World-Building: Enforcing Laws

In the process of world-building for fantasy/sci-fi writing, we not only need to make up laws for our worlds, we  need to think about how the laws are enforced. Without any enforcing of laws, chaos arises. Why shouldn’t someone steal all your stuff if there were no consequences? Why shouldn’t they stab you to death to get a chance at your wife/husband? Or do it just for the hell of it?

Most people don’t look forward to going to jail for long sentences, being hanged or beheaded, being put in the stocks, or whatever other punishments your world has. Many early societies didn’t have actual police forces to catch the criminals— families often had to catch their kin’s murder themselves. Among the ancient Norse, when some one killed your brother, you were free to kill any member of the murderer’s family in vengeance. 

More civilized societies as in most sci-fi worlds have a system more similar to ours. Criminals need to be caught. Perhaps technology will give better ways to find the criminals— we see that already in places with CC-TV cameras everywhere, and the use of DNA identification. 

In our world some charming people have decided ‘defund the police’ is a cool slogan, but they get dismayed by a resulting crime wave that affects them. Being a person tasked with law enforcement will always be a tough job. You have to gain control of possible criminals who are high on drugs, or drunk, and who may be belligerent and think there is nothing wrong with what they have done— even if it’s murder. And if a law enforcer makes a mistake— catching an innocent person, who dies in police custody— they can get called murderers, even if they had no way of preventing the death.

Some people think that looting and shoplifting from a business is OK because the business owner is insured and rich enough to afford insurance rate hikes. But people who own a business, large or small, aren’t in business just for the fun of it. The business needs to make enough money to cover the costs, both of the wholesale cost of anything sold and the cost of paying employees’ wages. As a bonus, the business owner usually expects a little money for his labor— if he’s not getting it, he might as well go home and do things he likes.

High shoplifting rates, or an incident of mass looting, makes businesses go away. That’s why so many urban ‘bad neighborhoods’ don’t have any of the chain discount stores in the area. They have individual stores with higher prices, because of the shoplifting rates. 

My father, who worked as manager in a discount store most of his working life, dealt with shoplifters all the time. He liked to say they had never caught anyone stealing a loaf of bread. I think what he meant was that people didn’t steal basic food items, but things they didn’t need to survive.

Out-of-touch people think looting is OK because it means people— including non-employed Leftist professional protesters— get fed. Real-world poor people tend to get food it more legit ways. If there are no wages to buy basic foods, they panhandle, or apply for charity/Food Stamps, or go to a food bank or soup kitchen. I’ve never panhandled, but I’ve done some of the other things— food banks are frustrating when  you have to be on a low-carb eating plan and most of what they have is Hamburger Helper and ramen noodles. 

Some people think training the young people with the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule would help reduce law-breaking. It might— a lot of crimes that are common now were less common when most kids were taught these things in home, religious education and school. But this training gets overcome when there are loads of people promoting ‘situational ethics’ or the idea that there are no absolute rules without exceptions.

Not murdering and stealing are good rules. In a major crisis, we all agree that one may use deadly force in self-defense or the defense of others, and in an apocalyptic situation one can break into a sporting goods store to get a crossbow or ball bat to kill zombies with. But if your mind is filled with the exceptions more than the rules, you are always finding good reasons to break laws. You speed through the school zone because you’re running late. You steal ‘protein bars’ from the mini-mart because you’re hungry and you left your wallet in your other pants. You kill Joe because he flirted with your wife, or he cussed you out, or you want his stuff…. I have read about a lady serial killer who was a devout church-going Christian on the surface. But she kept feeding people ant poison when they caught her stealing to get drug money. I’m sure she knew the ‘Thou shalt not murder’ rule. She just got in a habit of not applying it to herself.

In fantasy and sci-fi stories, the shared moral rules may be similar to those of the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments, or quite different. Maybe one rule is that you don’t say the Fearless Leader or Dark Lord’s name, or he will get you, through magic or technology. Maybe your hero will obey his society’s rules, or be looking for a better way. In either case there will be some sort of law enforcers to keep him on track.

You Need To be Mean to your Characters!

