But Why is Their Blood RED?

So, over the weekend I got to see the movie Avatar for the first time. Shiny, SHINY premise, oh my squee how I love it. Whee! Really, overall it was a great (is slightly long) film - but although I would say I love it, there were still a few things about it that bugged me.

One of which, surprisingly, was not 'unobtainium' - for two reasons. Firstly, because I am an English Lit major/teacher and thus came up with a spiffy, thematic reason why it was called 'unobtainium' and all that that was symbolic of; and secondly, because a friend who watched the film with me sent me this link the day afterwards O:) :D Always nice to know people are smarter than I had assumed.

Image from IMDb

No, the unobtainium I could live with. One of the things that really bugged me was this: In a presumably low-oxygen environment (presumed since the humans need to wear oxygen masks in Pandora's atmosphere), the blood of the Na'vi people is red. RED, PEOPLE! Basic biology 101, in case you missed it in school: blood is red when it is rich in oxygen, because the hemoglobins change their structure when exposed to said oxygen etc etc, read all about it. But the key point is that unless the Na'vi conveniently have blood made from other substances that conveniently turn red when exposed to their atmosphere, their blood shouldn't be red.

Convenient.

But.

You see, the reason I had to watch Avatar on the weekend was because my sister is studying Science Communication, and after viewing the film the six-ish of us she'd invited over participated in a lead discussion about science in the film, and the portrayal thereof. And a really interesting and important point came up. It's called uncanny valley, a term coined by Japanese researchers to describe the way we react to things that are almost-but-so-subtlely-not human.

I can't recall why the idea came up, but it did, and of course I put my writer's hat on and mentioned that this is an issue for all authors who try to write stories of the Other; writing about the Other (in whatever guise) is hard, because while you have to make the characters genuinely Other and not just humans in Other skins, you also have to make sure that your human readers have something to connect with. Your Others still need to have human emotions and experiences in order for your readers to sympathise, so you need to make them like humans - but not so like humans that you lead your readers into uncanny valley, nor so human that they are no longer Other except in appearance.

How does this related to red blood, I hear you ask? Well, maybe not, since on the whole people who read writing blogs are pretty smart, so you've probably already figured it out. ANYway.

The Na'vi are Other. They're humanoid, but they have a distinct (and very awesome) culture and a distinct language, and they process and think about the world in ways that are recognisably non-human.* However, they have emotions and reactions that we would expect from humans, and they are eminently sympathetic. So far, so good. No uncanny valley, no humans in alien skins.

Back to the blood. As one friend who watched the film with me pointed out in the course of the discussion, the reason behind the red blood could be really simple: rather than a mistake of omission on the part of the producers, not thinking through their science correctly, it could simply be an attempt to humanise the Na'vi in order to further our sympathies. After all, as my friend said, if they didn't bleed red, we might just wonder why they had grape goo on their faces. :D

So I guess the question is in the end, where is the line? How far do you go to try to make your non-human creatures sympathetic? Is it okay to defy logic if it really will help the general audiences of your story (who I doubt would have even considered the blood, since no one else in the room when I watched it did, and I had a biology/science communication major and a physicist amongst others in there with me) sympathise with your characters?

Facts, or a sympathetic connection?

Personally, I think I still would have prefered non-red blood. But I get that I'm in the minority of even noticing that. So what about you? Does this kind of thing bother you at all??


*Although why they have only four limbs when EVERY OTHER TERRESTRIAL CREATURE ON THE PLANET has six, I couldn't tell you.

Climate: Temperatures and Precipitation

Read the previous post in the map-building series: And Then It Exploded.

So, a while ago I started the map-building series as a backlash against All Those Authors that get it Wrong, and as an attempt to prevent that happening in the future. I've talked about the very fundamental stuff - the underlying structure of the world, the fun you can have with hotspots and volcanos - and have developed a few rules to keep you on the right track:

- Lesson #0 in Map-Building: Always have a reason.
- Lesson #1 in Map Building: The mountains are where things crash together. So are the volancos and the earthquakes.
- Lesson #2 in Map Building: You need to have a reason for where you put things on your map. But you can pretty much invent a reason for anything.


