I might actually meet my deadline. I think I can finish the first draft this week, and that then gives me about a week for polishing. I’m heading into the big final confrontation stuff, so it tends to go more quickly, unless I have to stop and think.
I haven’t done a book report in ages. I guess I went through a bit of a “blah” reading phase. But I recently read one I want to talk about, The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst. It’s the kind of fantasy novel I’ve been looking for. I’m not sure I’d call it “light” because some pretty dark stuff happens, but it has a sense of optimism to it and the protagonists are honorable, relatable people, so it’s not too depressing. The worldbuilding is astonishing. The society and the physical structure of the world are unlike anything I’ve seen before. This is definitely not your standard-issue quasi-medieval fantasy world.
For one thing, the people live in trees! There are whole villages formed among the branches of giant trees. However, the forest isn’t entirely safe because there’s a delicate balance between the people and the spirits of the world. The spirits want to kill people, but people have managed to keep them in check and get their service at times. The story is about what happens when that balance goes off and how it may take a new approach to achieve a different kind of balance. Saying much more about the story would give away too much.
Between this and Uprooted, it makes you look at the woods in a totally different way.
I’ve also been doing some non-fiction reading. It took me ages to get through it since I was fitting it in around fiction reading and writing, but I read The Fellowship, by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, which is about the group of writers around Oxford that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The book gets into the history and lives of Lewis, Tolkien, and the other main members of the Inklings, weaving their individual stories together in the ways their lives intersected and delving into their individual faiths and the influence of life and faith on their writing. It was fascinating stuff, if a bit dense at times.
In a way, it made me wish for a group of friends like that, people to get together with and talk about writing and myth and faith. But then the thought of reading my work in progress out loud to people is rather terrifying, and getting together a couple of times a week would be overkill to me. I wouldn’t have time to get any writing done.
Reading about their influences and their philosophies on fantasy was interesting because it echoes a lot of the way I look at it, as a way of exploring ideas and creating places where amazing things can happen.
I’m not sure I’d recommend this book to anyone who wasn’t really, really interested in the topic, though.
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Friday, January 06, 2017
Old Books
I hit a particular reading mood right before Christmas in which what I desperately wanted to read was fun fantasy — something escapist, about people I liked having adventures in a world I’d want to visit. I wanted something like Stardust, with adventure, magic, and romance. I posed the question to a fantasy group on Facebook and got a lot of recommendations for things I’ve already read. But there were also some recommendations for old classics that I hadn’t read, books from the early days of fantasy as a commercial publishing genre. Fantasy stories have been around forever, but it was the US paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings in the late 60s/early 70s (I think the late 60s one was unauthorized, but it was still a big hit) that kickstarted the idea of books like that as a genre that was kind of a subset of science fiction, and they started actually labeling books as “fantasy” and had publishing imprints dedicated to that.
As happens with a lot of newly popular genres, publishers became desperate to find more books like that, which meant the quality varied widely. The Sword of Shannara was one of those early books, and it was essentially a retelling of The Lord of the Rings. There were a lot more a lot like that. I missed many of them, even though I was a teen fantasy reader hungry for more books like that in the early 80s, mostly because of my access to books at the time. I was living in a small town without a library or bookstore. The school library was pretty much useless. The nearest bookstore was a B. Dalton in the mall in a city more than ten miles away, and I didn’t have independent transportation to get there or much money to spend on books. We mostly got our book fix from the large used bookstore in that nearby city, and later we were able to get a membership in the library in a nearby small town. But that meant that my selection was limited to what was in the library (and when it came to paperbacks, that usually meant what people had donated) or what was in the used bookstore, and that meant it was the books people were willing to get rid of. As a result, I missed a lot of the classics from that era.
So, I thought I’d give some of those that were being recommended a shot. I figure that someone working as a fantasy novelist ought to have read some of the standards. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to go back and read those now. They come across as awfully cliched. These were the books that created the cliches, so they weren’t cliches at the time, but if you’ve ready pretty widely in the genre and then go back to the earlier books, the tropes really jump out at you.
For instance, how many of these books start with a weather report? It’s like the way to set the mood and establish the world is to have the main character noting the weather — snow is falling, it hasn’t rained in ages, there’s a storm coming. Then we frequently have our hero do something really dumb that ends up launching him into the story — he misses a turn and goes to the wrong place, forgets what he was sent to do, takes a break to take a nap and oversleeps, trusts the wrong person, trips over something and causes a disaster, etc. This is because we have to establish our hero as an unlikely hero, an everyman underdog in the mold of Frodo and Bilbo, and apparently that means he’s a bit bumbling. He’ll probably be helped out of the fix he got himself into by the appearance of a white-bearded, wise old wizard. Once he’s thanked the wizard for his rescue, the two of them will have some kind of conversation in which they discuss the history and current political situation of their world. The wizard will either sense some kind of power or potential in our hero or will know something about the hero’s background that the hero doesn’t realize about himself (all those orphans with mysterious origins). The wizard will either recruit the hero for some kind of quest or take him on as an apprentice. The hero will try to learn magic and fail (more bumbling), and it’s almost inevitable that he’ll later learn that this is because he’s truly special and has a different kind of magic that doesn’t work by the usual rules. Once he figures out how his power works, he’ll be the most powerful wizard ever.
I won’t name the book that inspired this rant because it applies to more than half the fantasy novels published between about 1973 and 1993. I’m really making an effort to get through the one I’m reading now, since the author is now considered a grandmaster of the field and I’ve never read anything by him, but I don’t know how long I can take it. It’s not his fault that other people went on to do the formula better than he did or that other people ripped him off (then again, I’ve read several books in this mold that were published before this one, so it was already a bit tropey).
However, I will blame the author for making a bad point of view break in the opening paragraph. I think I need to do a writing post on handling deep POV.
I need to find more current fantasy that’s not so grim and dark. What else is out there for someone who wants to read something like Stardust?
As happens with a lot of newly popular genres, publishers became desperate to find more books like that, which meant the quality varied widely. The Sword of Shannara was one of those early books, and it was essentially a retelling of The Lord of the Rings. There were a lot more a lot like that. I missed many of them, even though I was a teen fantasy reader hungry for more books like that in the early 80s, mostly because of my access to books at the time. I was living in a small town without a library or bookstore. The school library was pretty much useless. The nearest bookstore was a B. Dalton in the mall in a city more than ten miles away, and I didn’t have independent transportation to get there or much money to spend on books. We mostly got our book fix from the large used bookstore in that nearby city, and later we were able to get a membership in the library in a nearby small town. But that meant that my selection was limited to what was in the library (and when it came to paperbacks, that usually meant what people had donated) or what was in the used bookstore, and that meant it was the books people were willing to get rid of. As a result, I missed a lot of the classics from that era.
So, I thought I’d give some of those that were being recommended a shot. I figure that someone working as a fantasy novelist ought to have read some of the standards. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to go back and read those now. They come across as awfully cliched. These were the books that created the cliches, so they weren’t cliches at the time, but if you’ve ready pretty widely in the genre and then go back to the earlier books, the tropes really jump out at you.
For instance, how many of these books start with a weather report? It’s like the way to set the mood and establish the world is to have the main character noting the weather — snow is falling, it hasn’t rained in ages, there’s a storm coming. Then we frequently have our hero do something really dumb that ends up launching him into the story — he misses a turn and goes to the wrong place, forgets what he was sent to do, takes a break to take a nap and oversleeps, trusts the wrong person, trips over something and causes a disaster, etc. This is because we have to establish our hero as an unlikely hero, an everyman underdog in the mold of Frodo and Bilbo, and apparently that means he’s a bit bumbling. He’ll probably be helped out of the fix he got himself into by the appearance of a white-bearded, wise old wizard. Once he’s thanked the wizard for his rescue, the two of them will have some kind of conversation in which they discuss the history and current political situation of their world. The wizard will either sense some kind of power or potential in our hero or will know something about the hero’s background that the hero doesn’t realize about himself (all those orphans with mysterious origins). The wizard will either recruit the hero for some kind of quest or take him on as an apprentice. The hero will try to learn magic and fail (more bumbling), and it’s almost inevitable that he’ll later learn that this is because he’s truly special and has a different kind of magic that doesn’t work by the usual rules. Once he figures out how his power works, he’ll be the most powerful wizard ever.
I won’t name the book that inspired this rant because it applies to more than half the fantasy novels published between about 1973 and 1993. I’m really making an effort to get through the one I’m reading now, since the author is now considered a grandmaster of the field and I’ve never read anything by him, but I don’t know how long I can take it. It’s not his fault that other people went on to do the formula better than he did or that other people ripped him off (then again, I’ve read several books in this mold that were published before this one, so it was already a bit tropey).
However, I will blame the author for making a bad point of view break in the opening paragraph. I think I need to do a writing post on handling deep POV.
I need to find more current fantasy that’s not so grim and dark. What else is out there for someone who wants to read something like Stardust?
Friday, December 09, 2016
In Praise of Escapist Fantasy
I finished the Magicians trilogy, and now I see why people liked it. The second half of the first book was awfully grim, but the second two books have a real sense of wonder and fun. We got to see those cynical characters from the first book becoming good, strong (but still snarky) people, living up to their potential after everything they'd been through.
Now I'm in the mood for something else that's fun and escapist, and that's been a bit of a challenge. Of all the books I have on my shelf from convention freebies and the Nebula goody bag, most of the ones I haven't read yet sound so bleak and grim. Just reading the plot descriptions on the covers makes me want to crawl in bed and pull the blanket over my head.
And, you know, right now, the world needs some hope and escapism. It's been a rough year, and there's some scary and nasty stuff happening. We don't need to read about dystopias. What we need is hope and joy. It's hard to build a better world when you can't envision what that looks like, when all you're seeing is something dark and grim. That's why I'm glad that I do what I do. The kinds of things I write might not be taken seriously by the kind of people who use "escapist" or "fluff" as a criticism, but I think it can be just as important as all the grim, serious, message-laden stuff (not saying that there's anything wrong with the more serious stuff, just that it's not the only kind of fiction that has merit).
Why is escapism so important? Part of it might get called "self care." It's hard to take on the world all the time. Sometimes you need to take a step back and refresh, and a moment of fun and happiness may be what you need to recharge enough to go back out into the world and make a difference.
