As some of you may have noticed from a post a few days ago, I just finished the first draft of Unnatural Causes, my fantasy-mystery novel which I've been working on for some time.
Unnatural Causes began with a simple concept: I wanted to write a mystery novel in a secondary world fantasy setting. It seems to me that most mystery-fantasy mashups, at least at the novel length, take a contemporary setting and a "traditional" mystery, and then add fantastic elements (Harry Dresden / Jim Butcher, I'm looking at you). I wanted to go the other way around: take a fantasy setting and paradigm, then add a mystery element. I decided to have the crime be the murder of a mage and made the investigators her apprentice and familiar. To invert expectations a bit, I decided the familiar was the primary investigator and the apprentice more of the sidekick.
Initially, I had a very traditional Holmes-and-Watson kind of dynamic in mind. All that changed when I started developing the world and particularly, the origin and role of familiars. I posed to a writers' board the question of which had more possibilities: familiars as extraplanar beings, or familiars as constructs with various animal features. Someone said, "Why not both?" and that started me down a path that created the alien world where the Light - what familiars call themselves - live.
At that point, I had a choice. I could stay with my original concept and make the apprentice the viewpoint character, or I could delve deep into this new consciousness. The experiment of trying to write from the point of view of a very alien character appealed to me; that choice won out.
This turned out (I think!) to be the best choice. The way I had created the Light already put my familiar at a disadvantage: they were fundamentally constructed to have difficulty with falsehood. The apprentice would often have to translate human lies and politics (... same thing?) for her. Also, had the apprentice been my narrator, the pair would have had to be together for the entire novel for the reader to observe the full investigation. Instead, making the familiar my narrator allowed the characters to explore different paths ... and allowed her to get into trouble that would have disappeared behind the scenes otherwise.
I enjoy doing character profiles in advance, but I've noticed a tendency: I always write one or two that I end up not using, and a character that I either wrote about only briefly or never planned for ends up playing a large role in the novel. Both happened to me this time. Duvalis, familiar to the foreign ambassador, was always meant to be a side character, but he leapt to life as a snarky counterpart to my narrator. Their prickly banter was one of my favorite parts to write.
There are issues I know I need to cover in editing, some of which I can't mention without giving the plot away, but I'm taking a breather and basking in the satisfaction of a tale finished ... for now.
About Me
- Lindsey Duncan
- I'm a professional harp performer, chef / pastry chef, and speculative fiction writer from Cincinnati, Ohio. My contemporary fantasy novel Flow is available from Double Dragon Publishing, and my science fiction novel Scylla and Charybdis is now out from Grimbold Books. I've also sold a number of short stories and a few pieces of speculative poetry. I write predominantly fantasy, usually epic and/or humorous, with some soft science fiction. I play the traditional lever harp with a specialty in Celtic music - but I also perform modern and Renaissance tunes. And yes, you read that right - I have a diploma in Baking and Pastry and an Associates in Culinary Arts and am currently working in the catering field at Kate's Catering and Personal Chef Services (Dayton, KY). I am a CPC (Certified Pastry Culinarian) and CSW (Certified Specialist of Wine).
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Tuesday, May 05, 2015
Tuesday Thoughts
Today, I'm going to try to talk about profanity in fantasy writing (and cursing in general!) without using any of aforesaid naughty words. You all have permission to bap me if one slips out!
I remember very distinctly when I put the first few chapters of Flow up for critique. One reviewer pointed out that I didn't need to "sanitize" the language for young adults (I don't consider Flow a YA novel despite its main protagonist being a teenager, but that's another discussion). But Kit saying "holy schnitzel" is a verbal tic, not the writer trying to be delicate, and there are a handful of incidences of - stronger - language in the book where I felt it was necessary.
I am always conscious of the advice that dirty language looks much stronger on the page than it does when spoken. That's in part because the spoken word blips in and out of your consciousness, but on the page, it remains in your line of sight, however peripheral, until you turn to the next.
And if there's more profanity there ...
I am not a prude about language: culinary school cured me of that. I still swear infrequently enough that I can stop a room with a four letter word, and I'd like it to stay that way. Shock value is contextual. It's like using an exclamation point: every time you do, you diminish the impact of the next.
Profanity in secondary world fantasy is another beast. It takes a genuine look at the culture you're using: would these words have developed? To take a drastic example, a society without inheritance laws or that allows polygamous marriages is probably not going to place much shock-value in a certain curse that involves legitimacy. This may be personal taste, but the most popular curse word in our modern society just screams contemporary to me, even though I know the origin is pre-modern. (I learned this tidbit from my Plagues and Witches course and an instructor who was very delighted to share it.)
Other words require certain religious aspects to make sense, especially the idea that there is a place of suffering and torment in the afterlife to which one can be condemned. This is more difficult to reconcile with certain forms of polytheism. Take the Greek mythos, for instance: Tartarus and its punishments were reserved for the worst offenders, the chosen few - hi, Sisyphus! And in general, the Greek gods were less than concerned with morality. I am not as well versed in Egyptian mythology, but my understanding is that the evil were more likely to be consumed than condemned.
Inventing curse words has its own pitfalls, and I haven't really tried this yet, though I do have curses and world-specific exclamations in the more general sense. I'd rather see "he cursed" in narrative than a word out of place, whether imaginary profanity or something borrowed from the modern lexicon.
As always, it's all about using the right words.
I remember very distinctly when I put the first few chapters of Flow up for critique. One reviewer pointed out that I didn't need to "sanitize" the language for young adults (I don't consider Flow a YA novel despite its main protagonist being a teenager, but that's another discussion). But Kit saying "holy schnitzel" is a verbal tic, not the writer trying to be delicate, and there are a handful of incidences of - stronger - language in the book where I felt it was necessary.
I am always conscious of the advice that dirty language looks much stronger on the page than it does when spoken. That's in part because the spoken word blips in and out of your consciousness, but on the page, it remains in your line of sight, however peripheral, until you turn to the next.
And if there's more profanity there ...
I am not a prude about language: culinary school cured me of that. I still swear infrequently enough that I can stop a room with a four letter word, and I'd like it to stay that way. Shock value is contextual. It's like using an exclamation point: every time you do, you diminish the impact of the next.
Profanity in secondary world fantasy is another beast. It takes a genuine look at the culture you're using: would these words have developed? To take a drastic example, a society without inheritance laws or that allows polygamous marriages is probably not going to place much shock-value in a certain curse that involves legitimacy. This may be personal taste, but the most popular curse word in our modern society just screams contemporary to me, even though I know the origin is pre-modern. (I learned this tidbit from my Plagues and Witches course and an instructor who was very delighted to share it.)
Other words require certain religious aspects to make sense, especially the idea that there is a place of suffering and torment in the afterlife to which one can be condemned. This is more difficult to reconcile with certain forms of polytheism. Take the Greek mythos, for instance: Tartarus and its punishments were reserved for the worst offenders, the chosen few - hi, Sisyphus! And in general, the Greek gods were less than concerned with morality. I am not as well versed in Egyptian mythology, but my understanding is that the evil were more likely to be consumed than condemned.
Inventing curse words has its own pitfalls, and I haven't really tried this yet, though I do have curses and world-specific exclamations in the more general sense. I'd rather see "he cursed" in narrative than a word out of place, whether imaginary profanity or something borrowed from the modern lexicon.
As always, it's all about using the right words.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Tuesday Thoughts
Writers are - and writing is - I think, intrinsically bipolar ... not in a clinical sense, of course, but as a necessity of the craft and business. The euphoria we have when the words flow perfectly and everything comes together is the high we remember when we stumble, freeze up, come back to yesterday's page and think, "This is all garbage." We need that negative impulse when it comes to editing, tempered with a little love. We have to simultaneously be our own worst critics and our own greatest fans, and somehow know which applies in which moment ... and, of course, we never get it right all the time.
The submissions process sets up another series of highs and lows. The acceptances, the rejections (far more frequent!), the comments in praise or critique, they all keep the rollercoaster going. Personally, I think there's nothing more frustrating than a rejection letter that has only positive things to say! If there was nothing you would change about it, why didn't you buy it?
Sadly, it often seems that growth and improvement as a writer comes as a greater ability to analyze your own flaws. As you get better, you only get harder on yourself. I look back at some of the whacky, unfiltered drivel I wrote when I was younger, and I miss that hyperactive energy. I wish there was some way to combine the blind passion of then with the discerning eye of now.
