Characters

Not Breaking Viewpoint

Posted by Aibird on August 18, 2014
Posted in: Characters, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 6 Comments

I listened to this podcast from Writing Excuses the other day, and found it fascinating: World building without breaking viewpoint. I often think about how I can explain bits about my world without breaking the viewpoint of my characters.

First, if I’m writing in first person or very close third, it’s a lot harder to justify describing and explaining bits about my created worlds. Why would a character who lived in it all their lives take notice of these things? To them its natural and how things are, so how do I incorporate details without it breaking that sense of character?

One route people go is by introducing a foreigner or outsider into the environment, which the characters interact with or help on their journey. This outsider to the world may even be the main character, thus allowing us to really describe how this world differs from our own in stark detail. This is why in fantasy, stories of people being whisked away to foreign worlds is so common. It makes it easy to deal with the integration of world build details into the storyline without it coming across as forced or out of character.

If the character already lives in the world, much of what may seem strange to us would be natural for them, thus the above technique wouldn’t be applicable to this type of story. This is where the above podcast is so incredibly useful. Writing excuses discusses in depth multiple techniques to integrate world building without breaking the viewpoint, and a lot of them are subtle and rather brilliant methods. Go listen and explore some of their methods. A lot of them are fairly brilliant.

Some of the techniques I use is based upon the point of view I choose. If I choose a somewhat more omniscient point of view, this gives me a lot more freedom to describe things than if I were to use first person or third person limited. However, omniscient can be very hard to pull off due to the tendency for the piece to feel a lot like head-hopping, if the switches to other characters are done too often, it can feel a bit like whiplash for a reader and make it harder for them to keep track of who sees and knows what. Omniscient allows you to have access to all the possible viewpoints for that story, but it may be a good idea, if you decide to use this, to decide what point of views are the most important for telling this story, and then find a way to incorporate those POVs into a steam-lined and less jarring narrative.

One way I use omniscient is by writing an entire scene from each character’s perspective, and then weaving them together. Sometimes it’s easier to place them side by side, giving you multitude of differing perspectives on a single event. Sometimes it’s possible to weave observations of each into a seamless narrative of that event, rather than going through the entirety of each. It depends on what I’m writing and what method feels the most seamless and natural. It does take a bit of experimenting and a lot of feedback, especially if I’m integrating world building aspects into the narrative as well.

Limited third person is harder in the sense that it can be very easy to break viewpoint (first person is similar in difficulty due to this same reason). You have to filter everything that happens through one character’s experience — what they don’t know, the reader cannot know either. When it comes to revealing world-building information, this can be just as challenging since you need to find a way for the character to experience that aspect of their world in a way for the reader to understand that this is not Earth but some other world. One way around this is when the character takes a moment to breathe during or after a crisis and tries to think things through. In moments like these, if the characters tends to be fairly contemplative, then they may take the moment to just observe the details of their surroundings and give themselves time to calm down before they try to solve or end the crisis. We all do this to some extent, where we need to re-center ourselves, or withdraw from a heated discussion in order to gather our thoughts and find a way to recreate dialogue after its been broken down by whatever crisis. This allows me to slip in aspects of the world building naturally through the character’s actions.

Another way is to offhand mention it when the character is walking around or doing some action. They take notice that the weirdness is there, but they aren’t bothered by it. I’ve noticed that in real life people may often ‘discover’ things that were there all along, but they might not have noticed at first. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why they suddenly noticed it — though sometimes it can be because a friend pointed it out to them — but it’s something we all do to some extent.

I’m still gathering techniques and ideas on how to better integrate world build details into my tales, but these are some possibilities that may prove helpful. Be sure to listen to the podcast for even better and more intensive ideas! (I didn’t list them here mostly because it’s way better to hear it for yourself.)

So tell me, dear readers, how do you deal with this?

Resources and Worldbuilding

Posted by Aibird on July 20, 2014
Posted in: Characters, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , . 3 Comments
Image of a spaceship with wings. Fairly small ship.

