writing

Way With Worlds: Sex And Worldbuilding – The Biological Imperative

by

DNA

And its time to talk about sex and worldbuilding. Which, if you think is going to be exciting and arousing, indicates you are either sadly deluded, or really into worldbuilding to a level few are. You make the call, I won’t judge.

Sex in many ways is like air, and not in that it’s part of life and sometimes involves wearing a mask. It’s more the fact that it’s so omnipresent that we can miss out how important it is. We think we know how important it is because we just assume we do – until we really think about it.

Sex is part of being human (it’s why you’re here to be human), so we can get used to it like we do seeing and smelling and touching. That of course means we can miss its complexities, and that means we miss it when creating our worlds.  When you miss something so important in your worldbuilding, you’re far worse at it.

So even if you never delve much into sexuality in your settings and stories, it’s probably there in the background, and it might be in the foreground and you don’t know it.

So first of all, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of sex and worldbuilding – biology.

And let’s take a look at three basic things you may face – sexual biology that is familiar, sexual biology that is similar to our world, and completely different species.

But first, let’s remember what sex is for.

The Purpose Of Sex

Sex is about information – progenitors are able to transmit information about themselves in a way that allows it to be used to create new life.  In the case of humans, the DNA of the parents provides the blueprint for a new person to develop in the body of one of the partners.  No matter what kind of creatures you build, sex comes down to information being used to create new life – even if in the case of simple creatures its the information being copied in simple cellular division.

Sex in many ways is like a conversation, though in the case of the aforementioned simple animals, it’s rhetorical.

So when you start thinking about the biology of sex in your setting, always remember it comes down to information.  However it gets more complicated . . .

. . . really, when you think of it all life is about information.  It’s locating food or holding a rally that leads a country to victory in a war.  It’s about smelling out a predator or about listening for the right tone to tell you your significant other is cheesed off.  Life is input and output and retention and processing of information.

In turn, we can also see how living creatures don’t really have distinct boundaries among their organs and instincts and thought processes.  Someone seeking out a mate or a good meal will rally every resource they have to find it.  Our desire for an adrenaline rush can make us seek out thrills skydiving – and in turn someone had to actually rally their mental abilities to invent skydiving.

Now when you add in sex, the core “conversation” of life, you can realize how complicated writing it can be.  That’s the original part of life – the ability to pass itself on.  It’s affected every part of our lives as humans, and ties into our familial instincts, our habits, or ability to form social relations, and even our boundaries.  Sex is everywhere in its own way.

Thus, even from biological points of view, writing about sex becomes complicated because it’s at the core of a living being and because its likely to touch on far more than simple reproduction.

In the end, I find that when writing about sex and designing its point in your world it keeps coming back to these lessons:

  • Living creatures propagate themselves.  At the core a species is about transmission of information.
  • Living creatures lack boundaries among their component biologies – which is understandable because why should they be there?
  • Because of this it is likely that sex for any species you may write will go beyond the boundaries of reproduction and into all aspects of life.
  • This in many ways makes sense as, again, sex is a form of communication/transmission and that is what life is about.

Now with that being said, let’s move on to the three basic kinds of sexuality you may end up designing in your worlds.
Situation Normal

First of all if you’re writing about people that are for all extents and purposes human, i may seem pretty easy to write about sex and ignore it all together. It’s just standard. It’s normal. It’s background noise, though perhaps with an uninspired soundtrack.

This is where things tend to go wrong because we don’t pay attention.

The biology of sex for humans introduces any numbers of complicators that may play into your story. Just a few examples:

  • Issues of contraception.
  • Issues of social diseases.
  • The duration of pregnancy.
  • Complications of pregnancy.
  • Biological issues due to sex organs, from ovarian cysts to enlarged prostates.
  • Biological transformations such as puberty and menopause.

If you’re going to do any kind of setting with regular people, the biology of sex is likely to come up, even if it’s just figuring someone hauls off and kicks another character in the junk. They may be minor, but they may be there.

In most cases, writing “humans like us” and sex really focuses not on the biology (with which we have passing familiarity) but psychology and culture. That may lull you into a false sense of security.

