Posted by nightphoenix on Feb 29, 2012 in
Output Slogging my way through Promises. There was a week where I was hitting around 1,000 words a day, but things have slowed down as I’ve been having to do a combination of rethinking, re-plotting, and worldbuilding.
The political situation on Caosgi, the world Saeli and Co. are currently on, has always been the most difficult and complex bit of the overall story. I’ve rethought it from the ground up at least three or four times, and in this last rewrite alone I’ve added and tweaked a number of things. Read more…
Tags: brainstorming, editing and revisions, Shades, worldbuilding
Posted by nightphoenix on Sep 17, 2011 in
Novels,
Output,
Process Seriously.
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? Read more…
Tags: brainstorming, magic, Mora, Saeli, Shades, worldbuilding
Posted by nightphoenix on Apr 2, 2011 in
Output,
Process This week, being spring break, I knew I wasn’t going to get much done in the way of actual writing. So, instead I’ve spent a little time concentrating on Amphiptere’s Vision, the MMORPG the hubby and I’ve been working on. It was inspired partially by World of Warcraft and by a turn-based, cartoonish RPG called Dofus, plus a heavy dose of experience from playing Achaea, a text-based MUD. The game I imagine is what’s called “sandbox” style: heavily role-playing dependent, where players can directly affect the world. Players build the houses, towns, roads, and cities; players create and run the organizations; players generate the big conflicts in the game. There are 61 discrete sentient races, 21 of which are playable. The abilities are many and varied, and a lot of the skillsets require creativity and imagination to use. Read more…
Tags: worldbuilding
Posted by nightphoenix on Dec 10, 2010 in
Film,
Output,
Short Stories Remember how I said I discovered a great, gaping hole in my Grimms premise?
Part of the idea is that children are kidnapped by faeries when they are babies and toddlers, because children who grow up in Arcadia make better, more docile slaves. It’s all they know. All my Grimms are kidnapped as toddlers, and rescued as teenagers. But the problem with that is, and I can’t believe this never occurred to me before:
See title of post. Read more…
Tags: Grimms, worldbuilding
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 Oct 6, 2010 in
News,
Novels,
Output Most often when I’m brushing my teeth. Maybe it’s the mint?
I will start thinking about a set of characters, and playing with bits of dialogue in my head. Often, what they will say to each other is surprising, revealing solutions to plot and story problems that I would have never thought of on my own. (Of course, given that this is all going on inside my head…eh, who says writers are sane?) And I will have “Oh. OH! Oh, hey, that’s perfect!” moments.
Well, last night I was thinking about Alex and Lauren from my Waters story. They were standing on the bow of the Kalianne, looking out over a contested Shallow. Our dear antagonist Meeley had brought in her airships and the fighting was pretty fierce. Alex was debating whether to take the Kalianne in, and decided he didn’t want to risk a confrontation with Meeley just yet. So they’re watching from a distance.
Lauren frowns and says, “Why do they fight like that? What do they really want?”
“They want what everyone who gets stuck in this desolate wasteland wants.” Alex sighs. “They want to go home.” Read more…
Tags: ideas, worldbuilding
Posted by nightphoenix on Sep 25, 2010 in
Novels,
Output One of the many things that The Way of Kings made me think about was the ecology of fantasy worlds. That was the one aspect of James Cameron’s Avatar that flat-out impressed me: how thought out Pandora was as a functioning ecology. Everything in that world, plants and animals alike, looked uniquely Pandoran (except, incidentally, the Na’vi, but that’s another rant…). It was all beautiful, but everything also had a purpose. The Way of Kings is also like that: everything revolves around the highstorms.
Saeli’s world lacks that. Verre is both like and unlike Earth, but I really haven’t given much thought to those differences. Dheu is a bit more detailed, but Dheu is actually even more Earthlike than Verre so it’s kind of a moot point. Caosgi has the most detail, but that’s because it’s significantly different. (Different is actually easier to worldbuild.)
Read more…
Tags: brainstorming, Shades, worldbuilding
Posted by nightphoenix on Sep 15, 2010 in
Novels,
Output,
Process …from Tennessee, that is. Went on a trip with Eli and my mom to her property up there. It was fun and relaxing, except for the part when we almost hit a deer. That was kind of scary. No internet or cell phone service up there, so I’ve been a bit out of touch these last couple of days. This is kind of a long post. Update, and (another) new idea.
Read more…
Tags: brainstorming, ideas, Shades, Windwaker, worldbuilding
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 25, 2010 in
Novels,
Output I decided to listen to my Dragon Singer soundtrack today in the car, which of course got me thinking about it. I did a little brainstorming with the hubby during lunch. Yeah, my brain is scattery like that. Am in the process of making a few revisions.
Read more…
Tags: Dragon Singer, ideas, Miriam, Rane, spindlewyrd, worldbuilding
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