This spaceship is fairly small and my example of something with limited resources, which definitely would affect how far it’ll travel.

This subject was brought up in the forums I help moderate. In this thread, the economy of a story was discussed in depth. One member in particular, Victor N, brought up an excellent point: the economy of your story can play a role in the plot. Definitely read the link above because he provides excellent examples. Below I’ll discuss my own thoughts on this subject and give my own examples.

When you craft your world, you will need to consider the resources your people have access to and the abundance of these resources. How abundant they are can play a role in the conflict you create for your story. For example, if your world has a plethora of resources dedicated to travel, where finding a way to travel someplace is easy, convenient, and inexpensive, don’t build a plot around the inability to travel. Your economy setting won’t match your plot.

For example, the protagonist suddenly reaches the spaceport, and none of the spaceships work, or they are all gone, or they fail to start. Or if the protagonist tries to use the teleporter and it fails to work on every ship and facility they reach. Every time you need a twist like that to evoke conflict in this travel abundant world, your plot will start to feel contrived. If there is an abundance in travel facilities, then why would they all fail at the same time? That type of plot won’t work in that setting. You need a very, very good reason for this conflict to work, and the only way to pull it off is if the failure of resources requires a lot of time and effort to repair (or find again). They can’t just magically work again at the end of the book, otherwise the reader will feel cheated.

You’ll have to consider this when you draft your conflicts for your stories. It may be helpful to list all the resources that may influence your characters and your plot. This may include travel, communications, financial resources, building resources, food, water, electricity, power plants (or some other way of producing power for any electronic devices), environmental resources, people (for wars or construction or various jobs in your city), and so on.

Let’s say you have a town with a small population. It wouldn’t make sense for this town to have a large army with a never-ending supply of soldiers, especially if they are cast as the antagonist in your plot. Where are all these people coming from? The economy of that town doesn’t fit the plot and you’ll end up breaking your story.

How about this scenario: One of your countries wages war and is defeated. Most of their soldiers are gone, most of their towns razed, and their food and water supply heavily depleted or ruined. The occupying force leaves behind a few guards, but they have little resources to keep the order. This is a low resource setting, so having your protagonist suddenly rebuild the castle over the course of a few weeks is a bit unbelievable. How do they find the manpower or even the building resources to pull this off? If they have little to no resources starting out, how can they build up those resources in order to achieve their goals? That could be a crucial part of your story. But if you just jump over it and have them suddenly return to full strength in a short amount of time, your story will look contrived and unbelievable. After a defeat that bad, it can take several generations before that country may rebuild enough to exert any degree of strength. Part of that is because they just lack manpower to build up the cities and town, to extract the materials needed from the environment, to produce the food and clean the water, to rebuild their infrastructure. Where does that manpower come from? Either from immigrants, which could be rare — there may be more people fleeing it than returning to it — or more commonly from births. These could all influence your story if you use this type of setting.

Let’s say your story is about a crew on a spaceship. How large is this spaceship? The amount of room you have is a resource that may need to consider. Is there a way for them to produce their own food and water? If not, how do they survive? You can’t have them travel for years and have no way of producing their own food, especially if they don’t have any stops to resupply. This will leave a gaping hole in your story. Also, you can’t have the spaceship hold a huge amount of food and water to cover those years of travel because the more weight that spaceship has, the harder it is to get up to speed in order to even reach any destination. Also, spacecraft often needs to carry their own fuel, which will add to its weight. How does their propulsion drive work? Is it using fuel that requires a lot of it for the drive to work? Or can you use a small amount of fuel and go for years on it? Either scenario could influence the plot and characters depending on the type of story you write.

