Tag: storyworld

Categories
Writing for YA

Building a Compelling Fantasy World: Q & A with YA Author Amy C. Blake

It’s not always easy creating a whole world from scratch. Amy C. Blake agreed to give a few words of writing advice about building story worlds.

What is a common pitfall fantasy writers fall into when building their story world?

It’s easy for fantasy writers to forget they have to follow the “rules” they created for their story world. If they choose to break a rule, they have to explain why. Otherwise, readers get frustrated. For instance, in the first book of my Levi Prince YA fantasy series, I established that people can only enter Terracaelum (an invisible land suspended above Lake Superior) from Castle Island when the prince or princess lowers the drawbridge and admits them. In subsequent books, I couldn’t simply ignore my rule when I needed to allow access without the prince or princess being present. I had to not only create an alternate way in, but also to provide a logical reason why the exception was made.

What essential ingredients do readers expect from a story world?

Besides clear rules, readers expect to be given the proper amount of details to let them experience the story world. Too many specifics can bog down the flow of the story, but too few can make readers feel unmoored. Sprinkling sensory details throughout the dialogue and narrative tends to work best. Of course, in fantasy stories, readers expect something outside of their ordinary worlds—superhuman abilities, time jumping, mythical creatures, etc.—and they can best enjoy those elements when given the right particulars at the right moments.

How can writers make sure they balance their novel in regards to world building, character development, and the other elements needed?

Again, it’s a matter of dispensing information at the optimal time. Authors shouldn’t do an information dump about their character’s backstory any more than they should pile on too much minutiae about the story world. They don’t want to overuse dialogue, internal monologue, or narrative in any one spot; instead, they want to use the appropriate amounts of each at the appropriate times. It’s all a matter of finding the proper pacing to allow the story to unfold to maximize the reader’s delight.

Where do you find inspiration for creating a story world?

I’m an avid reader, and my family enjoys exploring museums and historical sites. I’m also an avid daydreamer, so I tend to find inspiration during quiet moments—sometimes while on a long car ride or when I can’t sleep. During those quiet moments, ideas blend with the information I’ve gleaned, and my story world expands. I just have to remember to jot down my daydreams so I can flesh them out later.

Great advice!

Thank you so much for stopping by, Amy.

Award-winning author Amy C. Blake is a pastor’s wife and homeschooling mother of four. She has an M.A. in English from Mississippi College and has written articles, devotionals, and short stories for a number of publications. She’s also writing two series for the Christian market, her On the Brink Christian suspense trilogy and her Levi Prince YA fantasy series.

Whitewashed, Colorblind, and Tie-Dyed, featuring three homeschooled girls who head off to college and find themselves on the brink of danger, are available in paperback and Kindle. The Trojan Horse Traitor, The Fall of Thor’s Hammer, and The Fay’s Apprentice, about homeschooled pastor’s kid Levi Prince and his adventures in Terracaelum, are also available in paperback and Kindle.

Visit Amy’s website at amycblake.com.

Donna Jo Stone writes YA contemporary novels about tough issues but always ends the stories with a note of hope. She blogs at donnajostone.com.

Categories
Storyworld

War of Worldcraft: Two approaches to World Creation

So you want to create a storyworld, eh? Well, it took God six days to complete the one you’re living in, so don’t expect to make yours in one day. Worlds are complicated things, and in order to make one believable, you’ll need to take into consideration a whole host of things from politics to geography. But first, let’s approach the philosophy of world creation. There are two extremes, but most authors approach the task with a little give and take from both.

[bctt tweet=”So you want to create a world, eh? #storyworld #scifi” via=”no”]

From the story, arises the world…

In this approach, you start with a story idea and create the world as the story progresses. You haven’t mapped out the flora or fauna and you may have no idea what the planet’s political structure looks like, but you’ll figure everything out as you write. The principle advantage to this method is speed. Specifically, you can start writing immediately and fill in details later as you figure them out.

But before you get started, you’ll need at least a general idea of the storyworld’s outlook. Even something simple like knowing your universe is similar to Star Wars, or that magic and technology are used like Final Fantasy VII, that can help a lot. You can’t copy the intellectual property, but a general idea can help.

