Author Archives: Oren Litwin

Keeping Power

20 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by in Politics, Politics for Worldbuilders

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

(This post is part of Politics for Worldbuilders, an occasional series.)

Fiction writers often create elaborate imaginary kingdoms or galactic empires, ruled by iron-fisted dictators or feckless legislatures or councils of wise elders. Often, however, the politics of such regimes often falls flat. Powerful figures line up for or against the protagonists seemingly at random, or “because the author says so.” While this can be fine, depending on the main emphasis of your story, it would be better to understand the dynamics of political conflict in your imaginary regime, so that you can use it as a basis for creating a compelling story.

But there are many different kinds of regimes: democracies, dictatorships, aristocracies, each of which has innumerable flavors and nuances in their structures. Does an author need to become an expert in all of them to write good political conflict?

Not necessarily. A good starting point would be a general theory of how regime leaders stay in power or get overthrown—simple enough to be easily applied to your story, flexible enough to be relevant to ancient kingdoms, modern democracies, and everything in between. Fortunately, there is such a theory, developed by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and his collaborators, and known in comparative politics as selectorate theory. It goes like this:

Imagine a Kingdom of Crelia. Its king, Rothgar the VIII, rules over a strong aristocracy headed by nine barons, not all of whom like him very much, and a much larger pool of powerless peasants who pretty much have to suffer whatever comes. Rothgar doesn’t have to worry much about what the peasants think; but he must pay attention to the barons, because if enough of them turned against him, Rothgar could be overthrown and beheaded. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to keep all of them happy all the time—just a fraction of them, let’s say four. Their strength, plus his own, are enough to keep the other five barons in check.

To keep his supporters happy, therefore, King Rothgar keeps their taxes somewhat lower than the other five barons, gives them more privileges at court, and sets royal policy to favor their interests over those of the five other barons, to some degree. (The peasants, needless to say, get milked for all that Rothgar and the barons can get.)

In terms of selectorate theory, the peasants (Residents) have no role in choosing the king. The nine barons, on the other hand, make up the Selectorate—the group of people with the right, or the power, to influence the selection of king. The selectorate is the outer circle; the inner circle, on the other hand, is the Winning Coalition, the four barons who make up Rothgar’s chief supporters.

Rothgar’s survival depends on maintaining his winning coalition. But he need not keep it as the same four barons; indeed, his main leverage over them is the threat of replacing a pushy baron with one of the other five barons in the selectorate. That threat allows him to keep the expense of maintaining his allies down to a reasonable level, so he can keep more taxes to himself.

His threat would be even more effective if he could expand the size of the selectorate, by appointing five or six peasants to the nobility. Now, there are fifteen barons total, and the king still needs only four of them as his supporters. With so many more options to choose from, Rothgar need pay a much lower price to secure his base of support. Any baron that tries to hold out will quickly be replaced by a more cooperative rival.

However, suppose that there are not nine total barons but only six. Then, each of the four supporter barons is in a powerful position; the king will have a much harder time replacing them individually, and has no way to replace them all. They can then extort a heavy price for their support, perhaps so heavy that the king’s own revenue is squeezed and he loses power over time. The same would be true if the king suddenly needed seven barons out of nine, instead of just four. (The country, needless to say, will suffer as spending on public goods drops off a cliff.)

As a rule, if the winning coalition is large relative to the size of the selectorate, it can extort a high price. If it is small relative to the selectorate, the ruler can keep more revenue for himself. At the limit, if you make the entire populace part of the selectorate while only requiring a tiny winning coalition (for example, with a strict meritocracy or an authoritarian party-based regime), then your supporters will have to make do with meager benefits indeed.

In general, therefore, the ruler has an interest in expanding the selectorate to cover a larger part of the population, and the selectorate members have an interest in restricting its size. Likewise, the ruler has an interest in reducing the necessary size of the winning coalition, and the selectorate would want to increase the size of the winning coalition.

You can see these dynamics play out in the political struggles over extending the right to vote. In the United States, for example, it was originally the case that only property-owning freemen could vote, about 6% of the population. Government policy thus tended to favor the landowning class. Over time, the right to vote was slowly extended to most white men, then most men, then most adults. At each step, some who already had the vote feared that their interests would be harmed by the new voters, and fought bitterly against their inclusion. And at each step, the size of the winning coalition grew along with that of the selectorate, and government policy thus changed to benefit larger portions of the total populace.