There’s also the expense of getting the resources into that ship in the first place. If it comes from the surface of a planet, the cost of sending supplies to orbit can be highly expensive and depends on the resources of countries on that planet. Does that planet even have the infrastructure to resupply their space docks on a regular basis? Also, does your crew have the financial resources to resupply all their needs? Would it be more cost efficient to simply create a hydroponics room where they grow their own food, and create a recycling system where all water is constantly recycled for use in bathing and drinking? Also, if there is any accidents or failures on the part of equipment — do they have the resources to repair this? Everything on that spaceship will undoubtedly be a finite resource. All of these questions could be a potential source for conflict depending upon your answers.

However, what if you introduce a device such as a replicator that gives them everything they need and requires little to no supplies to keep it working? Then you’ll have a hard sell to introduce a conflict where they “run out of resources.” If the replicator can always fix that, why would that conflict even exist? Unless the replicator stopped working, then that conflict could work, but you’d have to show the difficulty they face in repairing it. It can’t just randomly stop working to serve a plot point, and then later in the story start working again without any explanation. That just looks contrived and your reader will trust you less or you could lose your reader altogether.

You also don’t want to go overboard trying to explain all the resources and how they work in your world. Some of this may not be necessary for the story you have in mind, and if it is necessary, then you should incorporate it into the descriptions, dialogue, and character’s actions throughout the book. It’s always a fine balance. The role these resources play can either help you create good and interesting conflicts, or they can undermine and break your conflicts, depending upon their influence on the story as a whole.

Consider the following questions: Does the resource directly influence your character and the plot? If it does, you may need to address it as you write your story. If the resource doesn’t have much influence, then you may be able to safely overlook it, or just provide a one sentence description dismissing why it doesn’t have influence.

However, it can be a challenge to determine what does influence your plot and character. Sometimes you may not realize it until after you finished your first draft. It may be helpful to write your story, and then go through and make a list of your resources. Mark off the ones that have little influence on the character or the plot, and those that do heavily influence it, map out how abundant (or scarce) that resource is in your world. Then examine how your characters dealt with that issue. This can be useful in teasing out holes in your plot.

The economy of your setting can and often does play a significant role in your plot and characters’ actions. Don’t overlook it, and be sure to explore its limits as you write. It’ll help you create a more tightly knit story, close any plot holes, and make your story feel more authentic and real to the reader.

Thoughts on Philosophy within Worldbuilding

Posted by Aibird on June 3, 2014
Posted in: Characters, World Building, Writing. Tagged: . 3 Comments

When I develop a culture for my world, I often will take a step back and consider the philosophies that may develop within that culture. The environment in which the culture develops will play a factor since it is integrally linked to how the culture survives and how it passes on its survival techniques to the youth. These survival techniques can, over time, develop into myths and stories that showcase the morals of that society. As time goes on, these myths can develop into religions and into various philosophical thoughts. So when developing the philosophical ideas of your made-up culture, consider the impact of the environment. Also, be sure to examine language as well since it is a reflection of how the culture perceives and understands its world.

For example, in several native Alaskan tribes, they have numerous words for snow because of the environment in which they live often has blizzards, heavy amounts of snow, and cold weather fairly often throughout the year. When you examine a lot of the myths their culture holds, blizzards and snow often feature heavily within them, and these myths help to teach the people of their tribe the beliefs, survival tips, and philosophy of their elders. Myths and parables develop naturally as ways for people within a culture to share morals, religious beliefs, and/or philosophical ideas, because it breaks down the ideas into an easy to digest form: storytelling.

While I was doing research for this post, I noticed that in western philosophy humanity is often characterized in twos. Introversion and Extroversion. Anima and Animus. Restorative force and destructive force. Male and Female.  However, this is not the only way you can envision your world’s culture and its dominant philosophies. Even though it is simpler to view the world in a black and white lens, where everything is in twos, it fails to represent the true diversity that is our universe and our reality. You can create a culture that is devoted to this black and white view of the world, but you also can break that mold and create a culture that isn’t devoted to this idea of twos.