A word of caution: when you use this process, you MUST go back and examine your manuscript for consistency. If you flippantly mention the protagonist grew up climbing trees, you can’t later say his hometown was a desert. Similarly, if you realize midway into your book that you’d like to populate the earth with elves or cyborgs (or cyborg elves, whatever), you’re going to have to go back and add details to that effect earlier in the novel unless you intend to completely catch the reader off guard.

From the world, arises the story…

With this style, you design maps, ideologies, technology, and fantastic creatures early. Your characters are crafted within the realm of this fictitious land, and as a result, they feel genuine. Why? Because their motivations are drawn from the rich history you’ve created. In fact, the main advantage to this method is that the world will feel alive, because you’ve already considered how its inhabitants fare in their daily routines.

One problem I’ve seen with this approach is when a proud author frontloads his manuscript with world-details instead of the actual story. It’s understandable, right? I mean he’s created an entire ecosystem in his head. But the result is a lengthy prologue that belongs in a reference manual for a roleplaying game. Boring! Instead, display the richness of your universe in the way your characters interact with it. Subtlety is the key.

The other drawback is “analysis paralysis.” If you worry too much about the way your world will hold together, you may never get around to actually writing your story. If you want to be an author, you know you eventually have to write a book, right?

[bctt tweet=”If you want to be an author, you know you eventually have to write a book, right? #author #writer” via=”no”]

Finding middle ground…

As I said, most authors approach world creation with a hybrid of the two methods. As they write a couple chapters, their heads are filled with ideas for international drama. As that grand-scale conflict solidifies, new incentives are born into their characters. And so it goes. Most importantly, understand the advantages and disadvantages of the two philosophies and pick a method that works for you.

 

Categories
Storyworld

Anatomy of Grays: Sex

AnatomyGraysSex

Jim held a gray spheroid up to the light. “So Doc, you’re saying the sex of this alien was actually female?”

“That is perhaps an overstatement. This is clearly an egg we retrieved from the deceased Sharalla pilot. While this may indicate a female of the species, their biology is unlike anything we’ve encountered. For all we know, the males carry the fertilized eggs, as in some of Earth’s aquatic wildlife.”

Jim lowered the egg, which had the size, heft, and texture of a softball. “You’re not saying this thing is fertilized are you?”

The doctor shook his head. “Our scientific team has concluded it most certainly is not. We wouldn’t let you handle it otherwise.”

The little rock wiggled itself in Jim’s hand, producing a breathless stare from Doctor Stein.

“Ahh,” Jim sighed in mock contentment, “ the certainty of science.”

 

What better way to spend the day before Valentine’s than talking about alien sex and reproduction? Seriously though, the method of reproduction in an alien species dictates much of its culture, so it bears at least some consideration in your storyworld.

Assuming your creatures have some form of sex to reproduce (and don’t just materialize or breed asexually), you’ll need to figure out how they do it. Generally, it will involve some form of fertilization, the method in which sex cells, containing half the genetic composition of each parent, unite to form a new, unique member of the species. This is broadly separated into two categories: external fertilization and internal fertilization.

External Fertilization

External fertilization is a form of sex that is mostly reserved to earth’s fish. While from our view, this seems impersonal, it doesn’t have to be. Granted, there doesn’t seem to be much intimacy between two fish, but there is sometimes a loyalty to the young. The male Siamese Fighting Fish will tirelessly guard over its eggs, ensuring they remain in a nest of bubbles until they hatch. Male seahorses will care for their fertilized eggs in a special pouch. Cichlids are fish that keep their eggs in their mouths, and continued to do so until they’ve not only hatched, but are old enough to fend for themselves.

If you introduce a sentient (and somewhat relatable) alien species with external fertilization, it would probably be best to model it after one of these more maternal or paternal species on earth. That is, unless you’re trying to create a heartless society of extraterrestrials. In that case, spawning massive numbers of progeny at random might fit better.

Internal Fertilization

This is the section that might get me fired from my position at A3. I’m kidding, I’m kidding – you can’t fire someone who works for free … I think. Anyway, internal fertilization is when male sex cells enter the female’s body and find the female sex cell(s). They combine and form a new life, starting as a zygote and eventually either hatching into the world, or emerging via the birth canal.

