Posted by nightphoenix on Dec 10, 2010 in
Books,
Novels,
Output First, Shades. I’ve finished the bird edit, and am now about two chapters into the line edit. Line editing is hard, mostly because I’m realizing how much I skim when I’m reading. Now I’m forcing myself to actually read every sentence, and make a judgment on whether that sentence says what I want to say in as few words as possible. Slow work. One interesting thing I’ve discovered are…well, I’m calling them “remnants”. Little snippets of phrasing in certain places that are from two or three drafts back. Most of them no longer belong, because the wording and motivation and flow of the scene have evolved so much. Interesting how common they are, and how easy they are to miss on a casual read-through.
I’ve begun re-reading my First Draft in 30 Days book, and thinking about how I’m going to approach re-writing the second installment in Shades. At the conference, I want to at least be able to say that I’m “working on” the second book. Hopefully if I start the re-write with a system, it will go faster than this first book has. Read more…
Tags: books, reviews, Shades
Posted by nightphoenix on Oct 10, 2010 in
Books They suck away whole hours and days of your life. They occupy your mind even when you aren’t reading them. The people in them can become as real or even more real than the flesh and blood people you actually know.
So what does that make us writers?
Anyway, I just finished The Maze Runner by James Dashner. It was good, but not the sort of book I’d write. Although I could take a page or two from him on how to pace a YA story, and how to sustain a mystery throughout a book in a way that’s intriguing, but not irritating. My only complaint was that sometimes the kids’ relationships in that book didn’t quite ring true. Honestly, they weren’t mean enough, petty enough, cruel enough. There wasn’t enough Lord of the Flies for me to quite believe it. But maybe that says more about me than it does about the author. 
On the recommendation of several different people, I have started The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I’m enjoying it so far, but I don’t think it’s going to quite match the sheer scope and power of The Way of Kings. However, one quality that I appreciate is that fact that it’s not as fast-paced as most epic fantasy, and far less fast-paced than the typical YA fare I devour.
It puts me more in mind of Robin Hobb’s Assassins trilogy, in that the main character is telling the story of his life, and is in no particular hurry to get to the “good” parts. The character’s voice is equally if not more intriguing than the events taking place. It’s not that there’s nothing interesting going on, but it’s a book than I can read a few pages and then put down again without…pain? Can’t do that with The Wheel of Time. Can’t do that with The Way of Kings. I don’t think this is a book I could just sit there and read for hours and hours at a time…it doesn’t spur you on and on and on. He eases you into the character at a nice leisurely pace. Yet it’s interesting enough that I want to get back to it.
I think that’s the sort of pace I want my Tindaari epic to have. Because while it’s an epic, it’s a character epic. I’m following five or six people throughout a large chunk of their lives…several decades. Stories like that just can’t run at a breakneck pace. Tindaari is also less about War (like most epic fantasy), and more about the interaction of Religion, Intrigue, and History. Yes, there is war, but the story is much more about all the threads that led up to the war…the war itself is rather short, and right at the end. More like an almost-war. I will reserve final judgment until I actually finish The Name of the Wind, but so far I think it’s one I will definitely try to emulate in pacing.
My chief complaint about the book so far is that even though it takes place on a completely different world, the author keeps using specific fantasy tropes from our own world. (And I’m not talking about demons…that’s become a fairly generic class of creature.) For example: The Fae. I can accept that another world might have fairies, but I would expect those fairies to be somehow; in language, behavior, lore, whatever; connected to that world. Rothfuss is not doing that with the Fae in The Name of the Wind. He’s using OUR fairies, OUR faery lore, OUR conventions to characterize them. (Allergic to iron, sometimes called the folk, same organizations: Twilight Court and such, graceful, ethereal, elusive, mischievous, cloven feet, etc.) And every time he does it, it throws me out of his fantasy world…because I associate those kind of faeries with OUR world. They’re too specific, and thus they don’t mesh with the rest of the world he’s created.
