The last post of our series involves the very real concept of "world building". Now any writer worth their iodized salt does world building for their particular story. Not in the traditional sense of the concept, where one builds an incredibly rich and detailed world for their fantasy/paranormal story; but more in the non-traditional sense, where one builds a believable world for their story but doesn't go completely off the rails.
A decent example of this would be the world that I am creating piecemeal for my trilogy. It's not overly detailed with a backstory that permeates/affects the entire story (think any good fantasy series that you've read in the past decade or so), but detailed enough to get the job done and keep the reader engaged.
So I'm going to try, with this final post of the series, to describe what I've created for both sides of this trilogy. For the sake of simplicity, the first side that will be touched up will be called "Earth, with the other side being called "The Pod Planet". Also for simplicity's sake, I will state that I did perform some needed research for both sides of this trilogy, because a story is incredibly dull without a modicum of research added to the mix.
~~~~~
1} Earth: I would be telling an untruth if I'd stated that creating this version of Earth was easy peasy lemon squeezy. It was not, by any stretch of anyone's imagination. Let's start off by going into a very short summary of how I used the Aztec empire as a starting point for two of my MC's: Jhon and Adeola.
Now one of the things that I enjoy creating in my stories, are non-traditional business entities. All of these non-traditional business entities feature a particular noun that normally wouldn't be used that way. In this particular instance, the Aztecs were turned into a very savvy and quite the large business entity, albeit extremely cruel and unforgivably ruthless. In essence, I gave them a very lucrative side hustle involving all aspects of gambling, and simply worked in a few of the more unsavory parts of their culture.
Like human sacrifices as the ultimate payment for basically an impossible to pay gambling debt (you know, the kind of debt where you're worth more dead than alive). Complete with the requisite paperwork for life insurance policies etc, so that the families of the degenerate gambler will no longer be subjected to harassment by debt collectors. Maybe.
I did not pursue the same philosophy with Jhon's wife, Myla. Even though she was originally an unwilling resident of the Pod Planet, she did reside on Earth for a number of horrifying years. So by the time we cross paths with the Ventura's, they are working for a small profitable company called Dandelion Inc (the original title of this story was called "Dandelion Tears), with Jhon being the public face of the company, while Myla was working as a relatively efficient debt collector.
The reasoning behind the two Incan ladies, Ilka & Bella, being called "ladies-in-waiting" and initially acting servile but gaining confidence as the story progresses, calling Myla their Queen, is due to the secret mission they're on: reuniting Myla with her sister the Pod Queen. Now regarding the Incan culture et al, I didn't delve too much into it, beyond inferring that the civilization was decimated by wars and the like. I kept the references to that culture to the basics, like language, location and some mythology. Also, these two are considered to be decidedly non-human entities, with Bella becoming a spirit/symbiont that sometimes can be seen by others.
Now given the fact that overall, we're playing very fast and extremely loose with the concept of time, it should come to no one's surprise that horses are being used for basic transportation. And it should come to no one's surprise that the horses come from a distant past measured by decades/centuries, with references to previous centuries such as the 18th and 20th.
Before I delve into the world of the Pod Planet, I would like to mention that virtually all of the main players on both sides possess telepathy with various degrees of skill levels. Even the three humans involved (since everyone else is distinctly a non-human of some repute) have some ability to use telepathy. And because this is a fantasy, everyone has a special skill set that is uniquely tied to them.
2} The Pod Planet: The Pod Planet was a little easier to create, since I had only the barest of outlines from the original story to work with. By "barest", I mean from the original story I had maybe one page in total to create this world from. So with that being said, let's put this subject to the side for a moment, in order to focus on the one main character that is the originator for the rest of the players who call the Pod Planet home.
The Pod Queen. As mentioned previously, the Pod Planet has a monarchy that is strictly matriarchal in its ruling structure. Men exclusively control the power behind the throne, via an entity called The Royal Entourage, as well as fulfilling all roles connected to the palace and government (think of Parliament after Oliver Cromwell). These two seemingly irreconcilable power structures are the driving force behind the machinations of the Pod Queen. A reverse coup d'etat if you will, with the monarchy looking to neuter its version of Parliament.
The Pod Planet itself, while outwardly looking like the typical late Renaissance empire, is anything but that. Instead, it's a blended empire of ancient and modern technology, and fantasy/paranormal For example, animal transportation is used, yet, they have scientists from all fields. Communication is either oral, written, telepathy, or in some cases, modern video, between human and non-human. And just like the majority of the main players in the story, the Pod Queen has a hair spirit, otherwise known as a symbiont.
The Pod Planet is also home to a large population of non-natives, both voluntary and involuntary. For example, two humans who were promoted to voluntary citizens of the Pod Planet, were originally from Earth, as former members of the military. Nyx, who is very much a major component of the story, was also originally an outlier of the non-voluntary type (as mentioned in a previous post), but now is a voluntary outlier of a different sort.
So as the story progresses and with more of the action being centered on the Pod Planet, the breadth and scope of exactly what the Pod Planet is will surely increase. So far, we have confined our descriptions to what the palace and its inhabitants are; the main palace chambers and antechambers; the Queen's bedchambers; and a fraction of the landscape.
I certainly hope that you enjoyed my short series about the inner workings of my Hot Mess trilogy. It definitely was an enlightening journey for me, as I usually have problems in trying to describe most aspects of a given story that I'm either currently writing or have written. Sometime expressing one's self via the written word can be far more rewarding than simply trying to talk it up.
{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved
Telepathy is something I've used often. Handy way to communicate.
ReplyDeleteI use it a lot in my stories, and I agree, it's a very handy way of communicating, with all types of species.
Delete