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A Primer on Writing Trans Characters

Posted by Aibird on June 13, 2016
Posted in: Books, Characters, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

Introduction

A question I’m commonly asked is: how does one write a trans character? I also get asked this question in regards to writing gay, lesbian, or bisexual characters, and/or how to write a person of color. There is a lot of overlap in these questions since a person can have a variety of skin colors, and that same person can also be trans or cisgender as well as gay, lesbian, bi, asexual, or straight; therefore, some of the articles I will link offer excellent advice on writing people of different skin tones and ethnicity as well as different genders and sexualities.

In this primer, I will focus primarily on gender identity. I will provide some common definitions, how to worldbuild with trans characters in mind, things to keep in mind when designing a trans character, and steps you can follow when writing trans characters’ stories. I will also have a list of resources at the end of this article for further reading.

How to use the guide

Think about the setting of your story and the characters you wish to create. For writers whose settings are real locations in current or historical time periods of Earth, you may not need to go through the worldbuild section. Instead, you can research how gender is perceived and how people are treated within your chosen location and time period, then go straight to the Designing Your Character section. For example, if your setting is 1800s Ireland, then do some research to see what it was like for men and women in that time period, then go straight to the Designing Your Character section of this primer. If you are writing an alternate Earth history, then you may find the content of the worldbuild section helpful. If you are creating your own science fiction or fantasy universe, I highly recommend going through the entire primer and not skipping any section in order to assist you in deepening your understanding of your world and characters.

Important Things to Keep in Mind

Trans people are a diverse group, so I will cover a few of the most common gender identities. Trans women were assigned male at birth but are women. Trans men were assigned female at birth but are men. There are also non-binary people, who could be assigned either male or female at birth and may use various identifiers such as genderqueer, neutrois, agender, and others. Although some intersex people are trans, not all trans people are intersex. You can view the transgender language primer link I provided in the definitions section to read more about the various terms and identities.

The gender identity of a trans person is real, and it is important to respect their pronouns, to use their chosen name, and to not out them without their permission. When talking about transgender people before they transition, it is important to  use their current pronouns unless specified otherwise by that individual; do not use the sex assigned at birth pronouns.  Also, avoid the use of their “deadname,” which is the name they were given at birth but is not their chosen name. Even if discussing their life before transition, it is still better to not use their deadname unless they give permission. When writing the character’s story, seriously consider whether it is even necessary to provide the dead name ever. In most cases, it will not be relevant to the plot.

Why is this important? Because trans people exist, and representation really does matter. In this essay by a transgender woman, she discusses the power of representation and the tragic tropes people often use when writing transgender characters. Negative portrayals that show us as comedic relief or as a villain only serve to perpetuate the stereotype that we are not serious (or real) or that we are dangerous, which can also cause tremendous harm — trans people, due to discrimination and rejection of who they are by today’s society and sometimes their family and friends, already have high suicide rates and rates of being murdered for who they are. Negative portrayals can aggravate those rates by perpetuating harmful myths, which can lead to increased harassment, lack of acceptance, and other harmful behaviors perpetuated against trans people.

Tragic portrayals done respectfully can be important in showing how society treats trans people today and gather sympathy for trans people. However, in our current culture (in America where I live), most of the stories I see of trans folks are tragic portrayals. Having an overabundance of tragic portrayals is exhausting to a trans person, who already faces discrimination and injustice and makes it hard to hold out hope for positive change in society’s treatment of us. At this point, I am desperate to read anything but a tragic and/or negative portrayal, so that I can enjoy seeing a trans person flourish and thrive rather than wither and die.

Positive portrayals provide hope for the future and shows people that trans people can do awesome things too, where trans people are shown as human beings just like everyone else and that we are just as worthy of rights and respect as a cisgender person. It’s important to think about how we portray characters, especially if you wish to write a trans character respectfully. We often underestimate the influence literature, video games, movies, TV shows, and other media can have on our perceptions of others and ourselves.

This isn’t to say you can’t have trans people as villains, comedic relief, or have them experience great tragedy and/or death. But if that is the only portrayal of trans people you have in your stories, then there is a problem. Trans people can be heroes as well — diversity in representation such as providing balanced portrayals is also important. Let trans people be heroes, and let them experience interesting story lines that aren’t only about their gender identity. Think about all the diverse portrayals of straight, cisgender people, then consider how, with some alterations here and there, you could give a trans person similar diverse roles in stories.

Diversity can help to deepen your worlds and stories. Diversity can also provide you with more opportunities for conflict, character growth, and societal change, which can give you even more ideas for future stories. Writing diverse characters and diverse story arcs also challenges us to learn more about people not like us; this can increase our ability to emphasize with others, helps us reconcile diverse worldviews, become more accepting of other people, and pushes us to challenge any biases we have that may be holding us back as writers and as people. Writing diverse characters can be a fun and interesting journey, but it will require you to do some research, but then as writers, we should all be used to research by now!

In order to start our journey, it is important to understand the terms we will be using. I have provided a short list of terms, but I included a resource for a more comprehensive list of terms that you may encounter as you research and explore the transgender community.

Definitions of Terms

Gender identity means a person’s internal sense of what their gender is. Some describe it as their brain’s gender. The person’s gender identity may or may not align with the sex assigned at birth.

Sexual orientation denotes who a person is attracted to. Gender identity and sexual orientation are not the same thing. A trans person can be any sexuality.

