D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

fantasy writing

Celebrate the Women Part 2

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A silly start to world building

The members of my writing group are all confused. They keep expecting Lisen’s Garla, but we’re not in Garla anymore. Last week I wrote about the process of creating Garla, of what it took to make the absence of sexism, the elevation of women to absolute equality, work. This week, I’ll tell you about the creation, in the wake of that revolutionary society, of a world that isn’t a cookie-cutter imitation of Garla, a world that can stand on its own without leaving me yearning to return to that world where I spent so many years rather than staying with my new world in progress. A world called Azzur.

The story of Mari Spencer, the protagonist of my current project, begins on earth, just as Lisen’s did, but where Lisen had a destiny and her life had not begun here on earth, Mari is all human with no prophecies to bind her. I started with a magical forest. In order to move from one world to another, there must be a portal, and the forsaken forest is that portal for Mari. She also has a guide, a woman named Tula who lives within that forest. Now all of that was easy, but where could I go from there? Where was the fantasy world I wanted Mari to discover?

City of Afra with pencil notations

The world Mari ends up in is Azzur. Actually, that’s the name of a city state with Afra as its capital. I wanted something not entirely typical of fantasy settings, nothing medieval, thank you, so I settled on the fertile crescent, the cradle of civilization—Mesopotamia—as my jump-off point. That was the easy part. Plop a river down, place cities on its banks and move on from there. The physicalities were not at issue.

What was at issue was how men and women related to each other in this world. In my research, I was pleased to discover that during King Hammurabi’s time, his code may have restricted married women from participating in commercial pursuits, but many women engaged in business anyway. Property was left to them by their husbands, and they then left that property to their children. Now this may seem like a given these days, but back then, it was a very big deal.

So how was I to make this world palatable to my feminist sensibilities without simply duplicating Garla? It took a while, as it always does, but here’s what I came to. I began with Azzur having a ruler whose eldest child inherits regardless of gender. Men and women are equal in their spiritual life with the priesthood in the Temple open to both. In addition, the higher the social class, the more equal women are. But why? Why the upper classes but not the working masses?

Eventually I discovered—because world building is a process of discovery—that the existence of only female serpents (read, dragons), which are bonded to the royal family, triggered this effect. When I decided these female serpents would be parthenogenic—able to reproduce without the aid of a male—I realized this had motivated the royals into a belief that the bodies of females of any species knew somewhere deep within how to reproduce without the assistance of their corresponding males.

With their survival at risk, the male royals took their cue from the female serpents and started treating their own female counterparts as equals. The closest upper classes, including the priests in the temple, followed suit. On the other hand, the further down the social ladder a person lands, the more likely they are to think of the serpents as only a myth and—if they’re even aware of the serpents’ unique method of reproduction—parthenogenesis as part of that myth. Therefore, this equality of the sexes only goes so far, but in the upper stratosphere of Azurian hierarchy, it is a given.

If this sounds a bit contrived, it is. At this point. Book 1 of this series is in the midst of rewrite, and more will likely be revealed as I reach completion of this first story. World building is a process, with each step dependent on the last, and all steps open to reconfiguration, if necessary, until they’ve been permanently enshrined in print. We’ll see how things change by the time I publish this book.

How Hard Could It Be? (Plenty, but Worth It)

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I finished the first draft of my eighth book this week. It begins a new series for me, and finishing it proved to be quite the accomplishment. It’s a shitty first draft, of course, but I did write the last word, the last sentence for the very first time with great satisfaction.

This book surprised me in many ways. I expected the proverbial walk in the park—me having so much experience and all—but in many ways it was the most difficult project I’ve tackled. I had to confront the reality of doing some tough, very personal writing, and I had to open the veins in my soul and bleed on the page to bring the story to the life I wanted for it. The bleeding turned out to be more profuse than I’d expected.

But rather than continue with generalities, let me get down to it.