I also miss the teenager who thought, "I don't want to wait until eighteen to have my book published; that's arbitrary and silly." (And I would have used the word arbitrary; I was always a weird and wordy little kid.) Oh, how I miss that confidence. Now, that blithe assurance has been replaced by compulsion: I keep writing because I have to. Because of that tiny voice that says maybe, just maybe this time ...
The submissions process sets up another series of highs and lows. The acceptances, the rejections (far more frequent!), the comments in praise or critique, they all keep the rollercoaster going. Personally, I think there's nothing more frustrating than a rejection letter that has only positive things to say! If there was nothing you would change about it, why didn't you buy it?
Sadly, it often seems that growth and improvement as a writer comes as a greater ability to analyze your own flaws. As you get better, you only get harder on yourself. I look back at some of the whacky, unfiltered drivel I wrote when I was younger, and I miss that hyperactive energy. I wish there was some way to combine the blind passion of then with the discerning eye of now.
I also miss the teenager who thought, "I don't want to wait until eighteen to have my book published; that's arbitrary and silly." (And I would have used the word arbitrary; I was always a weird and wordy little kid.) Oh, how I miss that confidence. Now, that blithe assurance has been replaced by compulsion: I keep writing because I have to. Because of that tiny voice that says maybe, just maybe this time ...
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Tuesday Thoughts
A lot of writers have very strong thoughts about music, whether it be a crucial writing aid or a do-not-pass-go distraction, or even whether the writer is a musician themselves. (A lot of fantasy writers seem to be Celtic musicians, or perhaps I just notice that selectively because I am one myself.)
From my secondhand understanding of how music and the brain interact, it should be hard to write while listening to music with lyrics - the lyrics engage the same part of the brain that is used for writing. Instrumental music doesn't interfere in the same way because there is no language for the brain to interpret. Never mind the science of it, though, I know writers who swear by their favorite tunes when they hit the keys.
For me, I can't listen to music while writing: it distracts me too much. On the other hand, I love to use music as a brainstorming aid, and it accompanies me through much of my day-to-day life ... and being an incubator of stories, I plot while driving or cooking or other activity of choice, whether consciously or not.
There's another way I use music to help me in my writing: when doing my prep work for novels, I single out songs from my collection to identify with specific characters, relationships or situations. Then, when those songs come on in my listening, I am quickly brought to pondering the character (relationship, situation ...). Given the way my brain works, I would be willing to bet I do this even when the connection isn't consciously brought to mind.
I do reuse the same song for future projects and new characters, and usually, "reassigning" a song will change the mental associations ... but not always. Years later, Gloria Estefan's Dangerous Game still brings me back to Miayde and Treddian from Butterfly's Poison.
Sometimes, my choices are more snarky than serious. For instance, in Scylla and Charybdis, where the main character was raised in a female-only society that uses Amazon names, I put the following on the novel playlist: Kirsty MacColl's Us Amazonians. I should hope it's obvious that very little about this song applies either seriously or literally to the story!
And, of course, other times, my song selections are more about feel than the precise lyrics. Going all the way back to Flow, I've always associated Ghost In The Machinery (Sarah Brightman) with Kit. (For those of you who are familiar with and like Brightman, her album "Fly" is a very wonderfully weird side-step from her usual fare.) Yet there is almost nothing in the lyrics that is specifically relevant to the storyline.
I "find" songs, too: abruptly discover that something I'm listening to applies to a character. I think this is what always appealed to me about Glee, for all its (many) flaws: that joy in "found" music.
All this is a roundabout way of saying that music is an important part of my creative process, but as part of the backburner, behind-the-scenes development rather than a writing companion.
From my secondhand understanding of how music and the brain interact, it should be hard to write while listening to music with lyrics - the lyrics engage the same part of the brain that is used for writing. Instrumental music doesn't interfere in the same way because there is no language for the brain to interpret. Never mind the science of it, though, I know writers who swear by their favorite tunes when they hit the keys.
For me, I can't listen to music while writing: it distracts me too much. On the other hand, I love to use music as a brainstorming aid, and it accompanies me through much of my day-to-day life ... and being an incubator of stories, I plot while driving or cooking or other activity of choice, whether consciously or not.
There's another way I use music to help me in my writing: when doing my prep work for novels, I single out songs from my collection to identify with specific characters, relationships or situations. Then, when those songs come on in my listening, I am quickly brought to pondering the character (relationship, situation ...). Given the way my brain works, I would be willing to bet I do this even when the connection isn't consciously brought to mind.
I do reuse the same song for future projects and new characters, and usually, "reassigning" a song will change the mental associations ... but not always. Years later, Gloria Estefan's Dangerous Game still brings me back to Miayde and Treddian from Butterfly's Poison.
Sometimes, my choices are more snarky than serious. For instance, in Scylla and Charybdis, where the main character was raised in a female-only society that uses Amazon names, I put the following on the novel playlist: Kirsty MacColl's Us Amazonians. I should hope it's obvious that very little about this song applies either seriously or literally to the story!
And, of course, other times, my song selections are more about feel than the precise lyrics. Going all the way back to Flow, I've always associated Ghost In The Machinery (Sarah Brightman) with Kit. (For those of you who are familiar with and like Brightman, her album "Fly" is a very wonderfully weird side-step from her usual fare.) Yet there is almost nothing in the lyrics that is specifically relevant to the storyline.
I "find" songs, too: abruptly discover that something I'm listening to applies to a character. I think this is what always appealed to me about Glee, for all its (many) flaws: that joy in "found" music.
All this is a roundabout way of saying that music is an important part of my creative process, but as part of the backburner, behind-the-scenes development rather than a writing companion.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Tuesday Thoughts
One final foray into the topic of naming (for now): the naming of things, whether it be cities, landmarks, organizations, or places of business. This is the part of naming that I find the most challenging, and each category has its own pitfalls.
For countries and cities in secondary worlds, there are obviously two types of names: invented names that follow similar conventions to the names of their inhabitants, and descriptive names like Whitehollow or Kingstown. (The former may, in fact, be the latter in some older language.) For me, the challenge of the former is coming up with an appropriate sound that conveys "place" rather than "person," and this is always going to be subjective. I know many a real-world place has sounded like a perfect character name to me!
For me, it is the descriptive names that are hardest, especially when it comes to naming organizations and businesses. It is no coincidence that it took me a long time to come up with a possible (never mind definite) name for my own catering business, and I'm still not sold on "Harmonies Entwined." (The name originated because the business plan I created for my coursework was centered around Virginia wine country and its wines; hence Harmonies Ent(wine)d.") I have a very sensitive meter for the possibility of things sounding hokey, which tends to nix a lot of ideas and make brainstorming difficult - my censor works overtime.
This may have something to do with the fact that I don't summarize well - my first reaction when I try is, "But I've left out this and this and ..." So a few words intended to label an entire group of people? That seems inordinately difficult. That said, I've come up with a few I'm proud of. I've always liked the Borderwatch, the quasi-military, anti-magic group in Flow - the name stems from the fact that they ... well ... watch the border between fairy and humanity. The magic-users in my abandoned novel Blood From Stone are known as lithomers, since their magic is very heavily stone-based.
Ultimately, I suppose, names for all but the most central setting elements aren't as crucial - they never appear so prominently as the names of characters. But the right name can breathe life into a setting just as surely as it can breathe life into a fictional protagonist.
For countries and cities in secondary worlds, there are obviously two types of names: invented names that follow similar conventions to the names of their inhabitants, and descriptive names like Whitehollow or Kingstown. (The former may, in fact, be the latter in some older language.) For me, the challenge of the former is coming up with an appropriate sound that conveys "place" rather than "person," and this is always going to be subjective. I know many a real-world place has sounded like a perfect character name to me!
For me, it is the descriptive names that are hardest, especially when it comes to naming organizations and businesses. It is no coincidence that it took me a long time to come up with a possible (never mind definite) name for my own catering business, and I'm still not sold on "Harmonies Entwined." (The name originated because the business plan I created for my coursework was centered around Virginia wine country and its wines; hence Harmonies Ent(wine)d.") I have a very sensitive meter for the possibility of things sounding hokey, which tends to nix a lot of ideas and make brainstorming difficult - my censor works overtime.