Try exploring cultures that break the binary — such as in India where there is three genders: male, female, hijra. There are dozens upon dozens of cultures around the world who have three genders or more. This view of gender can create new mythology, where the characters in the myths come in a variety of genders, and the philosophy hidden within the myths may differ from a society that has only a binary view of gender. For example, in some Native American tribes, where a third gender exists, this third gender was often seen as holy — as if touched by the gods. This belief system creates a different sort of atmosphere, where the culture is more accepting of behavior that falls outside the usual gender stereotypes, and these differences are even revered. While in a culture that sees gender only as a binary, people who fall outside the gender roles may be harshly punished rather than revered or accepted.  These are ways your philosophy and cultural views could manifest and influence the characters in your tale.

When examining philosophies around our world, be sure to examine ones outside your norm.  For example, I live in a country that is dominated by Western Philosophy, and so I take an active role in learning more about Eastern Philosophy. Even those terms are a bit simplistic, because within both categories there is a plethora of diversity within philosophical thought. Understanding that such diversity exists can also help in constructing philosophies for the worlds you build in your stories. Even then, the dominant philosophy within your society may not be the philosophy held by your protagonist or antagonist. Those differences can cause conflict and alter the shape of your story as much as other types of conflict. Recognizing that aspect to your tales can help you develop a richer and fuller story, especially for longer works.

It can also help you develop the theme of your story. Remember, even if a culture has a dominant philosophy or belief system, they are not a monolithic culture — there will be a diverse set of views and interpretations of the culture’s belief system and philosophies. There could be a group of people within your culture that develop a philosophy that is wholly against the dominant cultural norms; this creates tension in the culture and provides a great source for stories and interesting conflicts.

As a parting thought, think about what ideas your created world wants to instil in its youth. How does this differ from the ideas your culture instilled in you and how did it shape your views of the world? Now take one of your characters and answer that question with the character’s culture in mind. Try to focus on ways the character’s culture differs from your own and how that may shape or influence your character’s behaviors.

These are just thoughts and ideas to help get you started.

The Birth of a Story

Posted by Aibird on May 26, 2014
Posted in: Author, Characters, Writing. Tagged: . 3 Comments

On Wednesday nights, I play Guild Wars 2 with a dear friend of mine. As we play, our conversation may shift from the game to deep topics about our lives, our writing projects, our thoughts on reality and why things are the way they are.

One night I spoke to her about my Audir and Kenidra story. This story has been with me a long time. I first came across the characters when I sat down to write a story about amnesia in fifth grade. The names of these characters have changed greatly since that day in fifth grade. Audir started as Andrea and then became Audrey, until I finally settled on the current iteration of her name. Kenidra started as Kendra, though I had to alter it once I’d finally finished the basics of their native language.

These characters have been a constant companion in my literary explorations. In high school, I sat down and wrote their story for the first time. A theme developed in that tale, one I didn’t know quite how to handle: a theme of abuse and how wrong that abuse was and how they overcame that abuse.

This would become the theme for their tale in its many iterations. Kenidra would be the abused one, the one that had been severely hurt and betrayed by someone she loved and thought was safe. Audir would be the one to help her heal, help her move past it. In my high school version of their tale, I had their story of abuse and healing from abuse set on the backdrop of a larger space opera: them seeking Kenidra’s missing mother and fighting against a deadly menace, where in the end they save their home from invasion. It was grandiose, but the true bulk of the story lay in Kenidra and Audir’s relationship.

I rewrote this story in college. The deadly menace became scientists, where one sought a peaceful exploratory project and the other turned it into a weapon of destruction. Yet even then, the tale of abuse and healing still lay side by side with this other theme of how technology can be abused.

Now I sit down to rewrite their tale yet again. The themes in their stories mirror some of the themes in my own life. I think this is why I find that I cannot quite give up on these characters, despite how challenging it is to write their story. One friend called this tale my white whale. In a way it is because of how closely the two characters are linked with my own life. What they represent is some of the hardships I’ve faced, and how they conquer it is my way of healing from those hardships.

