On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

[Moogle]

Originally Posted by Culhwch

Just a quick one... Does anyone have any suggestions for an alternate term I can use for 'witch hunter'?

Well if these witch hunters are "bad guys" one way to go would be to call them Inquisitors since it implies a sort of sinister nature when people think about what the word has meant in history.

Yet on the other hand, if you want to go a more creative route and make them "good guy" witch hunters, just throw a few unique words together. Call them Daemon Purifiers or something like that. A Thesaurus can help, but always check the definitions because I see far too many people who just throw in random synonyms to seem more intelligent regardless of whether the word fits creatively or not.

[Anthony G Williams]

Originally Posted by Lhinneill

I think there should be a balance between the plot, the setting, and the characters.

I agree. I would just add that the balance between the three elements will vary according to the story.

To give an example, my first novel (The Foresight War) is about an alternate WW2. The focus of the plot is on how the war might have run differently if the British and the Germans both had advice from the future. The characters (principally, time-travelling British and German historians from the present day) are really simply there to carry the plot, and I therefore spent little effort on developing them. Some reviewers have criticised that, others have said that it's appropriate for the story. OTOH my second novel (Scales) is all about an ordinary man who is mysteriously transformed into a part-alien. The focus is very strongly on him - his thoughts, ideas and opinions - and I wrote the book in the first person to emphasise that.

It's horses for courses

[Marvolo]

Originally Posted by Anthony G Williams

One of the characteristics of SF is that the setting and the plot can both be far more important than in most other types of fiction. That "sense of wonder", of having one's imagination stretched, is what pulled many readers (including me) into the genre in the first place.

A quote from Bob Shaw's book on writing science fiction (attributed to a friend of his): "Why should I turn to science fiction for character studies when I still haven't read all of Dostoevsky?"

Of course, there should be characterisation which is adequate for the purpose - but I have stopped reading, out of boredom, SF books which have devoted so much time to building up the personalities of the characters that the plot has ground to a halt.

The easy answer is because Dostoevsky never wrote about how a character might deal with living in extreme conditions in space. How might that character cope or what might that character do? The character studies you talk about are written mostly in the modern settings of the time. You shouldn't limit yourself, or your expectations of your favorite genre, because of the mistaken belief that sci-fi is more about setting than character. I want to read stories with deep characterization in detailed settings with a good story emerging from the relevance of the two.

That's just me though.

[lin robinson]

Just a quick one... Does anyone have any suggestions for an alternate term I can use for 'witch hunter'?

I think it would be good to avoid words we use, such as Inquisitors or Investigators or anything. It's worth putting some brain to stuff like this because it rings hard and often with the reader. Also the word you choose can end up coloring the way these guys think and operate...guiding you in creating them.

"Cleansers" came to my mind, then "Redeemers". Billy The Kid's posse/outlaws were called "Regulators", which I just loved. Something like Liberators can go good/bad, and be rather chilling.

I like the idea of usiing a thesaurus, but the trick is coming up for the words to search for synonyms of. I'd look for a word that goes to the heart of what they are doing vis a vis your plot... or something so left-handed and seemingly irrelevant that it's a statement in that way. Like Registrars or Corporeals or something.

[Flag Pole Sitta]

Originally Posted by Culhwch

Just a quick one... Does anyone have any suggestions for an alternate term I can use for 'witch hunter'?

Use a Latin translator! You can find them for free, and while they won't give you the most sophisticated translation you'll get a nice approximation of word that is unusual and probably unfamiliar but still resonates with readers, or for something really strange, try Finnish, they have about a million letters in them. (J.K. Rowling does this with her spells. Accio is just Latin for “to come”)

Taking my own advice: Venators

[Flag Pole Sitta]

Here's my question: I'm building together a "cursed" world where it is always cloudy. The clouds are not so dense that no light gets through, but some days are worse then others. This cursed state has only persisted for about 50 years. So, how well does the vegetation grow? Do I need to resort to magic to explain the continuing prescience of life? If it matters the technology level is slightly more advanced then modern day. (Yay nuclear fission!)

Also, as I'm a D&D dork I'm going to say that the Dungeon Master's Manuel has some good resources on world building.

[Culhwch]

Originally Posted by Flag Pole Sitta

Taking my own advice: Venators

I like that one. I had been using 'Inquistors', a play on 'inquisitors'. Will have to give it some more thought, I think.

