Worldbuilding: Art and Culture in the Fantasy World

The most fundamental way to define a culture is through its art.  Geography, food, religion, technology and government are critical as well, of course, but none of those quite get to the soul of a people in the same way.  With fantasy fiction, we're mostly dealing with forms of art of limited technology: painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, literature and theater.

Music tends to be the way many fantasy writers go, to the point of cliché.  Especially with songs.  This is probably one of the quirks of genre that we inherited from Tolkien.  Let's face it, Tolkien loved his songs.  Personally, when I was reading him, whenever I saw indented, italicized text, I knew it was time to skip ahead a bit.  The same thing with poetry.  Now, part of the reason why these parts of a book seem so disposable is because the writers are not the poets/songsmiths of the ages that the work purports them to be.  It's one thing to say that a poem is a soulcrushing work of rhyme and meter that drives men to tears; it's another to actually write it.  I could do without it, personally.  I could also do without mention of lutes or mandolins.*

Painting, sculpture and architecture, I'll admit, are a little out of my ken.  Especially architecture.  For painting and sculpture, I tend to go in the direction of what they depict, rather than how they're depicted.  That's a nice way to drop a little worldbuilding history into the mix without it being as much of an infodump.  At the very least, having your characters seeing a painting or statue of a former king gives a slightly more organic way to drop in some background. 

Literature and theater are my favorite, though I tend to again go for what such pieces are about (and what that says about the culture) over trying to come up with excerpts.  In Thorn of Dentonhill, I have a snippet of dialogue from Three Men and Two Wives, which is going on in the background while Veranix is searching for someone in the public square.  Three Men and Two Wives is one of the ribald comedies of Darren Whit, a playwright from the previous century that I occasionally mention that is the Druth equivalent of Shakespeare**.  At a different point, I have Kaiana quoting from one of Whit's history plays, Queen Mara.  But, again, only snippets.  And in Holver Alley Crew, there's mention of the banned play The Marriage of the Jester, which is being performed in an especially shabby part of town.  While Three Men and Two Wives is a lusty, romantic farce (filled with crossdressing and confused identity), The Marriage of the Jester is little more than smut, presented to give the audience a cheap thrill, or for a little more coin, the opportunity to join in. 

I have to admit, I have fun just brainstorming potential play titles.

I intend to include a little bit of loftier theatre in Way of the Shield-- perhaps even an opera, if I can make it work.  Amanda Downum's The Bone Palace has a nice bit where her main characters go to the opera, and it's the blood-soaked tragedy kind. 

The other element I'm interested in adding to the mix is the use of magic in creating art.  I've hinted around that in Way of the Shield as well.  Still pondering that.  It's something I'd like to do, but at the same time, I don't want to stop the story dead in its tracks just to include it. 

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*- Yes, historical, but they also come off as Fantasy Clichés.
**- I also have some equivalents to Jonson, Marlowe and Webster.  Definitely Webster.  The Druth do so love a blood-soaked tragedy.  Especially since Whit was rarely a tragedist. 

Crazy Shakespeare Ideas

Every once in a while, that germ of an idea plants itself in my head, and I like to let it play out a little bit, even if I know I'm not going to actually do anything with them.

This often takes the form of ideas for theatrical productions that I'll never do.  My days as a theatre producer are behind me for the most part, having already lost my shirt on it once.  But that doesn't mean the bug isn't still there.

The idea hit me of doing really crazy Shakespeare productions.  I've been involved in my share of crazy ones (a slapstick As You Like It with wise-talking trees, an all-female Macbeth, an utterly doomed surreal Twelfth Night, to name a few), so those ideas still percolate up to the top of my brain.  I mean, I know that "high-concept interpretation of Shakespeare" is almost a cliche, but I do enjoy them.  Anyway, some strange ones came to me.

Zombie Apocalypse Titus Andronicus- Shakespeare's blood-filled atrocity could go quite nicely with a zombie apocalypse churning in the background.  It certainly fits in terms of bleakness.  And there's tons of bits that you can use.  When Mutius and Quintus are trapped in the pit, it can be a pit full of zombies!  When Lavinia is raped, with her tongue and hands cut off, why not go one step further: have her be zombified.  Then she spends the rest of the play muzzled and trying to bite people.  (This makes the bit where Young Lucius is freaked out by her even more freaky.)  Then when Titus captures Chiron and Demetrius, he can let Lavinia eat them!  And then Tamora will eat pies of their zombie-infested flesh!  Lucius can ride back into town with an army of corralled zombies!  It's got a lot of potential.

Military Space Opera Much Ado About Nothing- It's almost TOO easy.  Don Pedro's ship docks at Leonato's station, returning from the war.  Romance and smart talk between their respective XOs.  Alien constable Dogberry speaks in fractured English.

Steampunk Tempest- If any of Shakespeare's plays lends itself to steampunk craziness, it's The Tempest.  Prospero can have giant machines.  Caliban and Ariel can be bronze-and-pipe covered robots.  And awesome costumes.

I'm not actually going to do any of these any time in the near future.  So, if you're reading this, and you've got a theatrical fire to burn, why not try one of these?