Friday, February 28, 2014
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
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Tuesday, February 25, 2014
The Sceptre
“It’s just
a playing card.”
He gazes
down upon her. “And you are isolated here in the country. It is more than a
playing card. In the City they speak of decks that reveal the future, not that
anyone is ruled by cards landing face up before them, but one delivered by
Zanderin …? Never mind. Sweet Terra, this is not your problem. I must go.”
“Wait. A
wand, I mean a sceptre, can change fate, Rhodry, for good or ill depending on
how it is waved …”
He watches
at her, eyes narrowing slightly.
She soldiers
on, knowing she must sound like a lunatic. “What was your fate until you
received the card?”
He clears
his throat. “Marriage, heirs, assuming responsibility for the business.”
She frowns.
“Pretty normal.”
“A choice I
made recently, to be normal. Before that I intended to … do something else. Be
someone else.” He adds the latter softly, an afterthought.
“Maybe you
are meant to return to that,” Terra says, although she is unclear of her
meaning.
Rhodry
moves his hand to rest over the pocket where the card hides and smiles
strangely. “I think you are right. You have a lucky escape, sweet Terra, from
me. Thank Zanderin … but don’t say it aloud or he will be at your doorstep next.”
He turns
and stalks to the carriage waiting beyond Lily Merripen’s lovely lichgate.
Terra loses
all breath and sees the hills running with waterfalls. Gods in restful repose
while their thoughts water the cosmos. Perhaps they are not so restful after
all. She chooses then to pick her wand up. Wishful is now reality. This wand,
different from the one she invited, comes into her space, when it could have
waited until Rhodry Fairweather was in his home alone, and she will now ignore
it? Thus it is also her wand.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Sunflower Power
Sunny heads
swing to entirely cover the priest, creating for a few moments a bower of
yellow and green light over the man. Another moment, and the bower is no more.
Now it is a tightly woven tapestry of stalk, leaf, petal and ripening seed, and
gradually it tightens to take on the form of a man.
Ten Fantasy Cliches dealt with in the LORE series
I am uncertain as the the author of the original post, but what he/she wrote got me to thinking and I thought I'd share with you how I deal with the cliches prevalent in Fantasy. My 'rebuttals' are posted in italics.
TEN FANTASY CLICHES THAT SHOULD BE PUT TO REST
Anyone who follows celebrity gossip knows there is a
downside to fame. Addictions, bankruptcy, and sex scandals threaten to tarnish
a star’s image. Perhaps the biggest downside of fame is that, for most, fame is
temporary. Why? Imitation. A hit record or a hit movie creates an army of fans.
Producers start looking for the “next big thing” to satisfy the demands of
those fans. Copycat acts start appearing, the market becomes saturated, and the
fans move on.
The copycats are even worse when it comes to fiction because
that market does not move as quickly. Imitation survives far longer than it
should, until it calcifies into cliche. But there is hope. Writers can avoid
using cliches, and readers can avoid stories that are lousy with cliches. To
that end, I offer the following top ten list of fantasy cliches that deserve to
be put to rest, once and for all.
1. A Prophecy or Destiny
One of the most enjoyable aspects of reading is watching
characters develop as they struggle to overcome challenges. If the readers, or
worse the characters, have some foreknowledge of how these challenges will be
met, the drama loses all impact. It’s a shortcut, a cheat code. At best, the
reader will want to skip the hundreds of pages a character spends resisting
prophecy or destiny. At worst, the reader will throw the book across the room,
suspecting that the ending has been spoiled. And as far as false prophets, a
surprise interpretation of prophecy, or a mistaken chosen one, skip those as
well. These twists are no longer surprising.
Fantasy is by nature
about destiny and fate and the great and grand designs, and I believe one
cannot entirely avoid inserting a telling a two. I do, however, agree that
knowing what will happen is not so good. How did I avoid it? I do not reveal
the prophecy until after it’s fulfilled, and then I employ the fulfilling to
explain how much the characters have grown … without expounding upon it, of
course- it flows in with the tale.
2a. The Orphan/Chosen One
Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, and King Arthur/Wart. Across
media, this is a common cliché, often related to prophecy. As children, we all
dreamed of being picked from obscurity to become a celebrity, a hero, or a
doer-of-great-deeds. Let’s leave those dreams in childhood and not in our
fantasy novels, okay?
Agreed, and how do I
avoid it? My main character Rayne chooses himself, and he is a very flawed ‘chosen
one’ and nothing is ever quite what it seems.
2b. The Wise, Old Wizard
Otherwise known as the bearded deus ex machina. Does the
protagonist have a guide or a mentor? Fine. But I draw the line at stories in
which the protagonist and his friends have been struggling for the past two
chapters, only to have a wizard swoop in and solve their problems with a wave
of his wand or a magical phrase. I think readers would prefer a wizardless
solution, where the protagonist solves problems for himself.
Yes, my main character has a mentor, but this is more a
father figure and they fight as father and son would, really clash heads! There
is no wizard in LORE that sweeps in and saves the day. The characters have to
sort things themselves.
3. The Dark Lord (Corollary: the Pure Superhero)
Similarly, I would argue that it is acceptable for a story
to contain a tyrant king or a bloodthirsty general. But if the antagonist is
evil for the sake of being evil, that story has crossed the line into cliche. A
villain never sees himself as a villain but as a hero in his own mind.
Unjustified evil is boring. And so too is unmitigated goodness. That’s why
Batman is better than Superman.
