Plumbing the Cultural Depths

As writers, we play God (or Goddess, as it were). It's in the job description. We play God(dess) and, if we want to write a good story, we often have to flex our divine muscles to change probability to something a little more interesting. In speculative fiction in particular, we're divine--we have created a world.

Hot damn.

But, there's something worth remembering amidst all of that worldbuilding we lovingly do: you have to follow every thread out to the very end, at least as it applies to the elements you're dealing with in your book.

I'll give you a recent example form my own work. I'm currently worldbuilding (mostly culture building, at this point). The culture is designed to deter prejudice and dishonesty: everyone wears full body veils, covering everything but the eyes, and rings that signify socioeconomic standing, profession, marriage status, and number of children. You can't lift the veil in public.

Here's the issue: I'm writing a very strong romance thread in this book. So I had to go in up to my elbows and figure out a new system for public displays of affection. Then I cam to the realization that I had no way for unmarried couples to eat or drink in public, since they would have to lift the veil off of their face and risk showing themselves. So I had to design new chairs.

These were all issues that came up because of one relationship. Between two characters. Lord only knows what else I'll find before I get to the writing stage.

When you write a totally invented culture, it's necessary to think it all the way through. Even the smallest difference between their culture and ours can cause huge ripples, and you don't want to ignore them. Somewhere along the way, someone will go to the fridge and, while looking for a beer, figure out that something in your book doesn't make sense. Okay, maybe it's not a sure thing, but are you willing to take the risk?

Embedding myself in culture,
Voss

Modifying the Standard

Classic image of Hell: fire and brimstone.
Classic image of a dragon: great, bloody, flying, fire-breathing lizard.
Classic image of high elves: noble, slender, beautiful, ancient humanoids.
Classic portrayal of magic: muttering magic words and *bam* magic.

I could go on. These are all wonderful—especially as fallbacks, little minor things to fill in at the spur of the moment, since they require no real explanation—but boring. If something classic is going to figure into your work, change it up a little. I once read an interview with Masashi Kishimoto (the writer and artist for Naruto) on how he came up with the world. He just said (I'm paraphrasing) that most of what he came up with was him just trying to break the norm. Ninja? Put him in an orange track suit. Magic? Screw magic words, they're just going to make pretty symbols with their hands.

Guess what? It worked! Huge, multi-national franchise from a blonde, orange ninja that makes shadow puppets (I love Naruto, don't get me wrong on that point. The world-building is breathtaking, to say the least.)!

So, why not have some fun and change it up? It's one of my favorite exercises. Take a basic idea like dragons and see where you can go. Sure, fire-breathing is awesome, but take a look at Douglas Niles' drackans from the Watershed Trilogy. They breathe a fog that knocks out their prey...until they taste darkblood. Then it turns into a scorching blast of steam. They have a carapace over their wings that breaks open after puberty. They have a color war between brown and green. I love them.

Dwarves don't always have to dig tunnels and have excess body hair. Who says there can't be comely, dwarves? Who says elves have to be gorgeous, or shoot arrows? Why can't an elf, just once, shoot a sub-machine gun, or be a heroin addict?

The best wizard I've seen wasn't just kooky and wise—he was just insane, rambling, and had no bloody idea what he was talking about.

We all know the normal things, but they've been done to death, revived, and killed again at this point. Yes, you are going to get crap from people for messing with the 'official' lore. Stephenie Meyer did, and she has one of the best vampire mythos I've read. But, you can also root into the foundation much better with something different—I bring you to Meyer again. In today's age, vampires sparkle and are very, very pretty.

So, take a chance and have some fun. Screw the norm, just do what you want to do—if you prefer that your dragons live underwater and knit sweaters for the fish, make it work.

Now go, frolic with your imagination,
Voss

Gay in YA? Preposterous

I'm a twenty year-old gay man. I have no qualms about that. If you do, then you have every right to leave and never come back. It's a free country and I'm not holding a gun to your head, so I would away now if that is offensive to you:

This post is about the portrayal of gay characters in Young Adult fiction.

If you've been here for a while, you might remember my post about GLBTQ characters in fantasy and sci-fi (The link to said post is here.). I read through my older blog posts the other day, as I tend to do on occasion, and came across it.

Before I continue with this, I have a personal anecdote to share with you all.

I knew I was interested in boys at the beginning of seventh grade. I won't go into too much detail (I don't really want to have to put an adult content warning on my blog for this one post), but I was interested. I came out in eighth grade.

As bisexual.

The modern culture, advanced as we are, accepting as we are, open as we are, left me feeling as though there was a gap in me because I was gay, a gap so deep and jagged that I convinced myself that I was maybe still interested in women for a while. Finally, thankfully, I figured it out by my sophomore year in high school--gay and fecking proud of it.

When I look back, even with only a few years of perspective on the subject, I can't help but notice something that, as an avid reader, I should have noticed in middle school or high school: in all of the YA books I read (and there were a lot), not one character was anything but straight.

The books I grew up reading preached heteronormality, whether they were meant to or not. I admit I noticed it once, in ninth grade, talking about Harry Potter--I thought it very unlikely (and still do) that none of the hundreds of students in Hogwarts were LGBTQ--but I passed it off back then as nothing.

When I sat down today, I was going to write an appeal to the masses to write, read, and generally support LGBTQ characters in YA fiction. Being an intelligent person (at least I like to think I am), I thought it my duty to check something online first--it was very possible that I simply had not read any YA fiction with LGBTQ characters in it. I did a quick search for "gay characters in YA fiction".

I was appalled. Two sites I found on the first page had a non-negative view of using LGBTQ characters in Young Adult books. The others were either against it, or saying that somebody else was against it. I clicked on a link from Genreville, I site I trust to have high quality and intelligent fare. I continued to be appalled. This is the article I found. I encourage you to read it before continuing.

It enraged me to think that an agent--someone we are supposed to trust as a knowledgeable, cosmopolitan individual--would flat out say that they could publish their book, but only if they changed the gay character.

The article pretty much makes every point I wanted to make when I read it. The most important? LGBTQ youths need (not want, need) to see characters like them in their fiction, the fiction specifically geared to help them through the developmental years.

I can't say if this is the fault of a market unwilling to progress or take risks, the fault of outdated Puritanical values that should have been abandoned when we decided that not all women were evil and damned to Hell, the fault of parents so attached to the heteronormative "ideal" that they would refuse to buy such books, the fault of authors for not writing them out of fear or said heteronormative ideals, or a combination of all of these things.

What can I say, then?

This is a problem in our society that requires attention--and not next year, next month, next week, or even tomorrow. We have centuries of time to make up on this front. It stands to reason we need to start now, if not sooner.

What can we do? We, the writers, can write LGBTQ characters as they are and throw them into the lion's den along with all of our straight characters.

We, the publishers, can do our best to remain open to LGBTQ characters and judge the book on its merit rather than two boys kissing.

We, the readers, have the most power here, believe it or not. Publishers want to keep us happy, to give us what we want to read. Tell them what we want, what you want, what the LGBTQ youths need.

All it takes is one foot in the door--from there, with all of us pushing, we can get this in, get it recognized, and make it, as it always should have been, acceptable.

Right.

Safe.

Voss