Good morning, not a cardboard hero!Chapt. 1 "Ethnographic fantasy, or Consciousness determines bein

Have you heard the phrase - consciousness determines being? Or maybe you have met the opposite statement - that, they say, being determines consciousness?

Mysterious, isn't it?

It is mysterious, but in moderation - the first version of the phrase about consciousness and being means that the way a person lives will inevitably affect his way of thinking. and the second one claims that just the same way of thinking is able to change the way of life.

So, being and consciousness are one of the most difficult questions, and let's try to figure out which one of them still defines? And most importantly, why should we understand this, and what does some kind of "ethnographic fantasy" have to do with it?

And that's what it has to do with. Good morning, not a cardboard hero. Open your eyes. What do you see? Where were you born, hero? Who are your relatives? - we asked at the very end of the last post. Do you know why? Because heroes, like ordinary people, do not suddenly fall from the sky. They were born, grew up to the age when it was time to get acquainted with the reader, and for some time they quietly lived their lives, yes, until the very moment when they got into the author's and reader's imaginary lens.

And this is exactly what will determine to a very large extent what kind of hero is in front of us.

And the joke in the phrases about consciousness and being is that both formulations are right. It's simple - at different levels, depending on whether we mean the macro or micro level.

The macro level - the global, all-encompassing level - will be fully described by the postulate that the environment and lifestyle entirely create the basis for building the personality placed in them. Especially - placed from birth.

And the first level of reliability, as we concluded in the last article, is just that - global. Ethno-cultural. Why ethnocultural? Yes, because in a normal living world there are always DIFFERENT peoples one way or another. They are different because the world - a plausible living world - is also diverse. It is difficult to expect that people living in the snow or mountain gorges will be the same in character and perception of the world as the inhabitants of the south, green plains, arid desert. Do you know why? Yes, because if someone sees nature and weather of a certain type from birth, tries to live with this environment at least in relative harmony and follow its natural cycles and take into account the peculiarities, he gets a specific experience peculiar only to this area. And, having passed through the prism of the human psyche, this experience gives absolutely certain fruits: similar for the whole people at once, because the conditions are the same, and the laws of the work of the psyche, plus or minus, coincide with all representatives of the same biological species. Individual variability also takes place - but these are subtle elegant touches, which we will talk about later, because they relate to the "micro" level, and this is the topic of the next conversation. So what is it? Especially important is the ethno-cultural level of elaboration of the image of the hero - heroes - it is worth recognizing it for fantasy. As a rule, the fantasy world is populated by a bunch of fictional peoples living in fictional countries and living in fictional cities - and this is good, there should be quite a lot of fictional peoples, and different ones at that. After all, what is far to go – take a look at our real earthly world! There are also a lot of very different peoples in it, which often look no more like each other than the notorious dwarves look like no less notorious elves.

Which means what? So, indeed, the peoples of the fictional world should differ from each other, and not at all nominally, by the name there, and the color of their hair, or ritual bast shoes. braided in a special way. No, let's put it bluntly - "force does not work like that" (c) The differences should be much more serious.

At that very existential level – because these peoples – do you remember, "the echo of centuries under your feet"? – they did not develop overnight. The peoples in the fictional world have exactly the same long, centuries-old, complex history as the peoples of the real world. Ideally, it should be, you know? Yes, this story is completely in the author's head and drafts, and it does not necessarily have to be dumped on the reader in its entirety. But you have to think about it as an author, that's what I want to say.

think about it, outline it in your head, remember about it. About history and culture, customs and habits. Echoes of this heritage will have to be read here and there in the description of the life and disposition of representatives of the people. Let's say your hero is from desert nomads, or mountain northern hunters, or he is a sailor in the subtropics... it doesn't really matter which example to take. The only important thing is that the hero, like any normal person, remembers the fairy tales that he was told in his childhood, remembers perfectly the songs that his comrades sing on vacation, hears every day a speech replete with peculiar, understandable as it should be only to people born in name_these lands, jokes and words ... it all inevitably affects the way he will think himself, how to think, how to act accordingly and express his feelings, of any kind: even friendship, even enmity, even love, even compassion ... because the hero is used to, that people like him show these feelings and act in certain situations name_tak. This is the work of the so-called cultural code, the very ethnographic originality. And it is hellishly important for creating a truthful, logically consistent and plausible fantasy world in terms of structure and population.

Your hero, of course, may turn out to be something different from all his fellow tribesmen - and even most likely this is what he will be interested in. Then it will be very important to highlight this difference correctly and successfully in the narrative, the choice of tools here is already to your taste: will you create a situation or just emphasize the mental movements of the character, add a scene or description? Everything is in your will, the author.

