Sunday, January 22, 2012

Pangea

I was thinking of the stories I have written in the past and talking to some other writers when I noticed an interesting trend.
I am an amateur writer. I do not pretend to be an expert or a "novelist", I just write for the sheer joy of it.
One of the marks of an amateur writer is, when the setting is a world that is not the one we live in, the use of Pangea-esque settings. I admit, I tend to do this. Scratch that, I always do this when I don't use the Earth.
When you write a story, you sometimes have to incorporate the mixing of cultures. We can portray this by drawing boundaries and border lines; by making countries, dialects, accents, and nations. However, adding an "overseas" element adds a whole new challenge. Suddenly you have to think about how much globalization has occurred in your setting, how much the cultures differ, what reluctance they might have for mixing, and..... watch out... the fact that they have developed entirely separately from each other depending on which continent they originated from before things like boats and airplanes were invented, if they HAVE been invented in your story.
>:( *brain hurts*
No thanks. Not ready for that yet. I admire it when writers are, though.
I realized through this that one of my favorite authors, Maria V. Snyder (READ POISON STUDY, YOU WON'T REGRET IT), uses a pangea-esque world that just has some borders and two country names.
I STILL LOVE YOU, MARIAAAA!
oh hey...Boyfriend is here :] I'm gunna go

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