Welcome (back) to the Scarlet Quill Society!
In 2023 YeahWrite’s free workshop is going back to the basics with a focus on tropes, the sometimes imperceptible and often underrated building blocks of writing. Check out the bottom of this post (and every post) for a roadmap to the year. We’ll be updating it with links each month as the posts go live, so that you can navigate through easily. And don’t forget to check out the Writing Resources tab up **gestures vaguely upwards** there to find our previous workshop series on prompts and editing (not at the same time).
The biggest bonus of the Scarlet Quill Society is that there are actual club meetings. That’s right! Once a month we’ll get together with you and talk about that month’s subject, answer questions, and record the chat for posterity. So if you have an easier time taking in information that way, or if you’re left with lingering questions after a monthly topical post, you’ve got a chance to get the full picture! Check out the full description at the main Scarlet Quill Society page.
Latitude check!
We’ve spent a ton of time talking about tropes about people. And about plot. But what about the landscapes that these people and plots are set in? This month we’re focusing on the worlds around us, and the tropes that authors fall back on to make their worldbuilding a little easier – but that may actually make it harder. We’ve got an exciting panel of guests coming to talk about worlds real and imaginary, so let’s warm up to the topic (but not in the sense of global warming please) and talk about some classic worldbuilding tropes.
What’s on the map?
Let’s start in the hardest place possible: worlds you make yourself, out of whole cloth. Your assumptions about the world around you will still shape these worlds, so keep that in mind as we go through some of the classic tropes. This section is “what are you doing to the map” but in the second section of this post we’ll get to “and what does that map mean about the world” so stay tuned.
Everything is Europe
This is a huge problem in high fantasy, but it shows up other places. Is your map a landmass, dominated by oceans at the left and bottom of the page, with a big cold peninsula up top? Congratulations, you’ve made Europe. The biggest problem with Fantasy Europe is that it doesn’t have any of the fascinating and glorious diversity of Real Europe. So if you’re making Fantasy Europe what should you do? Look up who lives in Real Europe. You don’t, obviously, have to make cultures 1:1 with what’s in Real Europe, but you should consider the sheer number of cultures there, and the way they’ve been shaped by immigration (both from within and without the borders of your map), climate, the availability of food, trade routes, etc. Fun fact: there’s probably no point in history at which Europe was exclusively white, even with the expansive (read: anti-Black) definition of whiteness used in the modern US. Look at the climates and what could be grown where. After all, you have a real example to draw from.
Hyrule? No, You Rule.
Ah, Hyrule. Another classic fantasy map style. More than one ecosystem? Sure! We got all four: Desert, Riparian/Jungle, Alpine, and, um, A Giant Volcano. Each climate is confined more or less neatly to a map quadrant, surrounded by Beach (which is pretty much all the same climate regardless of where you are on the map) and Huge Ravine (that doesn’t have water in it? Despite being literally below sea level?). And there are rivers! And mountains! And none of the rivers or mountains really make sense except as a visual divider for the portions of the map that have different climates. Of all the rivers on the map, only the Menoat drains into the sea, and it’s both short and wide. There’s no delta. So while technically Hyrule solves the “don’t be Europe” problem as well as the “we need several climates” problem, there’s not a lot of ecological sense to the map. Or navigable rivers, for that matter; I’m not sure how the commerce stream for the for Lurelin Village fishing industry is supposed to work. This is what happens when you use a random map generator. So don’t forget to look at things like “sure I can use my fantasy river to make a moat but also does it start and end somewhere?” when you’re tweaking random generator maps. Think of them as a ChatGPT phrase: editing something can help you to get started, but you don’t really want any of the same words on the page when you finish that you started with, except in the general sense of using things like articles and conjunctions.