Today, we're going to move on to above-surface stuff, and look at the basics of climate. Two things form the fundamental basis of all climate: temperature, and precipitation. You can get hot dry climates (like deserts), hot wet climates (like rainforests), warm dry, warm wet, temperate regions that have four distinct seasons and varying rainfall in each, cold wet climates, cold dry climates, climates that are prone to snow and forms of precipitation other than plain rain.

Your plain average rain, however, isn't really plain or average. It can be pure or acidic to various degrees, it can be cold rain or warm rain, come in torrential downpours or gently soaking drizzle. Acidic rain is found in areas of high pollution or places downwind from high-pollution areas; pure rain is often found in low population density areas, but not always, because these places can be receiving pollution from other areas. Torrential rain is most usually found in the tropics; hurricanes need the right mix of airflow and water; thunderstorms need a cold front meeting a bank of warm air; drizzle often accompanies lower temperatures; and so the list goes on.


You can get so caught up in the fascinating minutia of weather - well, at least, I could - that you forget your story is actually supposed to ever be anything more than an excuse to build a really spiffy, perfectly logical world. I don't recommend this.

The amount of worldbuilding you DO want to do is up to you, but remember:

1) More worldbuilding makes your world seem more real.

2) Most of your worldbuilding won't make it directly into your novel, so it can be a waste of time.

and most importantly,

3) ALL worldbuilding should serve one aim: to increase conflict in your story. If you can't think of a way for it to increase conflict, you're pretty much wasting your time.

I mean, sure, it's important to know what kind of clothes your MC wears, and whether or not their society could actually legitimately make silk stockings - but this all matters a lot more to your reader if it's in some way related to the conflict, like your MC needs to masquerade as an aristocrat from another country only can't get her hands on the kind of stockings they wear, or something. Be creative. Make it matter.

And so to round off on climates: Do know your climate, because it will affect how your people live. More on that later. But don't feel you need to obsess. Most climates exist in most regions of the world, with the exception being the poles and the equator. Mountain ranges or lack thereof, ocean currents and whether they are hot or cold, costalness or continentality, prevailing winds - these are the four key things that will determine your climate. But really, weather is so complicated that even now we can't accurately predict it more than about four days out. So you know. As long as your climate is within the bounds of plausibility, most readers won't try to kill you for them.

With one exception. Please, please, please, don't try to make your poles hot and your equator cold for no reason better than 'to be different'. This will result in you being hunted down and smacked over the head with some basic physics.

Why?

Because the poles are, by the very nature of a ROUND planet, further away from the sun. The equator is closest. Ergo, unless you have some sort of fancy magic field that reverses the effect of the sun, your poles will be colder and your equator hotter.

And, for the love of peace, please have a round planet unless you're writing fantasy and have a deliberate reason for not making it so (and making it, say, a Disc carried by elephants on the back of a turtle). Gravity + spinning = round world.

Note also that it's the TILT of the earth's axis that gives us seasons; straight axis, no seasons. Bear that in mind when designing both round planets and especially non-round planets. If you're not round and/or you have no tilt, will you have seasons, or will your climates be stable?

Lesson #3 in Map Building: In the middle, things are grey and you can do what you like. At the edges, things have a reason. Don't mess with this, unless you have a very good reason.

Tune in next time for more on humanity's favourite liquid: water!

And Then It Exploded.

Read the previous post in the map building series: Where did all the mountains go?

I mentioned volcanos very briefly in the last post in this series in talking about where mountains are usually formed. Often, the volcanos appear where one plate is sliding under another, forcing the upper plate even up-er, and providing a weak spot for all that yummy magma and lava to come spewing out. Yay, fire and destruction!

But there is a second way for volcanos to appear, and since it isn't on a plate boundary, it's kind of a neat writerly world building trick that's almost as good as a deus ex machina for getting a volcano and/or string of islands wherever and whenever you want them.

Raise your hand if you've heard of Hawaii. Good. Now keep your hand up if you think you could point to it on a map. Keep your hand up if you think you could point to it on THIS map (you can find it if you click on the image to make it bigger).

Found it yet? Okay. Question. Is it on a plate boundary?

Hopefully, we agree on the location of Hawaii, and you've said no. Excellent. So, Hawaii is a chain of islands with both active(ish) and extinct volcanos - and it's in the middle of nowhere, not actually near a plate boundary. How does this happen?

One word: Hot spots.