Sex assigned at birth means that at birth the doctor looked at the baby’s genitalia and labeled them as either male or female (rarely if ever is any other test used to determine sex). (Note: if the genitalia is ambiguous due to various Intersex conditions, the doctor may do surgery without permission to force the baby into either male or female. This is a common practice in America.)

Cisgender means people whose gender aligns with the sex assigned at birth, i.e., they are not trans.

Transgender means people whose gender does not align with the sex assigned at birth. This is often shortened to simply trans. A transgender person can be a woman, man, neither, or an third gender altogether. Trans people may or may not experience gender dysphoria, and they may or may not decide to physically and socially transition. Again, there is a lot of diversity within the trans community.

Non-binary denotes a person who does not identify within the male/female binary. Non-binary people fall under the transgender umbrella, although not all may identify with the term trans. See the Transgender Language Primer for definitions of various non-binary identities.

Gender Expression denotes the external appearance of one’s gender identity, usually expressed through behavior, clothing, haircut or voice. A person’s gender expression may or may not conform to society’s gender norms.

Transition denotes the process a person may undergo in order to align their body and/or their gender expression with their gender identity. Physical transition may or may not involve hormone therapy, various surgeries, and voice training. Social transition involves changing how a person expresses their gender and may or may not include changing their behavior, clothing, haircut, or voice.

Gender Norms denotes society’s rules, expectations, and roles that define for each gender a set of behaviors, gender expressions, characteristics, and roles. Norms often include how society enforces these roles, expectations, and rules.

Gender Roles denotes society’s expectations for each gender in regards to the familial, workplace, and social positions within society as well as the characteristics and traits society associates with each gender.

Socialization is a sociological term that refers “to the lifelong process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs, values and ideologies, providing an individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within their own society.” (Definition from wikipedia).

For a comprehensive list of terms and definitions, please see this lovely list: Transgender Language Primer

Worldbuilding

I have an extensive list of resources and articles I have written regarding worldbuilding. You can view that here.  In this section, I will explore how gender can influence society (such as the culture of your country and/or planet). When you engage in worldbuilding and/or designing your characters, many different influences from society, language, and history can increase the complexity of your character’s journey, of how characters interact with each other, and of your plot lines. I have provided some questions for writers to consider:

  • How many genders does your society and/or country have? Some cultures on Earth have up to five genders. In fact, biology is showing more and more that even humanity is not as simplistic as having just two sexes. Think of gender as your identity that is within your brain. Your sex is related to your biological make-up such as secondary sex characteristics or chromosomes; however, studies show that using sex to determine gender is not always reliable. Also, there is some evidence that one person could technically have cells with very different chromosomes. The point here is to show that even gender can be incredibly diverse.
  • Is gender neutral pronouns common in your society? What types of pronouns does your society’s language have?
    • As a side note: In American society, gender neutral pronouns are rare, but people are slowing changing the language over time by using gender neutral pronouns within written and spoken works/discussion.  There are many languages in the world where there is multiple gender neutral pronouns or the language may not have any gendered pronouns at all. (Finnish is an example of a language that doesn’t have gendered pronouns (or nouns) like what we see in English.) Remember language also affects how people perceive others, and languages are not static. If a language doesn’t have gender neutral pronouns, this can change if enough people use gender-neutral pronouns, which is how languages evolve — folks changing how words are used over time.
  • How does your society treat each gender? Is one considered “better” or “stronger” or “more intelligent” or “more simplistic” than the other? How is gender perceived and experienced within your culture? What are the gender  roles? This leads into my next question about gender norms (rules or expectations enforced by society).
  • Has the treatment of each gender changed over time? Was some genders treated differently in the past? How did that change over time?
  • What rules and/or expectations does your society enforce for various genders? This can manifest in various ways (this list is just to get you started):
    • What types of employment are accessible to what genders?
    • In what ways are people of each gender typically presented in the media/entertainment, educational, and/or political discussions?
    • How do people view the body (as in are there specific body parts that society labels is for one gender only?)
    • How people view sex (as in how is consent taught? Is specific sex acts considered belonging to one gender only? Is one gender presented as more dominant in sex than the other genders?)
    • What clothing is taboo (or allowed) for each gender?
    • What types of physical or psychological characteristics are associated with each gender?
    • How are people of certain genders treated in public?
    • What actions a person of a specific is allowed to do in public and what is considered taboo?
    • Is one gender considered better than another gender and how this power differential is enforced?
    • If people transgress the gender norms, how does society punish them (if society punishes them at all)?
      • (For example, in America, if a man (cisgender or trans) acts too feminine, other guys may beat him up, insult him, abuse him, and/or demote him until he acts the way society states a “man” should act. In some extreme cases, the man could be killed. Or if a woman (cisgender or trans) acts too manly in America, she can be dehumanized, abused, raped, verbally harassed, insulted, and/or demoted until she acts the way society states a “woman” should act. Again, in extreme cases, the woman could be killed. Also, note that this enforcement is even more harsh for trans people in America, especially if they do not “pass” as a cisgender person. Many trans people, especially non-passing and non-binary people, are often seen as “transgressing” the gender norms, and so they experience harassment, abuse, destruction of their property, loss of jobs or denied jobs, loss of or denied housing, loss of rights, unable to access public services, etc. In some cases, they may be driven to suicide or are murdered.)

