How To Help Others

As I have brought up in a few of the blogs, I am not exactly the ‘normal person’ where it comes to the ‘traditional family background issues.’ I was raised by my mother and by my grandmother. I lived in a rather well-off portion of Houston and other times, when I stayed with my father, I lived in areas other people might defined as ‘urban ghettos.’ I was never friends with many boys and the females I was friends with did not particularly take to me since I was not masculine. I grew up being viewed as homosexual because my voice did not crack until I was older than most kids and, as the female friends I had did not hang out with me besides where school was involved, I was not considered normal. I have always fit into self-made friend groups; I am not, nor have I ever considered myself, popular or influential among my peers. Because of the notion that I was thought of a homosexual as a kid I was lobbed with rocks and spit on, sometimes in the same day. It was not rampant but it did happen. I have lived then in both the rich and poor upbringing circles as well as the prejudiced and the privileged social groups.

The Adventure of World Building Part #2

In the previous blog I spoke about one of the foundational elements of world building - weather! Weather is more than just set dressing, it allows us to explain food and crops, religion, and it can also impact the mood. This next blog will deal with another foundational element - money! While you don't need to completely grasp economics, the following thoughts might help you along ...

So, this one might seem a little weird, but bear with me. In settings that rely on a re-creation of the modern world economy, the US dollar or other forms of currency might be used. This is only logical. Still, other kinds of settings might not only require different fashions of currency, they might also not even use money at all (ala Star Trek) or they use things we might not consider 'money' at all.

The larger point here is that you need to understand what it is your characters do, how they justify their living, and (if you are doing a non-typical setting) you need to account for what/how things get done. Does your awesome photo-journalist investigator drive a Focus or a Jaguar? Do we actually see your main character, the free-lance captain of a space-ship ever get paid when we keep hearing he is debt? For all its faults, Star Wars at least showed what happens when you default on your loans to criminal space slugs.

EXAMPLE: Seeing as how I mentioned I was basing some of my own novel's ideas/plots on a setting very
much like ancient china, I had to be aware of how people paid for ... anything at all! I found out (very interestingly) that silk was so prevalent at a certain point in the history of the Han Dynasty that people actually used it as payment. Sheets of silks were historically a kind of "bond" people paid to other people for goods. I decided an interesting plot point was two different kingdoms use different dyes for their silks (red and blue) to distinguish one kingdoms "money" from another. Each kingdom guards its silk production facilities and the trees that feed the silkworms. This sets up awareness of where/how money is set up. It's not meant to be the biggest point but it is meant to afford the setting some kind of verisimilitude.

In the end, focus on knowing how your characters and how money works. I can't work for free and unless your character happened to inherit a staggering fortune which is held in a goblin bank, know how he/she gets paid. Work from there to see how your character acts when he/she looses his or her job, or when their globe trotting adventure to save the world from space ants has them return to an eviction notice.

The Adventure of World Building Part #1

As an English Major one of the things I am confronted with is the dreaded question - what do you want to do with your life? I long ago decided on Academia as my passion, but I have other passions to vent desires and needs that grading papers and academic level writing cannot fill. What might that be? Writing books!