I think that both my query letter and story are much stronger than they were at this time last year, but I suppose I’ll have to wait and see what sort of response I get.

The issue that’s going to work against me the worst, I believe, is length. Hands, Like Secrets is bloody long, both for a debut and especially for the YA market. And there’s only so far I can knock it back without compromising the story. At best…at the very, very best I can do on my own…I might could knock it back to 118,000 or so. That’s how long Twilight is. Twilight was a debut, and a YA to boot. It’s not impossible.

It just makes an already difficult job harder.

I try to tell myself that Eragon was somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 words, and it took off nonetheless. However, Eragon was originally self-published, and had something like a year to gain momentum before a publisher ever picked it up. I will self-publish Hands if I absolutely have to, but I want to exhaust all my other options first.

I’m about to get back to work on Promises, Like Tears, which has become a bit bogged down. I think there’s a lot in there that I need to go back and cut, or rearrange, and I can’t quite decide if I should do that first or just push on to the end and THEN come back. The latter is probably the better option.

Changed Shades to Seven Shades. I really have no reason other than it sounds more interesting. And the characters occasionally swear by it. The only fact I’ve established is that there are seven “shades” in shayol, and I haven’t really worked out why that’s important. Might become relevant in the last book, when Saeli is briefly taken to shayol by the Keeper of the Oath. I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I’ve also decided to attempt NaNoWriMo this year, and see if I can’t get This Chosen Fate written. It’s all plotted out; all I have to do is sit down and write it. That’s something I really need to practice: writing straight through something without going into editing mode. And this way I’ll have something besides Shades to shop around…something that isn’t as long

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

Anonymous

Well.

The problem is, my productivity has been extremely spread out. I’ve gotten a little further on Promises, Like Tears. I’ve written the script for about half an episode of Grimms, and mapped out all the episodes in each season…so I have a very clear picture of where everything is going. I’ve written a better version of my query letter, and am set to revise it yet again. I discovered the most awesome epic fantasy writing music on the planet. I made some awesome Halloween costumes. Aaaaaand, I’m revising Hands, Like Secrets. Again.

I just really don’t seem to have the discipline to keep plugging away on one single project at a time. I can do it for a couple of weeks, but then it’s like I HAVE to work on something else for a little while. My system of grouping projects together (one series, one novel, one season of Grimms, specific visual projects) has been useful in keeping myself within limits, as far as what gets worked on. I really can’t decide if my multiple project mindset is something I ought to try and train myself out of, or something to harness. I mean, once I break into the business I will have to be able to work within a schedule. I won’t be able to work on whatever the hell I want when I want, you know? So maybe I need to get myself used to that now.

So, in order. I’ve kind of hit a wall in Promises, one of those “just wanna get this stupid scene DONE and move on” walls that you simply have to kind of plod through. I felt like I was losing my grip on the characters and their motivations, like everything they were doing was coming from me instead of them. Being a character-driven writer, I hate that feeling. When I get that way I just have to take a step back. That was around Halloween, too, so I was doing costumes, which always eat a lot of my time.

Also, I got a copy of Scrivener for my birthday this year, and part of what’s been eating my time in the last couple of months has been moving all my various ideas and works-in-progress over to that format. Scrivener is a writing program which basically allows you to store all your documents, photos, bits of research, anything related to your story in one place, and lets you organize it. It’s really a great tool if you, like me, find yourself creating massive folders full of story-related stuff for each novel, and get tired of having to have multiple programs open all the time just to access it all. Initially I wasn’t going bother moving Shades, since Hands, Like Secrets was done and Promises well started. But after realizing that I could put ALL of my Shades stories in one project file, including the sequel and prequel, I decided it made sense to dump it all into Scrivener. Moving all my various projects has really helped me take stock of where I am in each project, and what still needs to be done. It was this move, actually, that got me working on Grimms again.

I ended up going through the whole story and working out arcs for each character, especially when they would peak or bottom out. What I didn’t want to happen was having all eight Grimms hitting rock bottom at the same time, because then I’d have a bunch of emotionally charged episodes followed by episodes where nothing significant happened. Gave each episode a name and a general plan of action as well.

The other major thing I did was make one of the Grimms gay. When I was creating the characters initially, I set out to make the cast as racially diverse as possible (without it seeming contrived). The girls outnumber the guys, but since guys tend to be over-represented in visual fiction, I think it will actually end up feeling even. But my relationship pairings were…too perfect. Hansel/Gretel, Red/Stiltz, Cutter/Cinder, Rapunzel/Oros (a fae), and Rora was going to fall for Alan Hunter in the end. But the whole point of having a diverse cast is so that, hopefully, everyone that reads the graphic novel will have at least one character they can really relate to. One character that “represents” them. This is the strength of an ensemble. So I got to thinking, who will my LGBT readers relate to? I felt like that perspective deserved representation as much as any other.

I chose Rora, initially because she was the only “unattached” Grimm, and changing her orientation would least affect my already established story arcs. But as I began to approach her character with this new nuance in mind, something unexpected happened. She almost immediately fell for Katie, the human girl who gets placed with Mother Goose in Season 3, and it was perfect. It introduces the problem of a Grimm falling for a human, which nicely contrasts Rapunzel’s struggle (Grimm falling for a Fae). It explaines a lot about Katie’s character. It links the Grimms with Smile, the second Fae-rescue team that Katie eventually helps start. I get to address the issue of homosexuality from the perspective of someone who’s grown up in an environment entirely free from the usual associated stigma (Arcadia), and someone who is all too familiar with the stigma.

And then, just this month, I really started to reassess where I am with Hands, and my agent-hunting. Because aside from that one nibble right at the beginning of the process, I’ve only gotten form rejections and silence. I tried revising my query letter, but that hasn’t seemed to help. Therefore, I have to think that it’s the story itself, specifically the beginning (as that’s what most agents request), that’s the problem. I have actually suspected (and tried to deny) that Hands didn’t start in quite the right place, that the scene in the High Priestess’ office is too tame to kick off the story. I just couldn’t figure out how to include all the necessary backstory otherwise. But I started reading a book called Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers by Les Edgerton…and realized that a lot of that backstory is not really necessary. Interesting, perhaps, but not necessary.

What I essentially decided to do was start the book in Chapter 2. I mean, compare the strengths of the opening lines:

Chapter 1: “I’d been summoned to the High Priestess’ office that night.” Bleh.

Chapter 2: “I sank back against the wall, gripping my hands into fists to stop them from shaking.”

Yeah, the second one is a whole lot more intriguing. And that immediately segues into the battle between Raphel and the High Priestess, which makes for an awesome first chapter. I was able to add back in enough information that (I hope) the reader will be able to figure out what’s going on. (Though I will say, if you are the kind of person who likes to have all new information, definitions, words, and explanations laid out for you up front, you probably aren’t going to enjoy this book.)

