(Let me preface all of this by saying 1. I typed this yesterday, while my internet was melting, so couldn't post it until now, and 2. I’m talking about words and concepts as I remember them from childhood. I won’t claim any of these meanings are 100% accurate now.)
I moved to Hawaii when I was six, because my dad was in the military and after he retired, my mother wanted to stay here. In elementary school, we had a kupuna (the simplest definition is teacher, although my understanding was that it tended to be an older person, like a grandparent teaching a younger person, in a vaguely master/apprentice relationship) come every other week, or every month. She taught us about the colors, numbers, and various other vocabulary words in Hawaiian, as well as traditions in Hawaii. I remember the tune and some of the words to a song for the colors (ula ula, melemele, poni, polu, ele ele, -something- eo eo [?],…). Granted, I missing some colors in there. In order, those are red, yellow, blue and purple (don’t recall which of these two is which) and black. It’s been years since I remembered what orange, green and brown are in Hawaiian, although I’m fairly certain I have some notes from around that time somewhere.
I also remember a visit from the kupuna when we made poi, a paste made from the taro plant. I have never cared for taro.
Jumping to freshman year of high school, I learned more about how Hawaii, or rather the southernmost 8 of the 108 Hawaiian islands, became a state. I can still picture the text box on the bottom half of a page with the title, “Bayonet Resolution.” Looking back now, I wish we’d been required more than just one semester of Hawaiian history out of four years of required social studies. Even after studying it over the years, I still can’t recall all of the facts. I remember names, I studied similar issues of assimilation, hegemony, and agency, but the one thing I know is that many Native Hawaiians didn’t want to be a state. For a time, the Hawaiian language was illegal—it wasn’t taught in schools, and I believe a child could get in trouble if a teacher heard them speaking it. The bayonet resolution refers to Prince Kuhio, if memory serves me correctly [and I don’t have time right now to double-check, ech] and the story goes that he was held at bayonet point to sign over the annexation decree. Despite the royalty of Hawaii making diplomatic trips, the islands were annexed as a strategic point in the Pacific (for a number of countries, but the U.S. moved first), Queen Lili’uokalani was overthrown, the monarchy ended and fifty years ago today, August 21, 2009, Hawaii became the 50th state of the U.S.A.
Around 3 [yesterday] this afternoon, there was a news brief on KGMB where the reporter mentioned some people called today Steal-hood Day, rather than Statehood. There are many Hawaiians today who are angry at the US government, feeling they should be granted sovereignty, and lands should be returned to Native Hawaiians.
As someone who has lived here most of her life, but has not a drop of Hawaiian blood, I have been annoyed by the number of commercials touting Hawaii’s statehood. They’ve been on television for months. In many ways, I feel that the government’s action in 1893 and 1959 were wrong. But at the same time, I don’t want to be forced out of the place I call home (even if summers have always been a killer for me), and I’d like to think myself as a local.
I suppose that I’m just trying to express how today, especially prompted by that news brief, I am jolted back into awareness of issues that some people around me deal with every day.
As a writer, I think it’s important in world-building, especially when a world/kingdom/country is populated by more than one people, to examine who invaded whom, or how one tribe/culture might have overpowered another. Was there a culture even earlier than the ones present in your story, and if so, what happened to them? (There are plenty of creation myths in Hawaiian culture, but the general consensus is that Polynesians came from other Pacific islands a millennium or more ago. I don’t recall much about possible cultures before that point.) Do the multiple cultures get along, seem to get along, or actively and pervasively loathe one another? It might be details that never make their way into the story, but they should be details the writer knows.
In the meantime, I’m going to brush up on my Hawaiian history and culture.
Happy writing,
Sabrina
Showing posts with label world-building. Show all posts
Showing posts with label world-building. Show all posts
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Elen Sila Lumenn Omentielvo
That apparently means "A star shines on the hour of our meeting," in Tolkien elvish, according to Elijah Wood from an article back around 2001. Nice, huh? I found when going through old newspapers looking for interesting stuff. (note: I don't really feel like hunting for a way to include the proper double-dot thing over the u in Lumenn, or the ~ on the second n in Lumenn, you'll just have to trust me.)
Anyway, that got me to thinking about languages in fantasy, and world-building in general.
When I was in college, all those months ago! I had to research some stuff for my honors thesis. I was an English and Psychology double major, and had opted to overhaul and finish a fantasy story I began back in high school with a friend of mine. Since it was a creative piece it needed an introduction/afterword that analyzed the novel. It also required a bibliography. So I went to my campus library, and fell in love, because it had five floors and rows upon rows of books.
In my searches, I found a book about Tolkien's elvish. My momeory of this book is that it was not just a dictionary, but included stuff about grammar, that it was very thorough in analyzing this language J.R.R. Tolkien had created for Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Seeing the article yesterday also reminded me of interviews with other cast members about learning the elvish.
And all of that culminated in my thinking about the time and energy that must have gone into creating a language, as well as a culture and a world. Tolkien didn't just make up words, he developed a language with grammar and all that good stuff.
That make me think of an interview/Q-and-A with Kate Elliott, whose last installment of the Crown of Stars series just came out in paperback. In that Q-and-A she talked about forming the world (although the Q-and-A may have been about her Jaran series).