I think maybe he’s trying to follow the rule of not calling a rabbit a shmeerp, just because it exists in an exotic world. He wanted Fae in his story, and so he simply called them Fae (instead of making up some word for essentially the same beings). The problem, however, is that the history and existence of the Fae are all tied up in the history of Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, and other real countries.
Same thing with using words like Aleph or Ruach. Those are actual Hebrew concepts…with Hebrew connotations, weight, and subtleties that just don’t make sense and would probably never develop in a world where Hebrew culture never existed. It’s like the author has taken these ideas without bothering to really integrate them into the fabric of this other world he’s created. Aleph and Ruach don’t naturally arise from the history, lore, and mood of the his world. He hasn’t provided any reason for Fae, or words like Aleph and Ruach, to exist as they do in THAT world. It begins to feel like a cheap substitute for worldbuilding.
Which is odd, because other elements of that world are completely unique…like the Chandrian…and those play right out of the history and fabric of the world. Those belong, in a way that the Fae do not. It’s not like the author didn’t do his worldbuilding. The history of this world is actually quite interesting, and seems very well-thought out. I think maybe he though he could use the Fae like he used demons…in a generic sense. But to me, the Fae are too specific, and too tied into this world to transfer. It’d be like, instead of angels and demons, using Lucifer and Christian saints in a completely fantasy setting where Christianity never existed. You can’t do that. They don’t belong there.
That turned into a bit of a rant. Let me be clear that otherwise I’m really enjoying this book, and would recommend it.
Also on the reading list:
Finally finished White Cat by Holly Black. Not bad. Will be reading The Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Claire as soon as I get my copy from the library. Also thinking of reading the Coldfire trilogy by C. S. Friedman. I’ve read two other of her books and quite like her writing style. Going to see if I can find the Uplift trilogy by David Brin as well, on the recommendation of the guys on Writing Excuses.
And um, I’m going to be writing in there somewhere, too. I hope. Like I said, good books are dangerous.
Tags: books, reviews, worldbuilding
Posted by nightphoenix on Sep 25, 2010 in
Screen Um. It is not wise to go see Legend of the Guardians, and then finish the last book in the Percy Jackson series in a single night. Unless you want some really strange dreams. (I’m pretty sure there was some Rah Xephon mixed in there too. )
However, Guardians is worth seeing for about the same reason Avatar was worth seeing: it’s really, really pretty. The characters and story were all basic formula, but it actually wasn’t as bad or cheesy as you might expect. I think it worked simply because all the characters were owls, and that alone was novel enough to offset the cliche-ness. Having said that, it was very predictable. There were absolutely no surprises in that movie. All of the characters did exactly what I guessed they’d do, and I basically knew the part they were going to play before they played it. “Ah, there’s the love interest…there’s the traitor…there’s the gruff old mentor…etc.”
On the way home last night I was thinking about this seeming reluctance of movie-makers to allow non-formula stories in their films. Is it because movies are so much more expensive to produce than books, and therefore cannot afford to fail as badly? I mean, there’s a reason certain stories are “formula”…they work! But I’m kind of tired of walking away from every single movie feeling like I’m just seeing the same thing over and over again. Come on. Somebody do something different. Somebody take a risk and try something new!
And then, when they make books into movies, there’s this annoying tendency to make those follow formula too, even if the actual book did not. The Lightning Thief was actually a good book, and the rest of the series is good as well. I think it would have translated well to film as it was. But of course, with a series, they’re never sure if they’re going to be able to keep making more movies, and so they make sure the first movie can stand on its own. With The Lightning Thief, that meant cutting out any references to Kronos and the overarching plot of the series. But in doing that, they had to make Luke into a cookie-cutter villain. Remember my whole “they broke his GMC” post? Yeah, well, it doesn’t break in the book. And what’s worse, if they do make more Percy Jackson movies, they’re going to have to go and dump the Kronos plot back in, and it isn’t going to make as much sense as it would if it’d been set up naturally from the get-go.