And, in rewriting that beginning, I really started to straighten out Saeli’s GMC as it progresses through the story. Although the last major rewrite I did straightened out most of the major continuity errors, there was still some disconnect between various scenes, specifically in the area of how Saeli is reacting to what’s going on. The various issues were coming and going, one after another, instead of piling up to the climax. Also, Saeli’s a bit tougher and sharper this time around, and there’s a very noticeable disconnect between what she’s thinking and how she’s acting at any given moment. I think this has everything to do with where the story starts now. She’s all over the place, emotionally, in her head…but to anyone else, she probably comes across as calm, quiet, and even a little bit cold. She’s actually pretty downright harsh to Raphel at first, and overall I think she’s a better match for him this time around. I’ve found myself writing him a little bit softer and more seductive in response, and I think he actually likes her a little bit more than he did before. It means that his cruelty is all the more jarring when it surfaces, which is appropriate.

I think this will also help me push through Promises, as I have a much clearly picture of where Saeli has been.

I’ve also discovered what seems like a hundred little tiny plot holes, which is both irritating and alarming (I’ve sent this to agents? Good gods, what was I thinking??). Most are continuity gaps, emotionally getting a character from here to there. Some are logistical, like why on earth did I have Saeli and Raphel walk up an entire flight of tower stairs in the city Temple when time is of the essence and THEY CAN TELEPORT?

And the latest one: After Raphel spirits Saeli away and returns her, the High Priestess decides that it’s not safe for Saeli to leave campus until she is dedicated to Scisaxar. Saeli gets special permission to leave campus for a few hours to go to a graduation party, at Cara’s request. She walks alone to a cabstand and takes a cab. On the way, she is intercepted by Raphel.

See the problem yet?

Saeli would never have been permitted to walk out of Aschamon alone. See, the reader knows that Saeli has already thwarted this rule once, and that she is not in any physical danger from Raphel. But the High Priestess does not know that. There’s simply no way she would allow Saeli to travel to this party by herself: she would arrange for Saeli to be teleported straight there, or at the very least, assign someone to escort her.

Cara is a bit more blaze about the whole danger aspect. She’s helped Saeli sneak out once…but that was only to Main Street, and she was with her roommate the whole time. Letting Saeli travel by herself, across town, at sunset? No, I don’t buy it. Again, as far as Cara knows, there is a murderous Cowl out there just waiting to get his hands on Saeli again.

But the thing is, Saeli has to be alone for this scene to work. She has to disappear with Raphel for an hour, and then has to appear at the party with no one the wiser. (Which means Raphel can’t neutralize Saeli’s escort, or abduct her for an hour when teleportation is supposed to be near instantaneous.) Raphel also cannot go anywhere near the party, because any Anjahel there will sense him. Saeli has to start learning rashas qi onscreen, as it were, and it must happen before all the party excitement (because she won’t be in any emotional condition to do it after she’s been “abducted”). This does not leave me many options.

My best one:

#1: Cara acts as Saeli’s escort. Raphel, in the guise of “Aiden”, whom Cara has met, convinces her to let him have an hour alone with Saeli before he takes her to the party himself. Cara would probably agree to this.

Downsides: Cara has been to Valene’s house (where the party is), so there’s no good reason for her to NOT teleport her and Saeli straight there. Especially since Cara wants to give Saeli the full advantage of her limited freedom, and figures Saeli won’t want to waste time in travel. Granted, they would have to exit the school in order to teleport, but they’d only have to be outside the gates. Raphel cannot intercept them there for obvious reasons.

Possible solutions: Saeli convinces Cara to get a quick bite to eat in town before heading for the party. Maybe, if Cara can be convinced that isn’t bending the HP’s rules too much. Or, Saeli travels with a large group of girls (probably Cara’s friends) into town ahead of time to, I dunno, eat or accessorize or whatever. A group would seem safer. Problematic, in that Raphel isn’t going to want to be seen by a whole bunch of Aschamon students and risk being pegged for what he is: a Cowl. Also, it means lots of people are going to know that Saeli disappeared with a guy, which means the word is much more likely to get back to the Priestess. The Priestess would recognize Raphel from his description. Eh…sounds like I’m going with option #1. It’s the least complicated.

Least complicated being an extremely relative term. Just thinking of all the little scenes I’ll have to alter to make this change is making my head hurt. But it needs to be done.

After all that, I’ll have to do another line edit, because somehow even though I dropped an entire chapter, my word count went UP. Then I will write yet another query letter, which I think I have a better idea of how to approach that now. If all goes well, by the first of the year, I will be querying again.

Oh! Epic fantasy writing music. Discovered a group called Two Steps From Hell (via Brandon Sanderson’s Facebook, of all places), and immediately had to get both of their commercially available albums. Apparently they mostly make movie trailer music (in fact, I recognized two of their songs in the latest Twilight trailer). Which means most of what they’ve done is only available if you, you know, have lots of money and make movies. But, man. This is what I’m talking about:

Two Steps From Hell - Archangel

Anyway, here’s to getting an agent in 2012.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

Apparently one of my plugins was actually hiding all of my posts except the top one, but only if you weren’t logged in. So of course because I was logged in, I didn’t notice. Anywho, I have fixed that problem, and I’ve also gotten the audio player back up and running, so music should work now. Troubleshooting is a laborious process, involving a lot of logging in, turning features on and off, logging out, refreshing the page, checking the page, logging back in, and well, you get the idea. I posted two new posts since the Great Fatal Error and Two Week Shutdown, but because of the above problem, I don’t know if anyone has actually seen them. Was kind of wondering why they never showed up on Facebook.

The continuation of the second book in the Shades trilogy is going well. I’ve had a lot of fun incorporating snippets and elements from the first draft into unexpected places in this draft. My favorite this week is when Raphel actually takes over Naeth’s body for about three seconds, long enough to scare the crap out of Othau. How and why, you ask? The visual was taken from a scene in the first draft where Othau is taunting Saeli and Mora, saying he isn’t afraid of “their leader”, when Raphel appears in a doorway looking all awesome and scary and says something appropriately badass like “You should be afraid of me”.

In the current scene, Saeli and Mora are still trapped in a cave with Othau and his gang (see the post I wrote about that). Naeth has just showed himself, and is using Mora’s suras bond with Raphel to allow the two of them to communicate (as though they had a sorarc). They are interrupted by Othau, things escalate to a point where Othau grabs Mora’s arm…and we discover that apparently Raphel was still “on the other end of the line”, listening through Naeth’s connection. Raphel uses an intuitive combination of spirit walking, qi, and Mora’s suras bond and transfers his consciousness into Naeth long enough to possess the god’s body and knock Othau away. Then Naeth bucks him out. On the surface, after everything calms down and they make it to Caosgi, everyone kind of writes off the incident. Although Saeli and Naeth will both wonder how the hell Raphel did that, and will worry about what it means. And they are right to worry.