This may have something to do with the fact that I don't summarize well - my first reaction when I try is, "But I've left out this and this and ..." So a few words intended to label an entire group of people? That seems inordinately difficult. That said, I've come up with a few I'm proud of. I've always liked the Borderwatch, the quasi-military, anti-magic group in Flow - the name stems from the fact that they ... well ... watch the border between fairy and humanity. The magic-users in my abandoned novel Blood From Stone are known as lithomers, since their magic is very heavily stone-based.
Ultimately, I suppose, names for all but the most central setting elements aren't as crucial - they never appear so prominently as the names of characters. But the right name can breathe life into a setting just as surely as it can breathe life into a fictional protagonist.
Tuesday, April 07, 2015
GoodReads Review: Otherwere
Otherwere: Stories of Transformation by Laura Anne GilmanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
An entertaining and varied collection of short stories, running the gamut from serious to silly to reflective to scientific. These are all contemporary / urban fantasy stories, but with the imaginative types of were-creatures presented, no tale feels repetitive.
Highlights for me were Shariann Lewitt's "Sharewere" (where the shapechanging involves artificial intelligence!) and Greg Cox's "... So Tears Run To A Predestined End." In general, I especially enjoyed the more humorous stories. Two stories didn't work for me. R.A. Salvatore's "The Coach With The Big Teeth" could have achieved the same effect in three pages, unless you're an avid sports fan. Adam-Troy Castro's "The Way Things Ought To Be" has an interesting premise based on were-politics, but its execution is too militant unless you agree with the outlook presented.
Overall, this is a solid anthology with several strong stories. Recommended.
View all my reviews
Tuesday Thoughts
So a confession: a small part of why I prefer to write secondary world fantasy as opposed to contemporary fantasy is I struggle with names. "Normal" names often don't have enough resonance for me to easily associate them with characters. On the other hand, there is a limit to how "weird" the names in a story can get before it becomes comical or breaks disbelief in a different way. (You can easily make a reader believe the world contains a hidden society of vampires, werewolves, magicians, etc, but characters with bizarre names? That's just too fantastic.)
In roleplaying games, one of my favorite tactics has been to have the character go by a simple / normal nickname that comes from a more complicated / unusual name. So Tate was Tatyana; Liv was Sullivan. In Flow, Kit's actual first name is Enid - her nickname comes from her middle name. Then, of course, there are the characters who have elaborate, overblown names because it suits their background or the plot. In "Lip Service," the narrator complains about her mother deciding to name her Arcana.
I find males even harder to name than females - in any setting, but particularly in the contemporary world. It always seems to me that, societally, parents are more willing to experiment with unusual and colorful names for girls. And, of course, the girls have "stolen" many an interesting name from their male counterparts!
This reminds me of a story my former teacher tells about Welsh triple harp player Robin Huw Bowen (male). When he arrived at the airport, she picked up his harp from security ... by claiming to be him.
For me, I think part of the issue is the more common a name is, the more likely it is that I know or have heard of (writer, actor, musician, etc) someone by that name. Whether consciously or not, my brain has built associations between that name and that individual, and the name no longer free-floats in space to be used at will.
That said, there are always names I just gravitate towards. I've always been a big fan of the name Vivian, and when I was little, I wanted desperately to be named Cynthia. (I was a weird little kid. Have I said that before?) On the boys' side, for whatever reason, I've always liked plain ol' Jonathan - not Jon or John, but fully spelled out.
... and with that, I flee back into another world.
In roleplaying games, one of my favorite tactics has been to have the character go by a simple / normal nickname that comes from a more complicated / unusual name. So Tate was Tatyana; Liv was Sullivan. In Flow, Kit's actual first name is Enid - her nickname comes from her middle name. Then, of course, there are the characters who have elaborate, overblown names because it suits their background or the plot. In "Lip Service," the narrator complains about her mother deciding to name her Arcana.
I find males even harder to name than females - in any setting, but particularly in the contemporary world. It always seems to me that, societally, parents are more willing to experiment with unusual and colorful names for girls. And, of course, the girls have "stolen" many an interesting name from their male counterparts!
This reminds me of a story my former teacher tells about Welsh triple harp player Robin Huw Bowen (male). When he arrived at the airport, she picked up his harp from security ... by claiming to be him.
For me, I think part of the issue is the more common a name is, the more likely it is that I know or have heard of (writer, actor, musician, etc) someone by that name. Whether consciously or not, my brain has built associations between that name and that individual, and the name no longer free-floats in space to be used at will.
That said, there are always names I just gravitate towards. I've always been a big fan of the name Vivian, and when I was little, I wanted desperately to be named Cynthia. (I was a weird little kid. Have I said that before?) On the boys' side, for whatever reason, I've always liked plain ol' Jonathan - not Jon or John, but fully spelled out.
... and with that, I flee back into another world.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Tuesday Thoughts
We're shuffling back to Tuesday for the weekly post because it is the only weekday I won't be in class this upcoming quarter - oh, yes, you heard that right. It's been a great ride, but I am so ready to graduate, ladies and gentlemen.
In the first draft of Gone With The Wind, so the story goes, Margaret Mitchell had named her heroine Pansy. It wasn't until later that she changed the name to Scarlet. Now, it seems almost inconceivable that Scarlet should be named anything else. What would a Pansy be like? I picture a plain, naive, sweet girl - or maybe a frumpy governness.
For me, names are inextricably linked to character. I find that characters don't fully form in my head until they have a name, and oftentimes, the name I've chosen will influence their development. This makes renaming - the few times I've had to do so - a grueling process. How do you find a different name that feels exactly the same as the original? And that feeling is an elusive, ephemeral thing: I couldn't necessarily articulate what the names I've chosen convey to me.
For some of my fantasy novels, I've done full-blown naming languages. Some writers find this excessive, but honestly, it's something I enjoy doing. I love coming up with the basic rules of word construction - maybe this language lacks the aspirated H sound? - and lingual drift, then watching the evolution. A side bonus is this also gives me a source for naming cities, rivers, countries, and so forth, which is something I often have trouble with. (That's another post, I think.) There is a fantastic basic primer that I use for generation, plus - if I feel ambitious - a list of (I believe) the 150 most commonly used words. I'm no Tolkien: the physics of linguistics, how sounds are produced in the mouth, how to "properly" represent subtle differences in sound that are represented identically in writing - all these things are outside the scope of my creations. Maybe some day.
For other works, I've simply created an internal sense for myself about how names from a particular culture or region should feel. (Are we getting the impression I'm a very kinesthetic person yet?) Sometimes, this is a specific analogue to the real world - similar to Welsh, Greek, Native American - and sometimes not. Other times, I'll set forth particular rules for consistency. For instance, in Journal of the Dead, all female names have a silent H in them somewhere; and to avoid a typical naming disease, female names never end with an -a. Male names almost always end in consonants.
In Unnatural Causes, the desert countries in which the story takes place have a very distinct naming convention. There are no "stand-alone" internal vowels - it's always some kind of dipthong. The only exception is the letter y. Names can, however, start or end with a single vowel. This gives me names like Roendair, Iluenn, Eshaira, Nydrian ... and it also sets up a nice contrast between them and the familiars, whose names don't follow these rules (Vil, Duvalis, Koric), and the lone westerner, Davsin.
... I would just like to observe that spellcheck is flipping its lid right now.
Which brings me to the use of contemporary names. I genuinely dislike real world names in secondary world fantasy, unless there is some hidden connection to our world in the backstory. It jerks me right out of the story. Obviously, all fantasy worlds are in some way modeled after ours, if only by contrast, but to have characters named - for instance - Alice and Thomas lampshades it too much for my taste. (Go here if you're unfamiliar with Lampshade Hanging) On the other hand, names that are "real" but not recognizably evocative of our world are all right with me. For instance, Pazia (from Fatecraft) is actually a Hebrew name meaning "golden." (I seem to be drawn to names in this particular vein ...)
And what about stories set in our world? There, I find a whole new set of challenges in naming ...
In the first draft of Gone With The Wind, so the story goes, Margaret Mitchell had named her heroine Pansy. It wasn't until later that she changed the name to Scarlet. Now, it seems almost inconceivable that Scarlet should be named anything else. What would a Pansy be like? I picture a plain, naive, sweet girl - or maybe a frumpy governness.
