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 This is a continuation of my blogging here at WdC |
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This will be a blog for my writing, maybe with (too much) personal thrown in. I am hoping it will be a little more interactive, with me answering questions, helping out and whatnot. If it falls this year (2024), then I may stop the whole blogging thing, but that's all a "wait and see" scenario. An index of topics can be found here: "Writing Blog No.2 Index"  Feel free to comment and interact. |
| Sympathy For The Monster A few online horror sites have been having discussions lately about why the Universal monster series from the 1930s through 1950s are often considered the best monster portrayals (coming in light of the recent version of Nosferatu). Yes, the more recent monster portrayals using CGI might be more monstrous (whether they look better is up to the individual; I think too much CGI looks like the animated sequences in Mary Poppins), and Hammer Films might have had better production values and introduced us to gore and realistic kills, and the slasher films that have been there since the 1970s might have more violence and bloodier deaths, but people tend to always go back to those old favourites of the golden age of Universal: Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, the Invisible Man, Gill-Man, the Wolf-Man, the Mummy. They keep trying to remake them. Some work (about 40% of Hammer’s films, Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy), some are okay (about 40% of Hammer’s films, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein) and too many fail and are just abysmal (about 20% of Hammer’s films, Tom Cruise’s The Mummy). So, what is it about the Universal black and white originals that just make them the pinnacle of the monster movie? Well, first, on a visual, there is something about the black and white that just works, I think. But visually the make-up is good and the monsters are there and are real, so the others are reacting to physical things sharing a set with them. The sets are real, not green-screened, so they can all interact with all their surroundings. Models? Sure, but physical models with real shadows. But that’s the physical. As a writer, there is one thing that makes these resonate – the monsters, the so-called bad guys, have an element about them that induces sympathy in the audience. They are not written as killing machines (this is where a lot of Hammer films fall down and every single slasher), but have something else about them. The audience is given a reason for sympathy. The least of these is Dracula, but the way Lugosi played him, going back to the stage, was that the vampire was lonely. He was thoroughly evil, but he wanted companionship. That hint of humanity made people think more of him than just some mindless beast. Frankenstein’s Monster is, of course, all about the outsider being treated appallingly. Considering the personal lives of the writer and director, it is hardly a surprise. He was created, not born, and he was not given a place in the world. He didn’t understand. And yet he was hounded to a death… sort of. Sympathy for the monster is easy here. Just as it is easy when it comes to the Gill-man, (The Creature From The Black Lagoon). This was a creature, a remnant of a prehistoric time, uprooted from his home, taken to civilisation, operated on and then left by the humans. The three films are really depressing, and the fact that at the end of the third film there is a sort of a nice ending for the poor abused Gill-man. But it was so easy to be sympathetic for the being. Maybe too much. And this carries on to the Wolf-man. Turned by a bite, unable to control the change, hating the change, searching for a cure, the Wolf-man remained sympathetic throughout his films, even when killing people. Removed from the original werewolf myth, it was an interesting take. And the Wolf-man is, in fact, one of the forms from original folklore, not a movie creation. Then there is the Invisible Man. Experimenting on himself, he does lose his mind, but it is gradual and we feel sorry for him as he loses it… and then, at the end, he remembers his humanity. Just. We might lose that sympathy for a while, but it is still there. And, finally, we have the Mummy. Forced into his situation by love, later brought back to life through magic, forced to do the bidding of a priest, the love for his princess is still there. The Mummy is not the villain, that is the controlling priest, and we feel for the Mummy and what he is going through. So, I think that’s why these films have lasted coming up 100 years as examples of fine monster movies. The best non-Universal example is very obviously King Kong. Taken from his home, shown like a zoo animal, and then killed by humans who just thought of him as an animal. Sympathy abounds. Except in the Japanese remakes of the 1960s and 1970s. They were just awful. What this boils down to is: making your monster at least a little sympathetic can really capture an audience. Don’t be afraid to show it. |
