Fantastical Naturalism?

[Tom]

I'm a natural-born skeptic. I cast sidelong glances of disbelief at improbable concepts in both real life and writing. (Which is why I am a progressive Christian who believes in evolution instead of literal divine six-day creation. I mean, seriously.) If a book I'm reading involves a literal creation myth or other divine intervention, I can shut off my disbelief to accommodate it.

However, when I go about creating a fantasy world, I want it to have a solid, natural origin. I love reinterpreting that origin in the creation myths of my numerous cultures, however. It's like I have two separate narratives going on in my head: the real origin story; and the many different facets of that reality that have fractured and recombined in thousands of unique ways. It's so fun to think about and toy around with.

Does anyone else do this? What are your thoughts on this approach to worldbuilding?

 

[Gurkhal]

I kind of agree with you, mostly, in that I want things which exists in the real world to be as accurate to that as possible, and keep things that don't exists in our world in harmony with what I've already established.

In regards to other worlds, I have the downside of not being able to shut it off entirely but its always nagging at me that some things don't seme to make sense or seem real.

In regards to worldbuilding my approach to it has become to not get dug down into details. I've been there, trying to make every single little detail work and match with each other and come out perfect, and its a swamp you get sucked down into. Better than to establish what will be of relevance and interest to the story and get those things straight before you start to worry about the other stuff.

 

[FifthView]

As storytellers, we have a lot of leeway when creating fictional storytellers and the stories they tell each other.

What becomes more problematic, for the skeptical among us, is attempting to create a literal creation process based on magic, gods, and so forth–I mean, what really happened in our fictional world vs what myths are told about it in that world. It's not necessarily difficult, because one can imagine a different law to physics (i.e., new "first conditions") and extrapolate from there. Many stories that don't involve actual intervention by gods and so forth don't require going into that kind of depth, but for those that do, the important considerations are plausibility and consistency–and, probably, a truly interesting set of initial conditions and effects.

In fact, for me personally, the fun is in the extrapolation. This approach for fantasy is not significantly different from the approach many use for science fiction. I.e., using a scientific mindset/approach, even if some of the givens of the world are fantastical.

 

[DMThaane]

I sort of went through the opposite while creating Ternia. I'm about as atheistic as one can get so I've been enjoying creating a world that was very definitely created and yet the deity responsible is nowhere to be seen, except in the contrivances of the creation. There's the obvious like the three suns that all orbit a perfectly central point and don't behave like they're supposed to or the Aberrant Moon that remains in permanent lunar eclipse yet generates its own white light (also the tides don't obey the moon) but then there's the smaller things, like the fact that no one worships an anthropomorphised deity (they instinctively know God doesn't resemble them) or the universal cult of threes (three being a key aspect of creation that has imprinted itself on the collective subconscious of humanity).

It's been interesting trying to decide where to put the 'breaks'. Where to allow natural laws to break down and slide the artificial into place without drawing too much attention to it.

 

[skip.knox]

I didn't have to create a world, since I'm working with alternate history. This has turned out to be more difficult than you might think. While I don't need to come up with geography, for example (it's Europe), I have had to figure out where to put my orcs and elves and suchlike. Is Brittany elves? If so, what do I do with the Breton counts?

And I still have to come up with orcish religion, dwarven economics, gnomish social structure, and figure out points where these interact. All without too radically uprooting the human culture, which I am preserving to the extent I can.

So, yeah, maintaining some degree of credibility amid the incredible can be a real challenge. I've come up with twp dodges that have helped. One, I don't have everything happen at once; the incredible has a history. Goblins show up first, orcs later. Dwarves and elves still later. Dragons even later (centuries later). The same goes for magic. I do not just have a whole system of magic drop in. Rather, what's magical, and the understanding of how it works, evolves over the centuries.

That dodge plays into the second dodge: I let the stories drive the world building. I don't try to work out everything in advance. Rather, I posit some axioms, some points that will not get altered, and then let the needs of the story drive the rest. For example, I wrote one short story that led me into a whole exploration (outside the story) of a kind of scientific understanding of magic. I would not have hit on that independently. Moreover, I believe that by doing my world building in this way, it is building a "truer" world.

I admit, my situation is unusual. I'm a medieval historian, with a PhD and all that. Big deal. But it means that, after 30 years of teaching, I'm very familiar with the material. It's easy for me to think of situations and stories, and to have a sense of what the consequences might be of this twiddle or that fiddle. This would be much more laborious if I was having to research everything from scratch. So, your mileage will almost certainly vary!

 

[Logos&Eidos]

The concept of a naturalistic fantasy world intrigues me greatly, and in my own forays into world building I try to avoid the just-cause explanation for things. Which causes me more than a few headaches, because the farther a removed a world is from "reality" the more difficult it gets puzzle out that world's rules.

My own world-building has in part stalled because I'm trying to make all the different elements work together without me having a world that is incomprehensibly different, or me having to ignore the logical consequence of my worlds elements.