Which brings up the next distinction, whether or not the animal lays an egg or cares for the embryo in an internal placenta. Some examples of egg-laying creatures on earth are reptiles and birds. If your alien species lays an egg, you’ll have to decide the level of involvement you want the parents to have in guarding that egg. Some birds like the hornbill are very protective of their eggs. So much so that the female blocks herself off in a tree hole and entirely depends on her mate to bring her food. Others, like sea turtles, bury their eggs in the sand and then leave, hoping for the best (there may be a reason they’re so endangered). Rattlesnakes are odd egg layers though, since they don’t really lay eggs, but keep the eggs internally until they hatch. While that may sound like a live birth, the eggs are still self-sustaining, meaning no nutrients pass from mother to child.

And that’s actually one of the distinguishing features of sex and reproduction in a mammal – the placenta. When a mammal baby develops in the womb, it receives nutrients from its mother until ready for birth. Even then, female mammals provide milk for their young with their mammary glands (breasts in humans, udders in cows and pigs, etc.).

Sex Between Species

While forbidden in Leviticus 19, sex between two different species occasionally produces a hybrid creature. Probably most well known is the mule, a cross between a donkey and a horse. Additionally, ligers are crosses between tigers and lions, and according to liger scholar and artist Napoleon Dynamite, they’re bred for their skills in magic. There are a lot of different hybrids out there, including zonkeys , dzos, and other strange creatures. Usually the two parents need a similar number of chromosomes, and even then the result is typically a sterile creature. Sometimes though, intentionally breeding two species results in a very, very bad hybrid, such as the killer bee. Yes, thank science for producing a species of insect capable of killing thousands of humans and livestock … and then accidentally releasing them from quarantine -whoops.

Sometimes in sci-fi and fantasy literature you’ll see a hybrid race. The most obvious that comes to my mind is the Half-Elf. Born of human and elven parentage, these half-races display characteristics of each. But in a sci-fi or fantasy world, you can’t assume that every alien species can intermingle with every other. In Michael A. Stackpole’s X-Wing series, one of his protagonists humorously recounts a bad memory of having sex with an alien. The two hadn’t considered the delicate pH balance in that… region. And as a result, both partners developed severe rashes and some other, ahem, unpleasant side effects.

Sex and Culture

As I said in my intro, sex (and marriage) is a huge factor that dictates how a culture operates. How do two individuals in a species find a mate? How do they produce offspring? How do they care for their offspring? Is there sexual deviancy and abuse? While these are all major questions that deserve an entire column this column has mostly addressed biology. Fear not though, I will address them in the future. So if this article interests you, be on the watch for my sex and worldbuilding article in the next few months.

There, I made it through an entire column dedicated to sex without once mentioning the words vagina or penis. Oh! Darn. Well, almost.

Next month we’ll continue our anatomy series and tackle the neuroendocrine system! Yeah, that’s basically just a fancy word for evaluating how an alien thinks and feels.

 

Photo Credits:

Birds and Bees Photo: http://www.evilenglish.net/the-birds-and-the-bees/

 

Siamese Fighting Fish Photo (Also great resource regarding these cool fish): http://dkphoto.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Siamese-Fighting-Fish-Life-Cycle/G0000_kRdp2qXrtk/I0000qlzVaRnV4Qw/C0000NHUtq8T1jVw

 

Napoleon Dynamite Inspired Liger Drawing: https://www.flickr.com/photos/51035597721@N01/5266903

Categories
Storyworld

Anatomy of Grays: Alien Digest

The autopsy window allowed Jim a clear view of the good doctor’s grim work. The gray-skinned corpse had been cut open from neck to … whatever was between its legs, and its internal workings were just as alien as its external ones. Over the speaker, Doctor Stein began commenting on how the ugly fellow might digest its food. Apparently the little gray invaders had multiple stomachs like cows. Jim sighed. So their world was being invaded by bipedal gray-skinned cud-chewers. Great. Just great.