It’s really a very small incident, one of those things that happens in the thick of a fight that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but nobody really pays attention to because zOMGpeoplearetryingtokillmerightnow. The “how the hell”s come later, when everyone’s had time to sit down and think.

I did this primarily to foreshadow the end of Book 2. It gives Raphel a small taste of what it’s like to have an immortal’s power, and provides the motivation for his major turning point. It will tweak the nature of the quest from “I want to destroy the gods” to “I want to destroy the gods myself, and take their place”. Raphel is no longer content to simply let the Keeper take out the gods of Verre; he starts fantasizing what it would be like to take that revenge himself. It won’t be until they get to Caosgi and learn about how newborn immortals are made that Raphel begins to contemplate possessing one permanently, and the incident with Naeth gives him a very good reason to start thinking this way: “I did it once, which means I can do it again…and if I do it with a newborn, he or she won’t be able to kick me out like Naeth did.”

And it gives Naeth a very, very good reason to never trust Raphel again. He probably won’t ever confess it, but that incident will have scared the crap out of him. Just as Raphel got his split-second of immortal power, Naeth got a split-second flash of who Raphel really is on the inside. The god will probably very quickly guess Raphel’s intentions on Caosgi, and will step up his efforts to turn Saeli against Raphel.

So as you can see, my writing has been going pretty well. Which is good, because little ELSE about this process is right now. Still agent hunting, and I’m getting kind of discouraged. Aside from that first nibble right at the beginning of the hunt, I’ve gotten nothing but silence and form rejection letters. I’ve revised the query letter once, and now it looks like I’m going to have to revise it again. I’ve read that if you aren’t getting at least like 4 out of 10 requests for partials or fulls, then there’s something wrong with the letter. But I’m also a a point where I honestly do not know how to make my query any better.

It occurred to me that part of the problem may lie not in the story itself, or the query letter, but in the genre, of all things. High fantasy for YA is not “in” right now, if the shelves at Books-a-million are any indication, and it may be only wishful thinking on my part that I think it’s making a comeback. It may be that a lot of these agents I’m querying actually like my story, but they just don’t think they can sell it right now. They might love it, but if they can’t sell it, they aren’t going to take it on.

Unfortunately there isn’t much I can do about that. I can’t make Shades NOT be high fantasy without fundamentally rebulding the whole thing from the ground up. I do have a couple of other options.

I can start hawking the story as a crossover to agents that represent adult fantasy. I may have to do that anyway, as my list of agents to query grows thinner.

And/or I can revise the query letter to contain specific selling points. I’d been dedicating most of the letter to the story hook, as I felt that was Shades’ strongest suit: yeah, it’s YA and yeah, it’s fantasy, but the point is that it’s a good story. But maybe I need to spell out why I think people will like Shades despite the fact that YA high fantasy is not the “in” thing right now.

1: The fantasy elements read more like an adult fantasy. There’s a reason teenagers who read fantasy and sci-fi tend to read ADULT fantasy and sci-fi…there isn’t much of the YA variety, and the YA variety tends to be less epic, less comprehensive, less grandiose. The voice and tone are different. It’s a difficult nuance to describe in words, but as a child who grew up on adult fantasy and now reads YA, I’m telling you, it’s there. Shades will appeal to teenagers like I used to be.

2: The voice, the pacing, the environments…these are all pure YA. Young adult is quicker, more immediate. Sharper. Pain and heartbreak are tasted and smelled and felt with all their sharp edges, but not really understood. Plenty of adult fantasies star teenaged characters, but those characters tend to be, due to circumstances, practically adults in all but age. Or, if they are children, they are handled in such a way that it becomes obvious that it is nevertheless an adult who is telling the story. It blunts the immediacy, in a sense. Adults just don’t handle problems the same way teenagers do. In contrast Saeli, despite being 19, is still an adolescent. A combination of upbringing and isolation from the larger world have shaped her in such a way that she still thinks and feels and deals with things like a teenager. Her life essentially revolves around school and studying until the cute bad boy intrudes on her life. That’s a pretty typical YA plotline because it’s something your typical high schooler will relate to.

Shades will sell to teenagers who grew up on Anne McCaffry and the Wheel of Time, and are now devouring Westerfeld and Holly Black and Melissa Marr.

Now I just have to figure out how to describe all that in a sentence or two.

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

Anonymous

The original fight was in my first draft of the whole trilogy (back before it was a trilogy), and it was one of those awesome, completely unplanned moments. The way the events had been progressing, I always assumed Raphel was going to be the one to take down Othau. He certainly wanted to. So I had this Raphel vs. Othau moment in my head literally right up until the moment Othau and Avalgo pulled knives on each other, and Raphel was occupied elsewhere. And I said, “Um, okay, apparently these two aren’t going anywhere until they have it out”. And it’s sort of appropriate that the fight should be between the two characters who are actually from Dheu…it highlights the fact that my four main characters are interlopers on a conflict that’s much bigger and much older than they are.

The theme of the fight is essentially the age-old question: Can an end justify the means taken to achieve it? If you have to become a monster to save the world, is it worth it?

And this is a theme that forms the backbone of the entire trilogy. Raphel’s goal is to save Verre from a war that is destroying both the Mantles and the Cowls…but he has to kill two gods in order to do it. Obviously he thinks it’s worth it. Of course, he’s got a major lifelong grudge against one of these gods, and the other god is actively trying to wipe out his people…so he’s not exactly the most unbiased judge of such things. Same with Mora and Kaladan. Only Saeli really has a shot at truly deciding whether the end is worth the cost. Right now, she’s on Raphel’s side…but the more time she spends around Naeth, the more she’s going to realize exactly what it would mean to kill a god.

Will she save her world? Or will she save her soul? Of course, her stake in this is all tangled up in her relationship with Raphel, and the choices he makes. Her tragedy is that she will be forced to destroy Raphel while believing in her heart that he wasn’t completely wrong. Ultimately she chooses principle over saving the world, but her circumstances will allow her to do the latter by sticking to the former. Lucky Saeli. Why am I playing it like this? Why am I giving Saeli an out?

Because I don’t know the answer to the question.

Othau believes that securing a future generation of Dheuans is worth the cost of derailing two girls’ lives. Avalgo disagrees, arguing that what good does it do to become monsters in order to survive? Each of them has a point, and I honestly do not know what I would choose, were I put in that position. On one hand, kidnapping, rape, and forced childbirth are monstrous things to inflict on anyone. On the other hand, not acting to save an entire world when you *could*, is also monstrous. It’s an unsettling place for me, not being able to decide within my own mind what a character “ought” to do. All I have to work with is what I know the character would do.