 

[thedarknessrising]

This has always been a toughie for me, because i'm a Catholic, and I believe that God created the Universe. Maybe not the six day story that is pounded into us as kids in bible school, but I believe He did have some hand in the creation. Now, the Jewish/Christian God doesn't exist in my world. So it was a little difficult for me to write a book that went against what I believed, even if it was purely fantasy. I had a system of gods worked out, kind of like the Greek pantheon, but then I had a great idea. These gods would actually be lesser gods, and they would be the servants of deity that would be like an amalgamation of both God and Lucifer (it makes sense when you read the mythos, I swear.) So yes, my world does have a fantastical creation story, brought about by my Nameless God, but the characters in the story don't actually know about the existence of this god. They all think that the lesser pantheon of gods created the world.

 

[spectre]

I think there could be a tough balance to find in providing a realistic world where the compulsion may be to explain why there is a thermal spring, even if that explanation spans part of or a whole sentence. Some readers may be turned off by what they already know moreso, the same, or the exact opposite of their reactions to a fantastic world. My setting has real sociocultural elements and I'm trying for geographic realism but there are also aspects of the world which defy explanation by real standards and that's what makes it fun. Imago dei, being a creator and maybe a little Freudian delusion in fairy tales and fantasy. I have two religions, one is politically assertive and you could say the same of the other in a Val Halla kind of way. What I'm really striving to do though is make that defiance of the real go further to defy the realism set forth in the book. Provide a bigger than big, smaller than small go between where the conflict lies and finds obstacles profundant of the "real world". Rather than a big climactic thrill I'm after a tale of struggle. So it makes sense to have all these rule bound elements and some immaculate ones because it invents opportunity for varied encounters.


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[Tom]

This has always been a toughie for me, because i'm a Catholic, and I believe that God created the Universe. Maybe not the six day story that is pounded into us as kids in bible school, but I believe He did have some hand in the creation. Now, the Jewish/Christian God doesn't exist in my world. So it was a little difficult for me to write a book that went against what I believed, even if it was purely fantasy.

I'm curious--why was it so difficult for you to write a belief system totally unlike your own? I'm just interested in knowing why, because I never had that problem. I've always loved dreaming up religions and societies radically different from my own, and have never not been able to completely understand and write those belief systems. Granted, I've always been on the edge of agnostic (even when I was extremely young), so maybe it's just due to my flexible worldview that I don't have a problem with it.

 

[thedarknessrising]

I'm curious--why was it so difficult for you to write a belief system totally unlike your own? I'm just interested in knowing why, because I never had that problem. I've always loved dreaming up religions and societies radically different from my own, and have never not been able to completely understand and write those belief systems. Granted, I've always been on the edge of agnostic (even when I was extremely young), so maybe it's just due to my flexible worldview that I don't have a problem with it.

Because I was brought up as a kid to believe that there is only one God, and He is ever present and all knowing and all that fun stuff. But, if the Nameless God that I created formed the multiverse, which would also include our own universe, then the God I worship wouldn't be real, and to me, that just feels kinda heretical. I dunno. It's weird and it probably makes no sense at all. But that's just what I think.

 

[spectre]

Because I was brought up as a kid to believe that there is only one God, and He is ever present and all knowing and all that fun stuff. But, if the Nameless God that I created formed the multiverse, which would also include our own universe, then the God I worship wouldn't be real, and to me, that just feels kinda heretical. I dunno. It's weird and it probably makes no sense at all. But that's just what I think.

Didn't the scientific community put forth an unofficial thesis they feel proven in the idea of God. I say proven, not that they've disproved God. I know they proved the God Particle which is something I believe is not even subatomic but something else. As well as the fact that physics on that level change in behavior if observed.

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[Philster401]

I think I see the problem maybe it might help you if Earth doesn't exist in your story or if Earth is important to your story think of your story as an alternative reality.

 

[Mythopoet]

I'm curious--why was it so difficult for you to write a belief system totally unlike your own? I'm just interested in knowing why, because I never had that problem. I've always loved dreaming up religions and societies radically different from my own, and have never not been able to completely understand and write those belief systems. Granted, I've always been on the edge of agnostic (even when I was extremely young), so maybe it's just due to my flexible worldview that I don't have a problem with it.

Let me take a stab at this as a fellow Catholic who has also struggled with the same thing. In Catholic (and Christian in general) theology, God is absolutely fundamental to all of existence. We firmly believe that without God there is nothing. God is existence himself. Even for creative people, it is hard to shake something so completely necessary to one's worldview. It can be hard to imagine a universe in which there is no one, true, creator God because, again, God = existence. If you keep going back far enough in the history of creation, you'll come across the question: But how do things even exist in the first place? Why is there something rather than nothing? For Christians, it is practically unthinkable that there is any other reason for existence other that God. Even Tolkien needed his Eru in the background before he wrote LOTR.

 

[Gospodin]

I'm a natural-born skeptic. I cast sidelong glances of disbelief at improbable concepts in both real life and writing. (Which is why I am a progressive Christian who believes in evolution instead of literal divine six-day creation. I mean, seriously.) If a book I'm reading involves a literal creation myth or other divine intervention, I can shut off my disbelief to accommodate it.