This month we continue our series on alien anatomy, literally delving into the bowels of unusual creatures – specifically their appetites. I’ve already posted an article about food and its necessity to your characters, which are probably vertebrates. That means they ingest their food, break it down, absorb it, and then circulate it to every single living cell in their bodies (which is headache-inducing if you stop to ponder it – don’t). Unused consumables are then disposed of in the same way that publishers typically treat unsolicited manuscripts. But with an alien anatomy, it bears mentioning that exotic creatures might ingest, digest, and circulate food differently.

 

Self-producing

Take for example a typical plant. Its food is self-produced, using a special pigment called chlorophyll, plus sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. It still needs potassium, nitrogen, and various other nutrients found in the soil, but the energy the plant uses is the sugar it produces for itself. This may not sound extremely interesting as a plot device in a book, but wait until you read John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. I won’t spoil who the green-skinned creatures are, but suffice to say Scalzi incorporates a creature that uses chlorophyll-infused skin to further enhance its energy (as a hint, they aren’t the Jolly Green Giants).

 

Externally Digesting

Other organisms like fungus and starfish actually digest their food externally. A fungus emits enzymes into the soil (or plant, organism, or whatever the fungus is feeding on), and its “food” breaks down around the root-like hyphae. The nutrients are then absorbed into those little tendrils. Try not to think of that the next time you get athlete’s foot. Arguably more gross is the starfish, which actually spits its entire stomach out of its mouth to digest its food externally. Creatures like this are likely to be pretty alien. Again, the world of Scalzi’s Old Man’s War is populated with interesting characters. Take the Gehaar for example, which are blue, tentacled extraterrestrials that inject their food with acid and slurp up the mostly-digested syrupy mess into their mouths. Yuck. But who knows what your space-faring adventurers or fame-seeking wizards will find in their world?

 

Otherworldly Appetites

But not all creatures need to follow the same rules as those in our own world. The second book in Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series (incidentally, no relation to the Pokemon craze), includes some creatures called Oni, which feast off of souls to prolong their life. They do this in an almost literal way, because the souls are actually stored in a stomach-like bag inside the creature, where they are processed and provide energy for the evil beings. Apparently such a malevolent metabolism makes a monster very hard to kill too, since an entire section of Alabama interstate was virtually destroyed in the process. You’ll have to read Monster Hunter Vendetta to appreciate it though.

 

Picking up a Monster Manual from Pathfinder or 3rd or 5th edition D&D can also give you some interesting ideas for aliens and fantastic creatures (Note: 4th edition is great to play, but the monsters typically lack back-stories). Examples from these books are Gelatinous cubes and oozes that tend to be mindless blobs of jello that are only semi-aware. If you touch one though, your skin will begin to decompose in their uniform acidic bodies. That’s because their digestive systems are little more than homogenous blobs of acid. Rust monsters are also interesting since they eat metal, including magic weapons. In one of the editions this meant that one of their waste products would sometimes be residuum, a magical substance used to enchant other weapons.

 

That’s all on the menu this month. Next month we’ll talk about alien sex and reproduction, but don’t worry, I’ll keep it PG. Still, you may not want to invite your grandma.

 

Gelatinous Cube Inspirational Photo from http://catsoftindalos.blogspot.com/2016/05/caverns-of-slime.html

Green Giant image from https://www.tellwut.com/surveys/lifestyle/food-drink/91881-jolly-green-giant.html

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi Storyworld

World-building From the Eyes of a Character

Character Eyes

The carbine was still jammed and Jim couldn’t do anything to fix it. He finally tossed it aside and cursed the shoddy Adronni weapon manufacturers – maybe their world would be next on the alien invasion tour. A shrill whine filled the air, and Jim pressed himself tighter against the debris-covered groundcar. A scant thirty feet away the earth erupted in blue smoke. As the remains of a prefab shelter rained harmlessly over his powersuit, Jim took inventory. A Gilgamesh repeater pistol, a single frag, and a suit of armor with a busted rebreather. As long as the reptilians didn’t gas him first, he’d probably live long enough for one of their walker units to plasma-blast him in the chest. He sighed. No, there was one last thing he possessed – the souls of his charred comrades pushing him on to avenge them. Jim unholstered the pistol and peered around the corner. Time to move – vengeance would be his!