It means I can’t really resolve this fight between Othau and Avalgo. It means that Saeli can’t fully resolve it, even after Raphel betrays her so badly that she MUST stand against him. It means I have to kill off my main villain without knowing, for certain, that he deserved it.

But ultimately, I think maybe it’s a question that needs to be left up to the reader to decide. Each character will choose where they stand, and the reader gets to decide if they made the right decision or not.

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

Anonymous

Here’s the situation. Saeli, Raphel, Mora, and Kaladan are on a world that is, due to a series of unfortunate events involving three jealous goddesses, one naive god, and a very angry angelic…well, doomed. Said goddesses created an extremely infectious disease that eventually rendered every single female on the planet unable to bear children. The last generation has reached their mid-50s or so, and they’ve essentially lost hope.

Enter Saeli and Mora, two young women of childbearing age who, due to their not being born on Dheu, are immune to this disease. You can see how this might interest certain parties. The two women get kidnapped, and are currently trapped in a cave surrounded by twenty or so men who are so desperate to not be the last generation that they’re willing to rape female strangers and force them to live out their lives on Dheu bearing children.

Saeli and Mora are both trained in the art of using their qi to do all sorts of extraordinary things, like fire and ice and wind and teleportation spells. None of the men who have captured them have any such power. (Although half of them are what they call “spirit walkers”. They can essentially thrust their spirits out of their bodies and travel about the “spirit realm”, where they receive guidance from the angelics who live there. This is, of course, of no practical use whatsoever against someone who can lob a fireball at them).

The first obvious question: how did a couple of magically inclined characters get captured by a bunch of non-magically inclined characters in the first place? Especially Mora, who, being second-in-command of Raphel Kailar’s infamous cabal, should be neigh unto impossible to capture WITH qi. The answer? The two were taken by surprise and drugged. Saeli didn’t react in time because she’s never really been in a real fight before, even though she was expecting the attack and knew what the assailants were after. Mora didn’t react in time because Saeli hadn’t yet gotten the chance to warn her what was coming.

The drug, nepthas, is one that specifically neutralizes one’s capacity to draw qi. The idea of qi-altering drugs is not new to the overall story, having been introduced in the first book. It would make sense that what the spirit walkers of Dheu and the majahel of Verre draw from the same source of energy, and that the spirit walkers of Dheu would have discovered a means to keep novices from jaunting about in the spirit realm unsupervised. In high doses, nepthas renders the victim unconscious, and can actually stop the heart if too much is given. It allows a group of non-magic wielders to knock Saeli and Mora out for several hours and spirit them away.

So now they are in a cave…the drug has worn off and both girls are awake…Raphel and some others are on their way but haven’t arrived yet…and the men, not quite desperate enough to assault female strangers while they are unconscious (although they considered it), have been waiting for this moment.

Now I have to create an impasse. I’ve given Saeli and Mora back their qi for this scene, because I can’t have the men actually assault them until the cavalry arrives. Yet I cannot have the two girls whooping up on the men and escaping just yet, either…but given their powers, it’s very difficult to imagine a scenario in which this realistically would not happen. You can’t just not have them consider using their powers because, well, it’s their primary weapon. It’d be like a trained swordsman stepping into a battle and forgetting he has a sword. Ain’t gonna happen, you know? And if they were to use their power, there’s really nothing the spirit walkers can do to stop them. So I’ve got to do something that will even the odds, at least until Raphel and Co. show up.

Even the odds #1: Reintroduce nepthas.

I had one of the spirit walkers throw a handful of nepthas leaves on the campfire. I’ve already established that nepthas is an inhaled drug (the first time they took cloths soaked in a wet mixture of the drug and slapped them over the girls’ faces)…so given that they are in a small space, it shouldn’t take too long for the tainted smoke to take effect and render Saeli and Mora helpless again.

Problems: It will still take time, several minutes at the very least. Saeli and Mora could easily escape in that amount of time. Rather than evening the odds, nepthas merely functions as a ticking clock.

Even the odds #2: Establish what can and cannot be done with qi in a small space.

The cave, while small, is nevertheless big enough to contain about twenty men and a small fire around the entrance area, and Saeli and Mora further back. (I’m going to have to assume the men stashed their horses elsewhere; perhaps in a nearby cave, with someone to guard them.) The roof is high enough for everyone to stand comfortably, although it may be *just* that high. If I wanted to be specific, I could have Mora’s head brush the roof. It is deep enough for Saeli to create what amounts to an electrified web between the two parties, where the men would actually have to approach to be zapped by it. So I’m imagining a space that is something like a crack in a wall: deeper and taller than it is wide. Let’s say at its narrowest (which is where Saeli and Mora would be)…wide enough for two or three people to stand with arms outstretched and fingers touching. Wider at the entrance.

I began to write some dialogue between Saeli and Mora, in which they each brought up and discarded various forms they could use to escape. It helped me sort of figure out in my own mind what can and cannot be done with qi, and how environment shapes that. There are basically two “methods” in which qi is used, once you’ve drawn up the appropriate elemental energy: 1) Use the energy to manipulate its physical counterpart; ie, using Air to make a breeze, using Earth to create an earthquake, etc. Easier. Faster. Or 2) Manipulate the energy itself. This is how majahel sight works, and how you create shields, like Saeli’s lightning net. Also, most anjahel skills rely on this method. Any qi form that does anything more complicated than moving matter around probably uses a combination of the two methods.

The physical element does not have to be present, but the energy does. Luckily, most latent energy sitting around contains the four basic elements, so finding sources of energy is not usually difficult. One might have a little trouble using Water in a desert, or Fire in a lake, but it would not be impossible. However, elemental energy =/= physical matter. One may be able to draw Water energy from a dry place, but unless there is an actual source of water on hand (even moisture leeched from the air), one will not be able to spontaneously create physical water. One may be able to draw Air energy, but one cannot create a breeze if there is no physical air to move. The single exception is Fire, which is why fire forms are popular among both Mantles and Cowls.

So, back to Saeli and Mora’s non-predicament. My goal was to run through every possible form and see if there was a logical reason why said form could not be employed (because that’s what any intelligent majahel would do, and I have to assume the reader will, too). Make sure there was no way someone could say, “Well, they can do ___ and ___, right? Why don’t they just  ____?” with me going *facepalm*.

I began with “put out the fire”. Saeli suggests blowing it out. Mora explains that the act of pushing all that air OUT of the cave will draw an equal amount of air back IN, along with all that tainted nepthas smoke. They’d drug themselves in the act. They discuss putting it out with water (Saeli has heard dripping water in the cave somewhere), but again, what happens when you dump water on a fire? Clouds of smoke. Putting out the fire will do no good if they render themselves helpless in the process.

