Let's Build a World: Day 28 - What Did We Leave Out?

[ladyseishou]

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men.
Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely.
Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?

- Georg C. Lichtenberg



It's Day 28 for Nano Writers's Let's Build a World. Read over - What Did We Leave Out? - from Stephanie Bryant's 30 Days of Worldbuilding. Notebooks in hand, let's read today's exercise:

In any group of world-building exercises, there's going to be something left out:

Clothing: What passes for fashion in your world?

Food and Kitchens: Is food substantially different? What about food prep and kitchen areas?

Sanitation and hygiene: We don't read speculative fiction to read up on people going to the bathroom, but how clean is your world? What do large concentrations of people do with their waste (biological waste as well as regular ol' trash)? A world's history can change when its sewer needs change: polio wasn't a serious problem until closed sewers meant children weren't exposed to it early enough to ward off the disease. Not to mention hygiene and bathing.

Disease and Treatment, Medicines: Similarly, how does medicine work in your world? What do people do for pain? What do they do about disease? How do people heal? Are there hospitals, healers, infirmaries, medics?

Treatment of the Elderly: A related issue: do your elderly drift away on icebergs? Do they get put into an old folks' home? Do they shift to hyper-productive imaginative lives in a VR world? Are they revered? Reviled?

Law Enforcement and Incarceration: Long-term incarceration is a modern phenomenon, and one that doesn't seem to work very well, given the overpopulation in prisons. What happens to criminals in your world? Fines? Feuds? Eye-for-an-eye mutilation? Microchipping? Do you have prisons?

Pets: Something that many humans believe is a distinction of humanity (KoKo the gorilla being an exception) is the desire to care for a pet. And yet, the definition of "pet" wasn't always the same, and the desirability of certain animals as pets changes when one is or is not able to have them "fixed." Do the people of your world keep pets, and if so, what kinds?

Also from the original post's comments for consideration:

Architecture and city-planning (water, energy, transportation and emergency procedures), and society and moral issues (sexual practices, views on killing).

Spend 15 minutes thinking about two or three of the above "left out topics."

Make a list and note how each might impact your story (plot point, characterization, setting). Share with us in the comments here or at Stephanie Bryant's post any additional topics that we've missed!

I will be adding scientific discoveries and inventions to my list (as the topic is a major plot point for my novel).

Here are some additional links that may help/inspire/amuse:

Traditional Dress of the World - extensive list of links for ethnic dress and textiles, organized by region from The Costumer's Manifesto

Weird Food & Strange Food from Around the World - fun site to browse through for ideas

Sanitation - from Wikipedia, good introduction to the topic. "Night soil," anyone?

Global Disease Alert Map - from HealthMap, scary!

History of Inventions and Discoveries - from HistoryWorld - great overview by time period


So what puts the spin in your world, Nano Writer? There are only two days left! Come back tomorrow for the next installment!