Incontinent
How many continents does your planet have? One? None? (Yes, desert planets count as one continent). This is going to affect your climate and weather patterns. We’re about to get to “what is your map doing to the world” so hang in there. For right now, take a second to think how your perceptions of livability for an area are shaped by the existence of different areas in proximity to it. For example, Las Vegas is actually a desert nightmare. Nothing very edible grows there. There’s no water. The local wildlife is scarce and dangerous. It can’t support a large population. And yet, a large population lives there, because everything from water to building supplies to fresh strawberries can be shipped in. If you take away the fertile areas near (and even not so near) Las Vegas that make that possible, you can’t put a Las Vegas in your world. Before you create a single continent planet, especially one with a single climate (we’ll get to why that’s silly) look around you and think about what in your daily life is made possible by access to other climates and ecosystems. And think about how you get from Point A to Point B.
Seasons
Again, you might be about to fall prey to Everything Is Europe! Fewer places in the world have the “traditional four seasons” than don’t. Where your city is on the continent can affect not just whether your people can get water, but whether it snows in the winter. And what does a “mild” winter mean? Look it up – milder winters sound nice but are currently contributing to the mass death of forests across Western Canada and the northern US. Infinite winter (looking at you Narnia) can mean starvation… but so can infinite summer, in an area unprepared for that. From the clothes you own to the food you eat, seasons shape our lives. Before you lean into the “summer good winter bad” trope, make sure you’re not about to destroy the world!
What’s in the map?
Now that you’ve got the basic outlines of your map, the oceans, rivers, mountains and so forth, let’s talk about what lives there and why.
Monoclimates: Desert planets and ocean worlds
Whether your monoclimate is a country or a continent or an entire planet, it’s unrealistic. Even in a planet with no axial wobble, the sun’s angle is different at different latitudes. Not even kudzu likes to spread that much. In order for your planet to be a monoclimate you’re going to have to take away a lot of what makes a planet function. And then you’re going to have to artificially plug it back in. This seems like a lot more trouble than just having a diverse planet to begin with, even though most people think it should be the other way around.
Likewise, a planet that is entirely a desert or entirely an ocean is going to have some barriers to life. Not just to living there, but to life having originated on the planet in the first place. Some folks try to get around this with a huge catastrophe (looking at you, Fury Road) but then you have to (or not, I guess) account for where the rest of the diversity on the planet went. All the water that was on Earth in the first place in the Mad Max series – part of which took place on a beach – is still there. Somewhere. And as an author you should know where.
Agriculture: People gotta eat
The landscape of your world shapes the food you eat. Even when you can import (you remember that navigable rivers thing?) food, you still have to grow it somewhere. Where on your world are the main agricultural centers? What can grow in the climate you made, and what can you make out of it? Don’t forget spices! When you say “the main protein on my world is fish” does that mean beef is disparaged or an exotic treat? Or both, depending on the subculture?
If you’re going to lean into the trope of “ten page descriptions of every last meal” you’ll need to know what people are eating. Comfort foods can be a shortcut to character description – they tell us a lot about where and with whom someone grew up, and whether they’re leaning into or opposing that history. Watch out for embedded racism in your assumptions (and tropes about) what people eat! Likewise, watch out for it in tropes about agriculture and community. Agriculture doesn’t necessarily look like colonial agriculture, so do a little extra work to find the method that works for the world you’re building. Maybe that is colonial agriculture, with huge monocultured fields. But know what you’re setting yourself up for with that design, both culturally and ecologically.
Critters
Whether they’re cute, monstrous, or good eatin’ there’s probably some critters in your world. When you’re using trope critters (dragons, unicorns, etc) you still have to give some thought to how they fit into the ecosystem. For example, I love The Last Unicorn. Notice what Peter Beagle did with his unicorns? They live in forests, so he made them deerlike instead of horselike. Horses don’t do well in forests. Similarly, if you’re going to go the Avatar route and have foxsquirrels (kidding, that’s Nausicaa), your combination creatures should be made of creatures that both thrive in the environment you’ve put them in. So you could have lizardmonkeys, although I’m not sure why you’d want to, but you’d want to look at an ecosystem with both lizards and monkeys in it and pick *those* to combine rather than, say, a gila monster and an orangutan. Look around at the adaptations that animals have made to live in ecosystems on Earth, and even if you’re using trope critters, you can work those concepts (sheep eyes anyone?) into your descriptions. Likewise if you’re transplanting critters to a new world, look at what would need to be done to maintain them, and how they might change – both the critter, and the landscape.