Then they move on to “neutralize the men”. Blast them all out with air or water? They’d just come back in, and also, see above. If they used fire, they’d probably incinerate themselves in the process. Saeli is actually the one to suggest killing them all, but only in the context of “Gee, I’m surprised you didn’t suggest that right away, Mora”. Neither of them, especially Saeli (who knows more of the story), particularly wants to seriously hurt or kill the men…partially because they empathize with their problems, and partially because killing “cowens”, ie, non-magical people, is the moral equivalent of shooting an unarmed person with a gun.

But they could paralyze them (Snake Creeps Down). They could also freeze them (Cross the Courtyard + Water Flows Downhill). And those are forms that the reader has already seen, via Raphel’s battle with the High Priestess. They could bind them up with cords of air (also something we’ve seen Raphel do). Plus we know that Saeli knows how to put people to sleep and influence the mood of a crowd, per her anjahel abilities.

After about a page of writing, and a lot more thinking, I was forced to conclude that, while Saeli and Mora’s environment limits their options some, it was not enough to realistically keep them from escaping. So…now what? How do I contain two magic users who have a very, very good reason to want to escape, now? (The nepthas on the fire effectively eliminates the weak but semi-plausible “oh, let’s just wait for Raphel, we don’t want to hurt these guys and they can’t do anything to us in the meantime” solution).

Then I remembered a chapter from the first draft, one I’d planned to eliminate, where Saeli and Mora are being guarded by a dark angelic that the spirit walkers had summoned. Random tidbit about Dheuan spirit walkers (that only I know): they have the ability to summon angelics, just like Verre anjahel. They can enter the spirit realm at will, after all. However, since their whole society is built around conversing with, learning from, and building relationships with angelics, summoning is very much a forbidden practice. It’d be like treating your teacher with respect, but ordering his children or servants around like animals; it just isn’t done.

That doesn’t, of course, mean that no one does it. As it happens, Othau and a few others have learned how in secret. So it would make sense that, faced with a couple of magic users that they need to subdue (but not hurt), they’d summon up an angelic as backup. I decided upon a marilith, since it’s 1) the only other dark angelic besides vrock that have been mentioned by name so far in the trilogy and 2) they are bigger, scarier, and much more intelligent than vrock. Inadvertently, this beings a whole new dimension of problems, because marilith are difficult to control. Mora senses, correctly, that the spirit walkers don’t really know what they are doing (or they would have chosen a more suitable angelic!), and thus, their control over the marilith they summon is tenuous.

Even the odds #3: Introduce a marilith.

And this finally does it. Because now Saeli and Mora cannot afford to do anything that is going to hurt or even distract the summoner, for fear of loosing the dark angelic from his control. Now they even have to worry about what will happen when Raphel does show up…because if he charges in with qi blazing, he could cause as much damage as either of the girls. Also, having a dark angelic around will give our other angelic friend Isharyel something to do besides stand there and be all wise and stuff.

So that was the process I went through, more or less, to make this scene work. I guess the lesson here is, when you have to put magical characters in a perilous situation, there are two things you can do. Introduce limits to their magic, and make the environment play to those limits. If that fails, introduce a second magical force to oppose them.

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

Anonymous

And it was so very, very easy to fix. Gah.

Anyway, that’s why things have been down for the last…week? Two weeks? Time tends to get away from me…

Back with your irregularly scheduled posts soon!

Edited to add: You may notice that some features, like my embedded music, are not working properly. Updating always breaks a few plugins (just usually not so thoroughly). I apologize. It will take me some time to get everything all updated and running again.

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

Anonymous

I have mixed feelings about A Song of Ice and Fire (the overall series). My biggest problem is that I can make a pretty sizable list of things I don’t like: about the writing, about the characters (specifically how death is handled), about the sexism and sex and overall yuck factor, and…well you get the idea. On the other hand, I’m still reading it. None of these factors were enough to not bother with the current book, nor have they been enough to make me put the current book down. The story is still interesting enough, I guess. But see that’s just it. I can’t put my finger on why I haven’t had the urge to quit reading, and I can’t figure out why such a vague “like” factor should overrule that whole list of “don’t likes”.

If I had to rank in terms of overall enjoyment in the genre of epic fantasy, this is how my list would go: Mistborn, Wheel of Time, Name of the Wind, Dragonlance, Sword of Truth, Assassins/Liveships/Tawny Man, Deathgate Cycle, Belgariad/Mallorean, Song of Ice and Fire, Winds of the Forelands.

(That’s not counting any YA series, ’cause I feel like that’s a different beast. It’s also not counting The Way of Kings, because there’s only the one book so far. I have a suspicion it will shoot to the top pretty fast).

(Also, that list is not representative of how I feel about the writing of said series…for instance I think Sword of Truth is too heavy-handed and the Belgariad and Mallorean repetitive….but just how eager I was to finish the books and how much I enjoyed reading them. Honestly, Name of the Wind and Wheel of Time could trade places, but…WoT has seniority

So see, Ice and Fire is down there. It’s good enough to keep me into it, but barely. (Winds of the Forelands I had to force myself to finish. Because geez, warwarwar almost everyone dies. Meh.) I’m not going to be too upset if the final book never materializes (like this one almost didn’t…as a reader, I’m all “THAT’S ANNOYING!!1″, but as a writer, I can totally understand that slogging inch by inch through a manuscript and then glancing up going “Where the HELL has the year gone??”)

Interestingly, the things I don’t like about Ice and Fire: some have gotten better in A Dance With Dragons. The rash of people dying in stupid pointless ways has slowed to a trickle. There haven’t been nearly as many deaths all around, which is nice. It’s starting to look like at least some of the bad characters might possibly have a shot of seeing some comeuppance, you know, eventually. Hope? Not quite, but more like a lessening of utter despair.

Other things have gotten a lot worse. First of all, I absolutely cannot abide how this author treats women in this series. It’s like, yeah I know this is supposed to be a gritty, harsh world and all…but after a point, I begin to wonder how much of the blatant disgusting misogyny was put there on purpose, and how much is due to the unconscious worldview of the author. Women in A Song of Ice and Fire seem to exist for exactly one purpose: to be fucked by men. There are only two types of women in Martin’s epic: whores and not-yet-whores. A woman’s consent is irrelevant to the question of whether a man will stick his member in her…it only answers the question of whether or not it might be considered “rape” afterward. And nobody really cares whether it was rape or not. Women have no sexual agency whatsoever; it is the men who decide where, when, and how often a women will spread her legs. After all, that’s what women are FOR.

