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bloodyrosemccoyHey guys! Got a worldbuilding question for you.
So while the Obligatory Giant Young Adult Fantasy Epic languishes in despair of finding an agent, it's mostly ready to be looked at--probably it could use an editor to point out things I've missed, but I've got it pretty polished. But I can't resist making a few tweaks while I wait, and there's one tweak that isn't so important for the actual book, but for the world.
The OGYAFE is portal fiction because, hey, I like portal fiction, but I'm trying to make OGYAFEland as independent as possible anyway. I want there to be a balance between their world and ours--some things are better there, others here. This extends to people, cultures, technology, and ecology and geography and so forth.
But one thing that's pretty darn fun about OGYAFEland is the dragons.
I really like the idea of dragons as a biological clade--not just a species. Not even a few varieties of intelligent creatures, like in the Dragonology books or similar pretend field guides. I'm thinking of them as but a whole dang taxonomic group distinct from reptiles, birds, and mammals--and with as much diversity, because dragons have been speciating just like all the other animals have. In OGYAFEland, dragons (with the exception of one notable species) are as commonplace, and as varied, as birds.
Which got me wondering.
Should OGYAFEland even HAVE birds?
I admit to going back and forth on this. It wouldn't take much to change it around in the story--a couple of place names would have to be changed, and one character's feathers (don't ask) would have to be specified to look like "dragonfeathers" (a modified scale that many dragon species have evolved--which is more or less how feathers work anyway), but that shouldn't be hard. And I like that our world would then have a biological clade completely foreign to OGYAFEland. Plus, while I'm not going for a one-to-one correlation between bird and dragon species, it's really fun to have them fill similar ecological niches that have the displaced characters from our world trying to make analogies and referring to "chickendragons" and "hawkdragons" and "hummingdragons" and "penguindragons."
But ... to be honest, I'd sort of miss birds.
I guess the whole idea is to have something be better in our world. But I wanted some other input. What do you guys think?
So while the Obligatory Giant Young Adult Fantasy Epic languishes in despair of finding an agent, it's mostly ready to be looked at--probably it could use an editor to point out things I've missed, but I've got it pretty polished. But I can't resist making a few tweaks while I wait, and there's one tweak that isn't so important for the actual book, but for the world.
The OGYAFE is portal fiction because, hey, I like portal fiction, but I'm trying to make OGYAFEland as independent as possible anyway. I want there to be a balance between their world and ours--some things are better there, others here. This extends to people, cultures, technology, and ecology and geography and so forth.
But one thing that's pretty darn fun about OGYAFEland is the dragons.
I really like the idea of dragons as a biological clade--not just a species. Not even a few varieties of intelligent creatures, like in the Dragonology books or similar pretend field guides. I'm thinking of them as but a whole dang taxonomic group distinct from reptiles, birds, and mammals--and with as much diversity, because dragons have been speciating just like all the other animals have. In OGYAFEland, dragons (with the exception of one notable species) are as commonplace, and as varied, as birds.
Which got me wondering.
Should OGYAFEland even HAVE birds?
I admit to going back and forth on this. It wouldn't take much to change it around in the story--a couple of place names would have to be changed, and one character's feathers (don't ask) would have to be specified to look like "dragonfeathers" (a modified scale that many dragon species have evolved--which is more or less how feathers work anyway), but that shouldn't be hard. And I like that our world would then have a biological clade completely foreign to OGYAFEland. Plus, while I'm not going for a one-to-one correlation between bird and dragon species, it's really fun to have them fill similar ecological niches that have the displaced characters from our world trying to make analogies and referring to "chickendragons" and "hawkdragons" and "hummingdragons" and "penguindragons."
But ... to be honest, I'd sort of miss birds.
I guess the whole idea is to have something be better in our world. But I wanted some other input. What do you guys think?
no subject
Date: 2014-06-21 01:34 pm (UTC)(Also, have you read A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan? It features an alternate world where there are many types of dragon. The main character is biased towards charismatic megafauna, but she mentions small garden creatures like 'sparklings'.)
no subject
Date: 2014-06-21 09:57 pm (UTC)I have not read it! Another author who had my idea before I did? I usually wind up liking those, after I've sworn a couple of times.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-21 10:41 pm (UTC)A Natural History of Dragons also has birds. I'm pretty sure most of the major Old World taxa are still present; dragons just supplant some of them in some niches.
(Sorry for derailing your post with a book review.)
* All the more because the protagonist is a noblewoman trying to make a calling as a naturalist in a sexist society, so the author has to pay attention to science because the protagonist is noticing things like anatomy and speculating about life-cycles. The protagonist's world doesn't quite have a Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection yet, but it's definitely a world where that sort of thing works. (Who knows, maybe that's what the protagonist is going to do in later books.)
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Date: 2014-06-22 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-22 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-22 05:23 am (UTC)