Creating a (not) good society and a (not) bad society

Open with the best bits of your good guy nation and the worst bits of your bad guy nation.

And after you've opened with the bad bits for the 'bad' and the good bits for the 'good' you can start introducing the other parts of each until possibly the two look very similar/equally palatable. It sounds like a cool concept to work with, so there are probably other ways to go about it too.

A lot of this can be conveyed by the characters attitudes as well. Everyone always thinks they're the good guys, that their actions are justified.

Have the Minians talk/think/act in ways that enhance their duty to/love of their country. Perhaps a festival or holiday that brings them together. One, of course, that the Torvians don't share.

Describe the colors, the food, and put in hints of the sheeplikeness or focus on frivolous things. Perhaps an obsession with a fashionable color or piece of clothing, or an artist who draws/writes/paints the same image every year. But always with an upbeat "this is so great" attitude.

Use a contrast character. Someone who came from Torvin, and is awed by the warmth and the color. Have him/her contrast the architecture, the food. He can be amazed by the things the Minians have that are not allowed/not available in Torvin.

Again, you can show cracks - perhaps they're a bit wasteful, having so plenty. Or they don't plan ahead, and the gorgeous structures they build arn't meant to last, so they tear them down and rebuild ( They did a bunch of temporary structures for the Beijing Olympics, I was rather shocked at the thought of them not lasting when i saw a documentary on one ).

Eventually, characters can start seeing the problems with Minan, or perhaps be forced to travel to/be exiled to/spy on Torvin. Then you have the same thing in reverse. Oh, this is so awful, then.. well, here's one or two good things, up to.. if we'd just done it that way in Minan, we wouldn't have had the plague/crop failure/economic collapse/superstitious panic/invasion from third country.

I think readers opinions are strongly affected by the characters they connect to. So if you focus on changing your characters opinions of their countries, I think the readers will come along.

Have you read Elantris? Also an excellent story by Sanderson. There's a couple characters who, while clearly bad guys, really show off the 'everyone thinks their a good guy' concept.

I have an element very similar to this in one of my books. I handled it by showing the country in question from the POV of a loyal citizen and also from the POV of a sworn enemy. From the citizen's POV the country is a wildly prosperous place full of honorable people, which, through its international relations, helps maintain peace and enforce ideals of justice around the world. From the enemy's POV the country is an international bully, which uses its military might to force its twisted cultural ideals on weaker nations and hides the oppression of its own people behind a vale of wealth. Through the coarse of the book, I hope to show that both characters are right. The country is beautiful, unique, flawed, and sometimes dangerous.

You could do something similar to that, either by showing two opposing POVs or having one character who slowly changes their mind.

efreysson said:

It would take place a few years after a war between two major nations, which at first glace (by the reader) seems like the typical "good country vs bad country" fantasy conflict. The winners certainly think of themselves as the good guys, and run a very stable, prosperous society. But once the plot advances, and the perspective character looks closer and has her assumptions stripped away, the whole thing turns out the be a morally gray, politically motivated, BS war, just like most in real life.

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The 'War is political BS' premise offers workable drama, but why do it in fantasy? Fantasy is whimsy, and the author must ask what's the benefit of adding whimsy to a realistic, even cynical premise? It shouldn't be simply to mislead the reader.

For comparison, this premise often appears in spy thrillers. Le Carre did it in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, for example. A compassionate, self-sacrificing character makes more and more sacrifices for his home side, only to realise that his home side isn't really worth it. That works because we tend to sympathise with our own culture and idealise it from the outset, so it shocks us when our society doesn't act as we think it ought. It's the shock of unthinkable atrocity which helps create the thriller. The author supplies the events; the reader's bias creates the shock.

But a fantasy society is not the reader's idealisation but the author's, which the author sells for the sake of entertainment. The reader has no regard for the author's ideals unless they're saleable, and the only reason they'll sell is if they're entertaining. So 'War is political BS' can work in fantasy, but only if it entertains. To make it entertaining we have to ask 'so what'?