Sometimes the only way to heal is to tackle it through stories. To explore it through metaphor and simile, where every word I write and every sentence I construct is me walking through the pain of my past and letting it all flow out of me. Flow onto the screen, where in those characters I face my worst fears and then I pass through them. Maybe the story won’t be worth much to others, and maybe they may not see the value in it like I do, or maybe it’ll help them heal from their own past. I don’t know. All I know is that I need to have the courage to finish this tale. To finally just finish this tale and then let it go.

This leads me, of course, to the biggest question of all.

Why do I write?

When I write a story, a piece of me falls into it. I often don’t write it with a theme in mind, but it’s always there. It’s always present to some degree. Sometimes I go back to shape and mold it. Sometimes I just let it be as it is. I’ve been writing since I was a young child, and although I’ve had periods where writer’s block stalled my writing, I always came back to it because it is the one force in my life that makes sense. It is my life blood. It is how I process my experiences, the horrors in our society, and seek healing and answers. It’s when I stop writing that I know something is wrong. That I need to tackle an issue and pass through it, so I can continue to write. Continue to be there for the people I love, and continue to try to build a better and more accepting and more loving future for all of us. I know I’m just one person, but with each word I type, I’d like to think that maybe, just maybe it’ll make a difference in someone’s life.

Snow White and Cinderella

Posted by Aibird on November 9, 2013
Posted in: Characters, Elivera, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , . 3 Comments

One of the reasons I found myself diving into the reinvention of fairy tales is simply because the modern takes on them are too stale. They don’t dig into a lot of the more disturbing thematic elements of the original fairy tales. Now, my purpose isn’t to dig into the more violent aspects that riddle the fairy tales. No, it’s the background of the fairy tales that I bring forward along with some gender-bending since the trope of the evil stepmother is an old, problematic trope that I really didn’t want to continue.

In Cinderella, the backdrop to this tale is a poorer town bordering the extravagant castle where the King and Queen live with the unnamed Prince. There is a lot of poverty in that backdrop, and Cinderella, having come from one of the more prosperous families is forced into servitude, by her stepmother, an enforced poverty that is depicted as fairly similar to the poverty in much of the village. The Ball, where all is invited, is a bit of a misnomer. Not everyone is actually invited, since only those dressed well are let into the Ball itself. The story makes no qualms about the fact that those at the Ball are finely dressed, which means that the more poverty stricken households within the village cannot go. They simply do not have the money or means nor a fairy godmother. Cinderella is basically a dream come true for the more poverty stricken folk, a dream of where magic helps them out of their poverty, where they are seen as the beauty they are and are able to move up in the world, into a wealthier and more prosperous life style.

Most versions of this tale that I’ve seen focus on that transformation of Cinderella, from the girl dirty and overlooked in her servitude to the beautiful bride of a Prince. What they fail to see is the poverty stricken others who will never have that dream. My reinvention of Cinderella examines that backdrop and also gives the Prince a chance to actually have some depth as a character – rather than just being the vehicle for which Cinderella achieves her dreams. In my story, I examine a Prince who seeks, mostly out of curiosity at first but then out of a moral obligation, what the more poverty stricken folks in the Prince’s kingdom needs and how they perceive the announcements and policies of the King and Queen. The Prince is sympathetic to the lower income people, and thus, when Cinderella is revealed in her servitude state, the Prince is able to empathize and to not condemn. It’s not Cinderella’s beauty that captures the Prince, in my tale, but her determination, especially in times of hardship. I add a bit of spice to the Ball itself, for the Prince decides to aid those who do not have the money to make it, by giving them a route into the ball that bypasses the security. There they can protest and plead with the King and Queen or enjoy the Ball as they see fit. The Prince does not fully understand the consequences of this or the riot that will ensue, but Cinderella catches on far more quickly, and acts swiftly to not only get the Prince out of danger, but also to get others to safety as well. This is when she loses her shoe, and also when she must take quick leave of the Prince, leaving only her shoe as a keepsake.

