My MC is from an ancient advanced civilization that fled to a new world in order to avoid destruction. But, things got kinda wrong and people from that advanced civilization did not arrive in the new world all at the same time. First people who arrived created new a society but they quickly disagreed on a number of subjects (mainly because unexpected events happened). So, their new society split into different kingdoms/countries... and there had been wars ever since. My MC arrived late. Very late : millenia late. People she knew who arrived first are long dead and this new world she discovers is totally foreign to her. But, thanksfully, a Temple knight from a theocratic society finds her and accompany her without knowing who she really is. Thanks to him, she has a guide in this new crazy world. At some point, they attend a mystery play that supposedly tells the history of the world before the MC arrived. In fact, these are legends, but most people take them for granted, because these stories are enforced by the Temple. So, it tells stories of war between the Temple and ancient demons, who are in reality people from the ancient civilization who disagreed with the guys who founded the Temple. But the Temple depict them as demons, because that's what people do : tell their version of the story to maintain their power... Well... How to write this scene, where the MC attend this play, in such a way that it is entertaining to read and without interrupting too much the plot of the story ?...
Well, does it have to be a play? Perhaps it could be like a poetry slam or something. Or it could be that they do what they often do with Shakespeare. Sometimes instead of an entire play, you can attend smaller readings of a particular scene or monologue.
This play idea sounds like an EXCELLENT way to get backstory in, without doing an infodump. I assume by MC you mean your main character. However, you haven't said if she is also your POV character, or will be in this play scene. And she's 'late' ...why is she late? The others left to avoid destruction, so why wasn't she destroyed if she stayed behind? Anyway, the reason I asked that question is this: how much does she actually know about the Truth of the situation. Obviously the play is a myth, created to keep the people in power still in power (hey, ho, that tactic works, doesn't it? Evidence is all around us....). But is she gullible and taken in by the 'story.' Or does she know better? This might be an excellent way to get the story conflict going, if she knows that what she's seeing within this 'play' is actually not true. And using her inner thoughts as she watches the play would be a great way to kill two birds with one stone. You could get the backstory AND the conflict in right away, without doing an infodump. If your POV character is busy reacting to the play (just within her thoughts about it) we will be instantly interested. So...the play isn't true, but the powers that be want people to think it is? Ah....okay ...so what happens next? That's the reaction that will keep your readers on board. Whenever possible, I'm a fan of keeping it personal. Nobody much wants a dry history lesson (especially when it's not actually history, but fantasy) when they pick up a piece of fiction. They want the personal view. What does the character think or feel about what is going on in her life? It's her perspective that matters. Fill us in on what SHE knows, not on all the ins and outs of the world's history back to the year dot. What does your POV character know? That's where to start, in my opinion.
The scene is written in first person from her POV. So, everything you said is on point. What does she know and why she is late ? Basically that ancient civilization escaped a dying universe through a black hole using some arthur c. clarke technology. So, they really are very very advanced. But not so advanced that they know everything. Not so advanced they are gods. They totally can fail, and one of the unexpected events occured when they traveled through that black hole. They hoped to escape in a new universe, which they did. But given the relativistic nature of black holes (and basically we don't know what is happening at the singularity of a black hole...) I'm using that to explain a catastrophe during the journey. The result of it is that some of them died, some other went through but arrived at different dates : some millenia ago, etc... I'm also thinking about the possibility that others arrived at completely different places, or possibly in different universe (why not ?) but that's out of the scope of the novel for now. Forgot to answer what does my MC know about all of this. She arrived really late. But from her point of view, she left the dying universe minutes ago before arriving in the new universe. From her point of view, her journey across universes last few minutes. From the point of view of people in the new universe, millenia passed. So she really knows very little about what happened in the new universe. At this point of the story, she actually expects to find her people somewhere, waiting for her.
Are the people in your story still very advanced? or did they regress to a less advanced state when they entered the new universe? I just can't imagine a society that is smart enough to use a black hole to move between universes ever being gullible enough to believe in demons. Unless of course, in this story there are such things as demons?
^ Well, we currently live in a society smart enough to create computers, and many who aren't involved in science and technology (as well as some who are) believe in all kinds of things others would consider primitive or superstitious. There always has been/will be a massive gap between the educated classes and the uneducated. And even the educated will compartmentalize.
True and I wouldn't say that no one would believe in a higher power or whatever, but as technology has progressed, more and more people have moved towards atheism. I could only assume a civilisation that's as advanced as the one suggested, would have gone a lot further down the road to atheism. Not to say individuals in the society might not cling to some religious ideas, but enough for the society to be a theocracy? It can't see it personally. That's not to say I wouldn't read the book. If it was well written and interesting, I'd be able to suspend disbelief just like when I read about magic schools and hobbits, but there would be a moment when I'd be pulled out of the book to wonder why this significantly advanced society was being run like a medieval one.
Not necessarily. In fact an excess of something tends to call up its opposite. Leaning too far toward science and rationalism will cause many people to feel that something essential is being left behind—hence these modern religious movements like Creationism and the Flat Earth Theory, which apparently is extremely popular. There's a lot of profound human truth that can't be touched in any way by rationalism or science. And it's important to try not to miss the real meanings behind religions. They were created in the first place to express some of those profound truths that people were intuiting but found hard to express. To wave it all off as if it's gibberish misses the point as much as religious literalism. Keep in mind that the conscious mind, the part capable of logic and reason etc, is relatively recent and only a small outgrowth of the irrational unconscious. Much of human truth lives in the unconscious and trying to pull it out kills it. So it's very understandable that when people sense the clinical impotence of pure scientific fact and science—its inability to recognize many of the real truths—they sense that there's some value in the religions that's being left behind. Most atheists only argue against a fallacious literal belief, not what many believers have in mind anyway. They're tilting at straw men and windmills. However, that all said (and too briefly I realize, by necessity), the majority of people who recognize these deep truths in religions don't try to find the core of meaning, but simply believe. Even in a highly technological society, the average mind is pretty simple. Most people know nothing about the science they use every day but just that you press the gas pedal and it goes. This in itself is a kind of faith. It's only the scientists and technicians who understand it better, and even they only understand their own specialized areas of study/work.
Basically : during the first arrival, the very advanced people tried to build a new home for themselves. That was the plan. But since many things got very wrong, they were unable to do whatever they intended to do to build this new home properly. So they disagreed on a number of things, and it finally led them to found diverse societies. After a while, the founders died and only the upraised natives were left to govern these societies. But they were nowhere as advanced as the founders. So at first things were kinda ok, but after millenias, wars between these different societies governed by natives, the techology regressed to the point where the setting more or less looks like medieval with broken remnants of high technology. Think : primitives in stargate, for example. Or maybe some old ruins in final fantasy franchise. Yep. That's another part of the story. Where, basically, I use (maybe some would say abuse) of Gödel's incompletude, without actually naming it.
