Spice Up Your Writing 🌶️

Despite the importance of spices in our history-the fact explorers crossed oceans for access to cinnamon and wars have been waged over nutmeg-I don't often see spice mentioned in a lot of fiction. Aside from the obvious. So let's take a look at spice, the worldbuilding and plot impacts it could have, and see how we can use it in our stories.

Script and VO by Adam Bassett
Animation by Cole Field

#spice #history #writingcommunity #authortube #writingadvice

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[kevingrundhofer]

Dude! You are my hero! I’ve been struggling for over a year as to what the final straw that breaks the camel’s back could be in the conflict between my two main people groups, and the salt trade is totally it. Thank you!

[nkapteyn]

A pretty good (and always overlooked) trilogy that revolves around the spice trade and spice routes is The Forsaken Lands, by Glenda Larke. Spice isn’t just used for food, but also for religious and superstitious reasons, since the people believe spice wards off a particular plague. It’s a fascinating look at how the spice trade influences the entire world she built, and adds a whole other flavour to the world (pun intended.)

[JohnDoe-hbhf]

I remember watching a streamer play Triangle Strategy, a tactics/strategy game from Square Enix from a couple months ago. The main conflict in the game is the salt trade, and a previous bloody war had been fought over it prior.

When the streamer found out the main plot was literally about salt🧂, they laughed it off as being dumb.

As a history buff I already knew about our own world's long bloody history over spice (and trade in general). It's not a bad premise by any means, but most people are so removed from the history and conflict, if you're making it your premise you need to properly lay out the world and character stakes for the average person to understand and enjoy your story.

Just my two cents, really enjoyed the video.

[GreenBlueWalkthrough]

Very true! As for me Spice also mean luxery/exotic goods pretty much becuase Sid Mier's Civilisation has it built in that way... Which I have in my novel set 500 years in the future had 2 of the character share a milshake topped with something called a star droplet a new kind of fruit cutvated sometime in the future. It's main fuction in the story is showing how things have changed yet stayed the same as they are haveing a very normsal date with this out of this world drink that is the guy's favoite and his favite cafe.

And another where one of those character is getting their back story fleshed out and the other is getting their story progressed. So I added a nice dark hyper dense/heavy wood that grow as tall as Earth's red woods but on high gravity world called Peter Chipnmy. Again for this otherworldliness but also to stress how heavy the wood must be and with magic it floats like the airship it's suposed to look like. Which I could have easly have just used a normal cerry and have the other be marble or something... But the new distant future fruit and wood really spiced it up.

[PhoenixCrown]

Interesting take. Especially the history is fun to know, but let's be real: People be warring over everything =P
I like either 1) the spice playing some integral role in magic/power/conquest, maybe a secret ingredient that requires deceit and subterfuge to maintain, and 2) the spice representing clear class structure, adding vivid and potentially fun worldbuilding.
Thanks!

[StarlasAiko]

Dragons fighting over cinnamon is not so weird if you consider all the cocoa that Aztec and Mayan gods were hoarding.

[Kelvin-ww]

Does anyone know the background music around 2:08

[MerkhVision]

What’s that music playing around 6:24? It’s really cool! It doesn’t seem to be credited in the description :/

[dougthedonkey]

Why are there such few comments and views?