When you create your own fictional world (altogether, or as a version of a real world) it’s on you to make it as real as possible for your readers. And that means… understanding how all the pieces of a real world fit together. Social mores don’t grow out of a vacuum, economic incentives are broad and intertwined, religious customs are visible, historic practices have not only foundations but reasons for still existing, and political realities are felt in everyday life.
For example, if you read a slightly older thriller with a traditional practicing Catholic character, it might bother you to see him sitting down to a steak dinner on a Friday. Yes, down in the religious specialist weeds, this is no longer a real issue, but you may know enough for that to raise your eyebrows, that is, you might expect the author to mention in passing how this happened, that this character thinks nothing of it, because it strikes a false note. In the real world he might well do it, but he would also likely contemplate how things have changed since his boyhood, etc.
As a writer, you require a nose for potential falsity. Problem is, if something doesn’t strike you as false or dubious in the real world, it’s even harder to see if it might be false in your artificial one. Read social histories and every novel set in the actual Georgian and Regency period as you will, you are still likely to make assumptions about plumbing, cleanliness, clothing, commerce, industry, pets, travel, scandal, etc., etc., that are not completely accurate. Maybe your readers won’t notice what you don’t notice. Maybe not, too.
Research about real history is what cultivates your sense of falseness in an historical novel. The more you know, the more the real world being described will retain its sense of reality. As a writer, you can generally look up any bit you might be unsure of, as well as discussions in the areas of uncertainty. (As long as you know enough about the real thing to trigger that feeling of uncertainty in the first place.)
It’s a bit less simple in created worlds, since to give them an equivalent feel of reality, you need to be not just clear about your world’s premises but also thoughtful about how the premises would interact — and that may be difficult to research directly (e.g., magic systems).
What nags at you, in your created worlds? How do you make that better?
Mad Genius Club 
13 responses to “Holding your world together”
In a medieval setting, finding the balance between sanitation and scents then, and what modern readers can tolerate. I realize that people who live surrounded by certain things eventually ignore them unless something unusual calls attention to it (the southwest wind not carrying eau de feedlot, for example, or people not having allergy attacks when a strong north wind blows.) Modern readers have a lower tolerance for ordure and stinks.
The everyday violence that was so common and still is common in parts of the world. Modern readers would balk hard at that, and I don’t like writing it.
Keeping strongly in your point-of-view character’s thoughts can help avert it.
I wonder, what would the reverse case be like, of a character from a Medieval-sort of world, whether it be actual history or the classic ‘generic fantasy’ or what have you, landing in the modern day world? Assuming they don’t swiftly end up in prison or a lunatic asylum, that is. What would most ‘medievals’ first notice about arriving in or near a modern large city, presumably in the USA or Western Europe?
The lack of beggars, and the lack of animals. Probably in reverse order. And then how few people show evidence of injuries. We forget how many people had scars, mis-set limbs, and other signs of healed injuries or birth defects. People did their best to try to limit scarring and to keep bones straight when they healed, but they weren’t always successful.
Thank you for the response.
You’re welcome. I freely admit, it’s not original—I heard an Austrian historian talking about it at a museum that had a display of human skeletons, all of which showed a lot of wear and tear, even the relative young people.
Whatever technological marvel they first saw. Airplanes if they are low enough. Highways or any other form of paved road, and then cars on them. Skyscrapers. Trains — or train tracks.
Thank you. I suppose if they come from one of the fantasy worlds that has a multitude of human-like races, they might also be wondering where everyone is, and why they’re only seeing humans everywhere.
I remember a friend who has written an unpublished story in an SF setting where two aliens who look like anthropomorphic foxes get invited by some human gamer friends to a movie party where they’re shown the LoTR, all three films. They like it but keep asking, “Why are there only humans in this movie,” because to them the elves, dwarfs, orcs, etc., all look almost indistinguishable from normal humanity.
Lights. Always ensure your light is sufficiently explained by the circumstances even if you have to explain that your character can see in the dark.
In A Diabolical Bargain, I was revising merrily along when I realized that one scene, Nick had to be doing everything blind because there were neither windows nor other lights.
At one con, some authors who were historians were asked “what bothered them” in historical novels (romance or otherwise).
Barbara Hambly commented that she disliked “long flowing hair for women” in certain time periods. As in those time periods, no respectable woman would wear their hair long in public. Even the most feminist women wouldn’t do that.
The one I bounce off of in my faux-regency fantasy is my insistence on a shared bedroom for an upper-middle-class married couple (vs the realistic occasional/scheduled visits from spousal chambers of my model). I find the unshared-bedroom aspect alien to the way I want to visualize it, and so I’ve modified it to a more malleable option (separate only for illness/monthlies) — my created world, my choice. I want more psychological intimacy in the relationships.
Couldn’t do that, though, if I were writing Regency Romance – different world.
I have more problems with my various worlds trying to combine. This UF world leaking over into that UF world. Especially when they have different magical systems and thus need to stay separate.
One of my stories is set in an alternate noir-ish 1949 in Argentina. I realized I had not mentioned anybody smoking after a couple chapters, so I had to go back and add it in, and even manged to use the individual mannerisms to add some characterization to a couple of the characters. (The American detective chain-smoking his Lucky Strikes, vs. the upper-class businessman delicately pulling out his gold cigarette case and flamboyantly gesturing with the cigarette as he speaks, for instance.)