| Novel #7 On the heels of Return came the first long story I actually shopped around – Our House. Written in a month at the end of 1995, clocking in at 62600 words, I was really proud of it. Looking back… not so much. It garnered a total of 17 rejections, of which 13 were form rejections. One said in rather diplomatic language that it was crap. One said that it was a rip-off of half a dozen other stories, most particularly Amityville Horror. One I can’t remember. And the other was the best, and also the last I received: The editor said he liked the story, “loved” the writing, but found the middle section meandered, and the constant self-referencing by the narrator, especially with what was yet to come in the story, was off-putting. So he basically told me to rewrite a lot of it, and I decided to do just that, and so stopped sending it out. However, by then, I had written so much other stuff that it fell by the wayside. So Our House was the first novel that got rejected. The story involves an old house that takes over the lives of a group of children, all the way into adulthood. It makes them do things out of character. But is the house haunted, or is it a reflection of themselves? The narrator is watching some protestors trying to save the house, and relates his own history with the place as he sits in his car, trying desperately not to join them. He fights it… and fails… sort of… Further, the narrator is used rather literally here. The story has no chapters, and is written from the first person perspective as though the narrator is talking into a hand-held tape-recorder. And that is how I wrote the first 25000 words – me talking into a dictaphone and then transcribing. The house itself existed, an old deserted house on Nelson Rd, long since torn down, which some of us broke into in year 7. The car in the shed was there as well, though not as old as in the story. Oh, and we didn’t kill anyone either. It is written like someone speaking, something Stephen King later did so much better with Dolores Claiborne. This is really based on a sort of reality. In fact, at the time we broke in and saw the damage inside the old house, I wrote a quick story about a murder in the place and my friends - this was primary school, remember, and I was 11 – passed it around so much it wore out. This happened fourteen years before I wrote Our House, and it was all still as clear as anything. It was also the first long story I’d written that got an emotional response from some friends – some claimed it gave them nightmares. That would be good if it was true, but I don’t know for sure. Look, the story definitely needs work, it suffers (as you shall see) from a diarrhoea of the ellipsis, and it drags a bit… a lot, but one day when I am suffering from writer’s block, I may come back to it and revise the bits that old editor told me to. Not bad, all in all. I mean, not good, but also… not bad. Excerpt: Hmmm… Nicky… Okay, let’s go. Get this over and done with… It seemed like Nick was a nice enough bloke. I mean, he had some annoying habits, but didn’t we all. Essentially, though, he was pretty cool. ‘Thea turned up with him on the same day that Brian turned up with Yvette and Gina (the latter was who he was trying to set me up with, having heard from Randy that I was a bit depressed after losing ‘Thea). We met in town and went to the pictures. I don’t remember what we saw, but it was an action film. Had Bruce Willis in it, I think. All I remember is that none of us spent a great deal of time actually paying any attention to the screen. Randy and Shelley, ‘Thea and Nicky, Brian and Yvette, me and Gina, four couples spending the whole afternoon kissing like there was no tomorrow. What I do remember – very clearly, in fact – was that when Gina kissed me it was like kissing a spittoon; Christ, did that girl’s mouth water. She almost dribbled. It was disgusting. I was almost relieved when, after a week or so of constant attention, she decided that I wasn’t right for her. And Brian and Yvette didn’t last a great deal longer, either. I think he found it hard to come to terms with dating quite an intellectual girl, a science student at university. Majored in physics, I think. But ‘Thea and Nicky, that turned out to be quite a coupling… We all liked Nicky, at least a little, though I knew Brian was suspicious of something. I never found out just what, but there was something he didn’t like about the tall, nineteen year old (two years older than me at the time), dark-haired teaching student from Flinders University. But… hey, you know… Maybe he just didn’t like an outsider, any outsider, coming into the circle… Especially after we sort of inducted him into the group… No, he wasn’t inducted, just sort of accepted… No, that’s still not right. Oh, shit. Well, let’s be honest here… We were looking for a Jamie substitute, some-one to replace the friend we’d killed so crudely, and Nicky’s affable personality and apparently deep affection for ‘Thea made him a candidate… The perfect candidate… But his first visit to the house seemed to completely contradict this assessment… It was near the end of September of that year, 1988, when ‘Thea apparently first told him what we’d been doing since we were little kids. She said later that she wasn’t sure if he believed her or not at first. She reckoned that he looked at her as though she was having a joke, or setting him up for one. But she persisted gently and he said that he wanted to see for himself. And that was when she asked Brian if it would be all right if he came in with us one night. Brian took two days (during which time he asked Shelley and Randy, but not me; apparently