◉ Novel Study
A crucial skill that fantasy and sci-fi writers must master is how to deliver setting details in a way that feels seamless and natural rather than like an info dump. In this post, I’m going to break down the second chapter of Rebecca Roanhorse’s epic fantasy novel Black Sun to show you exactly how she does it. Note that all writers can use these tips for how to seamlessly deliver the setting details that will make their fictional worlds come to life.
As discussed in my post on the opening, the first chapter of the novel sets up a crucial piece of plot backstory but delivers only a few details about the story world. In chapter two, we jump forward in time ten years, and the true action of the novel starts. This is also the chapter where Roanhorse does the most intensive work to establish the rules and conventions of her story world.
In this post, I’m going to list every piece of information we glean about the world of the novel, almost as if I were writing an encyclopedia entry about the society she depicts, then I’ll show you how she delivers each piece as part of a scene that keeps us wanting to read further.
The continent of Meridian is a crescent-shaped landmass curving around the Crescent Sea. Its three main cities are Hokaia, its military center; Tova, the religious center; and Cuecola, the commercial capital.
Cuecola is a walled city, with both narrow streets and wide avenues. Housing ranges from modest thatch-roofed homes to multistory stone mansions. Ceremonial and communal spaces include pyramids, tombs, market squares, and a royal ball court.
Cuecola is home to a class-based society stratified by both wealth and power. Ranks include slaves, servants, the poor, the common citizens, the merchant lords, the nobility, the House of Seven, and royalty. In principle, the same laws apply to all classes, but the upper classes use power and bribery to get their way.
Kuharan is a small farming community outside Cuecola, governed by the same laws and customs as the city but with more conservative leanings.
Cuecola has a tropical climate. Flora and fauna include papayas, palm, cactus (fermented for beer), corn, anise, chachalaca birds, and jaguars.
Cuecola is a conservative society, by twenty-first-century Western standards: Skirts are more socially acceptable than trousers for women, and homosexuality is a capital offense.
Meridian is a maritime society, with different cities and regions connected by ships sailing the Crescent Sea, though traffic comes to a standstill in the late fall and winter due to fierce storms. The journey by ship from Cuecola to Tova commonly takes thirty days. The captain of a fast ship can earn enough in twelve years to be able to retire.
This is a pre-industrial society: There is no mention of factories, electricity, guns, or engines. Clothing is sewn to order by hand.
Typical dress in Cuecola for common women includes a skirt and a huipil (a garment commonly worn in Mexico and Central America). Sashes are worn to mark rank or occupation. Noblemen wear their hair long, tied back in a high bun, and it is common for them to wear a lot of jewelry. A loincloth and cape is a typical nobleman’s dress.
Jaguars are important animals in Cuecola. The city’s pyramids are decorated with jaguar-headed stele, and a nobleman can bear the title of “White Jaguar.”
The Teek are a people from another land. Their eyes are bright blue, gray, or, in rare cases, a shifting kaleidoscope of jewel colors.
There is at least one form of magic in this world, a “Song” wielded by the Teeks and used to control others as well as some aspects of the natural world. Non-Teeks are afraid of their magic.
Body parts are commonly sold or stolen in Meridian. In particular, Teek bones are considered good luck charms and multi-colored Teek eyes are sometimes collected and worn as jewelry.
Tova is built atop a high cliff and is away from the Crescent Sea, though it is linked to the sea by the river Tovasheh. It is the home of the Sun Priest and the Watchers, who keep the calendar.
A lot of information, right? There are some interesting details here, but it’s all pretty dry. What’s missing is a reason for us to care, and that’s what Roanhorse provides in her story. Let’s walk through the chapter in order now, and I’ll show you how Roanhorse weaves in all of the details above.
We start with a zoomed-out view of the city of Cuecola and its surrounding villages. It’s dawn, and fruit sellers are walking “through the narrow streets and wide avenues alike, past the modest oval-shaped, thatch-roofed homes of the common citizens and up through the more lavish multistoried stone mansions of the merchant lords,” calling out their wares. All of the details in item 2 are covered but are anchored in a specific place and time: dawn in Cuecola. We know we are about to be in a scene and, by the end of the paragraph, we meet our point-of-view character for this chapter, Xiala.
