but from an anthropological point of view I can see how it would make sense culturally.

Taboos can result in a lot of cultural self-restriction. The area of technology leaps to mind, where the ethics of cloning and stem cell research play such a large role in determining where money goes, and thus where the technology goes next. Religious restrictions can have a deep influence in many areas of a culture - in Islamic art, for example, where the depiction of living beings (particularly humans) has been historically discouraged as blasphemous.

Taboo is rich territory for world and culture building. The planet of Garini in my story "Let the Word Take Me" had a religious taboo on the use of language. Many religions restrict the utterance of particular phrases or names, but in the Garini case the taboo applied to any free use of the language. Check out the July/August 2008 Analog magazine if you want to see how it worked; I don't want to give too many spoilers here. Frank Herbert (Dune) does a brilliant job of culture building with Arrakis and the treatment of water there, building in taboos on wastage that are treated with respect or disrespect by different power groups. Ursula LeGuin does some fascinating work with taboo in The Left Hand of Darkness when she creates a race of ambi-gendered humans (no time here to explain the exact details; go read it if you haven't) and builds folktales for them which elaborate on the kinds of taboos they might have, including for example incest and childbearing.

I encourage writers to think about the taboos of the cultures they create, because this can be a great way to give a culture extra dimension, to link its social groups in principled ways and to make it feel grounded in a physical environment.