On the surface, the above paragraph looks like an action scene. It’s dripping with tension, and Jim’s fate looks pretty bleak. But even an action-packed paragraph can be used to build your world. In fact, study it a minute and try to identify some of the foreign storyworld elements.

We’re not sure what kind of weaponry Jim has (laser? projectile?), but his attackers clearly have plasma weapons that explode in puffs of blue gas. And we can guess based on the grisly state of his allies that either the plasma weapons burned them alive or that the aliens have some other kind of burning weapon.

Let’s look at some of the subtler elements though. Take the use of the word “groundcar.” What is the implication there? Obviously a “groundcar” is a type of vehicle distinguished from some other type. An aircar? A hover car? We don’t know specifics, but use of that word reveals that methods other than ground-based vehicles are used for transportation in this world.

We also get a glimpse into the intergalactic relations. First of all, these reptilians are not only invading Jim’s planet but have apparently been on “tour,” invading many planets. We don’t know if “Adronni” is a company or a race of aliens, but we do know that either Jim or his military outfit purchased firearms from otherworldly suppliers. This establishes that the storyworld has interplanetary trade.

All of this could be done from a detached, third-person omniscient perspective, but the story is told from a deep, although third-person, POV. This not only conveys the gobs of storyworld information above, but it also does two other things: 1) it gives the action emotional impact. Sure, the battle scene is only a paragraph long, but you’re emotionally involved in the character. It inspires you to read onward and learn Jim’s fate, even as your imagination processes the alien elements. And 2) the world is shown with Jim’s particular biases. A comment like “shoddy Adronni weapon manufacturers” shows us Jim has preferences in firearms and the Adronni-supplied weapons are apparently not among them. This doesn’t mean his preferences are necessarily right, and a different character’s POV may reveal a different perspective on the carbine and its manufacturer. Your storyworld’s inhabitants, like those in the real world, won’t always agree on things.

This isn’t to say that every paragraph in your 90,000-word manuscript must be packed with exotic storyworld elements, but the first few chapters should do so as much as possible. And if you’re trying to get your audience attached to your characters in that same timeframe, doing so from a close, ground-level perspective can really help.

mhi1-posterLast year, my favorite novel was Monster Hunter International written by Larry Correia. A contemporary fantasy novel like this doesn’t need as much storyworld explanation as a distant-future sci-fi novel, but the author does equally amazing jobs at world-building and deep character exploration. I’ve also just started Marc Turner’s When the Heavens Fall, an epic novel with some well-developed fantasy elements and several great POVs. A final verdict will have to wait since I haven’t finished it yet, but thus far it’s a great read and exemplifies some of what we’ve discussed here.

That’s all for now. Next month we’ll kick off a series on alien and fantastic biology. Until then, let me know if there are any other storyworld elements you’d like me to explore in this space. Thanks for reading!

Categories
Storyworld

Fantastic Geographical Influences on Cultures

Tatooine

As Tatooine’s twin suns slowly inch to the sand dunes in the horizon, a lone figure strains his eyes as he scans the endless wastes to the west. Some of us are so familiar with Star Wars that we can’t remember the first time we saw young Skywalker against the backdrop of the two setting suns, but this scene is anchored in my mind as a brilliantly subtle method of showing a vastly different world.

Not every sci-fi or fantasy story has fantastic geographical elements, but some of the most memorable do. If you’ve considered writing a speculative fiction book, you’ve probably already considered a number of its aspects, but you’ll need to consider how the world’s geography shapes the culture of your storyworld.

The titular world described in the novel Dune by Frank Herbert served as a great inspiration to George Lucas’s Tatooine. Windswept sands and arid climates make for eye candy, whether reading about them or watching them, but the real gem in Dune is seeing how the local people survive in their environment. Water is such a scarce resource that it becomes a trade commodity and advanced suits are used to recycle their liquid wastes. But dehydration isn’t the only concern, since deadly storms whip up frequently and massive worms seek to devour anything that makes vibrations on the sands. The setting is incredibly perilous and consequently the indigenous people live a Spartan, nomadic lifestyle. I think because of the climate and the culture, Herbert models the people like a romanticized version of 19th Century Arabs, though with a sort of mysticism uniquely their own.

