Do you ever see a “critique” of fiction writing that was pretty obviously pulled out of the critic’s ass just to complain about like “Why didn’t the author spend 500 pages explaining the selective breeding practices of this species of domestic dragon to create fireproof leather armor?” Because Jimothy I can’t find a reader with that many fucks to give.
So is it like George RR Martin complaining about Tolkien not explaining the tax system of his world?
Man, every time I see one of these posts implying something would be too absurdly boring and specific to include in a fantasy novel I’m like ‘hmm, that’s something I wish they would have gone into more, that would be something I’d find legitimately interesting’
To me, it feels like we should in some ways let the world speak for itself, creating a sense of natural depth of simulation and realism where larger amounts of information are implied by relatively few lines, and save the detailed discussions that talk directly about tax regimes for online bonus content.
Of course, I may not be the best source of advice on this. We’ll see how things turn out.
There are two ways, I think, to approach this.
The first is a sort of intuitive iceberg below the surface, where a minor interaction within the story communicates a much larger information load or general sense about the nature of the world. To take an example I already posted,
The adultery laws don’t apply to registered prostitutes.
It isn’t highly entangled with the plot, but it tells us that
- They are socially conservative enough to ban adultery
- They are simultaneously not socially conservative enough to ban prostitution
- Synthesizing 1 & 2, their axis of social conservatism is probably different from our own, based on some alternate popular understanding of social mechanics
- The government is sufficiently interventionist/statist enough to not only ban adultery, but to register prostitutes - there must be a bureaucracy to enforce these laws, so we can infer something about the size and power of the government
So we don’t need to know the details of the regulation regime to get a sense of the world from it and feel a depth to the world simulation, assuming other aspects of the work align with the implications. We get even more out of it if we already know other facts about the government, like if it has popular support, in which case we can infer that the population itself has similar views of social conservatism.
The second is to entangle the fantasy mechanics with the plot.
In video games, there is an idea of tension between game mechanics and plot or story, and there is an idea that some of the best games really weave the two together in a natural way to create higher immersion as part of games as an artform.
I think we can view a fantasy book similarly, with a continuum.
At one end, there is this setting detail and there is the story, and they’re almost irrelevant relative to each other. We get a big long description of the Cow Tax, but our main character is a thief in a totally different province, and the Cow Tax not only doesn’t come up in the story but only impacts like 0.25% of GDP of the neighboring kingdom.
(Of course, some people can enjoy a book that is primarily about setting and not plot. Like a sort of fictional non-fiction book.)
As we move along the spectrum, the Cow Tax starts to become more entangled with the plot. Perhaps it interferes with the funding of the enemy noble’s army, or there is a rebellion in a province because cows were taxed too much.
We can move closer, too, and tell a story about a peasant suffering because of the Cow Tax, making its resolution the central element of the plot, or have the entire plot hinge on demonstrating the effects of the Cow Tax.
Under this approach, the more entangled something is, the more explanation it gets, unless we want to create an air of mystery or something.
(To some degree, “the whole plot is about demonstrating the effects of the Cow Tax” is a very classic sci-fi approach, where the whole book is a big “what if?”)