Or he, the hero, may not be the same as his fellow tribesmen in someone's representation inside the book world - for example, the representation of another hero with whom fate will push him in life, or rather you, the author. All of this may even have to be the subject of careful author's work on the non-cartonality (read - the verisimilitude of life) of the characters. But we will come back to this point.

What do we have as a result? The fact that a living and detailed world needs a variety of inhabitants that differ from each other, we have figured out.

But listen, they say that it is almost impossible to invent something fundamentally new... and is it possible at the same time to focus on quite real earthly prototypes of cultures? Can. It is possible, because otherwise it will not work. It is often not only impossible to invent something fundamentally new. but it is also harmful, because it generates an anarchic and indigestible mixture.

So it is possible and necessary to take known samples as a starting point. Only you need to handle the source material very wisely. In no case can you just mindlessly copy - simply because at best a deliberate cranberry will come out, and at worst a chaotic collage of multicolored pictures poorly mounted at the edges. If your task is just a humorous "cranberry" - feel free to go ahead, take the brightest and funniest manifestations, and highlight them with humor and characteristic situations! But - remember about the sense of proportion. Measure and moderation are the main principles of European aesthetics (as opposed to lovers of everything Japanese), to our taste)

Therefore, the peoples, even in some ways consciously copied from the historical real prototype, must meet another criterion, the name of which is "originality".

What do we mean by this?

And the fact that the people you describe will not (should not be in any case) be one hundred percent twin brother of something already existing. Simply put, it is not copied from some other book or history textbook. just because- remember? - being determines consciousness. And the existence of the people in your book is still somewhat different. At least in the fictional world they will have other names of mountains and rivers around, other peoples-neighbors and other relations with them. and the people you have invented may not have, say, Christianization in the historical context. Or communication with the peoples-speakers of the Semitic group of languages. And they didn't read the Bible. And therefore they will not be able to quote it, they will not give names with biblical roots to each other. And the names of some phenomena given in honor of characters from books, places and events that are absent in their reality will also be alien to them. If you need so much, say, that your heroes mention the "Eleusinian mysteries" in conversation, think about transferring the whole city of Eleusis (Elefsis now) and a specific manner of celebrating a certain date to your world, for example.

Every nation you have created should have this very cultural background, it should be original, consistent, and at the same time you should remember that peoples communicate with each other throughout history. They are friends and enemies, trade, travel... Therefore, you need to think about how close the contacts of each of the peoples are. What is the idea of the neighbors of a particular ethnic group? Under the influence of what it was formed in this form? You should have an answer to these questions before you start writing, and yes, it's difficult.

However, this is where the key lies - why some authors have all the described people, peoples and the world as a whole exactly alive. you believe in him immediately and completely, and some here and there stick out "white threads" of inept stitching of "spare parts" of the do-it-yourself designer trained from everywhere.

Therefore, there are a lot of typical elfognomes, horned-helmet "Vikings" and helmet-flashing Greeks-in-sheets-on-the-naked-body, the same type of barbarian northerners, insidious thin-moustached Arabs with a stupid accent and no less the same type of bland, like a church wafer, monks. Cranberries served with a serious face - could there be anything worse? Can. perhaps. When this is done not even for lack of skill, but for criminal negligence: "and so it will do," they say.

It won't do, don't hope.

Therefore, remember the main thing: your heroes are real people, albeit fictional. And living people are born from dad and mom, they have relatives, there is a family history, there are roots and a long tail of the genetic code. And cultural, national, natural, social and any other environment. And all this puts its own shade in the overall palette, yes... but at the same time there are the main, leading color notes. Everything else is shades and background.

You will have to draw a portrait of your non-cardboard hero, as an artist on canvas in oil, in stages: the ground and the general background (ethnography, culture, history), the under-painting (family and the history of social relationships), contour and general volumes (physical data)... then you will take the tools thinner and thinner, work out the nuances, the play of color, shadows, highlights and the finest curves of shapes. but that's later.

First, understand where your hero belongs.

Where was he born, what did he love when he was little, and who did he call relatives? Good morning, hero, tell him. And add: I mean, where are you from? I can see it in your eyes, the color of your skin. facial features, and most of all - by the manner of bearing. I can hear it in your voice. And you mentioned it. It seems to be the glorious city of Corfu, am I right?...

This concludes the chapter. Next time we will analyze the terrible beast of anachron) No, not the magnificent book by Elena Khayetskaya - although she is totally worth it. We'll just talk about the authenticity of historical heroes. There is something to talk about there, although not as big as it turned out today.

See you soon, gentlemen!

the image is taken from open sources on the Internet