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The Hero’s Struggle

The Hero’s Struggle

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The Swords of Lankhmar-smallConan the Barbarian. Elric of Melnibone. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Gilgamesh. Hercules. Hector of Troy.

These giants of heroic fantasy (and the mythology from whence it springs) strode across the landscape of my imagination as a young man. They were my guiding stars when I started to write my own stories. But what were they teaching me?

When I think about these heroes, one thing that comes through is their incredible lust for life. Even when they lapse into melancholy, they never stop striving, never stop fighting, and that struggle is the essence of life. Whether it’s Conan carving out a place for himself in the kingdoms of Hyborea, or Elric fighting to keep his fragile body alive with potions and sorcery, or Hector facing the dread Achilles to protect his home, these heroes confront the challenges of their ages.

Their struggles say a lot about humanity. How far would we go to protect our own? Where is the line between justice and vengeance? Is violence ever warranted?

So when it came time to create the heroes for my own stories, I didn’t set out to emulate these characters, but time and time again I noticed certain parallels. For instance, Caim (the main character of my Shadow Saga) has many of the physical traits of the Gray Mouser, but married to a personality more like Conan. Caim is direct in his sneakiness, deliberate in his dealings, and he possesses a code of honor that, although rather bleak and brutal to most people, elevates him above his peers.

Heroes often fight. They tend to love and mourn with superhuman passion. But first and foremost, they struggle. With their enemies, with their societies, with the gods, and oftentimes even with themselves. They struggle, and so must our contemporary heroes who wish to tread in their titan-sized footsteps.

The Plot Thickens. Or Maybe Stretches.

The Plot Thickens. Or Maybe Stretches.

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NovelistI had occasion to look into John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist for something totally unrelated to the posts I’ve been doing lately on plotting and plot devices. While I was checking through the book for the quote I needed, however, I found a few things he had to say about plot that I thought you might find interesting.

For those of you wondering, this is not the British John Gardner who was tapped to write the 007 pastiches in the 1980’s, but the American one who wrote all that Old English literary criticism, who’s one of the best known teachers of creative writing, with his book The Art of Fiction considered one of the seminal works in the field for students and teachers alike. For those of us in the Fantasy and SF community, however, he’s likely best known as the author of novels like Grendel, and Freddy’s Book, and October Light.

I’m going to share these observations in the order in which they appear, for the most part without regard to context. I won’t apologize for all the male-centric pronouns, I’ll just  point out that the book was published after Gardner’s unexpected death (so no changes could be made in later editions) and that male-centric was the default back then (pre-1982), even for most female writers. Here we go:

The wise writer counts on the characters and plot for his story’s power, not on tricks of withheld information, including withheld information at the end . . .

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The Series Series: Tales from Rugosa Coven by, Um, Me

The Series Series: Tales from Rugosa Coven by, Um, Me

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While we wait for my current publisher to send me the new cover art, here’s my last publisher’s art for a novella in the Rugosa Coven Series.

A tight deadline for turning around my galley proofs meant I had to choose: either skip my regular blogging gig here, or blog about the only book I’ve had time to look at for the past two weeks: my own. I can’t very well review a book I wrote–not just because of the temptation to brag about it, but also because the nitpicky galley proof process is forcing me to second-guess every word of it, at a point in the production process in which only a few of those words can be changed. Should you buy my book? If anyone had asked me last night while I was doing battle for the last time with a paragraph that has been driving me crazy for the past seven years, I honestly don’t know what I’d have said. John O’Neill assures me that Black Gate‘s readers will be interested in my own experience writing a fantasy series and preparing it for publication, so here goes.

Once upon a time, there was a call for short story submissions from a horror magazine. The editors were looking for very short works of psychological horror on the theme of “the life interrupted.” I tend to write long, and I’d never written horror before (and since the story that came to me grew up to be a comedy, I still haven’t), so I thought I’d challenge myself by trying to write something for the call. I wanted to start with a character whose life, pre-interruption, was already unusual. My protagonist arrived in my head by way of this personal ad on the fictitious dating website PaganSingles.com:

Divorced Wiccan female, 32, seeks realistic rebound guy. Petite and trim brunette. Enjoys the ocean, 19th century novels, long Sunday mornings with the New York Times. Atlantis cranks need not apply.