Randomly, some places of the plate will be thinner than others, allowing the magma to break through to the surface even though there's no plate boundary in sight. This is called a hot spot. If the hot spot is under land (less likely, since the land plate is thicker than oceanic plate), you'll get a regular volcano; if it's underwater, you'll either get an underwater volcano, or if its strong enough, a volcanic island.

But here's the thing: the plates are moving, right? And some times, the hot spot isn't caused just by the thinner crust; it's also mysteriously caused by a literal 'hot spot' in the magma underneath. So when the plate moves on, rolling its way from one boundary to another, the hot spot stays behind - and a new volcano appears.

Rinse and repeat, and you get a lovely chain of volcanos/islands, each of which will become extinct as it moves away from the hot spot and a new volcano erupts behind it. So,

Lesson #2 in Map Building: You need to have a reason for where you put things on your map. But you can pretty much invent a reason for anything.

Doncha just love how rules in writing are made to be broken? :D

Where Did All The Mountains Go?

Read the introduction to the Map Building Series.


To really understand how and why things work, it's usually a pretty good idea to strip things back to their most basic level and build your way up from there. Maps are no different, if you want to get really serious. The world works in layers, and really good maps that Work will be designed around the same principles. If you want to go the full hog and draw all your layers (and drawing skills aren't necessary, I promise), tracing paper is the medium of choice, because it allows you to stack all your layers on top of each other and see the whole depth of the map at once.

So, if you're going to start at the very beginning (which we all know is a very good place to start O:)), where exactly is that? Not, alack, with a-b-c, or even do-re-me; rather, with transform, convergent and divergent.

Which are what? Plates, of course! Not the dinner kind, but the continental kind.

Modern science posits that the entire crust (outer surface) of the Earth is not one solid shell, but actually a whole bunch of bits of shell (plates) all forming a patchworky kind of crust. And because the centre of the Earth is full of molten rock, and molten rock is hot, and hot stuff tends to want to rise, creating convection currents as it reaches the highest point it can go and then bounces along at the top for a while getting cooler before it sinks again*, these plates move. In fact, if you were to record the Earth from outer space for a significant while and then hit fast forward, the plates fairly zoom around the surface of the world.

So where do transform, convergent and divergent come in? Well, as map builders we care about plates mostly because the edges where they touch each other have the potential to do Interesting Things. To save you the science infodump, here's a pretty picture that explains what they are (click to embiggen):





And here's another pretty picture that shows you where Earth's plates are and what type of boundaries they have (click through for bigger):

One thing should hopefully stand out to you: if you think about where all the major mountain ranges of the world are, they're often along plate boundaries. The Himalayas are where the Indian plate is bashing into the Eurasian plate. The Andes are where the Nazca plate is sliding under the South American Plate. The Alps? Middle Eastern plate smashing up into the Eurasian one. Lots of crashing = lots of mountains.

Of course, plate tectonics at the global level isn't the only reason mountain occur; Australia boasts the Great Diving Range right down its east coast, and you can see in the images that Australia is smack bang in the middle of a plate, not anywhere near a boundary. But in general, plate boundaries are where you have the fun stuff: mountains, volcanos, earthquakes. That sort of fun >:)

How do you employ all this with map building? Very easily. You scribble in some plates, scribble over some continents kind-of roughly based on the plate outlines (but really, you can do anything - look at Australia!), and then have fun deciding where to cause all the chaos >:) Impassable mountain ranges, volcanos, undersea geysers, rifts and trenches both terrestrially and undersea... Bwa ha. So much potential conflict for your poor little characters.

Lesson #1 in Map Building: The mountains are where things crash together. So are the volancos and the earthquakes.

Until next time, have fun causing chaos. Chaos #ftw! :D

Crash Course in Map-Building: Introduction

Read part two: Where did all the mountains go?

I realise from the outset that a lot of people will decide that this post isn't relevant to them. And maybe, to some extent, that's true: not every writer needs to know where mountain ranges are likely to pop up, especially if you're writing in the 'real world'. Still, mapping has its place for everyone. For example, the kitchen of a house doesn't usually migrate from front to back to top floor to basement; the writer obviously knows where in the house it is, and I guarantee you there was a map involved, even if said map is only in the writer's head.

Cartography: it's for everyone!