Even the women think this way in this world, which I find both abhorrent and utterly baffling. There was one scene where a female protagonist was assaulted by a male character intent on raping her. She fights him, he overpowers her…and then they have wild passionate sex which she absolutely enjoys. Only later do we find out she’s had this man as a lover for some time and is very attracted to him, wanted him, etc. I just…no. That is not how women think. There was nothing playful or coy about her telling him to bugger off (she drew a knife on him!). There is absolutely no reason to write a scene where a woman WANTS to be raped, even if she knows and has had sex with the guy before. It was disgusting. It confused me so bad that I had to flip forward and back several times to make sure I hadn’t MISSED some vital piece of information that would make that scene make any kind of sense. It threw me out of the story.

Also, I don’t remember nearly so many references to genitals that start with “c” in the other books. (Maybe my brain just sort of mentally tuned them out before). Have I mentioned that I hate, hate, hate those particular words? And sex with body parts. And fluids. And screaming. I just…ew. I know, I know, joyless world, crass characters, yadda yadda yadda…I don’t like it. Especially since I don’t know how much of it the author is deliberately channeling to create a certain mood or mindset…and how much of it is really how he sees things. Usually, when you write a book in which you must include morally offensive ideas…you present it well and realistically, yes, but at some point I feel like you’ve got to make it clear to your readers that the behavior in question is not okay. I haven’t gotten that vibe yet. The vibe I get is: it doesn’t matter whether something’s right or wrong…it’s how the world is, so deal with it. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Some point.

That actually takes me into…the yuck factor. I can deal with blood. You read fantasy, you’re going to see a lot of blood doing all sorts of things you’d just as soon not see: spraying, splattering, oozing, leaking, splashing, you get the idea. I can deal with body parts in written fantasy (movies…eh, not so much. Not a lot of it). Brains and entrails are common.

I cannot deal with human waste. And I’m really not exaggerating when I say that A Dance with Dragons is full of shit. Human shit, horse shit, pig shit, sick shit. There are many times where characters are described going to the bathroom (which I feel is generally unnecessary unless they get bit by a snake or something, you know, significant happens), in rather more detail than I felt necessary. I assume male characters take a piss from time to time. I might even assume they wake up with erections sometimes and you know, deal with that. You don’t have to tell me about it. Seriously. You don’t have to tell me about it. You’re going to make me think you’re obsessed with body parts or something. And honestly, the way you treat women in the story…

Ah but well. You’re probably by now wondering why I mentioned chamber pots.

Most traditional epic fantasy is based in a somewhat Medieval-ish setting with some magic or something thrown in. That means Medieval technology, which means you get around by some variety of horse (no self-powered vehicles), communicate by some variety of bird (no communication technology), defend yourself with swords, bows, and armor, or magic (no guns), pay taxes to a king or lord (no democracies), warm and light your house with fire (no electricity), eat from wooden, metal, ceramic, or glass flatware (no plastic), sew your own clothes and build your own furniture (no assembly-line produced goods), heal your wounds with raw herbs or magic (no advanced medicine), bathe by hauling buckets up to your room (no indoor plumbing), and sleep at the end of the day on a hay or feather mattress (no polyester or such).

And you do your business in a chamber pot in your room.

Now let’s be honest. The Medieval Age is not one in which most modern people would want to live, not if they’ve actually studied what it was like for a common shmuck back then. Life was harsh, unfair, hard, brutally short, and you stank through most of it.  So…why this institutionalized nostalgia as presented in fantasy literature? Well, to be fair, the Medieval period did produce some really kick-ass swords. And cathedrals. And there were knights, of course, which have a legacy that’s almost fantasy-ish in of itself. But I think the biggest reason is because of the magic. It is theorized that, if people had regular access to some source of supernatural power, humanity would have no particular reason to advance beyond the technological level of the late Medieval period. Magic would fill in the gap of technology, would provide all the advantages and conveniences that were, in real history, provided by science and technology.

My question is: if magic is supposed to fill in those gaps, why is there no indoor plumbing? Why does the widespread use of chamber pots persist in fantasy fiction??

It’s not like they can’t build pipes. Heck, you don’t even need magic for it…weren’t there some really ancient cities that had plumbing? This strange reliance on chamber pots and buckets of water just really doesn’t make sense. Why preserve THAT particular bit of Medieval reality, when so much of the rest is discarded? (Hot spring baths? How many people had access to those?) Peeing in one’s room is gross. It stinks. It attracts disease. You have to clean the pot. Did I mention it stinks?

If you’re lucky, an author might mention a random chamber pot once. Most don’t talk about the character’s bathroom arrangements at all, which is nice…although if you’re filling bathtubs with buckets, you’re probably peeing in pots. If that author is George R. R. Martin, you’ll get to read in rather graphic detail exactly how pervasive chamber pots are, and how often they are used, and even what happens when a character uses his bed or something else besides a chamber pot….yeah. Most authors leave the chamber pots offstage.

But they’re there, more often than not.

Why?

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

I’ve come up with the idea of organizing every project, including the artistic ones unconnected with my writing and my wands, into what I’ll call “cycles”. Every cycle includes at least one series novel (like Shades or Briar Rose), one stand-alone novel, various shorter writing projects, bits of Amphitere’s Vision, and art projects. It gives me options, but confines those options enough so that I actually make progress on things.

What’s also helped is finally sitting down and deciding exactly what still needs to be done for Amphiptere’s Vision, which was kind of a huge, sprawling mess. The project folder is a jumbled mess of Excel spreadsheets, Notepad notes, and drawings of characters, dragons, and maps in various stages of completion. I asked myself: “If I was going to hand a folder to, oh say a game producer, what all would I need to include so that they would understand the vision of the game? What might they want to see?” and made a list. So now I have, like, actual goals to work towards.

Each “cycle” is supposed to take 1-2 years to complete, though I think that will vary. The way I broke things down, I already have 12 cycles planned. *cough* Yeah, I have a lot of projects. Although the last two or three are just Tindaari (I know I’ll be filling those up). I ran some numbers, and calculated that if I wrote 400 words a day, I could write a 96,000 word novel in a year’s time. Double that to 800 words a day, and I could write two novels in a year’s time. That’s not bad. 400 words doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but I’ve been surprised how often it’s difficult to manage even that much in a day. (Ever try writing with Inspector Gadget, Rugrats, or Pixar playing in the background? Meh.) That will get better after school starts, I think, and I have some hours to myself.

One of my biggest problems in productivity is guilt. Much of the time I feel like I’m not making enough progress. Of if I am making progress, I feel like it’s coming at the expense of doing the laundry, or making sure my son isn’t just sitting around all day watching TV. I know guilt motivates some people, but it paralyzes me. I get even more disinclined to work, and thus feel more guilt, and so on. The 400 words a day is really helping with that, because it’s such an easy goal to meet and yet I know it will still get me somewhere. And when I write more I can pat myself on the back even more.

So that’s where I am, and why I haven’t been updating much.