Then there's what I mentioned before about needing an image of a better world so you know how to make it happen. Sometimes we need a glimpse of a world where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad, and the good guys prevail because they're good. We need a reminder that being good can be rewarding when we live in a world where good doesn't always win. That's why I don't really like the grimdark stuff or dystopias. I get enough about that from watching the news.
I get e-mails from people who've read my books while going through chemo, while on bedrest with a difficult pregnancy, who've read them to people recovering from strokes. They wanted something fun and light to take their minds off their current woes. I like to think that reading about good people doing good things and winning might encourage people that it's okay to be good, brave, and kind. And if enough people get that kind of encouragement, maybe they can change the world.
Now I'm in the mood for something else that's fun and escapist, and that's been a bit of a challenge. Of all the books I have on my shelf from convention freebies and the Nebula goody bag, most of the ones I haven't read yet sound so bleak and grim. Just reading the plot descriptions on the covers makes me want to crawl in bed and pull the blanket over my head.
And, you know, right now, the world needs some hope and escapism. It's been a rough year, and there's some scary and nasty stuff happening. We don't need to read about dystopias. What we need is hope and joy. It's hard to build a better world when you can't envision what that looks like, when all you're seeing is something dark and grim. That's why I'm glad that I do what I do. The kinds of things I write might not be taken seriously by the kind of people who use "escapist" or "fluff" as a criticism, but I think it can be just as important as all the grim, serious, message-laden stuff (not saying that there's anything wrong with the more serious stuff, just that it's not the only kind of fiction that has merit).
Why is escapism so important? Part of it might get called "self care." It's hard to take on the world all the time. Sometimes you need to take a step back and refresh, and a moment of fun and happiness may be what you need to recharge enough to go back out into the world and make a difference.
Then there's what I mentioned before about needing an image of a better world so you know how to make it happen. Sometimes we need a glimpse of a world where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad, and the good guys prevail because they're good. We need a reminder that being good can be rewarding when we live in a world where good doesn't always win. That's why I don't really like the grimdark stuff or dystopias. I get enough about that from watching the news.
I get e-mails from people who've read my books while going through chemo, while on bedrest with a difficult pregnancy, who've read them to people recovering from strokes. They wanted something fun and light to take their minds off their current woes. I like to think that reading about good people doing good things and winning might encourage people that it's okay to be good, brave, and kind. And if enough people get that kind of encouragement, maybe they can change the world.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Reading Slump
So, I visited my book yesterday, and that always makes me feel awkward. I thought more authors did this sort of thing, but the people at the stores always act surprised when I offer to sign their stock. Then they think I want to do a booksigning right then and start talking about setting up a table. I pointed out that there were five books and I could sign them in just a few minutes right there.
If you don't find the book when you visit the bookstore, ask for it. It took me a while to find my own book in a store where I knew there were copies because someone had tweeted a picture of them. I was looking in Teen Fantasy, and it was in Teen Fiction (flashbacks to the Enchanted, Inc. series being shelved in Fiction instead of in Fantasy).
I'm narrowing in on a solution to my story problem. When in doubt, look to the folklore/mythology. There's probably something that will provide the solution.
I've been in a bit of a reading slump lately, and I've finally decided to give up on the book I've been trying to read for six weeks. It's not that it's a bad book. It's just that it's a little too long and slow for the amount of emotional investment I have in it. I'm intrigued by the premise, but it's paced as epic fantasy, which means events are really spread out, with descriptions of every single meal they eat in between each major event. Seriously, what is the deal with food and epic fantasy? I've noticed that most books in the genre really get into food, even when one of the points is that because of the way things are going, they eat the same thing at almost every meal. There are entire scenes comparing whether the fruit, bread, and cheese at this place is better than the fruit, bread, and cheese at the previous place. I don't care about the food. I want to get to the part where they blow things up with magic. Or even where the main character has anything resembling a relationship with another character -- not necessarily romantic, but something that feels like a connection that makes me care about whether or not it continues or where I know she'll feel some kind of pain if something happens to the other person.
So I'm moving on to rereading a lot of Terry Pratchett before WorldCon, and it counts as work! Right now, I'm rereading Nation, which is a non-Discworld book. But I still love it. When I was a kid, I was very fond of shipwreck/survival type stories where the characters had to fend for themselves for a while in some difficult environment. I love it now, but when I was a kid, I'm sure I would have been utterly obsessed with this book, would have read it over and over again, and would have researched (or tried) some of the stuff in it. I'm afraid I'm a bit too much like the girl characters he tended to write. Then again, I'm planning to be Granny Weatherwax in my old age.
If you don't find the book when you visit the bookstore, ask for it. It took me a while to find my own book in a store where I knew there were copies because someone had tweeted a picture of them. I was looking in Teen Fantasy, and it was in Teen Fiction (flashbacks to the Enchanted, Inc. series being shelved in Fiction instead of in Fantasy).
I'm narrowing in on a solution to my story problem. When in doubt, look to the folklore/mythology. There's probably something that will provide the solution.
I've been in a bit of a reading slump lately, and I've finally decided to give up on the book I've been trying to read for six weeks. It's not that it's a bad book. It's just that it's a little too long and slow for the amount of emotional investment I have in it. I'm intrigued by the premise, but it's paced as epic fantasy, which means events are really spread out, with descriptions of every single meal they eat in between each major event. Seriously, what is the deal with food and epic fantasy? I've noticed that most books in the genre really get into food, even when one of the points is that because of the way things are going, they eat the same thing at almost every meal. There are entire scenes comparing whether the fruit, bread, and cheese at this place is better than the fruit, bread, and cheese at the previous place. I don't care about the food. I want to get to the part where they blow things up with magic. Or even where the main character has anything resembling a relationship with another character -- not necessarily romantic, but something that feels like a connection that makes me care about whether or not it continues or where I know she'll feel some kind of pain if something happens to the other person.
So I'm moving on to rereading a lot of Terry Pratchett before WorldCon, and it counts as work! Right now, I'm rereading Nation, which is a non-Discworld book. But I still love it. When I was a kid, I was very fond of shipwreck/survival type stories where the characters had to fend for themselves for a while in some difficult environment. I love it now, but when I was a kid, I'm sure I would have been utterly obsessed with this book, would have read it over and over again, and would have researched (or tried) some of the stuff in it. I'm afraid I'm a bit too much like the girl characters he tended to write. Then again, I'm planning to be Granny Weatherwax in my old age.
Tuesday, June 02, 2015
Revisiting Epic Fantasy
I'm closing in on the end of this book -- finally! Within about 10,000 words I should be at a length I'd consider a full novel. I don't know how many words it will take to finish the story. I've discovered some surprising things along the way. For instance, I now know what the deal is with that cat/woman fairy. She's played a role in the plot in the past, and I knew there was a story behind her. I just didn't know what that was until yesterday.
Now I just have to resist the end-of-story impatience that has me so excited with the end in sight that I rush toward the end, skimming over things like "lots of stuff happened and they beat the bad guys, the end!"
I went on about a month-long library lull because I've been trying to purge the to-be-read pile (or as one of my friends dubbed it, The Strategic Book Reserve) and actually read some of the books that I thought I might read at some point. I found a small nest of Old School Del Rey fantasy novels from the late 70s/early 80s that I'd somehow never read. That was a real blast from the past. This seemed to be from the era soon after the official US paperback publication of The Lord of the Rings, when suddenly everyone wanted more books like that and fantasy was the next hot thing. There was even a special variation of the Del Rey imprint logo to indicate that it was a fantasy. I suspect that this was a case of publishing glut (though I don't know that the genre ever died out) when they were so desperate to find these books that they were buying them up left and right. Newbie authors could become smash bestsellers overnight, just on the virtue of having that logo on the spine, that style of cover art, and a map at the beginning of the book. Some of the authors first published during that wave are still going strong (Terry Brooks). Others have faded into obscurity since then.
After reading one and a half of these books, I can see why I haven't read these in all the time I've had them (I'm not sure when I obtained them) and why these books are now out of print and I can't find anything newer than about 1984 by this author. I suspect that at the time they were very much in the "it must be like Tolkien" mode -- the story had to be a journey or quest of some sort, the questing party had to be made up of people from various magical races, and the hero had to be an "unlikely" ordinary guy (always a guy) thrust into this adventure, usually a bit reluctantly. And there always had to be a wizard in the Gandalf mold. There was often some weasely bad guy stalking them, wanting to get their magical object(s). Usually, the wizard had to give a chapter-long lecture on the history of their world and of the bad guy in the second chapter, before they set out on their quest. There was always some incident in the middle when the questing party made a really bad decision, overruling the wizard's advice, that ended in some kind of disaster and major setback (note to self -- when on a quest and tired of walking, be very, very suspicious if just the right number of really friendly and suspiciously well-trained horses shows up. It's a trap. It's always a trap.).
I imagine a lot of the issues have to do with the time. There was likely that "it must be just like X, but different" factor. Pacing was very different then. There was a very strong emphasis of plot over character, and I think today's readers generally demand a deeper viewpoint. I got to the end of one book and still couldn't have told you much of anything about who those people were, which made it hard to care what happened to them.
But man, when I was in high school, I probably would have devoured this stuff. I probably wouldn't have noticed the thin characters because I'd have fleshed them out in my head. I'd have charted every step on their journey on the map at the front. I'm not sure these particular books would have become obsessions the way some of the others I read at the time did, but this was still the sort of thing I enjoyed reading at the time, and it was the kind of thing I kept trying to write when I first decided I wanted to write a fantasy novel. I still would love to write a classic "quest" fantasy, and No Quest for the Wicked was my way of playing with those tropes in a modern setting (if you read a lot of these fantasy novels back in the day, you may recognize them).
I saw this map of "Clichea," the generic epic fantasy world around the time I was struggling through these books and found it highly amusing, but almost too true to be funny.
I did finally give in and go to the library. Now I'm reading a Charles de Lint book. Aaahhhh, sweet relief. I may stick to fantasy that's a little more recent or that has stood the test of time.
Now I just have to resist the end-of-story impatience that has me so excited with the end in sight that I rush toward the end, skimming over things like "lots of stuff happened and they beat the bad guys, the end!"
