Creature Building 101:
Part 1
by
Marilyn Glazar
©2004,
Marilyn Glazar
In fantasy and science fiction novels authors
are often called upon to come up with creatures that have never before seen the
light of day. Sometimes these creations are aliens or monsters, and sometimes
they are mythological creatures such as unicorns or vampires. If such a
creature spends very much time at all under the scrutiny of the reader it's
important that it live and breathe in the reader's mind.
Fortunately, there are a few tricks that can
help lend verisimilitude to made-up and imaginary beings. The first and
foremost of these is to pay close attention to the rules that creatures on this
planet follow. It's perfectly fine to break these rules, just as it's all right
to break some grammatical rules occasionally, but it helps to know what rules
you are breaking and why. In fact, taking one or two rules and breaking them on
purpose can make for an interesting creature.
Holly Lisle pointed out in her article on
character creation (see link below) that it can be helpful to create a
character's personality and background before worrying about what that person
looks like. This technique seems to work better for some writers than others.
You may already have an idea of the appearance of your creature. If so, keep it
in mind but set it aside while we consider a few other factors.
In staying alive, a species (type of creature)
has to have strategies for coping with its surroundings. These strategies can
be divided into three categories that we'll call Survival, Sustenance, and
Reproduction and the three are interlinked. A species will not survive without
sustenance and if it doesn't survive it doesn't get the chance to reproduce. We
will deal with these categories extensively one at a time and then consider the
appearance of newly created creatures. In this issue we will look at survival.
Survival is the means a creature uses to avoid death. Every environment on this
planet is rife with danger. Animals have to keep warm but not too warm, they
have to get plenty of oxygen, they have to safely get rid of and avoid toxic
substances, and they have to evade becoming the main course in another
creature's meal. These dangers are inherent to the environment that an animal
lives in. Arctic creatures have a different set of problems than tropical and
desert creatures. It stands to reason that the problems faced by magical
creatures and alien creatures would also be different. For this reason,
creature building and world building must go hand-in-hand. Let's look at a
couple of real-life examples and then examine a fictional creature to see how
each solves its survival problems.
There is a really nice article in the March
2004 issue of National Geographic about harp seals (see link below). You might
remember this creature from campaign that has been going on since the 1960's to
stop fishermen from hunting it for seal oil and fur. This is an animal that
lives in cold places and it has adapted to its environment. Harp seals have a
thick layer of fat that protects them from the cold. The body is streamlined
for swimming, which is important since it spends a lot of time under water.
Harp seals are also pretty prolific which helps it to stay ahead of losses
from predation and hunting. Females have one pup a year from the time they are
between four and eight years old until about the age of thirty.
Each spring the harp seals migrate south where
there are no 'natural' predators and the conditions are just right for giving
birth and raising young. People kill these creatures in their southern homes of
Newfoundland and Greenland. In addition, ice that is too thick or too thin in
their spring quarters can cause the death of pups. However, for a type of
creature to exist, the survival of the individual is not important. Harp seals
still exist because (so far) they reproduce faster than they are killed off.
This is a common and perfectly acceptable method of solving the problem of a
high mortality rate.
For a second example, let's look at a creature
in a completely different set of circumstances, the Gila Monster. Who can
resist a real-life creature with the word, "monster" in its name? These lizards
live in desert areas in the western United States and Mexico. The biggest
problems they have to deal with are heat, cold, and a lack of water. They
survive because they are designed to deal with these problems. Scales keep
whatever water is in the lizard from escaping easily. As an extra precaution,
the lizard sleeps under rocks and in the burrows of other animals during the
day. It comes out to hunt at night, and although a lizard can be sluggish due
to low body temperature, it's venom helps it take down its prey. It even stores
up extra food as fat in its tail. This helps Gila Monsters to survive the other
difficulty of its environment which is the cold. Summers may be hot, but winter
comes, even to the desert. The Gila Monster survives the winter by hibernating
and living off of the fat in its tail.
Anne McCaffery created a creature in her
Dragonrider series that has lived in the hearts of several generations of
readers. It is not at all a creature of this world and could not possibly exist
on Earth as we know it, but it does follow the rules of creature creation and
the self consistent rules of the of the fictional world where it exists. It is
based on the mythological dragon. In order to survive on its planet, it has to
associate closely with humans. In fact, these dragons were created by humans in
order to help them deal with an environmental menace. In order to get along
with people it has a form of telepathy and impresses upon a human companion at
birth (a little like some birds impress upon their parents), forming a permanent
relationship. In order to fight the environmental menace, called thread, it has
the ability to chew a stone containing phosphorous and produce fire. The fire
burns the thread that falls out of the sky while teleportation ability allows it
to quickly duck out of danger's way. In reading these books it's hard to
determine if the creatures were created before the world or the world was
created for the creatures. Anne McCaffery's dragons could not live without
Pern.
Considering survival mechanisms gives your
creature grounding in your world. It helps work the new creature into the
ecosystem around it. Looking at these relationships can give a writer a better
understanding of a newly created creature. In fact, especially if the creature
doesn't figure into the plot too extensively, this and a description may be all
you need. It's a nice snapshot of the lifestyle of a species. However, if your
creature is the reason for your plot, or if it's on stage extensively, you might
want to stay tuned for the Sustenance, Reproduction, and Appearance articles.
Article Mentioned: How To Create a Character,
by Holly Lilsle,
http://hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/wc2-2.html
Article Mentioned: Harp Seals: The Hunt for
Balance, by Kennedy Warne, National Geographic, March 2004
Series Mentioned: The Dragonriders of Pern:
Dragonflight, Dragonquest, the White Dragon, by Anne McCaffrey, ISBN
0345340248
|