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

Anonymous

Back on Memorial Day, we had to take our five-year-old son to the emergency room. He’d been tired for a couple of days, and then his mouth got really dry. When we took him in, he was so weak and tottery that he could barely walk himself to the bathroom. They tested him in the ER and determined that he had Type 1 diabetes and was suffering from diabetic ketoacidosis, and immediately admitted him. Ketoacidosis is what happens when your body cannot use the sugar in your blood for fuel, and starts breaking down its own tissues instead.

Of course, the hubby and I were all like, “What? He has what?? for quite a while. I mean, diabetes in a five-year-old? Who expects that to happen?

In retrospect, there were signs. His hands had been cold. He’d been absurdly thirsty. He’d need to pee like every hour. He’d been losing weight (which we thought was due to a growth spurt). But diabetes is not a conclusion the average person would have jumped to, I don’t think. Not in a child. They made it abundantly clear that this wasn’t our fault, that this would have happened eventually no matter what we did.

The boy spent a week in the hospital, much of it in the ICU. It was, let’s just say, a bit surreal. Intellectually I know that week happened, but honestly, it feels more like a gap in time. I don’t think I really appreciated just how sick he was until after he was better, and I found out how nervous the pediatrician had been. And honestly, I’m glad I didn’t know how bad off he was when we were bringing him in. Glad and quite appalled, really, because I don’t even like to think about what might have happened if we had decided to wait a day to bring him in, or something.

The subsequent couple of weeks have been all about adjusting to checking blood sugar and and counting carbs and giving insulin several times a day. And yeah, we’re going to be doing this until he learns to do it himself…and then he’s going to be doing it for the rest of his life. Or until they find a cure, and well, I guess I’m too cynical to hold my breath. All of a sudden, I’m having to think about things I’ve never had to before, like…how many carbohydrates are in his favorite mac and cheese? How is his school going to handle his shots? How are we going to afford his medicine every month? And so on.

Needless to say, I haven’t had much brain space for writing.

Although I did make the decision to make one of my characters diabetic. It’s one of those chronic conditions that is almost invisible as long as you keep on top of it…and yet, it can cause terrible complications and even kill you if you don’t. And I think incorporating all this stuff into a fictional character will help me, personally, deal with it.

Then I had to decide who.

Can’t be an outright fantasy character, because explaining a disease like diabetes in a fantasy context, using otherworldly terms and employing otherworldly understandings of such things would be unnecessarily confusing…and having diabetes and its management exist exactly how it does here would break the fantasy setting. So it needs to be an urban fantasy character.

Honestly, my immediate instinct was to use Rane, from Dragon Singer. Having a condition like diabetes would play a good counterpoint to his dragon slaying occupation. Problem is, he lives in the future. Specifically, he lives in a future where people have neigh unto perfected genetic engineering and technology. In a world where people have discovered how to create living dragons from scratch, they would have almost certainly cured all auto-immune diseases…like diabetes. That’s probably where these genetic engineers started. Assuming Rane had even been born with the disposition to develop diabetes, they would have given him the cure as a child. It would have never manifested.

My next thought was Caleb from Briar Rose…but I think that would make him too weak. He already has kind of a pushover personality, and he’s got his lycanthropy to overcome. He’s not the one you’re supposed to feel sorry for. Fayna is.

Ha, a diabetic vampire.

But…you know, that’s never really been done. And I immediately pictured a scene in my head, of Fayna in the hospital at, oh say ten years old with kedoacidosis, and Caleb watching over her. Maybe he didn’t know her very well before that incident. Maybe he was the one who happened to be with her at the time, and brought her in. That could have been the start of their friendship. And it would give Caleb a very good reason to always be worried about her, especially if she’s the kind of person who doesn’t take very good care of herself. “Is she taking her insulin? Does she have enough to get her through the month? Does her boss know she’s diabetic? Do the people around her know what hypoglycemia looks like?” If Fayna’s parents don’t much care about her, it would probably fall to Caleb to manage her diabetes when she’s too depressed to do it herself. He would probably become rather overprotective of her, and she would (rightfully) resent it. It would give her yet another reason to run away, and it would give him a reason to come after her. “No one knows what she needs like I do” and all that.

And then…and I’ll admit this is rather creepy and questionable science at best…but what if vampires can taste glucose in someone’s blood? I mean, hyperglycemia means that there is too much sugar circulating around in your blood. Logically, wouldn’t that mean your blood would taste kind of…sweet? Wouldn’t that be a tasty treat for a being that lives off blood? I could see vampires capturing and possibly keeping diabetic hyperglycemic humans around as “dessert”.

It would give Vanilla Lace (first vampire villain of the series) a very specific reason to target Fayna…because Fayna is apt to forget to take her insulin. Her sugar is always high. Of course in this instance, VL wouldn’t be seeking to necessarily turn Fayna, just keep her around for the clan to snack on. And she wouldn’t want to kill Fayna either…and this is something Caleb wouldn’t know until possibly too late. Then Nightshade (second vampire villain, VL’s rival) hits the scene and kidnaps Fayna. And turns her, possibly just for the sake of pissing off Vanilla Lace. He probably thinks the process will kill Fayna, and might be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t.

Another question is, will Fayna still be diabetic once she’s turned? Traditionally, becoming a vampire seems to heal a person of whatever diseases or afflictions they had as a human, and makes them no longer susceptible to such things. (Although, I’d wonder if that goes as far as regaining one’s sight, or regrowing a lost limb, or somesuch). But the Curse in my vampire mythology doesn’t work like that. It only changes very specific Contracts (Death, Sleep, Sunlight, etc), and otherwise leaves the body alone. The body is still biologically alive, and functional. Fayna’s blood would change, give her faster healing and such, but I don’t imagine her body would spontaneously begin producing insulin again. She’s still going to have to manage her condition.

Which would actually, in a way, be worse for her. Because she cannot die. She could go through severe kedoacidosis, where her body would literally consume itself for fuel, but it would not kill her. And any complications she develops as a consequence of her condition, she’s going to have forever. And she’d have vampires constantly wanting to snack on her (yeah, they snack on their own as well as humans, given the chance)…and thus wanting to keep her sugar super high (hey, yeah, you might go blind in a few years, but it won’t kill you!).

In all, it adds an interesting dimension to the story and to the characters. I’d be dealing with some disturbing themes, especially in light of the fact that a child of mine has this illness. But in a way, it kind of makes the whole deal more manageable in my head. Grounds it against something completely scary and unrealistic, where I can say, “This fantasy scenario is the worst thing I can imagine anyone dealing with. Compared to that, I can handle the reality.”

Like this post?

Like!