O:)

But I want to go a little further than that to discuss something I've seen a lot of lately: a blatant disregard for the actual, physical constraints of the world when creating a map. Published authors are just as guilty of this as non-published, and both are equally shudder-worthy. Sure, okay, writers don't have to be cartographers as well - but just a little bit of thought and effort will make sure that people who know about this kind of thing don't feel tempted to throw your book against the wall.

The example I'll never forget is good old Robert Jordan. Regardless of what you think of his writing, his control over his plotting, and his development of female characters, you can't escape the fact that his work is popular as anything. And in the front of all the books, all prettily drawn up, is the map of the world, which makes me want to beat my head against the wall every time I see it. Why?

Have a look at it. Note especially the coastline, and where all the rivers exit to the sea. Can you see anything wrong? Every. Single. River. exits to the sea at the very end of the land point. Every single time!

I see heads shaking in confusion. What's wrong with that? you ask.

It's wrong because it's not the way things work. Water always takes the path of least resistance; a spur heading out to sea will be higher than the surrounding ground; water also causes erosion of the surrounding ground; ERGO a river will, nine times out of ten, exit to the sea in a BAY, not off the tip of a point. And if it didn't exit into a bay initially, give it a few years to erode and it will.

Yes, if you're writing fantasy you can in theory get away with anything - but only if you have a good reason for it. Hint: "Because it looked pretty" is not a good reason. Neither is, "Because I felt like it", "Because that's how it came out", or just, "Because". Aside from the use of magic, the physics of Robert Jordan's world isn't demonstrably different from our world. We are given no reason to think that physical substances shouldn't behave there exactly as they do here; and yet, for some strange and untold reason, rivers do.

Lesson #0 in Map-Building: Always have a reason.

If you don't have a good reason for changing the way something works, don't. It's as simple as that.

Read part two: Where did all the mountains go?

Technology and Magic

Today I have a guest post up on Liana Brooks's blog about the magic system that I use in my stories. I thought it might be interesting to post the original thoughts I had about magic and technology by way of prequel to that post :o) This is taken from my 'secret' blog that I use to throw all my worldbuilding thoughts onto, creatively named Worldbuilding, Inc. ;)

Had a thought the other morning to the effect that really, technology is magic. 'Magic', as I have been using the term, is that mysterious addition that has the ability to animate a bunch of cells and make them actually 'alive'; magic is life itself, in all its various forms, throughout the universe. We have magic from self, magic from plants and animals, magic from other people, and magic 'essence' from the universe itself - the latter being predominantly the realm of faith-based magic (miracles and what have you).

But what about the substances that aren't alive? Electricity is, in many ways, uncannily like life-force - I mean, think about the number of books that have been written whereby electricity is used to make something live. Think even about the fact that we use electricity to stimulate a flat-lined heart into beating again... And think about the wonders that we are able to do because we can manipulate this and knowledge like it.

It's like magic, isn't it?

So, we have 'magic', which uses lifeforce, and we have 'tech', which uses electricity. Both are magic; they don't actually conflict, like so many people seem to think they do. They complement. They need to be used in balance - to wit, Sanctuary. Life and death magic, acting in balance.

Only it isn't death magic, because that's something else again, I think. Utilising remnant echoes of life magic? Something, anyway.

But no, tech magic is unlife magic, not death magic. It's the magic of things that were never alive, it's the magic of computers and lightbulbs and machines.

AI is where it starts to get blurry - the world is trending towards a greater and greater merging of life and unlife, first and foremost in the field of AI, and of things like growing artificial organs. We are blending the two, trying to break down the boundaries (oh look, Chaos Theory! Everything swirling together to become mixed, like jam in rice pudding! You can't stir things apart, only together) so in the future, 'magic' is going to encompass both. Only we probably won't call it magic, because we tend only to use the term for things we can't understand ;)

Like Vegemite on Toast

So, recently co-curricular at my school has found me, and I've been attached to the year 7/8 debating ness. We have something like 9 teams, and meet every Monday from 330-430pm for debating coaching.

Today is Monday. It is now 4:52pm. Debating today was HILARIOUS.

We have an official debate on tonight, part of the on-going inter-school competition. The topic is 'That Australia cannot support a population of 36 million people', a figure drawn from a comment by the leader of our opposition recently as being the expected population in fifty years' time.