he didn’t think I’d like ‘Thea’s new boyfriend just waltzing in… and he was probably right… but at least he did tell me after the decision was made) to make up his mind and the next Saturday night there were once more six people seated around that small, dirty, smelly room where ‘Thea and I had first made love, where Jamie had been killed, where five of us had grown up… But things felt different. The atmosphere was really claustrophobic in the room, almost oppressive, and despite the rather cool night outside, the room had a sweltering feel about it as well. We all felt uncomfortable and uneasy and what little conversation there was was very forced. It was almost as though the house didn’t want him here, didn’t want anything to change, no matter what had happened to Jamie. And Nicky apparently felt it worse than any of us… so much so that it almost created a split between he and ‘Thea… which, I suppose, was probably what the house wanted, anyway. I was so happy with it at the time, and it reads now like it was written by someone trying just too hard. I can see why it was rejected. But the idea is fine and the characters are not too bad. I might revisit it some day. Just… not at the moment. |
| Technical Terms This came up on Discord recently – when do we use technical terms in writing fiction? First, a definition – a technical term is a word or phrase that is specific to an occupation or qualification, or which has a different meaning when used by an occupation. So, an example would be “pedagogy” which is a term used in education circles and very few other places; another word would be “indulgence” which has a meaning most people know, but has a very different meaning in Catholic ecclesiastical terminology. If we know about a subject, we are going to want to use technical terms in our writing. But is that entirely appropriate when dealing with an audience that will probably not have the same knowledge base as the author. We could go the Michael Crichton route, where technical terms are explained in-text, though this does tend to slow the pace to quite a ridiculous degree. In Jurassic Park, he changed it up by having a film made for the uneducated give the technical terms and their meanings. But, still, it was essentially an info dump. Or we could go the Arthur C. Clarke route and just dump a heap of technical terms into the narrative and assume your reader is intelligent enough to understand what they mean by context or prior knowledge. Personally, this is the way I would prefer to do things, but editors are as unadept at the subjects I know about as the general populace, and so this has caused issues for my publication chances. So… what? Here is what was recommended to me by the editor of a magazine in the US back in the early 2000s. When people talk, they will use technical terms, acronyms and abbreviations because they know what they mean. They never explain them. In general, it is said that the first time you use an acronym or abbreviation in a story, you explain what it means, but people are not going to say, “Give me twenty cc’s of ibuprofen, stat! Which, of course, you know means give me a syringe with twenty cubic centimetres of the drug ibuprofen, a non-steroidal pain reliever, stat, and by that, I mean right away.” The editor said to try and get the more technical terms into the narrative and then explain them with a clause of no more than half a dozen words. So, “Give me twenty cc’s of ibuprofen, stat!” // Bob nodded and drew twenty cubic centimetres of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug into the syringe before handing it to Bill, going as fast as he possibly could. That is as clunky as all out, but everything is explained without info-dumping; it is a part of the ongoing action. Another way is having a newbie character – see the first Hellboy movie for an example – who knows nothing and so everything needs to be explained to them. They can ask questions, acting as an audience surrogate. I personally find this cheap and a little lazy, but it does make sense, and works well for most audiences. That’s all well and good when it comes to dialogue, but what about in narrative? If I said, “Bill grabbed Bob around the waist and suplexed him hard onto the edge of the ladder,” in a fight scene, the word “suplex” would make most people go, “Huh?” But if I said, “Bill grabbed Bob around the waist and lifted him off the ground, above his shoulders and then down hard, Bob’s back slamming onto the edge of the ladder, a picture-perfect suplex,” I have explained it first and then given the technical term without detracting from the narrative flow, and yet explaining a word I can then use without explanation later on. So, that was the advice given by a few editors I have worked with – use the description first, and then add the technical term afterwards. Don’t do it too often, and too close to another time you do it, or else it reads rather boring, but that is the way it was recommended to me. Let’s go back to that opening question: when do we use technical terms in writing fiction? Whenever they would be used in real life, but explain them carefully, without giving an essay, and make the explanations part of the flow of the action, not be a simple info-dump. |