For me, names are inextricably linked to character. I find that characters don't fully form in my head until they have a name, and oftentimes, the name I've chosen will influence their development. This makes renaming - the few times I've had to do so - a grueling process. How do you find a different name that feels exactly the same as the original? And that feeling is an elusive, ephemeral thing: I couldn't necessarily articulate what the names I've chosen convey to me.
For some of my fantasy novels, I've done full-blown naming languages. Some writers find this excessive, but honestly, it's something I enjoy doing. I love coming up with the basic rules of word construction - maybe this language lacks the aspirated H sound? - and lingual drift, then watching the evolution. A side bonus is this also gives me a source for naming cities, rivers, countries, and so forth, which is something I often have trouble with. (That's another post, I think.) There is a fantastic basic primer that I use for generation, plus - if I feel ambitious - a list of (I believe) the 150 most commonly used words. I'm no Tolkien: the physics of linguistics, how sounds are produced in the mouth, how to "properly" represent subtle differences in sound that are represented identically in writing - all these things are outside the scope of my creations. Maybe some day.
For other works, I've simply created an internal sense for myself about how names from a particular culture or region should feel. (Are we getting the impression I'm a very kinesthetic person yet?) Sometimes, this is a specific analogue to the real world - similar to Welsh, Greek, Native American - and sometimes not. Other times, I'll set forth particular rules for consistency. For instance, in Journal of the Dead, all female names have a silent H in them somewhere; and to avoid a typical naming disease, female names never end with an -a. Male names almost always end in consonants.
In Unnatural Causes, the desert countries in which the story takes place have a very distinct naming convention. There are no "stand-alone" internal vowels - it's always some kind of dipthong. The only exception is the letter y. Names can, however, start or end with a single vowel. This gives me names like Roendair, Iluenn, Eshaira, Nydrian ... and it also sets up a nice contrast between them and the familiars, whose names don't follow these rules (Vil, Duvalis, Koric), and the lone westerner, Davsin.
... I would just like to observe that spellcheck is flipping its lid right now.
Which brings me to the use of contemporary names. I genuinely dislike real world names in secondary world fantasy, unless there is some hidden connection to our world in the backstory. It jerks me right out of the story. Obviously, all fantasy worlds are in some way modeled after ours, if only by contrast, but to have characters named - for instance - Alice and Thomas lampshades it too much for my taste. (Go here if you're unfamiliar with Lampshade Hanging) On the other hand, names that are "real" but not recognizably evocative of our world are all right with me. For instance, Pazia (from Fatecraft) is actually a Hebrew name meaning "golden." (I seem to be drawn to names in this particular vein ...)
And what about stories set in our world? There, I find a whole new set of challenges in naming ...
Monday, March 30, 2015
Homeschooler's Perspective: the Age Gap
One of the major differences between homeschooling and conventional schooling is the fact that typically, life and learning experiences (the two are inextricably linked) do not occur with a large group of people the same age. Theater, sports, music, zoo class, and assorted field trips tend to be a family affair. You become accustomed to hanging out with people of all ages, rather than your friend automatically being the person closest to your own age, and their family members regulated to "annoying siblings" or "the mom." For me, this was often even more the case: because my family started homeschooling when the movement was novel and strange and because my mother spoke on the topic, adults wanted to talk to me as "exhibit A," while their children met me as their introduction to homeschooling.
I'm not sure whether homeschooling, happenstance or inborn preference played the greater part, but this trend only continued as I grew older. For several years, one of my closest friends was my neighbor's younger daughter. I worked at the Cincinnati Museum Center during school hours, so made friends with the adult volunteers. I was always very comfortable and at ease with them.
Then I entered the world of the traditional lever harp. Most harpers start either very young - they take lessons as children - or later in life, often towards retirement. I was sixteen and right in the middle, and in general, I've stayed there. I do meet some harpers close to my age, but most are on one side or the other.
My final encounter with the age gap came in culinary school. Once again, I was surrounded by people who were just out of highschool - given or take a few years - or people a decade or two older starting a new career. I tended to feel more kinship with the older students than with the "kids," but I've had good luck getting along with both.
Does it really matter? In the end, common interests and dedication trump age every time. If there has been any difficulty, it comes from the generation gap in terms of pop culture and common views - quite simply, we don't always get each other's jokes. For instance, in the kitchen one day, I made a "crunchy frog" joke to absolute silence. I've been the only person to laugh when my teachers made a reference. I was completely boggled to find out that many of my younger classmates never check their email. And who can live without their own printer? (All right, that may be a writer thing.)
Speaking of writers, that's another area that spans the gamut of ages, but I don't tend to notice it as often. A big part of it, I'm sure, is because there are almost no physical reminders. Another component is that if a joke does fall flat, it doesn't land in an obvious abyss of blank stares. But then, there's the fact that we writers tend to collect information and trivia, and we're more likely to get jokes that don't fit our generation, background, or chosen (non-writing) career.
... a bit like homeschoolers, really.
I'm not sure whether homeschooling, happenstance or inborn preference played the greater part, but this trend only continued as I grew older. For several years, one of my closest friends was my neighbor's younger daughter. I worked at the Cincinnati Museum Center during school hours, so made friends with the adult volunteers. I was always very comfortable and at ease with them.
Then I entered the world of the traditional lever harp. Most harpers start either very young - they take lessons as children - or later in life, often towards retirement. I was sixteen and right in the middle, and in general, I've stayed there. I do meet some harpers close to my age, but most are on one side or the other.
My final encounter with the age gap came in culinary school. Once again, I was surrounded by people who were just out of highschool - given or take a few years - or people a decade or two older starting a new career. I tended to feel more kinship with the older students than with the "kids," but I've had good luck getting along with both.
Does it really matter? In the end, common interests and dedication trump age every time. If there has been any difficulty, it comes from the generation gap in terms of pop culture and common views - quite simply, we don't always get each other's jokes. For instance, in the kitchen one day, I made a "crunchy frog" joke to absolute silence. I've been the only person to laugh when my teachers made a reference. I was completely boggled to find out that many of my younger classmates never check their email. And who can live without their own printer? (All right, that may be a writer thing.)
Speaking of writers, that's another area that spans the gamut of ages, but I don't tend to notice it as often. A big part of it, I'm sure, is because there are almost no physical reminders. Another component is that if a joke does fall flat, it doesn't land in an obvious abyss of blank stares. But then, there's the fact that we writers tend to collect information and trivia, and we're more likely to get jokes that don't fit our generation, background, or chosen (non-writing) career.
... a bit like homeschoolers, really.
Saturday, March 21, 2015
That Time of Year
It's that time of year again. No, not spring - you couldn't prove that by the weather around here, anyway - but the annual submissions period for the Sword & Sorceress anthologies. This has been a dream market of mine for years. I've managed to get stories held for second reading, but haven't broken through yet.
So this year, I have two stories selected for editing and eventual submission. They are:
The Dragon's Dinner: a recent story of mine, a short, humorous tale about a princess who goes to rescue her beloved from a dragon, only to find that things are appetizingly not what they seem.
Unblemished: a much older (and longer) story about a woman who becomes a Silver, a healer whose powers only work unless she herself is never injured ... not so much as a scratch. Family loyalties come into conflict with her profession. This story needs a lot more work than the other: descriptions added, paragraphs rearranged, language tidied up ... but the plot is strong, and I think it will be worth it.
Fingers crossed that this will be the year.
So this year, I have two stories selected for editing and eventual submission. They are:
The Dragon's Dinner: a recent story of mine, a short, humorous tale about a princess who goes to rescue her beloved from a dragon, only to find that things are appetizingly not what they seem.
Unblemished: a much older (and longer) story about a woman who becomes a Silver, a healer whose powers only work unless she herself is never injured ... not so much as a scratch. Family loyalties come into conflict with her profession. This story needs a lot more work than the other: descriptions added, paragraphs rearranged, language tidied up ... but the plot is strong, and I think it will be worth it.
Fingers crossed that this will be the year.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Wednesday Wanderings
Location, location, location.
Back when Flow first came out, I defined why I considered it contemporary fantasy, not urban fantasy. Part of the reason is, despite the road-trip aspect of the story, it doesn't really occur in or involve a city environment. Most of the tale is spent in smaller population centers or in outlying suburban areas.