I went on about a month-long library lull because I've been trying to purge the to-be-read pile (or as one of my friends dubbed it, The Strategic Book Reserve) and actually read some of the books that I thought I might read at some point. I found a small nest of Old School Del Rey fantasy novels from the late 70s/early 80s that I'd somehow never read. That was a real blast from the past. This seemed to be from the era soon after the official US paperback publication of The Lord of the Rings, when suddenly everyone wanted more books like that and fantasy was the next hot thing. There was even a special variation of the Del Rey imprint logo to indicate that it was a fantasy. I suspect that this was a case of publishing glut (though I don't know that the genre ever died out) when they were so desperate to find these books that they were buying them up left and right. Newbie authors could become smash bestsellers overnight, just on the virtue of having that logo on the spine, that style of cover art, and a map at the beginning of the book. Some of the authors first published during that wave are still going strong (Terry Brooks). Others have faded into obscurity since then.
After reading one and a half of these books, I can see why I haven't read these in all the time I've had them (I'm not sure when I obtained them) and why these books are now out of print and I can't find anything newer than about 1984 by this author. I suspect that at the time they were very much in the "it must be like Tolkien" mode -- the story had to be a journey or quest of some sort, the questing party had to be made up of people from various magical races, and the hero had to be an "unlikely" ordinary guy (always a guy) thrust into this adventure, usually a bit reluctantly. And there always had to be a wizard in the Gandalf mold. There was often some weasely bad guy stalking them, wanting to get their magical object(s). Usually, the wizard had to give a chapter-long lecture on the history of their world and of the bad guy in the second chapter, before they set out on their quest. There was always some incident in the middle when the questing party made a really bad decision, overruling the wizard's advice, that ended in some kind of disaster and major setback (note to self -- when on a quest and tired of walking, be very, very suspicious if just the right number of really friendly and suspiciously well-trained horses shows up. It's a trap. It's always a trap.).
I imagine a lot of the issues have to do with the time. There was likely that "it must be just like X, but different" factor. Pacing was very different then. There was a very strong emphasis of plot over character, and I think today's readers generally demand a deeper viewpoint. I got to the end of one book and still couldn't have told you much of anything about who those people were, which made it hard to care what happened to them.
But man, when I was in high school, I probably would have devoured this stuff. I probably wouldn't have noticed the thin characters because I'd have fleshed them out in my head. I'd have charted every step on their journey on the map at the front. I'm not sure these particular books would have become obsessions the way some of the others I read at the time did, but this was still the sort of thing I enjoyed reading at the time, and it was the kind of thing I kept trying to write when I first decided I wanted to write a fantasy novel. I still would love to write a classic "quest" fantasy, and No Quest for the Wicked was my way of playing with those tropes in a modern setting (if you read a lot of these fantasy novels back in the day, you may recognize them).
I saw this map of "Clichea," the generic epic fantasy world around the time I was struggling through these books and found it highly amusing, but almost too true to be funny.
I did finally give in and go to the library. Now I'm reading a Charles de Lint book. Aaahhhh, sweet relief. I may stick to fantasy that's a little more recent or that has stood the test of time.
Friday, April 05, 2013
Magical Realsim
Yesterday's sniffles seem to have been the harbinger of a cold, which ruined my plans for the day. I'm reminded of back when I was in school (or when I had a regular office job). There were days when I had no pressing reason to be at school or work and it was a perfect day for staying home and reading, and I could turn a few minor symptoms into a serious illness. But then there were the days when I was sick on a day when there was something going on at school or work that I wanted to be there for, and I'd keep telling myself that I was getting better, and maybe I could pull myself together and make it. I was supposed to go hiking/geocaching today, and it's the perfect weather for it (which is also the wrong weather for a reading day), so if I go five minutes without a sniffle or sneeze, I find myself thinking that maybe I could go, after all. And then I'll sneeze or cough. It really would be wise for me to take it easy today so I can maybe get over this quicker. I also think there should be a limit as to the number of colds any one person can get each year. I've had more than my fair share, and I wouldn't want to be greedy.
But I did get a lot of reading done yesterday, since always needing a hand free for tissues made knitting challenging. I've decided that the kind of fantasy women's fiction that's more magical realism can be rather frustrating. I enjoy it while I'm reading, but then I start thinking about it and I get annoyed by all the "was it really magic?" loose ends. As a fantasy reader, when I see something supernatural in a book, I take it at face value rather than thinking of it as metaphor or symbolism or some psychological thing (I nearly threw Life of Pi across the room when I got to the end and got the "explanation."). If there's magic, I want it to make sense as magic. I want to know how it works, where it comes from, what the rules and limits are. The vague "it's odd, but we don't really think too much about it or question it, and it may just be symbolic" magical realism thing leaves me unsatisfied. Plus, a lot of the time, if it isn't magic, if that's just in the minds of the characters, then there tend to be a lot of staggering coincidences. They work if there's magic, because something is making it happen, but if there isn't magic, it's very contrived.
Does anyone know where A Discovery of Witches is shelved in bookstores? I've started reading it, and it reads like flat-out fantasy (with a strong helping of paranormal romance), with magic, witches, vampires, etc., and the writing being more genre style than literary. My library put a "fantasy" sticker on it (it has "witch" in the title), but all the author blurbs on the cover are from literary authors. It's showing up on the fantasy and horror Amazon bestseller lists, but I recall it getting mainstream/literary treatment when it was released. It shows up in the "people who bought this also bought" lists for both the books I know were published as fantasy and the books I know were published as mainstream women's fiction.
Now I'm going to go pretend it's gray and rainy and spend the day on the sofa with a book, some tea and the tissue box.
But I did get a lot of reading done yesterday, since always needing a hand free for tissues made knitting challenging. I've decided that the kind of fantasy women's fiction that's more magical realism can be rather frustrating. I enjoy it while I'm reading, but then I start thinking about it and I get annoyed by all the "was it really magic?" loose ends. As a fantasy reader, when I see something supernatural in a book, I take it at face value rather than thinking of it as metaphor or symbolism or some psychological thing (I nearly threw Life of Pi across the room when I got to the end and got the "explanation."). If there's magic, I want it to make sense as magic. I want to know how it works, where it comes from, what the rules and limits are. The vague "it's odd, but we don't really think too much about it or question it, and it may just be symbolic" magical realism thing leaves me unsatisfied. Plus, a lot of the time, if it isn't magic, if that's just in the minds of the characters, then there tend to be a lot of staggering coincidences. They work if there's magic, because something is making it happen, but if there isn't magic, it's very contrived.
Does anyone know where A Discovery of Witches is shelved in bookstores? I've started reading it, and it reads like flat-out fantasy (with a strong helping of paranormal romance), with magic, witches, vampires, etc., and the writing being more genre style than literary. My library put a "fantasy" sticker on it (it has "witch" in the title), but all the author blurbs on the cover are from literary authors. It's showing up on the fantasy and horror Amazon bestseller lists, but I recall it getting mainstream/literary treatment when it was released. It shows up in the "people who bought this also bought" lists for both the books I know were published as fantasy and the books I know were published as mainstream women's fiction.
Now I'm going to go pretend it's gray and rainy and spend the day on the sofa with a book, some tea and the tissue box.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Friday Follow-ups
I have a number of follow-ups to recent topics.
First, there was an interesting story in the news this week that tied into my reality concerns involving the premise of the movie Easy A. There was apparently a "fantasy slut league" at a California high school in which male students "drafted" female students and earned points for real-life sex with them, and many of the female students knew about it and participated willingly or because of peer pressure. I'd say that the fact that the peer pressure was to participate proves that it would be unlikely for a girl to become the subject of a rumor mill for supposedly having sex once -- unless she was something like the president of the purity club or something else that would make her out to be a huge hypocrite.
Second, the discussion about the portal books continues in writing and publishing circles. The Publishers Weekly "Genreville" blog about fantasy and science fiction recently had a post about this trend and a possible sense of "exhaustion" in the genre -- if we're living in the future, has our world become the "other" world so that we're no longer interested in other worlds? It does seem like a lot of the fantasy published today (including my books) takes place in our world rather than in the "other" world that's traditionally been the setting for fantasy. That's interesting to think about. I tend to go in cycles. I love the juxtaposition of the normal and the abnormal, that sense that maybe this time you'll round the corner and find that things are different. But then sometimes I just want to escape.
I also read that one of the issues with the portal fantasy is that not only is the idea that an ordinary person in our world becomes the Destined, Chosen One With Magical Specialness dangerously close to Mary Sue wish fulfillment, but if you look at it through politically correct goggles, it becomes a metaphor for colonialism, with the ignorant savages needing the more sophisticated outsider to come in and solve all their problems for them, and that makes a lot of editors uncomfortable. Never mind that all these other worlds seem to be very white and European-based.
But that got me started thinking: Why do most of these "other" worlds that people visit through portals seem to be quasi-medieval and European? I suspect to some extent it has to do with the fact that for a very long time, the standard fantasy setting was quasi-medieval and European -- swords, knights, castles and the like, with bonus wizards. Therefore, if you were going to travel from our world to a fantasy world, it had to be what a fantasy world was supposed to look like.
But then if you think about it, some of the earlier portal fantasies didn't involve medieval worlds. Alice's Wonderland was more or less Victorian, made different from the "real" world by whimsical touches like talking animals and playing cards. I'm not sure it really even mapped to a particular time period, aside from a few things like the tea party and the croquet game. Likewise with Neverland, which seemed to be an amalgamation of everything that seemed like a good fit for a place where you could have adventures -- pirates, Indians, mermaids, and the like. Even in the original illustrations, Hook looks vaguely early 18th century, but otherwise, it would be hard to time-stamp Neverland. It's been ages since I read The Wizard of Oz, but a quick skim of the description of the Emerald City doesn't strike me as the typical medieval fantasy world. It seems more like a city contemporary to the time of the writing, only better (there's specific mention of no horses, which would imply it's a lot cleaner). Actually, it would be really hard to map Oz to any particular time in earth's history. Oz is Oz.
And, really, why would a fantasy world have to follow earth's history so exactly that you could figure out what time period you're in? I remember the Internet outcry over the fact that there were hay bales mentioned in the Wheel of Time books because those wouldn't have existed in that time period. What time period? This is another world! Ditto with SCA complaints about fantasy, unless the story is specifically set in our history.
Now that fantasy has broadened beyond the medieval European setting, I wonder if there's room for portal worlds that are, say, Victorian or Regency (assuming there's room for portal worlds at all). Or get wild and crazy and pull an Oz, so that your portal world is itself and not anything you can map against earth. It might be full of seeming anachronisms because technology may have developed in different ways and at different rates. The clothes might be different not only because of technology but because societies with different religions and moral codes might not have the same taboos of what parts of the body can be shown. The existence of magic might stall the development of technology or lead into entirely new technologies. They might not have internal combustion engines, but they might have the equivalent of flying cars, because if magic allows you to fly, why bother building roads?
