The Responsibility of World-Building
By Greer Macallister | May 3, 2021 |
For years, when people asked why I wrote historical fiction, I said, “Well, it just seems like all the ideas I get these days are historical fiction ideas!” And then you can guess what eventually happened. I got an idea that wasn’t.
Fast-forward through a pretty intense period of soul-searching, drafting, rewrite after rewrite, adding a new agent to my team, spending a month on submission absolutely terrified no one would buy the book, wailing and gnashing of teeth, etc., the usual writer stuff.
And just days ago, I sent my editor the second pass (post-copyedit) version of my first work of epic fantasy, set in a world called the Five Queendoms. The book kicks off a series currently contracted for three books that I hope will go on for at least five; the world is a matriarchal one, peopled by women both powerful and powerless, strong and vulnerable, angry and placid, vindictive and supportive, nurturing and pitiless. Writing it has been a great pleasure and a painful slog.
And it all came from that first idea: if writing fantasy means we can imagine any world whatsoever, why can’t we imagine one that’s female-default in the way today’s world is male-default, matriarchal in the way today’s is patriarchal? Matriarchal worlds in fiction tend to be depicted as either utopias or dystopias, and I wanted to read a story set in one that was neither, with women in charge simply because that was the way it had always been, unquestioned. The women are heroes and villains, victims and victors. Because why shouldn’t they be?
Writing historical fiction, as I’ve been doing for the last decade, involves a great deal of attention to detail. Discovering, researching and including period detail — not just describing the clothes and buildings of the era, but the way it might have tasted, sounded, smelled — is important to helping transport the reader to the story’s time and place. Writing fantasy is both similar and different. The same types of details still help transport the reader. The difference is that we have far more control over what those details might be, because we’re building the entire world from scratch.
As I built the world of the Five Queendoms, I decided that I would make the most of the opportunity I’d never had before. I could make this world anything I wanted it to be. For years I’d been writing stories about women in the 19th century United States, women struggling to break out of the narrow mold of what femininity meant (and for many people, even in our current century, still seems to mean.) But in fantasy I didn’t have to do that. So I developed a world that didn’t box women into specific roles. That didn’t make them secondary players in some king’s or knight’s or Chosen One’s story. In the world I built, there are no slaves, no prostitutes, no sexual violence. And as an unanticipated benefit, I realized I was able to avoid a number of tired fantasy tropes, simply because the world’s structure rendered them irrelevant — no princess unwillingly married off to a prince for the good of the kingdom! (Actually, no princesses at all, only queenlings, because the entire language is different and -ess endings imply a secondary or lesser status that, in this world, no longer makes sense.)
We can write things in our stories that we don’t like or approve of. No book needs to be all sunshine and rainbows. It’s most obvious in fantasy or science fiction because we can stretch the world to do nearly anything, but even in historical or contemporary fiction, you’re still selecting the aspects of the world you want to include and illuminate. In a sense, we’re all world-building, no matter the genre.
Q: Do you see world-building as a responsibility, an opportunity or both? What are some of the potential complications?
Raised in the Midwest, Greer Macallister earned her MFA in creative writing from American University. Her historical novels have been named Book of the Month, Indie Next, LibraryReads, Target Book Club, and Amazon Best Book of the Month picks and optioned for film and television. Her latest novel, The Thirteenth Husband, is inspired by Aimee Crocker, the Paris Hilton of the Gilded Age. Macallister also writes the ongoing Five Queendoms epic fantasy series as G.R. Macallister. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books, she lives with her family in Boston, MA. www.greermacallister.com
Good for you, Greer. I love the concept of a matriarchal default world, and can’t wait to read.
What are the potential complications? Is there anyone who is portrayed as “other” to your protagonists? Does the “othering” occur because of default thinking (besides sexism–which I suppose could still exist in a matriarchal world)? Is there xenophobia? Ethnocentrism? Classism? Racism? Is there religious persecution? Homophobia? Any sort of taboo-tagging? Does the magic system favor any certain group?
These are very real-world elements that can add layers of depth, conflict, and applicability to a fantasy story. But most if not all of them have the potential to offend and even trigger. Do you watch Fantasy BookTube, Greer? Because if you do, you’ll know that someone is almost always offended.
Take Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel novels. I’ve always thought they were richly imagined–especially the alt-historical aspects: Set in Terre de Ange (an alt-renaissance France); with an earthly deity (Elua, a bisexual son of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, born out of wedlock, whose tenet is “Love as thou wilt”); and a religiously and governmentally sanctioned system of courtesan houses (legal and non-stigmatized prostitution). The first novel debuted 20 years ago, and though the series sold well, in its early years it never made much of an “outrage ripple” on the storytelling waters. Turns out that now there is a segment of fantasy fandom that considers the series to be patriarchal if not as veiled misogyny. And that invented religion? Though it’s been optioned for a movie(s)/television series (more than once, I think), many say that’s what’s kept it from actually being produced. Yep–a made-up religion might be too offensive… can’t make this stuff up, folks–ba-dum-dum.
