by Peggy Bechko
Here’s what writers face every day. It’s simple really. If they’re creating a world that is known, that is, some version of the earth or the country you live in or the town, or whatever, research is necessary to fill in the background of your story. Experience, webcrawling, visiting libraries, whatever it takes. It’s still pretty straight-forward.
The hitch comes in when a writer sits down to create any kind of what is referred to as ‘speculative’ fiction. That’s when it gets to be great fun. Or at least it better be fun or I advise you not to do it. Here’s where the writer has the opportunity – even the necessity to create fictional worlds, cultures, languages, the whole shebang. Think about writers like J.R.R. Tolkien Orson Scott Card Edgar Rice Burroughs and others.
So, how does a writer go about creating a whole culture? Well, the industrious writer can simply steal one. By that I mean he or she can use an event in history, say the fall of the Roman empire the characters can be ‘renamed’ and recycled; just keep the core values and what’s at the base of the culture still there and plunge in. Only problem is, if your skeleton is too visible lots of history buffs are going to say, hey, this isn’t original – it’s a remake! And another thing to think about is if you want to add something to the mix, like the paranormal or magic or some such and don’t think it thorough as to how it would affect the underlying skeletal culture things get complicated.