First, Arrogance

Despite the prospect of building a world anew and creating as-yet-unknown characters, I’d thought, in my unmitigated ignorance, that after seven books (six in a series, one stand-alone), the writing itself would be easy. I truly believed I could simply put my fingers to the keyboard and pound it out. Easy. Oh, I’d have to pause now and then to elaborate back story and pull a map together. I’d have to fight my way to a story, but I could pants my way through it. How many times had I done so before? (I do do some outlining, but less and less as I progress as a writer.) Again, easy.

Wrong.

I slogged my way through, and it took me from March to December to complete a 60K manuscript. Granted, I was dealing with life-threatening surgery and a recurrent infection, and the normal crises of making it from one day to the next often intruded. But at my usual speed of 1K a day, I should have finished in a couple of months. I didn’t.

Second, a Brand-new World

Here’s a hint of what you’re in for

I’d spent 40 years in Garla, a lovely spot to abide, and I’d come to know it intimately. Lovely to look at and, with its equal treatment of women and their roles in Garlan society, a paradise for this feminist. The characters were friends I would talk to in difficult times, and a few of them were better at telling the story than I was. In short, I was spoiled.

So, when I set out to create this new space for myself and my potential readers, the pain and struggles of putting Garla together had dissolved, much as the pain of labor evaporates in a mother’s mind when the baby is put into her arms. Man, was I in for a revelation. It required far more effort than I remembered from before.

And the hardest of all? Determining how to revert back to a sexist society without making myself scream in rebellion. I did eventually determine how to get some fairness in without copying (heaven forbid) everything I’d done in Garla to, in essence, “give women the vote.”

Finally, There’s Mari and Me

Mari, this book’s protagonist, is me. I mentioned this in last week’s post, and the prospect of opening up that cesspool of flaws (or wounds, as my therapist calls them) shook me to my foundation. So I moved slowly. I made a false start that I had to pull back on at two-thirds through that first draft. Some of it was usable; some, not. But I rebooted the project and pushed myself forward—always forward—if at only 200 words a day.

And I did it!

And I survived.

I’m proud of this book, and I can’t wait to begin molding it into a readable volume and ultimately sharing it with the world.

The Shadows That Guide Me

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hoia-baciu-haunted-forest-romania

I am a seat-of-the-pants kind of author. I used to outline, then put all my scenes on individual cards, and only after that would I allow myself to start putting words to paper. It worked fine. It also stole a great deal of time from actually writing. To be fair, it did speed up the process of getting the words down, but there were always those scenes that ended up being something completely different from the original plan, necessitating changes in the subsequent outline/cards.

With my most recent book, Protector of Thristas, however, I had a few pages of notes and a minimal amount of 4×6″ cards when I began writing, and as I wrote, the notes grew and the cards stacked up until the entire story had unfolded on the page. I found this highly stimulating intellectually and creatively and decided that with the next book—my current work in progress—I would simply start writing, filling in the cards and the notes as the story evolved in my mind.

My muse has encouraged this behavior. She manipulates the characters and story like puppet shadows, allowing them to become real as they and their plot lines take full form on the page. These shadows swim around and through me while the story gains momentum, and I follow them, picking up their bits of ghostly threads to weave into the tale. The only downside to this method is that I spend half the story asking “How the heck does it end?” (Endings, after all, require setting up, and how can one set up what one doesn’t know yet?)

But here’s one thing I have learned about myself after writing four books—I always figure it out. Whatever “it” may be, the answer comes when it’s meant to come. And if the answer I get doesn’t fit the previously completed narrative, then I have to regroup, rewrite and run a little faster to catch up with the shadows who have moved on without me.

I love those shadow creatures, and I love hosting them as I tell the story as they’ve told it to me. Now, I’m not advising every writer to use this method. It’s chaotic as a box filled with kittens and twice as bloody if you let down your guard. But if you, like me, revel in the magic of that chaos, then you’ll understand how the shadows guide me.