Be bold, world-builders. Build your story-ships well, for the waters will sometimes be turbulent. Wishing you the best, Greer!
Oh, I’m certain I’ll be offending someone! Even using the term “feminist epic fantasy” on Instagram next to my deal announcement brought out some of the “you must be a man-hater” crowd, sigh. But all in all I have high hopes that more readers will be delighted than perturbed.
Love your perspective, Vaughn, thanks for sharing! Wishing you well in the launching of your story-ships, too.
I’m so excited about your new project, Greer!
Aw, thanks, Sarah!
“In a sense, we’re all world-building, no matter the genre.” I love this, Greer, and I agree. For me, both as a reader and a writer, continuity is everything. In the way historical details enrich the reader’s immersive experience, magical worlds and systems need to follow rules and make sense . I see this as a responsibility because inconsistencies take the reader out of the story. I’m dealing with this now in a late revision, having discovered inconsistencies that need to be addressed. Sometimes it feels like I’m building a lean-to! Good luck with your series. It sounds wonderful!!
Yes, setting up the rules is so important. I still have to stick to rules as much in fantasy as I did in historical, it’s just that I came up with the rules in the first place. That doesn’t mean they’re easier to follow — like you said, the inconsistencies just keep cropping up!
Wow, wonderful ideas. I will be looking forward to this world you are building. Can I get an autographed copy when it hits the stands?
Thank you! And I’m sure I’ll be signing, yes!
Great post!
To answer your question–I don’t write fantasy per se, but I don’t set my stories in existing cultures, either, so I get to do a lot of world-building, too. I also read quite a bit of fantasy and science fiction. I don’t regard this sort of writing as any greater responsibility than any other kind of writing, but I’ve noticed it’s a good deal easier to mess up. For example, there are stories depicting worlds with no bigotry that nonetheless have no LBGT characters. In a historical novel, we could assume they’re all just closeted, but if you get rid of the closet and write a liberal paradise in which everybody is cishet, you imply LBGT people just don’t exist. And that’s worse. In fantasy, there’s a lot more scope for mistakes like that, where you change one thing, forget to change other things, and all of a sudden your story implies something you don’t mean.
Such a good point! Not quite the same angle, but touching on the same issue: I write historical novels that have LGBT characters, and you wouldn’t believe the number of readers who say “this is anachronistic! There weren’t gay people in the 19th century!” But people think of history as white/straight/able-bodied/etc because so many books/movies/TV shows etc represent all their characters that way. Writing inclusively is the best way to work toward correcting the record.
Really good stuff, Greer. Your “journey” into a new world sounds familiar in all respects. I chose a Sumerian queen for my protagonist in a series set 5,000 years ago–loads of research to build her matricentric world as authentic as possible. I have no historical basis for her male-female role inversion, but chose a niche in time where anything was possible. Women have ruled in men’s stead for 200 years, they own land, rule the temple, judge the courts while men labor to build an agrarian life. Then a man of power rebels and moves against the whole cultural establishment.
Integrating a paranormal aspect to it was a challenge. The next two books will carry my queen through the threat of human annihilation, but like you, I plan to project her experience as lore for future women of power and grit.
My greatest challenge has been to provide readers with a pronouncing gazetteer for all the names of places and people. Some readers stumbled a bit with that but I was fortunate to have build a compelling story so they persevered. I believe that is a hallmark of epic fantasy, the old “easy for you to say” conundrum of clever phonetic invention brought to its knees by a tin ear.
Go for it!
Love this! Fantasy names are both a wonderful opportunity and a total bugbear. And there is so little written about wide swaths of history — why not set it in the world as it might have been, since no one could really say how it was?
This was a great examination of worldbuilding. I see it as both an opportunity and a responsibility. In my writing it’s an opportunity to highlight an aspect of society. The responsibility is to do so in a way that performs the examination from multiple perspectives and doesn’t preach. There’s also a responsibility to twist and turn the worldbuilding to suit the writer’s needs. Build it and adhere to it.
I like the idea of “examination from multiple perspectives,” yes.
It’s interesting, that idea of “-ess” as a lessering suffix. Grammatically, it’s a feminizing suffix – has been right back to Ancient Greek.
In the Anglophone world we have a push to ditch words with that suffix, as it’s seen as lessering, or as defining women in a role as a variant on the “normal” men in that role. But in France there’s a push to increase the usage of feminine forms – docteure instead of docteur, for example – to avoid the linguistic erasing of women in these fields.
One more example, I guess, of how tightly culture and language are bound – you can’t change one without it affecting the other.