A way with worlds: 35 - Normalcy

So, maybe in your world 50% of people have high school degrees, 10% have less than that, 30% have a college degree, 7% have a masters, and 3% have a PhD. So, on average, a randomly selected person would have a high school degree, and half my main cast (if they were selected at random) would have a high school degree.

And none of this relied on the mean. It's all statistics. You may start having flashbacks to the previous column - and you should.

To give an example in my own work, Xai. Religion is a big part of the story and the culture of the setting, so I know the distribution of religion - what percentage are synthesis,, what percentage are Christian, what percentage practice the native religion, etc. However, there is no "average" religious belief that actually exists, merely the odds one will belong to a particular belief set (or a syncretic belief set), and some chances are higher than others.

In designing your world, you need to know the distributions of elements in your world - what percentage of people are what religion, what percentage of a planet is ocean, what level of income is most common, etc. Then you can get an idea of how your world works - and what is likely and unlikely.

SO, IS THERE A NORMAL?
Something in your world may be very common that people consider it normal. Some elements may be common enough that people think of them as normal. But "normal" itself isn't easy to grasp - normal is just a concept.

If this sounds like my last column on odds seen through the looking glass, that's exactly the point - there are no normal, only odds and how they're portrayed and perceived. Normal is a matter of perception and perspective, and playing statistician with your world may end up confusing and misleading you - think of how often someone's tried to convince you something was "normal" by arcane math.

Know what your characters think of as normal. Know how the odds of your world work. Don't get bogged down in statistical calculations and simplistic definitions - you'll find no help and many possible traps.

SUMMARY:
Simple math won't describe what is normal in your world - because "normal" is actually a very subjective concept. Instead, understand the individual likelihood and distributions of various elements of your world and write from there.

A Way with Worlds is hosted at fanfiction.net, lit.org, and sffworld.com.
A German translation is in the works at Christian Spliess's Page
It is archived at the Way With Worlds archive.