And now I think I've fed my subconscious a little too much, considering I have work to do, especially since I plan to plant myself on the couch tonight. It's nice and cool, so I can huddle under the blankets and watch Grimm and Haven's Halloween episodes.
First, there was an interesting story in the news this week that tied into my reality concerns involving the premise of the movie Easy A. There was apparently a "fantasy slut league" at a California high school in which male students "drafted" female students and earned points for real-life sex with them, and many of the female students knew about it and participated willingly or because of peer pressure. I'd say that the fact that the peer pressure was to participate proves that it would be unlikely for a girl to become the subject of a rumor mill for supposedly having sex once -- unless she was something like the president of the purity club or something else that would make her out to be a huge hypocrite.
Second, the discussion about the portal books continues in writing and publishing circles. The Publishers Weekly "Genreville" blog about fantasy and science fiction recently had a post about this trend and a possible sense of "exhaustion" in the genre -- if we're living in the future, has our world become the "other" world so that we're no longer interested in other worlds? It does seem like a lot of the fantasy published today (including my books) takes place in our world rather than in the "other" world that's traditionally been the setting for fantasy. That's interesting to think about. I tend to go in cycles. I love the juxtaposition of the normal and the abnormal, that sense that maybe this time you'll round the corner and find that things are different. But then sometimes I just want to escape.
I also read that one of the issues with the portal fantasy is that not only is the idea that an ordinary person in our world becomes the Destined, Chosen One With Magical Specialness dangerously close to Mary Sue wish fulfillment, but if you look at it through politically correct goggles, it becomes a metaphor for colonialism, with the ignorant savages needing the more sophisticated outsider to come in and solve all their problems for them, and that makes a lot of editors uncomfortable. Never mind that all these other worlds seem to be very white and European-based.
But that got me started thinking: Why do most of these "other" worlds that people visit through portals seem to be quasi-medieval and European? I suspect to some extent it has to do with the fact that for a very long time, the standard fantasy setting was quasi-medieval and European -- swords, knights, castles and the like, with bonus wizards. Therefore, if you were going to travel from our world to a fantasy world, it had to be what a fantasy world was supposed to look like.
But then if you think about it, some of the earlier portal fantasies didn't involve medieval worlds. Alice's Wonderland was more or less Victorian, made different from the "real" world by whimsical touches like talking animals and playing cards. I'm not sure it really even mapped to a particular time period, aside from a few things like the tea party and the croquet game. Likewise with Neverland, which seemed to be an amalgamation of everything that seemed like a good fit for a place where you could have adventures -- pirates, Indians, mermaids, and the like. Even in the original illustrations, Hook looks vaguely early 18th century, but otherwise, it would be hard to time-stamp Neverland. It's been ages since I read The Wizard of Oz, but a quick skim of the description of the Emerald City doesn't strike me as the typical medieval fantasy world. It seems more like a city contemporary to the time of the writing, only better (there's specific mention of no horses, which would imply it's a lot cleaner). Actually, it would be really hard to map Oz to any particular time in earth's history. Oz is Oz.
And, really, why would a fantasy world have to follow earth's history so exactly that you could figure out what time period you're in? I remember the Internet outcry over the fact that there were hay bales mentioned in the Wheel of Time books because those wouldn't have existed in that time period. What time period? This is another world! Ditto with SCA complaints about fantasy, unless the story is specifically set in our history.
Now that fantasy has broadened beyond the medieval European setting, I wonder if there's room for portal worlds that are, say, Victorian or Regency (assuming there's room for portal worlds at all). Or get wild and crazy and pull an Oz, so that your portal world is itself and not anything you can map against earth. It might be full of seeming anachronisms because technology may have developed in different ways and at different rates. The clothes might be different not only because of technology but because societies with different religions and moral codes might not have the same taboos of what parts of the body can be shown. The existence of magic might stall the development of technology or lead into entirely new technologies. They might not have internal combustion engines, but they might have the equivalent of flying cars, because if magic allows you to fly, why bother building roads?
And now I think I've fed my subconscious a little too much, considering I have work to do, especially since I plan to plant myself on the couch tonight. It's nice and cool, so I can huddle under the blankets and watch Grimm and Haven's Halloween episodes.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Sucked Through a Portal
Will I make it through a day without anything breaking or needing repair? I'm starting to wonder. After I got the car battery replaced yesterday, in the afternoon my water was cut off. When I got desperate for tea, I called the HOA manager to see what was up and if she had a timetable for the water being back on (and if it was just me). She didn't know anything about it, which had me worried. But it turned out they were doing some sprinkler system repairs and had cut off the water and neglected to notify anyone that they were doing so, I guess assuming that everyone was at work. Well, I was at work, but I was at work at home, and I needed tea. I was just about to start melting ice cubes in the microwave to get water for making tea when the water came back on. Still, with all the little things that have gone wrong around me lately, I'm starting to wonder if I have some kind of Trouble that makes devices in my presence fail. It's one of the more minor, inconvenient Troubles, as it doesn't seem to kill anyone. It's just going to end up isolating me as I sit around at home, waiting for repairmen to show up, and people will stop letting me in their homes when the handle comes off the kitchen faucet and the refrigerator goes on the blink after I've been there for a while. My only social interactions will be with repairmen, who do become rather fond of me. I'm already on a first-name basis with the greeter at Home Depot.
I didn't get much work done, and I can't really blame the tea craving when I had no water. I think it was another case of my unconscious getting my conscious mind out of the way so it could work. I found that the parts I thought I'd need to rewrite are actually exactly what they need to be. I was surprised that the parts where I thought I got back on track were actually the parts that need to be scrapped and done over, but I didn't know quite what to do. I figured it out right before I had to go face the kindergarteners. Now we'll see how much I get done today. Mom says the first half is probably the best book I've written so far. Now I need to make the last half that good.
In other news, when I was asking for book recommendations a few weeks ago, one of the things I was looking for was "portal" novels about someone from our world ending up in a fantasy world. I got some recommendations, but they were mostly from the 80s and 90s. And it turns out that there aren't a lot of these being published today, for some pretty odd reasons. I found a couple of blog posts on the issue. This one gives some of the editors'/agents' reasons why they aren't looking for these kinds of books. And this post also gets into some of the reasons.
Some of the reasons they don't want these books are kind of silly. For instance, they think that since the hero is in a fantasy world, what happens there doesn't matter. But then what about books taking place entirely in a fantasy world? Aren't we supposed to imagine that the fantasy world is a real world, and the distinction between "real" and "fantasy" is a matter of perspective? We only think of the "real" world as "real" because it's our world. All novels take place in fantasy worlds, to some extent, because the events of those books aren't actually happening. There's also the argument that these books all follow the same pattern -- hero goes to fantasy world, turns out to be just the hero needed to save the fantasy world, then comes home a changed person. Except I can think of several exceptions.
But what it seems to boil down to is an argument that sounds like Yogi Berra went to work in publishing: They don't want this kind of book because it's just too popular. Apparently, most fantasy submissions are some kind of portal novel, which indicates that it's a very popular genre. People generally write what they want to read. But most of them are really awful self-insertion Mary Sue stories. That makes editors recoil from the very idea of portal fantasy, since they've seen so many awful ones. When agents discover that editors aren't buying it, they stop considering those submissions. That probably creates a downward spiral. If the agents aren't looking at it because editors aren't buying it, then the only ones editors see are those that haven't gone through agents, so they're even worse, so they're even more opposed to the very idea. But that then means none are getting published, which means there's even more of a hunger for this kind of book among fans, and so when people with any inkling of desire to write can't find what they want to read, they write it, and that means there are that many more submissions of that kind of book, most of which are bad (because, in general, most submissions of anything are bad), so editors are even more violently opposed to anything even resembling a portal.
I can see where they'd get overwhelmed by those kinds of stories. I think it's a safe guess that the first effort of at least half of all would-be fantasy writers is a portal story. If you're a fantasy fan, then the longing to have adventures in Middle Earth or Narnia is going to hit, and a portal story is like writing real-person fanfic about yourself entering that other world. I didn't actually write this sort of thing when I was just starting to write, but I certainly had a lot of daydreams of that kind of story. When I was first getting into the Narnia books, we lived in Germany on the edge of the Odenwald (as in it was on the other side of the fence from our yard), which is the perfect fantasy land setting. I couldn't take a walk without imagining that if I stepped just the right way between two particular trees, I'd find myself in Narnia. Then while I was still working my way through the series we moved to a different place, where there was a ruined castle on the hill behind our neighborhood. We walked up to that castle almost every weekend, and I kept imagining that if we found the right path, when we got there, the castle wouldn't be ruined but would be the way it was at the height of its glory, full of knights and ladies.
Not to mention that the portal story is the ultimate literal expression of the hero entering the "special world" of the story in a hero's journey sense, and that story is pretty much hard-wired into the human psyche. We can't help but tell ourselves these stories. All that adds up to probably tons of immature Mary Sue portal adventures that choke out the good ones. One of those essays I linked to also suggests the attitude that this sort of story is childish -- about the only ones being published these days are children's books. But do we ever really outgrow the desire to escape? When all my modern stuff is breaking down on me, the idea of escaping to another world is really appealing.
This may be one of those areas where self publishing can help fulfill the need -- if there's a hunger for something that publishers won't touch, readers will find it that way. But then readers will be put in the position of editors, seeing so many awful ones that they recoil from the idea and may not discover the good ones.
I've written a YA portal story that didn't sell (surprise) but that I also think needs extensive work before I could even self publish it. Now I suspect my brain is going to get to work on a good adult portal story, just to be contrary. I do have a slight advantage in the self-publishing game in that I have an established reputation, and readers will know they're less likely to get a bad Mary Sue from me.
I didn't get much work done, and I can't really blame the tea craving when I had no water. I think it was another case of my unconscious getting my conscious mind out of the way so it could work. I found that the parts I thought I'd need to rewrite are actually exactly what they need to be. I was surprised that the parts where I thought I got back on track were actually the parts that need to be scrapped and done over, but I didn't know quite what to do. I figured it out right before I had to go face the kindergarteners. Now we'll see how much I get done today. Mom says the first half is probably the best book I've written so far. Now I need to make the last half that good.
