“Likewise, the inner meaning of a romance cannot be flagged up by the author without altering its true nature. It has to remain hidden, woven into the warp and woof of the story so that it comprises not an object for Contemplation but the whole field of vision within which the story is experienced.”
-Michael Ward Planet Narnia
Think back to when I wrote about the Kappa element in my last article. It permeates the entire story without even being noticed. It’s the air which makes up the atmosphere of the story. You see through it without seeing it, and without it you cannot see. (Simply put, the Kappa element is how readers see, taste, and feel your story.)
But you cannot build a world on atmosphere alone. You need something solid to build off of, a vessel for the Kappa element to fill. This Lewis called the Model, or backcloth. This is your story world.
“In every period the Model of the Universe which is accepted by the great thinkers helps to provide what we may call a backcloth for the arts.”
-C.S. Lewis The Discarded Image
In the Discarded Image, Lewis’ focus is on the Medieval Model of the universe, which influences almost every written work from the beginning of the middle ages, to the 1700s. The reason this model of the universe was so widely adored (though factually untrue as was later discovered), was due to the emotional and aesthetic appeal of the Model, as Lewis explains,
“But this backcloth is highly selective. It takes over from the total Model only what is intelligible to a layman and only what makes some appeal to the imagination and emotion.”
-C.S. Lewis The Discarded Image
Though the stargazing mythos of the Medieval Universe was generally useless as a scientific tool, it served incredibly well as a poetic and storytelling device. Thus it was widely employed by great poets like Dante, Chaucer, and Milton who understood the Model and could allude to it with great effect.
(To learn more about the Medieval Model of the Universe, visit Michael Ward’s website here )
The spice of all enticing fiction is not simply mystery but phenomenon. The difference is, phenomenon is not another mystery to be solved, but is a mystery with a purpose. A phenomenon in storytelling can be explained simply as something commonplace to the reader, though odd enough to capture their attention.
Old fairytales did an amazing job at this with their nursery dreams of ‘magic’. You really can’t write good fantasy without magic, and magic (by definition) is a phenomenon. A mystery with a purpose. (i.e., The stable boy who finds the spell book doesn’t have to be a certified magician to speak a spell.)
The reason behind using ‘phenomenon’ as opposed to mere mystery is to build onto the Model. You want your Model to be like a medieval tapestry, full of complexity and order which seems chaotic at a distance. By doing this you’re actually making your world more believable and thus, more enjoyable to the reader.
There will always be unanswerable mysteries; though not all mysteries are useless. (Gravity is a popular example of a mystery which, though we aren’t sure why it happens, we have always put to good use. What we would call a ‘phenomenon’.) To a writer of healthy fantasy, life is full of phenomenon, as Michael Ward points out…
“The invented world of romance is conceived with this kind of qualitative richness because romancers feel the real world itself to be cryptic, significant, full of voices and ‘the mystery of life’.”
-Michael Ward Planet Narnia
Or, more precisely, ‘the phenomenon of life’. A good story itself should be like a phenomenon. Enough like reality to seem familiar, but odd enough to entice the reader’s imagination. Logical enough to wrap our minds half-way around, but irrational enough to leave us wondering. In a sense, your writing should have an almost religious air. Religious in the sense that it appears commonplace like bread, wine, books, and wood planks. Alone they mean nothing, but in proper context they become flesh, blood, the Word of God, and the cross of Christ.
Intricacy and Aesthetics
Intricacy itself does not make a world believable, the same way aesthetics like dragons and knights don’t make a story Medieval. Both aesthetics and intricacy engage the imagination, but they can also stifle the imagination without proper moderation. The Medieval Model of the Universe, as an ongoing example, was not a chaotic jumble of phenomenon, but was intricately ordered to accommodate each useful mystery with the next. As a literary device, this was indispensable,
“The human imagination has seldom had before it an object so sublimely ordered as the Medieval cosmos.”
-C.S. Lewis The Discarded Image (The Heavens)
As a world-building writer, you cannot possibly develop a Model more intricately elaborate and complimentary than the Medieval Model. This is why I have subscribed to the maxim, ‘if you can’t beat’em, join’em’. I’m currently writing a southern-gothic, fantasy anthology which follows much of the order of the Medieval Model (at least as well as I understand it). For all intents and purposes, it is a medieval story, without the medieval aesthetic.
For me this means, writing a world which, at first seems commonplace, but on closer inspection becomes magical. It takes place in a rural, turn-of-the-century, southern-American town; think Tom Sawyer or To Kill a Mockingbird. (A little Poe and a little Steinbeck thrown in there.)
It seems bleak and meaningless at first, but as you keep reading, you begin to wonder if there is more to this world than meets the eye. There’s the constant suggestion of stars affecting events on the earth, spirits interfering with human activity, and most of all, the unmistakable flavor of ‘magic’ in the atmosphere.
Everything begins to feel alive with a dense significance, like a medieval story would. There is none of the bleak despair of the moderns about existential angst and meaninglessness. Everything is pregnant with meaning and full of life. But this vivacity in the storytelling landscape does not make the story unrealistically cheerful. In fact it breads new meaning to the idea of sorrow, as I am about to explain.
Balance and Sorrow in the Storytelling Model
Like in nature, proper perspective is maintained by balance. (Ordered chaos in a sense.) A good storyteller understands this, and builds his/her world with just the right balance of madness and sanity. No one could write a story entirely about chaos, (it would be unintelligible); and no one could write a story about complete order, (for the same reason). Either the story would be about reviving order or about chaos disturbing order.
It’s common storytelling understanding that conflict is at the heart of a plot, but conflict isn’t the story itself. It’s the balance of conflict and order which gives the world tension and makes the hero stand out. Conflict is found in fine shades which give definition to the storytelling Model.
“As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows.”
-George Macdonald Phantastes
The atmosphere of your story world should imply a faint discord, (not of a threat alone) but of sadness. I’m sure you’ve noticed it in your favorite stories. An air of desperate sorrow which stirs the otherwise sunny weather of the story-mood. I would argue the theme of loss is at the root of this. (Life itself, apart from being a phenomenon, has a sorrowful story-like flavor in our human vacuity. The loss of our perfection at the fall)
But I digress. Think about the root of sorrow in story like this: for there to be a world worth talking about, there has to be a story inside that world. For there to be a story in that world, there needs to be conflict. For there to be conflict, there must be loss, and where there is loss there is sadness. Not to say every good story is sad, but within every good story is a thread of sorrow, like in beautiful music.
The point of all this is to say, an intricate Model makes for a beautiful story; and intricacy is not a mess of parts, but cooperative mechanisms. The most satisfying part of making a balanced storytelling Model, is how it almost runs on its own power. It allows you, the writer, to follow the story as if you were uncovering it. It enables the Kappa element to permeate the whole world until you’re lost in it, which is exactly what a good story should do.
The idea of a storytelling Model is not meant to be restrictive, but on the contrary is meant to give you more freedom as a storyteller. A Model well developed can immerse readers into a world completely foreign to them, though making them feel right at home. The best ‘realistic fiction’ holds us on the surface of the world. We relate, though in the most mundane and insipid ways to a materially ‘realistic’ world. The beauty of a Modeled, fantasy world is its delightful un-realism, which is, oddly enough, the part which makes the story real to us.