It is my hope to examine the poverty that lurked behind the scenes in the original and various reincarnations, and to bring it to the forefront. The purpose of the story isn’t the romance of Cinderella or the Prince, nor is it the transformation of Cinderella from servitude to Prince’s bride. It’s the struggle of the rich against the poor, and how Cinderella and the Prince are simply pawns in that much larger struggle.

For Snow white, I examine a much different thematic element. In Snow White’s original tale, she is an orphan, her royal parents dead, with only her stepmother to take care of her till she comes of age. (Or is married off as is often the fate of girls in the original fairy tales.) The phrase that occurs the most is ‘fairest of them all,’ and shows how obsession over beauty leads to madness and death. The Stepmother ceases to see Snow White as a person of value, and seeks only to destroy the one person her magic mirrors claims is fairer than her. The dwarves serve as a safe haven, but even in their care, Snow White is not exempt from the malicious attempts on her life; she is shown to be remarkably naive and far too trusting, which is her downfall. In addition to these qualities, she is shown to care for the dwarves, doing the household chores and making their food, and as such, she is being shown as the proper lady in comparison to the stepmother, mad with envy and who doesn’t exhibit these ‘lady-like qualities’ that old tales were often obsessed with themselves. The theme of obsession is even apparent in how much the original versions of the tale stress those ‘lady-like qualities’ and ‘beauty’ Snow White has.

However, it is the Prince’s journey, once again an unnamed Prince in most versions, that gives the theme of obsession an even darker twist. When Snow White “dies” by the poisoned apple, the Dwarves, heart-sick with grief, put her in a glass casket on a mountain for all to see and mourn. She is on display as an object, and this is how the Prince encounters Snow White. He sees her beauty and decides he wants it. He doesn’t seek who Snow White was, nor has any regards for her consent or wishes (which at this point she cannot give). He only wants her to be his based on what he sees in the casket. It takes some time, twice in one version and thrice in another, but he convinces the dwarves, who have ownership of her body, to give her away. Worse off, the Prince then kisses her, despite being told she was dead. Disturbing? Yes. This somehow dislodges the poisoned apple from her throat, and she awakens, only to be married to the prince. The stepmother then, in the original version, dances until she dies as their entertainment. In other versions, she is killed by the Prince or left for dead.

When I set about reinventing Snow White, I focused on the Prince’s journey and that of the Stepmother. The two are interrelated in the sense that both obsess over a particular idea and person. Both obsess about Snow White; in the step mother’s case, the obsession focuses on eliminating her and, in the Prince’s case, about obtaining her. Snow White’s consent and thoughts are not taken into account, and she is at the whims of these two forces. The Huntsman, sent to kill Snow White in the first attempt on her life, spares her partly because of her pleas and partly because of her beauty. She asks for her life to be spared, and he gives her that. Even in this instance, she has little control over her fate. It lay in the hands of the Huntsman, and then later in the hands of the dwarves and the Prince. Secondly, the obsession is shown to be evil in the stepmother, but in the Prince he is rewarded with Snow White, despite his obsession about her beauty. His behavior, especially in obtaining Snow White from the dwarves, served to me as an eerie and disturbing correlation with the sex slave trade that is rampant today. Where girls have no agency and are on display for people to examine them as goods for them to purchase. In some cases, these sex workers are sold into the slavery by people they once trusted. In this vein, the dwarves, whom Snow White trusted, gives her away to the Prince, knowing that he wants her only because of her beauty. He is an object of his desire, and the story ends with their marriage. Nothing is really said about if Snow agreed to it, but then she isn’t entirely in a position not to agree. She has no where else to go, and if she doesn’t agree, she will probably end up with the dwarves, which the fairy tale – and the various reincarnations of it – show as a lesser state than the Prince.