What would be the most horrifying interruption possible in the life of a skeptical post-modern Neo-Pagan who prides herself on not being a New Ager? Discovering that the New Agers were right about something, anything, and why not Atlantis?

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Nobody Gets Out Alive: Writing Advice from the Cheap Seats

Nobody Gets Out Alive: Writing Advice from the Cheap Seats

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WritingBefore I was published, I read a lot of articles and books about writing, hoping to improve my craft. As I progressed, it became more difficult to find sage advice, because so much was slanted toward the novice writer just starting their first steps on the path. What I’d like to do today is pass along some tips for the intermediate writers out there — those who have been honing their work for a couple years with the goal of getting published.

One of the biggest hurdles I faced when coming up was in my head. When I first started, I wrote in my spare time. Just whenever I felt the urge, and not with any consistency. Even when I decided during my college years to switch my major to English with the goal of becoming a career novelist, I was still treating it like a hobby. I think I was more intrigued by the idea of being a writer than the reality, which sounded like a lot of work.

Taking that next step toward being a “professional” writer meant changing my habits, and my state of mind.

1. Write every day

Everyone has school or a job, family obligations, friendships that require nurturing, and so on. But putting your butt in the chair and writing for a specific amount of time every day builds a habit, and that habit will see you through some tough spots down the road. You won’t always feel like being creative, but you still need to put in the time. Think of it as an investment in your career. You have to put in the work, day after day, for months and years on end. Treat writing like a profession, and others will start to see you as a professional.

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Unlikely Story: BG Interviews the Editors

Unlikely Story: BG Interviews the Editors

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Closed dooers slider2It’s been nearly three years since The Journal of Unlikely Entomology made its first appearance, and while this multi-legged publication focused initially on that fertile but narrow intersection of spec fic and bugs, the magazine has since branched out, changed its name, and adopted a rolling series of varied themes (the latest being the upcoming Journal of Unlikely Cryptography, now accepting submissions).

Unlikely Story pays pro rates for fiction, a rarity these days, and manages to make the stories they present look sharper than switchblades by moonlight.  Here’s my interview with editors A.C. Wise and Bernie Mojzes.

Unlikely Story has not only shortened its name, you’ve upped the pay rate. Nobody does both those things in one short span.  Have you gone quietly mad?

A.C.: That implies we weren’t mad to begin with… I mean, we started off publishing a magazine exclusively about bugs, how sane can we be?

Bernie: Indeed.

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The Sword Folk Are Coming!

The Sword Folk Are Coming!

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John Gwynne
John Gwynne (who won!) with a nice non-fantasy looking longsword

The Gemmell Award ceremony at the World Fantasy Convention was a hoot. It was also illuminating.

Out of the five contenders for the Morningstar Award (Best Debut Novel), two appeared with weapons in the brochure: John Gwynne (who won!), with a nice non-fantasy looking longsword, and Miles Cameron, in Hundred Years War era armor.

Miles Cameron
Miles Cameron, in Hundred Years War era armor

Cameron is obviously a part-time sword person. Mr Gwynne, when I asked him, ‘fessed up to being a collector only, but still interested in authentic historical combat.

Later in the bar, I got talking to a journalist and the conversation turned to my obsession with Historical European Martial Arts, especially the superiority of the German Longsword tradition.

“Ah,” said the journalist, backing away and holding up his hands defensively. “You should chat to Adrian Tchaikovsky. He talks about that.”

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Pacific Rim and the Culture of Rip-Off Vs. Homage

Pacific Rim and the Culture of Rip-Off Vs. Homage

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“This is not a rip-off, it’s an homage!”–Peter Swan (Liam Neeson) in The Dead Pool

Watching the special features on Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim this past weekend, I was struck by something the director said. Paraphrased, he told the design crew not to take any elements from previously-existing kaiju (such as Godzilla, Gamera and so forth), but to pay tribute to the spirit of those films. In other words, it’s a classic homage.

"And I would do anything for loooove...."
“And I would do anything for loooove….”

Now, bear with me on this. I’m a fan of Asian cinema, particularly the 80s and 90s classics such as The Bride with White Hair, Jet Li’s Once Upon a Time in China series, The Heroic Trio and its amazing sequel Executioners, and so forth.  I’m not obsessive about it — there’s a lot I haven’t seen — but I know the high points.