However, when I go about creating a fantasy world, I want it to have a solid, natural origin. I love reinterpreting that origin in the creation myths of my numerous cultures, however. It's like I have two separate narratives going on in my head: the real origin story; and the many different facets of that reality that have fractured and recombined in thousands of unique ways. It's so fun to think about and toy around with.

Does anyone else do this? What are your thoughts on this approach to worldbuilding?

Like in any aspect of writing, for me, it comes down to the purpose of the fantastical element (wether I am just the reader or when I am the writer), be it in the form of a Fantasy prop or a Science Fiction prop. Why is it there? What's the purpose to the fabric of the story? In Octavia Butler's Ooankli series, the idea that these alien beings are going to be able to manipulate us genetically, using a naturally occurring organ of reproduction that is intrinsic to their biology is preposterous. But I'm willing to put that aside because it's just a tool to be able to talk about something very different in the story, to be able to talk about us, humans, a creature attaining so much and still running on the same OS we've used for the past million years. In Storm Constantine Wraeththu series (to get closer to Creation Myth), the way this new sub-species of human comes about is equally preposterous. You don't just evolve into a completely new kind of thing in one single go the way she describes. Again, I'm willing to let it go because she is clearly using it as just a tool to talk about something else, to talk about our sense of gender, our rolls therein, and a deeper truth concerning sexuality that few of us are willing to admit to, even unto ourselves. If you saw the film Her, the way the A.I. operating systems get sold like they were iPhones at your local mall is equally ridiculous. That would never happen. The government would never allow it. But, again, it's acceptable because the film isn't about A.I.s you can buy at the mall and fall in love with. It's about human emotional interaction and connection, or the lack thereof. Samantha is an A.I. as a matter of story-telling convenience so that we can engage a "person" who lacks all of the things that we think are trivial. She has no body or physical beauty, so we must engage her inner human paradigm at a very focused level and the thought experiment spins out from there.

So, to answer your question, my eyes would roll only if the interpretation a given culture in a book has concerning their creation seems to serve no purpose, tells me nothing about them, is only masturbatory world-building. If a book or story goes to such lengths as to give this bit of information to me, I need it to mean something to the larger fabric of the story or the people, be it something I am reading or something I am writing.

 

[Tom]

Because I was brought up as a kid to believe that there is only one God, and He is ever present and all knowing and all that fun stuff. But, if the Nameless God that I created formed the multiverse, which would also include our own universe, then the God I worship wouldn't be real, and to me, that just feels kinda heretical. I dunno. It's weird and it probably makes no sense at all. But that's just what I think.

Interesting. Your reason just kind of confuses and fascinates me--I was brought up believing the same things, yet ever since I can remember those beliefs weren't fixed immovably in my mind. I could bend them, mold them, sometimes even break them. Was this flexibility something I was taught, or does it come naturally to me? I don't know. (But I sure as hell know it freaked out a lot of the adults in my life, so it probably wasn't taught.)

Now that I think about it, maybe it's due to my ability to compartmentalize concepts. For example, I can put the Genesis story in my "mythology" compartment, and evolution (what I believe the origin of the universe to be) in the "fact" compartment, and neither one makes or breaks my belief in God. In the same way, I can put God in my "reality" compartment, and the various gods I've created into the "constructed world" compartment, and the two can coexist in my mind without any problems. It's a tiny bit more complicated than that, but that's essentially the way my brain works.

Thanks for answering, by the way. It's really fascinating to me to hear other people's views on how religion affects various aspects of their lives.

 

[Gospodin]

Another example that comes to mind, and speaks directly to the idea of Creation Myth, are the Dwarves of Tolkien's Middle Earth. If you braved The Silmarillion (yes, I know, reading that thing is like pulling molars with your fingers), you learn early on that the Dwarves of Middle Earth are - accepting the Creation Myth as both myth and fact-within-the-story - literally children of a lesser god. When one knows this, and one engages their behavior, their manner of being, of the foibles to which they are prone, it becomes much easier to see what Tolkien was trying to say with them.

 

[MineOwnKing]

I think the complexities of life are easier to digest for people of faith when they perform their spiritual rituals.

I know life was more fun and seemed easier for me when I believed in Santa Claus.

Likewise I think it's just easier and more fun to write stories with creation myths.

As thinking beings, one of the perks is that we can get a kick out of things that are conceptual or abstract in nature.

Knowing that we are made of stardust is only interesting up to a point. It's naturally just more fun to think there is some being in the sky with a crazy sense of humor and an unpredictable temper.

From a marketing perspective I would hope to create stories that are interesting to a diverse crowd with a wide variety of beliefs.

From a personal perspective, in my mind, believing in a god is equal to not believing in myself. It literally makes me want to scream.

If I do not have the mental strength to make it through the day with my own sort of half-ass philosophy, which is an innate, transcendental-like concept of self-reliance, then I am not putting forth a brave enough effort to live life to the fullest.

I must be meaner and tougher than the chain that whips me; no amount of faith ever did or could ever again give me the strength I found of my own accord.

And yet I also understand the need of those who accept faith. I grew up in a religious family and I never begrudged the joy they got from it.

But I knew from the time I was very little, I could never have faith or believe in something intangible.

If you have faith then I say: rock on!, but leave me alone.