As I look at other contemporary fantasy stories I've written, this generally holds true. (Xmas Wishes occurs firmly in suburbia.) Part of it is, I'm sure, that I'm not comfortable enough with many big cities to be confident using them as story setting, but the lion's share is that urban settings really don't interest me that much. As a personal preference, I don't like the bustle and claustrophobia of big cities; I don't feel the allure or the mystique, even if I can grasp it on an intellectual level.
It is in the quieter spaces that I seem to find my modern-day stories. Some of them are even inspired, to various degrees, by experiences I've had. A Flow-verse story I'm currently trying to sell entitled "A Dose of Aconite" is set largely in an anonymous nowheresville motel that is modeled after the place I stayed outside of Oberlin when I was getting my SHSA (Scottish Harp Society of America) judging certification. And the skeleton outlet mall between Cincinnati and Columbus where confrontation occurs in Flow? That's a real place ... with some tweaks, of course.
I do think that abandoned and desolate places have appeal for me as a writer. (A while back, I mentioned that I finished a new story, then an old free-write start ... only to realize that both revolved around a mysteriously abandoned population center.) Most of the action in Flow occurs in the spaces between ...
Of course, one of the fun parts of using the real world is highlighting its oddities. A retired humorous novel of mine pokes at the fact that the Cincinnati airport is in Kentucky. Flow makes a reference to the glitzy, over-the-top McDonald's in Asheville, North Carolina. One of my unsubmitted stories, Lip Service, uses every single reference to metaphorical kisses I could find, from Kissimmee, FL, to Kissing, Germany, to Hershey's kisses, to a Glasgow Kiss ...
Back when Flow first came out, I defined why I considered it contemporary fantasy, not urban fantasy. Part of the reason is, despite the road-trip aspect of the story, it doesn't really occur in or involve a city environment. Most of the tale is spent in smaller population centers or in outlying suburban areas.
As I look at other contemporary fantasy stories I've written, this generally holds true. (Xmas Wishes occurs firmly in suburbia.) Part of it is, I'm sure, that I'm not comfortable enough with many big cities to be confident using them as story setting, but the lion's share is that urban settings really don't interest me that much. As a personal preference, I don't like the bustle and claustrophobia of big cities; I don't feel the allure or the mystique, even if I can grasp it on an intellectual level.
It is in the quieter spaces that I seem to find my modern-day stories. Some of them are even inspired, to various degrees, by experiences I've had. A Flow-verse story I'm currently trying to sell entitled "A Dose of Aconite" is set largely in an anonymous nowheresville motel that is modeled after the place I stayed outside of Oberlin when I was getting my SHSA (Scottish Harp Society of America) judging certification. And the skeleton outlet mall between Cincinnati and Columbus where confrontation occurs in Flow? That's a real place ... with some tweaks, of course.
I do think that abandoned and desolate places have appeal for me as a writer. (A while back, I mentioned that I finished a new story, then an old free-write start ... only to realize that both revolved around a mysteriously abandoned population center.) Most of the action in Flow occurs in the spaces between ...
Of course, one of the fun parts of using the real world is highlighting its oddities. A retired humorous novel of mine pokes at the fact that the Cincinnati airport is in Kentucky. Flow makes a reference to the glitzy, over-the-top McDonald's in Asheville, North Carolina. One of my unsubmitted stories, Lip Service, uses every single reference to metaphorical kisses I could find, from Kissimmee, FL, to Kissing, Germany, to Hershey's kisses, to a Glasgow Kiss ...
Wednesday, March 04, 2015
Wednesday Wanderings
Happy National Grammar Day!
It should surprise no one that I am a big fan of this holiday. I am an unabashed grammar fanatic, and I will confess that seeing grammatical errors (with the exception, perhaps, of the most obscure) in professional documents, from announcements to job descriptions to newsletters, tends to lower my opinion of the company or individual. I try to resist it - I know that it's not as important to some! - but I can't help it.
I realize that English is a living language, and that grammar use will drift as the language does and eventually become "correct." On the other hand, the language is much more codified than it ever was in the pre-modern era, so to what extent is drift natural and acceptable, and to what extent is the application of new terms / grammar conventions an ad populum fallacy - that is, the idea that it's right because most people believe it to be true? I don't know that there's a singular answer. That said, I can tell y'all definitively that "ain't" ain't in my dictionary. (Y'all is probably a good example of all this! People will insist that it should be "ya'll" or that it's "y'all" if singular or "ya'll" if plural or ... this is not a debate I'm up on. ;-))
(This makes me think about the response to the "rule" about not ending a sentence with a preposition: "This is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put.")
(Yes, I have a parantheses addiction.)
To me, though, it's more than just a debate, and there are both practical and artistic reasons for it. On the practical level, grammar and punctuation are vital for clarity. The argument for putting a comma on the word before a person is addressed is easily illustrated with the difference between, "Let's eat, Grandma!" and "Let's eat grandma." As for applying it in other situations, I think it's much easier to use it consistently than to have to stop and consider clarity every time ... especially when the definition of clarity may vary from person to person.
On the artistic side, grammar and punctuation inform the music of the written word. They ask for pauses; they group phrases together like a singer following breath marks. There is a marked difference between two independent phrases separated by a period versus the same two phrases separated by a semi-colon. I confess I'm heartily addicted to ellipses and dashes, and I constantly have to edit back my use of them, but that break, that beat, is as much a part of my writer's lexicon as any word.
Some online publishing houses have moved to a trend of removing any punctuation that is not strictly necessary for clarity. This drives me batty. To me, it's taking some of the music out of the language. Please save the commas! Catch them and release them back into the wilds of prose, where they belong.
It should surprise no one that I am a big fan of this holiday. I am an unabashed grammar fanatic, and I will confess that seeing grammatical errors (with the exception, perhaps, of the most obscure) in professional documents, from announcements to job descriptions to newsletters, tends to lower my opinion of the company or individual. I try to resist it - I know that it's not as important to some! - but I can't help it.
I realize that English is a living language, and that grammar use will drift as the language does and eventually become "correct." On the other hand, the language is much more codified than it ever was in the pre-modern era, so to what extent is drift natural and acceptable, and to what extent is the application of new terms / grammar conventions an ad populum fallacy - that is, the idea that it's right because most people believe it to be true? I don't know that there's a singular answer. That said, I can tell y'all definitively that "ain't" ain't in my dictionary. (Y'all is probably a good example of all this! People will insist that it should be "ya'll" or that it's "y'all" if singular or "ya'll" if plural or ... this is not a debate I'm up on. ;-))
(This makes me think about the response to the "rule" about not ending a sentence with a preposition: "This is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put.")
(Yes, I have a parantheses addiction.)
To me, though, it's more than just a debate, and there are both practical and artistic reasons for it. On the practical level, grammar and punctuation are vital for clarity. The argument for putting a comma on the word before a person is addressed is easily illustrated with the difference between, "Let's eat, Grandma!" and "Let's eat grandma." As for applying it in other situations, I think it's much easier to use it consistently than to have to stop and consider clarity every time ... especially when the definition of clarity may vary from person to person.
On the artistic side, grammar and punctuation inform the music of the written word. They ask for pauses; they group phrases together like a singer following breath marks. There is a marked difference between two independent phrases separated by a period versus the same two phrases separated by a semi-colon. I confess I'm heartily addicted to ellipses and dashes, and I constantly have to edit back my use of them, but that break, that beat, is as much a part of my writer's lexicon as any word.
Some online publishing houses have moved to a trend of removing any punctuation that is not strictly necessary for clarity. This drives me batty. To me, it's taking some of the music out of the language. Please save the commas! Catch them and release them back into the wilds of prose, where they belong.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
GoodReads Review: The Golden Swan
The Golden Swan by Nancy SpringerMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
The worlds of Isle and Vale collide as crippled, lovesick prince Frain from the mainland washes up on a beach and is discovered by Dair, the wolf-form son of the King of Isle. The book follows the same format as the previous volume, three (roughly) equal first person sections, with the character who is the driving force (in this case, Frain) taking the final portion. Maybe it's because it was new in the first book but is a deliberate echo here, or maybe it's because the three characters can't freely and mutually communicate for most of the book, but it doesn't work quite as well.