So when I see something like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films, I see exactly what the lnfluences are. Except in this case, they’re not homages: they’re recreations of some of the exact moments from the films that influenced them, only couched so that you (the general American audience who’s never seen them before) will think they’re Tarantino’s or Ang Lee’s original ideas.

That, my friends, is a rip-off.

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What I Learned From A New Hope

What I Learned From A New Hope

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Star Wars A New Hope-smallI was seven years old when the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope, hit the theaters. That was a magical summer in my childhood, a time when the future was gigantic bubble of fun and optimism that seemed to be moving closer to me day by day.

Years later, when I started penning my own stories, I flailed about like most fledgling writers, not really sure what I was doing. Eventually, I got my act together, but it wasn’t until later as I looked back on what worked, and what didn’t, that I started to realize that the most important lessons about storytelling were the ones I unwittingly learned at the movie theater, watching heroes battle an evil empire in a galaxy far, far away.

Motivation

It’s vital for characters to have deep and compelling motivations, so when I think of this topic, I always go back to the basics. Luke, our main hero, begins the movie yearning to get off his desert homeworld and find adventure among the stars. That seems simple, and it is, but it’s also a motivation that so many people share. Who among us didn’t yearn for personal freedom when we were growing up, the chance to get away from our ordinary lives and do something exciting?

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Plot, Plain and Simple

Plot, Plain and Simple

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Writing the Novel From Plot to PrintI may have mentioned this before, but now that I’ve started talking about problems associated with plot, I’ll mention it again: There’s a lot of talk out there about plot-driven narratives versus character-driven narratives, where the former is “bad” and the latter is “good.”

Here’s the skinny: these are terms useful to the book reviewer or critic. They’re not useful to the writer and here’s why: There is no plot without character and there is no character without plot. Specifically, there’s no action without a character to perform it, and no characters without actions to define them. Nothing happens unless someone decides to do it, and unless someone does something, there’s no plot. In fact, there’s no story. This is true for every novel, every short story, every film, every TV show, and an awful lot of poetry. Regardless of genre.

There are things like allegories and satires, in which this might be debatable. Of course, the primary purpose of these is not to tell a story, but to get a particular point across, so screwing with the narrative is okay and even expected. But the best of these will at the very least pretend to include character and plot.

Last week, I talked about how badly-used plot devices often arise out of the writer ignoring character and “making” something happen, often to manipulate the reactions of readers and viewers. You can avoid this by asking yourself some simple questions right at the start. Many of us start writing with character in mind, so we ask ourselves, “Given this type of person, what kind of interesting things can happen to her?” Even if you start somewhere else, however, one of the first questions you’ll have to ask yourself is “Whose story is it?”

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Excuse me, Are you Using that Plot Device?

Excuse me, Are you Using that Plot Device?

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Crossing LinesThe other day, I was watching a new Canadian show that I’m not sure is even airing in the US called Crossing Lines. It stars, among others, William Fichtner and Donald Sutherland, and promises to be a kind of Agents of Shield without the Marvel universe – a group of police officers from different countries come together to solve international crimes as an arm of the International Court. So far so good, except for . . .

In the second episode, a tender moment occurs where two characters bond over similar family issues. They look warmly into each other’s eyes and promise to talk about it later. I call out “Dead man!” And of course I was right. One of them was dead by the end of episode, leaving the other feeling bereft. And leaving me rolling my eyes.

While “Dead man!” can be fun to play (as can “She did it!”) it’s a sad commentary on the state of narrative that these games can be played so often.

Okay, I hear you say, so it’s a plot device, and maybe it’s a bit overused (where “a bit” means I’m understating). Is that really so wrong? Yes, yes it is. The problem with this kind of thing is that because we recognize it, we feel manipulated, and when your viewers, or your readers, feel manipulated, you’ve lost them. You’ve reminded them that not only did you make this bit up, you’ve made all of it up. When your readers start considering the structure of the narrative, they’ve taken a step back from it. And bang, as they say, goes your willing suspension of disbelief.

We could argue that this kind of manipulation doesn’t happen as much in novels or short stories as it does in television and movies. Maybe not. Novels, for one, have time enough to make readers genuinely care about a character before she gets killed. And plot devices are actually useful things; both as readers and writers we love them, except when we hate them.

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