Ever have one of those days when it
feels as if the whole world is against you?
Excellent.
Well, perhaps not excellent for you but
I suspect it made for a great story. Dramatic storytelling comes from conflict.
As a writer and as a reader, I don’t just want the conflicts the heroes face to
be against other characters. I want the world to be an opponent - the deadlier
the better. I want it to a source of danger on all levels of human experience:
physical, social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual
My first step in building
This notion of corruption and cynicism
carries through to the physics of the world as well. There is very little magic
to be found in Tristia and what there is generally costs more money than decent
folk could ever hope to afford. It’s also a petty sort of magic - more useful
for manipulating and harming others than for healing. The gods and saints
themselves, when they do appear, do so for the powerful, not the righteous. All
of this makes Tristia a rather terrible place - and therefore a perfect
backdrop for characters who are struggling to maintain their ideals in the face
of futility and despair.
Part of why I start with the idea of a
contrasting dynamic is because, unlike most hard science fiction, I don’t want
physics and technology to drive culture. I want the world to reflect the
underlying themes of the book, so I draw from elements within our own world to
make that possible. In Traitor’s
Blade, the travelling magistrates known as the Greatcoats
were inspired in part by the itinerant judges of the English Middle Ages -
envoys from the King who would travel a year-long circuit of towns and villages
listening to cases and dispensing verdicts. Of course, in my world the
Greatcoats' situation is vastly more precarious and involves a great deal more
sword fights. Never all that common in our own world, and not a characteristic
of itinerant judges, the use of duelling as a means of resolving legal disputes
is a critical part of the world of Traitor’s
Blade - one that affects people’s ability to get justice for
themselves and their families. This impacts all aspects of society and culture
within the world of the story.
Whether the individual elements of the
world are inspired by aspects of our own or are created out of whole cloth,
they all have to fit within that contrasting dynamic identified at the outset.
They all have to be physical and cultural reflections of the themes that
underpin the story. In other words, the individual elements all work together
so that my poor, struggling characters will feel that the whole world really is
out to get them.
Sebastien de Castell, March 2014
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The first book in the new and exciting Greatcoats series, Traitor's Blade, is out now by Jo Fletcher Books.
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