fantasy furniture

badducky · Oct 19, 2006

i watched the dark crystal the other day again, and i was thinking about all the weird furniture in the mystic village, and all the weird utensils in the skeksis feast.

does anybody know of a book that manages to pull that kind of stuff off? i'm trying to figure out how one would go about describing the uses and utensils of such weird equipment.

if anyone wants to try their hands at providing a good example of their own, i'm all eyes.

Vincent · Oct 19, 2006

I love the Skeksis' eating utensils. Very imaginative. I've always wanted to steal them for a story or two.

badducky · Oct 19, 2006

Yes, but how do you make that stuff part of your story without an info-dump?

Anyone do it well?

Stormhawk · Oct 19, 2006

You could describe the untensil (assuming is had prong-like features) as having food/clothing/hair caught in it and describe it as the problem was being solved.

TheIT · Oct 19, 2006

Form follows function. If the creatures in the story are different forms than humanoid, it would follow that they'd have different construction for their artifacts.

Agreed, it's a delicate dance to describe the physical characteristics of another race without info dumping, but if the race is described, I'd imagine the same techniques could be described for their items.

POV plays a large part in how anything is described. If the POV character is not of the same race, then comments about the differences between what the other race has and what the POV character expects would be acceptable. If the POV character is of the other race, then information would need to be woven in as if what the readers perceive as oddities were actually normal.

Ordinary_Guy · Oct 19, 2006

TheIT said:
...then comments about the differences between what the other race has and what the POV character expects would be acceptable. If the POV character is of the other race, then information would need to be woven in as if what the readers perceive as oddities were actually normal.

Wise words.

Avoiding the info dump is critical (IMO), but hard to avoid (especially in more obscure worlds [like fantasy]). A steady trickle of details can help mitigate flooding a scene...

Oddsocks · Oct 19, 2006

If items like that become very relevant to your story, I think describing them would be fine. If they're just eating with their weird eating utensils, you probably wouldn't, but if their design means a character can also use them for something else, then you would need to.

Gillhoughly · Oct 20, 2006

Oddsocks said:
if their design means a character can also use them for something else, then you would need to.

:Gillhoughly gets a mental picture of a fantasy world MacGyver hastily browsing a full dinner place setting for the right tool to stave off a troll attack at the castle gate.:

"Best use of a fantasy salad fork, ever!"

zornhau · Oct 21, 2006

The snag is, for a full description, you have to have a character who's new to the tech, and cares.

Slayer held up the utensil. "WTF is this?"

Unicorn Girl smiled patronisingly. "Rotate the flanges depending on the foodstuff. The double spike is for nuts. The serrated fork, for cabbage."

"And for meat?"

"Meat? What's that? Why are you screaming?"

Shweta · Oct 23, 2006

I think things like utensils are just done better in a visual medium.

If I had plot-significant visual details that were hard to describe I think I'd seriously consider writing a comic (graphic novel) rather than a conventional one.

I keep considering it anyway, just because none of my characters in my WIP are white, but readers tend to assume the ethnicity and I don't want a whole buncha brown people to have to comment on how brown they are. But I think I can find a better way to do that, at least; the rainforest setting oughta be a clue.

TheIT · Oct 24, 2006

Shweta said:
I keep considering it anyway, just because none of my characters in my WIP are white, but readers tend to assume the ethnicity and I don't want a whole buncha brown people to have to comment on how brown they are. But I think I can find a better way to do that, at least; the rainforest setting oughta be a clue.

Have you read the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy by Ursula K. LeGuin? She dealt with the same issues pretty gracefully as I recall.

With regards to description, this thread sums up a lot of the problems I have when trying to write description. If it doesn't have something to do with the story, I have difficulty coming up with the words to describe it no matter how alien and nifty it is.

Oddsocks · Oct 24, 2006

I have a question - just say there was some otherworldly item that was important in a story, would it be acceptable to have diagrams? I mean, how acceptable are pictures in a modern novel? You see maps in fantasy but not much else these days.

Shweta · Oct 24, 2006

I've seen pictures of clues and such in YA books, but not in any adult books that I'm thinking of.

Shweta · Oct 24, 2006

TheIT said:
Have you read the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy by Ursula K. LeGuin? She dealt with the same issues pretty gracefully as I recall.

Oh yes, I adore Earthsea.

As I remember, the way she did it was to have a group of Others who were pale-skinned and fair-haired. Sadly, I have a culture that lives in a rainforest. They've never seen anybody who wasn't brown and dark-haired, at least before their hair went grey.