One last thing: don’t forget the bugs! They’re critical to maintaining your ecosystem.
In conclusion…
Look, you don’t have to spend decades designing a new language to worldbuild. But as an Indigenous friend reminded us once during a sensitivity read, the world is a character in your story too. Give it at least as much thought as you give your other characters. And come hang with our panel this month for climate change, gardening, and more food for thought!
THIS MONTH’S SPECIAL GUESTS
They’re back! Kat Tanaka Okopnik, TC Duong, and Genevra Hsu will be joining us this month for a panel discussion of worlds and worldbuilding tropes. Together they’ll investigate mapmaking, climate change, food, and how the worlds we build are reflected in the one we live in. Join us!
KTO is a writer and editor currently curating public discussions covering the intersection of etiquette, social justice, geek culture, food, parenting, technology and politics. These topics might seem randomly assorted taken one at a time; viewed as a constellation, the tangle of paths resolves to a map of guideposts toward building accessible escape pods off this hell-bound handbasket without crashlanding on Planet SSDD. This work is generously crowdfunded by patrons at http://www.patreon.com/ktokopnik/.
TC Duong has spent his career working at the intersection of national organizations and their grassroots networks through advocacy, capacity building and organizing. As someone in philanthropy, his work is to shift social change work from transactional to transformational.
Genevra Hsu learned to read at three years old, and has had loud opinions about writing ever since. She’s a queer martial artist, gardener and baker who lives in a 140-year-old house in Southwestern Virginia with her husband and two peaceable housecats, and when she’s not reading, writing, cussing at bindweed or coming up with weird cupcakes, she can reliably be found watching Chinese dramas. She keeps an Instagram full of garden photos at www.instagram.com/foxwatchful and we’re so excited to welcome her to the channel.
Your turn!
Got questions? Let’s continue this conversation in the Coffeehouse on Facebook or Discord. And keep an eye out for the next face-to-face (face-to-Zoom?) meeting of the Scarlet Quill Society.
Join the Scarlet Quill Society!
Live Scarlet Quill Society meetings take place once a month. This month’s meeting will take place on Thursday, July 13 at 8pm US Eastern time. Don’t worry, we’ll send out an email reminder. (Not on our mailing list? Sign up here!) Future dates and times TBD based on member and guest availability, but we’ll try to accommodate as many folks as possible. (Yeah. We know. It’s best to have a fixed time. But we think it’s even better than best to be able to accommodate a diverse slate of exciting and qualified panelists, and we hope you’ll agree.)
You can also sign up for a monthly membership! Each month, paid Society members will receive an email with a link to the Zoom meeting. If not every topic interests you, you can also purchase one-time access passes to each month’s meeting via Ko-Fi. If you can’t make it to the meeting, or you don’t like to speak on camera, you are welcome to submit questions before the meeting that our editors will answer in the meeting.
- $5 one-time access to this month’s Zoom session. (The January meeting is free, but please use this link to RSVP!)
- $5 monthly subscription (Pen level): Access to all the live meetings and recordings as soon as they’re uploaded, as well as a private Discord channel where we can discuss tropes in more detail, and your topical questions will be answered by YeahWrite editors! Pen level members can also suggest tropes for future live discussions – our goal is to give you what you want and need!
- $3 monthly subscription (Pencil level): Access to the meeting recordings as soon as they’re uploaded and to the private Discord channel!
A week after the meeting, recordings will become available to all at no cost, but if you find them useful we encourage you to leave a tip in our tip jar—it helps keep the lights on over here and allows us to keep bringing you the high-quality workshop content you’ve come to expect from us, as well as acquire some exciting guest panelists. You can also sign up for a $1/month Paper level membership just to show us you love us.