This brings up an important point. When the winning coalition is small, it can be bought off with policies that benefit itself, even if those policies harm the populace at large (as they often do; it is easy to tax the populace and enrich a handful of supporters). But as the winning coalition grows, relative to the populace as a whole, it becomes more likely that policies benefiting the winning coalition will also benefit the populace in general.

This, argues selectorate theory, is the main reason that democracies tend to be better run (on average) than dictatorships—the ruler must set policies that benefit 50% of active voters at a minimum, instead of a small handful of powerful nobles, generals, or businessmen.

The model can fit any regime you imagine. Communism? The Communist Party membership was quite large, compared to the size of the Politburo; regime figures could be replaced easily, and often were. Banana republic? The key figures are the generals and the main business leaders, who are hard to replace and thus demand a high price for their support. (For more, read The Dictator’s Handbook.)

How can you use this in your fiction? Selectorate theory gives you several points of conflict to focus on: expanding or shrinking the winning coalition, or the selectorate; exactly who gets to be in the winning coalition; policies that benefit the winning coalition and harm the rest of the country, or an effort to change such policies as winning coalitions shift; a ruler who allows his winning coalition to fall apart, so a challenger can assemble such a coalition of her own. You can tune the details to fit your particular setting; but selectorate theory gives you a strong foundation on which to build the political conflict in your story.

****

(And don’t forget, I’m accepting submissions to a fantasy anthology, Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. Check out the announcement and start writing!)

Class Conflict, Part One

09 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by in Better Fantasy, Politics, Politics for Worldbuilders, State Formation, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

(This post is part of Politics for Worldbuilders, an occasional series.)

Imagine a small nomadic band of hunter-gatherers, living a carefree existence in the wild hill country—let’s call them the Pandu. They own little property aside from the weapons and tools they carry and the clothing they wear. Let’s even suppose that they practice free love, and that children are raised communally. Finally, imagine that everyone performs the same jobs: hunting, foraging, making clothing and tools, raising children, and making decorative jewelry that looks pretty (we can call these “prestige goods”).

One might think that the Pandu ought to be the perfect egalitarian society, without conflict over possessions or political power. And actual foraging societies do tend to be nearly egalitarian (for reasons discussed in Michael Taylor’s Community, Anarchy, Liberty, among other authors). Still, they are not perfectly egalitarian, even if there are no hard class divisions. Let’s see why.

Let’s say that some Pandu are somewhat better at hunting or foraging than others. Such “Good Hunters” manage to gather enough food in a shorter time, so they can spend more time creating prestige goods—or else they can gather extra food and trade it with others for their prestige goods. Over time, they will have more jewelry than less skilled hunters. At this point, jewelry starts to be not just pretty shiny things, but a sign of hunting skill.

Good Hunters will start to attract more intimate partners because of their greater prestige, or simply with gifts of food or jewelry; lesser hunters will lose out, in relative terms. If the story ends here, we would have a single-class society shot through with simmering tensions and periodic fits of jealousy-driven violence.

Now imagine that successful hunters had the right to eat their prey’s hearts, which grant magical powers and even greater hunting skill. Suddenly, we have a “rich-get-richer” scenario: Good Hunters would soon outstrip their less-skilled rivals, becoming a class in themselves that eventually possesses far more food, prestige, and social attractiveness than the “lower” class. The lower class could still feed itself, but would lack prestige and social standing, and likely intimate partners as a result—and would have no way to catch up, at least not through hunting skill.

Still, both of these classes would have broadly similar interests: they hunt the same game, gather the same foods, value the same goods. So long as interclass jealousy is kept under control, perhaps by social rituals that periodically erase class distinctions, the Pandu band will remain unified.

But suppose that the less successful hunters, recognizing that they cannot compete at hunting, decide to begin farming instead so that they can win prestige and intimate partners of their own. Suppose they are successful, and produce as much food on average as the Hunters do, achieving a broadly comparable social status. How does this change the picture?

For one thing, while the Hunters would continue their nomadic lifestyle, following the game as the seasons shift, Farmers suddenly are tied to a fixed plot of land. Even if they can travel during fallow seasons or even between the planting and harvest time, they would have to return to their plots of land to harvest their crop. Even if they plant multiple crops in multiple locations and circulate between them, they are now less mobile than before.

What’s more, Farmers have to feed themselves somehow while their crop is growing. They might borrow food from fellow Pandu, promising to repay them at the harvest. Likely, they would borrow from the Hunters. But perhaps the Hunters would take advantage of the new situation to demand back more food than they lent.

