[Malloriel]

Originally Posted by Malloriel

What you're saying here is that that Scathae are a natural part of your world and wish to establish that fact for the reader, yet at the same time you feel that the reader would find it too alien to simply accept as you've dictated your populace does. This is where you find your own conflict, because your desires and your views do not coincide.

Originally Posted by Spectrum

I'm sorry, what?

To make my explanation make sense I've quoted myself. What you tell us is that the Scathae are a natural part of the world you've created, but the way you see them yourself is so different from what IS normal that you're afraid people won't accept them as being as common as you've written them to be. If you can't accept them yourself as being common, everyday, average, normal pieces of your world then how can the reader? Because that's what you'll share in your writing, the way you perceive them. The longer you think of them as being alien and different, the harder it may become to express the way you want them to be seen. Follow?

Originally Posted by Spectrum

MAY-en-in?

Indeed, perfect emphasis and everything. It's not the spelling I prefer aesthetically, but it is the way I've pronounced it since the beginning. --Smiles-- At least I know THAT word will come across well.

Originally Posted by Spectrum

So... give detailed descriptions of the context and let the reader figure it out?

Yes... I see the merit in that. Thanks.

Absolutely. Here's what I've learned since being on the forum, and analysing more in depth those books of this genre I really enjoy, and that is; often if you're going to write from the third person (as I do), you're telling the story from their perspective with only the knowledge they have, which means you're also expressing their point of view on any given object, person, place, or species. What this really means is even if you see a particular place, say a palace, as being grand and majestic and absolutely spectacular, if you're telling the story from the perspective of an adult who has live there his whole life, the sense of wonder won't be in him as it would for a traveler seeing it for the first time. It's a part of the local's everyday experience and usually not worth much notice, but to a traveler, this could be the most beautiful thing he's ever seen in his life, taking his breath away, making him forget to move, filling him with poetry he can't even begin to know how to write because words just seem too shallow to capture what it is he's seeing. And if THAT is the sense you want your readers to have, you may need to consider a whole new character to introduce. Perspective is what it's all about, so in this case, since you've got a race that's as common as humans, pretend that you're there in that world and write about them as if they ARE humans. We know humans exist and accept that without question. As long as you give hints through the context as to what we should expect from them and then not change up the rules randomly later, we'll take just about anything you give us.

Originally Posted by Spectrum

I'm impressed at how you (apparently) pulled this entire scene out of thin air. (Also, you look like you've been reading Wheel of Time, with all the references to the "war between the sexes". :P)

I did, in fact make it up on the spot. ^_^ I thought it would work best using a name you'd already given to make it more tailored, and I felt the situation helped to explain what a dax and sphyle were without sitting down and saying "Now, within the Scathae there are males and females just like there are with humans, but they're called dax and sphyle instead." You shouldn't even have a character with an inner dialog like that (which was a major part of the above point too), because a lot of times you can use inner dialog and perspective to give information without infodumping, but you're limited to what the person knows and feels, so someone who knows how a lamp works isn't going to look at one and in his head explain why it works, even if it's technically a mystical object. Now if it's a mystical object that only a few people have, the character being one of the few, and knows how it works, might pause a moment to think on the mechanics, but not if lamps themselves are also common.

And yes, I have read most of WoT, but I don't actually like how there's such a separation between the sexes, the women always angry with the men BECAUSE they're MEN, and the men writing of the women because they're WOMEN. That sort of view always kind of annoyed me, but for the purposes of getting the gender thing across, I think it works really well.