Get Weird With Your Aesthetic (And Watch Your World Grow in Style and Uniqueness)

Before we get started, I wanted to let everyone know that this pandemic has been keeping me in the kitchen almost as much as it has at my work desk. I'm contemplating sharing some of my experiences/discoveries, if folks would like to see them. The first in the potential series is Creamy Yogurt Jello: An Ideal Dessert For Those Looking To Lose Weight.

Anyway, onto this week's topic!

How Weird is Your World?

Something I've realized the older I've gotten is that so many settings in sci-fi and fantasy feel like they're conforming to an invisible style guide. It is, quite honestly, one reason I stopped reading high fantasy almost entirely. There are only so many times I can pick up a book where the elves are patient and aloof, the dwarves are heavy-bearded Scotsmen, and everything is set in the same two miles of British countryside that Tolkien staked out so many decades ago. Mainstream science fiction fared better for me as a reader, but the trend still seemed to be to keep everything utilitarian and useful, which lent an air of accuracy to the space age, but which also tended to make everything look and feel... bland.

This might just be me getting old and griping, but I remember when I was first coming into genre fantasy as an eager consumer of stories everything was vibrant. Characters and settings were colorful, bizarre, and at times completely wild, and the sheer, full-throttled nonsense grabbed you by the hair and forced you to pay attention.

And now I'm going to talk about a kids' cartoon.

If you're not familiar with Thundercats as a property, let me sum it up for you. A spaceship full of alien cat people crashland on what is likely a far future, post-apocalyptic Earth, and try to make a new home. They transform their ship into a huge tower which is guarded by space-age weaponry. Their leader carries a magic sword and claw shield, and is counseled by the ghost of their dead patriarch. Their initial enemies are mutants from outer space, who fall under the influence of an undead mummified sorcerer who serves the ancient spirits of evil.

For those of you concerned I was ingesting illicit substances before I wrote that paragraph, I can assure you it is exactly as bat shit as it sounds. And this show was primarily written for children to sell action figures. Despite the occasionally cheesy dialogue, lessons about friendship, and the annoying nursemaid known as Snarf, the aesthetics (and occasionally grim undertones) of the show are absolutely fascinating from a world building perspective.

And it is far from the only example I can call to mind.

Strange Structures Built From Bizarre Blocks

In case you were wondering, Thundercats was not an exception by any stretch of the imagination when it came to unreal settings. Eternia, as a setting, is full of wizardry, laser rifles, beast men, ridable dinosaurs, villains with skulls for faces, and more! Dollar Store paperbacks with trashy sci-fi from the 70s gave us genetically-engineered super soldiers bodyguarding adventuring princesses while they tried to survive war zones on distant moons. The whole concept behind the Herculoids was a barbarian family and their bizarre pets fighting everything from mad scientists, to mutants, to invading robots.

Another example is the grim darkness of the far future, represented by the sprawling Warhammer 40,000 setting. It is filled with every kind of sci-fi and fantasy you could think to tell. It's got robot uprisings, techno-knights, alien empires, psychic wizards, war worlds, mech pilots, living machines from ancient days, giant space bugs, and the list goes on and on.

It only gets weirder the deeper you dig.

In fairness, there is more to the settings and stories I'm describing here than just their wacky worlds and unconventional aesthetics... but those are often the things that immediately arrest a viewer's attention long enough to get them to read the first few pages.

Because, to paraphrase what I once said to a client, "If your world has cyborg sky vikings dog fighting with frost dragons, that should be splashed across the cover instead of buried somewhere around page 298!"

Be Bold, Be Strange, Be Different

All of us reach back to the stories we read when we were younger when we first start writing. We paint in the patterns and colors we're familiar with as we learn the craft and figure out what makes our stories work (or not). But when it comes time to step out of the shadow, don't feel that you need to conform to the limits held by those who came before.

Tradition is just another word from the peer pressure of dead people. And while a lot of our favorite authors may still be among the living, don't let their works take the wheel out of your hands. It's your book, and you should feel to get as weird, wild, and strange with it as you want to!

Even better, if you find yourself asking, "But why would they do that?" then you can get some absolutely wild results that might end up being some of your favorite parts of your setting!

Why does the cowboy have a laser revolver? Perhaps the lens assemblies have a cool down time, so to provide multiple shots (and space out wear and tear) there are six of them in a weapon! Why is the sword the sidearm of choice for Korathan space pirates? Well, when you're taking a merchant ship that isn't built for battle, the last thing you want to do is blast a hole in the side of it and lose your precious cargo, so you've got to do things the old-fashioned way. If you think hard enough about it, you might be surprised at the answers you find.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my short story collection The Rejects!

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