Suddenly, Hunters and Farmers have opposing interests. Hunters want to be mobile; Farmers less so. Hunters want their rights as lenders upheld, and perhaps to gain additional privileges in the process; Farmers would want to defend themselves against such privileges, or even to deprive Hunters of their repayment.

So what policy will the Pandu band follow? It will depend on the relative strength of each class, the ideological beliefs of the Pandu, and the skill of the band’s mediators or leaders. At all times, clashing interests will pull the band in different directions, and perhaps pull it apart entirely.

Class can go beyond simplistic notions of upper, middle, lower—it can also be derived from different and conflicting interests. And conflict, needless to say, is at the heart of good stories. You can generate powerful conflicts by depicting societies with opposing class interests, and those conflicts will be all the more compelling if your social classes are more than caricatures.

****

(And don’t forget, I’m accepting submissions to a fantasy anthology, Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. Check out the announcement and start writing!)

Geography, Travel, and Power Projection

07 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by in Better Fantasy, Politics, State Formation

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Years ago, I wrote a post about long journeys in fantasy fiction. It discussed how incredibly difficult long-range travel was, and the profound economic and social effects caused by that difficulty. But I didn’t discuss very much the close relationship between ease of travel and political power.

Remember that in the premodern world, travel on land was extremely difficult compared to travel by sea. It was about as hard to transport a load of grain 100 km over land as it was to ship it from one side of the Mediterranean to the other. Traveling off-road was slow, difficult, and dangerous; there was no guarantee of food, and it was easy to be injured by terrain or wild animals. Even when roads existed, travelers could easily be hampered by bad weather, bandits, or disease.

Why does this matter for politics? We who live in consolidated states sometimes forget that the government’s power is not a given. People generally comply with the government only when they are made to, through enforcement by armed men and the bureaucrats who keep them paid. Where there are no police, and communication with the government is difficult, inhabitants can ignore the law when it suits them. (Even in modern America, there are parts of Appalachia and other rural areas that are renowned for moonshine, drug cultivation, and general lawlessness.)

As James C. Scott lays out in great detail, the first requirement for the consolidation of political power is the ability to control people. That means that a state will generally only extend its rule into areas in which its soldiers can easily travel, in order to extract taxes and plunder and slaves. In Southeast Asia, the focus of his study, large cities were controlled by powerful rulers, but their ability to project their rule into the countryside was limited. During harvest season, the regime’s armies would sweep through the countryside in order to extract grain from the hapless farmers, and in some cases to take slaves. But in the monsoon season, when the roads became muddy lakes and were impassable, a regime’s effective zone of control often shrank to the borders of its capital city alone; the countryside would be beyond its reach.

Similarly, state control often did not extend up into hill country, mountains, marshlands, or other rugged terrain. State rule and so-called “civilized society” would be a feature of the lowlands, while the highlands would be seen as stateless zones of barbarism.

States that wanted to increase their power thus had a strong incentive to move population into arm’s-reach, and to keep them there. Cities were the most prominent example; walls were built not only to keep invaders out, but to keep subject populations in. Peasants were often forbidden to move away from their designated cities, and had to farm plots that were in easy traveling distance. (This was also meant to aid in creating legibility for the state.) Plus, serfs or slaves would be imported and kept under control by force.

On the flip side, Scott writes, people who wanted to escape the coercive state would often flee to inaccessible areas such as badlands, hill country, or marshes. There, they would set up “maroon communities,” or else join with the existing bands of stateless peoples who lived as nomads or foragers. Not that they would disconnect from the state entirely. Until quite recently in human history, a majority of the world’s population was outside of state control, and states depended on trade with stateless peoples to provide them with many of their luxuries (as well as slaves).

From the viewpoint of accessibility and power projection, you can see the tremendous importance that good roads played for imperial powers such as Rome and Persia; or the role that the Dutch and British fleets played in imposing their colonial rule across the seas. Nor was this only an issue in earlier ages; NATO forces in Afghanistan have suffered severe problems suppressing the Taliban specifically because of the difficulty in traveling through the mountainous terrain.

Summing up: power depends (in part) on a regime’s physical access to people. Regimes with better logistics, better traveling technology, and the ability to move their subjects into concentrated zones of control thus could intensify their own power.

****

(And don’t forget, I’m accepting submissions to a fantasy anthology, Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. Check out the announcement and start writing!)

So, About That How-To Book on Politics…

06 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in Better Fantasy, Politics, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

[UPDATE: The first volume is published! Check it out.]