In other news, when I was asking for book recommendations a few weeks ago, one of the things I was looking for was "portal" novels about someone from our world ending up in a fantasy world. I got some recommendations, but they were mostly from the 80s and 90s. And it turns out that there aren't a lot of these being published today, for some pretty odd reasons. I found a couple of blog posts on the issue. This one gives some of the editors'/agents' reasons why they aren't looking for these kinds of books. And this post also gets into some of the reasons.
Some of the reasons they don't want these books are kind of silly. For instance, they think that since the hero is in a fantasy world, what happens there doesn't matter. But then what about books taking place entirely in a fantasy world? Aren't we supposed to imagine that the fantasy world is a real world, and the distinction between "real" and "fantasy" is a matter of perspective? We only think of the "real" world as "real" because it's our world. All novels take place in fantasy worlds, to some extent, because the events of those books aren't actually happening. There's also the argument that these books all follow the same pattern -- hero goes to fantasy world, turns out to be just the hero needed to save the fantasy world, then comes home a changed person. Except I can think of several exceptions.
But what it seems to boil down to is an argument that sounds like Yogi Berra went to work in publishing: They don't want this kind of book because it's just too popular. Apparently, most fantasy submissions are some kind of portal novel, which indicates that it's a very popular genre. People generally write what they want to read. But most of them are really awful self-insertion Mary Sue stories. That makes editors recoil from the very idea of portal fantasy, since they've seen so many awful ones. When agents discover that editors aren't buying it, they stop considering those submissions. That probably creates a downward spiral. If the agents aren't looking at it because editors aren't buying it, then the only ones editors see are those that haven't gone through agents, so they're even worse, so they're even more opposed to the very idea. But that then means none are getting published, which means there's even more of a hunger for this kind of book among fans, and so when people with any inkling of desire to write can't find what they want to read, they write it, and that means there are that many more submissions of that kind of book, most of which are bad (because, in general, most submissions of anything are bad), so editors are even more violently opposed to anything even resembling a portal.
I can see where they'd get overwhelmed by those kinds of stories. I think it's a safe guess that the first effort of at least half of all would-be fantasy writers is a portal story. If you're a fantasy fan, then the longing to have adventures in Middle Earth or Narnia is going to hit, and a portal story is like writing real-person fanfic about yourself entering that other world. I didn't actually write this sort of thing when I was just starting to write, but I certainly had a lot of daydreams of that kind of story. When I was first getting into the Narnia books, we lived in Germany on the edge of the Odenwald (as in it was on the other side of the fence from our yard), which is the perfect fantasy land setting. I couldn't take a walk without imagining that if I stepped just the right way between two particular trees, I'd find myself in Narnia. Then while I was still working my way through the series we moved to a different place, where there was a ruined castle on the hill behind our neighborhood. We walked up to that castle almost every weekend, and I kept imagining that if we found the right path, when we got there, the castle wouldn't be ruined but would be the way it was at the height of its glory, full of knights and ladies.
Not to mention that the portal story is the ultimate literal expression of the hero entering the "special world" of the story in a hero's journey sense, and that story is pretty much hard-wired into the human psyche. We can't help but tell ourselves these stories. All that adds up to probably tons of immature Mary Sue portal adventures that choke out the good ones. One of those essays I linked to also suggests the attitude that this sort of story is childish -- about the only ones being published these days are children's books. But do we ever really outgrow the desire to escape? When all my modern stuff is breaking down on me, the idea of escaping to another world is really appealing.
This may be one of those areas where self publishing can help fulfill the need -- if there's a hunger for something that publishers won't touch, readers will find it that way. But then readers will be put in the position of editors, seeing so many awful ones that they recoil from the idea and may not discover the good ones.
I've written a YA portal story that didn't sell (surprise) but that I also think needs extensive work before I could even self publish it. Now I suspect my brain is going to get to work on a good adult portal story, just to be contrary. I do have a slight advantage in the self-publishing game in that I have an established reputation, and readers will know they're less likely to get a bad Mary Sue from me.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Healing the Mortal Injury
Slight improvement with the preschoolers last night. No tears, and one kid who refused to enter the room last week actually stayed this week. He still hid in the corner and didn't really participate, but he did some of the activities from his spot in the corner. I did come across the Mortal Injury, though. One of the kids called me over at one point, calling out, "Teacher! Teacher! She's hurt!" about one of the other girls, who then held up her finger to show me. The amount of drama surrounding the situation made me worry we'd have to pick up a severed fingertip and pack it on ice to get her to the emergency room. But I couldn't find anything wrong when investigating the allegedly injured finger. There was no blood, no sign of a scrape, no redness, no whiteness, no swelling, no funny angle. It just looked like a finger to me. I suspected the Mortal Injury was more like a Desperate Need for Attention (the child in question was a former clingy non-participator who has gradually warmed up), so I said, "Oh, you poor thing," and gave her a hug. I was immediately swarmed by little girls telling me stories of every injury they'd ever sustained in their lives and showing me the paper cuts they got in school that day. I think I may have added "nurse/doctor" to the Disney fairy princess superhero mom they seem to think I am.
The child soon forgot the injury and was actively involved in a game of zombie tag not long afterward when the kids were playing in the fellowship hall while the adults finished eating dinner. I was sitting to the side, reading a book on my phone and occasionally being bombarded by little kids and being turned into a zombie a few times. The way they described the game to me, the first time you get tagged, you get turned into a zombie, and then anyone you tag will also become a zombie (you have to move around like a zombie during this phase). Then the next time you get tagged, you get turned into a chicken (that phase was highly entertaining). After that, you get turned into Superman. If you get tagged after that, you're out, and you're back to being a normal person. You go through the phases pretty quickly if you stay in your seat, reading Dickens, and don't try to run away. It does actually sound like a fun game, but there's no way I could keep up with those kids.
I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't mention the passing of Steve Jobs. At first, I was a little bemused by all the Facebook tributes for someone most of these people never met, but then I realized that every one of my books was written on a Mac, so even someone I've never met can have an impact on my life. I got my first Mac in 1990 and am currently on my sixth. I suppose those books still would have been written on another computer, but I like being able to focus my time and energy on writing the books instead of messing with the computer. And the newest one is just plain pretty. I like the idea of the design mattering. Why not make things lovely as well as functional?
Going back to the earlier post about fantasy plausibility, I have to agree with the comments about how fantasy can become implausible when the author isn't consistent with the fantasy elements. I may be more willing to let that slide when it makes things more difficult for the characters instead of easier. For instance, one thing that kind of nags at me in the Harry Potter series is the fact that in most of the books they act like they can't do magic without wands (and preferably their own wands) and specific spells. If they have their wands taken away, they're entirely disarmed and helpless. But the whole opening of the first book was about how Harry managed to do all these magical things with no wand, no spells and no awareness that he was magical. He made his hair grow out when he got a bad haircut, escaped from bullies by levitating and made the glass in the snake's enclosure disappear. It wasn't just something that was in the first book and then forgotten because the last book showed in Snape's memories that Snape and Lily did bits of magic as children before they got wands. I can kind of handwave that inconsistency as it being an ability kids grow out of once they start learning proper magic (though it does seem odd to train people into needing a crutch) because being required to have a wand makes things harder. I'd have a problem if they'd established that they needed wands, and then Harry suddenly discovered that when he was in a bad situation he could just get himself out without needing a wand.
As for my wish for the couple who may be enemies but who like each other, I should probably clarify that. I was speaking in terms of that "fated/destined for each other" trope that comes up a lot in fantasy/paranormal romance. There are plenty of examples of enemies who fall in love. It's a classic Romeo and Juliet story (though hopefully without the characters being Too Stupid to Live), and that's one kind of romance novel I like (I used to be very fond of the Norman/Saxon medieval romances). The reason I threw in the enemies is that there's not much story without conflict, so a story about two people who are destined for each other and who seem made for each other and actually like each other would be boring. There has to be some monkey wrench thrown in, so have them made for each other but be on opposite sides of a conflict, with their destiny drawing them together. Or they could even be the kind of destined couple where their coming together will bring about something, so there are factions with a vested interest in keeping them apart. I think maybe my problem with the idea of a couple being fated for each other but being totally wrong for each other may be another one of those things where I can't believe it because it contradicts my personal beliefs. "Fate" or "destiny" to me boils down to "God," and I can't imagine that God would destine you for someone who was totally wrong for you in every way except sexually.
The child soon forgot the injury and was actively involved in a game of zombie tag not long afterward when the kids were playing in the fellowship hall while the adults finished eating dinner. I was sitting to the side, reading a book on my phone and occasionally being bombarded by little kids and being turned into a zombie a few times. The way they described the game to me, the first time you get tagged, you get turned into a zombie, and then anyone you tag will also become a zombie (you have to move around like a zombie during this phase). Then the next time you get tagged, you get turned into a chicken (that phase was highly entertaining). After that, you get turned into Superman. If you get tagged after that, you're out, and you're back to being a normal person. You go through the phases pretty quickly if you stay in your seat, reading Dickens, and don't try to run away. It does actually sound like a fun game, but there's no way I could keep up with those kids.
I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't mention the passing of Steve Jobs. At first, I was a little bemused by all the Facebook tributes for someone most of these people never met, but then I realized that every one of my books was written on a Mac, so even someone I've never met can have an impact on my life. I got my first Mac in 1990 and am currently on my sixth. I suppose those books still would have been written on another computer, but I like being able to focus my time and energy on writing the books instead of messing with the computer. And the newest one is just plain pretty. I like the idea of the design mattering. Why not make things lovely as well as functional?
Going back to the earlier post about fantasy plausibility, I have to agree with the comments about how fantasy can become implausible when the author isn't consistent with the fantasy elements. I may be more willing to let that slide when it makes things more difficult for the characters instead of easier. For instance, one thing that kind of nags at me in the Harry Potter series is the fact that in most of the books they act like they can't do magic without wands (and preferably their own wands) and specific spells. If they have their wands taken away, they're entirely disarmed and helpless. But the whole opening of the first book was about how Harry managed to do all these magical things with no wand, no spells and no awareness that he was magical. He made his hair grow out when he got a bad haircut, escaped from bullies by levitating and made the glass in the snake's enclosure disappear. It wasn't just something that was in the first book and then forgotten because the last book showed in Snape's memories that Snape and Lily did bits of magic as children before they got wands. I can kind of handwave that inconsistency as it being an ability kids grow out of once they start learning proper magic (though it does seem odd to train people into needing a crutch) because being required to have a wand makes things harder. I'd have a problem if they'd established that they needed wands, and then Harry suddenly discovered that when he was in a bad situation he could just get himself out without needing a wand.