So when worldbuilging “normal” humans, take a moment to inventory any issues of sex that may come up. A quick list is:

  • What diseases exist that are sexually transmitted or involved? This will also affect culture.
  • What areas of sexual transformation are affected by the setting. In an era of malnutrition puberty and pregnancy will be aversely affected, for instance.
  • What other environmental or setting factors may affect sexuality biologically. This can radically affect your setting – if a virus is causing sterility in your setting, you need to design it to explain why there is a population left in your setting.
  • How do cultural and psychological and even metaphysical elements affect sexuality – attitude, access to contraception, etc. Biology is a powerful thing, but these other factors will affect it.

Even in writing a real-world setting, don’t always assume you know enough about sexual biology to write. A little research is in order if it’s remotely part of your story. Because of many issues (psychological and cultural) you may know less than you think.

Sex And The Possibly Single Almost-Human

Then you get into settings or setting elements where you have almost-humans. Your standard fantasy races, the thing-on-the-forehead-but-human-otherwise aliens, and so on. You know, the beings in the setting that are are for most intent human but a bit different.

It’s often tempting in dealing with almost-humans to do two things:

  • To make their sexuality just like humans.
  • To throw in a twist or something extra, but treat them just like humans.

Both approaches are a mistake. The first is to ignore all other factors that make your species different – unless you’re quite sure there aren’t any (then you may be OK). The second is to forget that small changes can have vast repercussions, especially when you deal with reproduction.

Imagine a human-like race where the gestation period was half the time, completely changing the effect it’d have on the role of women. Lower the sex drive of a species and it might limit their spread (as often seems to be a trope of fantasy dwarves thanks to Tolkein). A few minor changes to your “almost human” races and you have major repercussions to deal with.

In handling the biology of near-human species I find a good way to deal with it is to stop thinking of them as near-human and focus on them as species that has familiar elements. These familiar elements provide you a lot of useful reference points, and from there you can extrapolate on what the differences mean.

Think of it as having a known path, and that makes it easy to figure out where you deviate from it and what happens when you do. This isn’t my favorite method (see below), but is useful.

A few examples:

  • Maybe you have increased fertility due to a hostile environment. In turn as a species tames its world population may be a problem quicker. There’s something to deal with in your story.
  • Perhaps you do limited gestation periods. That would affect the role of women in society as they’re less limited. It also would probably increase fertility for obvious reasons.
  • What if species have no case of menopause or reproductive limits in their lifespan. If couples can easily have children until death it’ll change ideal ages for marrying and conceiving.

However, remember you are creating a different species. Past a few minor changes here and there, you may really be inventing a new species. When things get different from regular humans to any degree, you’re really just designing a completely new species . . . and you might just want to start here to begin with.
Loving The Alien: The Sexual Biology of Non-Humans

And this is where it gets complicated. More complicated – creating a totally new species in your setting and dealing with their sexuality.

In designing a species from scratch, in not having a “human with funny ears” you’re going to enter into a very crazy world. Designing your own species can be tough as is, and when you get to sexuality it’s going to be a challenge because, as noted, sex is so complex and connected to other things in the case of living beings.

Just think how complex sex is for humans, biologically. Now inventory all the non-human species you know about and think about their sexual biology. Now realize you’ve got to create something like that. It’s enough to make you loose interest in sex.

Welcome to the cold shower of world building original species.

So I won’t lie, if you’re going to populate your world with definite non-humans it’s going to require some thought. There is some advice I can provide:

  1. Remember sex is about transmission and propagation, but it is likely to tie into other elements of any species, as noted above.
  2.  Read up on the sexual biology of other creatures and note how they work. It’ll give you ideas, and in some cases probably horrify you beyond words.
  3. Determine how far you have to go. Building realistic species (or building species realistically) can be very addictive and you can go pretty far down any rabbit hole of biology, be it sex or something else.

The key to designing good sexual biology is, like many things, to know how much you have to do then take it a little farther to make sure you know enough.

