Post #140 October 1 2018

“Water Clans of Seome: Writing about Alien Cultures”

One of the greatest challenges as a writer of science fiction, and at the same time, one of the joys, is writing about alien cultures.  In my own recent series of sf novels The Farpool Stories, I describe a marine civilization of intelligent, sentient creatures who have created an entire civilization below the waves of the ocean planet Seome.  The series involves stories of how the Seomish people interact with each other and with humans.

Every sf writer approaches worldbuilding a slightly different way.    In my case, I wrote a novel called The Shores of Seome many years ago (which mutated into The Farpool) and in the process created a lot of background for this world and its inhabitants.  In fact, I created an Appendix containing much of this material and stuck it at the end of The Farpool.

Writing a story about aliens and setting it on an alien world is a real juggling act.  You want to convey a true sense of alienness without turning off the reader.  You don’t want to write an encyclopedia or something like National Geographic.  You still have to have a compelling story and somehow work in enough alien details to transport the reader to this other world and its people and bring them to life for the reader.

In my case, I created background encompassing the following areas and then wrote extensive notes to give my background some depth.  When and where I could, I worked this background bit by bit into the story.  I even hit on the plot device of having a sort of universal translator called an echopod, which had some encyclopedia functions.  When the human characters needed to know something and an info dump was unavoidable, I had the aliens tell them to trigger the echopod and it would spit out material from my background.  As long as I didn’t overdo this, it seemed to work pretty well.  I tried to keep these passages to less than half a page.

Here are the categories I tried to develop pretty extensive background for:

1. The language with key words and concepts and a few notes about grammar
2. Maps (entire globe and by quadrant)
3. Description of the world itself as a planet
4. The major cities and settlements and their key features
5. The physiology of the Seomish (remember, these are talking fish)
6.  The biology of Seome (other plants and animals)
7. Theology and First Things of the Seomish people
8. The Hierarchies: Government, Politics and Organizations
9. Commerce, Industry, Crafts, Trades, Science and Technology
10. Communications and formal relations between the Kels (tribes or clans)
11. Education and training
12. Entertainment and recreation, diversions and amusements
13. Home life and intra-kel relations
14. The Kels (tribes or water clans): their history, key details, etc
15. More detailed description of one kel including cuisine, history, architecture
16. A brief chronology of Seomish civilization
17. An historical timeline and key events, notes on timekeeping
18. Seomish rituals and customs
     
    Was this a lot of work?  It was and most of it was done 40 years ago.  I never tried, in writing the actual stories, to get all of this into the story.  But by having it as background, the detail dictates some aspects of the story, such as how events might unfold one way versus another way, always in keeping with the background.  This kind of detail is like a crutch in that I can always look up how one of my characters might do something and I can be consistent across a number of stories in how I describe things.  An echopod in The Farpool works the same as an echopod in The Farpool: Convergence.  And sometimes having this level of background will suggest obvious plot developments and natural conflicts that can be used.
     
    One of the greatest mistakes as an author is to try to get all of your background into the story, at the expense of the story. Story comes before everything else.  I have found that a little background goes a long way.  If you do your job right as a storyteller, you’ll find the reader more than willing to help out by filling in some details with their own imaginations, even if you didn’t supply the details.  In fact, many readers prefer that since it engages their faculties even more…adding to their enjoyment of the story. 
     
    Give your readers enough detail, well described, believable and internally consistent, to transport them to your alien world and then let the natural conflicts and the characters carry the story.  You’ll even find that once in a while, something will crop up in the story that you never expected, something lurking just below the surface of your feverish brain, that is triggered by a background detail you worked out months before.  At that point, you say wow! And then put it in and pat yourself on the back for having thought that up.
     
    It was all because you were steeped in the alien culture from the beginning.  Maybe it is like working for National Geographic. 
     
    The Word Shed will take a one-week hiatus so I can attend a writers’ conference. The next post to The Word Shed will come on October 15, 2018.
     
    See you then.
     
    Phil B.