Biographies

It’s that special time of book-writing – at least, fantasy-book writing – when things start to come alive. I’ve had a map up on my wall for a while (more fully fleshed out from something I’ve had for quite a number of years now), with all the little towns and castle and villages and things; names that carry some amount of meaning; a little bit of history and culture worked out, and a description of a key point within the story that epitomizes the culture of the land today. Which is all well and good. But it hadn’t truly come alive. Yet.

Yesterday (and a little bit this morning as I sipped coffee and did the dishes) however, I began working on characters, and their biographies. While setting can be made very real – trees can grow, and birds can nest in them; winds caress the land and ripple fields of grass – it didn’t seem truly alive until I started putting people in it.

I don’t know if this is something foundational, or just prideful, but have you noticed that a place – let’s say some old building, or even a wide-open plain in Montana – even if birds and other animals are present and visible, can seem so very deserted. Something’s missing unless there are people around.

Sometimes this is a good thing: being alone, free from the press and expectations of people, can be invigorating and refreshing. But it is those times that we go to those deserted places specifically because there are no people. To borrow, paraphrase, and perhaps trivialize a feminist idea: we are still in reaction to the presence of people. Our expectations are for people to be around.

It’s probably the most jarring thing about post-Apocalyptic movies and books.

It brings sympathy to likeable characters.

It symbolizes the purity of nature (we can talk later about why humans seem almost universally to be a pollutant of nature).

And it brings otherwise vivid landscape to life. A town or village at the edge of a lake is one thing; have a character come from that village, have been raised in that village, and seek the comfort that village brought whenever she decides to finally leave – suddenly the place is alive. It’s important, it has meaning – and almost instantly it is populated with a bunch of other people. Who raised her? Who were her friends (if any)? How did these people live, and eat? Did they build their house, or someone else? Do they produce all their own food, or is there a market? Do people travel through this village? Do they bring news of the “outside” world? How does she and all these other people feel about the news they bring? And why are these three strangers looking for something that her grandmother who named her only told her about in bedtime stories?

Not to evoke Dr. Frankenstein, but: “It’s alive!” I can’t wait to discover more.