I’ll just have to leave that up to you.

Sex Is Important

Hope I haven’t scared you off, but sex is a complicated issue, as we all know, however it’s incredibly important to do in your worldbuilding.

It’s why there is a population to experience it.

It’s a part of our own lives so readers will notice its absence.

It’s part of life itself.

It might just be one of your biggest challenge as a worldbuilder. But if you’re able to tackle it, you’ll be rewarded with a very believable world.

Of course once we talk biology, we have to talk about psychology, and that’s next . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Way With Worlds: Genres Within Genres

by

Child Reading Magic Library

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum, MuseHack, and Ongoing Worlds]

(Compliments to my friend Scott, whose essay on adaptions and history inspired this)

Genres, as I have heard it said, are reading instructions. We have certain expectations and mental toolkits that, when we read something of a given genre, we use to make sense of them. Wether this is good or bad is perhaps up for debate, but I think the basic truth is there – if only a truth of human nature of needing expectations.

I think this is why “genre mashes” are so popular. They engage two sets of expectations and combine them together, giving us both recognizable elements as well as a rush of the unusual, of ideas colliding. It’s that sense of things being both recognizable and different, which can bring inspiration, horror, humor, and other intense reactions that we seek.

However, genres are influences in worldbuilding as well. Because we are aware of audience expectations when we build our worlds and settings, when we tell our stories and code our games, we adjust what we do. Genre is also a set of worldbuilding and writing instructions to meet expectations.

In a way this makes genre a bit insidious as it may limit us – and in some cases we just start regurgitating tropes which is not so much worldbuilding as quilting. However I’d like to address a different issue, having focused on trope-piles before.

Genres hide within genres. When you adapt a certain genre consciously or unconsciously, you might be actually adapting a genre inside it – or surrounding it. If you’re not aware of this you can quickly suffocate your own worldbuilding under the weight of the things you’ve dragged in.

Consider The Western

This concept of genres within genres came when I was contemplating the role of Westerns in the above column. As I write this in 2014 it seems Westerns are often failed or are darkly-re-envisioned but most examples I saw were a genre fusion – the Space Western.

The Space Western at this time is nearly it’s own genre. It has it’s roots in early pulp SF and is obvious in the “Wagon Train” elements of Star Trek TOS.  However in the last few decades it’s become it’s own thing.  Just a few examples that come to mind:

The fact we even have the term “Space Western” to throw around says that it is Indeed A Thing.

Now I’ve got nothing against that. In fact I’ve rather enjoyed many Space Westerns, especially self-aware ones. But what I want to discuss is why SF would be bonded so closely with the Western – as it reveals the dangers of genre-mapping in worldbuilding.

Westerns, simply, are about frontiers. As SF itself is essentially about frontiers in many formats (especially explorational/people on a spaceship stories) the fusion fits perfectly. In a way, Westerns and SF share a similar “inside genre” – that of “people on the edge of the known” – and thus Space Westerns make perfect sense.

However Space Western as a genre – and indeed a bit of an overused ones, and thus a good example – also shows the danger of overfocusing on genre.  Consider:

Maybe your SF story has a frontier element, but Western tropes don’t fit it – but if you drag those in unawares (or figure “this just must be a space western”) then you’re affecting your worldbuilding. Your world is getting buried under tropes and ideas that have nothing to do with your own ideas – that of the Space Western.  You may, in short, figure (perhaps unconciously) that “my setting is a fronteir” and then suddenly you’re using a genre (Space Western) inappropriately, and dumping in elements that really don’t fit your setting.

And this is the lesson. Sometimes you don’t want a genre – you want whats inside of it.  You just may get confused over certain genres.