Fantasy conflicts tend to be of two sorts: High fantasy conflicts are of good vs evil. Low fantasy conflicts are the sympathetically nasty vs the unsympathetically nasty. In a high fantasy world 'War is political BS' means that you have the wrong leader on the throne. The 'so what' becomes 'we must topple the leader'. In a low fantasy world 'War is policial BS' means that you need to use that fact to survive and prosper. It's a nasty world and people will do nasty anyway; just don't let it mess you up.

Both can work, but what I think won't work is if we sell our own ideals for the sake of entertainment, then screw the reader for having swallowed our crap.

Does anyone have other suggestion for how I could put on appearances of a "good guy nation" and a "bad guy nation"?

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Yes, but it depends on whether you want a high fantasy version or a low fantasy one.

In a good high fantasy society we'd see happy, polite, beautiful agreeable people living peaceful free lives. But the society is corrupt if there is an underclass or oppressed group propping this dream up. Likewise, the 'bad' high fantasy society would have ugliness and anger and poverty. But the society could be virtuous if the ugliness is a curse, the anger is outrage, and the poverty were inflicted rather than deserved. So when the false good society goes to war it's to oppress -- even if their reasons are full of jingoism. When the false bad society goes to war, it's to survive.

In a low fantasy world there are no good societies -- only different kinds of bad. We might have authroritarian bad vs anarchic bad, or religious bad vs secular bad... Whatever the difference, when they go to war it's for reasons of cynicism, exploitation and self-interest. There'll be jingoism and propaganda and it's the job of the main character to cut through that and find what it's really about -- then do what it needs or wants to do anyway.

Hope that helps!

efreysson said:

I appreciate the input, but I think your view of fantasy as a writing genre is overly simplistic and absolutist. There is no law that a fantasy society has to be either pure and good, or rotten to the core.

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Neither did I claim that it must, but fantasy tends to idealise its subject and generally that's what fantasy writers use, and what audiences want to read.

Take an ordinary real-world princess. She's just a person and might be pretty, plain, or have a face like a horse. But make her a fantasy princess and she'll be extraordinarily beautiful, or the plainest person you can imagine, or have a face that people want to tie a nose-bag onto.

All literature tends to magnify its subject, but fantasy does it strongest, and that's what leads to idealisation. Successful fantasy writers know this and use it; unsuccessful fantasy writers ignore it and create dross. Warriors who can't fight; dragons that don't scare; evil societies that fail to menace; good societies that fail to entice us.

There are more sorts of fantasy than high fantasy and sword-and-sorcery. Dark fantasy for instance, and Paranormal Romance, and Paranormal Mystery and New Weird, and Space Opera and Cyberpunk. But they all -- all -- use their whimsy to idealise somehow. Which brings me back to my key point: if you don't want to idealise, don't do it as fantasy. Write a political thriller instead, say.

It's neither simplistic nor absolutist, but simply good craftsmanship: understand what your tools do before you use them.

I'm thinking this could be an "ant and the grasshopper" situation. You know, the grasshopper seems to have it good, until the perspective shifts and winter arrives. Then suddenly, it's good to be an ant.

And so if the Minians are prosperous, happy, well fed... tending towards fat and lazy, what happens when they need to be disciplined and industrious? If their architecture is attractive and fanciful, what happens when major storms or attacks or other drama happens? Do the sturdy, boring structures of Torvind fare better?

I LOVE your national saying, BTW.

I think I'll use that on my kids to get them to do their chores. Short people shoulder burdens, big people shoulder duty. LOL

I would say the trick of this, whatever characteristics you choose, is in how you present it. How does the reader learn about the differences of the two? By you explaining it to them or by the MC walking through the world and bumping into people and experiencing the differences?

For myself, I found the power of low fantasy is that the some aspects of the world / societies remains a mystery. It's that sort of bottom up vs. top down perspective.

In military analysis of battles and generalship is top down. For accounts of the soldier's in the trenches, ignorant to the grand scheme its bottom up.

So for low fantasy, like Ruv Draba is suggesting, the MC is just trying to keep their head down and survive. The battles they face aren't world changing, but smaller personal battles that effect their lives and not those of nations. (Which I tend to prefer reading in general) Currently most of my work fits into this.