When you think about gender norms and their enforcement, think about socialization. This can be a complex topic, so reading sociological theory on socialization may be useful. How we are socialized by society today may not be how people in the past were socialized, as socialization of norms is changeable over time. Think of it this way. You know how we are socialized to think pink is feminine and blue is masculine? At the end of the 1800s and early 1900s, blue was actually considered feminine. Things like this can change depending on time period and culture.

For example, in American culture, guys are supposed to be tough and show little emotion, and masculinity is associated with power, sexual prowess, and violence. Femininity in America is often associated with being overly emotional, not smart enough, weak, or bossy. However, in some societies on Earth, the masculine person is expected to show more emotion than the feminine person and their gender roles are polar opposite of how gender roles are perceived in America.  These socialized perceptions and gender norms have an impact on how people are perceived and treated. And all of what I’ve discussed thus far? That’s all learned behaviors and perceptions. I bring this up because I want writers to think outside the box. To avoid having these biases and/or socialized perceptions color your world-building.

The Sociological Images page does a good job of breaking down how a society enforces and perpetuates its norms. Also see their “for instructors page” as it has a lot of good resources for learning more about sociology and societal norms.

Designing Your Characters

Now that you understand the backdrop of your world in regards to gender, think about your character and how they inhabit that space. By understanding the environment, space, history, and personality of your character, you can develop intriguing story lines that move beyond stereotypes. Although there is a time and place for stories about the act of transitioning, there’s also much to be said about giving your trans character different types of story-arcs. You don’t have to make their entire plot line about them being trans or about their transition. Remember, trans people are very diverse, exist in all sorts of professions, and there’s more to them than just their gender identity. Their gender identity is only one facet of who they are. Also, recognize that a trans person can be any sexuality — gender identity and a person’s sexuality are not the same thing, so a trans person can be straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, asexual, or pansexual.

The following questions can help you better understand your character and the space around them, so when you write, you can include little details that add depth to their story-arcs and their interactions with other characters and societal systems.

  • How does the character navigate their society? (Is there roadblocks that prevent them from accessing certain opportunities or areas of society? Are their laws that prohibit their movement or restrict their rights? Do they have laws that guarantee their rights? Is society accepting of them or not? How do they react to these things? What is their opinion on the state of society?)
  • How does the character get through a day? (As in how to people respond to the character’s existence? Is it positive, negative, and/or neutral? Do they feel safe going about their day?)
  • Does the character encounter discrimination? How do they deal with discrimination? (Is there legal recourse for them? Programs or resources to help them access healthcare, employment, education, basic needs requirements, etc…)
  • What sort of movements exist that challenge the society’s gender norms? Or is your society accepting enough that there is no need for such movements? Is your character connected with such movements and what do they think of them?
  • How does your character experience gender? Do they have dysphoria? Will they transition physically or socially? Or are there roadblocks that prevent their transition? How do they react to society’s view of people like them?
  • What does your character like to do? Hobbies? Work?
  • What is your character’s spirituality or belief system? How does that influence their behaviors and thoughts?
  • What is your character’s worldview — how do they perceive their place in society? What do they feel about some of society’s laws or expectations? What sort of political theory to they adhere to?
  • Where did your character grow up and what was their childhood like? How does events from their childhood influence them today? What lessons did they learn during their childhood in regards to life, society, and their view of  themselves?
  • What is their family like? How many siblings do they have? What are their parents like? Does their family accept their gender identity?
  • What is your character’s sexuality? Have they dated anyone in the past, and if so, why did the relationship end? Are they interested in dating anyone? Are they in a relationship?
  • If in a relationship, did your character marry the person or not? Why? Do they have kids?  What are their kids like? Do they have any pets?
  • Who are your character’s friends? Why did they choose those friends? How did they meet? How deep are the friendships?
  • Is there anyone your character really dislikes? Why do they dislike them?
  • What was their education like? What did they study? Why did they decide to study that particular subject(s)?
  • What type of employment does the character have? Why did they choose to apply for that job? Or were they forced into that job due to societal norms or family pressure?
  • What is a typical day in the life of your character? (Think of a day before the big events of your story changes their life forever.)

For a longer list of character questions, see this thread on Legendfire Writing Forums.

Do not be afraid to use gender-neutral pronouns if there are characters who are of a third or fourth gender (or no gender). You can even meld the gender neutral pronouns into the society of your character’s world by making it a commonplace and/or important to the culture. When integrated into the setting (world) and characters, gender neutral pronouns will seem essential and not jarring to readers. For example, in science fiction, writers will use a variety of techniques to denote people (or aliens) of genders outside of the male/female binary:

  • Writers may use actual gender neutral pronouns such as ve/vir/vis (Alastair Reynolds has a character who uses these pronouns in one of his novels).
  • Or they may use a pronoun native to the language of the character (common with stories that have aliens in it like the Xenogenesis trilogy, where the aliens denote their third gender as just ooloi, or in Julie Czerneda’s works where it is a word native to the alien language).
  • Another approach involves writers using humanity’s tendency to stereotype and denote things by human’s norms. In this case, humans may decide to use only one pronoun for the entire alien species.  (The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin does this, where the human observer denotes all of the people on Winter as “he.” Ann Leckie does this in Ancillary Justice, where humans denote everyone within the alien species as “she.”) As a caveat: this particular approach may be useful for aliens and human stories, but I find this approach to be limiting and somewhat troublesome when used for non-binary characters (human or not).

