What makes fantasy feel real?
steve miller
Not all fantasy has the same "depth" of the fantastic -- Peter
Beagle's Fine and Private Place isn't the same as kind of work as
Jorel of Joiry -- but good fantasy lets you get lost in it without
doubting while you're imersed in it.
What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
doesn't work anymore?
Steve
working, working, working
The Tomorrow Log: order now at fine stores everywhere
Scout's Progress, a Prism Award Winner, from Ace
Elsewhere and Otherwhen -- from http://www.embiid.net
Brian D. Fernald
> OK, thinking cap time.
>
> Not all fantasy has the same "depth" of the fantastic -- Peter
> Beagle's Fine and Private Place isn't the same as kind of work as
> Jorel of Joiry -- but good fantasy lets you get lost in it without
> doubting while you're imersed in it.
>
> What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
> techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
> superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
> doesn't work anymore?
>
Define real.
Most modern fantasy seems to attempt to put itself forwards as if it
were a complete simulation of a real world, is this a real world to you?
Others might go for the reality of the individual experience? If it is
real to the character, regardless of whether it is real to all the
characters, is this a real world to you?
--
Brian F.
FSOBN.
steve miller
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Define real.
>
>Most modern fantasy seems to attempt to put itself forwards as if it
>were a complete simulation of a real world, is this a real world to you?
>
>Others might go for the reality of the individual experience? If it is
>real to the character, regardless of whether it is real to all the
>characters, is this a real world to you?
What makes it work for the reader. We're talking experience of the
reader. You are a reader -- what makes fantasy real for *you*. If you
never get that involved with a book, then fantasy doesn't work for you
and this isn;t a question for you.
Steve
Brian D. Fernald
> On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 19:12:08 -0500, "Brian D. Fernald"
> <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Define real.
>>
>>Most modern fantasy seems to attempt to put itself forwards as if it
>>were a complete simulation of a real world, is this a real world to you?
>>
>>Others might go for the reality of the individual experience? If it is
>>real to the character, regardless of whether it is real to all the
>>characters, is this a real world to you?
>
>
>
> What makes it work for the reader. We're talking experience of the
> reader. You are a reader -- what makes fantasy real for *you*. If you
> never get that involved with a book, then fantasy doesn't work for you
> and this isn;t a question for you.
>
You misunderstand my question. Define what 'real' means in the case of
a fictional world and I might be able to provide a more meaningful answer.
I can get involved in a book despite the world never being 'real' to me.
The book could be 'real' to me, based on the character's state of me or
of mind (Poe and Lovecraft come to mind as examples of this). This
implies nothing of the underlying 'reality' of the world.
'What works for the reader.' is a difflicult question. What reader?
Are all readers the same? Are there general rules that include a
portion of the readerdom?
--
Brian F.
FSOBN.
Beth Friedman
<che...@starswarmmnews.com>,
<652j4vs3q05ovud19...@4ax.com>, wrote:
>OK, thinking cap time.
>
>Not all fantasy has the same "depth" of the fantastic -- Peter
>Beagle's Fine and Private Place isn't the same as kind of work as
>Jorel of Joiry -- but good fantasy lets you get lost in it without
>doubting while you're imersed in it.
>
>What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
>techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
>superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
>doesn't work anymore?
I don't agree with all her points, nor especially with all her
examples, but Ursula K. LeGuin's essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie"
deals directly with just this issue.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Fae Bard
news:652j4vs3q05ovud19...@4ax.com...
>
> What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
> techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
> superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
> doesn't work anymore?
>
The thing that first springs to mind isn't literary... it's from the _Final
Fantasy: Spirits Within_ movie. For those that haven't seen it, the entire
thing is computer-animated. There's a scene where a guy is turning a photo
over and over in his hands, and there's a line of numbers on the back from
the processing place. They could've left it out, and I probably wouldn't
have noticed... but for me, it made the movie utterly real.
I guess for me, then, reality is in the little things to which I can relate.
Meghan
--
***
author of _From the Ashes_
an urban fantasy novel set at Pendragon Renaissance Faire.
For more info, visit http://www.faire-folk.com
Charlton Wilbur
SM> What makes it work for the reader. We're talking experience of
SM> the reader. You are a reader -- what makes fantasy real for
SM> *you*. If you never get that involved with a book, then
SM> fantasy doesn't work for you and this isn;t a question for
SM> you.
Emotional reality. In considering the LOTR movie recently, I've been
thinking about why the books pack such a punch for me, and I think
that a lot of it is that the characters react like people I know, or
would like to know: they're all human. _The Last Unicorn_ has
something similar; where LOTR feels like a history, _The Last Unicorn_
feels like a fairy tale, as there doesn't seem to be much depth to the
world and there are charming anachronisms scattered throughout the
book. But the scene where (Maggie?) rebukes the unicorn for waiting
until she was old and ugly instead of coming to her in her youth has
haunted me since I first read the book.