When I started writing
the LORE series there was a Dark Lord, but I soon grew bored with him. He is
still there, but he isn't called the dark lord (he has a much better title!)
and he doesn't perpetuate evil for the sake of evil. He has very good reasons
for his choices, although his manipulations are on a grander scale than a man
sitting alone and plotting evil upon his neighbour would achieve. Also, as the
story progresses, there is a chance you might even sympathise with him, and in
the future you may even come to encourage him into choosing a new path …
4. White Hat Good/Black Hat Bad (Corollary: good people
are beautiful; evil people are ugly.)
Any story that relies on some form of simplistic shorthand
to divide good from evil should be avoided. Now that’s not to say that you
can’t have symbols or uniforms for opposing sides in a war, but any sort of Manichean
marker, such as the color of clothing, race, or species is too reductionist.
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy fell victim to this
cliché, with his Aryan/good elves and dark/bad Orcs and Uruk-hai, but George R.
R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series flipped the cliché,
with (mostly) honorable men wearing the black of the Night’s Watch, while
corrupted men wear the white of the King’s Guard.
I agree. It takes all
kinds and good and evil is in the hearts and souls of the characters, not in
their features. Prepare thus to be surprised by who is what in LORE.
5. The Races/Species are Uniform
Just as an entire race or species shouldn't be purely
angelic or demonic (even angels or demons need complexity and variation),
members of a race or species shouldn't look or act the same as if they were
clones of one another. Look at humanity: the variation is quite dramatic. Yet
it is rare to see such variation among elves, dwarves, or other fantasy
creatures.
We do fall into this
hole, admittedly, and the main reason for this is the confines placed upon us
by the length of the tale. A writer cannot expound on the complications of
every race used and still maintain a reasonable word count able to translate
into a readable book. What do we do? We generalise and sweep a race that
populates our narrative with one broom. However, the race or two that is
integral to the tales in LORE are as complicated and different as a race should
be.
6. Men, Front and Center (Corollary: women are to be
put on pedestals or martyred.)
Take a look at the protagonist and secondary characters. Are
they all men? Are the women in your story afterthoughts? A beautiful princess
in need of rescue? A goddess sacrificing her immortality for the sake of a
handsome hero? A grandmother or witch? Just as races or species shouldn’t be
simple stereotypes, neither should female characters. Look for stories that
challenge sexist conventions. Readers prefer strong female characters. Choose
Buffy Summers over Snow White.
How do I avoid this?
There are strong men and women in
LORE!
7. Unrealistic Fighting (Corollary: unrealistic
healing from wounds.)
A hero cannot take on a dozen assailants simultaneously and
win. And a group of assailants would not wait to attack the hero one after the
other. The hero would likely be killed, or at least horribly injured. And in a
society where medical knowledge is limited, these injuries would have
long-lasting consequences (barring magical healing, but see cliché number 8).
Broken bones not set properly would cause pain and limit motion.
Arthritis would be common, not to mention pain and nerve
damage. Again, George Martin does inflict long-lasting injuries on many
characters in his A Song of Ice and Fire series.
Yes, indeed, and thus
my characters do get hurt, they do die, and they do suffer.
8. Magic Without Limits
This follows from cliches two and three. Magic should be
constrained in some way. There should be a cost to acquiring a magical ability
and limits on the exercise of magic. Otherwise, magic can be used to solve all
problems and overcome all challenges posed in the story.
I cannot stress enough
how much I agree with this! There is magic in LORE, but it is judiciously
employed. It doesn't magically save the day.
9. The Church of Witch Burning
Religion can be a difficult subject in fiction.
Historically, churches have been a source of community, of spiritual and
worldly education, and of political power. Although a fictional religion can
stand in opposition to magic or magicians, or even actively struggle against
them, a fictional religious order shouldn't be reduced to one overarching
cause. Religion becomes reactionary, making it difficult to justify all those
religious adherents. Check out Mary Doria Russell’s portrayal of the Jesuits
in The Sparrow or Walter M. Miller’s monks in A
Canticle for Leibowitz for examples of a more complete portrayal of a
religious order.
How do I avoid this? While
there is religion (because a believable fantasy world and its people requires
it), it isn't the driving force behind the story, ever. Although, let it be
said there is the Order of Taranis … but this is something beyond religion.
10. Strange Spellings
Stories should not have to rely on capitalizing words or
spelling them differently to invoke a sense of mystery or power about the word
or concept. The context in which the word is used should be sufficient. The
same goes for changing the names of recognizable animals in order to make the beast
sound more fantastic. Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series
relies on creative spelling and excessive apostrophes quite heavily: Dhai’mon,
Dhjin’nen, Ghob’hlin, Gho’hlem, Ghraem’lan, and Ko’bal, for example.
Now, come on, there
has to be a little strangeness! Still, ‘normal’ words are spelled ‘normally’ in
LORE, while the made-up ones are easy to read and remember. There is
strangeness, yes, but it never overshadows the story.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
Feast Night
He strode
through town greeting no one and appeared as dead to the townspeople as the
creatures that emerge on this night, with their voracious appetites. Tall and
gaunt, his face was as ashen and pocked as the paper birch near the lake, his
lips pulled back to reveal pointed teeth, and his eyes were hollowed dark
sockets.
From LATTICEWORK
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Awareness
A long,
long time ago, a lone wolf, starving and desperate, slaughtered an innocent boy
out walking the countryside. The boy was loved well by his parents and they
planted a tree in the place where his blood was spilled, a memorial that will
stand the test of time.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Fallen from the Sky
She comes
frequently; she has since the day her father spoke to her about the man fallen
from the sky. Always there is light, even in the darkest weather, even at night
when it is starless. She measures the stones on each occasion, but now
understands her time is too short to mark the growth. She comes during the
sighing of the wind, and has not heard the murmurs, but she is not
disappointed; she must be patient.
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