Seventh Sanctum

Way With Worlds: Intelligent Life

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Intelligent Life

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack]

I’m going to start by assuming the setting of your story has intelligent life in it. If not, well that sounds like a challenging write, and feel free to skip this part until you need it.  Or don’t because hey, you never know.

Now first, allow me to define intelligent life, so we’re on the same sheet of virtual paper here. Intelligent life is that form of life that can process information, adapt and retain this information, pass this information on to others, and possesses a level of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Intelligent life is essentially a kind of conscious computing, even if I personally dislike that simplistic terminology.

I would especially argue that intelligence contains a level of self-awareness as intelligence life as we think of itis self-modifying and self-directing. You can’t separate intelligence from consciousness, because someone has to “be in there” to be intelligent. “I think therefore I am” is also “I know I am as I think.”

With that all-to brief (and doubtlessly incomplete) journey into the philosophy of intelligence, let’s continue a to why it’s important. I’ll also try not to overdo the words “intelligent life,” but no promises here.

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Way With Worlds: Origins. In The Beginning – Once Again

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Origin Flare

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack]

For the next few columns I’ll be looking at specific things that you need to do and define when building your setting. This should not be taken as the only things that you have to do, but instead a list of basics, with advice and ideas on how you can develop them best. I’m sure you’ll have your own ways to do things, that I may miss things, or that your writing may have some unique needs.

But it’s a place to start.  In fact, on the subject of “starting,”  the first thing we’re going to look at is literally the First Thing: The Origin of your setting.

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Seventh Sanctum Update 12/22/2013: New Generator

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Well with the site rewritten, the numbers back, a new year starting, and some time off I decided to write a brand new, in-depth generator to finally solidify the mojo that’s come back.  So I chose something that seemed both easy and popular, the Magical Legend Pony Namer, which seemed simple and fun, and of course played into the most unexpected fandom ever to dominate the internet and the insanely long-lived collector enthusiasm.

Actually it works pretty well, but what was stunning – and indeed obsession-making – is it taught me about language patterns I’d missed.  This is actually going to help out in future generators.  Without boring you (because I could go on) here’s what I learned, mostly thanks to the incredibly extensive online resources I found.

Lesson One.  There’s a continuity between descriptive terms and objects – but it’s not that some objects can also define things (like the word “silver”) but objects at times define objects (the words “Pasta Salad” have an object defining another object).  So there’s a  little more complexity than I realized here, and I think future (and revised) generators will be better for noticing this.

Lesson Two.  Names have a level of formality about the – or a lack.  The level of formality affects how you associate names, words, titles, and concepts and the difference between a formal name and a nickname.  This is reasonably easy to classify, actually.

So I learned something.  I just didn’t expect to.  I’ll now leave you to the names.

– Steven Savage