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So what do you call this?
Dec. 14th, 2003 08:56 pmI hate the word manifesto. It's so damnably political. Mission statement? That's very managementese. Statement of purpose...kind of wordy. Well, here's a thing.
Why am I going through all the trouble of creating a world from scratch? Why don't I start by describing the worlds where I have characters, to which I feel a personal connection through that part of myself that has taken its own name and tells its own stories? I think it is that intimacy I have with those places that keeps me from describing them. It's like asking me to describe my house. There's nothing to build there. I wouldn't know where to start or what would be worth describing. I feel like doing so wouldn't really be a creative process because everything already exists. It's simply there. For this exercise, I feel like I have to have a hand in making something, to know that the ideas are at least in part mine. There's nothing there until I put it there. So Kel and Shan's house, River's tiki bar, Tidal's office, Marlowe's ship, Alex's apartment, they'll all have to wait a bit. It's not like they're going anywhere.
So why this specific world? Of all the things I could come up with, why a generic fantasy world? Well, it what's on my mind right now, since we're playing Dragonlance. It's something that's pissed me off for a while, the way the typical fantasy world is put together. I mean, this is a place full of monoliths. All elves shit lilies, all orcs are chaotic evil, everyone in Solace is a good guy peasant, humans are the only race with any diversity...Tolkien had a solid, mythological reason behind his monoliths like that, but most writers since then have not. I want to build a fantastic world that also makes sense. I want to make a world that makes sense; if it turns out to be fantastic, so much the better. Fantasy just allows me the leeway to do so. Or something like that. This is experiment land I suppose. There's nobody there yet to tell me it doesn't work like that. Nobody there to get me hooked into one story, to confine my focus to one small place around the people talking. There's no point of view, so I can see everything at once if I want to.
Why am I going through all the trouble of creating a world from scratch? Why don't I start by describing the worlds where I have characters, to which I feel a personal connection through that part of myself that has taken its own name and tells its own stories? I think it is that intimacy I have with those places that keeps me from describing them. It's like asking me to describe my house. There's nothing to build there. I wouldn't know where to start or what would be worth describing. I feel like doing so wouldn't really be a creative process because everything already exists. It's simply there. For this exercise, I feel like I have to have a hand in making something, to know that the ideas are at least in part mine. There's nothing there until I put it there. So Kel and Shan's house, River's tiki bar, Tidal's office, Marlowe's ship, Alex's apartment, they'll all have to wait a bit. It's not like they're going anywhere.
So why this specific world? Of all the things I could come up with, why a generic fantasy world? Well, it what's on my mind right now, since we're playing Dragonlance. It's something that's pissed me off for a while, the way the typical fantasy world is put together. I mean, this is a place full of monoliths. All elves shit lilies, all orcs are chaotic evil, everyone in Solace is a good guy peasant, humans are the only race with any diversity...Tolkien had a solid, mythological reason behind his monoliths like that, but most writers since then have not. I want to build a fantastic world that also makes sense. I want to make a world that makes sense; if it turns out to be fantastic, so much the better. Fantasy just allows me the leeway to do so. Or something like that. This is experiment land I suppose. There's nobody there yet to tell me it doesn't work like that. Nobody there to get me hooked into one story, to confine my focus to one small place around the people talking. There's no point of view, so I can see everything at once if I want to.