The session went well, and good points were raised on both sides of the argument, but just as we thought it was all done and were getting ready to go, one girl asked for clarification on a particular point: why does an increase in population mean we need to increase our production of resources?

Of course, being the utterly sensible person I am, I tried to explain it like this:

Imagine you have a teaspoon of vegemite* and one piece of toast. You can take your vegemite and spread it on your toast, and spread it right to the edges. HOWEVER, if you had TWO pieces of toast, how much vegemite would you then have per toast? Assuming that one teaspoon of vegemite to one piece of toast** symbolises our current standard of living, the answer any way you look at it is not enough. You need more vegemite.

...To which the girl responds - So why can't you just go to the store and buy some more?

Me: Because someone needs to make the vegemite.

Girl: How do you make vegemite?

Me: It's made out of yeast and salt and... never mind!

Girl: But why is it black?

Me: Because of the yeast.

Girl: But isn't yeast the stuff inside an egg?

Of course, by now the two debating captains are rolling around on the front desks gasping for air, but being the committed individual I am, I plow on.

Me: That would be yolks. The fundamental difference being that one is yellow and gooey, the other is white and powdery***.

Girl: But if it's white, how does it make the vegemite black?

Me: Because of the chemical reactions that happen when you mix it with other ingredients.

Girl: What reaction is that?

Me: I'm not a science teacher! I'm an English teacher!

Meanwhile, the debating captains and the rest of the class die of hysteria.

Me: ... Would it help if we started over with peanut butter?

Girl: Yes! Peanut butter's easy, it's just made from peanuts and butter!

Me: ... ... ... *headdesk*


Oi. But anyway, it struck me that the proper answer, the one that does not involve spreads of any kind, might be relevant to writing and world building. Because of course, if you increase a population and want to keep the standard of living the same, all your extra resources have to come from somewhere. Are you going to buy them from other countries, in which case you need more money? Are you going to keep them out of your own resources, in which case you have less surplus to export? Are you going to accept that a drop in living standards is simply a necessity? Are you going to increase your tech so that you can manufacture more goods faster and more efficiently, in which case the tech level of your country generally will increase - potentially also increasing standard of living and demand for even more goods that you have to make somewhere?

What are you going to do?

What will your near-future or far-future setting look like? How will these real problems that we're having to solve now impact what your society values, what it looks like?

People think a lot about levels of technology and increasingly about the environment in their future-set stories. But don't forget how these things interact with your population size.

Have a great week. And if you can, enjoy some vegemite on toast ;)


*Vegemite, I am told, is an acquired taste. It's very salty. Americans have been known to thrown entire jars in the rubbish upon receipt because vegemite is black, and the recipients assumed it had gone foul in the post. No. It's supposed to be dark black-brown with the consistency of rancid butter. It's okay.

**For the record, I think this is too high a ratio of vegemite:toast. Vegemite is very salty. Did I mention that? People who slather vegemite on their toast as if it were peanut butter have something wrong with their tastebuds, and will almost certainly soon have something wrong with their arteries.

***If you use the dried stuff, that is.

Fantasy Elements #1: 'True' Language

It's been a while since I posted articles in the Story Elements and Fantasy Elements series, but I thought it was high time to dredge them up again and continue :) So today, the whole concept of true names and language.

There's a lot of emphasis in the fantasy genre as a whole on words and language. You have magic systems based on words, you have made-up languages that embody the culture of the people who speak them - and you have names. Often, you have True Names, which are different from ordinary, everyday names because they have Power. The name of the thing is the essence of the thing, and to call something by its essence is to have absolute power over it.

I was thinking about this the other day, prompted by an old post over on A Nudge In The Right Direction. I have a major in linguistics from university, so have a bit of experience with languages and language and the concepts thereof.

Throughout history there have been many theories of art: art imitates nature, nature imitates art, art should imitate (or at least represent) nature, art is art for art's sake. In the late eighteen hundreds the work of a Swiss linguist called Ferdinand de Saussure changed the way many people thought about the interplay between art and nature, and linguists worldwide began to question and explore the idea of the word as representative of reality.

