Reflections from Balticon 53: Article 3, “You Can’t Shop at Target on Middle Earth”

Originally published May 31, 2019 - At Balticon I moderated “You Can’t Shop at Target on Middle Earth.” Panelists included Lauren Harris, Roberta Rogow, Keith R.A. DeCandido, and Elizabeth Bear, who was Guest of Honor.

Roberta Rogow kicked off the discussion of logistics in building your world setting, explaining it is one thing if you are writing a historic setting, where the reader has some background on the way the world works. It is another when a fantasy setting is not. You really need to carry everything you need or know how to get it, essentially living off the land.

Elizabeth Bear mentioned recently reading a post-apocalyptic book which she enjoyed except for the one confusing fact for her… Ten years after the end of the world, people were still raiding and hanging out at the grocery stores. Hmm, I guess expiration dates of normally refrigerated items really are meaningless… as are canned goods that should long ago have been stripped by shelves, unless almost no one’s survived.

When your setting is original, the more detail you put into your story to offer the reader a sense of how the work works is important, to a point. Too much detail can throw readers out of the story. Elizabeth Bear suggested a good way to share those details can be to show them through what the characters are doing versus what I think of “info dug” exposition.

Elizabeth also shared that seafaring peoples in their masted ships often planted along their routes the kind of trees they would need many years later to replace broken masts. Think of the story possibilities of someone coming along and destroying those trees and how angry the seafarers would be, who discovered that, particularly when they needed those trees and now could not repair their ships.

Keith DeCandido mentioned in his remarks, “Think about money. What kind of coin are they carrying?” I envisioned heavy purses of gold coins weighing a character down—and cutpurses following them, and donkeys laden with gold—and losing them along the way through robbery or happenstance all making for interesting plot points. Elizabeth Bear shared that this is where “letters of credit” are so important and those that are trusted to serve in banking roles. I could not help but think of the Knights Templar, who served such a role historically and came to a bad end, or other groups throughout history. Then again, members of the panel suggested, think about the story possibilities of forged letters of credit or other cases of fraud that could be involved.

Lauren Harris and all the panelists stressed that history offers us examples of how people across cultures traveled and carried what they needed in ways that are often difficult to credit. But they really happened, all we need to do is our research, which can provide ideas we can build into our stories. Ideas that can offers our stories and our readers delight… and offer the kind of challenges to our characters that make for good storytelling… all because there are not Targets in Middle Earth.

Welcome to the world of Highmage’s Plight, where magic changed key laws of science and gunpowder now puts out fires — and humanity and the elvin Empire face destruction. In Sleeping Beauties and Beasts twisted fairy tales may be their only hope!

Dare to Believe,

D.H. Aire