Way With Worlds

Way With Worlds: Conflict’s End

by

Demolished House

(Way With Worlds is a weekly column on the art of worldbuilding published at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

We’ve been discussing conflict as of late, from psychology to how speed (or lack of it) affects conflict. But conflicts inevitably end, if only because they become something else or because everyone involved ends up sort of dead. So what happens afterwards? What happens when conflict ends?

That’s going to happen in your world. In fact, the end of conflict may define the end of a tale you tell in your world – or be the start of one. It may involve many fine details you need to consider.  Smoking aftermaths tend to be more work than actually causing them, worldbuilding-wise.

So we have to ask – what comes after.

But first, I want to address what Conflict means for worldbuilding – because it has a place.

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Way With Worlds: Society And Disaster Moving Faster

by

Cheetah Speed Relaxing

Sometimes, conflicts and social breakdowns are all about speed. In fact I’d argue they’re all too often about speed – fast or slow.

  • That sudden change can be too sudden, and society falls apart. An invasion, a plague, a social breakdown can be damaging because they’re so damn fast.
  • Or you have a slow change is so slow that people adapt automatically and don’t even know there’s potential conflict brewing. Sure there’s technically a plague, but its spreading so slow (or slowed down by modern technology) no one ever realized they were courting an apocalypse.  Conflict averted and you never knew it.
  • That character who jumps to conclusions makes situations work.
  • That character who takes things slow doesn’t address problems in time, and conflict is born.

When it comes to conflict in your world, you have to ask how fast and how slow things are happening. In fact, speed – or the lack of it – may be the only reason a conflict exists. Too often people ignore solutions or go outright Leroy Jenkins on a problem and help assist the apocalypse.

So when you’re writing about the conflicts in your world you have to ask just how fast events are happening and how rapidly people are reacting. That determines what happens, or even if there is a conflict. You might even find, once you think about it, that there’s conflicts you never noticed in the societies you made all because of speed . . .

Here’s what to ask when it comes to speed and conflicts.

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Way With Worlds: It Comes Apart – The Persecution Rests

by

fence barbed wire

(Way With Worlds is a weekly column on the art of worldbuilding published at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

Last column I covered bias and bigotry in the settings you’re developing. Not a pleasant subject, but one that’s important because believable characters have their biases and often their bigotries – just as we do.

To summarize my handy rules-to-remember on the subject:

  1. Everyone has Opinions.
  2. When opinions “solidify” they become Biases.
  3. When Biases become part of our identity they become Bigotries, sort of black holes of ideals that suck other things in.

Now when bigotries seize control of an individual, a group, a nation, or a galactic confederation, that can lead to outright campaigns against various people. Attempts to extermiate, subjugate, control, or drive out an entire identifiable group. In short, persecutions.

Which is the unpleasant subject of today’s column.

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