Sometimes It’s What’s Inside That Counts

Many times we choose or are inspired by various genres and incoroprate them into our world – but what we may be looking at is a genre inside the other genre.  If we’re not aware of that, however, we might pile on parts of the “container” genre inappropriately:

  • Maybe you want to do a story of honor and revenge.  Thus you are inspired by Samurai stories – but the elements of such tales may not fit your world as it has few cultural equivalents.  You wanted honor and revenge, not the cultural complexities of Japanese culture.
  • Perhaps you want to do a dark mystery in your fantasy setting, and certainly film noir wizards sound cool – but grafting on classic detective elements may not work in a world where you can use necromancy and interrogate the murder suspect (and you may realize this too late into your worldbuilding). You wanted the mindbending puzzles and betrayal of mysteries, not the film noir elements.
  • Perhaps you like the Man Created Monster genre and want to work that into your realistic nanotechnology story – when you realize that when you have micromachines a giant stompy bad thing is inappropriate.  What you wanted is to give the threat a personality.

Thus when you choose your genre or genres of your world, you may want to ask what you’re doing and why. Is it the genre or genres that you want to write – or is there something inside it that you’re really aiming for.

Food For Thought

So when you’re deciding on your genre(s) ask yourself these questions.  What are you?

  • Trying to say. Do/does the genre(s) make sense to what you’re writing or are you trying to use what’s “inside” one to communicate something.
  • Really writing. What is at the core of your world? Why are you dressing it up in a given genre? Is it getting buried under the associated tropes??
  • Trying to communicate to the audience. Genres can provide shorthand to the audience, but is what you’re saying actually served by the genre in question?

Closing

Genres may be instructions, but they can be limits – and even traps.  But sometimes genres hide in genres, so you might not know just what you’re doing and why in your worldbuilding.  Self-awareness – and genre-awareness – can help you greatly.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Way With Worlds: Dystopia Time!

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Dystopia And Smog

Previously I discussed Utopias. They’re not always popular, often poorly done, and are best handled by doing real world building first. Seeking to force a Utopia into your world tends to be about as successful as forcing it in real life.  If you don’t get that joke, please avoid any participation in politics until you do.

So now we’ll talk their opposite, Dystopias. You know how those go – they’re awful, terrible, explore the darker parts of human nature. A few even roll post-apoclapytics into the Life Sucks Stew for a complete course of misery.

However while Utopias don’t seem to be that popular for a variety of reasons I covered, it seems that a lot of worlds I see these days are just overloaded with Dystopias.

Which makes building good ones a bit more difficult . . .

Dystopia-A-Go-Go

I often wonder why Dystopias are so popular in fiction, at least modern fiction and modern popular fiction. As I write this in 2014 it seems like the shelves are filled with terrible worlds, often but not entirely in the realm of Young Adult Fiction. I’m starting to think adults might want to speculate what kind of world they’re leaving to young people here, but let’s focus on why there’s so many.

So why do we have so many dystiopias? I’ve been thinking about that one for awhile.

  • Conflict and challenge are important to getting interest in fiction, so Worldbuilding with a dystopia means instant conflict. Conflict means interest.
  • Dystopias also appeal to people’s morbid curiosity. When you see something horrible you wonder how bad it can get.
  • Dystopias also appeal to curiosity since there’s almost always the mystery of “how come this is so awful.” Curiosity is a powerful thing.
  • People may have trouble visualizing a better world, but can easily visualize a bad one. They may thus find Dystopias more believable – even when they’re not.
  • Dystopias may also seem more believable to people because of real-world examples – human history has had quite a few terrible societies.
  • That set of historical examples also provides plenty of material to use in building dystopias, so you have a pretty big construction set.
  • Dystopian settings may be seen or portrayed as “more realistic” because of the above examples – and the strange tendency in Western culture to believe “dark” is “realistic” or “mature.”

Finally, there is one thing that differs Dystopias from Utopias. Both may be written with agendas (as I noted with Utopias), but I believe the above factors mean that agenda-created Dystopian worlds may seem more believable and the agenda of the author may not be visible. It may even be welcome because it came in a “mature” manner (in short as part of a horrible setting that some may see as realistic).  Dystopias let you get away with more.

Now this popularity may make it easier to create a Dystopia and make it part of your setting, your game, your book, etc.

That’s the problem.

A Warning On Dystopia

Because Dystopias are so popular, so common, they’re actually a danger for you as a writer. Thus, a few warnings for you, cultivated from my observation over time of how many of them are in literature and games (and poorly executed).