Ah, well.
On a slightly depressing note, I have deleted 25 spam accounts from the database in just the last week. That’s probably about average. I wish they’d just make spamming illegal.
Tags: books, movies and television, reviews
Posted by nightphoenix on Sep 22, 2010 in
Books I suppose it would be redundant to call it epic. But, that pretty well sums it up.
It’s both similar to and very different from The Wheel of Time. For one thing, it’s still not entirely clear (to me, at least) where the overarching story is going. In TWoT, that was set up pretty concretely at the conclusion of Book 1: The Dragon Reborn is going to fight the Dark One in the Last Battle. Rand is the Dragon Reborn (that was pretty obvious at the end of Book 1, even though it wasn’t officially revealed until later). That is the quest; all else leads up to that.
In TWoK, things are not quite so clear. We know the Last Desolation is coming, but we don’t know exactly what that is. We know the Voidbringers are going to return, but we don’t know exactly what those are, either. We don’t know if the Knights Radiant will get rebuilt, because we don’t know why they disbanded in the first place. I’m not even entirely sure which side of things the Heralds are on.
I actually kind of like shrouding the central quest in mystery. Not that TWoT doesn’t have revelations and stuff you don’t know and have to guess, but the central quest itself is clear. I have a suspicion that my Tindaari epic (the one that’s been sitting on my computer for years, and will continue to sit there until I’m ready to write it) will need a mystery-shrouded central quest…which means that, like The Way of Kings, I will need to have some incredibly strong characters from the start.
On a somewhat related note, TWoK concentrates a whole lot more on the main characters’ lives, rather than the main characters on a quest. What they are doing is not unrelated to the central thread, of course, but they are not yet directly moving towards it. It’s a departure from the Tolkienesque plotline that seems to dominate most epic fantasy, and I like that.
Also, I swear I’ve never experienced three separate “holy shit” revelations within the space of fifty pages. The last section of the book was awesome.
If you are at all a fan of The Wheel of Time or epic fantasy in general, and you haven’t read The Way of Kings by Brandan Sanderson, then you need to.
Tags: books, reviews
Posted by nightphoenix on Aug 14, 2010 in
Input,
Screen As you might guess from the title, the hubby and I finally got our chance to see this movie. It was well worth the wait.
I think the last film I saw starring DiCaprio was Titanic, when I was what…12? 13? It’s not that I don’t like him as an actor, although there is a part of me that still remembers the Titanic hype and secretly thinks DiCaprio will never live that down. But mostly it’s because he’s been in movies that I had no real interest in seeing. I’d heard that the Aviator was good, but personally I found the trailers for it cringe-worthy. DiCaprio simply cannot do an authentic-sounding southern accent. Yikes.
But you know…he’s not a bad actor. In fact, after watching Inception last night I’d say he’s a pretty good actor. He emotes very well and he never sounds like he’s just reading lines.
I’m not a fan of the action genre, most of the time. Inception was certainly that, but they managed to include a number of sympathetic characters, which made all the difference in the world. The movie was also unpredictable in a way that not many movies lately have been…where there are times when you genuinely don’t know what the characters are going to choose. That said, I caught myself in writer mode several times, thinking things like, “Ah, they’re raising the stakes again” or “this is an info dump” or “ooh, interesting symbolism”.
The story told in Inception revolves around one basic idea: “What is real? And how do you know?” Which put me in mind of another story that asked the same question: The Matrix. Now most people acknowledge that the first Matrix movie was very good, while the next two were anywhere from so-so to utter crap, depending on who you ask. The conclusion, in particular, was very disappointing. I did some brainstorming last night, comparing the two stories, trying to figure out why Inception succeeded and the Matrix failed. Read more…
Tags: GMC, movies and television, reviews
Posted by Mistress of Feathers on Aug 10, 2010 in
Books,
News,
Novels,
Output I read The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau in one day, almost in a single sitting. My husband got kind of boggle-eyed when I told him that, and yeah, I guess that’s a bit quick, even for me. I mean, it usually takes me at least a whole day, maybe two, to plow through a several hundred page book. It was quite a satisfying read…I’ve seen the movie, probably a year ago now, and it was pretty faithful to the book. That sort of conciseness, common to the young adult genre in particular, is something I admire when I see it and something I need to do more. I have a tendency to write epically.