As for my wish for the couple who may be enemies but who like each other, I should probably clarify that. I was speaking in terms of that "fated/destined for each other" trope that comes up a lot in fantasy/paranormal romance. There are plenty of examples of enemies who fall in love. It's a classic Romeo and Juliet story (though hopefully without the characters being Too Stupid to Live), and that's one kind of romance novel I like (I used to be very fond of the Norman/Saxon medieval romances). The reason I threw in the enemies is that there's not much story without conflict, so a story about two people who are destined for each other and who seem made for each other and actually like each other would be boring. There has to be some monkey wrench thrown in, so have them made for each other but be on opposite sides of a conflict, with their destiny drawing them together. Or they could even be the kind of destined couple where their coming together will bring about something, so there are factions with a vested interest in keeping them apart. I think maybe my problem with the idea of a couple being fated for each other but being totally wrong for each other may be another one of those things where I can't believe it because it contradicts my personal beliefs. "Fate" or "destiny" to me boils down to "God," and I can't imagine that God would destine you for someone who was totally wrong for you in every way except sexually.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Plausibility in Fantasy
I got the book proofread and off to my agent. Now I want to clean my kitchen, straighten my living room and bedroom and maybe start shoveling out my office. And I also have my medical school work to do. Speaking of which, another faculty member at the medical school where I used to work and that I still freelance for won a Nobel prize yesterday, which brings them to five, which I think is still a record for Nobel-prize winning faculty members at American medical schools. I had to do the research and call around to other schools when we got the fourth back when I worked there, and at four we were on top back then. I don't think I knew this doctor when I worked there, so I haven't added to the list of Nobel prize winners I've met personally, but considering I have Watson and Crick on that list, I think I'm still doing pretty well. I had tea with Dr. Watson once when I had to entertain him while he was waiting for a news interview (they weren't on the faculty at my school but were there as guest lecturers for a seminar).
My next project is already nagging at me. It's a mostly completed book that still isn't quite right, and I'm not entirely sure what to do about it. It's falling apart at the ending -- not the resolution of the main plot, but what that resolution really means to the characters and how it affects them. I think that means I need to go back to the characters and really look at what their arcs should be, since the resolution of the main plot should complete the character arcs. I may not have to change the main plot, but I may need to change what I see as the journey the characters are on and what they're supposed to be learning from it.
A couple of weekends ago at FenCon, I was on a panel that I find myself still thinking about, in part because an audience member asked a question that I wasn't able to answer at the time, and I'm still not entirely sure what my answer would be. The topic was "Plausibility in Fantasy," and we were discussing how to write a novel in which unbelievable things happen and make readers believe it. When you read fantasy, you're pretty much buying into the idea that impossible things will happen -- magic exists, vampires exist, etc. How do you create a world that people will accept? Someone in the audience asked us if there had been a fantasy novel where we couldn't buy the premise or that struck us as implausible.
At the time, I couldn't think of anything. It's usually the real-world stuff that throws me out of the novel. If I'm reading a fantasy novel, I can buy that there may be immortal people who could be hundreds of years old but who look young. I have a hard time believing that these centuries-old people would be going to high school or falling in love with teenagers. In urban fantasy, I'm more likely to question the heroine having a nice Manhattan apartment and a closet full of designer clothes than I am to question the fact that she has magical powers. I guess it's because I don't have any experience with the supernatural, so I'll take what the author gives me there, but I will question the things I do have experience with. One of the conclusions the panel came to was that most of this boils down to how entertaining or engaging the story is. If I'm mentally calculating the heroine's cost of living, then the story hasn't sufficiently engaged my brain or emotions.
Since then, I have thought of a couple of cases where it was the fantasy element that threw me out of a story. One that shall remain nameless because these books are very popular and I'm acquainted with the author probably suffered from the fact that they contained fantasy elements I'm not overly fond of, so the rest of the book would have had to be really engaging to get me involved, and one of the key fantasy elements that was unique to the premise just didn't work for me. I didn't believe it would work the way the book said it would, and something the book treated as a plus I thought was absolutely horrible. I think this was because it was a fantasy element with roots in religion, and the use of that element didn't fit with my personal religious experience, so it probably falls into the category of me questioning things I have experience with.
The other case of a fantasy element that I don't find plausible is a popular trope in paranormal romance and urban fantasy that crosses over with paranormal romance, and that's the couple who are supposedly destined for each other but who have absolutely nothing in common -- no interests, no values, no goals that mesh in any way -- and who may even be enemies, but because they're destined for each other, they can't resist each other. I would think that being destined for each other would mean they're made for each other. They'd be the perfect fit. They may be entirely star-crossed and be on opposite sides of a conflict, but when they met it would just seem right in ways that go beyond physical. I can't get into any book where the characters hate each other, are total opposites, have nothing in common and yet who can't help but be drawn to each other because it's destiny.
Now I kind of want to read (or write) the book where the two people from opposite sides who should be enemies meet and everything just clicks, and they find they agree more with each other than they do with their supposed allies.
Otherwise, for me it seems like a case of getting the real-world details right, and then I'll buy whatever you try to sell me in the fantasy elements. Let me know that you've thought about sources for food, money and clothing. Make the characters act like real people -- or explain it really well if they don't. Put some thought into logistics. And then I'll probably accept that your characters have magic powers.
My next project is already nagging at me. It's a mostly completed book that still isn't quite right, and I'm not entirely sure what to do about it. It's falling apart at the ending -- not the resolution of the main plot, but what that resolution really means to the characters and how it affects them. I think that means I need to go back to the characters and really look at what their arcs should be, since the resolution of the main plot should complete the character arcs. I may not have to change the main plot, but I may need to change what I see as the journey the characters are on and what they're supposed to be learning from it.
A couple of weekends ago at FenCon, I was on a panel that I find myself still thinking about, in part because an audience member asked a question that I wasn't able to answer at the time, and I'm still not entirely sure what my answer would be. The topic was "Plausibility in Fantasy," and we were discussing how to write a novel in which unbelievable things happen and make readers believe it. When you read fantasy, you're pretty much buying into the idea that impossible things will happen -- magic exists, vampires exist, etc. How do you create a world that people will accept? Someone in the audience asked us if there had been a fantasy novel where we couldn't buy the premise or that struck us as implausible.
At the time, I couldn't think of anything. It's usually the real-world stuff that throws me out of the novel. If I'm reading a fantasy novel, I can buy that there may be immortal people who could be hundreds of years old but who look young. I have a hard time believing that these centuries-old people would be going to high school or falling in love with teenagers. In urban fantasy, I'm more likely to question the heroine having a nice Manhattan apartment and a closet full of designer clothes than I am to question the fact that she has magical powers. I guess it's because I don't have any experience with the supernatural, so I'll take what the author gives me there, but I will question the things I do have experience with. One of the conclusions the panel came to was that most of this boils down to how entertaining or engaging the story is. If I'm mentally calculating the heroine's cost of living, then the story hasn't sufficiently engaged my brain or emotions.
Since then, I have thought of a couple of cases where it was the fantasy element that threw me out of a story. One that shall remain nameless because these books are very popular and I'm acquainted with the author probably suffered from the fact that they contained fantasy elements I'm not overly fond of, so the rest of the book would have had to be really engaging to get me involved, and one of the key fantasy elements that was unique to the premise just didn't work for me. I didn't believe it would work the way the book said it would, and something the book treated as a plus I thought was absolutely horrible. I think this was because it was a fantasy element with roots in religion, and the use of that element didn't fit with my personal religious experience, so it probably falls into the category of me questioning things I have experience with.
The other case of a fantasy element that I don't find plausible is a popular trope in paranormal romance and urban fantasy that crosses over with paranormal romance, and that's the couple who are supposedly destined for each other but who have absolutely nothing in common -- no interests, no values, no goals that mesh in any way -- and who may even be enemies, but because they're destined for each other, they can't resist each other. I would think that being destined for each other would mean they're made for each other. They'd be the perfect fit. They may be entirely star-crossed and be on opposite sides of a conflict, but when they met it would just seem right in ways that go beyond physical. I can't get into any book where the characters hate each other, are total opposites, have nothing in common and yet who can't help but be drawn to each other because it's destiny.
Now I kind of want to read (or write) the book where the two people from opposite sides who should be enemies meet and everything just clicks, and they find they agree more with each other than they do with their supposed allies.
Otherwise, for me it seems like a case of getting the real-world details right, and then I'll buy whatever you try to sell me in the fantasy elements. Let me know that you've thought about sources for food, money and clothing. Make the characters act like real people -- or explain it really well if they don't. Put some thought into logistics. And then I'll probably accept that your characters have magic powers.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Women in Fantasy
I wasn't up reading quite as late last night, and I got up earlier than I have been, but then got sidetracked by that plane crash in Austin since the regional news channel was running the feed from the TV station I used to work for. I really need to go to the bank to deposit a royalty check (yay for royalties!), but I mostly just want to burrow under a blanket and read or write.
There tends to be a lot of discussion in fantasy and writing circles about the lack of female characters in a lot of epic fantasy books, and this is generally considered to be a bad thing. I've thought about it and realized two things that may get my "girl" membership card taken away from me:
1) I hadn't actually noticed and
2) I don't really care
#1 may have something to do with the fact that I haven't read much epic fantasy since I was a teenager, when that was about the only fantasy you could find. That's not because of a shortage of female characters but rather because I'm more interested in focusing intently on a few characters than in following the broader scope of a cast of thousands. I've also kind of burned out on the quests with the Fate of the Universe at stake. But even when I was reading more of it, I honestly hadn't noticed whether or not there was an adequate female presence. I'm sure I read a few boys-only books, but the fact that there weren't any females never struck me.