[Flag Pole Sitta]

Originally Posted by Culhwch

I like that one. I had been using 'Inquistors', a play on 'inquisitors'. Will have to give it some more thought, I think.

Glad I could help ^.^

[lin robinson]

Here's my question: I'm building together a "cursed" world where it is always cloudy. The clouds are not so dense that no light gets through, but some days are worse then others.

Sounds like Seattle. Maybe it's a fungus place?

[Flag Pole Sitta]

Originally Posted by lin robinson

Sounds like Seattle. Maybe it's a fungus place?

I've never been to Seattle. What grows there?

[chrispenycate]

Trees, skyscrapers and mirosoft.
Fungi need to get nourishment from their substrate, much like animals; they'll only go on growing while there's organic matter to digest.
But there are several photosynthetic plants that grow in low light conditions (not total darkness, obviously) including plants that generally grow beneath the canopy of rain forests of coniferous woods; they grow slowly, and frequently have dark coloured leaves to grab the maximum of available energy. Ivy, african violet, things like that.
There are going to be mass extinctions, though.

And somebody who comes from Seattle told me the cloud cover does occasionally clear, so you can see they put some mountains at the back of it, just never while I've been visiting.

[lin robinson]

LOL

A friend of mine had his brother come to Seattle for an extended visit. (Perhaps "detox" would be a better word)
He'd been there three months when one day he walked onto the back porch and yelled, "What hell is THAT?"
The answer was, Mt. Rainier.


Fungi grows in caves, so...

[Peter Graham]

Hi FPS

Here's my question: I'm building together a "cursed" world where it is always cloudy. The clouds are not so dense that no light gets through, but some days are worse then others. This cursed state has only persisted for about 50 years. So, how well does the vegetation grow?

I suppose it depends. Assuming your world to be similar to our own in terms of eating habits/available food and further assuming that the climate changed quickly as a result of the curse, you would have had significant problems with famine.

Grain crops like wheat and barley cannot survive without sun. Too much moisture and they just flop and rot.

Beans and peas do a bit better, but without sun the yields will be fairly useless.

'Soft' crops like salad vegetables, soft fruits, squashes and cucumbers will rot. Plums will swell up with water and might even change colour but will remain as hard as nails.

Tubers will do OK with minimal sun, but they still need something other than wet. Rain actually causes potatoes to swell up really nicely, but without enough sun and warmth to stimulate growth from seed stock, you're going to have real problems. If the ground is continually waterlogged, tubers will go over and rot very quickly.

Cattle crops like kale or beet will, at best, give poor yields and will be of low nutritional value. Pasture will be waterlogged and turn to mud under the hooves of animals. The animals themselves will eventually chill, or get foot rot. Sheep need virtually no encouragement to die at the best of times and cattle are not built to withstand permanent wet. What little hay that can be cut will never be dry enough to be stored. Any attempts to rick wet hay causes fernmentation and exciting fires.

Your biggest problem is bees. Bees will not fly in wet conditions. If bees aren't flying and bringing in nectar and pollen, bee colonies will die within a season. If bee colonies die, you have no pollinating insects. No pollinating insects causes a large-scale collapse of whatever organic food production remains.

Do I need to resort to magic to explain the continuing prescience of life? If it matters the technology level is slightly more advanced then modern day. (Yay nuclear fission!)

Magic or (depending on technology levels) a massive system of hydroponics and polytunnels, supported by intensive indoor rearing of meat and dairy animals. You'd be totally reliant on artificial feed supplements and cocktails of chemicals. After a couple of years, the people eating this junk would be sprouting second heads and tentacles!

Regards,

Peter.

[pyan]

What's wrong with tentacles?

How about the old Yeast Vat solution? Grow the yeast, autolyse it, flavour it and mould it into familiar shapes.
High food value, and you don't need sunlight.....

Eurasyp - Autolysed Yeast

[Lith]

I live in a world of near-perpetual cloud cover (Yay for the Pacific NW!). Grass grows pretty well. Typical farm crops, not so well (though we do have something of a summer). You could grow lettuce, but the best resort for your people would be to suddenly switch to meat and fish (if you happen to count the two separately). You'd have some serious problems with the sudden climate change, but I imagine after five or ten years it would find a balance. The animals would eat the grass, and the people would eat the animals. Your population would probably be cut back drastically.

But once it finds that equilibrium, you'd be okay. The Indians in this part of the country were reputedly better off than in most of North America because of the steady food source.

Of course, it also depends on just how wet things are. We get about 100 inches of rain a year along the coast.