Ahwell.

If it doesn't have something to do with the story, I have difficulty coming up with the words to describe it no matter how alien and nifty it is.

I think if it doesn't have anything to do with the story, it shouldn't be in there. But if the story is partly about the world, then it helps set the scene to describe odd and alien things.

But they don't have to be visual, necessarily. Or not only visual. Like zornhau was (I think) implying, the visuals of objects are linked to their function, and that's a way to bring them in.

RedWombat · Oct 24, 2006

Shweta said:
I keep considering it anyway, just because none of my characters in my WIP are white, but readers tend to assume the ethnicity and I don't want a whole buncha brown people to have to comment on how brown they are. But I think I can find a better way to do that, at least; the rainforest setting oughta be a clue.

Color aside, there are certain deliveries that just plain work better in comic form. You can get away with a lot in comics that would come off as cheesy or abbreviated in book form, for reasons I still don't quite understand, but am increasingly convinced of.

C.bronco · Oct 24, 2006

Gillhoughly said:

:Gillhoughly gets a mental picture of a fantasy world MacGyver hastily browsing a full dinner place setting for the right tool to stave off a troll attack at the castle gate.:

Click to expand...

Gillhoughly said:
"Best use of a fantasy salad fork, ever!"

I'll put that one right up with the time Homer invented a "Snack Vest." My fantasy chair has a refrigerated cup holder and an ottoman that runs to the corner store so that you don't have to miss the race when you run out of anything.

badducky · Oct 24, 2006

I'm still waiting for some genius to invent the stationary bicycle that comes with its own fridge, wifi, ipod, and imac.

Ordinary_Guy · Oct 24, 2006

badducky said:
I'm still waiting for some genius to invent the stationary bicycle that comes with its own fridge, wifi, ipod, and imac.

Wow. Sounds interesting. I'd be surprised if somebody didn't come out with it. They'd call it... the iMunch.

yanallefish · Oct 25, 2006

I'm gonna carve your heart out with a...

Kinda depends on the setting, I'd think. Are you wrapping your food in leaves, eating soup in bread bowls, or packing it in ice? (all of which are done on Earth and so would probably not be too bizarre)

Or... are you on an alien planet using a thoog to spike your meat before you stick it in whatever orifice is required for eating? Or maybe you scoop stuff up with your spensun.

I think the verb is the important part - see above, you can give someone a rough picture of what you - or the alien, or the fairy, or whatever - is doing. Without info-dump issues.

Pthom · Oct 25, 2006

yanallefish said:
Kinda depends on the setting, I'd think. Are you wrapping your food in leaves, eating soup in bread bowls, or packing it in ice? (all of which are done on Earth and so would probably not be too bizarre)

Or... are you on an alien planet using a thoog to spike your meat before you stick it in whatever orifice is required for eating? Or maybe you scoop stuff up with your spensun.

I think the verb is the important part - see above, you can give someone a rough picture of what you - or the alien, or the fairy, or whatever - is doing. Without info-dump issues.

All good points. But you need to be careful even when the verbs are familiar. Too many unfamiliar nouns and the reader starts flipping pages back to see what definitions he missed. Or, as in the case of my novel-in-stasis, beta readers complained at too much unfamiliarity. And that was after I'd fixed what those same beta readers complained was too much info dump.

(sigh)

Guess I'll just have to write on my near future space opera stories where everything is mostly familiar.

Shweta · Oct 25, 2006

Ha, I get people complaining about unfamiliarity just when I use Indian stuff.
You don't have to get that exotic to have that problem

zornhau · Oct 26, 2006

zornhau said:
The snag is, for a full description, you have to have a character who's new to the tech, and cares.

Slayer held up the utensil. "WTF is this?"

Unicorn Girl smiled patronisingly. "Rotate the flanges depending on the foodstuff. The double spike is for nuts. The serrated fork, for cabbage."

"And for meat?"

"Meat? What's that? Why are you screaming?"

What I should have said is that you can evoke the oddness without describing the utensils and furniture in detail.

Shweta · Oct 26, 2006

I think, unless it's a murder mystery that revolves around the shape of the flanges, it's a pretty safe bet that we can evoke oddness without describing them in detail

badducky · Oct 26, 2006

In DEEPNESS IN SKY, Vernor Vinghe played a neat trick. Because he was using human zombie translators he explained that he was going to be using the human equivalent for the spiders.

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