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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Researching the Tropes

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Researching the Tropes

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Sun Wu-small

My Fantasy Writing Workshop (Columbia College Chicago) starts each semester by writing a shared private encyclopedia of genre tropes. Each week has an assigned category. The categories are: monsters or magical creatures; gods, demi-gods, or powerful spirits; magical artifacts or prophetic techniques/devices; and historical people. The students each write one entry per category, then the following week, all the entries in that category are part of their assigned reading.

For each category, I’ve compiled a list of at least fifty potential subjects with short descriptions taken from across the world cultures and mythologies to get them started. Many of the entries have alternate spellings, and some reference books contradict each other, so students are required to use more than one source in their research.

Here’s a list of a few of the monsters/creatures in the first unit.

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Off to a Writing Retreat in Cairo

Off to a Writing Retreat in Cairo

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On the left is the anthropoid coffin of Wenmontu, of the 22nd or
23rd dynasty (944-716 BC). To the right is the coffin of Mesiset,
late 22nd to early 25th dynasty (c. 750 BC). These are in the
archaeological museum of Bologna, which has an excellent
Etruscan collection I wrote about in a previous post.
Photo copyright Sean McLachlan.

I’m stepping out of the blogosphere for the next couple of weeks to do a writing retreat in Cairo. As Black Gate regulars know, I usually go to Tangier, but now that my Tangier novel is out, I’m changing location to work on a new project.

It’s a neo-pulp adventure novel tentatively titled The Masked Man of Cairo: The Case of the Purloined Pyramid and follows the adventures of a disfigured World War One veteran turned antiquities dealer who gets tangled up in the machinations of the Thule Society in 1919. And yes, a pyramid really was stolen from Giza! Well, sort of.

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What Black Sabbath Can Teach Us About Writing

What Black Sabbath Can Teach Us About Writing

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Sabs

The world got some sad news last week — Black Sabbath just played their last concert.

OK, that’s small potatoes compared with all the other crap going on, but it was the end of an era. I bet I’m not alone among Black Gate readers and writers in being a Black Sabbath fan. Unfortunately I never got to see them in concert and now I never will.

They did teach me a lot about writing, though. As an author I get tips and inspiration from lots of different sources, not just other writers. Sure, I have a fondness for the great prolific authors and the literary giants, but I often learn more from the greats in different arts. Perhaps that’s because there’s a certain distance that allows you to see what they do more clearly. With other writers I tend to spend a lot of time looking at the nuts and bolts of their work, while with musicians and painters that’s not the case. I know very little about playing the guitar, and nothing about painting a landscape, so I focus more on the philosophy behind the work rather than the techniques of the work itself.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: I’d Rather Be a “Librarian” Than a Disney Princess

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: I’d Rather Be a “Librarian” Than a Disney Princess

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Librarian 1

On the advice of my students, I’ve finally delved into The Librarian/s franchise. If you haven’t encountered it yet, there’s three made-for-TV movies (The Librarian: Quest for the Spear; TL: Return to King Solomon’s Mines; and TL: Curse of the Judas Chalice), starring Noah Wylie, Bob Newhart, and Jane Curtin. They’re a wacky spoof of adventure films like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Congo. Seeing Bob Newhart wield a broadsword and fend off villains is worth the price of a theater admission.

In 2014 the franchise was turned into a TV series, The Librarians, which made the unique move of keeping the three movie leads on in bit or slightly bigger parts, while bringing in three new young assistant librarians and a guardian (bodyguard) who have the bulk of the adventures. They also introduced a new “caretaker,” (mentor and minder) who is the immortal Sir Galahad, played with disarming charm by John Larroquette. Christian Kane is one of the new librarians. He plays basically the same character he played on Leverage, which is delightful.

The series airs on TNT. The movies and previous seasons are available on Amazon Prime video, at the moment. Jonathan Frakes has directed eight episodes. Matt Frewer, Vanessa Williams, Rene Auberjonois, John de Lancie, Felicia Day, and Bruce Campbell (as Santa) are among the guest actors from the genre world.

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Books and Craft: The Power of Point of View

Books and Craft: The Power of Point of View

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Slow River Del Rey-small Slow River Del Rey-back-small

Today, I begin a new column here at Black Gate. I’ve been toying with the idea for “Books and Craft” for some time now. As an avid reader, a professional author, a writing mentor and instructor, and a lifelong student of craft, I have long been interested in what it is about certain books that capture our imaginations and elicit our passions. Why do we return again and again to certain stories? What qualities define “classic” novels and “must-read” new ones?

In this column, I hope to address those questions. I plan to look at a variety of fantasy novels, and science fiction as well, with an eye toward identifying an element of craft that contributes to their success. Sometimes the books will be familiar — those classics of the genre we know so well. Sometimes they’ll be more obscure titles — hidden gems that you might not know, but ought to. And sometimes they’ll be new works that demand our attention.