 

Writing the story

Writing the story can often seem daunting, especially to people who are uncertain if they can portray trans characters well. I’ll tackle the steps to take in a bit, but first let’s discuss ways of writing the story your characters inhabit.

Once you have designed your characters, be willing to place them in diverse roles within your stories. You can make them the hero, the antagonist, an important side character, or peripheral characters that influence the plot in minor ways. It only takes a sentence or two to establish that they are trans. This can be done through a conversation the characters have, how other people interact or react to your character (such as microaggressions), the character’s inner thoughts about society and what they experience, or through well-worded descriptive details. The best way to explore how to do this is by reading books that feature trans people. Or think about how trans people may discuss being trans to other people — sometimes it comes up naturally in conversation. I will include a list of books to try at the end of this primer for you to explore how others have written trans characters.

For an example, I will use myself. A few days ago, some friends were sharing experiences of harassment (namely cat-callers). As a trans person who was assigned female at birth, I have experiences with this from when I was not yet out and was still perceived as a woman by nearly everyone. Since I was with friends, I joined the conversation by saying, “I get that. Before I came out or even considered transition, I experienced that too. I remember this one time…” Another example was when I was with friends on a hot day. I made the comment: “Ugh, I hate that feeling of sweat inside the binder. I’m totally going to take a nice shower when I get home.” My friends then shared their own discomfort with the heat, we laughed about it, and the topic changed to something else. In both these instances, my sharing of my trans part of my identity was brief and not the focus, but in both instances I felt comfortable and safe enough to share my experience.

By reading and listening to trans people’s stories and experiences, you can compile all sorts of ways to slip in details that the character is trans, where it may or may not be crucial to the plot but it is another interesting detail that develops the character further.

Here is a wonderful example of a writer doing a good job in creating a trans character. In Dragon Age Inquistion, there is a character who is trans, and the main indicator is some dialogue where the character mentions that they bind. Here is a blog post of how the writers and developers of Dragon Age Inquistion researched the subject and implemented the character in a respectful way: Building a Character: Cremisius “Krem” Aclassi. This article also shows the steps involved in writing a trans character well:

  1. Research and lots of it. Best way to do this is to listen to the stories of trans people. Read about their lives and read stories by them. Read up on definitions and concepts pertaining to trans people and the issues they face.
  2. Look for roles trans people can have in your stories — try for diverse roles in a variety of professions, and try to avoid making their story-arc just about the fact they are trans. Trans people are just as interesting and complex as cisgender people. Trans people can be any profession, any sexuality, any ethnicity or race, any socioeconomic position. Diversify!
  3. After you write your story, look for beta readers who are trans, and ask for their critiques. Listen to their constructive feedback on how to improve, and don’t feel defeated or sad if their reaction is less than stellar. Learn from your mistakes, fix any errors, and keep doing your best to diversify your characters. The best way to write diverse characters is by trying, learning from the experience, and trying again when you mess up.
  4. Understand that no matter how hard you try, some folks will love what you write and other people may not. As long as you do your best to write trans characters respectfully, that’s what’s important.

Remember, you don’t have to be a trans person in order to include trans characters! Writing trans characters may seem hard at first, but I challenge you to try anyway. Realize that trans people are just like you, and by writing about them, you can not only better understand trans people but also grow as a person and a writer. If you have any questions or want to see certain sections covered in further detail, feel free to drop me a note, and I’ll see what I can do.

Resources:

Legendfire Writing Forum Thread discussing how to write trans characters.

The Gender Book is a good 101 primer about trans people and issues they face. I highly recommend starting here.

Tips on writing trans characters (article published at Strange Horizons).

An article published on SFWA that provides tips on writing characters of different races and/or ethnicities. A lot of the advice is applicable to trans characters as well.

An article published on Walrus called Rise of the Gender Novel. It discusses how trans people are portrayed in literature.

Kat Blaque’s Advice on How to Write Transgender Characters (a YouTube video):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3fbvOX8Zh4 (I highly recommend this resource. Kat Blaque is a trans woman, who does a wonderful job offering tips on writing trans characters well.)

Lists of books with a trans protagonist:

Worldbuild: Cities

Posted by Aibird on December 6, 2014
Posted in: Aliens, Elivera, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 3 Comments

In a society, people tend to gather in communities, and over time these communities can expand and grow, developing into cities. Thus, when world-building, cities can prove to be intensely beneficial to your stories. Taking the time to develop them can help you better understand the setting of your story and how your characters may be influenced or shaped by their surroundings.

For example, if your story takes place in a desert, the community may not be a sprawling metropolis, mostly because the environment simply couldn’t sustain it. Think about the amount of water necessary to keep those inhabitants alive. In a desert, water is scarce, and thus a large, sprawling city would be counterproductive and dangerous to survival. You’d quickly run out of resources to continue to expand the city. Even if this city is by an oasis, such rare water sources are not unlimited resources, and if over tapped, that resource will run dry, which would be disastrous for the inhabitants of the city. To avoid this problem, communities in the desert may be smaller towns.

