I think my *settings* are kind of author darlings...

[Ophiucha]

Usually, I like to focus on the little things. My conflicts are between a couple of people, perhaps friends, and the adventuring is limited to small cities. With the plots sort of 'zoomed in' on a few characters, the world around them gets as much development as it needs for them to operate, and the rest just sort of defaults to 'utopia' because I'm a politically-minded woman who would have difficulty writing about the little lives of bakers and priests if there was a poverty crisis in their world. And honestly, it works fine... for those stories.

The problem is that I've gotten so used to looking at the big picture through rose-tinted glasses that I can't seem to write a world with flaws. Can I write a racist character? Sure, no problem, I could even make him sympathetic. But a racist government? A racist religion? For some reason, when it comes to the world, I choke. I can't get past this mental block, and now that I want to write something else, I end up hesitating at every turn. I need this culture to have serious problems with women's rights, yet I can't mentally justify why anyone would have women as anything less than equal. Even though that is the point of the entire novel, that it is wrong, when it comes to writing a government that perpetuates that views I just can't seem to do it. I can make the President of this government a sexist arse, but I can't seem to make his policies reflect that.

So my settings are author darlings, Mary Sues with mountains on their backs and trees running down their nose. I don't want them to be wrong, I don't want them to be flawed, I don't want to not want that, but I do. I've been trying for weeks to commit to anything negative about this world but I keep flip-flopping and flaking on it. I need a kick in the butt and a push in the right direction; anyone got any advice?

 

[Jabrosky]

I need this culture to have serious problems with women's rights, yet I can't mentally justify why anyone would have women as anything less than equal. E

Maybe look into how patriarchy came about in the real world? The theory I prefer is that the subordination of women came about as a consequence of agriculture and social stratification. Since sedentary agriculturalists desire larger families than foragers, since more people means more labor power, the burden of child-bearing grew heavier on women. They were thus excluded from other occupations in society.

 

[Ophiucha]

I think from a technical perspective, I get the causes of patriarchy and sexism, but it's just a total mental block on being able to apply it to my own creations? Like, damn, it's hard to explain. Maybe take it out of a political context for a sec and let's say the problem was that I couldn't seem to write a setting that didn't have dinosaurs in it. And no matter what I was writing, no matter what the story was about, I just have like a tick in the back of my mind that is like 'mmm no this story is just missing something, and that something is a velociraptor'. Except assume that the plot of the novel literally revolved around the idea that there were no dinosaurs. Maybe it's like a prequel to Jurassic Park where they are working on creating the dinosaurs and haven't succeeded yet, but I have this complete inability to make it to the climax of the novel without someone being eaten by a T-rex.

That's what this is like for me, except with basically everything fundamental to a moral code.

 

[Penpilot]

Maybe try starting on a small scale first. Try this writing exercise. Take two characters, each taking up the opposite sides of an argument. In this instance let's say the question being argued is Are women inferior to men? Try it several times so that the pro-woman side wins once and another time when the anti-woman side wins. Now vary the sexes of the people taking each side of the argument. Have it be man vs. man, man vs. woman, woman vs. man, and woman vs. woman.

If you can get this exercise to the point where you not only understand the negative viewpoints you can feel them and empathize just a little, you can extend that to your world. Maybe this will help you get over that hump.

 

[Ophiucha]

Hmm, maybe. The only problem with that is I don't really have difficulty writing prejudiced characters... like, the President of this country is a bit of a sexist ass, though he's not really presented as evil. He's the love interest's uncle and he's relatively friendly to the main character, he just doesn't think she should vote or own property and he makes jokes about her cycles whenever she's angry. And one of the MCs is pretty racist. It's definitely not a problem I have with the characters. Maybe it's just a certain optimism? Like, I'm in the 'hate individuals, not humanity' kind of camp, so writing bad people is easy but having a larger picture still be primarily bad... I guess it's a block.

Maybe a similar writing exercise on a smaller scale? Like a racist... café. Work my way up to an entire society.

 

[FatCat]

I don't understand this, to be honest. If you can write a prejudiced individual, and government and religion are groups of like-minded (sometimes ) individuals, then where's the block coming from? Treat the organization as a character, then add dissenting factions within it. That way the prejudice is there, but advocated against by a minority. Don't know if this helps at all.

 

[ThinkerX]

Ok...

1) You don't have difficulty writing stories about individually biased characters.

2) You do have trouble writing about biased societies.

So...

Write a short story, heavy on dialogue and short on setting. The MC (or one of them) is a highly biased character AND an official in a highly biased society. A lot of his interaction with the other characters is going to be 'this is the law' / 'this is how things are'. You potray your biased society through the eyes of biased characters.

 

[wordwalker]

Another approach: think of a society as a good, fun place to live with one or more visible problems-- that the MC is destined to solve. They could be social issues like we've discussed, or sometimes practical ones that need their own discovery ("oh no all the tin is gone, and we all know there's no way to get metal from iron ore" --true (hi)story).

This is a bit Mary Sue-ish, but not as much as a true utopia; many writers use it to one degree or another. It can take the pressure off world-building by using flaws you know you're about to fix, plus it focuses the drama on their change. And you can reduce the idealism by sprinkling in other but minor problems for the world (and the MC, if needed) just to make the point that they aren't one story away from everything solved.

 

[Jamber]

Hi Ophiucha,

It's an interesting problem, but I'm left wondering if you're working at this too front-on? A world should be complex, and putting shades of grey in something you feel black and white about is definitely going to be tricky. I like what others have suggested in terms of thinking small-scale and imagining dialogues, or looking at the history of a particular 'ism' to see if that leads to new ideas.

I think the world has to have something you really love, something that pulls you in despite the overt sexism. Maybe you need to get inside the segregated women's quarters, for instance, instead of thinking about the situation in overview (as 'wrong'). Isn't it fun to hang out with just women sometimes (what would life be like inside a harem)? Maybe if you start imagining the world from inside a tiny subsection that's pleasant for the 'victims' it will be easier to get off the mark.

cheers

Jennie

 

[Ophiucha]

Interesting ideas, everyone! I'm going to work on some little drabbles in the world and see what I come up with. It might take a while to get over it, but you've given me interesting ideas to work with.

I like wordwalker's idea, in particular. It might not make the most fleshed out world, but if I spice up the non-moral issues of the world enough I can probably work with the setting to build up to that point. And in a grotesquely optimistic sense of the word, I suppose a revolution is - in a way - a 'fix it' for a problem. I can work with it. The fact that there are two, maybe three, 'cultures' and like six subcultures within this city might give me little ways to explore things. Like, maybe one group isn't sexist but then they are also really racist and one group isn't racist but they're super sexist. It'd need a little more subtlety and nuance to it than that, but at least I'd have everything I want somewhere in the world, with the revolutionaries goals making them come together in the legislation...