The flaw that plagued the earlier volumes are also in evidence here. Prophecy and destiny are used as motivations and explanations; mysterious, inexplicable events feel less like the markers of an invisible world than randomness or convenience. (This latter is, again, a product of its time. Nowadays, fantasy readers expect more rigorous logic underpinning the worldbuilding.)
I had trouble pushing through this book because none of the main characters really seem to have solid motivations to drive the plot. They are carried along, instead, by the vision of one, to a conclusion that is equal parts sorrow and joy, and could be more poignant and affecting with stronger desires driving it. It feels more like a product of the world and its cosmic forces than the characters' efforts.
View all my reviews
Wednesday Wanderings
I think we all adopt phrases and verbal tics that in some cases started out as humorous or clever, but have become such an integral part of our daily lexicon that we no longer think much of them ... until we say something and the person next to us stares or bursts out laughing. Oh. *Oh*. Some of them simply may be "regular" sayings that have passed out of common usage.
For your (hopeful) amusement, here are some of mine:
We're off like a herd of turtles: my family says this all ... the ... time.
(I'll be back in) two shakes of a lamb's tail: I have no idea where I picked this one up, but I say it a lot.
Easy breezy lemon squeezy: blame my pastry instructor.
Good enough for government work: same.
I have two brains - one's lost, and the other's out looking for it: this has become one of my stock responses when I do something dim-witted.
The wheel's spinning, but the hamster's dead: about the same.
It takes me two pages to say hello: I'm long-winded / wordy. At least in writing.
Hello, Department of Redundancy Department, Hello: another family standard.
It's good to be the king: ... if you haven't seen Mel Brook's History of the World Pt 1, this one won't make much sense. (See also: "The streets are crawling with Romans!" and "Walk this way.")
For your (hopeful) amusement, here are some of mine:
We're off like a herd of turtles: my family says this all ... the ... time.
(I'll be back in) two shakes of a lamb's tail: I have no idea where I picked this one up, but I say it a lot.
Easy breezy lemon squeezy: blame my pastry instructor.
Good enough for government work: same.
I have two brains - one's lost, and the other's out looking for it: this has become one of my stock responses when I do something dim-witted.
The wheel's spinning, but the hamster's dead: about the same.
It takes me two pages to say hello: I'm long-winded / wordy. At least in writing.
Hello, Department of Redundancy Department, Hello: another family standard.
It's good to be the king: ... if you haven't seen Mel Brook's History of the World Pt 1, this one won't make much sense. (See also: "The streets are crawling with Romans!" and "Walk this way.")
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Wednesday Wanderings
I've run into an interesting situation with Unnatural Causes as I wind towards the revelation of the murderer: though the main characters are able to piece together his/her identity, he/she has hidden their tracks too well - my heroes know whodunnit, but they have no way to prove it to the authorities. The body is gone; simply going to the guard would result in a he said / she said scenario, and neither of my investigators have a lot of political capital. (Politics, influence and power are an integral part of the storyline, much to the dismay of my extraplanar narrator, who has no patience for this kind of thing.)
I have no idea how I'm going to resolve this; however, I also know I'm an incubator and ideas develop on my mental backburner. So, I'm continuing to write - there are a few more major scenes before the confrontation - and hoping that something will come to me. If worst comes to worst, I can go back and edit in some weak link that the investigators can use. Or maybe ... just maybe ... the solution will be that there is no solution.
When I started writing this novel, my motivation for choosing it over other projects was two-fold. First, fantasy mystery - in the sense of a mystery / detective style story set in a secondary world, rather than a mystery / detective story in our world with fantasy elements added - is something I've always wanted to write. It fits very neatly into the "mannerpunk" style that I like writing, where social status, politicking and battles of wits are more important than armies.
Second, this concept flexes my writer muscles with some challenges: I've never written a novel-length mystery story before; and my first person narrator is an extraplanar being who I was very determined to make FEEL alien to the reader, not just a human in a funny suit. (And it is a very funny suit: familiars materialize in this world as a blend of human and two or more animals.)
I initially set out with the goal that I wouldn't know whodunnit until shortly before the investigators did, but I found that untenable for laying out the storyline, so I stopped and worked out the motivation and nature of the crime. I did, however (and this is a slight spoiler), make myself promise one thing: I wouldn't go with the easy out of "everyone dunnit," where multiple people were in some way responsible.
The idea of multiple attempts on the same life does fascinate me, I'll admit, because of some of the opportunities it presents. The classic example is of three men in a desert. Two of them independently decide to kill the third. The first man poisons his water canteen. The second man pokes a hole in the canteen so the water drips out and he dies of thirst. So ... who actually killed him? I love thought experiments like this.
But since I have done it before, it felt like a cop-out in this case. I still couldn't resist having multiple components to the murder, but ... you would have to read it for details. What I've enjoyed with this book is that when I started it, I deliberately made the choice to write slowly. I'm an incubator, so I wanted the time to let it ferment in my head (now I'm mixing my culinary metaphors) and not reach for the most obvious tool in my toolbox.
The title Unnatural Causes, by the way, is a bit of occult geekery. In pre-modern magical thought, the natural was the realm of things that behaved as they were in nature: birds fly, leaves, and so forth. The supernatural was the realm of God, demons, spirits, and so forth. Between that was the unnatural: things that behaved in ways that were against the natural order. So, for instance, a rock fired from a sling was as unnatural as a magical spell! Science and magic dovetailed. In many ways, this liminal view of the world was what kept magical thought alive.
Besides being an obvious play on "death by natural causes," Unnatural Causes is also particularly appropriate because the magic in the setting is essentially technology: enchanters build "thought machines" to execute their spells.
So in the end, rather than be anxious about this problem in my novel I haven't yet solved, I'm excited to see where it takes me.
I have no idea how I'm going to resolve this; however, I also know I'm an incubator and ideas develop on my mental backburner. So, I'm continuing to write - there are a few more major scenes before the confrontation - and hoping that something will come to me. If worst comes to worst, I can go back and edit in some weak link that the investigators can use. Or maybe ... just maybe ... the solution will be that there is no solution.
When I started writing this novel, my motivation for choosing it over other projects was two-fold. First, fantasy mystery - in the sense of a mystery / detective style story set in a secondary world, rather than a mystery / detective story in our world with fantasy elements added - is something I've always wanted to write. It fits very neatly into the "mannerpunk" style that I like writing, where social status, politicking and battles of wits are more important than armies.
Second, this concept flexes my writer muscles with some challenges: I've never written a novel-length mystery story before; and my first person narrator is an extraplanar being who I was very determined to make FEEL alien to the reader, not just a human in a funny suit. (And it is a very funny suit: familiars materialize in this world as a blend of human and two or more animals.)
I initially set out with the goal that I wouldn't know whodunnit until shortly before the investigators did, but I found that untenable for laying out the storyline, so I stopped and worked out the motivation and nature of the crime. I did, however (and this is a slight spoiler), make myself promise one thing: I wouldn't go with the easy out of "everyone dunnit," where multiple people were in some way responsible.
The idea of multiple attempts on the same life does fascinate me, I'll admit, because of some of the opportunities it presents. The classic example is of three men in a desert. Two of them independently decide to kill the third. The first man poisons his water canteen. The second man pokes a hole in the canteen so the water drips out and he dies of thirst. So ... who actually killed him? I love thought experiments like this.
But since I have done it before, it felt like a cop-out in this case. I still couldn't resist having multiple components to the murder, but ... you would have to read it for details. What I've enjoyed with this book is that when I started it, I deliberately made the choice to write slowly. I'm an incubator, so I wanted the time to let it ferment in my head (now I'm mixing my culinary metaphors) and not reach for the most obvious tool in my toolbox.
The title Unnatural Causes, by the way, is a bit of occult geekery. In pre-modern magical thought, the natural was the realm of things that behaved as they were in nature: birds fly, leaves, and so forth. The supernatural was the realm of God, demons, spirits, and so forth. Between that was the unnatural: things that behaved in ways that were against the natural order. So, for instance, a rock fired from a sling was as unnatural as a magical spell! Science and magic dovetailed. In many ways, this liminal view of the world was what kept magical thought alive.
Besides being an obvious play on "death by natural causes," Unnatural Causes is also particularly appropriate because the magic in the setting is essentially technology: enchanters build "thought machines" to execute their spells.