Another consideration to consider is the design of the buildings. Cooling a building may be essential for some deserts. One way to accomplish this is to allow for the flow of air throughout the house. If nights get too cold, these buildings would also have the ability to be shuttered up. The materials for these dwellings should be a light color, as darker colors absorb more light (and thus more heat). As deserts can often be hot (though not all will be, depending on the latitude of your desert), a dark colored structure would make the indoors unbearable during the days. To maximize on cooling, it may be better to have underground structures, where the air can be cooler. There is a reason animals burrow under the desert during the day; this is because the area under the surface can often retain the cool temperatures of the night for much longer than the structure situated on top or above ground. However, there is a limit to how deep you can build your underground structures; don’t have them been miles deep, for the closer you get to the mantle, the more the temperature will rise as that part of the earth’s interior can be substantially warmer than the crust.

That’s just one example of how to build a city that makes sense in its environment. To help you generate ideas, study some of the cities built on earth. Look into how they are built, where they are built, and what problems they face due to their location and the environment in which they live. Not all cities last forever, so look into why cities decline. Sometimes it’s human factors that cause the decline, but also consider environmental factors as well. Make a list of possible ways cities can expand and decline over time, and try to create a timeline for your city. Researching cities on earth can be useful in helping you consider the timeline of your cities, but don’t feel like you have to model your city after Earth cities.

If you are writing science fiction and creating a futuristic city, think about how technology will play into the type of city you want to create. Will technology help compensate for lack of resources in the environment? If so, how would that work and what is the necessary infrastructure to make that technology work within the confines of your city? How many workers or robots would be necessary to maintain that infrastructure? How will the technology of your city play a role in the inhabitant lives? Will they have a city-wide network that inhabitants can tap into?

When examining the history of city design, there is several different styles of design:

  • Traditional designs tend to focus on long straight streets and squares, where there are green spaces or public areas in the middle of the city. A lot of traditional city designs focus on square grids, though some cities utilize a radial form such as Paris.
  • Modernist designs focus more on taller, more elevated buildings being built into city blocks, where the expansion of the city goes toward the sky rather than spreading out over more land.  Modernist designs also focus on large highways cutting through cities. The idea of grouping office buildings together also is part of the more modernist design for cities. In what ways can you examine modernist designs and alter them into something more unique and less earth-like?
  • Green designs integrate natural landscape into the design for cities. This is also known as landscape urbanism. This is a harken back to the pre-industrial cities which were often small with the landscape close by. However, in modern cities, urbanization covers such large areas that natural landscape is often disconnected from those that live in the constructed environment of the modern city. This relationship of the natural and constructed environments becomes more difficult to achieve, especially with the spread and expansive nature of modern cities. Green designs focuses on sculpting the city to fit in with the nature, where nature and constructed environments were integrated in ways that highlight the flow of the landscape. One example is the gardens within Japanese and Chinese cities, where artificial landscapes were constructed within the city. Other examples are coastal cities being conformed to the shape of the coast. Instead of forcing the coast to fit the minds of the designers, the city is molded to fit the coast and is built to handle possible storm surges and rising sea levels. In coastal cities, it’s often not possible to have square grids, as the coast line can often be irregular in its shape, and so the city must be molded to fit that shape.
  • Another design for cities is the Systems design, which focuses on viewing cities like living organisms. This design takes into account the complexity of cities. It highlights how over time they can grow more complex, if more people move to that city, or less complex if the city starts to fail due to various factors. These designs are often simulated in various city building software, and tends to create patterns that resemble more the structure of a brain neuron rather than grid-like patterns or city blocks.

When designing cities, it can be effective to think about what your world is like and the values of your species. For example, my Dragios species is very much focused on biological technologies, so their architecture and city designs are all oriented on the helix nature of DNA, and the buildings are grown through nanotechnology and can evolve into more complex structures. This type of city is very different from earth-like designs and less systematic and grid-like, as it takes more of a helical structure to its layout. This is one of the many ways you can diversify your city designs.

Now that you have the basic layout of your city and the environment in and around it, you have to consider the systems, services, resources, and industries within your city. Where will your people live? What type of housing is available? Where are the markets located and what do they resemble? How is the infrastructure handled such as water, electricity (if it exists), sewage, transportation and so forth? To help you examine this side of city-building, I formulated a list of questions, which I posted to the resources forum at LegendFire: http://www.legendfire.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6795

The above link includes a set of questions for you to answer as you build your city. It also includes some links to further information. I highly recommend exploring it. So readers, how have you constructed your cities? What do you consider?

To stand on an alien world

Posted by Aibird on August 10, 2014
Posted in: Aliens, Physics, Science, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment
stand alone in the void of your mind from Flickr via Wylio

© 2012 David Dehetre, Flickr | CC-BY

Our eyes can’t see Infrared light, so a world that thrives on IR might look like the above picture to us. Though the color of the sky might be a different color than this picture shows.

Our Moon

What is it like to stand on a world that is not Earth? For those that have had the chance to walk on the moon, they experienced this to a small degree. The moon is a hostile environment. There is no atmosphere, and has very light gravity. You must have technology in order to survive on the moon; without it, you’d be dead. Yet, what is it like to stand there and look up at the sky? First, you’d see the earth. Large and colorful. You’d see the clouds drifting across its surface and the blue of the oceans, the more pastel colors of the continents. You’d see the sun as a bright white light tinged with yellow far in the distance. You may even see stars, but the black void that is space will be all around you.

There isn’t an atmosphere that refracts light, giving day time a blue tint. The day and night sky would be black. There isn’t any protection from the sun’s more harmful radiation. You’d have to put the whole moon between you and the sun or hope your suit and technology could protect you from the more dangerous rays — the ones that could damage your cells and slowly kill you.