Language. There are books I read just for the sheer magic of the
words. I'd like to read more fantasy books that do that, but they
seem to be few and far between.
Charlton
Fae Bard
news:87k7g6h...@mithril.chromatico.net...
>
> something similar; where LOTR feels like a history, _The Last Unicorn_
> feels like a fairy tale, as there doesn't seem to be much depth to the
> world and there are charming anachronisms scattered throughout the
> book. But the scene where (Maggie?) rebukes the unicorn for waiting
> until she was old and ugly instead of coming to her in her youth has
> haunted me since I first read the book.
Wow... I can tell I need to go back and read _Last Unicorn_... I my initial
impression of your description was that you meant _Song of Sorcery_, which I
also need to go through again.
David Friedman
>
> SM> What makes it work for the reader. We're talking experience of
> SM> the reader. You are a reader -- what makes fantasy real for
> SM> *you*. If you never get that involved with a book, then
> SM> fantasy doesn't work for you and this isn;t a question for
> SM> you.
I once asked Bujold how she was able to write such improbable plots and
still have them feel real. Her answer was that she put real people in
them.
Erol K. Bayburt
>I once asked Bujold how she was able to write such improbable plots and
>still have them feel real. Her answer was that she put real people in
>them.
That's part of it, I think, but only part. In her Vorkostigan books, I get the
sense of technology being a living, breathing thing, like a great beast of
burden in the background. This does as much to make that universe feel real to
me as her "real people" characters do.
Her fantasy /The Spirit Ring/ feels flat to me because it lacks this. The
people in it are real, and alive, but the magic/technology somehow isn't. Or at
best it's only alive like a tree, and not animate. I get the feeling that in
the book it's been the 14th century for several hundred years and will continue
to be the 14th century for several hundred years more.
--
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com
David Friedman
ero...@aol.com (Erol K. Bayburt) wrote:
> Her fantasy /The Spirit Ring/ feels flat to me because it lacks this. The
> people in it are real, and alive, but the magic/technology somehow isn't. Or
> at
> best it's only alive like a tree, and not animate. I get the feeling that in
> the book it's been the 14th century for several hundred years and will
> continue
> to be the 14th century for several hundred years more.
I think it also suffers by comparison with the original she is working
from. The real Benvenuto Cellini is a hard act to top.
BrainsAkimbo
> techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
> superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
> doesn't work anymore?
>
I think Borges said that a good way to start a fantastic
story was to have the protagonist have a personal tragedy.
His "The Aleph" and "The Zahir" both start with the death
of the protagonist's girlfriend, if I remember correctly.
Possible spoilers for Lewis Shiner's "Glimpses" follow.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
*
S
P
A
C
E
That's what I liked of Lewis Shiner's "Glimpses", for example.
The main character is traveling in time and doing all sort
of weird stuff, but at the same time he has other personal
concerns to take care of, like his divorce and his father's
death. He doesn't go all the time "Wow, I'm talking to Jimi
Hendrix's ghost!" or things like that, that would have killed
the story IMHO.
Just my $0.02,
-- BA
Boyd & Michelle Bottorff
> What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
> techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a superior
> feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or doesn't work
> anymore?
In LeGuin's _The Dispossessed_, which someone in one of my crit groups
thinks is one of the worlds most wonderful novels, she says something
like "at first children say 'my arm' and 'my hand' but eventually they
learn to say 'the arm' and 'the hand' like everyone else does." That is
nonesence. LeGuin must be amazingly unknowlegable about how chidren
learn language to have come up with such an idiocy. It jarred me out of
my sense of the possible reality of the book, and I never got it back,
and put the darn thing down about 30 pages later, never having been able
to convince myself that it was real enough to bother with. This small
slip obviously did not have the same effect on my crit partner... but
then, *I* am the mother of six, one of whom has a "severe language
delay", and my crit partner has no experience with children at all.
In reverse, one of the "real" things for me about LOTR is the terrain.
All those details about trees and weather and so forth. Those were real
trees, and real weather... so this *must* be a real world.
I think that the trick of establishing reality is to carefully drop in
appropriate bits of reality, while avoiding inapropriate bits of
non-reality. Make sure your unreality is internally consistant, but
also make sure it has something in it that your readers will recognize
as being 'real'. IMHO, YMMV. Some bits of reality will resonate better
with some readers than others, and some errors will pass by some readers
unnoticed, and will totally ruin the experience for others -- but that's
unavoidable, you can't even get around it by having NO errors, because
one person's truth is another's nonsense.
Of course with most novels I pick up off the "new books" shelves at the
library nowadays the thing that bothers me usually isn't the lack of
reality, it's that in the search for reality the author seems to have
forgotten to including any FUN. Since your books tend to be
significantly funner than the average I hope you aren't about to jump
over the deep end in the quest for reality. :)
Michelle Bottorff
Blanche Nonken
> But the scene where (Maggie?) rebukes the unicorn for waiting
> until she was old and ugly instead of coming to her in her youth has
> haunted me since I first read the book.