Right now I’m working on Inkheart, another book that I’ve seen the movie of. Pretty good so far.
I have a ridiculous weakness for M&Ms. In case the blog itself doesn’t give that away.
You might notice that I’ve tweaked the sidebar a little bit. That picture (and yes, that is me) is one the hubby took while we were in North Carolina. It was a nice foggy day, which made for some very neat photo opportunities. I also finally figured out how to eliminate the search thingy at the top. I never liked it there. I’ll probably put it somewhere else in the sidebar, so the blog is still easily searchable.
I’ve been thinking about the logistics of the coup Raphel is planning for the city of Aschera. Read more…
Tags: books, brainstorming, reviews, Shades, worldbuilding
Posted by nightphoenix on Jul 12, 2010 in
Process So the hubby and I went to see Despicable Me on Saturday. It was an entertaining movie…solid story, solid character arcs, lots of funny moments that weren’t over-the-top. In fact, a lot of the humor was surprisingly smart for a movie of this genre, even the fart jokes and such.
But I was especially struck by the three girls. They were perfect for the role they had in the story, and they really called something to my attention that I hadn’t thought about before: how children are portrayed in movies now, versus how they are portrayed in much older movies, like Pinocchio and Peter Pan. Despicable Me had a tight soundtrack, one where you notice the music because the action in the movie is moving right with it (as opposed to just background ambiance). The three girls’ theme exemplified them perfectly: it kept the hip-hopish rhythm and beat that ran through the whole movie, but it had this very innocent, upbeat flute melody floating on top.
Read more…
Tags: movies and television, musings, reviews
Posted by nightphoenix on Jun 26, 2010 in
Process Last weekend, the hubby and I took Eli to see Toy Story 3 with my mom…and later that night, we saw The Karate Kid (minus Eli and my mom!).
Toy Story 3 was good, but surprisingly…well, dark. I mean, some of stuff those toys were doing, some of the scenes, whew. Just the fact that these are children’s toys makes it all the more disturbing when they imprison and hurt each other, you know? It reminded me of one of the interesting aspects of faery lore: the grotesque is hidden within the enchanting and innocent. Everything seems fine and beautiful, but there’s something…off…that you just can’t put your finger on. Until it’s too late.
But they wrapped up the Toy Story saga quite well. Yes, I cried.
The Karate Kid was a different beast altogether.
Read more…
Tags: business of writing, movies and television, reviews, the real world
Posted by nightphoenix on Apr 29, 2010 in
Books Yeah, yeah, I can already hear the groans. More vampires, right? After reading Twilight, I decided to delve into all the other YA vampire literature that’s out there, to see how they all do it, and what works. And what doesn’t. I have to say that as of right now, VA is now at the top of my favorites list.
Read more…
Tags: books, reviews, vampires
Posted by nightphoenix on Feb 28, 2010 in
Books,
Input,
Novels,
Output Brandon Sanderson has officially impressed me. I just finished Warbreaker, which I grabbed because the library had it sitting on their new book shelf. I said, “Oh, that’s the guy that’s finishing the Wheel of Time series, and does Writing Excuses (my favorite writing podcast).” And the inside cover blurb actually looked interesting, in a genre where very little catches my eye anymore.
Honestly, it wasn’t the most impressive or enthralling piece of fiction I’ve ever read, but it was good. I never had the urge to put it down and go do something else. The magic premise, BioChroma, was fascinating, and one I’m tempted to steal from. And he managed to successfully fool me into thinking the good guys were the bad guys and vice versa, which I enjoyed. I’ve seen funnier snark…but not much funnier, and not in the adult genre. YA tends to have more snark, and characters who snip at each other. Sanderson’s snark is sophisticated (which you won’t really find in YA), and I like that.
