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What you send to Agent or Editor varies with the kind of book, but I’m now working on the not-book parts of the submission package. NewEditors who are assigned in the middle and latter parts of a group of books–especially something as complicated as the Paksworld books–usually appreciate something that will get them up to speed quicker than just reading the whole (in this case eight previous) books. Copyeditors always like to have a list of unique character names, words, etc. And that’s what I’m doing now, taking a break from the wildlife management report for a few hours to work on this.
Some of what I’m doing will end up on the Paksworld website, because it should be there anyway: more on the history, more on the religions, more on money, food, economics & politics. I’ve been thinking what NewEditors need to know first–what will ease their way into Paksworld the most–and it may be my history degree, but I’m thinking “history.” So I’m partway through the history lesson.
What I know of the history of Paksworld goes back thousands of years, and what I surmise (from what I know of it) goes back much, much farther. It’s pretty cloudy back there, but that’s OK because although we have archaeology, we don’t have a connected narrative of a known individual’s life from even 10,000 years ago in our world. We know there was someone. We know something about his/her tools, and we may have physical remains. We can tell, from archaeology and rock paintings and the like, some of what the people were doing. But we can’t say “A man named Joe and a woman named Sharon lived in this village; Joe had children with another woman named Alice and Sharon never had children at all. Sharon discovered a new dye, a better red dye than the one they’d been using, and Joe was a great storyteller.”
So I know in general, vague, “here are some tools and this is what might be done with them” ways what was going on 10,000 and 20,000 and 30,000 years ago in Paksworld, but it’s deep background and nothing that should concern readers. It lets me move populations around, account for migrations, look at the ecology of the place and decide whether redroots (for instance) are native to the north, the south, or the far south.)
The trickier thing–and the reason I’m taking a break to think longer about it–is dealing with the vast differences in memory between an elf who experienced an event 20,000 years ago, and someone whose entire memory is a tiny fraction of that length of time…me, for instance. I studied history; we learned, among other things, that historians, as well as ordinary people, make mistakes. (For instance: horse collars. The French historian who started the “known fact” that pre-horse-collar harness methods choked horses and that’s what limited what loads horses could pull…was wrong. Totally, completely wrong, and it’s been proved wrong by experimentation. The experimental refutation wasn’t known at the time I was in college: I learned about it later. What really increased the efficiency of draft horses? a) taller horses and b) iron axles and trace chains.)
With my “thinking-like-historian” hat on, I’m entirely too likely to jump in and correct people on their historical mistakes (see above paragraph) but within Paksworld, I have to think about how those people would think. How important is it to them that the details be right? (How much did it affect me to know the story about George Washington and the cherry tree? Or Johnny Appleseed?) Are all the reasons that people conceal, embroider, enlarge, and otherwise misrepresent what really happened the same?
Probably not. The motivations of elves, for example–and of particular groups of elves and particular elves–may be very different from the motivations of rockfolk–and we already know the gnomes and dwarves see things differently. As for humans…our memories are in constant reconstruction, according to neurologists. The high school class that was hell for me may have been a favorite of someone else. Whose memory is wrong about that? Neither.
So: in looking at the “real” history of Paksworld, why are the elves telling humans what they tell them—and not telling them the other things? There were humans around tens of thousands of years ago, but the elves are not saying (that I’ve heard yet) “Your foremothers grubbed in the dirt with their fingernails and ate worms and centipedes; you were dirty ugly animals, and if not for us, you’d still be…we are the ones who taught you everything you know, we are the ones who showed you beauty, music, weaving, how to care for the land…how dare you question us?!”
There’s a certain pleasure, for some people, in knowing what others don’t know–withholding the knowledge, keeping it to a favored few (C. S. Lewis mentions the almost-universal interest in the Inner Circle–from those in it, those who want to be in it, and those who despise it.) There’s sometimes concern that the ignorant can’t handle the knowledge safely. Or that they just won’t understand it no matter how much you tell them–not until they’ve learned other things.
I have inklings of the reasons for the different groups, but I’m finding it hard to analyze it in a way that will help NewEditor. Back to work now.
Comment by iphinome — January 22, 2012 @ 5:47 pm
Far be it for me to offer correction my lady but did you perhaps mean how to care for the land?
Comment by elizabeth — January 22, 2012 @ 10:21 pm
Yes. I did admit I make mistakes, didn’t I? If not, here’s a correction: yes, I make mistakes. Sometimes I even correct them. (She says, making a dash for “Site Admin” and “Edit Post” and hoping no one else sees the actual error until it’s fixed.)
Comment by Eloise Twining — January 22, 2012 @ 10:31 pm
Preface:
I work as a stagehand
Some years ago I worked a Paul Winter Consort event. Ok, so it was the better part of 20 years ago.