| Autofiction Following on from the last entry: "20250509 Using Real People In Fiction Pt 2" …A few times I have made fun of Hulk Hogan’s autobiographies, for the sheer amount of bullshit that exists on their pages. I may also have mentioned Frank Dux and his alleged autobiography. But what if those lies were all a part of a plan, if they were deliberately told in the way they were as an artistic statement, not just because the author was a self-deluded egomaniac? Welcome to the world of Autofiction. Okay, that is rather flippant. Autofiction is a serious recently developed genre where a person’s real lived experiences are mingled with fictional tales in order to tell a story, usually with a deep message. In fact, I have not come across one that did not have a barrow to push. Sorry, but that seems to be the way it is. Being as averse to message stories as I am, I generally find autofiction tedious. However, it is still a valid form of modern writing that I feel can be expanded beyond the simple message tale. And in April I attended an Autofiction online workshop. Now, in Australia in the early 1990s, we had a woman named Helen Demidenko win a few prestigious awards with her book about a Ukrainian refugee, based on her own lived experiences. There was a problem, however. Her real name was Helen Darville, she was not a Ukranian refugee nor did she work with refugees nor was she related to any or even know any (possibly). She made the whole thing up based on some stories she’d heard… and when she got caught out, the literary world in this country went ballistic. To this day she has not been forgiven. If she’d done this 30 years later, then she would have probably claimed it was a work of autofiction, and she would still be writing award-winning (and boring – the book was dull) books. Autofiction is generally considered a seamless mixture of personal history with fictional storytelling. Most of the time it is used to explore sexuality, identity, displacement, cultural lore, sense of belonging or a societal negative. Real people are mixed with fictional aspects, and the reader is left in no doubt that this is a work of fiction, but some stories might be true, some people are real while some have been created,places could be real, made up or renamed… and yet, without exception, the emotions are definitely personal. When it comes to some of the issues I have mentioned previously when using real people in works of fiction, the autobiographical aspect can (and is designed to) blur the lines here. I don’t think it has been tested in court (at least, not that I could find), so… not sure here how this would be approached. From the worskshop, there are a few things a writer will need to do if looking at a work of Autofiction: 1) Be prepared to explore memories which might not hold true for all participants. While this is true for all autobiography, the lack of recall matters less here, and can create conflict. 2) Balance truth and fiction without relying too heavily on one or the other; this is probably the greatest issue when trying to write this style. Is it just a fake autobiography? Or is it an exaggerated real autobiography? Or do the made-up bits really matter and help the tale? Tough line to walk. 3) Be prepared to explain just what it is you are writing, because it is so new. This includes to potential publishers. 4) Remember the author is the most important character in the story; it is a form of autobiography, after all, even if it is mixed with fiction to make a point. 5) Using it to show something that the writer feels needs to be shown should still reflect some of the writer’s lived experiences, and not just be made up wholecloth. For example, it would be a complete work of fiction for me to write a book as if I was an African woman living in Canada; I have no lived experience in that. It could be Autofiction for me to write about being treated like pond scum by American companies and American people for being an atheist, adding extra tales to my own lived experience. As an aside, sometimes the narrator’s name and the name of the author are different. This does help make the work more fictional, but it gets really confusing in this case. I will add here that Autofiction is sometimes seen as a form of experimental writing, and I can see that. As such, publishers are still dubious about it, though more and more works are being published. So, in essence: Autofiction is a life story written as a work of semi-fiction with the author appearing as a/the main character in the narrative, drawing from a lived life experience while at the same time incorporating fictional elements, characters, and events, to give voice to a complex societal issue. Might be a new genre worth considering… |