So in the end, rather than be anxious about this problem in my novel I haven't yet solved, I'm excited to see where it takes me.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Wednesday Wanderings
The more you know, the funnier life is.
So much of humor is based in juxtaposition or the inversion of expectations. Obviously, you have to have expectations to invert them! Other times, what will tickle your funny bone is a bad pun or a literal, absurd translation of a common phrase / information / fact / etc. You have to "be there" to get these jokes. Pop culture jokes become irrelevant and obscure with surprising speed.
Many jokes rely on common knowledge, whether it be of history or a public figure. For instance, there's a great Far Side cartoon, which sadly I couldn't find online, which depicts the Great Sphinx in Egypt with two workers peering over the head and the following dialogue:
"'That's fine,' I said. 'Good nose,' I said. 'But no, you had to hit the hammer on the chisel one more time.'"
This isn't particularly funny unless you're already aware of the fact that Sphinx is missing its nose.
When knowledge gets a bit more obscure, the opportunity for humor continues to expand. Recently, there was a very fun discussion on my Facebook feed when I noted a typo in my textbook: "tart-eating apples." So ... what ... small pastries chewing on Granny Smiths? My geeky writer friends and I had a blast rewriting this phrase with different punctuation. None of this would be funny if you didn't know the applicable grammatical rules. (Now that I think about it, technically, "Eating, tart apples" would be correct, because "eating" and "tart" are two independent adjectives describing the same noun - apple - but it definitely doesn't pass the clarity test ...)
I had a bit too much fun with this in Who Wants To Be A Hero? - a lot of jokes aimed to various levels of mythological knowledge. Zeus gets parodied; there's some snide commentary about divine family trees; and I mock Beowulf. A lot.
Sometimes, knowing a little more gives you the ability to laugh at others - be kind, please! I was in a fantasy writer's session when a panelist admitted that, when she drew her first world map of an island, "There was a river running straight from one side to the other," and most of the room laughed: either they knew the geographic likelihood of this (extremely unlikely), or had probably done the same thing as a young writer, or both. So really, we were laughing with her.
I think most of us would like to keep learning all of our lives. Isn't it a great benefit that it gives us more opportunity to laugh?
So much of humor is based in juxtaposition or the inversion of expectations. Obviously, you have to have expectations to invert them! Other times, what will tickle your funny bone is a bad pun or a literal, absurd translation of a common phrase / information / fact / etc. You have to "be there" to get these jokes. Pop culture jokes become irrelevant and obscure with surprising speed.
Many jokes rely on common knowledge, whether it be of history or a public figure. For instance, there's a great Far Side cartoon, which sadly I couldn't find online, which depicts the Great Sphinx in Egypt with two workers peering over the head and the following dialogue:
"'That's fine,' I said. 'Good nose,' I said. 'But no, you had to hit the hammer on the chisel one more time.'"
This isn't particularly funny unless you're already aware of the fact that Sphinx is missing its nose.
When knowledge gets a bit more obscure, the opportunity for humor continues to expand. Recently, there was a very fun discussion on my Facebook feed when I noted a typo in my textbook: "tart-eating apples." So ... what ... small pastries chewing on Granny Smiths? My geeky writer friends and I had a blast rewriting this phrase with different punctuation. None of this would be funny if you didn't know the applicable grammatical rules. (Now that I think about it, technically, "Eating, tart apples" would be correct, because "eating" and "tart" are two independent adjectives describing the same noun - apple - but it definitely doesn't pass the clarity test ...)
I had a bit too much fun with this in Who Wants To Be A Hero? - a lot of jokes aimed to various levels of mythological knowledge. Zeus gets parodied; there's some snide commentary about divine family trees; and I mock Beowulf. A lot.
Sometimes, knowing a little more gives you the ability to laugh at others - be kind, please! I was in a fantasy writer's session when a panelist admitted that, when she drew her first world map of an island, "There was a river running straight from one side to the other," and most of the room laughed: either they knew the geographic likelihood of this (extremely unlikely), or had probably done the same thing as a young writer, or both. So really, we were laughing with her.
I think most of us would like to keep learning all of our lives. Isn't it a great benefit that it gives us more opportunity to laugh?
Wednesday, February 04, 2015
Wednesday Wanderings
Recently, Nyki Blatchley put up a post about the kind of characters he likes to write about, with a fair amount of attention for the age of his protagonists, and that got me thinking about my own patterns.
I think most of us fantasy writers who started out young began writing about teenagers, both because of the appeal of the coming-of-age story and due to some degree of wish fulfillment. That's not to say this is a "newbie choice" - there are deep themes, both mythic and personal, that these characters make possible. People never stop discovering who they are, I think, so reading about a character who is undergoing that same journey in a world with very different possibilities than ours has a powerful draw.
If those of us who started writing these characters when we were knee-high make any mistakes, it may be that we make our protagonists a little too young, because it seems plenty old to us. I wrote or rewrote one of my early novels about three times; throughout, Nelia changed from being 17 to being 19 to being 21, and each time, that seemed like a massive leap to me as a writer (along with the thought of, "What was I thinking? She's too young."). Now, looking back on all those ages (never you mind how far), 21 seems the most reasonable. I wouldn't want to make her much older for the storyline I'd developed, but on the other hand, she needs time for her warrior training and other background.
In any case, when I started writing older, more established characters, it was a revelation. Characters who are embedded in their society, who have a stake in their own identities and what they've built, present a whole different set of challenges. It was ideal for Butterfly's Poison, my intrigue novel, because the resources of the characters - and most particularly, what they had to lose - were key to the plot. In many ways, I think I generally prefer this kind of character. On a personal level, I never really had that teenaged identity crisis of, "Who am I?" - I always was very centered in my sense of self. So it's hard for me as a writer to get into the mindset of that flux, and there's a degree to which I think I subconsciously believe it's not actually possible. ;-)
I find a lot of fertile ground in the idea of someone who has lost everything, who has start to over and reinvent themselves at a point when they thought they had the world figured out.
I have gone back to the teenager and the young adult. Anaea in Scylla and Charybdis discovers herself even as she discovers the rest of the universe. (She is also profoundly a misfit: her "calling" in life doesn't even exist in what she initially thinks is the full sum of human existence.)
Obviously, there are older and younger characters than this. I am fascinated by immortality and its ramifications, so I often write about immortals, especially gods. I think my childhood obsession with Greek myths has something to do with this: I never get tired of the juxtaposition between divinity and human pettiness.
... which probably explains the entire existence of Who Wants To Be A Hero?
I do touch upon the "merely" old, though not as frequently. One of my favorite characters in Who Wants To Be A Hero? is a contestant who happens to be the grandmatriarch of a pseudo-Norse clan. Still, if I were to make some conscious choices, this is an age demographic I'd like to pay more attention to.
I'm also fascinated by what I think of as the "eerie child" - the youngster who is far more poised and mature than their years would suggest. Humans develop cultural filters as they mature, and most of these are important for survival (at least until you move), but children who haven't developed these filters yet can see things the rest of us can't. Verdant from Taming The Weald is one of my best examples of this. (Shameless plug ... you knew there had to be at least one.)
If there's one thing all this brings to mind, it's that life is not always a straight line. We've reached the end and we're just starting out in unexpected places.
I think most of us fantasy writers who started out young began writing about teenagers, both because of the appeal of the coming-of-age story and due to some degree of wish fulfillment. That's not to say this is a "newbie choice" - there are deep themes, both mythic and personal, that these characters make possible. People never stop discovering who they are, I think, so reading about a character who is undergoing that same journey in a world with very different possibilities than ours has a powerful draw.
If those of us who started writing these characters when we were knee-high make any mistakes, it may be that we make our protagonists a little too young, because it seems plenty old to us. I wrote or rewrote one of my early novels about three times; throughout, Nelia changed from being 17 to being 19 to being 21, and each time, that seemed like a massive leap to me as a writer (along with the thought of, "What was I thinking? She's too young."). Now, looking back on all those ages (never you mind how far), 21 seems the most reasonable. I wouldn't want to make her much older for the storyline I'd developed, but on the other hand, she needs time for her warrior training and other background.