Some years ago, I blogged about my plan to write a book about politics for writers, filling a gap in the existing materials on worldbuilding. Most writing teachers focus on details such as the structure of the nobility, or the form of government, or other political features that are actually secondary to the fundamental questions of power, rule, and conflict. I hoped that, using my scholarly background in political science, I could create a guide that succinctly gave authors a powerful tool to generate stories from political conflict.

So what happened?

In short, I’m very badly stuck on how to structure the book.

Basically, there are a series of key concepts that underpin politics: geography, technology (especially weapons technology), the related issue of legibility (how easily a ruler can monitor and tax the peasants), power projection, legitimacy and ideology, and the social order (how wealth and power coexist with each other), to name just a few. Starting with those, you can very quickly drill down to the fundamental type of story you want to tell, and design your world to facilitate that. The problem is that all of these concepts tend to interpenetrate, in a big gnarly ball of connections shooting every which way.

So in trying to essentially give a crash course on graduate-level PoliSci, where does one start?

And if someone wants a checklist for use in worldbuilding, what order would you follow?

I honestly don’t know. But if I keep dithering, the book will never get written, and all you aspiring worldbuilders will be left adrift in a sea of bad fantasy-kingdom pastiches. (Horrors!) My current plan, therefore, is to write blog posts about the various fundamental concepts piecemeal, without worrying overmuch about their order or relationship to each other. I will be collecting these posts, and past posts on related topics, in a new page called Politics for Worldbuilders, which you can see in the top of the blog.

Enjoy!

(And don’t forget, I’m accepting submissions to a fantasy anthology, Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. Check out the announcement and start writing!)

“…A Bribe Blinds the Eyes of the Perceptive…”

26 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

In a previous post, I asked whether it was a good idea to have a Kickstarter reward for authors who donated $50 to have their submissions critiqued, and to have the opportunity to resubmit. The reaction was generally negative, and I understand why; and to be honest, I should have known before asking that it would be problematic. The Talmud (Ketuvot 105) lists several examples of where even pious scholars had their judgment perverted by attempts at bribery, even when the bribes themselves were refused. In general, the rabbis issue a stark warning against any hint of conflicts of interest.

I may still offer some kind of critique as a reward, but if so, it will be for a separate story that is not under consideration. Thank you to everyone who gave their feedback!

Lessons Learned from a Successful Kickstarter

22 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by in Self-Promotion, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

I’ve been writing for a long time, but The Odds Are Against Us is the first time I ever tried to put together a collection of other people’s work. It’s also the first time I ever ran a successful Kickstarter project, with all the expectations that implies. So the last year has definitely been a learning experience; the good news is that for Ye Olde Magick Shoppe, I’ll be better prepared. (By the way, submissions are open! Click the link and check it out.)

Since I’m surely not the only person who’s producing a compilation of other people’s work, I figured that a writeup of my key takeaways would be interesting. So here they are:

1. Everything takes longer.

When it’s just you, you are limited by your own capabilities; but on the other hand, you have total control, and no coordination friction. Once other people are involved, time has to be budgeted in dealing with all the slowdowns that result. And even if you think you gave yourself enough time, you probably didn’t.

I first published the Call for Submissions in December 2016, launched the Kickstarter project in February 2017, and promised the completed anthology to my backers by December 2017. In my case, even though editing the stories took more time than I anticipated, I actually did give myself a distant-enough deadline to handle the overflow anyway—provided that we went the self-publishing route, which was the plan. Even when I started talking with my publisher, I assumed that there was enough time left to meet our promised deadline without difficulty. But traditional publication is a much, much, much more deliberate process than I expected. Hence the delay.

2. Start planning your campaign early.

I didn’t decide when to launch the Kickstarter campaign until far too close to the anthology’s submission deadline; so marketing suffered, and the project page wasn’t as polished as I would like. For one thing, the promo video used computer voices, which sounded hideous, because I could do it in an hour or two—but I figured computer voices were marginally better than no sound at all.

For my next project, even though I’m planning to launch the Kickstarter page in April, I’m already in contact with artists and voiceover actors. With a little luck, the project page will be far more attractive than it was this time around, which means more backers and more money for authors. And speaking of which…

3. Budget realistically.

Kickstarter takes roughly 10% of the gross as its fee. It also costs money to mail physical books to backers, or to provide other tangible rewards. And about 70% of the funds raised were used to pay the authors, of course—and suddenly we’re already in the red.

I expected that, and viewed it as a long-term investment, in principle. And on the bright side, for a modest project like this one, the dollar amounts are manageable. But in a larger project, the costs of distributing backer rewards can quickly get out of hand if you don’t plan for them carefully.