At that event Paul came out and begged his public not to idolize him. Not to take his flights of fancy as “gospel”. Far as I could see his audience politely ignored him. I think this though it germane to your meditation. Paul is a very charismatic person who chooses to be in the public eye. He understands that his symbols can be interpreted incorrectly but is powerless to stop it. Add Elves to this mix and I really do think it creates a very rich environment.
Comment by iphinome — January 22, 2012 @ 10:32 pm
Funny, now that I’ve taken a second look I don’t see any error at all. It must have all been in my head.
Comment by elizabeth — January 22, 2012 @ 10:39 pm
Elouise: Thanks for that…it’s making me think even more.
iphinome: In the context of the post before yours…it’s all magery. Now you see it, now you don’t.
Comment by elizabeth — January 22, 2012 @ 10:47 pm
The worst thing about writing nonfiction in your invented world is that you just create more puzzles and questions to be answered.
How the heck did the Pargunese come up with a breed of horse like the Pargunese Black when a) they arrived in Pargun as seafarers and b) the next nearest horses were nomad horses, more like Mongolian horses? Not more than 13.2 hands (a few maybe 14) and the Pargunese Blacks run 16 to 16.2. And different build.
Oh. Wait. Having asked the question, little wiggly ideas start assembling. First they…and then they…and then…(shut UP, story-brain. We’re doing nonfiction this week. ALL this week.) (Yes, but…but…but…look, they…NO, I said.)
Comment by Roberta — January 23, 2012 @ 3:55 am
LOL. The seeds of fiction come from history…. So nice of you to share all these tidbits and make our reading even more enriched.
Glad to know how many hands tall the horse breeds are. I am not always sure when I read of the height. On the matter of horse country, how much shorter are the horses the Vonjans use, or that Aldred has access to? Marrakian horses to me seem to be a mixture of Arabian and the Lipplinzer’s in my mind. Am I accurate?
Comment by iphinome — January 23, 2012 @ 4:23 am
Drat those magelords and their clever mind tricks.
And happy year of the dragon Lady Moon.
Comment by Rolv — January 23, 2012 @ 5:23 am
I’ve trieed to create a coherent non-fictional acount of fictional world, and yes, it’s hard.
When I was a child, my brothers and I invented several countries, starting woth soocer, athletics and speed skating results (we’re Norwegians, you know) and continuing outlining the countries themselves, maps and history, lists of kings/ presidents/ prime ministers etc.
Over time, the outlines became more detailed, ann ambitious. Problem is, sometimes the original notions don’t make much sense, so it’s quite hard to make a coherent and logically consistent picture; it couldn’t have happerned that way! Consequently, the “epicycles” needed to keep it together become increaslingly strained, and quite often history needs be reinvented.
Comment by Naomi — January 23, 2012 @ 7:09 am
Maybe the elves weren’t the only ones who helped ‘elevate’ old humans? perhaps the dragons had a hand, the Dragon we’ve met so far, seems to consider elves to be a bit childish, or at least the current Queen… Oh I am counting the days to the release of the new book, but please, Elizabeth, keep updating the Paksworld info, I love it!
Comment by Kevin Steverson — January 23, 2012 @ 8:29 am
About the Pargunese Blacks…….see what had happened was…Ky Vatta had taken a contract to deliver frozen embryos to a new multi planet colony…one of those planets specialized in farming…and well you know distractions happen on a ships brig and well the coordinates for the jump….of course this was years ago…and the old “don’t contact the natives”…wait????….what???….oh……… sorry, Ma’am…..
Comment by elizabeth — January 23, 2012 @ 9:31 am
Roberta: Horses in Aarenis vary in size and shape by use; the Vonja militia would use a general “sound riding horse” of 14.2 to 15.2 hands; the farmer’s cart-horse would be a little shorter and heavier-boned, capable of any farm use, etc. “Gaited” horses with a natural 4-beat gait instead of a trot are widely used as riding horses. (Arcolin’s roan is such a horse.) There is no exact equivalent of an Arabian, and thus no exact equivalent of any of the breeds developed by admixture of Arabian blood (sigh. Wish there were. But there’s not.) Marrakai breeds quality riding horses, selecting for something that looks and acts like a Morgan/Arab cross with an extra half-hand of height, maybe. Endurance, weight-carrying, soundness.
Rolv: exactly. Especially without the deep background notebooks, the ideas I had 29 years ago when I started writing in Paksworld…and even when I finished the first books three years later….were not as perfect as I could wish. There’s a reason Tolkein’s deep history “fits” in LOTR…he spent a lot of years tinkering with it before any of it saw print.