crater2Closer to home but no less exotic, Homer Hickham’s novel Crater takes place on our own moon. If the author’s name sounds familiar to you in a non-literary sense, that’s because Hickham was the real life main character in the movie October Sky. After a successful career at NASA, he’s taken up writing Christian Science-Fiction situated on a lunar landscape. Crater, the first novel in his series, deals with the difficulties of lunar survival on a well-established colony. The book is geographically interesting, from the ubiquitous low-gravity to the commerce routes used by space age delivery trucks. Starting in his home in a rugged Helium-3 mining town, the main character must trek across craters, canyons, and rocky plains to obtain a mysterious package at the moon’s main port of call. Because of the harsh setting and the rugged independence of these colonists, Hickham portrays the men and women of the moon similar to Appalachian miners.

PT_BtPoSWhile my first two examples take place in environments naturally devoid of water, the complete opposite is seen in Howard Andrew Jones’ Pathfinder Tales: Beyond the Pool of Stars. In it, Miriam Raas is pulled back into her family business of deep sea salvaging and must fight off monsters, pirates, and evil sorceresses along the way. But she isn’t without her tools of the trade: a magical version of scuba gear, complete with underwater breathing and enhanced mobility. The society that has grown up around her home in Desperation Bay is one of commerce and shipping, complete with nobles and merchants vying for importance through petty political squabbles you could expect in such an environment. The culture is probably most similar to that of Britain during the peak of its naval might, but the magical influence sets the tone as something distinctly different.

When you think of your storyworld, consider its unique geographical features and how civilizations might develop around them. As in these examples, you don’t have to invent environment-culture interactions from scratch. Readers expect people (and all sentient beings) to naturally develop functional cultures around their environment, and they expect these interactions to have elements similar to what we’ve historically seen on earth. So the more you borrow and tweak elements from our own diverse world for your own purposes, the more your settings will feel realistic.

Categories
Storyworld

Acquiring Things of Value

ThingsOfValue
Acquiring Things of Value

When writing a speculative fiction novel, determine what the things of value are in your world. Water, food, shelter-building resources, fuel: these are essential to survival and can create primal conflicts in a story. Sometimes wars are fought over precious metals and rare elements with powerful properties either for magic or technology. Maybe your characters aren’t directly involved in your storyworld’s economy, but they’ll definitely feel its effects somehow.

goldbars

If precious commodities have anything in common, it’s that they are rare. Additionally, there are only five ways to acquire them: force, theft, trade, harvesting, or begging. The things of valuable in your novel, as well as the manner in which your characters (and their authorities) acquire them, will shape your fictitious world. Here are a handful of examples from various works of fiction.

Frank Herbert’s Dune portrays the relative need of two different substances, one native to the desert planet of Arrakis, the other quite rare. The rare commodity, water, was used as a form of currency, despite also being a necessary consumable. On the flip side, Arrakis’s primary export was its spice, an addictive drug used for its life-extending and prescience-granting purposes. Interstellar trades (and wars) were made to ensure the exchange of these two commodities, and such is the socio-economic and political stage for the epic saga in Dune.

The TV show Firefly also showed an interesting perspective on things of value. In the opening scene of the first episode, a crew of space pirates scavenge what looks to be a crate of precious metals from a derelict vessel. The entire episode leads you to believe that what Mal and his crew have stolen is something of incredible value. But by the show’s end, you discover the blocks of gold are essentially just foil-wrapped Powerbars. This causes some confusion until you realize just how desperate the border worlds are for food. Nevertheless, we get a glimpse of how the border folk survive – namely by trade and theft.

moonSimilarly, Robert Heinlein’s book, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, briefly alludes to the commodity of air and the complicated manner in which colonists pay for that utility on a lunar base. Certainly not something we think of here on earth, where the air is free.

In these three examples, water, food, and air are all valuable commodities, despite each being common on earth. On the other hand, the fictional resource in the preceding examples, Dune’s “spice,” is unique and fundamental to Herbert’s amazing world – it literally wouldn’t function without it. If you’re writing a speculative fiction novel, what sort of unique resource needs exist in your storyworld? If you’ve read something with some interesting things of value or ways of obtaining them, consider leaving a comment below so you can pique the imaginations of fellow authors.