| Using Real People In Fiction Pt 2 The first time I brought this up is here: "20240526 Using Real People In Fiction" .So, didn’t I cover everything there? As it turns out… no. What if you use your friends or family in a book, including their proper names, and you do NOT have their written permission (written is very important in a court of law)? You might think you’re doing the right thing including them, or that it is essentially harmless, but, then you decide to put the work into the public sphere, publishing it (in any form) and you discover… 1) They might not like their portrayal. Even if you, the writer, think you are portraying them in a sensitive light, they still might not like it. They might think they are too passive, they might think the relationship isn’t what they would like, they might even think they wouldn’t act that way or say those things. Technically, it is not enough for libel/defamation (and it has been tested) because they are not being portrayed in a negative light, but it can be a problem. 2) They simply don’t want to be in a book. Unless you are writing a family history and their details are a matter of public record, a person is perfectly within their rights to say they do not want to be in a book or story. Especially if they put it in writing that they do not wish a character based on them to be in a story before the story is publicly or semi-publicly published {i]in any form, then you might have an issue. It could be for privacy or they just don’t see the point, but their wishes need to be considered. 3) Your relationship with the person changes. You’ve put a person into a story in a very heroic sense, but then you have a falling out, so this becomes reflected in your writing… and that can be a problem. It is not, again, generally something a court can help with, but that person is within their right, especially before a story is publicly or semi-publicly published to give a written cease and desist which you must obey. Oh, and a person can decide at any time they do not like the portrayal, by the way. Literally, any time before public or semi-public publication. So… is there a way around this? Yes, and it is very simple: DO NOT USE THE FULL REAL NAMES OF REAL PEOPLE FROM YOUR PERSONAL CIRCLE IN A BOOK! Base the characters on them. Make them look similar. Have them act in similar ways. But if Jane Doe thinks Mary Sue is based on her, she will have to prove it, and that is not easy. However, if Kylie Baggins thinks Kylie Baggins in your book is the same, then you’re in trouble. The grey area is if Jeannie Hart thinks Jeannie Smythe is the same. First names are common; the portrayal is going to have to be blatant. Yes, as a beginner writer, it makes it easy for your characters to be people you know; my discussion on my early novels shows that I did this ("20250321 Novels #1 & #2" ). But I changed the names!Anyway, I went through this with Sins Of The Father in 2020. A former friend named Troy felt a character in the book named Troy (different last name) was based on him. But his lawyer said that he would have to admit to abusing his kids and being an out of control alcoholic, as the Troy in the story was portrayed, to a court. He couldn’t do that, so he let it slide. This brings me to my second point – make changes! Except if writing your autobiography (which is a different kettle of fish altogether), do NOT use a person whole-cloth. Change them! This might seem logical, bit there are people I know who are being forced to rewrite whole books they wish to publish because a daughter doesn’t want her kids in a book, or a partner left them. Don’t let it happen in the first place – don’t use people you know blatantly in a story you plan on publishing in any format. |
| Novel #6 After Invisible Friend, the next 6 long works were all novellas. Of these, only one bears discussion: Relick is a comedy novella (26000 words) about a group of archaeologists fighting the Catholic Church and the USA in preserving a holy relic – the poo of Jesus. A few little tweaks and, well, it was my first book sale. Yep, a comedy about poo was my first book. Life is funny like that sometimes. Further, it is still one of the few pieces I’ve written that I actually enjoy. Okay, so we come to the next novel. Return (1995) is an odd 55,500 word novel, told in a twin time-frame format. The stories run side by side; it is not non-linear, just alternating. In the first time frame, set in modern times, a demon has returned to Earth. Tyson is suspected by those in the know, but it is not him. His daughter, and two old friends – a priest and woman – get involved, as well as a member of the US military who was there last time. In the second time frame, 8 years earlier, all of these people (except the daughter) are much younger, and the demon makes its first appearance in Sydney, Australia. I liked the way the old story reinforced the new, and the way they tied in so nicely together. reading it nowadays, the connections seem a little forced at times, and the whole child thing does not sit right or ring true, especially after becoming a teacher and seeing how children respond to trauma. The character of Tyson is, I think, well written in the present, but too moody in the past without due course except "he's possessed." The priest is too angst-filled in the present, but feels about right in the past. The young woman is okay in the past, and inconsistent in the present. The US military guy shows no signs of growth or change over the years; maybe he's a little gentler now? The concept, though, is a nice supernatural one with much more psychological horror than I thought I was capable of at the time, and a lot of the gore horror is only implied or the results only are depicted. Again, with some tweaking, I could possibly make it more “adult” than the semi-adolescent state it currently sits in, maybe even find a home for it. Though the two time frames might need updating to reflect today better. Excerpt: Despite himself and his growing trepidation, Brother Galway entered the building. He looked around the back room. Everything was in order; the kettle sat on the small