For centuries it had been assumed that language was in some way mimetic or representative of reality - the term 'dog' was fundamentally doggy, 'tree' was fundamentally treey, etc. But Saussure said that there could be no relationship between a word and reality apart from arbitrariness, principally because if there was some sort of mimetic connection, then all languages would have similar sounding words for similar concepts - and they don't.

There's a lot more to his theory, of course, but I'm trying to keep this non-technical. If you're interested, I'd be happy to expound; it's relevant to the fantasy genre generally and to anywhere you're using made-up words specifically. But for now, assuming that Saussure is correct and that there are no necessary connections between things and the sounds we use to represent them, let's examine some of the issues this raises for the 'true language' idea.

To say there is one 'true' language necessarily disparages all other languages. All other languages are not true, which is to say they are lies...

And who's to say which is the true language? Different ethnic and/or religious groups might reasonably claim that they alone have the true language, and that all other languages are impure, and the people who speak them unclean or infidels. Which leads to language stagnation, where languages refuse to invent or borrow new words for new concepts because that would mean corrupting the language - and this of course leads to societal stagnation, for a language that allows no new concepts will not support a changing society...

And yet despite all this, fantasy still insists on a true language. The world called into existence by a single word or phrase, the breath of some Creator, a sound that resonates throughout all creation and lends it Power, names that have the power to bind a person and their soul, to call up the dead, the capture immorals and trap them to one's will...

Where does our fascination with this come from? And why is it that characters are so much easier to write once we've named them, and so impossible to write when they have the wrong name? Are the two connected? How? Why? What is it we're seeking when we long for a language that is true, and pure, and power?

'Black Gates' Wins Out in the Portalverse...

So, after all my fluffing around, it seems The Black Gates has finally won over Logan in the 'Which Book Gets Written Next' competition.

Why?

Simple. It may not have as complete an outline, but it does have that one thing that Logan sorely lacks - world-building. And now, also, a beginning, which came to me last night as I lay in bed struggling to sleep. Teaser, anyone?

Athara tensed under the blankets and strained her ears in the darkness. Was that the gate?

I'm horrified by the fact that it begins with the MC waking up, but at this stage, it'll just have to cope. Besides, it's not waking up so much as being woken up. And that's completely different, right? *sheepish grin* At least it has a beginning now.



In other news, my universe finally has a name. A nickname, anyway, something quick which I can use to refer to it. It came to me this morning as I was driving to work.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time reading agent Kirsten Nelson's blog, and subsequently doing some actual agent research (cue scary music... dun dun dun...). It was interesting, though I bemoan the fact that so many more US agents make themselves accessible through the web - I'm yet to find a single Australian agency that even lists bios for its agents :\

ANYway. My universe.

Somewhere in the mountains of advice I read yesterday, an agent spoke of a story she'd taken on - to her suprise, a 'portal story'.

*shock* and *surprise* on my part. Prophecies? Chosen Ones? Sure, they're overdone in fantasy, that's a no-brainer.
But portals?

Well, yes. I suppose so.*

*cringes*

Any of you that know the background that ties my stories together will understand that this is crushing news for me. (Though I don't really care; see footnote below). In my universe, portals abound. They're pretty much a staple, you could say.

And all this rushed through my head this morning as I drove, distracting me from focussing on the on-coming traffic (O:) don't tell my father!)... and the perfect name appeared.

My universe is, officially, the Portalverse.

:D

*(A large part of me wants badly to argue that they're only as overdone in fantasy as space ships are in science fiction... People need to travel after all. But is this self-defence or logic at work here? Who's to say...)

P.S. Say hello to my hundredth post. Hoorah! Aren't I verbose *beams*

World Building - Too Many Ways To Do Things

Help.

It's the third of the month, and I haven't started writing yet.

I know why, and I need some advice...

Basically, I need to do a WHOLE heap more worldbuilding before I continue with any of my stories - and I mean a LOT. So my dilemma is thusly:

Do I sit out the mini-nano we're doing over on critique circle and worldbuild industriously this month (something I find hard to concentrate on in large amounts), or do I write the story anyway, knowing the worldbuilding will be thin and the characters not fully rounded until about half way through??

Which is basically what happened with TBAEO, being a true Nano. It's going to need a complete revamp come rewrite time.

And of course, there's styles of planning to consider - what if writing the story and world building as I go is just the way I work?

Argh. Why can't there just be one definitive way to do this?!

*Sigh*