#2 is because I'm far more interested in there being good characters who are right for the story than in there being any particular kind of characters. I may have been interested in there being a girl I could relate to in a book when I was a kid, but ever since I hit puberty and stopped running around with my friends in the fields or woods (depending on where I was living at the time) acting out our favorite books, TV shows or movies, I became far more interested in a book having a male character I could fall in love with than I was in having a female character I could relate to or play. (Puberty and the end of running around acting out stories happened at around the same time, but I don't know if the two events were related). As a result, as long as there was a guy I liked in the story, I wouldn't even have noticed whether or not there was a girl in the story. Around this time, in addition to discovering fantasy I was also really into World War II adventure stories, which were also short on females (just try fitting a woman into a book taking place almost entirely in a WWII submarine), but it never really occurred to me that there was anything missing. I hear a lot about how important it is to have female role models in books for girls, but I can't think of a single fictional character who has inspired me or shown me what I could do. I have been inspired or influenced by books to try something or to pursue some interest, but it was the depiction of that interest that got my attention, not the fact that a character I could relate to was doing it. A female character doing something like a particular job never struck me as any kind of validation that women could do that sort of thing. I got that validation and inspiration from real people doing that in the real world, since people doing it in fiction is actually pretty irrelevant to reality.
I'd far rather have no female characters than shoehorned-in, politically-correct female characters who seem out of place in the story or who are The Token Girl. Some of the lengths they go to these days to insert women in places where they probably wouldn't have been and doing things they probably wouldn't have done (like where did all these medieval Englishwomen get all that ninja training?) end up bothering me far more than if there were no women at all (especially if the men are cute). The feisty chick who can outfight any man, even those twice her size, and who is therefore qualified to join the otherwise all-male questing party is just as irritating a cliche as the damsel in distress. I guess you could say that I don't like the idea of affirmative action for fictional people. The story, and nothing else, should dictate the cast.
However, that doesn't let authors off the hook. One of the reasons given by one of the authors cited for having no or few female characters in his epic fantasy novels was that he didn't know how to write female characters. Huh? I'd have bought it if someone said that they didn't know how to write Nepalese characters because they'd never been to Nepal, didn't know anyone from Nepal and couldn't find any books on the culture of Nepal. But unless you were left as an infant on the doorstep of a monastery and were raised by cloistered monks, you've probably had some exposure to women -- mother, sister, other relatives, neighbors, teachers, classmates, co-workers, bosses, waitresses, the person in front of you in line at Starbucks, wives, daughters, etc. If you did grow up in a monastery and missed out on interacting with women, most libraries and bookstores have shelves devoted to books about women -- about their bodies, their emotions, the phases of their lives, their relationships, being a mother, being a daughter, being a sister, being a wife, struggles in the workplace, social issues, memoirs and biographies of women in various times throughout history, novels written by women, about women and for women. You get the idea. And then there's a magazine industry devoted to publications for women in the various phases of their lives. Women make up about half the population, unless you live in Alaska or in that monastery, so you could always try something wild and crazy like talking to women or, if you want to get really radical, listening to them. I'd have been fine if the author in question has said merely that the story he was telling didn't call for female characters, but the "I don't know how to write female characters" excuse doesn't hold water.
I also think that it's essential to really research what you're writing about, because what you think you know about that time and place may not be accurate, and what seemed like an all-male endeavor may not have been. That's not to say that you should go scouring references to find some way to fit a female into your story, but doing the research could give you ideas for characters that are outside your preconceptions, and even if that doesn't up your book's estrogen levels, it will make your book more vivid and detailed.
Then there's the fact that if you are going to write female characters -- really, if you're going to write any characters at all -- they need to be real characters, not stereotypes. There's no such thing as a typical female. There are just a lot of individuals who happen to be female. If you're going to include women, give them goals, motivations, conflicts and inner lives the same way you'd do with any other character, and don't rely on such tropes as the Hooker with a Heart of Gold, The Good Girl or The Kick-Ass Chick. Don't use the female as nothing more than a quest object -- if you could switch out the princess for a jeweled chalice without changing your story all that much, then you're doing it wrong. Don't use the female as nothing more than a source for motivation -- they killed his wife, and now he's going on the rampage. And please, for the love of all that is even remotely holy, avoid that godawful Peter Pan/Wendy dynamic that's all over the place right now in pop culture, where a woman who should be a peer to the man is put in the role of mother to a man who refuses to grow up, and she's the bad guy for forcing him to grow up.
Not that male writers hold the exclusive on writing bad female characters. Women can be just as guilty. They can produce Mary Sues who are entitled and whiny while still being practically perfect in every way or else are superpowered Amazon kick-ass chicks with no weaknesses.
I get a little nervous about the way that traditionally "feminine" traits and behaviors are often seen in a negative light -- and often by women. Emotions are a weakness. You can never rely on anyone for help because you should be able to do it all yourself. Expecting commitment from a lover is something no independent woman should do. And a woman can never, ever need to be rescued without it being some terrible strike to the cause of feminism. It sometimes feels like the only good, strong female character to some people is Rambo in drag. Not that I want every woman to be a damsel in distress, but if a woman who is generally competent and capable and who has been known to help the men through their difficulties occasionally needs a hand in a bad situation, I have no problem with that.
Meanwhile, the publishers also aren't off the hook. I don't think there should be any kind of quota system for buying books by female authors vs. male authors or for considering the gender makeup of a book in purchase decisions, but it wouldn't hurt for publishers to get past some of their preconceived notions (or maybe even do some research) about readers and not exclude books or authors based on these preconceived notions. There has been a stereotype that the primary reader of epic fantasy is a teenage/early 20s boy, and that these boys are afraid that they'll get girl cooties if they read a book by a female author or with too many female characters (or a female in the lead role). I don't know whether or not it's true, but maybe the publishers should look into that before making decisions based on outdated or incorrect stereotypes.
There tends to be a lot of discussion in fantasy and writing circles about the lack of female characters in a lot of epic fantasy books, and this is generally considered to be a bad thing. I've thought about it and realized two things that may get my "girl" membership card taken away from me:
1) I hadn't actually noticed and
2) I don't really care
#1 may have something to do with the fact that I haven't read much epic fantasy since I was a teenager, when that was about the only fantasy you could find. That's not because of a shortage of female characters but rather because I'm more interested in focusing intently on a few characters than in following the broader scope of a cast of thousands. I've also kind of burned out on the quests with the Fate of the Universe at stake. But even when I was reading more of it, I honestly hadn't noticed whether or not there was an adequate female presence. I'm sure I read a few boys-only books, but the fact that there weren't any females never struck me.
#2 is because I'm far more interested in there being good characters who are right for the story than in there being any particular kind of characters. I may have been interested in there being a girl I could relate to in a book when I was a kid, but ever since I hit puberty and stopped running around with my friends in the fields or woods (depending on where I was living at the time) acting out our favorite books, TV shows or movies, I became far more interested in a book having a male character I could fall in love with than I was in having a female character I could relate to or play. (Puberty and the end of running around acting out stories happened at around the same time, but I don't know if the two events were related). As a result, as long as there was a guy I liked in the story, I wouldn't even have noticed whether or not there was a girl in the story. Around this time, in addition to discovering fantasy I was also really into World War II adventure stories, which were also short on females (just try fitting a woman into a book taking place almost entirely in a WWII submarine), but it never really occurred to me that there was anything missing. I hear a lot about how important it is to have female role models in books for girls, but I can't think of a single fictional character who has inspired me or shown me what I could do. I have been inspired or influenced by books to try something or to pursue some interest, but it was the depiction of that interest that got my attention, not the fact that a character I could relate to was doing it. A female character doing something like a particular job never struck me as any kind of validation that women could do that sort of thing. I got that validation and inspiration from real people doing that in the real world, since people doing it in fiction is actually pretty irrelevant to reality.
I'd far rather have no female characters than shoehorned-in, politically-correct female characters who seem out of place in the story or who are The Token Girl. Some of the lengths they go to these days to insert women in places where they probably wouldn't have been and doing things they probably wouldn't have done (like where did all these medieval Englishwomen get all that ninja training?) end up bothering me far more than if there were no women at all (especially if the men are cute). The feisty chick who can outfight any man, even those twice her size, and who is therefore qualified to join the otherwise all-male questing party is just as irritating a cliche as the damsel in distress. I guess you could say that I don't like the idea of affirmative action for fictional people. The story, and nothing else, should dictate the cast.
However, that doesn't let authors off the hook. One of the reasons given by one of the authors cited for having no or few female characters in his epic fantasy novels was that he didn't know how to write female characters. Huh? I'd have bought it if someone said that they didn't know how to write Nepalese characters because they'd never been to Nepal, didn't know anyone from Nepal and couldn't find any books on the culture of Nepal. But unless you were left as an infant on the doorstep of a monastery and were raised by cloistered monks, you've probably had some exposure to women -- mother, sister, other relatives, neighbors, teachers, classmates, co-workers, bosses, waitresses, the person in front of you in line at Starbucks, wives, daughters, etc. If you did grow up in a monastery and missed out on interacting with women, most libraries and bookstores have shelves devoted to books about women -- about their bodies, their emotions, the phases of their lives, their relationships, being a mother, being a daughter, being a sister, being a wife, struggles in the workplace, social issues, memoirs and biographies of women in various times throughout history, novels written by women, about women and for women. You get the idea. And then there's a magazine industry devoted to publications for women in the various phases of their lives. Women make up about half the population, unless you live in Alaska or in that monastery, so you could always try something wild and crazy like talking to women or, if you want to get really radical, listening to them. I'd have been fine if the author in question has said merely that the story he was telling didn't call for female characters, but the "I don't know how to write female characters" excuse doesn't hold water.
I also think that it's essential to really research what you're writing about, because what you think you know about that time and place may not be accurate, and what seemed like an all-male endeavor may not have been. That's not to say that you should go scouring references to find some way to fit a female into your story, but doing the research could give you ideas for characters that are outside your preconceptions, and even if that doesn't up your book's estrogen levels, it will make your book more vivid and detailed.
Then there's the fact that if you are going to write female characters -- really, if you're going to write any characters at all -- they need to be real characters, not stereotypes. There's no such thing as a typical female. There are just a lot of individuals who happen to be female. If you're going to include women, give them goals, motivations, conflicts and inner lives the same way you'd do with any other character, and don't rely on such tropes as the Hooker with a Heart of Gold, The Good Girl or The Kick-Ass Chick. Don't use the female as nothing more than a quest object -- if you could switch out the princess for a jeweled chalice without changing your story all that much, then you're doing it wrong. Don't use the female as nothing more than a source for motivation -- they killed his wife, and now he's going on the rampage. And please, for the love of all that is even remotely holy, avoid that godawful Peter Pan/Wendy dynamic that's all over the place right now in pop culture, where a woman who should be a peer to the man is put in the role of mother to a man who refuses to grow up, and she's the bad guy for forcing him to grow up.