Categories
Storyworld

Food for your Storyworld

Food for your Storyworld
Even Heroes need to Eat

Regardless how fantastic the setting, the people in your book must treat their environment as commonplace. A character who regularly interacts with something will spend little thought on (and the author should spend little time describing) its method of operation. This is true whether writing about food or magic. But how do you describe the common occurrences of a believable system? It’s best done with sparse descriptions of characters interacting with their world, but to write convincingly, you need to think things through. To get your creative juices flowing, let’s look at the energy that fuels your characters.

No, not their motivations, their breakfast.

Food Production

Unless your world breaks the laws of mass conservation (such as a cleric’s “Create Food” spell or the Enterprise’s replicator), your protagonist’s lunch came from somewhere. If survival isn’t one of your story’s tension hooks, you don’t need to describe the origin of each meal, but in a long enough adventure, your reader may wonder where the lone hero gets his food, and you’ll need to consider it as well.

greenhouse

In our world, all food can be traced back to plants, which require soil, sun, water, and carbon dioxide. This obviously applies to vegetables, fruits, and grains, but grasses inedible to humans are the sustenance of livestock, and from them we get a myriad of consumables. In fact, animal feed can often grow in climates hostile to farming, which is why residents of colder regions historically had more meat in their diets.

Other hostile climates, such as a post-apocalyptic future, may have a similar increase in dietary protein, or they may rely on food production and preservation of ages past (until it runs out!). Alternatively, space stations may house hydroponics facilities, or elven crop growth may depend on the blessings of the local druid. Nevertheless, before food is eaten, it must first be produced.

Food Preservation

spamUnless your protagonists are survivalist hunters or part of the agricultural industry, the food they bring on their adventures must be stored. Portable storage falls into five main categories: canned, frozen, dried, pickled, and salted. Even a high-tech future will have some variation of these methods (e.g. cryo-frozen meats, canned nutrient-paste, etc.).

Preservation only delays the process of rotting as long as possible, but decay is inevitable. You can’t have a character wake from stasis a million years after humanity’s destruction and have her forage for canned food, because by then it will all have spoiled. Exceptions are made for Spam and Christmas fruitcake.

Food Preparation

Anyone who has eaten Cheerios in the car knows not all food needs preparation, but a good meal requires heat. Why? Partly because warm food is pleasant (ever tried cold French fries?), but also because higher temperatures kill harmful bacteria (ranging from 140F for rare beef to 180F for poultry).

microwaveBut no matter how bizarre your world’s heating methods are, your characters won’t think twice about them. Suppose you were an author writing about food two hundred years ago and conceived of a “Microwave Oven.” Should the microwave’s operator need to consider the details of particle physics and wavelengths? Not if you wanted to describe the way we typically use it. Even those who understand microwave technology seldom consider it when they put their leftovers in and walk away. The denizens of your creation should similarly spend little time thinking about something so common, even if it would be unimaginable to those living in a different world or time.

In a fantasy setting, maybe fire sprites heat your villagers’ meals in exchange for precious stones, but don’t revel in the occurrence if it’s commonplace. Or consider a future in which all single-use rations have a self-heating mechanism, making them especially useful on the galactic frontier. At any rate, a method of heating must be considered unless your people eat all their food cold (which limits the kinds of food that can be eaten).

 

Food Disposal

trashcan

Disposal of waste is not of great concern unless your characters inhabit a world of extremely limited resources. Some examples are desert worlds, post-apocalyptic settings, or space stations (Hugh Howey’s Wool Omnibus come to mind). For the most part though, trash isn’t noteworthy. Even a short-range starship will probably jettison its refuse.

 

When writing about food, you don’t need to spell out every detail, but you should ponder how and what your characters are eating. A genuine environment will connect with the reader because it feels like you’ve considered how people survive in it, and food is very much a part of daily survival.

Much of this information comes from my own 2,500 square foot garden and from The Encyclopedia of Country Living, a 900+ page tome by Carla Emery that details everything our agrarian ancestors did.