3 likes

Anonymous(3)

What it did well:

The series made me care about every single character. I really couldn’t pick a favorite. Now I know that sounds like a “duh”, but honestly? That’s rare. That’s really, really rare. Anytime you have an epic with a huge cast of characters, there’s almost always going to be characters whose chapters you look forward to reading, and other characters whose stories you don’t care so much about, except that you’ve got to slog through them to get to your favorite POV again. It’s hard enough to create one character that everybody likes. Creating a whole cast of characters that everyone likes? In the Sword of Truth, I only really cared about Richard, Kahlan, and oddly, Nathan Rahl…reading about anyone else was work. In the Way of Kings, I liked Kaladin so much that it would take me a good two or three pages to get “into” anyone else’s story. Even the Wheel of Time couldn’t pull it off, though WoT manages to periodically bring various storylines to the forefront of my interest. I used to slog through Mat’s chapters because he just wasn’t as interesting to me. Now, with the introduction of Tuon, his is among my favorite storylines, and I find myself slogging through Elayne’s and the Forsaken’s chapters. Heck, there was a point around Book 8 where I was slogging through Rand’s storyline to get elsewhere.

In Winds of the Forelands, however, what would happen was I’d reach the beginning of a chapter with a new POV, figure out whose it was, and think something like, “Oh, yeah, them. I’d almost forgotten. There were having such and such problems, and this was going on…” and I was quite happy to keep reading. Those books were probably among the most balanced I’ve read, as far as juggling POVs and keeping interest up. The villains were as interesting and complex as the protagonists (a must for me, if I’m reading), and at various times I found myself honestly conflicted in who I was rooting for. This is something I really want to emulate in my Tindaari series…as every storyline is essential and I don’t want readers glazing over some to get to others.

The downside of this, however, is that while I cared about every character, there wasn’t one who really stood out to me. As I said, I couldn’t pick a favorite. Nobody really got to me, you know? The closest was Cadel the assassin, oddly enough, and he was killed off at the end of the third book. I really don’t think I was supposed to like him as much as I did…and it created in me an odd resentment towards one of the protagonists, Tavis. I’m supposed to be rooting for Tavis, and I did, but there was always this part of me going, “I wish I could like you more, but you killed Cadel. Yeah, I know he assassinated your fiance and framed you for it, and you’re going to be screwed until you get that sorted…but Cadel was awesome! I miss Cadel.”

Another aspect that bothered me about the series is that although the main storyline was tied off at the end, there were a whole slew of smaller subplots that I felt didn’t get finished. You sort of get the impression that all the smaller stuff will work itself out, but since I’d come to care about all these smaller situations, I didn’t like not knowing for sure. It felt like the smaller plotlines existed solely to propel one particular character, or a few characters, towards the final big battle at the end…and if we knew the fate of those characters, it would be enough. And I mean, I guess that is enough, ’cause there’s only so much wrapping up one can do before it gets boring. It just didn’t…feel like enough. Not for me.

But really, I can nitpick anything. Winds of the Forelands was a surprisingly good series, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes the genre and is tired of WoT and LoTR knockoffs.

I realized that my vague dissatisfaction with the series has less to do with the quality of the books themselves, but in the fact that it was a war story. Most epic fantasy is about war. Most epic fantasy concerns itself with nations and kingdoms and armies and warriors and borders and conquest and preventing conquest. Lord of the Rings. The Wheel of Time. Dragonlance. The Belgariad. Even Harry Potter has got one set of sorcerers trying to conquer and destroy the other set. The Sword of Truth and The Way of Kings have enough else going on that it pulls the spotlight off the battles, but still, there are battles. There’s always a war going on, or a war about to start. I noticed it in Winds of the Forelands, I think, because the entire story hinges on one particular war, and concerns all the smaller wars that lead into the big one. It’s not just a story taking place during a war…it’s a story about a war.

I don’t like war. Fighting battles, moving troops, swords and arrows and armor, thinking about how many men it will take to defeat a particular army…none of that crud interests me. I hate watching spear-carriers in stories get killed off in huge swathes in order to “up the stakes” for the good guys. It may be necessary but I don’t like it. It’s not what draws me to epic fantasy and I’ll be honest, it’s my least favorite part of it.

And this got me thinking, why is epic fantasy always about war? Well, for one thing, it’s big. It involves all kinds of people from various places. It forces people to move around a lot. It forces people to ally with enemies, and estrange themselves from allies. It’s exciting. It permanently changes the geographical and political landscape. No one walks away unscathed. Very few things are as epic as a war. It’s conflict writ large.

I never pictured Tindaari as a war story. I had vague plans of a war between the new priesthood and the magic users, but it was never anything definite because it wasn’t a part of the story I enjoyed planning. I was putting a war into the story because…well, that’s what you do in epic fantasy. You need all-encompassing, world-changing, epic battles between really awesome magic users and warriors with really awesome swords. So I’ve put myself in a position of writing a story in a genre that requires me to include something I don’t really want to write about.

That won’t do.

So I started brainstorming. After all, I don’t have to write about war. I don’t care if it’s the easiest way to make an epic…I don’t have to do it that way. I just need to think of something else, something equally as epic…but something that interests me. What sort of event brings people together on as massive a scale as a war, but isn’t a war?

Natural disaster comes to mind pretty quick. But really, that’s just replacing people against people with people against nature. Plague, famine, the sudden appearance of superpowers or curses among the population…which usually leads to some sort of armed conflict between supes and non-supes.

The only other kind of epic fantasy I can think of are what I’ll call coming-of-age stories. They concentrate on one single person’s life…though that person is usually some kind of hero or king, or is well caught up in the doings of heroes and kings. Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles is such a story, as is Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, as is Robin Hobb’s Assassins trilogy. (The Belgariad is a sort of hybrid, but honestly I think it’s the tongue-in-cheek humor that really carries that series for me.) Instead of creating an epic feel by spreading the focus wide, among a huge cast of characters…one narrows the focus down to a single individual, but takes that life in such detail that it becomes epic.

I just started The Wise Man’s Fear, second book in Rothfuss’ series…and I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I’m enjoying the reading so much more than Winds of the Forelands. I think it’s simply because I happen to like life-epics better than war-epics. For one things, life-epics tend to unfold at a slower, more relaxed pace than war-epics. I can get comfortable with the character and the world before the really big stuff starts to happen, and I’m not as tempted to read ahead to ease tension. Tindaari is very well set up to be a life-epic…it is, after all, the story of Ravana and Linus growing up, growing into their powers and into the world.

This is, perhaps, where Tindaari could really be something unique in the epic fantasy genre, because it’s really the story of several characters coming of age and meeting each other. You get to know all of them from childhood, or at least young-adulthood. It would be a life-epic in structure, but still keep the multi-character focus and breadth of a war-epic. I think taking the time to follow these characters as they grow up will help alleviate that “really like some characters, bored with others” problem that crops up in epics.

And best of all, if armed conflict does happen within the story (and it probably will), at least I can feel like I don’t have to focus on that aspect of it.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes