I have a deep respect for writers who can tackle what I’ve heard referred to as “high fantasy”; to be able to conquer an epic world filled with magic and sorcery and its own cosmology has always been something I’ve been highly envious of, especially those that have done it well.
And yet, it’s never been something that I’ve been able to really sink my teeth into.
That isn’t to say there aren’t examples out there that I’ve enjoyed, but it seems to take me a lot of effort, and I don’t understand why. A dear friend of mine once began raving about Tolkien – before the movies, even! – telling me that I had to read the Lord of the Rings, it would be one of the most spellbinding things I had ever read, and so on.
So I tried it. And I got a hundred pages in, and set it aside, and have not picked it up since.
I’m not sure what it was. I know Tolkien has his detractors, and I can see their point in a lot of places, but I can’t help but shake the feeling that the story just wasn’t written for me. There are people that enjoy it, and that’s fine. Likewise, most high fantasy has been the same; I don’t think I have the constitution to be able to truly appreciate it. I end up starting series or novels and usually end up setting them aside. I’ve done the same for some sci-fi greats as well; this may be blasphemy, but Asimov tends to be someone I can take in small quantities. Again it’s not that I think the stories are not well-written, but in reading them, I get the sense that they are not written for me.
The ones that do grab me – the Neil Gaimans and the David Eddings and the Jasper Ffordes of the world – well, I can’t really think of what they truly have in common, apart from a healthy dash of humour. There is something in my heart’s core that really jumps at the thought of a good sense of humour in a work, even if it’s a very, very dark one, such as that of Gaiman or Stephen King, another writer whose books have long been friends of mine.
So I look back on my list and wonder if I’m okay for having that bias, because it means that I’ll probably never pick up much Tolkien ever, or I wonder if the humour is there and just too subtle and I’m suffering from preconceived notions about what will reach my sensibilities. Am I being unfair? Am I missing something?
I’d love to hear from other people about how their biases affect what they read – and even better, how that bleeds into our writing.
Category Archives: The Writing Life
What do you do When your Good isn’t Good Enough?
Take a deep breath, relax. What’s got you so worked up?
Is it your three hundredth rejection letter? A hypercritical response from a beta reader? A moron/cyber bully with a keyboard and a bone to pick?
If you’re going through the traditional route, rejection letters are part of the game. It’s kind of like pledging a fraternity…you’re going to get knocked down only to be built back up.
Take Amazon reviews with a grain of salt, don’t let them offend you. If you get upset, the bad guy wins. You don’t want them to win, because that means you lose. And you don’t want to be a loser, do you? =)
If you can distance yourself from your work, your emotional health will be in a lot better shape than if you get wrapped up in all of the personal jibes. It’s perfectly fine to get wrapped up in your book when you write that first draft. Pour your heart out, write everything and anything.
But when it’s time for the second and subsequent drafts, go in with that little violent bugger in the back of your head. Kill your darlings. After your mass murder during the second draft, you should feel a whole lot better about your work and have that emotional distance to know that you’re creating to the best of your ability. Show it back to your hypercritical beta reader. Compare the two drafts, did the comments made/suggested make sense in retrospect? Did you write the best book you possibly could and the reader/reviewer/critic just doesn’t know what they’re talking about?
Or was there more truth than lies? Don’t be afraid of the troll under the bridge. Think of their criticism as the toll you paid to make a second, third, or fiftieth book that much better.
Good luck!
Economy of Character
The human brain can only retain so much information; real estate in there is limited. One of the purposes of our minds is to condense that information to a manageable level. This is done through the formation of concepts, the most abstract of which are like skyscrapers on that limited real estate.
When using your mind to create these concepts (i.e. thinking), you are combining two or more objects or concepts (chair and table) into a higher-level concept (furniture). This new concept in effect gives you information about a potentially infinite amount of chair- or table-like objects (that they have the qualities of furniture). This applies to anything else your mind deems worthy of being called furniture.
Why bring this up in a discussion about character?
I primarily write in the fantasy genre, which is known to suffer from a malady called the cast of thousands, which is exactly what it sounds like. In order to achieve the epic scope they desire, some authors create many cultures and lands and people them accordingly. Some of the better writers attempt to alleviate this problem through masterful characterization and differentiation, but the problem remains: the human brain can only retain so much information.
It’s happened to everyone I know (myself included) who reads fantasy, especially the doorstoppers. We come across a character, and the name seems vaguely familiar, but we just cannot remember who that character is. We either figure out who the character is by the context, just ignore him, or treat him as a completely brand new character, history forgotten. None of these is ideal for a writer trying to tell a coherent story with a powerful emotional impact.
One solution to this problem is the very same process that you’ve used your whole life to make sense of the real world: combining lower-level units into higher-level abstractions.
Let’s say you have a character who is a policeman. Then, later on, you decide you also want to include a serial killer in your story. Nearly opposites, to be sure, but what if you combined these characters? A serial killer that is also a cop? Such a character already exists: Dexter, from the popular show of the same name. One of the hallmarks of both the book series and the show is how complex and interesting the main character is.
Of course, it’s easy just to smash two characters together and call it a day. But, like forming real concepts, it has to make sense (or rather, you have to make it make sense, since you are the one creating the character). You would never subsume chainsaw under the concept furniture. Also, the concept needs to have something essential about it that justifies its existence. The concept furniture tells us more about the world than just knowing about tables and chairs. The same must be true of the character. That essential attribute is that character’s identity, which in fiction usually boils down to his motivations, his personality, his beliefs, his psychology, etc.
In the example above, that identifying attribute could be Dexter’s homicidal urges as framed by his strange moral code.
Some of the immediate advantages of doing this should be obvious. First of all, your readers know who all of the characters are. But also, those two characters, who were perhaps a little flat to begin with, become three-dimensional when combined into one (if handled properly). This leads to deeper, more thoughtful fiction. Remember when I said that thought is concept formation? That’s why: the reader actually engages in that process when coming across characters like this.
Of course, this applies to other aspects of fiction as well, such as worldbuilding. So, take pity on your poor, confused readers and please, please economize your characters. Not only will they enjoy your stories more, but you’ll have made them feel smarter by the end, and that is always a good thing.
Stand Alone or Grow a Forest?
If books were trees, I’d have a forest in my head. It’s 842,622 words long, filled with sweeping character arcs, murky intentions, sacrificial heroism, the syncopated percussion of snapping bones, the crackling discharge of magic, the heady musk of blood. It’s a trilogy that has marinated in my conscious for near twenty years. It dwells in the vaults of my mind, the limbs of its beautiful prose framed by spaces, commas and periods, yearning to live the life of ink, dripped and stamped into meaning. My epic magnum opus.
Of course, I pulled that word count out of the ether, but I tend to read and desire to write doorstoppers . . . as long as they’re well-written. Twice before I tried to write the first book of my planned trilogy, and twice before I wrote myself into more corners than any house has a right to claim. The trees of my series blinded me, cramped the single tree I was trying to cultivate. It wasn’t until I heard other authors I respect and read talk about postponing larger projects that consumed their younger years while they honed their craft that I realized I was biting off more than my writing chops could chew. Carrying a story through a single book is far easier than trying to drape one over the frame of a series.
This is why most authors I’ve spoken with advise not trying to write a series fresh out of the gates. Usually, the untried author won’t be up to the challenge. Does this mean you’ll never be able to write a series? No. Michael Jordan didn’t dunk the first time he jumped, Brett Favre didn’t throw a touchdown the first time he picked up a football. And besides, most publishers won’t buy a series from an unknown author, though there are the occasional exceptions: Joe Abercrombie, Sam Sykes, R. Scott Bakker and others. Some publisher submission guidelines even go so far as to say if you’re submitting something that’s part of a larger work not to provide any info on the later books. If they’re interested, they’ll ask.
So, the advice which was given to me and which I now pass on to any other aspiring speculative fiction writers out there is to write a self-contained, stand alone novel-or six-before tackling a series. Prove to yourself you can carry a story from its beginning, through the muddy middle to its brilliant climax. The best series-in my opinion-contain books that stand on their own with beginnings, middles and endings, so focus on that when you’re just starting out. But-and this is important-don’t hold back! Don’t cling to your best ideas so you can use them in an eventual series, use them in what you’re writing now! You want anything you write to stand out and wow the reader . . . like a majestic tree standing apart from the forest.