If you are thinking of creating a dystopian setting, keep these things in mind:

  • These are easy to do because there’s so many. It may be tempting and easy to make one in a setting for no good reason.
  • Dystopias are also tempting as people see them as “realistic.” That temptation can lead you to taking your setting in a dark way believing its realistic – and it may be anything but.
  • There are so many accepted tropes on Dystopias that its all to easy to pile a few on, meaning even an attempt to make an effective Dystopia can fail if you resort to tropes – which is very easy unconsciously.
  • Dystopias can conceal agendas that you’re accidentally working into the story. Readers/players may detect them easily while you may not see them, combining embarrassment with poor world building.  Yes, you may see how other people put agendas into their Dystopias – be aware you may do it too.

So now with these warnings, let’s ask a question . . .

Why Build A Dystopia?

The simple answer – do it if it’s appropriate. Just as I mentioned in Utopias.

In a lot of cases it just works. I’m no fan of the overload of Dystopias in today’s media, but sometime your setting and world building may lead you to conclude that “yeah, this part of the setting is going to be awful.” Run with it – in fact this is the best way to run with it as you reached that conclusion honestly.

I also find that, much as building more ideal settings, building a good Dystopia is a real way to expand your world building skills. Making a good one as opposed to a pile of tropes is a real challenge. Extremes are educational.

Dystopias are also fascinating because if you can build a believable setting that is believably terrible, then you’ve really achieved something. Bad Dystopias are just as ridiculous, just as able to remove believability, as bad Utopias or general bad settings. Good ones? That’s a challenge.

Dystopias are also interesting to explore historically – namely, how did something end up being so awful? This is always great fun to explore as a world builder because you explore so many different options, histories, and psychologies.

Finally, extremes are just fun to explore as a world builder, good or bad, high-tech or low-tech.

So if you decide it’s time to make your setting an awful spectacle of misery then what happens now? What should you do?

Of course I have an answer.

Putting Together Dystopia

So, if you’re going to build a Dystopia (as much as one designs suffering and misery). What do you do?

Just like Utopia, you need to sit down and do some work and make a real setting. Good, bad, neutral, whatever world building is world building, a creation of thinking things over, tying things together, and figuring out how things work. It’s all good world building

Yout biggest barrier will likely be the tropes and cultural issues mentioned above. Don’t take those for granted, because they seem to be bloody everywhere. Take it from an old geek, it’s like those bad post-nuclear games and tales I saw over and over in the 80’s.

But as for specific advice:

  • Dystopias can be intentional or untintentional – and indeed one person’s Dystopia may be another’s Utopia. It’s important to ask how it came about – and how conscious or unconscious it was. In a few cases you’re really writing post-apocalyptic stories, which is another kettle of dead fish.
  • A real Dystopia is identifiable – it has an identity and a duration and is not a transitory state. That’s another distinction from post-apocalyptic which often has a strong transitory element.
  • A Dystopia, as terrible as it is, has to be sustainable for it to be identifiable and have duration. You’ll have to figure out how such an unpleasant setting exists and maintains itself by resources, social cohesion, etc.
  • Dystopias also require you to explore the psychology of people in them. People may not be happy, but they’re likely contributing to the situation somehow or maintaining it aware or unaware. Because a Dystopia needs to be distinct and somewhat sustained, its likely people are contributing it or at least not opposing it.
  • Dystopias also present the interesting question of how they react to change. Change may be embraced or resisted, but how does your terrible/unpleasant setting deal with it?
  • Did the people making this society know what they were doing or not? How do those who maintain it now react to it?

Dystopias take some work to do. Good dystopias are just about as difficult as building Utopias.

Go Build The Worst

Hopefully that’ll help you in creating lousy and horrible worlds for your characters/players.

I think having seen so many bad/dervitive utopias, readers and gamers and such want something that’s really good. Applying good world building to Dystopias makes you a good world builder – and gives people something they’ll appreciate.

Even when it’s awful.

On purpose.

– Steven Savage