Not that male writers hold the exclusive on writing bad female characters. Women can be just as guilty. They can produce Mary Sues who are entitled and whiny while still being practically perfect in every way or else are superpowered Amazon kick-ass chicks with no weaknesses.
I get a little nervous about the way that traditionally "feminine" traits and behaviors are often seen in a negative light -- and often by women. Emotions are a weakness. You can never rely on anyone for help because you should be able to do it all yourself. Expecting commitment from a lover is something no independent woman should do. And a woman can never, ever need to be rescued without it being some terrible strike to the cause of feminism. It sometimes feels like the only good, strong female character to some people is Rambo in drag. Not that I want every woman to be a damsel in distress, but if a woman who is generally competent and capable and who has been known to help the men through their difficulties occasionally needs a hand in a bad situation, I have no problem with that.
Meanwhile, the publishers also aren't off the hook. I don't think there should be any kind of quota system for buying books by female authors vs. male authors or for considering the gender makeup of a book in purchase decisions, but it wouldn't hurt for publishers to get past some of their preconceived notions (or maybe even do some research) about readers and not exclude books or authors based on these preconceived notions. There has been a stereotype that the primary reader of epic fantasy is a teenage/early 20s boy, and that these boys are afraid that they'll get girl cooties if they read a book by a female author or with too many female characters (or a female in the lead role). I don't know whether or not it's true, but maybe the publishers should look into that before making decisions based on outdated or incorrect stereotypes.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Fantasy Cheese
I am making decent progress on the NaNoWriMo project, sticking to my planned pace of 2,000 words a day. My competitive streak did rear its ugly head when I saw people posting higher totals, and then I reminded myself that I'm not trying to go faster right now because my priority is revising the other proposal. And, besides, weekends are actually busier for me because things happen that require me to leave the house. Plus, the point of all this was to moderate my writing pace, and going all-or-nothing would sort of defeat the purpose.
I suspect the part I've written will require massive amounts of rewriting because at the moment I'm meandering and rambling, since I'm still wrestling with how best to convey this story (which points of view to use, what information to share and when to share it, etc.). Maybe once the proposal is done and once I have enough written to have a better feel for it, I can take the time for more serious planning and plotting.
I did discover that television makes a pretty good motivator for getting the work done. One of my favorite guilty pleasure movies was on SciFi Saturday afternoon, and I told myself that I could only watch it if I got the writing done before it came on. And I did, so yay. The movie is called Dragonsword on SciFi, but on IMDB and Amazon they have it listed as George and the Dragon. It's a moderately cheesy telling of the legend of St. George and the dragon (with many, many liberties taken), but it manages not to be quite as cheesy as the typical SciFi Channel movie. Most of the dialogue doesn't make me cringe and the cast is relatively high quality, aside from Patrick Swayze, who has inexplicably wandered in from another movie. Everyone else is British or at least attempts reasonably well to sound British, or is supposed to be foreign and therefore not supposed to sound British, and then there's Swayze with his Texas accent and not even trying to hide it (though, as we learned from Kevin Costner "playing" Robin Hood, the attempt to hide it can be much, much more painful) even though he's supposed to be from the same place as all the other characters. Still, there's just something fun and sweet about that movie that makes me happy, and since the DVD is pretty cheap on Amazon, I'm seriously tempted to buy it.
I attempted to watch the first episode of Legend of the Seeker, but I had to turn it off about half an hour into it because it was just too painful. Most of it was another language issue, since the lead characters sounded like typical American twenty-somethings, and that threw me totally out of the story. I know that in a story supposedly taking place in one of those fantasy worlds we can assume that the whole thing is being conveniently translated or dubbed into modern English so we can understand it, so there's no reason that can't be American English, but it still just seems wrong. If you're doing a sword-and-sorcery story set in a quasi-medieval European-type place, it seems like the characters should kind of sound at least a little quasi-European. The United States (or Canada) doesn't really have that kind of mythology (except as written by modern fantasy writers). We're too new to even pretend to have that kind of history that's been lost in the mists of time. So it just bugs me to have people running around with swords and magic and armor and castles and all the usual European-based fantasy tropes, and they sound like American college students. I lose that sense of "other" when they talk like people I hear every day. I'm curious as to whether British viewers feel the same way about fantasy, if they expect the characters to sound British or European or if they get thrown out of the story because the characters sound too much like people they hear every day. Are Brits more open to fantasy with American accents, or is that even worse to them than it is to me?
My other issue (and I haven't read the books -- and from what I've heard about them, I don't think I want to -- so I don't know if this is from the books or an invention of the TV writers) is the fantasy trope of the Destined Chosen One (with optional Magical Specialness) who's been hidden away by the Mentor Wizard, who doesn't manage to get around to telling him about his super-special destiny until, oops, that destiny almost gets him killed, and then in the middle of the crisis we have to have the "No, really? I don't believe you!" scene. Mind you, I'm a big fan of the unlikely hero and am all over the stories where the assistant underwater basketweaver turns out to be the long lost heir to the Empire's throne or the great mage who will save the kingdom. My complaint is more with the variation on this story where the wizard knows who he is and is even nearby, watching over him, but somehow never manages to share this potentially crucial information until after the time when it might have been useful (like, you know, before the kid confronts the people who want to kill the long-lost whatever). There certainly are reasons not to share the information, and that can make for an interesting plot if done well, but when it's done purely so that the big revelation can happen during the course of the book/movie and in the middle of the crisis that kicks off the story, I'm prone to much eye rolling. It's also kind of annoying tohave to stop all the action early in the book and go through the "Here's your entire backstory, and this is why these things are happening" scene, which usually involves much arguing about how it can't possibly be true and he doesn't know what to do, but he has this destiny, blah, blah, blah. And then everything else that happens in the book is all because of his Grand Destiny and Magical Specialness.
I actually much prefer the stories where nobody knows who this guy is, and where even the great wizard doesn't know where to find him. Then the revelation of who he really is comes near the end of the book, after we've seen him demonstrate his true worth without the confidence booster of knowing his Grand Destiny or being aware of his Magical Specialness.
At any rate, while I can be a big fan of fantasy cheese, I don't think this series is going to be my brand of cheese.
And now it's time to go rack up some words.
I suspect the part I've written will require massive amounts of rewriting because at the moment I'm meandering and rambling, since I'm still wrestling with how best to convey this story (which points of view to use, what information to share and when to share it, etc.). Maybe once the proposal is done and once I have enough written to have a better feel for it, I can take the time for more serious planning and plotting.
I did discover that television makes a pretty good motivator for getting the work done. One of my favorite guilty pleasure movies was on SciFi Saturday afternoon, and I told myself that I could only watch it if I got the writing done before it came on. And I did, so yay. The movie is called Dragonsword on SciFi, but on IMDB and Amazon they have it listed as George and the Dragon. It's a moderately cheesy telling of the legend of St. George and the dragon (with many, many liberties taken), but it manages not to be quite as cheesy as the typical SciFi Channel movie. Most of the dialogue doesn't make me cringe and the cast is relatively high quality, aside from Patrick Swayze, who has inexplicably wandered in from another movie. Everyone else is British or at least attempts reasonably well to sound British, or is supposed to be foreign and therefore not supposed to sound British, and then there's Swayze with his Texas accent and not even trying to hide it (though, as we learned from Kevin Costner "playing" Robin Hood, the attempt to hide it can be much, much more painful) even though he's supposed to be from the same place as all the other characters. Still, there's just something fun and sweet about that movie that makes me happy, and since the DVD is pretty cheap on Amazon, I'm seriously tempted to buy it.
I attempted to watch the first episode of Legend of the Seeker, but I had to turn it off about half an hour into it because it was just too painful. Most of it was another language issue, since the lead characters sounded like typical American twenty-somethings, and that threw me totally out of the story. I know that in a story supposedly taking place in one of those fantasy worlds we can assume that the whole thing is being conveniently translated or dubbed into modern English so we can understand it, so there's no reason that can't be American English, but it still just seems wrong. If you're doing a sword-and-sorcery story set in a quasi-medieval European-type place, it seems like the characters should kind of sound at least a little quasi-European. The United States (or Canada) doesn't really have that kind of mythology (except as written by modern fantasy writers). We're too new to even pretend to have that kind of history that's been lost in the mists of time. So it just bugs me to have people running around with swords and magic and armor and castles and all the usual European-based fantasy tropes, and they sound like American college students. I lose that sense of "other" when they talk like people I hear every day. I'm curious as to whether British viewers feel the same way about fantasy, if they expect the characters to sound British or European or if they get thrown out of the story because the characters sound too much like people they hear every day. Are Brits more open to fantasy with American accents, or is that even worse to them than it is to me?
My other issue (and I haven't read the books -- and from what I've heard about them, I don't think I want to -- so I don't know if this is from the books or an invention of the TV writers) is the fantasy trope of the Destined Chosen One (with optional Magical Specialness) who's been hidden away by the Mentor Wizard, who doesn't manage to get around to telling him about his super-special destiny until, oops, that destiny almost gets him killed, and then in the middle of the crisis we have to have the "No, really? I don't believe you!" scene. Mind you, I'm a big fan of the unlikely hero and am all over the stories where the assistant underwater basketweaver turns out to be the long lost heir to the Empire's throne or the great mage who will save the kingdom. My complaint is more with the variation on this story where the wizard knows who he is and is even nearby, watching over him, but somehow never manages to share this potentially crucial information until after the time when it might have been useful (like, you know, before the kid confronts the people who want to kill the long-lost whatever). There certainly are reasons not to share the information, and that can make for an interesting plot if done well, but when it's done purely so that the big revelation can happen during the course of the book/movie and in the middle of the crisis that kicks off the story, I'm prone to much eye rolling. It's also kind of annoying tohave to stop all the action early in the book and go through the "Here's your entire backstory, and this is why these things are happening" scene, which usually involves much arguing about how it can't possibly be true and he doesn't know what to do, but he has this destiny, blah, blah, blah. And then everything else that happens in the book is all because of his Grand Destiny and Magical Specialness.
I actually much prefer the stories where nobody knows who this guy is, and where even the great wizard doesn't know where to find him. Then the revelation of who he really is comes near the end of the book, after we've seen him demonstrate his true worth without the confidence booster of knowing his Grand Destiny or being aware of his Magical Specialness.
At any rate, while I can be a big fan of fantasy cheese, I don't think this series is going to be my brand of cheese.
And now it's time to go rack up some words.
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