Examples like theses always leave an impression on me. Particularly in these genres where the writer creates a world or significantly alters the world we live in, part of helping the reader suspend their disbelief can come throuhg creating a realistic world. Sure dragons may abound and you can walk into a tavern to be confronted by elves, orcs or trolls, but if the world and the culture is well-formed in the writer's own mind, these strange situations will seem commonplace to the reader. It will seem as if these situations ciould easily occur in that world.
And all the details floating around in the writer's head, or hastily scribbled on post-its or in journals, may not make it into a finished novel, but it seems to me that as long as the writer knows it, that sense of wholeness will come through in the writing.
Think about the time of year the story takes place, how long it take to travel by foot or by horse from one destination to another, what's the weather like, what about seasons, how does the terrain affect planting, or is it only good for planting, what's the best set-up for a castle to provide the best defense where it's situated, etc.?
I think for me, that's what I want most when starting something new. I don't need to know the four major scenes of the book, or what chapter the protagonist has their call to action, or when and where the climactic scene occurs. I just want to know a general sense of the overarcing plot, and then what this world looks like and what these people want. Because motivation is another aspect of making the world realistic: knowing your characters as well as you know the set-up of the world. I took some notes this morning about my second book. Since the first in that series is done (at least, the first draft is done, it still needs major revising), the second doesn't require so much in the way of world-builidng, although I fully intend to include tasty morsels of other interesting places unseen in the first book that will add to the flavor of this world. But I need to look at every character and see what drives them. The notes I took were a first step to working out the "villain's" POV. I'm thinking that's a good way to look at a story.
I found with the honors thesis story, that it was two-thirds of the way through the first draft that I could explain fully why the villains were acting the way they acted. Their motivation for who and why they attacked. Even if some of the details didn't make it into the text (yes, that needs revision too), I had a sense of it and I hope the completeness of it came through.
With book B, the first story in this series, I got questions of 'why do they need so and so, what does person X want, what is his motivation for helping?' And although I knew the motivation was there, being able to utter it sensibly helped. It made the people and the world more real.
So, world-building: you gotta love it.
That said, here are some fun results from a quiz. The first is what came up and the second was what I was if I wasn't the first. I think I fit in both to some extent.
Anyway, that got me to thinking about languages in fantasy, and world-building in general.
When I was in college, all those months ago! I had to research some stuff for my honors thesis. I was an English and Psychology double major, and had opted to overhaul and finish a fantasy story I began back in high school with a friend of mine. Since it was a creative piece it needed an introduction/afterword that analyzed the novel. It also required a bibliography. So I went to my campus library, and fell in love, because it had five floors and rows upon rows of books.
In my searches, I found a book about Tolkien's elvish. My momeory of this book is that it was not just a dictionary, but included stuff about grammar, that it was very thorough in analyzing this language J.R.R. Tolkien had created for Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Seeing the article yesterday also reminded me of interviews with other cast members about learning the elvish.
And all of that culminated in my thinking about the time and energy that must have gone into creating a language, as well as a culture and a world. Tolkien didn't just make up words, he developed a language with grammar and all that good stuff.
That make me think of an interview/Q-and-A with Kate Elliott, whose last installment of the Crown of Stars series just came out in paperback. In that Q-and-A she talked about forming the world (although the Q-and-A may have been about her Jaran series).
Examples like theses always leave an impression on me. Particularly in these genres where the writer creates a world or significantly alters the world we live in, part of helping the reader suspend their disbelief can come throuhg creating a realistic world. Sure dragons may abound and you can walk into a tavern to be confronted by elves, orcs or trolls, but if the world and the culture is well-formed in the writer's own mind, these strange situations will seem commonplace to the reader. It will seem as if these situations ciould easily occur in that world.
And all the details floating around in the writer's head, or hastily scribbled on post-its or in journals, may not make it into a finished novel, but it seems to me that as long as the writer knows it, that sense of wholeness will come through in the writing.
Think about the time of year the story takes place, how long it take to travel by foot or by horse from one destination to another, what's the weather like, what about seasons, how does the terrain affect planting, or is it only good for planting, what's the best set-up for a castle to provide the best defense where it's situated, etc.?
I think for me, that's what I want most when starting something new. I don't need to know the four major scenes of the book, or what chapter the protagonist has their call to action, or when and where the climactic scene occurs. I just want to know a general sense of the overarcing plot, and then what this world looks like and what these people want. Because motivation is another aspect of making the world realistic: knowing your characters as well as you know the set-up of the world. I took some notes this morning about my second book. Since the first in that series is done (at least, the first draft is done, it still needs major revising), the second doesn't require so much in the way of world-builidng, although I fully intend to include tasty morsels of other interesting places unseen in the first book that will add to the flavor of this world. But I need to look at every character and see what drives them. The notes I took were a first step to working out the "villain's" POV. I'm thinking that's a good way to look at a story.
I found with the honors thesis story, that it was two-thirds of the way through the first draft that I could explain fully why the villains were acting the way they acted. Their motivation for who and why they attacked. Even if some of the details didn't make it into the text (yes, that needs revision too), I had a sense of it and I hope the completeness of it came through.
With book B, the first story in this series, I got questions of 'why do they need so and so, what does person X want, what is his motivation for helping?' And although I knew the motivation was there, being able to utter it sensibly helped. It made the people and the world more real.
So, world-building: you gotta love it.
That said, here are some fun results from a quiz. The first is what came up and the second was what I was if I wasn't the first. I think I fit in both to some extent.
|
|
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)