Creating Life - The Podcast Transcripts (The Art of World Building, #4) (Hardcover)

Episode 7 - Creating Monsters

Hello and welcome to The Art of World Building Podcast, episode number seven. Today’s topic is how to create monsters. This includes talking about how they differ from animals and species, how to make their origins interesting, their motivation, and more. This material and more is dis-cussed in Chapter 5 of Creating Life, volume 1 in The Art of World Building book series.

Defining Monster

We all know what a monster is, but we might also be creating a species or animals, so let’s try to be clear about the differences. The term implies something harmful, unnatural, or morally objectionable, whether that’s a physical deformity or psychological one. Storytellers have created monsters to get across one of those ideas, usually as a warning. In other words, traditionally monsters weren’t there simply to be killed by our heroes, although this is something we often see in science fiction and fantasy. The storytellers of old usually approached it that way, but in our modern times, it seems that people often create monsters just to have something for our heroes to kill.

While there’s nothing wrong with that, it suggests that there are two kinds of monsters: those that have nothing interesting about them other than being scary, and those that are representative of some evil. It’s arguably harder to create the latter, which is probably why a lot of modern storytellers don’t bother. While this is fine, be aware that you could do more with your monster if you have a mind to create something that is morally objectionable.

We can do that by having the monster represents something. And it should be an issue that has something to do with either the story or the characters. For example, maybe your monster is a fallen knight who has been trans-formed into something hideous, and that the reason this happened to him is that he somehow failed in his moral duty as a knight, and this is the punishment.

By punishment, I don’t necessarily mean that someone forced this person to become this way, but maybe their morally bankrupt choices led them to do something and exposed them to something dangerous, and that phenomenon turned him into a monster. In this way, we can imply that their character and their faults led them to become a monster. And if we’re not looking for that sort of commentary, then we don’t need to do this.

Another angle we might want to explore is that some-times a monster is thought to foreshadow some sort of evil happening. This can be one reason why they are cast out of society. As long as they are around, people might be worried about this event taking place. An example of this would be someone who is born with a birth defect that makes them physically hideous to other people, and that causes people to not only decide that they are a monster physically, but maybe morally they represent something terrible. The arrival of a person with this moral flaw could herald the end of civilization, for example. That’s kind of extreme, but it could be also just the fall of some kind of idea, or some idea has been tarnished by the arrival of this morally objectionable person.

Something we’re alluding to here is the unfortunate reality that at least humans tend to judge other people based on physical characteristics. We will decide that someone attractive is good and someone unattractive is bad. Psychologists have actually done studies proving that people do indeed do this, where good appearances is associated with good character. This is an unfortunate reality that we all have to live with.

However, we could have a species of our invention, or even the standard ones, that don’t act like this. They might be the ones who take in a monster, or a person who is considered a monster, who has been cast out by another society. They may become known for becoming a refuge for monsters. What if you have a character who, at the end of a book, becomes a monster for the next book, and then goes to those people for refuge? It’s an interesting arc.

We might also have a species or race, or even animal, who is initially considered to be a monster by space traveling characters who are unfamiliar with this life form. We’ll touch upon this more in a few minutes, but the question of numbers is one of the ones we should consider, because typically a monster is considered to be a one off. There’s only one of them, not ten or a thousand.

We could have a scenario where the space travelers encounter just one of them and think it’s a monster, and then in time they find out it’s not. It’s an animal or species.

This brings up another subject, and that is the word “sentient.” The definition of this word is the ability to sense, feel, and experience, which means that any animal is technically sentient. But in science fiction and fantasy, the word is often used to imply that someone or something either does or does not have humanlike mental capabilities. This isn’t really what the word means, but you’re probably familiar with that, if you’ve heard of it at all, so we’re going to go ahead with that understanding of what the word sentient means throughout this episode.

Episodes Included

1: Intro to the Podcast

2: How to Use Analogues

3: How Many Worlds to Build

4.1 and 4.2: How to Create Gods and Pantheons

5.1, 5.2, 5.3: How to Create Species and Races

6: How to Create World Figures

7: How to Create Monsters

8: How to Create Plants

9: How to Create Animals

10.1 and 10.2: How to Create Undead

22: Assign Senses to Species

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