To live on the moon would require a massive undertaking, where we’d have to build a base that is sustainable and highly shielded. Any leaks would be disastrous, and help may not reach us in time. We’d have to be able to jury-rig solutions on our own and extract our own water from the moon, grow our own food within the protected and sealed base, because supplies would be expensive to send from Earth.

Alien Planet or Moon – Red Dwarf System

What about a different planet altogether? Let’s examine a system where the star has a different range of light than our sun. Let’s start with a red dwarf star system, one of the more common stars in our universe. Red Dwarf stars are fairly small and burn their fuel slowly, and thus have a fairly constant luminosity. However, its luminosity is only 10% the luminosity of our sun, so this star’s light is faint. It may appear as more of a dull orange or red in the sky.

The planet, in order to be habitable, must be fairly close to the star to receive enough light and energy to fuel the systems necessary for life. This means the planet may be tidally locked, which would cause large temperature variations. The side that faces the sun would be blistering hot, making it hostile to life, and the other side would be incredibly cold. The cold side may even be cold enough for the atmospheric gas to turn to liquid or solids, which isn’t conducive to life at all. To compensate for this, a heavy atmosphere and a large ocean would be necessary to distribute this heat from the tidally locked side to other places on the planet. However, a thicker atmosphere means you run the danger of having a greenhouse effect, where then the planet’s surface would be too hot to sustain life (a bit like Venus, the ultimate example of a run-away greenhouse effect).

Another way for life to exist in this system is if the planet is a gas giant and the moon is tidally locked around the planet. As it orbits the planet, it’s able to receive sunlight from the star at several stages of its orbit: when it’s between the planet and the sun and when it’s to the side of the planet. It’d receive no sunlight when its behind the planet. This gives the moon a day/night cycle and distribution of heat. In certain parts of the orbit, the sun will appear very low in the sky on the tidally locked side. This means that the tidally locked side won’t be completely cut-off from sunlight, which is good for life. There’s also the demarcation of the night and day side of this tidally locked moon — this border region would have less extreme temperatures than the tidally locked side and its opposite side. Thus life may be more prevalent in this border region.

Let’s say that we’re on that tidally locked moon. Remember, the red dwarf star is small, and thus will mostly emit radiation in the infrared spectrum and will be fairly faint. Even close to the star, the planet still must contend with variations in the energy output of the star due to sunspots that can cover up to 40% of the surface of the star at a time. This effects the output of the energy released, which in turn effects how much of that energy reaches the planet. During these periods, temperatures may dip a bit and plants will find it harder to absorb the needed light for photosynthesis. Perhaps they’d evolve a form of hibernating state during the sunspot periods? Sunspots often are cyclic, and thus after a long amount of time, it is possible life would adapt to the sunspot cycles.

Any plants on that moon will have to absorb spectra other than the red and blue spectrum of light that Earth plants’ absorb (and thus give them their characteristic green color) in order to receive enough nutrients to fuel its photosynthesis. This will change the color of the plants, giving them a different color than what we’d see on earth. It’s possible the plants would be black if they absorb all visible light wavelengths.

However, since infrared light is the dominant light, the plants are more likely to evolve with infrared light as the driver for photosynthesis. This means they may not appear as black at all. Our eyes, which require the visible spectrum to see, may view the plants as colorless. However, to aliens that evolve on this moon, they would likely evolve eyes that see infrared light, so they’d see the color of those plants. They’d see a very different world then us.

What will that look like? The best way for us to simulate this is to show false color images of infrared sight, where we translate the infrared spectra to visible light spectra in order for us to “see” what it’d be like. The focus would be more on the process of life — where we’d see temperature differences more keenly. In fact, the world would be based upon temperature differences since the amount of infrared light emitted (or reflected) by objects depends on the temperature of that object.

How would that alter the alien society if the world they saw was based upon the temperature variations in their environment? How would it alter their views of themselves? Their view of their world and how they construct their cultures?

Also remember, if this is a tidally locked moon around a gas giant, that planet will take up a huge section of the sky for the tidally locked side. It will take up a smaller portion for the border area, and won’t take up any of the sky for the side not facing the planet. How will this effect the evolution of the alien culture?

It’s also possible that this moon may be either be a fairly dry, desert-like world or one that is ocean rich and full of moisture. To develop an ocean, the moon needs to form with an abundance of water molecules and eventually evolve a process to keep that water cycle moving. However, it is also possible for this moon to develop a dry, desert landscape, where water is hidden under the surface or trapped in the atmosphere. This would be a warm moon where water is more scarce, but life could still evolve. However, for either possibility, the moon would still need an atmosphere to protect life as it evolves.

Another important point is that the moon would experience stress from the gas giant’s gravitational pull, which could drive enough tectonic activity to help bolster the formation of life. Tectonic activity would allow for the formation of mountains, valleys, plains, ocean trenches, rivers, lakes, and other interesting geological features. Take a look at Titan as an interesting example of a moon with an atmosphere and some minor tectonic activity. Water doesn’t exist on Titan because of how cold it is, but it still has lakes and rivers — it’s just liquid ammonia.