Let me be clear: I am not so presumptuous as to suggest that the specific craft element I identify is necessarily THE single factor in a given book’s success. Just because I might focus on, say, world building in Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana, that doesn’t mean his character work (or his prose, or his pacing) isn’t spectacular as well. My articles are intended to be illustrative and even instructive, but certainly not definitive. Whether as readers or as writers, we have something to learn from the work of successful artists. My hope is that these articles will help you see aspects of storytelling that you might not have noticed previously.

And so…

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Writing Life: The Arrow Storm

Writing Life: The Arrow Storm

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archers
We call it the arrow storm

We — well a mate and I  — call it the Arrow Storm. It’s like Seth Godin’s Dip, but different. The experience looms large in the lives of professional creatives, but it’s not unique to us. Let me explain.

Imagine you’re a knight. Your enemies are a bunch of  peasants on top of a hill. Once you get amongst them with your sword, they are almost literally mincemeat:

[The peasants] shouted out, and cried, “Put him to death.” When he heard this, he let his horse go; and drawing a handsome Bordeaux sword, he began to skirmish, and soon cleared the crowd from about him, that it was a pleasure to see.

Some [peasants] attempted to close with him; but with each stroke he gave, he cut off heads, arms, feet or legs. There were no so bold but were afraid; and Sir Robert [Salle] performed that day marvellous feats of arms. These wretches were upwards of forty thousand… he killed twelve of them, besides many whom he wounded. (source)

Whee! And that’s just one (doomed) knight without any armour or backup. In this scenario, you are advancing with your comrades and you have you armour.

Unfortunately, these peasants are armed with longbows.

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Always Winter, Never Christmas?

Always Winter, Never Christmas?

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narnia-christmas-small

Just a short post this week, since I’m sure we all want to get back to our holiday celebrations.

And speaking of which, I’m sure that everyone who remembers The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as well as I do knows where today’s title comes from. The first time that Lucy finds herself in in Narnia, she meets Tumnus the faun, who tells her that because of the power of the White Queen, in Narnia it’s always winter, but never Christmas.

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Five Reasons Why a Writer Should Stay On Social Media!

Five Reasons Why a Writer Should Stay On Social Media!

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...you have to avoid falling into the rabbit hole of long debates where you can't let something stand
…you have to avoid falling into the rabbit hole of long debates where you can’t let something stand

Me: I’m stuck. What kind of sentries would the bad guys set up?

DS Baker (a former soldier): Hang on…

Two minutes later we’re talking face-to-face across the Atlantic. I love the 21st century!

Yes, there are good reasons for a writer to stay on social media.

Well not all the time — and yes you have to avoid falling into the rabbit hole of long debates where you can’t let something stand. However, if you are a writer, then my experience is that properly curated social media is your friend.

I’m not talking about marketing, though it does help to have a wide circle of friendly people who are on your wavelength so might — not that you are entitled to this in any way — give your books a try.

No, I’m talking about more basic stuff.

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Truth in Historical Fiction

Truth in Historical Fiction

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Writerly boots on the ground in 12th century France (this illustration is a test, by the way).

Anet, Northern France, AD 1176
The summer breeze rustled the oaks where the tournament company of King Henry the Younger waited in ambush. It carried with it the sound of hooves, jingling harness and men chatting.
Sir William Marshal suppressed a grin. “Here they come, messers.” (*)

I was frankly terrified when I first put my writerly boots on the ground in 12th century France and perched on the shoulder of a 30-something William the Marshal as he lay in ambush with his lord, the bratty Henry the Younger.

In a sense, everything in my life had prepared me for this moment. I’d always been obsessed by Medieval History, spent my childhood dragging family around castles, read Malory at 11, Froissart at 12, and could recite the deeds of the Marshal when I was younger than that. I studied the subject to postgraduate level. I even have a sword scar and can teach you how to use a longsword.

Despite all this, writing that first line was terrifying.

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Meet Me through the Black Gate, Then Two Blocks down Great Jones Street

Meet Me through the Black Gate, Then Two Blocks down Great Jones Street

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the-war-of-the-wheat-berry-year-sarah-avery-smallTonight Great Jones Street, the new magazine that brought back my old Black Gate story “The War of the Wheat Berry Year,” is hosting an author chat, and you would all be very welcome. We’ll be talking about fantasy stories of all kinds, particularly epic, heroic, and sword and sorcery. I expect we’ll also be talking about issues of revision and representation, because of my essay, “Conscientious Turncoats,” at GJS about how the story needed to change to come back into the world. Feel free to bring your readerly fixations and preoccupations with you, too. I would love to have some familiar Black Gate voices in this new space.

Great Jones Street is a peculiar hybrid creature, a magazine that’s also an app. They started with a love of short stories and a realization that the short story may be the perfect form for reading on phones. I almost said I got unintentionally hooked on their app, but it would be more accurate to say they filled it up with so many great stories by top SFF writers that I forgot I was reading through an app. It feels more like the kind of anthology you might find in Jorge Luis Borges’s interdimensional library, or the best bookshop in Diagon Alley — endlessly growing new stories as you read it. Seeing my name among the other authorial names gathered there is a bit dizzying, and I’m not quite sure how I landed the first spot for their inaugural author chat.

The chat will run from 8pm to 11pm EST. Instructions on how to join the conversation are here.