There was a good depth to this, the strange gentleness of the tribe, the, understandable, untrusting nature of the stranger. Glossing over the fight scenes helped set that tone too. Thanks for sharing.
Well, I'd like to say I specifically chose to gloss over the fight scenes to set a more gentle tone, but actually I did it because I don't think I'm very good at writing fight scenes. I'm trying to study that and get better at it, since I seem to focus on fighting men so much in my stories. How the heck can I write soldiers and warriors without fighting scenes?
Interesting. I wasn't specifically going for "gentle", although taken apart from the rest of the WIP it's from, I see how you get that.
The WIP is about a bronze age "horse nomad" tribe transitioning from polygamous to monogamous. I started it out of spite because of all the "evil patriarchal nomads taking over the peaceful matriarchal towns" stuff. We all know monogamy is better for everyone, especially women, so I thought I'd invert it, and make the patriarchs the monogamists. And it sort of... works.
The first thing that happens is that the tribe gains more men, since they don't lose as many young men to fighting over women. The new rule is "no one gets a second wife until every man has at least one." So the most powerful men don't have as many wives as they would otherwise, but everyone gets at least one. It also means they actually have a way to incorporate a young man turned out from the other tribes to "prove himself." I mean, other than by castration and / or slavery.
I'm also assuming that it was common for both the horse tribes AND the towns to expel their young unmarried men. I'm assuming part of the innovation made by the horse tribes was sending the young men off in TRAINED wolf PACKS.
So you get more men working together. Working together for fighting, but also working together in other ways.
So maybe this doesn't make sense, but I think it's interesting the ideas you come up with when you're not chained to the "men oppressing women" framework. You have to actually look at how things might or might not work.
I don't know how to write warriors without fighting but I'd imagine it involves a lot of drinking and gambling.
The gentleness is created by the stranger expecting violence. The ritualised combat, the fighting ring, the chief having to speak for it to begin, the stomping of spears. All of it is rather civilised for a bronze age horde.
Monogamy also gives young men a bond into a tribe, especially once the married couple has children. That thick bond creates a stronger community, and a larger one with all the added people mainly being fighting men. It could be while unmarried men might make more reckless warriors, married men might make more committed warriors especially when defending.
Thanks for the detailed comment on how your ideas developed, great stuff.
Interesting Story. Odd, when I read it, I wasn't thinking Bronze Age, I was thinking post-apocalypse, for some reason. Maybe it was the names. My inner story-teller was wondering what the next story was about.
That didn't occur to me, but now that you mention, it looks obvious that someone could see it that way. I just decided all the males would have a one-syllable name and all women a two-syllable name ending in "a." For no particular reason. But that means a lot of the names, like "Mel" and "Tom" sound modern. And the others could sound like shortened versions of older names.
This is actually about two-thirds of the way through my oldest WIP, so I have a lot more, but I don't have a plot at all yet. Just scenes I see.
That sounds like my writing. I don't have a plot, per se. Yours sounds like "Slice of Life," storytelling, which is what mine started out being. The plot wends through it, but not overtly. The only thing that ties the slices together is the setting and the characters.
There was a good depth to this, the strange gentleness of the tribe, the, understandable, untrusting nature of the stranger. Glossing over the fight scenes helped set that tone too. Thanks for sharing.
Well, I'd like to say I specifically chose to gloss over the fight scenes to set a more gentle tone, but actually I did it because I don't think I'm very good at writing fight scenes. I'm trying to study that and get better at it, since I seem to focus on fighting men so much in my stories. How the heck can I write soldiers and warriors without fighting scenes?
Interesting. I wasn't specifically going for "gentle", although taken apart from the rest of the WIP it's from, I see how you get that.
The WIP is about a bronze age "horse nomad" tribe transitioning from polygamous to monogamous. I started it out of spite because of all the "evil patriarchal nomads taking over the peaceful matriarchal towns" stuff. We all know monogamy is better for everyone, especially women, so I thought I'd invert it, and make the patriarchs the monogamists. And it sort of... works.
The first thing that happens is that the tribe gains more men, since they don't lose as many young men to fighting over women. The new rule is "no one gets a second wife until every man has at least one." So the most powerful men don't have as many wives as they would otherwise, but everyone gets at least one. It also means they actually have a way to incorporate a young man turned out from the other tribes to "prove himself." I mean, other than by castration and / or slavery.
I'm also assuming that it was common for both the horse tribes AND the towns to expel their young unmarried men. I'm assuming part of the innovation made by the horse tribes was sending the young men off in TRAINED wolf PACKS.
So you get more men working together. Working together for fighting, but also working together in other ways.
So maybe this doesn't make sense, but I think it's interesting the ideas you come up with when you're not chained to the "men oppressing women" framework. You have to actually look at how things might or might not work.
I don't know how to write warriors without fighting but I'd imagine it involves a lot of drinking and gambling.
The gentleness is created by the stranger expecting violence. The ritualised combat, the fighting ring, the chief having to speak for it to begin, the stomping of spears. All of it is rather civilised for a bronze age horde.
Monogamy also gives young men a bond into a tribe, especially once the married couple has children. That thick bond creates a stronger community, and a larger one with all the added people mainly being fighting men. It could be while unmarried men might make more reckless warriors, married men might make more committed warriors especially when defending.
Thanks for the detailed comment on how your ideas developed, great stuff.
Interesting Story. Odd, when I read it, I wasn't thinking Bronze Age, I was thinking post-apocalypse, for some reason. Maybe it was the names. My inner story-teller was wondering what the next story was about.
That didn't occur to me, but now that you mention, it looks obvious that someone could see it that way. I just decided all the males would have a one-syllable name and all women a two-syllable name ending in "a." For no particular reason. But that means a lot of the names, like "Mel" and "Tom" sound modern. And the others could sound like shortened versions of older names.
This is actually about two-thirds of the way through my oldest WIP, so I have a lot more, but I don't have a plot at all yet. Just scenes I see.
That sounds like my writing. I don't have a plot, per se. Yours sounds like "Slice of Life," storytelling, which is what mine started out being. The plot wends through it, but not overtly. The only thing that ties the slices together is the setting and the characters.