I don’t know yet what proportion of funds will go to the authors the next time around, but it may end up being closer to 60%. And as fun as it sounds to offer things like bookmarks or art prints, we’ll probably skip all that and stick with intangibles, like being able to name a character.

4. Know what rights you want from your authors, and why.

With my original plan to self-publish, I didn’t care so much about securing a long term of rights from the anthology’s authors. When traditional publication became possible, that became a problem; the publisher was hesitant and ultimately wanted a longer period of exclusivity, which I had to get from the authors. That slowed us down.

Next time, I’ll have a better set of expectations about what rights to secure, and will get signed contracts from the authors in advance. That will make the anthology more marketable, and will hopefully help us avoid unexpected delays over the legal wrangling.

******

If this was helpful for you, let me know in the comments. Kickstarter and other crowdfunding methods are powerful, but you need to have a plan and realistic expectations. Once you are armed with those, however, the power of crowds can help bring new works of art to life.

Would Paid Critiques Be Appropriate for the Call for Submissions?

22 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by in Better Fantasy, Self-Promotion, Writing

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

I’ve been thinking about how to make my current anthology project as awesome as it can be. For one thing, I’ve noticed that a number of submissions are by relatively new authors who show a lot of talent, but maybe could use some feedback. The other thing is that I’m trying to figure out attractive swag for the Kickstarter project that we are going to have in a month or two.

Here’s an idea I wanted to run by people: what if authors could pledge, say, $50 to the Kickstarter in exchange for getting a one-page high-level developmental critique of their submission, and the chance to resubmit (as well as the smaller-dollar backer rewards, such as book copies)?

On the positive side, most of that money is going right back to the chosen authors, so it’s a kind of “pay it forward” thing. Plus, it lets new authors improve their writing, which is always a good thing.

I’m worried, though, that people might see it as “pay-for-play,” meaning that the donation would become a stealth entry fee, or that people who donate would have a leg up over those who don’t. That’s absolutely not the case—I want the strongest stories in my anthology, not the ones who pay me a few bucks—but it is true that the chance to get feedback from the editor would make it easier to improve your story to my taste. And I don’t want people to be turned off, or to think that this is a scam.

So I’m asking you. Do you think that this would be appropriate? Or would you feel like this is a scam, or be otherwise turned off? Would you yourself be interested in a critique? How much would you be willing to pay for one? (Bear in mind that most critique services charge much more than $50 for a 20-page manuscript.)

Let me know in the comments. And if this is something you are interested in, be sure to sign up for my mailing list to be notified when the Kickstarter goes live, so you can order your critique.

Under Contract! (Plus, Call for Submissions!)

16 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in Better Fantasy, Self-Promotion, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Amazing news—the short story anthology of military fiction that I’ve mentioned before just got placed under contract!

Hopefully, I’ll have more news to report before long. In the meanwhile, it’s time for another Call for Submissions…

The theme for the next anthology is “Ye Olde Magick Shoppe.” Full rules are here, and the deadline is June 1. Your stories must include the buying or selling of magic as a plot element. Be sure to read the full rules, or risk the slush pile.

I look forward to reading your submissions! Good luck!

We Shall Have Time…

31 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by in Self-Actualization, Self-Promotion, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

The many months since my last post have been an incredible trip. My Kickstarter project was funded, several tremendous short stories were submitted to the anthology, and they’ve only gotten stronger as we’ve gone through the editing process. Now I’m trying to figure out the best way to publish.

If there is one thing I have learned from this process, it’s that sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith. The thought of a total unknown like myself soliciting short stories with only a vague promise of payment, and then attracting enough crowdfunding sponsors to actually make the whole thing work, was terrifying. (My biggest fear was that only a handful of poor-quality stories would be submitted, and I’d be forced to publish them just because I had committed to.) I could very easily have decided not to go forward with the whole thing.

And yet, it all managed to work out in the end. The selected authors are great, our backers were incredibly generous, and once I get the logistical questions worked out, the world will have a book showcasing brand-new stories that might never have been seen otherwise. Which is a great feeling!

The Odds Are Against Us—An Anthology of Military Fiction

21 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Self-Promotion, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Last month, I put out a request for submissions for an anthology of short military fiction. Now, the time has come. The first three authors have been selected, and the Kickstarter project is live!

We’re still accepting story submissions until April 1. The more money gets raised, the more that chosen authors will be paid, and the more stories we can publish. Join me to make this a reality!soldiers-2b