Miskatonic
Auror
As I've been fleshing out the story I’ve been working on I constantly run into new questions I have to ask myself in order to keep things fairly logical and believable. The latest question that has arisen, which has become a lot more important than I initially assumed, is the following: How does a kid that lives and works on a family farm all of a sudden decide one day to leave home and go on an adventure without everyone who cares about him not suddenly dropping everything they are doing to go and look for him and bring him back home?
A child running away from home is not uncommon. Whether it's them trying to make their parents feel sorry for telling them they had to eat all their vegetables or because they are living in an unsafe situation that they are trying to get away from, when children go missing the reaction of family and friends is somewhat predictable.
That being said, one would assume that if a young farm boy all of a sudden up and ran away for whatever reason to go on an adventure, his friends and family would at some point start to worry and start looking for him. In some stories just accepting that family life goes on as always and the friends and family are just oblivious to the boy being gone might work, but for what I've been writing that just doesn't sit well. So now I'm stuck trying to figure out a chain of events that lets this kid, who is say 9-10 years old, leave the family farm and go far away from home based solely on some bad dreams he has been having.
Because I’ve been researching about peasant life in medieval Europe as I write, I have to this point tried to be conscious about the accuracy of the details as much as possible. In spite of this, my fleshing out of the farm boy scenario has made me realize that I am able to not only come up with a believable chain of events, but also change the aspects of everyday life in my world to my own specifications without ever really finding the details lacking and in need of some historical reference point. In fact I think my world building is better because of this.
These are some of the questions I’ve had to work through to get the protagonist out the door and onto the path of adventure.
If a child has dreams and fever like symptoms what kind of medical treatment would be available to someone that is poor or located in a rural area?
If a child is having prophetic dreams would there be any religious superstitions or beliefs that would lead someone to think of something like possession? If so what is it about the religious/folk beliefs that may play a part in this scenario?
If there is a healer or priest in the village, what methods would they use? What god(s) would they pray to?
If the child could convince someone that the dreams are true, say an authority figure like a priest, this still leaves the notion of supplies, money, and other travel logistics. Given it’s a child of 9-10 years old would they require an escort? Does the escort become part of the story or does the child manage to sneak away at some point?
This is what I decided in a nutshell.
The child starts having bad dreams and seems to have fallen ill. His mother, a widow, who was taken in by her elder brother, waits and hopes that the episode will pass. After the boy, albeit having fever like symptoms, tries to run off several times, is finally taken, by his mother, to a midwife that also serves as a type of healer/doctor who practices a more homegrown version of one of the more popular polytheistic religions. The boy spends time there and though the midwife doesn’t believe his dream revelations at first, she eventually comes to realize he isn’t making things up. She cooks up a cover story for the boy to use so that he can leave home on some errand for her, with religious implications. So now not only is his mother relieved that her boy is getting better, but being a pious woman she thinks that her son, someone lowborn, might have a chance to serve the gods in some official capacity. Who wouldn’t want their child sent on some kind of pilgrimage with the blessing of the local clergy? The uncle on the other hand is very skeptical and complains that they’ll be missing an able-bodied worker. Of course this opposition will just make her that much more adamant about her boy leaving on his journey.
Now the boy has an alibi, supplies and money, contacts for places to stay on his way, etc. He’s also got the midwife covering for him in case mother comes asking how things are. Not only that, but everything looks like smooth sailing so he is perfectly positioned for something to go wrong.
So what is my point exactly? For those going for realism in regards to world details, don’t let the story itself be held hostage by the urge to stick what might be nitpicked by the history snobs.
During all of this, every time I stopped and thought “well what would it be like during the middle ages?” I always came to the same conclusion. Who the hell cares? It makes sense and it works, and the mundane details are not that far removed from the real thing. In this situation all of the world-building elements came directly from their necessity where moving the plot forward was concerned, with little to no concern as to the “historicalaccuracy” of the details.
A child running away from home is not uncommon. Whether it's them trying to make their parents feel sorry for telling them they had to eat all their vegetables or because they are living in an unsafe situation that they are trying to get away from, when children go missing the reaction of family and friends is somewhat predictable.
That being said, one would assume that if a young farm boy all of a sudden up and ran away for whatever reason to go on an adventure, his friends and family would at some point start to worry and start looking for him. In some stories just accepting that family life goes on as always and the friends and family are just oblivious to the boy being gone might work, but for what I've been writing that just doesn't sit well. So now I'm stuck trying to figure out a chain of events that lets this kid, who is say 9-10 years old, leave the family farm and go far away from home based solely on some bad dreams he has been having.
Because I’ve been researching about peasant life in medieval Europe as I write, I have to this point tried to be conscious about the accuracy of the details as much as possible. In spite of this, my fleshing out of the farm boy scenario has made me realize that I am able to not only come up with a believable chain of events, but also change the aspects of everyday life in my world to my own specifications without ever really finding the details lacking and in need of some historical reference point. In fact I think my world building is better because of this.
These are some of the questions I’ve had to work through to get the protagonist out the door and onto the path of adventure.
If a child has dreams and fever like symptoms what kind of medical treatment would be available to someone that is poor or located in a rural area?
If a child is having prophetic dreams would there be any religious superstitions or beliefs that would lead someone to think of something like possession? If so what is it about the religious/folk beliefs that may play a part in this scenario?
If there is a healer or priest in the village, what methods would they use? What god(s) would they pray to?
If the child could convince someone that the dreams are true, say an authority figure like a priest, this still leaves the notion of supplies, money, and other travel logistics. Given it’s a child of 9-10 years old would they require an escort? Does the escort become part of the story or does the child manage to sneak away at some point?
This is what I decided in a nutshell.
The child starts having bad dreams and seems to have fallen ill. His mother, a widow, who was taken in by her elder brother, waits and hopes that the episode will pass. After the boy, albeit having fever like symptoms, tries to run off several times, is finally taken, by his mother, to a midwife that also serves as a type of healer/doctor who practices a more homegrown version of one of the more popular polytheistic religions. The boy spends time there and though the midwife doesn’t believe his dream revelations at first, she eventually comes to realize he isn’t making things up. She cooks up a cover story for the boy to use so that he can leave home on some errand for her, with religious implications. So now not only is his mother relieved that her boy is getting better, but being a pious woman she thinks that her son, someone lowborn, might have a chance to serve the gods in some official capacity. Who wouldn’t want their child sent on some kind of pilgrimage with the blessing of the local clergy? The uncle on the other hand is very skeptical and complains that they’ll be missing an able-bodied worker. Of course this opposition will just make her that much more adamant about her boy leaving on his journey.
Now the boy has an alibi, supplies and money, contacts for places to stay on his way, etc. He’s also got the midwife covering for him in case mother comes asking how things are. Not only that, but everything looks like smooth sailing so he is perfectly positioned for something to go wrong.
So what is my point exactly? For those going for realism in regards to world details, don’t let the story itself be held hostage by the urge to stick what might be nitpicked by the history snobs.
During all of this, every time I stopped and thought “well what would it be like during the middle ages?” I always came to the same conclusion. Who the hell cares? It makes sense and it works, and the mundane details are not that far removed from the real thing. In this situation all of the world-building elements came directly from their necessity where moving the plot forward was concerned, with little to no concern as to the “historicalaccuracy” of the details.
Minstrel
