#InkRipples: World Building

By: Meradeth Houston on 4:00 AM

#InkRipples is a themed meme hosted by Mary Waibel, Katie L. Carroll, and Kai Strand. We post on the first Monday of every month. If you would like to participate compose your own post regarding the theme of the month, include any of the images displayed on this page, and link back to their three blogs. Feel free to post whenever you want during the month, but be sure to include #inkripples when you promote so readers can find you. The idea is that we toss a word or idea into the inkwell and each post is a new ripple. There is no wrong interpretation.

Woah. Look, I'm actually managing to get this post out on the first Monday of the month :) And, ahh, this is a topic that I absolutely love: building new worlds. Because while we live in a pretty interesting one, there's something to be said for creating a place where the fantastical, the magical, or sometimes just the very different (think, alt-history) happen. While I'm focusing more on the sci-fi/fantasy trajectory here, because that's what I write, really all novels have another world in them, even if it's entirely built upon the one we live in; different things happen, and no matter how close to 'reality' something may be, it doesn't mean that it's entirely fact.

So, what I love most about world building is thinking about all the little details that might be different. While creating the world of the time-travelers in Travelers, I loved thinking about how their lives would be different. What would it mean to be able to always have a do-over if you wanted it? But what if that do-over had to happen much later in your life? And what would you do if you could travel and live in any era that you wanted? How would that change you? I imagine in all sorts of interesting ways--and also alter the relationships with all those around you. I ended up trying to create a situation where most of the young travelers didn't have much experience changing things, as I quickly realized that was an out of control situation if I let them just do what they wanted whenever :)

In the current book I'm working on, people have Talents--almost all are little things (their toast always falls butter side up), but sometimes talents can be much, much bigger (like, a person is always charismatic...to the point of being able to talk anyone into anything). What does this mean about their society? How would their jails work if they arrested someone with the talent to melt metal? How might their schools be different to accommodate students who were just plain good at memorizing? And what about romantic relationships? Would there be ways to test and tell what a good match would be, based on your talents? All sorts of fun little details come from this kind of study.

Maybe it's because my day job is as an anthropologist--those who study humans--that I find all the little components come together to make a richer, fuller whole. One that I enjoy working with when writing, and especially love while reading. I think this is one of the reasons Harry Potter will remain such a popular tale: the world itself is superb, with all kinds of details and fun little nuggets that allow a reader to see it as a real place, with real occupants, where, someday, if you're very lucky, you might be able to visit. Because, that's what we're doing while reading, right? Visiting the worlds we've built, and hoping to take our readers there, too :)

What are some of the worlds you most like visiting?

A quick shout-out to S.R. Johannes and her recent release: ReWired!!

Sixteen-year-old Ada Lovelace is never more alive and sure of herself than when she's hacking into a "secure" network as her alter ego, the Dark Angel. In the real world, Ada is broken, reeling from her best friend Simone's recent suicide. But online, the reclusive daughter of Senator Lovelace (champion of the new Online Privacy Bill) is a daring white hat hacker and the only female member of the Orwellians, an elite group responsible for a string of high-profile hacks against major corporations, with a mission to protect the little guy. Ada is swiftly proving she's a force to be reckoned with, when a fellow Orwellian betrays her to the FBI. To protect her father's career, Ada is sent to ReBoot, a technology rehab facility for teens...the same rehab Simone attended right before killing herself.

It's bad enough that the ReBoot facility is creepy in an Overlook-Hotel-meets-Winchester-Mansion way, but when Ada realizes Simone's suicide is just one in an increasingly suspicious string of "accidental" deaths and "suicides" occurring just after kids leave ReBoot, Ada knows she can't leave without figuring out what really happened to her best friend. The massive cyber conspiracy she uncovers will threaten everything she cares about--her dad's career, her new relationship with a wry, handsome, reformed hacker who gets under her skin, and most of all--the version of herself Ada likes best--the Dark Angel.

With a deliciously twisty plot, the topical bite of Cory Doctorow's LITTLE BROTHER, ReWired delves into technology addiction, internet privacy, and corporate/government collection of data, as it vividly illuminates the universally human questions about ethics, privacy, and self-definition that both underpin these socio-political issues and dovetail with classic coming-of-age themes. Ultimately, ReWired is about the daily choices we all make about who we want to be, how much of ourselves we choose to share with others, and the terrifying risks and exhilarating rewards of being ourselves, online and off. (Goodreads)