Ancient Tomes

I read a lot of Big Fat Fantasy Sagas. And I've noticed a recurrent meme. People are always RE-discovering some system of magic, by poring over Ancient Tomes (TM). Magic is something that was more widely understood in some glorious, almost-forgotten past.

Where are the innovators? the people devising NEW systems of magic? (The forgotten-past people had to have gotten THEIR system from somewhere.) Where are the research facilities where new magical theorems are tested and honed?

I exaggerate slightly - there are several ongoing series where magic is being explored and expanding in contemporaneous story-time, but they're few and far between. And they're actually more interesting than the Ancient Tomes genre. IMHO, of course.

sigh

5 PM on day two of a three day holiday weekend and the three stores across the street from us close their doors. It's like they're averse to business or something.

See my article, 'Is owning a store your dream? then act like it'.

Not just for Novelling any more

Okay, it's time to admit that if this blog is going to be about writing, it can't just be about writing fiction, because I'm not writing fiction right now.

It's really annoying - I have a plot! A complete, entire plot. And my characters and setting are amorphous blobs. It's usually the other way around, at least with me - wonderful characters that I want to play with, a unique and intriguing setting, and .... nothing for them to do. So the novel, such as it is, continues to ferment and seethe in the back area of my brain, over by the brainstem.

Still, I am writing, after a fashion - 400 word keyword articles for various venues, the odd query letter or two to the mainstream print media, etc. So I'm repurposing this blog to become a general writing blog, with hopes that my novel will eventually return to the forelobe and out the fingertips.

I hope all two of you who were breathlessly waiting to hear more about my novel aren't too disappointed.

Bonus trivia - Things you find out while looking up something else. Schmaltz is rendered chicken fat. Maybe you knew that, but I didn't, until yesterday.

tiny victories

Always celebrate your tiny victories.

Today I learned how to print on an envelop. Sounds trivial, but each darned printer has a different way they go in, and a different orientation thing you have to tell your word processor...

So yay for me.

Three volume fantasies - a rant

Okay, this isn't about MY novel, it's about someone else's. I'm not even done reading it yet, although I am in volume three, so I'm not going to specify the novel or author - who knows? it may pick up in the final innings.

But man, what a rut! The first two books were pretty good - introducing the milieu and making us care about the very large cast of characters. But this one... sheesh.

It's got the fairly standard fantasy set-up; the world is out of whack and various groups of heroes are trying to Restore Order to the Universe, being thwarted by heinously evil villains who like things fine the way they are. The usual stereotypes have been deployed (although the author wisely declines to bring in dwarves and elves); the sinister southerners who veil their women and keep slaves, and so forth.

The good guys are scattered in various groups all over the map, all convening on some final showdown. And if you ask me, JRR Tolkien has a lot to answer for, in pioneering the 'ensemble cast' form of mammoth multi-volume noveling, with tiny bands of players all scattered willy-nilly over an enormous map. Very few people do this form justice.

The author visits each group roughly in turn, which is clever writing because when you leave group A, you're all in a tizzy to return to their story so you read thru group B's adventures, leaving them in the lurch and wanting to get back to THEM as you move on to group C. It's a recipe for page-turning that's usually pretty effective.

But in total, it's getting kind of weird. Because they keep getting captured by bad guys and escaping and recaptured... In storyline A, the raiders are trying to capture the women of good-guy town, and brave woman heroine leads the great battle against them and ooooh, they win, only... boo, another group of bad guys come along and they're all captured and thrown into a ship. Then the brave woman heroine manages to get her chains off and kills the captain and steals the keys and liberates all the women only... boo, the ship is shipwrecked and they're all captured by -another- group of bad guys. Then all the women are in the seraglio and the brave heroine overpowers the harum manager and yay, they're all going to escape only... booooo, bad guy shows up and now they're all going to be sold at auction.

In storyline B, sweet sensitive hero escapes the clutches of his villainous father and brother with the Magic Device of Great Worth. Alarms go off and booo... he gets captured and brought back in chains. He escapes again, runs off and joins up with wandering nomads... booooo, evil soldiers kill all the kind gentle nomads and sensitive hero is back in chains. He's RESCUED by the mysterious mage-apprentice, and they escape -again-, and boom, recaptured and back in chains. At one point the mysterious mage-apprentice was DEAD and the Magic Device of Great Worth brought him back to life again.

I swear, if the mysterious MA dies AGAIN and is resurrected AGAIN, I'm going to toss this book in the trash.

I -know- you're supposed to keep the suspense building and the heroes in jeopardy, but this one crosses the line into pure parody.

Books for writers

Herewith, a couple recommendations (links in sidebar) for books about writing. Orson Scott Card not only writes best selling sci-fi (the now-classic Ender's Game and its innumerable sequels), he writes well about writing. His Characterization and ViewPoint is an excellent introduction to how to build realistic characters and how to find the right POV for the kind of story you want to tell. How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy isn't a book about writing, but a book about what's different about the SF/F genre and what conventions you can either follow or ignore, and which conventions you ignore at your peril. If you are not a faithful reader of SF/F and your budding novel falls into this genre, you really need to read this book (as well as a plethora of existing SF/F novels) before you continue.

One thing I liked about both these books is his description of four (non-exclusive) categories any story can fall into:

- Milieu story: the environment is the interesting thing and the story and/or characters may be secondary. Gulliver's Travels, Lord of the Rings, any stranger in a strange land story.

- Idea story: answers a specific question that is raised. Mysteries and many 'techie' sci-fi stories fall into this category.

- Character story: in which a character recognizes a need for change and is transformed (or not). Most of modern 'literary' fiction falls into this category.

- Event story: something is seriously wrong and must be righted. When the wrong is righted, the story is over. Lord of the Rings is both a milieu and event story in this case. Many sci-fi stories and thrillers are event stories. The Evil Villain must be foiled in his search for the planet-crushing device, etc.

Most people expect a reasonable mix of the above elements in their fiction, but if a mystery features a detective that is frankly a shallow collection of quirks, it doesn't matter much if the mystery itself is satisfying. A character story about a shallow collection of quirks would be annoying and unreadable.

Card got some unwelcome notoriety a while back when he made some comments that were taken by many to be homophobic. Since Card is a Mormon, I cut him a small amount of slack on the homophobia thing; he can't help it, poor dear - it's the way he was raised. He seems to be fairly generous in his support of other writers, and his personal website, Hatrack River, contains an amazing number of articles he's writtten on the art and business of writing.

Where to start?

Of course I read everything about writing I can find, and they all seem to be saying pretty much the same thing about where to start your story. When I tried this at NaNo, I started way too soon, with a bunch of boring, non-story-related events meant to introduce the protagonist to the reader. Half-way through, I realized my error, but it being NaNo, where writing crap is part of the deal, I forged ahead, understanding that I'd fix it later.

The problem was that I introduced the protagonist and main POV character via an interview he was conducting with a totally disposable character. Since at this point, we had only 'seen' these two individuals, the second, disposable character gained an importance that he didn't merit and wasn't going to need.

I decided that I would toss out all the events that happen on far-future Earth, and start the story in space, with our hero en route to the meet-up that would define the rest of the story.

Of course, today, while driving to and from work, I was coming up with all kinds of extraneous detail about Our Hero's life on Earth, and what the effects of an extremely underpopulated Earth would have on human society and culture. All stuff I won't be able to use in any meaningful way, since none of the action is going to be taking place in the milieu I'm lovingly inventing, except as it gives me (but not the reader - yet) insight into what motivates my boy. Isn't that always the way?