stove, the refrigerator in the corner hummed to itself, the dishes from this morning’s Ladies’ Club meeting were sitting on their tray, waiting for himself to put them away. He looked closer; a ten dollar note was attached to a note poking out from beneath the tray. The Ladies’ Club probably wanted him to do some shopping for them. But surely a thief – even one after the silver chalice and other items the Church possessed – would have taken a quick ten dollars and at least had a look through this room. His first instincts started to take over, but that feeling was too uncomfortable for him to dwell upon... The three doors he passed through to enter the main Basilica of this building were also unlocked. And he went through each with growing fear until finally he was standing in the middle of the nave, looking up and down. His mind was very wary; nothing seemed out of place, but something definitely was. He could feel it. And the feeling was exceedingly uncomfortable... like nothing he had ever felt before... like nothing he ever wanted to feel again... He cast a critical eye over the pews before he walked up to the altar, slowly, very unsure of himself. And the closer he came, the more that feeling in the back of his mind grew. He could feel it, almost radiating from this end of the building, growing stronger as he approached. And then he saw, in the light coming in through the multitude of stained glass windows, the puddle on the floor. He bent and had a closer look at the liquid. Red, thick... He smelt it – blood. He looked forward. Small pools of it dotted the floor, leading up the seven stairs to the altar itself. Fresh blood. Genuine panic entered his mind. What was going on here? He knew what he should do – he should go to the rear room and telephone the police, let them come and investigate this extremely odd occurrence. But he knew himself too well and, ignoring the frantic messages to the contrary coming from the forefront of his mind, he made his way anxiously forward once more. Every step became harder and harder as he went until by the time he was leaning against the lectern with the large Bible resting upon it, he was almost out of breath. There was more blood here and its trail led directly to the room called the sacricity, where the altar items and priestly garb were all kept. He looked closer; there was a lot more blood. Forcing himself to keep going, he followed the bloody track and touched the door of the small room. It swung open with a slight creak... Brother Michael Galway turned and vomited all over the floor. He had never seen so much blood, and all of it coming from Father Wagner – his wrists, his side, his feet, even his scalp... So much blood... And in the form of Christ’s wounds... And Father Wagner in so much pain... “Help me...” the priest croaked, but the Brother could not move... The pain in the elderly man’s chest grew sharply, up into his jaw, down his arm, and both men slipped finally out of consciousness... Yep, definitely one of those religious horror novels that used to sell so badly but are now sought by publishers. The idea came to me with a weird 'what if': “What if an exorcised demon came back?” Then I had the idea to write it spread over the two time frames, 1986 and 1994, and include a child… which was deliberate to leave it open for a sequel that I never wrote. Look, the story is no masterpiece and it will need a lot of work to make it sellable (especially the ellipsis over-over-use), but I was finally starting to get the idea of writing characters, not just events. Not terrible, but certainly not good. |
| World-building - Towns So we have mountains and rivers, now let’s look at where to put people (or any population) – the places they live. In an area, initial settlements will always be around a source of water. If the region rains a lot, then amongst the first things to be built will be large areas to capture water. But water is tantamount. This is in the early days of a settlement, as it grows. Now, the second thing is food. Is it a hunting society? Then there will be areas for wild animals to be living, and often surprisingly close to towns, with the predators that can bring. Is it an agrarian society? In that case, there needs to be the right sort of land, and lots of it, for farms to be established, and to supply enough food for a town, and there has to be roads for transport and a means of getting the water to the crops. Or the town might be a place where trade occurs. In that case, it must be remembered that most heavy trade is water-borne as it is cheaper and easier than horses. But there will also be overland trade, with each town no more than a day away by regular transport (horse, foot, horse team, whatever) from the previous. Yes, I understand pioneers and settlers camped, but we are looking at towns established after initial expansion. Then there is exact location. If the region is filled with warring tribes or warlords who want land, then the town will have fortifications, and most likely be on higher ground, within easy access to the water. It might even be built some way up the slope of a mountain by the water supply. Or, as in the case with Paris, France, it might be on an island in the middle of a large river. Even coastal cities on seas and oceans generally originally occur at the mouths of rivers or bays (which tend to be fed by multiple water