Once we do, the reader is focused on Xiala’s predicament. She wakes to find herself in jail—and not for the first time. This time, however, it appears she has done something serious enough that she is in real trouble. After that first big chunk of information in the opening paragraph, the world-building details come in small snippets over the next few pages and emerge naturally from context.
For example, we get a sense for the climate and the flora and fauna (item 5) as Xiala wakes up and processes what she can hear (“the rustle of the wind through the palms and the familiar cries of chachalacas waking in their nests”) and smell (“freshly pulped papaya” and the reek of “body odor and fermented cactus beer”). We learn about typical Cuecolan dress for women (items 6 and 9) by seeing what Xiala is wearing as she scans herself for something she can use to make noise to alert the guard to let her out.
A short dialogue exchange with the guard reveals a bit of the social order (item 3) as Xiala demands to be let out, saying she has a ship waiting for her, and the guard mocks her: “Oh, a ship? You a sailor, then? No, no, a captain? Wait, a merchant lord himself! One of the House of Seven.” This progression in ranks makes it clear that the House of Seven is some kind of mark of power and prestige.
The next shift in the scene is when the tupile, the prison constable, shows up with a man dressed as a nobleman (item 9), his long hair in a “high bun” and jewelry on his neck, ears, and wrists. Note that Roanhorse is leaning on familiar structures and words, like “merchant lords.” Aside from the proper nouns for characters and places, “House of Seven” and “tupile” are the only unfamiliar terms we’ve encountered thus far. Other terms, like “cantina” and “huipil,” are drawn from Spanish and so will be familiar to some readers. They also do the double duty of telling us (along with details like the climate and the flora and fauna) what kind of culture this one is analogous to. We know more than we realize and can make reasonable assumptions about how this society might work.
The interplay between the tupile, the nobleman, and Xiala confirms what we already suspect. The tupile asserts that this is a culture in which everyone—aristocrat or slave—must obey the laws (item 3). But Xiala knows that he is swayed by the power of Lord Balam, the nobleman, who adds a bribe to his persuasion.
Roanhorse pulls us through the scene with story questions: Why is Xiala imprisoned? And then why does Lord Balam intervene to have her released? The conversation between the two characters as they walk back to the center of Cuecola after her release provide the answers, and those answers reveal more about the world. Xiala got drunk after some kind of confrontation with a merchant lord who double-crossed her. A beautiful woman in the cantina took her home to Kuharan, the small town where she was imprisoned, but their sexual encounter is interrupted by the arrival of the woman’s husband, who has Xiala arrested after she punches him (items 4 and 6).
Xiala at first wonders if this nobleman—who introduces himself as “Lord Balam of the House of Seven, Merchant Lord of Cuecola, Patron of the Crescent Sea, White Jaguar by Birthright” (item 10)—is after one of her bones (item 13) or eyes, which have the rare Teek coloration (item 11). She’s prepared to use her Song magic in self-defense if she has to (item 12).
It turns out, however, he has a quest he wants her to undertake. He offers to make her captain of a ship for a term of twelve years, paying her a salary and percentage of trading profits, if she will transport an Obregi man to the city of Tova in twenty days or less. On the one hand, Xiala reflects that this deal would allow her to retire at the end of the term. On the other hand, it is a long journey, typically requiring thirty days, and the Crescent Sea is stormy at this time of year (items 7, 14, and 1). Roanhorse relies on readers’ excitement at recognizing a familiar fantasy trope and the suspense around whether or not Xiala will say yes to give her the space to also illuminate us about the geography and other details of this world.
Takeaways
Spend time building out the principles and details and structures of your story setting, then look for opportunities in each scene to reveal those details.
Give readers information as they need it to form opinions about a choice facing the character or to make sense of what is happening in that moment rather than giving them information they don’t need to know until much later in the novel.
Balance new information and concepts with familiar activities and relationships that operate similarly in your fantasy world and our world.
If you can’t find the right moment for a specific detail, ask yourself whether it’s something readers need to know. Perhaps it’s just something that you as the writer needed to know in order to write the scene.
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Keep exploring
This is one novel’s breakdown from Novel Study — my series reverse-engineering how bestselling books actually work, opening to ending. The full method, with all the charts, is collected in the books.
This post is collected in Novel Study, Book 1 of the series.
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