Naomi: I’m still discovering things about this world that I didn’t know early on. Early on, for instance, I knew there had been dragons, but did not expect them to erupt into any of the stories proper…much like our dinosaurs. We know there were these big giant critters, but if you were canoeing through a wooded swamp in Louisiana and came upon one munching on a cypress canopy…you’d be surprised.
Kevin: It wouldn’t have been Ky Vatta…it might have been Lady Cecelia, if she ever got another space yacht. Ky’s transport career was too short to give her time to do that…although…come to think of it…she’s probably going to get bored being an admiral when there’s no big flaming war to fight. What would she do then? Hmmm….
Comment by Dave Ring — January 23, 2012 @ 11:49 am
With their long lives, I wonder if elves procrastinate more, less or just differently than humans. The “long years innumerable” may seem to stream by very fast when wrestling with a need for unpleasant action. On the other hand, consequences that seem remote to humans (e.g., ecological damage) may be perceived more readily and taken much more seriously by elves. Both our tendency to ignore threats beyond our lifespan and our tendency to act despite imperfect conditions (because we won’t live forever) must seem scary to elves.
Comment by Ed Schoenfeld — January 23, 2012 @ 2:09 pm
In the ‘when life hands you lemons’ department, have you ever thought that losing the notebooks may have saved you? Tolkien has this hugely consistent history and legendarium, and we can see in his notebooks all the long years he spent filing those rough edges off. And yes, that gives an impressive and realistic weight to the context of his wonderful fiction — but there is an even more realistic weight to fiction that exists in a world where history is an imperfect (sometimes even unreliable) narrator. When tempers get soothed at the Council of Elrond, there is htis sense that everyone was just remembering the same events from their race’s particular role in them, and all that needs to be done to make peace is acknowledge ‘the whole story.’ In Paksworld, no one really knows what their story is in the first place, and digging in the archives is as important as slaying monsters is figuring out what’s right and wrong. A much different flavor of realism, and (for me at least) much more satisfying now that I’ve done the the growing up thing, and academic history thing, and have come to imagine I actually know how thin the record is.
So count one reader who likes that this worlds’ past is a little bit ‘undiscovered,’ maybe even unknowable, and that the Change of Ages going on has as much to do with the living characters’ perceptions of their world as it does with the demons, gods and saints.
Comment by Kevin Steverson — January 23, 2012 @ 9:38 pm
Well said, Ed, well said….
Comment by Genko — January 23, 2012 @ 9:52 pm
I sometimes point out that even writing an account of what happened to me this morning will contain at least omissions and interpretations, if not downright inaccuracies. How much more so history of events much farther in the past?
Comment by Rolv — January 24, 2012 @ 8:23 am
Genko,
Yes, to write IS to interpret events – and to read IS to interpret what’s written.
And every account of any event is conditioned by it being given from a specific point of view.
Objectivity is an illusion, unless you are omniscient.
But, to pursue one of my favorite hobby horses, there are degrees of subejctivity; we are not forced to chose between the Schylla of utter subjectivity and the Charybdis of total objecitity. 🙂
Comment by Genko — January 24, 2012 @ 9:28 am
In thinking about George Washington and the cherry tree, for instance, that story is part of American culture, however watered down it has become by sales ads and the like. Stories shape culture, and whether they are objectively true is likely beside the point. The place of myth in culture is profound, not at all like the place of intentional lies to sell products.
Better stop there. I feel a rant coming on.
Comment by Rolv — January 25, 2012 @ 8:28 am
Ed,
While I share your feelings on Paksworld, I disagree with you on your comments on the Council of Elrond. Actually, to my mind, your description fits better to the movie version than to the real events.
First, you must not forget that the Council was an Elvish affair, although 7 non-elves (incl. Gandalf) participated – plus Sam hiding under the table. We are given the names of 5 elves; Elrond, Glorfindel, Erestor, Galdor and Legolas, but we are told there were several more, probalby including not only the household of Elrond, but also his children.
Second, we see that the diffents viewpoints and disagreements remain, they are just not always in the spotlight. Elves and dwarves are fiercely in disargreement, and Aragorn and Boromir seldom see eye to eye. Even the final decision is not so much a result of consensus as Elrond and Gandalf deciding what must be done.
Third, there was not so much tempers and soothing of them as desperation, nobody knowing what to do, and finally clutching at the only shade of hope.
So I would argue that Tolkien is more realistic than you give him credit for.
Comment by Jenn — January 25, 2012 @ 1:24 pm
Genko,
I once was in a class given by a Dominican exegete (sp?) who used your “morning story” example (written by several witnesses) to explain the various discrepancies in Scripture. And how a very simple statement takes on a different theological significance based on the readers perception. I loved his class especially after I got what he was actually saying.