In any case, when I started writing older, more established characters, it was a revelation. Characters who are embedded in their society, who have a stake in their own identities and what they've built, present a whole different set of challenges. It was ideal for Butterfly's Poison, my intrigue novel, because the resources of the characters - and most particularly, what they had to lose - were key to the plot. In many ways, I think I generally prefer this kind of character. On a personal level, I never really had that teenaged identity crisis of, "Who am I?" - I always was very centered in my sense of self. So it's hard for me as a writer to get into the mindset of that flux, and there's a degree to which I think I subconsciously believe it's not actually possible. ;-)
I find a lot of fertile ground in the idea of someone who has lost everything, who has start to over and reinvent themselves at a point when they thought they had the world figured out.
I have gone back to the teenager and the young adult. Anaea in Scylla and Charybdis discovers herself even as she discovers the rest of the universe. (She is also profoundly a misfit: her "calling" in life doesn't even exist in what she initially thinks is the full sum of human existence.)
Obviously, there are older and younger characters than this. I am fascinated by immortality and its ramifications, so I often write about immortals, especially gods. I think my childhood obsession with Greek myths has something to do with this: I never get tired of the juxtaposition between divinity and human pettiness.
... which probably explains the entire existence of Who Wants To Be A Hero?
I do touch upon the "merely" old, though not as frequently. One of my favorite characters in Who Wants To Be A Hero? is a contestant who happens to be the grandmatriarch of a pseudo-Norse clan. Still, if I were to make some conscious choices, this is an age demographic I'd like to pay more attention to.
I'm also fascinated by what I think of as the "eerie child" - the youngster who is far more poised and mature than their years would suggest. Humans develop cultural filters as they mature, and most of these are important for survival (at least until you move), but children who haven't developed these filters yet can see things the rest of us can't. Verdant from Taming The Weald is one of my best examples of this. (Shameless plug ... you knew there had to be at least one.)
If there's one thing all this brings to mind, it's that life is not always a straight line. We've reached the end and we're just starting out in unexpected places.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Wednesday Wanderings
I am not one of those writers who feels her characters are "real" and is subject to their whims. (I do experience that sensation of "this action isn't right for this character," but I don't anthropomorphize it. I have my theories about the source of this, but that's for another blog post.) However, I do have some sense of story and world as independent entities - that they are, to some degree, outside of me.
Mostly, this tends to arise when an editor or reader makes a suggestion for a significant change to the story. I'm human, of course: I'll admit that occasionally, my initial reaction is due to laziness, "But I don't want to!" However, other times I balk and can't even, necessarily, articulate why the alteration doesn't work for me.
But it boils down to certainty, a voice inside me that says: "That's not how the story goes." To me, the stories I've written have an existence of their own. I can't change them any more than I could go out and add Elvis to Mount Rushmore. Perhaps it's a subconscious sense of everything that doesn't reach the page, the words between the words. Perhaps those lines are telling me things that an editor / reader can't see. Perhaps it's something else.
I always feel a bit guilty when I turn down a rewrite request, as if I'm being a diva - that I don't have the status to contradict an editor, particularly when my reasoning is no more concrete than, "I don't think this is right for the story." Sometimes it's as simple as, "That might be a valid interpretation, but it's not the story I want to tell." Other times ... I can't even imagine that as the story's reality.
Sometimes, fiction is almost as much about finding as it is about creating.
Mostly, this tends to arise when an editor or reader makes a suggestion for a significant change to the story. I'm human, of course: I'll admit that occasionally, my initial reaction is due to laziness, "But I don't want to!" However, other times I balk and can't even, necessarily, articulate why the alteration doesn't work for me.
But it boils down to certainty, a voice inside me that says: "That's not how the story goes." To me, the stories I've written have an existence of their own. I can't change them any more than I could go out and add Elvis to Mount Rushmore. Perhaps it's a subconscious sense of everything that doesn't reach the page, the words between the words. Perhaps those lines are telling me things that an editor / reader can't see. Perhaps it's something else.
I always feel a bit guilty when I turn down a rewrite request, as if I'm being a diva - that I don't have the status to contradict an editor, particularly when my reasoning is no more concrete than, "I don't think this is right for the story." Sometimes it's as simple as, "That might be a valid interpretation, but it's not the story I want to tell." Other times ... I can't even imagine that as the story's reality.
Sometimes, fiction is almost as much about finding as it is about creating.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
GoodReads Review: The Black Beast by Nancy Springer
The Black Beast by Nancy SpringerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Prince Tirell, heir to a legacy of madness and death, has his life torn apart when his true love is slain, and his younger brother, Frain, finds himself swept along. The story plays on multiple levels: the personal, where the most important value is family devotion; the global, where Tirell plans rebellion; and the divine, with a goddess, dragons, and a trip through the realm of the dead.
This volume is stronger than the last, for a few reasons. It relies less on the burden of prophecy to carry its plot and motivations. The goddess Shamarra claims that destiny connects her to Tirell, but is that really true? The worldbuilding is deeper, with a few particularly interesting quirks, such as the natives' deep and abiding fear of water - not just oceans, but rivers and streams. (As a side note, though the back of the last book makes it clear that story does occur in the same world, this book has no direct connection and stands alone.)
Another interesting aspect of the book is that it is told in first person perspective - not just one character but three, following in succession. Though it's well handled, I wasn't sure there was any point to using the perspective of Fabron, the smith-king; I would have been just as, if not more, happy with a fifty-fifty split between Frain and Tirell. And although leaving Tirell's perspective until last does a nice job of building a question in the reader's mind - why does he act the way he does? - the answer doesn't feel strong enough to be a valid payoff.
Still, we start the book with Frain, and that's the journey that matters: Frain's. The Black Beast ends with a tantalizing glimpse of his future ...
View all my reviews
Wednesday, January 07, 2015
Wednesday Wanderings
Let's kick off 2015 (on my blog, at least) with the first edition of Wednesday Wanderings! All right, so it's just my weekly post, renamed because my Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be whacky for the next few months, but it feels like there ought to be some kind of symbolic ... symbolism to the whole thing, so just go with me on this one.
No entrance into a new year would be complete without a quick look back into the last one, so here's mine:
Writing: all was pretty quiet on the writing front for 2014. I feel a bit stagnant, with no real milestones to report. I'm currently working on editing one novel and about two-thirds of the way through another. My present goal is to finish both processes by my birthday. I also finished the following short stories:
Wanderlust
Regret the Rain
Pollination
She's Unable to Lunch Today
Wine and Chocolate
Chains
Untitled (... I know, I know, but I'm terrible with titles)
Harp: gained a student, said farewell to another, and had my busiest holiday season in years. Undertook a project to revive / practice / polish tunes in my repertoire that I had let fall into dust, disuse and ... dis-playable-ness ... and made a lot of progress with it. I think I'm about saturated, though, so early 2015, at least, will be more focused upon finding new, shiny music to play.
Culinary: most of life's changes have happened in this arena. This time last year, I was a "Skills baby" (what the more senior students call those in the Fundamentals class). Now, I'm a Baking & Pastry graduate with my diploma in hand and working on finishing up my Associates. I've also been working at a local catering company since the beginning of August and growing by leaps and bounds.
Personal: nothing to see here, folks. Move along!
No entrance into a new year would be complete without a quick look back into the last one, so here's mine:
Writing: all was pretty quiet on the writing front for 2014. I feel a bit stagnant, with no real milestones to report. I'm currently working on editing one novel and about two-thirds of the way through another. My present goal is to finish both processes by my birthday. I also finished the following short stories:
Wanderlust
Regret the Rain
Pollination
She's Unable to Lunch Today
Wine and Chocolate
Chains
Untitled (... I know, I know, but I'm terrible with titles)
Harp: gained a student, said farewell to another, and had my busiest holiday season in years. Undertook a project to revive / practice / polish tunes in my repertoire that I had let fall into dust, disuse and ... dis-playable-ness ... and made a lot of progress with it. I think I'm about saturated, though, so early 2015, at least, will be more focused upon finding new, shiny music to play.
Culinary: most of life's changes have happened in this arena. This time last year, I was a "Skills baby" (what the more senior students call those in the Fundamentals class). Now, I'm a Baking & Pastry graduate with my diploma in hand and working on finishing up my Associates. I've also been working at a local catering company since the beginning of August and growing by leaps and bounds.
Personal: nothing to see here, folks. Move along!
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