Zombieland (2009)

You put a lot of effort into creating characters. You hope your Lead character is interesting, and that readers can identify with him. But what will make that happen? Trouble!

How many readers would have liked Harry Potter if an evil wizard hadn’t killed his parents, leaving him to be raised by horrid Muggle relatives? How many would have identified with Katniss Everdeen if she had lived in a peaceful, prosperous society with no ‘Hunger Games’ competition in sight? Would we have followed Scarlett O’Hara through the Civil War if she’d got Ashley to dump Melanie for her right at the beginning?

Being a big meany to your characters makes those characters more relatable. Most readers have had troubles, and even if their troubles were very minor, they felt big. It’s easier to care about an orphan, an unfulfilled person, even a doomed person, rather than someone for whom everything goes right. Everything going right is what happens to other people, the ones we don’t like so much.

Lots of troubles give characters lots of chances to show good qualities. If Katniss never had to volunteer for the Hunger Games to save her sister, and therefore never allied with little Rue in those games, we might think she was just a self-involved teen with no redeeming qualities. In ‘Gone With the Wind,’ we are shown that Scarlett is shallow and self-centered, but she stays with Melanie and delivers Melanie’s baby, and then helps her sisters and the servants survive when she returns to Tara to find everything she had known destroyed. 

Imagine instead you write a character named Mary, who is popular and a good student and has a wealthy family who gives her everything. Will we even like her? Probably not— unless we make her lose her popularity, lose her family, and have to drop out of school to work in a cotton mill. Troubles like that will make any good qualities Mary has shine forth so that even the more inattentive readers will notice.

Now, you don’t have to give every character the same set of troubles. There have been many fictional characters who were not orphans, or not poor, or not unpopular. You just have to give your character some troubles.

The center of most fictional plots is the things the Lead character wants but can’t seem to get. It must be something important to him— for example, if he can’t get the girl he wants, he can’t have 10 other more available girls around him that he likes just as much. Getting the girl has to seem like life-or-death to your character if that is at the center of your plot. Your Lead can best be defined as someone who wants something, and wants it with all his heart. 

Without being mean to your characters, in particular the Lead character, the characters are just going through the motions of something that won’t much matter to anyone. Your readers might not even know what’s missing, why they could never really ‘get in to’ the story, or care enough about the story to finish it, or why they couldn’t give it a good review. But now, YOU know what is missing. Get writing, and add some troubles to your fiction!

Preaching To or At Catholics Online

Jesus. He’s a Friend of mine.

I am a former Protestant (Presbyterian, Lutheran) who is now a convert to the Catholic church. And lately I’ve noticed something that bothers me. There are Protestant/Evangelical preachers or would-be evangelists who troll Catholics in the comments section of various posts on Facebook and MeWe, and I have also noticed at least 2 who have joined Catholic groups under false pretenses, don’t interact with the group, and post long, long sermons, clearly Evangelical, in those forums. In one group a guy was posting sermon-videos at a rate of one a minute for a while. Another fellow posted the exact same sermons in two groups, one Catholic, one about Christians who support Israel. That sermon mentioned neither Catholicism nor Israel.

I am a firm believer in the idea that throwing sermons at the unwilling is not a way to win over hearts and minds. Nor is calling Catholics or other non-you Christians ‘hell-bound’ going to do the trick. Other Christians are mostly as convinced of the truth of their branch of Christianity as the online-preacher is about his.

And being insulting isn’t too convincing. Since I have a controversial, pro-man/woman-marriage page on Facebook, I have a lot of ‘athiests’ calling me a crazy liar and calling my disabled kitten ugly, and somehow those insults never made me doubt my faith. Nor want to become that kind of ‘athiest.’ If I lost my faith I would be an atheist— properly spelled— and I would still be civil to other human beings, because that approach is better. I can’t imagine the beloved writer C. S. Lewis, during his atheist youth, insulting other people’s disabled kittens to spread the atheist nonfaith.

What if these fire-breathing Protestant/Evangelicals had instead joined the Catholic group, made 10 encouraging and denomination-neutral comments for every one that might be perceived as being a bit non-Catholic, and had never posted any long sermons at all but just done a little ‘seed-planting?’