I picked up his debut, Elantris, from the library the other day, and also I finally got my hands on a copy of The Gathering Storm, which is the next Wheel of Time book. I’ll be reading those over the next couple of days.
Shades is coming along…slowly. Last night I went through the whole second draft, formatting it to send to my critique group. Well, of course, I can’t go through my writing without editing, and thus it took a lot longer than it should have. But I made some good changes…mostly tightening scenes, making them as clear as I can. I’ve been a little stuck at my current spot because I’m about to introduce Scisaxar as a character for the first time, and I really don’t know him very well.
The problem is, I haven’t found a way to relate Scisaxar directly to Raphel, or even to Saeli. He’s still drifting around on the periphery of my main characters, and is thus distant to me. Yuril is much easier to write now because she’s had some stage time, and she’s in love with Raphel. I don’t know how Scisaxar feels about Raphel, or Saeli, or any of the main characters. I’m going to drop him into the scene just after Yuril breaks Raphel’s fingers, and I know that Scisaxar is going to be pissed that Yuril has been blasting holes in his Temple. We’ll start with that, and see where he takes it.
Another thing that I’ve been pondering, and something that might help me with Scisaxar’s character, is that I’ve been trying to determine what the “inciting incident” between the two gods was. Why do they hate each other? What started the war in the first place?
Things I know: 1) On a much deeper level, the war has to do with Yuril’s and Scisaxar’s frustration over the Oath. They pit their followers against each other when in truth, both of them would prefer a direct confrontation. It frustrates them to have to work through mortals, and thus each blames the other even more for forcing them to sacrifice followers. This leads them both to be cruel and distant with their peoples. Cruel, because they don’t understand the source of their anger, and thus they take it out on their people. Distant, because they cannot afford to get emotionally attached to people they are sending out to die for them.
2) Both gods helped curse the Midplains. Raphel is right about that. What Raphel doesn’t know is that they did it as a desperate measure, to stop a certain secret society of people. These were the original gray mages, who knew how to build inter-world portals, who could summon both light and dark angelics, and who were delving into angelic and spirit lore that would have been better left alone. These experiments actually drew the attention of the Keeper of the Oath, who paid a short visit to Verre just before the Cursing. Well, that scared the you-know-what out of Yuril and Scisaxar. The Cursing was both a desperate measure and a panic reaction, and was perhaps overdone.
Now, I have a choice to make. Was the Cursing itself the two gods’ inciting incident, leading them to go to war for more than a hundred years…or did the disagreement start before that, and the gods temporarily put it aside for the Cursing?
If the Cursing was the inciting incident, then the resulting war is genuine. Both gods think that the other handled their part of the Cursing badly, or they blame the other for having to do such a thing, or whatever. They have a legitimate, relatively recent grievance against one another. However, if the gods put aside their conflict temporarily for the Cursing, then the resulting war would have to be a farce. In fact, it’s even possible that the gods were never truly at war in the first place, and their “hatred” is a cover-up to keep the world from discovering the truth.
I honestly like the second option better, because it makes the ending to Shades more plausible. Having Saeli single-handedly convince two gods who genuinely hate each other to stop a war they’ve been at for over a hundred years seems unlikely. But if their conflict isn’t real, her job is much easier. However, it dangerously reduces any empathy one might have for these gods…because that means they’ve been sacrificing their followers for a lie. It makes it look like Raphel was right about them, which will make it difficult for the readers to empathize with them towards the end. It works for the overall story of Verre, because the gods really were preventing something that would be ultimately worse than a hundred year war. But Raphel doesn’t know that, and Saeli doesn’t know that, and so the gods are, to them, going to look like monsters. And the only way I can prove that they aren’t monsters is to reveal a whole lot of information and backstory that I don’t want to cover in this trilogy. That’s what the sequel is for.
