Talio’s Codex is a legal thriller and courtroom fantasy set in the secondary-world city of Nuciferia. When my publisher asked for a description of Nuciferia for cover art, I wrote:
- A dreamy medieval Dutch/Venetian vaguely steampunk pre-industrial city of close buildings and canals, seen at golden hour or sunset.
- The canals are filled with multicolored barges and long boats. The boats look like gondolas, but with no ‘ferro‘ at the tip
- It is late summer or fall.
- A city of about 10,000 people. Men wear suits; women wear dresses and bonnets.
- The streets are bustling, but not overcrowded.
- Among the citizens of Nuciferia are the Incarnites (a religious minority, each wearing a saffron cloak and hood) – about 1 out of every 20 people.
- In the distance, we can see the skyline station tower, skyline and skyship.
- Nuciferia has NO clocks, machines, vehicles (aside from boats, barges or horses/carriages).
“Dreamy medieval Dutch/Venetian city of canals” is how I always pictured Nuciferia. Imagine my surprise when I got to the end of my first full draft and realized…there were no canals.
I’d mentioned the canals when main character Talio arrives in Nuciferia, and had mentioned them on occasion throughout the story, but they sat there as inert material. A painted backdrop. Background.
I went back through the outline, and in every chapter, everywhere I could, I made sure to foreground the background.
What do I mean by that? Any unique element of your story should be more than set dressing. Your characters should observe and interact with it, as much as possible. It needs to be woven into the story so it becomes inextricable with the plot.
Here’s what I did:
- When Talio first returns to Nuciferia, he and his former wife take a boat to the Palace of Justice, so we can see the steps leading down to the water docks, the captain, and the feeling of lazily gliding along the canal in a pleasure boat: “They descended the stairs to the canal and found a captain with a small flat-bottomed boat….”
- At one point, Talio considers returning to the small town he came from: “On the street, Talio ignored the Incarnites and walked along the edge of the canal, kicking pebbles into the water below.”
- Every time Talio goes out walking in Nuciferia, the canals make an appearance: “Talio walked downstream through the city in the early afternoon during the lull after midday, watching a group of men and women struggle to right a listing barge blocking a canal from traffic.”
- Talio’s life is threatened by two boatmen who chase him along the tops of barges and then push him into a canal.
- When he returns to his home base after the attack, soaking wet, he explains to the innkeeper Vinne that he fell into the canal by mistake. “It did not sound convincing to Talio, and he knew it would not sound rational to Vinne. No six-year-old would ever wander close enough to the edge of a street to fall into a canal.”
- When Talio meets a secret group, he listens in on their conversations: “They spoke of moral and ethical issues: poverty, medical care, the homeless, rights to waterways.”
The primary religion is based on worshipping a water goddess. I also included a bunch of metaphors everywhere I could to water and the sea:
- “He would accept the offer of a legal partnership and see where the river took them.”
- “It was not for ordinary citizens to see how the fish was sliced.” (i.e. how the sausage is made)
- “You have the advocate’s habit of following a thought downstream to its conclusion without considering logical paths.”
- “He felt like every law student making a convoluted argument in a mock trial, sailing away further and further from the island of rationality into a sea of doubt.”
Even the layout of Nuciferia is water-based. “Upstream” refers to the northern, upscale part of the city. “Downstream” refers to the poorer southern part of the city.
All of these references are basically part of information about the world sprinkled throughout the story…but there’s no stopping the plot for a heavy info-dump. Instead, we see that water is everywhere: in the architecture, layout, and even mental models of the citizen.
In my novel-in-progress, The Library at Eventide, “Skerricks” are small floating spiky balls, whose purpose is unknown. Once again, I went through the manuscript and first made sure that a Skerrick appeared in nearly every chapter, floating nearby. Then I foregrounded the background and brought in the Skerricks physically and conceptually to the story:
- A white cat that Eran, the main character, adopts is seen dancing on his hind legs, trying to reach a floating Skerrick above. Also: “Every time Eran picked him up, White Cat turned into a Skerrick with whirling scimitars instead of spikes.”
- Lina the healer mentions she needs to check on a pregnant villager: “That girl’s stomach is so big by now I have to make sure she doesn’t turn into a Skerrick and fly away in the night,”
- When Eran is feverish and delirious, he imagines a row of Skerricks in the sky above, waiting ominously.
- A children’s scroll they discover while reviving the library tells the story of a girl and her Skerrick friend.
Here, the Skerricks interact with the characters, they appear in their media, dialog and even dreams. It’s an easy way to infiltrate the unique background of your story and make it part of the plot.
Don’t settle for boring, static background props – foreground your background.