World Economics

I'm going to go slightly astray from my normal posts for a moment. Last week was the economics of specific characters. Now I'm expanding to economics of entire worlds.

It seems obvious at first - the economics of the world is based on money. After all, that's what we all have in our pockets/purses/bank accounts. We don't store leaves or cherry pits or shells.

But what does that money buy? What's important in your character's world? Not just the obvious desires the characters have, but the subtle things. Do your people ever buy food? Clothing? Is everything provided in the story, done in the background, or do economics matter? What's bartered for? What's traded back and forth?

Without the economics, there is no story. There are always things of value in the story, be them visible or not. Why are they there? What are they for? What does it mean to have them, or to not have them? What are they truly worth?

Writing prompt: Write a quick scene where your characters are dealing with an object of value. What will they give to get it? Why?

Character Economics

So - you've got a character. What are his motivations? WHY is he doing whatever great things that create a story around him?

In other words, what are this characters economics? What currency really matters to this person? (If your first answer is money, think a little longer - is it really money, or is it what the character can do with the money? That's two different issues). And if you're writing in something other than this world, you may even need to figure out the society's economics. What matters to them? What's their currency?

Writing prompt: Take a character sketch, and figure out this person's currency. If the person wants love, what does that do to the story? What if it's honor? Or sex instead of love? Write a scene where the characters currency shows.

Animal Metaphors

It's a long-standing tradition in fiction to use animal metaphors, both to describe a character and to describe actions of a character.

What does it really mean to say someone's piggy? What if they're cat-footed? Sometimes people even go to the extreme and go all the way to having animals as characters - usually as children's stories, or it gets viewed as a children's story even if it isn't mean to be one (Watership Down?).

Writing prompt: Take one of your character sketches, and think of animal metaphors for that person. Add some. Do they change the view of the character? The story?

Adding to Quirkiness

So you've got a pile of quirks. Well, what do they mean? Who cares?

Think about portraying your character. How are you seeing this done? In film? On paper? In a game? How you're handling your character makes a difference here.

I'm going to use the example of someone that fidgets. If you're doing this on paper, you need to refer to the fidgeting - but you need to do it in a way that doesn't make the reader scream "I know already!" That can be tricky. If you're doing it on film, the person needs to fidget, but not to the point that they're relabeled "the fidgeter" regardless of their character's name. Etc.

Writing prompt: try to write a scene in which the person's quirk is visible but not obnoxious.