Perhaps the war began as a farce, but then got personal for the gods. Scisaxar is winning, after all, when the story opens. Maybe he started to press his military advantage and broke the unspoken understanding between him and Yuril. But why would he do that? I have to pull this back to the Cursing somehow. He would have to have some sort of grudge, if not against Yuril herself, then against her followers. Several possibilities present themselves. The most obvious is that Yuril attracts more followers and Scisaxar is jealous. Or he honestly feels that her followers are degenerates, and despises/feels sorry for them. Or they did something that got a lot of his people killed. No, that’s too general. They did something that got one certain person that Scisaxar really cared about killed. That would be a very strong motivation for wanting to win a farcical war.
Ah, an idea. Scisaxar loved a pre-Cursing gray mage, one of the ones in the thick of the angel experiments. The gods decided, together, that the order of gray mages had to be destroyed and the knowledge buried. They devised the Curse between them and set it loose on the Midplains. Afraid for his love, Scisaxar pursued her and pursued her, and finally brought her around to his point of view. He made her a White Mantle, and thus thought she’d be protected. Then, while the Curse was still spreading, she and a whole mess of her cohorts got caught by Cowls. Both gods’ followers had orders to kill or convert any gray mage. Scisaxar’s love refused to become a Cowl, so they killed her. Scisaxar demanded retribution, but Yuril refused, saying that even though the girl had repented of what she’d done, she still had the knowledge. The knowledge had to die. Scisaxar’s grief leaked into the still-spreading Curse, and it devoured the land as well. Once they contained it, followers from both sides were shocked and confused over why the gods would do such a thing. Yuril suggested that they stage a war, and let each side blame the other. The true reason for the Cursing would surely be buried. Scisaxar, afraid of losing all his followers, agreed. The war began, both as a farce and as revenge, on the white god’s part.
That’s very vague, and I can probably tweak it. But it could have a number of ramifications. One, Scisaxar is going to hold a severe grudge against Cowls, and against Yuril for letting them do what they did. It’s not really her fault; Yuril probably wouldn’t have sanctioned killing the girl, but the Cowls didn’t ask beforehand. Scisaxar is going to make sure his own people follow a strict hierarchy that leads directly to him, and he’s going to make sure they never act outside of his jurisdiction. He’s going to be jealous that Yuril manages to attract more followers, but at the same time, he’s not going to take any pains to make himself likable. Something like how a grieving widower would feel about a sibling who gets a lot of attention…jealous, but unwilling to compete. That jealousy is going to be manifested specifically in how he feels about the Raphel problem…because he can see that Yuril loves Raphel the way he loved ____. But Scisaxar’s also the one who will be suffering the most remorse over the Cursing, because he essentially screwed it up. He’ll possibly be the one who is more willing to listen to Saeli in the end.
So the war is both a farce, and personal, but more personal on Scisaxar’s end. Scisaxar’s pain amuses Yuril, but she doesn’t allow herself to think about it too deeply…lest she be reminded of how she really feels about Raphel. And worse, Raphel is exactly the kind of Cowl the white god hates, because he’s a wild card. He does what he wants, and the gods can go screw themselves. It was those kind of Cowls who killed Scisaxar’s love. He’ll hate Raphel, and hate that a Cowl managed to steal yet another follower away from him (first Kaladan, then Saeli), and he’ll hate Yuril for wanting to spare Raphel, and he’ll hate that were the tides turned, he would do exactly the same thing as his sister. No wonder the gods have to abandon the scene…neither of them can act. Their hands are tied by their pasts, and by the Oath. And we’re back to the Oath again.
I think I have a handle on the white god now. Enough to start writing him, anyway.
Wow. Scisaxar is walking into this conflict with some seriously complicated crap in his past.
Tags: authors, books, GMC, reviews, Scisaxar, Shades, Yuril
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