If there is one thing these two fairy tales have in common is that the Prince’s way of life is the ultimate goal for the both girls, even if neither outright wanted it at first (or in Snow White’s case, there is no evidence that she considered it a possibility until she awoke in his arms.) It is assumed in both that the girls would automatically fall for the Prince and, of course, they’d want to wed into this higher status. Both live for awhile in a lower status, and both are lifted out of it. Cinderella through magical means, and Snow White through what amounts to being given away like a heirloom.

In adapting these fairy tales, I realized that I could use the setting of my Elivera universe as a way to expand my own world-building, and to give myself more room to focus on the thematic elements and characterization of the heroines and the Princes. This is why I set them in my Elivera universe, just set a few thousand years in the future from my current batch of Elivera novels. It is my hope that as I explore the two fairy tales I can examine one, the plight of the impoverished in these yarns; two, the consequences of obsession; and three, agency and lack thereof.

Snow White’s tale is my NaNoWriMo project. The Cinderella tale is only half written, and I hope to finish it in the next two months.

NaNoWriMo Notes: Characters

Posted by Aibird on October 26, 2013
Posted in: Author, Characters, Writing. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Characters are the core of the story. Without them, you really don’t have much of a story or really anything to write. It’s why I take a lot of care in my character building. I want to understand the character the best I can before I start the story itself. Once I know my characters, the story will unfold from there, and I don’t have to worry about knowing every possible detail about the plot itself. My characters will reveal all the details to me in time, and if I write myself into a corner, often it is character building exercises that help me pull myself out and toss me back into the flow of the tale. To be honest, when I write, this isn’t my story I’m telling, it’s the characters’ stories. When I’m cognizant of that, it makes it a lot easier to write the tale, and to avoid suffering from writer’s block.

To help myself along, here is the general template I use for character building. This template is years in the making, where I’ve received permission to borrow aspects of other writing friend’s templates and some I developed on my own:

Continue Reading

A Single Story

Posted by Aibird on July 27, 2013
Posted in: Characters, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , . 1 Comment

I recent TED Talk I found really spoke to me.  Chimamanda Adichie is from Nigeria, and she speaks about the danger of a single story, where she relates how a single story of Africa has caused grave harm and a critical misunderstanding about the huge diversity of people and cultures within Africa.  There are many overlapping stories in the various regions and cultures of Africa, but many people fail to see this because of the single story being promoted by our literature and media.  Here is the awesome talk:

 

This caused me to ponder what single stories may do for world-building. Often we may focus on a culture within our created universe, but that’s just a single story.  What is the diversity within your world? What other stories may overlap or even contradict the one you just told?  Sometimes, when I sit at my desk wondering what to write, I’m not doing this for the lack of ideas.  No, there is so many different possibilities and stories within my created worlds, that I often feel overwhelmed and I don’t know where to start.

The only action I can do is to pick one and write that tale, but always remember that even as I write this tale from the perspective of my protagonist, I’m only telling one side of the story.  There is always more facets to the story that I may not be able to tell within the confines of the story itself because of the choices I made in order to tell the story in the most coherent and cohesive manner.  You often cannot relate all the possible views of all the scenes within the story, but you can choose one view and maybe a few others as long as it doesn’t destabilize the coherency of the story itself.  But what views will you choose?  Why did you choose them?  Is your biases affecting your choices?  These are questions I often ask myself as I write.

When I write these stories, I don’t want to be locked into one viewpoint and one worldview. I want to be able to experience the conflict of differing worldviews and perspectives within the confines of the story, and this is why character conflict can be just as important as plot conflict.  Character conflict can help reveal more nuances to the story, and help it deviate from the tendency of telling a single story.  My purpose in writing is to tell the stories of the characters in the best way I can, in hopes it will inspire and invoke thought in my readers, helping them to see the world in a different light.  To do that, I must not fall into the mold of a ‘single story’ that Chimamanda Adichie describes in the TED Talk as well.  I need to be respectful of the multiple, overlapping stories my characters and their world has, and to try to find a way to represent that without losing coherency and consistency within the novel itself.  It’s a hard task, but an exciting and interesting one.