The temperature of that planet will influence what exists as a liquid on that surface, and if the planet is too hot, it may not have liquids but instead will be dry and arid. (This is also possible for a planet that is fairly cold. Mars is a good example of a planet where there is no flowing water because of how cold it is. A thin atmosphere also inhibits liquids existing over long periods on a planet/moon’s surface. It’s always a good idea to know the phase transitions of different elements and molecules, especially those that are fairly abundant on your moon or planet.)

The above is mostly a thought experiment to help you visualize what it might be like to stand on another planet. What else should I consider as I examine standing on an alien planet or moon?

How I craft a language Part 2: Phonetics and Phonology

Posted by Aibird on April 2, 2014
Posted in: Aliens, Biology, Elivera, Linguistics, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

You can read the first part of this series here. This is a continuation of that first post.

I’ve made some concept drawings of my Dragios species, but as I’m not the best at drawing, this is mostly sketches with only the head done in any sort of detailed fashion. Here’s one of the design sketches:Image02172014154740 I’m still not fully satisfied with it — the mouth needs to be a bit more triangular and smoothed out, but it’s close enough for my purposes.

In order to start creating their language, I need to consider the details of how this alien species evolved and their biology. The Dragios species evolved on a light gravity planet around a low mass star (spectral class of K5, which means it’s surface temperature is only 4,400K and it is 0.64 the size of our sun. This means the planet has a closer orbit in order to be in the habitable zone.), where the gravity is 3/4ths that of Earth. They are mostly a bird/reptilian type species and can glide short distances on their planet. They have the ability to alter their outer appearance to some degree, the two outer layer of cells fairly flexible, allowing for them to camouflage themselves extremely well. It takes some time for them to learn how to look like other similar sized animals, but once they master the skill, they can easily blend and walk amongst their prey without being noticed. This makes hunting fairly easy, and fairly easy for them to hide if they’re being hunted. They are bipedal with strong legs and strong wing bones, allowing them to run fairly fast and glide great distances. Their hands have a thumb and three fingers, which gives them the dexterity to grasp objects and undoubtedly proved essential in their development of technology over time.

Their mouth is shaped a bit like a bat’s snout, very compact, but with a large nasal area. Their ears are large and can easily move nearly 270 degrees. This gives them a wide range of movement, and allows for greater breadth in the range of their hearing. They also have no lips, and thus would have no consonants corresponding to those types of sounds. Within their throat, they have a four thin vocal chords, layered upon each other, which allows them to sing four pitches at the same time. This gives them versatility with their music and speech, and also makes it hard for a human to ever truly learn to speak their language. Because of this, their language is heavily based around music. When devising the phonology of their language, I had to take all of this into account.

Now I could examine the phonetics of their language, which is the production, transmission, and perception of the sounds of language. This is different then phonology , which concerns itself with the examination of the systematic organization of sounds (such as into words) and how this organizing of sounds constructs meaning. To examine how the sounds are organized, I first have to create the sounds. Here are the two phonetic maps I created:

Consonants: Dragios consonants

Vowels: Dragios vowels

As you can see, I left some space for improvement as this is a work in progress. Although I did base the categories loosely upon human linguistics, I took out a few categories that they wouldn’t have due to a difference in mouth construction. With these sounds and the characters I use to represent them, I can start to construct words, which is where I start to examine the phonology of their language. To do this, I created some simplistic word construction rules, where C stands for consonant and V for vowel:

VCV
CVCV
CVVC(V)
VVC(V)

Although this is somewhat simplistic at the moment, it’s enough for me to start constructing words based on these sounds. I decided to focus first on the musical terminology because of their ability to sing more than one sound at a time and how crucial music will be in their culture. I then expanded the vocabulary to include words for their environment and their society. From there, I could start to work on how they actually construct their sentences. In order to construct sentences, I needed to create a set of rules, also known as syntax. These rules would help speakers form sentences in which to communicate larger and more complicated ideas. Another way to view syntax is to think of grammar rules — all languages have them. Those grammar rules are the syntax of that language.

I started with a simple rule for basic sentences that focused on the word order within the sentence itself: Subject — object — verb

From there I decided that the clicks within the language would serve a bit like punctuation and articles. They’d signify when a sentence is a command, statement, or interrogative. They’d also serve as connectors of one phrase to another within the sentence. With this idea in mind, I began to construct a few basic sentences. Now this is all very simplistic currently, and I do have further plans on how to add depth to the syntax of this language, but as of this moment in time, this is where I currently stand with my alien language.

So that’s the basics of how I created my first alien language. Having a linguistics resource nearby aided me tremendously during this project, but more importantly, I had to examine how various species’ mouths were constructed. This gave me a wider range of ideas on how an alien mouth may evolve, and what it may resemble, and in turn, allowed for more versatility with the sounds they could make. Will I use this language within my stories? Possibly but even if I don’t, the act of building this language has allowed me to examine my alien species in depth. To visualize it more fully and to give me a chance to examine their society and views of the world and how that may differ from humanity. This has, in turn, given me ideas on possible conflicts that can give rise to even more stories. So the act of building their language has inspired me in a great number of ways and further enriches the world-building of my Elivera universe.

It can be a challenge to create a language, but it’s definitely rewarding in the long run.

Paper Mache Project Completed

Posted by Aibird on October 23, 2013
Posted in: Art, Elivera, Science, World Building. Tagged: , , , , , , . 3 Comments

Here is the final pictures of the paper mache project:

I apologize for the fuzzy aspect to the pictures. They were taken with my phone camera.