For example in GRRM's sword and fire, you don't know everything, but you get a sense of how the pieces are being moved about the board. (This example I use in terms of a greater perspective to the political environment, not good vs. evil societies.) In Glen Cook's Black Company, you only have a vague sense as to what the "greater" game is about. The book is more concerned with the smaller struggle of a unit of men. (albeit ones that greatly influence the world) I'm sure there are examples of even smaller scale interactions, I just can think of any at the moment.

In addition to selectively revealing the good/bad aspects of each society, try to play with POV. If you want the Torvin to be perceived as bad, use the voice of an unpleasant, unsavory type (who may later be revealed to have unwavering morals and sense of justice). Opposite for the Minan - use a physically attractive character to show that side, but one with vices and a hidden cruelty ingrained.

Another quick way to give this slant.

"whoever wins writes the history books."

Its as basic as that.

@ Ruv Draba:

I'd say there's another way to write fantasy: grab some fantastic elements, and then analyse the changes those bring to the normal formula and take them to their logical conclusions. It's pretty much identical to much of sci-fi in that sense, and is great for exploring concepts that are difficult to create otherwise.

I don't think "idealization" is necessary at all... all you need is something alien.

efreysson said:

Does anyone have other suggestion for how I could put on appearances of a "good guy nation" and a "bad guy nation"?

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Very interesting idea. Often though in fantasy "BAD" is equivalent to unsanitary or squalid. So if you focus on the visual you miss the bad smells and the horrific infant mortality.

So once you get past the pretty colors, it could turn out the good society is fetid, everything stinks to high heaven and the infant morality rate is 80%. If you open up any of the pretty boxes in the pretty land they are full of rotting bodies of various kinds and none of the holidays are clean-up days, they are all just be happy! Days.

On the other hand the austere bad society (when you get past the appearances) smells fresh and clean. they are very prudish and anal and the birth rate is low, but hardly any of their infants die.
Their holidays are random orgies (the social rigidity would have to not be a genetic rigidity) followed by clean ups in which even the powerful wash the sewers.

Nicely Freudian too, at least the bad society has a coherent Freudian model. The Bad society sounds vaguely like early modern Northern European Calvinists -- NAsty and austere, repressed and violent, but with high status for women. Scarlett Letter Land

efreysson said:

Well, according to my current outline, as of the end of the first act of the first book, the main character is accompanied by a Torvinian on her travels. More specifically, a Torvinian super (-duper) soldier captured in the war and put under a spell that forces her to obey the commands of an assigned handler.
And as of the end of the first act, that handler is the main character, who now finds herself in a very ethically iffy spot: Basically engaging in slavery, but also ordered to keep an extremely dangerous enemy of the state under tight control.
The Torvinian lady is naturally less than pleased at being stripped of free will and forced to slaughter monsters and bandits in an enemy country, and her blunt criticism forces the MC to start questioning things.

Hmm. Maybe I could have one of the supporting characters be a Minian veteran of the war who speaks disparagingly of "the dark, miserable land" early on. Coupled with the bards singing of the glorious and just victory, that could very well have the desired effect on the reader.
Until the cracks start showing, of course.

Thanks for the suggestions, all of you. I'll think about this some more.

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Reversing who is in servitude might work better. I see the Torvians as having too small of a population to sustain large wars for long. They are deadly at raiding and such so the Minian could be captured and expect a horrible fate only to find that the Torvians have elaborate ways of making captives feel honored and working hard collaboratively to get big ransoms so that they get the whole story of the Minians goofy family and why they won't pay ransom...eventually they find some odd jobs for the Minian to do and eventually the Minian helps ransom Minians back from the Torvians (essentially doing the Torvians work for them)...and eventually the Minian finds the Torvians are good and the Minians are bad.

efreysson said:

I appreciate your posts, but am rather confused by . . . Freudian? I didn't mention phalluses or psychology.

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I was seeing the Torvians as being "anal" (a set of responses that Freud elucidated), ie obsessed with being clean, repressed, regimented, correct, exact...which is often seen as a bad characteristic, but it could be a norm in Torvian society

See for example:

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Anal_retentive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_personality

http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/ss/psychosexualdev_3.htm

http://www.wilderdom.com/personality/L8-5FreudPsychosexualStagesDevelopment.html

http://changingminds.org/explanations/learning/freud_stage.htm

http://hubpages.com/hub/personalitydevelopmentpsychology