I think the main thing is to avoid the obvious cliches. I recently gave up on reading a reasonably promising series at least partly because of the story arc where an explorer from Medieval-Europe-Land arrives in Pre-Columbian-Central-America-Land and is ... wait for it ... greeted by the natives as their white-skinned savior god. And then proceeds not to kill half of them, enslave the other half, and take their land in the name of his king, but rather helps them defeat their hereditary enemies and fulfills his expected role with grace, good humor, and a fair amount of self-reflective humility. Um ... yeah, because that's exactly how these things tend to work out, right?
Bit I'll say again, if you're writing quasi-historical as opposed to straight historical fantasy, I think the world should indeed be different from ours. I don't think, for example, that there need to be quasi-Jews in quasi-Europe unless that quasi-Europe also has a history involving a quasi-Middle-East, a quasi-Roman-Empire, quasi-Christianity, and analogues of all the other things in real history that led to the Jews being a wandering and largely persecuted people. On the other hand, if your world doesn't have that history, you probably shouldn't have a bunch of people running around with titles like "duke" and "baron" either, unless you're prepared to do some pretty fancy linguistic footwork ...
Self-consistency, like I said before. I can enjoy a fantasy with almost any setting, as long as it makes sense. What's most bothersome to me about a lot of fantasy worlds is how thrown-together they feel, without any attempt on the author's part to make them feel like part of a consistent whole. Cultural insensitivity is, I suspect, one of many undesirable results of this kind of sloppiness. Authors who think hard about a fictional world are more likely to be thoughtful and sensitive to the people in it.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-09-09 05:43 am (UTC)I think the main thing is to avoid the obvious cliches. I recently gave up on reading a reasonably promising series at least partly because of the story arc where an explorer from Medieval-Europe-Land arrives in Pre-Columbian-Central-America-Land and is ... wait for it ... greeted by the natives as their white-skinned savior god. And then proceeds not to kill half of them, enslave the other half, and take their land in the name of his king, but rather helps them defeat their hereditary enemies and fulfills his expected role with grace, good humor, and a fair amount of self-reflective humility. Um ... yeah, because that's exactly how these things tend to work out, right?
Bit I'll say again, if you're writing quasi-historical as opposed to straight historical fantasy, I think the world should indeed be different from ours. I don't think, for example, that there need to be quasi-Jews in quasi-Europe unless that quasi-Europe also has a history involving a quasi-Middle-East, a quasi-Roman-Empire, quasi-Christianity, and analogues of all the other things in real history that led to the Jews being a wandering and largely persecuted people. On the other hand, if your world doesn't have that history, you probably shouldn't have a bunch of people running around with titles like "duke" and "baron" either, unless you're prepared to do some pretty fancy linguistic footwork ...
Self-consistency, like I said before. I can enjoy a fantasy with almost any setting, as long as it makes sense. What's most bothersome to me about a lot of fantasy worlds is how thrown-together they feel, without any attempt on the author's part to make them feel like part of a consistent whole. Cultural insensitivity is, I suspect, one of many undesirable results of this kind of sloppiness. Authors who think hard about a fictional world are more likely to be thoughtful and sensitive to the people in it.