Also, I tilted the globe so you can see the north and south poles more clearly:

 

Image10062013214749I am looking down at the globe toward the northern hemisphere and the continent of Vera.  To the east, you can see half of the continent of Ratomae — the desert on the western side of its continental divide.  The continent of Vera is intersected by a mountain range, mostly due to the plate tectonics in that region.  Also, most of it is covered in forest with deserts at the equator that intersects the southern peninsulas at the bottom of the image. The forests of Vera are huge, where the trees can grow to a kilometer tall in places. This is partly because Elivera is slightly smaller than Earth, and slightly less massive, which gives it a lower surface gravity. Other factors come into play to allow for the huge growth of the trees, but that’s already discussed in my world-building posts, so check those out for more information!

Image10062013214804Here is the Isutobek islands. This is my first mistake: those islands are too large. They should be ten times smaller. Something to repair for my next attempt at this project.

Image10062013214812The other side of the Isutobek islands (ugh! too big!  But nearly impossible to fix after I painted them), and the rest of Ratomae, the eastern side of its continental divide.  I also made sure to take this picture looking down on the eastern side of the northern hemisphere, that way you can get a good look at the northern ice cap.  There is a continent under the northern ice cap, but there is nothing but ocean under the southern one.

Image10062013214849I put the globe on the table, and titled it so you could see the southern hemisphere better. This is the continent of Egoni.  Here is my other minor error.  The southern ice cap shouldn’t quite touch Egoni’s southern shore, but I drew it too far down and didn’t realize it until after I painted the ocean around it. It was too late to fix then.  Also, note how mountains encircle the top and sides of the continent.  There are huge, deep canyons in these mountains, and at the bottom of the canyons there is crevices and fissures, that lead to underground caverns.  Winds blow through these canyons at upward of 200 km/hr, so if you’re in the canyon or near it, you can hear what sounds almost like musical notes. This is due to the winds hitting the fissures and the holes in the ground, similar to how you’d play a flute.

Image10062013214858Turned so you can see how close Egoni is to the continent of Kefutji.

 

Image10062013214912The continent of Kefutji, which is a highly mountainous region — a lot of tectonic movement in this area, not just collision of plates, but also lots of hot spots.  There’s marshes, forests, and highlands as well as cold grasslands to the south.  It’s probably the only continent on this planet with the most disparate climate zones.

Image10062013214930I tipped the globe upward even more so you could see the entirety of the southern ice cap and how it overflows onto the southern shores of Kefutji.  The globe is also tipped slightly to the reader’s left, so it’s not entirely straight up and down.

Image10062013214951The ocean between Kefutji and the southern most peninsula of Vera.

Image10062013215001The ocean between the southern tip of Vera and the start of Egoni.  The globe is straight up and down at this point.  No tipping at all, thus the equator should be in the center of this image.

And that’s it!  It was a fun experiment.  What I learned:

  • Glue-based paper mache is simply not porous enough. It took multiple coats of acrylic paint to produce the color hues I needed.  Also, the paint scrapes off easily, so I have to be very careful with its stand.  I may take some fishing wire, create a slim net with it, and set the globe in that, so it can be hung and less chance of the paint being scraped.
  • Styrofoam base for this is too scratchy and porous to handle paint, so something has to be layered atop it for this to work.
  • Self-hardening clay is more porous than paper mache, so may try that as a possible fix.

It’s a relief to see it finished, and I must admit, it’s fun to show to others.  For a first try, it turned out alright.  Now I know what works and what doesn’t, and I have ideas on how to improve this project for when I try this again.  My hope is to create a more detailed and better version of this planet, and then I’d like to create a model of its moons (both are fairly small), and a few planets in other solar systems that the people in my novels have colonized.  It’ll probably take me quite awhile, but I’ll be sure to update here when I start on this.  For the moment, I’ll return to some basic map-making with paper and pencils, and working on finishing some of my current writing projects.

Paper Mache Planet Update!

Posted by Aibird on September 23, 2013
Posted in: Art, Elivera, Science, World Building. Tagged: , , , , , , . 3 Comments

Finally! I have succeeded in determining a way to paint my planet. This is the first batch of paint — it will need at least two if not three coats of acrylic paint – and there is some pieces of continent in the southern hemisphere and three islands in the northern hemisphere that have yet to be painted.

I’m using dark blue for ocean. A turquoise for rivers and lakes (big enough to see from space obviously). Dark green for forest. A basil-like green for grasslands. Dark yellow for desert. Brown for mountains and hills (not sure how to specify between the two yet), and bits of red for hot spots such as volcanoes. I have overlapped areas as well since forests, deserts, and grasslands can appear in mountain ranges and hills. You can see this most prominently on the Vera continent in the second picture below, where the forests overlap the mountain range that cuts the continent in half. I thought about adding texture to the mountain ranges and hills, but I’ve yet to determine a method that would work for what I have in mind.

For the most part, this is just a proto-type to give me a sense of scale and help me determine ways to improve this idea for future planet projects. It’s useful also to just have a globe I can touch when it comes to writing about the world itself. Without further ado, here is the pictures. I’ll be sure to do an update when I’m finished with the piece!

Note: All of these pictures focus heavily on the Northern hemisphere since that hemisphere is nearly finished (the islands in the third picture are not fully painted yet.) When I finish the southern hemisphere, I’ll do an update with those pictures.

Elivera4

Elivera3

Elivera2

Elivera1

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.