supplies) for that water supply. Eventually, of course, trade will increase and water can be brought in from across the waves, and a lot of the original waterways end up being diverted or built up on, and so those streams or rivers are not needed, but at first, they definitely are. But, you cry, my town is beyond the initial settlement phase! It has a population of a hundred thousand and is renowned for being where the finest magical hammers are made! Great… but how did it start? There will be water, or the remnants of a water supply, still evident; there will be those initial food sources still evident. Some of this evidence might be a town on both sides of the river that supplied so much of its trade. It might be the fact the town has very few hills because of the original farms. There might be a fortified walled internal part of the city where old defences had been built. Or, look at our modern cities. We cut down the trees and name the roads after them. We name suburbs after the owners of original farms. Dried up river-beds become highways. Old lakes get filled in and become developments. But the old traces are still there, physically and in town memory. Towns appearing in the middle of nowhere can only exist if there is a large amount of traffic that can bring goods and even water with them. They might have an underground aquifer to supply water, but as civilisation progresses, this will become polluted or even run out. They will rely on traders and travellers to supply everything, and the economy will be based around this sort of trade. So placement of towns is important when looking at the world you are building. The history needs to lend itself to the towns being where they are, and this is important for the current state of the town and how it developed. Even the country it is in, or the world at large. |
| World-building - Rivers We looked at mountains, now let’s look at rivers. Rivers are lines of water that flow from a high point to a low point. The majority of rivers start in a mountain range and terminate at a sea, ocean or large lake. Basically, you cannot have a river without a mountain. Rivers are formed by rain or melting snow forming creeks and smaller waterways, which eventually combine and come together to form a river that gravity draws downwards. It is said that some rivers come from natural wells, but this is not really supported, and is more a piece of folklore. Part of the issue is: how does water come out of the ground? There would have to be some sort of upwards pressure, and that would mean the area is very unstable geophysically. Yes, there are lowland freshwater sites – oases and billabongs, for example – which are fed from underground aquifers, but these are still bodies of water, not flowing rivers. Now, rivers are vital. The first communities were all established around freshwater rivers or freshwater lakes fed by rivers. The water was important, and it drew animals to them for food, and enabled them to have crops. Rivers were also the first freeways. A horse can go on land and go places where others couldn’t, but rivers were how large goods were transported. No early cultures with a permanent site of habitation built this site away from water. When world-building, this is important because a land with cities needs a supply of water, especially when being established. Having a city in the middle of a desert with only a small oasis makes no sense at all. Stars Wars were shocking in this regard – I know they had dew farms, but where on Tatooine was the water to support life before a civilisation developed? The canyons show clear signs of water erosion, but where is it all? Where does the dew even come from? That planet makes no sense whatsoever. As can be seen, rules of physics make no difference to many world-builders, but if you want your world to be accepted as at least plausible, then maybe look at the water supplies. |
| External Writerings April 2025 That time of the month where I list the writing I have done for Weekend Notes (and any other places that could be bothered publishing me online). Songs, films, places, events… oh my! One of the reviews got me a tourism award (  )… which was a hearty thank you and no money. So, of course, some of this is going to be completely irrelevant to USians, but remember, you do not have to listen to the songs (though I would be grateful if you did), but every look at the articles from a different IP address with no ad blockers helps me out in my increasingly desperate attempts to make money as a person who writes.My favourite albums - and there's a lot of them - from the first three months of 2025. A look at my favourite Val Kilmer performances, following his death. Reviewing two new artists that caught my attention. A local café that caught my attention. Great food. Songs about churches. Yes, churches. The local Cornish Festival. We get visitors from around the world, and I am doing a story reading, hopefully helping a book launch, and helping in a guided walk of one of the towns.6 articles this month. I have to do at least 4 to keep my ranking in the top 25 contributors, so your clicks will also help me in that regard. As usual, if you want a certain topic covered in songs (I can do films and books as well), leave a comment below. I would love to give readers what they want. |
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