Once a year, science fiction and fantasy aficionados gather from the mountain west area and beyond in a literary symposium called Life, the Universe and Everything (for any Douglas Adams fans, the title may earn a knowing nod). The three days of panels, presentations and performances become a veritable meeting place where young creators can come together learn skills and network with professionals. I first found myself there as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed attendee years ago, and because I was so taken, I asked around to see how I could volunteer. First as an attendee, I now am honored to add my meager efforts to the brain child of knowledgeable professionals I am proud to claim a working relationship with.
Over the course of a few years, the chair of the Media and Theatre Arts track learned I go off adventuring with my sisters and encouraged me to record my travels, as well as keep honing my fiction. This blog of vignettes, tips, and downright FUBAR yet fun experiences is one such inception from his encouragement, and the following is a further elaboration of the article of a similar name from the LTUE website.
So, in order to begin, I need you to do something for me:
Imagine you’re on a beach.
Now, when I imagine a beach scene, the photo above is more or less what I see: the foldable chair, the hat, the toes in the white sands, falling asleep as the cerulean waters breathe in and out with the tide. Throw in a word search book and an overheating phone, and the image is complete.
But back to you: What do you see? You might think back to those childhood trips to the seaside, digging into the coolness of the tan sand turning darker and cooler the deeper you dig. Maybe you hear the crashing of the ocean swells, or the seagulls trolling for leftovers from some unsuspecting kid and his Cheetos. Maybe a group of Top Gun cadets are playing a friendly game of beach volleyball, Maverick and Iceman nodding to each other in those iconic aviator shades. Those scenes sound pretty universal, billions of other human beings on this same earth would beg to differ.
Writing Exercise: Beach Scenes
If someone else were to do a writing exercise based on a beach they had imagined, the answer to that previously posed question would look vastly different: I partly grew up in Hawaii, and so when imagine a beach scene, it’s the white sands and blue lagoons I remembered. If we were in Elafonisi, Crete, the shores would glitter a pale pink in the hot sun. The certain shellfish native to that area vary in rose shades, and because of the uniqueness of the colored shoreline, signs prohibiting stealing handfuls of the peachy beach dot the dunes.
Off the coast of Favignana, Sicily, concrete ruins and decayed foundations of past structures crowded the shoreline. In between thong-bottomed tanners and napping Nonnas, there’s not much space for volleyball at all. In the Greek islands, pebbles pummeled by the waves cover the beaches, which I swear heat up faster and hotter than the average tan sand.
In Vik Beach, Iceland, volcanic rocks round to dark, sharp powder match the omnipresent gloomy overcast clouds. (They may even look familiar, if you’re a fan of Game of Thrones or the more recent Star Wars trilogy.)
The more you see of the world, the more you know. The more you know, the more you can show and tell, the more varied your creative palette, the more complex you can paint a picture with words and descriptions. And with that repertoire, you are better equipped to in turn create worlds without end.
Practical Application
You may be commenting to yourself, “Hey, any of those images could be googled and used as references.” And to that I would say, that is 100% correctamundo. Have I done that? Yes. Will I continue to do that? Also yes. But worldbuilding is not only about what you see; its also about what you experience.
Once, I was writing a scene about a cavern. The protagonist had gotten lost while spelunking, and found himself in a gigantic underground palace. When explaining this to fellow members of my writing group, they encouraged me to go to Timpanogos Caves and have a look around, “To get a feel for what the scene could be like.”
It wasn’t until camping in Havasupai that I understood what he meant. It was day two, and cliff jumping and waterfall chasing were checked off the list leaving us in want of another adventure. My sisters had heard about an old mining shaft, and of course we all went to investigate. Between Josh’s climbing rope and Nate’s climbing expertise, they lowered each other down the narrow shaft. Right around then Ana got some serious grit in her contact, so from the top of the shaft I lowered down her water bottle. It was there I discovered an overwhelming anxiety of not only being crushed, but lost with no one on the outside to hear me scream. In the belly of a stony leviathan so much was vast; suspended, yet very present. I was able to use that experience to describe the fear and experience of a character as he dealt with being buried alive in a cavern. And later in another story, I would describe another protagonist’s helpless crawl through an endless cavern and her own crushing claustrophobia.
Verisimilitude
There is so much more than what a scene looks like that makes it real. That includes, at its heart, what it feels like, or rather, what it makes you feel. And you feel by experiencing. The more you see and experience, the more you can describe and enrich your fictional world for the characters and, ultimately, your readers.
Richard Donner was famed for filming the Superman films starring Christopher Reeve. As the legend goes, written in bold letters on the production team’s wall was the word VERISIMILITUDE. In the case of his production, he wanted even the fantastic story of a boy from planet Krypton to be down to earth and the closest to the truth as it could be.
It is your job as a writer to make even the fantastical more than plausible; it is up to you to make it real. Online photos, nature documentaries, they can do the trick just fine. But again, what you feel is just as important as what you see. And for that, you need to step out your front door.
Undaunted Courage
It is a special kind of thing to step out under what seems like a familiar blue sky and into a world that is altogether unfamiliar. There were times in Egypt when I would look around and doubt I was on earth; the flowing white robes of the inhabitants and domed dwellings resembled something more out of Tattooine that anything I had seen before. But it made me humble to think of all there remained to learn. (Which, as you guessed it, was pretty much everything.) The more you travel, the more you realize there is so much more to learn. And the more you seek to learn, the more you build your own courage.
The courage to explore is not dissimilar from the courage it takes to write. Courage to take what you do and do know know and tell a story that touches the lives of others is the same stuff that drives us to expand our curiosity, seek new worlds, and in turn engender compassion. When you travel, there are opportunities to make you uncomfortable and grow that precious attribute that can transfer into very other facet of your life.
Go Forth
Sitting at a desk for hours at a time is no mean feat. For all you creators out there pounding out one word, and page at a time and soldiering on with dedication, I applaud you, and am proud of what you do. The worlds you are creating are waiting for you.
This world around you now? This world is waiting for you. Of all the wonders in this universe, there are many waiting for you to see and experience so you can, in your own way, keep telling the stories that keep this wonderful world immortal.
So step into the waiting world. Buy a ticket to somewhere halfway across the globe, or take a walk halfway down the street. It doesn’t matter where–just somewhere. See it. Experience it. And get to making something truly magical from it.