I believe in is seed planting. You can plant seeds of faith, and trust the Lord to bring the harvest. Yes, I know, Jesus preached long sermons like the sermon on the mount. But you are not Jesus. Jesus also spoke in parables— short illustrations— and we don’t know for sure how often He used the one method rather than the other. 

If you honestly think Catholics are ‘hell-bound,’ using an approach that will give the Catholic in question one more story about how Evangelicals/Protestants are hateful of Catholics is not effective. That’s how you get Catholics who question whether Evangelicals/Protestants can even be saved enough to get to heaven.

You want to save some Catholics? Do this: Buy a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a Bible with the Deuterocanonical books (Apocrypha), and get the little leaflet from CHResources on how to read through the whole Bible and Catechism in a year, and do it in a year. Next step: get a good book by a Catholic apologist that explains why Catholics believe the things we do, such as ‘The Catholic Verses’ by former Protestant Dave Armstrong, and read it. 

Then you will be equipped to go out amongst Catholics, knowing what they really believe, and plant seeds of what you think are the essentials of the Christian faith. Be encouraging, kind and loving. You may find after your studies that you no longer believe that getting Catholics to doubt their faith and leave their Church is your goal. Perhaps you will think it’s enough to lovingly encourage Catholics to draw closer to Christ and to the Bible, even if they stay Catholic. 

My personal belief— and I’m just a laywoman not a priest, pastor or bishop— is that God wants us to follow Jesus in the best way we know how, and even if we are in the ‘wrong’ church and believe false doctrines God still wants us in heaven if at all possible. I do believe my Catholic church has the correct and Biblical teachings, but I know there are also people who don’t believe like I do and who love the Lord. Let’s ignore the sad Christian divisions and recognize one another as fellow believers when we can. 

 

The ‘Cult’ of Imposing Writing Rules on Others, IWSG

One thing insecure writers so often do is get on a mad search for absolute writing rules and then proceed to impose those rules on other insecure writers— whether asked for feedback or not.

This is a post in the Insecure Writers’ Support Group blog hop. Learn more at: https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html

Some people support the rule about ‘no clichés’ by condemning every actual fantasy element in a fantasy novel as ‘cliché.’ No dragons, no elves, no vampires, no magic rings… no readers, because fantasy novel readers like books with fantasy elements in them, even though they have seen these things before. 

Some people like to complain about ‘head-hopping,’ or shifting the point-of-view during the scene. It IS an amateur move to shift point-of-view accidentally or in a confusing way. But author Stephen King wrote a scene where the reader starts off in the head of a bad guy on a shooting spree, shifts to a frightened observer who is the next to get shot dead, and then moves back to the point-of-view of the shooter. Does this make Stephen King an amateur hack-writer who will never be published? No, it makes him a skilled writer who is too experienced to bow to a lot of absolute amateur-writer rules.

Our need for rules dates back to our very early days of being able to read or write. When teacher admonished us that the word ‘cats’ must not be spelled ‘ka777z,’ it was wise of us to obey that rule if we wanted others to be able to read our childish little attempts at writing sentences. 

But we kept on learning more and more, and I hope we will all keep on learning more about writing until we die. There are very few absolute rules other than the ‘traffic signals’ of correct spelling, grammar and punctuation that make other people able to make sense of our work. Imagine if Jeff Lindsay had gone to a bunch of rule-oriented writers and explained his idea for the Dexter novels. A serial killer who’s a blood spatter analyst and the ‘hero’ of the series? You can’t do that! Lead characters need to be— at least more moral than someone that gets a thrill out of making other people dead. But Lindsay did pretty well with the Dexter thing after all.

The point I have to make is we have to develop our writing confidence enough to ignore the people who want to impose various rules on our work. If we are writing ‘OK-enough’ fiction and not groupthinking it to death through critique groups, we can ignore alleged writing rules. And if our writing skills have a long way to go, no amount of slavish rule-obeying will save us. (Hint— if you fear your writing is ‘not good enough,’ read more books. Write more novels and short stories. Your skills will improve.)