My favorite line from that book: "I did not know that I was so empty, to
be so full." Of late, it has been engraved on my heart.
Blanche Nonken
> What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
> techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
> superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
> doesn't work anymore?
Weird situations, with real people in them. Kind of like real life,
only instead of the horrible day with a fender bender at the end of it,
it's a horrible day with a dragon at the end of it.
steve miller
Bottorff) wrote:
>steve miller <che...@starswarmmnews.com> wrote:
>
>> What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
>> techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a superior
>> feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or doesn't work
>> anymore?
>I think that the trick of establishing reality is to carefully drop in
>appropriate bits of reality, while avoiding inapropriate bits of
>non-reality. Make sure your unreality is internally consistant, but
>also make sure it has something in it that your readers will recognize
>as being 'real'. IMHO, YMMV. Some bits of reality will resonate better
>with some readers than others, and some errors will pass by some readers
>unnoticed,
These is well put.
> the thing that bothers me usually isn't the lack of
>reality, it's that in the search for reality the author seems to have
>forgotten to including any FUN. Since your books tend to be
>significantly funner than the average I hope you aren't about to jump
>over the deep end in the quest for reality. :)
Thank you, but no. Part of what I've been doing is prepping for a
couple upcoming panels -- I'm moderating one on fantasy at Boskone and
then we're taking part on a character and world-building thingie at
MarsCon which can use some of the same ideas, I think...
Steve
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> steve miller <che...@starswarmmnews.com> wrote:
>
> > What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
> > techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
> > superior
> > feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or doesn't work
> > anymore?
>
> In LeGuin's _The Dispossessed_, which someone in one of my crit groups
> thinks is one of the worlds most wonderful novels, she says something
> like "at first children say 'my arm' and 'my hand' but eventually they
> learn to say 'the arm' and 'the hand' like everyone else does." That is
> nonesence. LeGuin must be amazingly unknowlegable about how chidren
> learn language to have come up with such an idiocy. It jarred me out of
> my sense of the possible reality of the book, and I never got it back,
> and put the darn thing down about 30 pages later, never having been able
> to convince myself that it was real enough to bother with. This small
> slip obviously did not have the same effect on my crit partner... but
> then, *I* am the mother of six, one of whom has a "severe language
> delay", and my crit partner has no experience with children at all.
It's a while since I read THE DISPOSSESSED, but from what I remember of
it, I'd be surprised if she wasn't positing some development of the
children in the utopia or dystopia that was a metaphor for something else,
rather than a straight description of humans acquiring language. I mean,
you don't read the bit about the wall, which the novel starts with, and
first think about the workmanship of the stone-making.
> In reverse, one of the "real" things for me about LOTR is the terrain.
> All those details about trees and weather and so forth. Those were real
> trees, and real weather... so this *must* be a real world.
How does that work for you with SF? Or doesn't it? Or does it, but a
different way?
>
> I think that the trick of establishing reality is to carefully drop in
> appropriate bits of reality, while avoiding inapropriate bits of
> non-reality. Make sure your unreality is internally consistant, but
> also make sure it has something in it that your readers will recognize
> as being 'real'. IMHO, YMMV. Some bits of reality will resonate better
> with some readers than others, and some errors will pass by some readers
> unnoticed, and will totally ruin the experience for others -- but that's
> unavoidable, you can't even get around it by having NO errors, because
> one person's truth is another's nonsense.
That's interesting. How would you differentiate fantasy from historical
fiction -- or wouldn't you? Are they the same kind of 'real'?
> Of course with most novels I pick up off the "new books" shelves at the
> library nowadays the thing that bothers me usually isn't the lack of
> reality, it's that in the search for reality the author seems to have
> forgotten to including any FUN. Since your books tend to be
> significantly funner than the average I hope you aren't about to jump
> over the deep end in the quest for reality. :)
I suspect that the nearer you get to 'realism' with landscape, the more
you tend to get tempted by realism in the sense of how little fun there
can sometimes be in the real world. Come to think of it, there aren't a
lot of laughs in LOTR. If it's epic, it's epic tragedy.
Mary
Brian M. Scott
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>In article <200302130...@216.158.68.44.dragonbbs.com>,
>mbot...@mac.com (Boyd & Michelle Bottorff) wrote:
[...]
>> I think that the trick of establishing reality is to carefully drop in
>> appropriate bits of reality, while avoiding inapropriate bits of
>> non-reality. Make sure your unreality is internally consistant, but
>> also make sure it has something in it that your readers will recognize
>> as being 'real'. IMHO, YMMV. Some bits of reality will resonate better
>> with some readers than others, and some errors will pass by some readers
>> unnoticed, and will totally ruin the experience for others -- but that's
>> unavoidable, you can't even get around it by having NO errors, because
>> one person's truth is another's nonsense.
>That's interesting. How would you differentiate fantasy from historical
>fiction -- or wouldn't you?
I'm not sure that I would. I recognized already as a child that
they had the same kind of appeal to me. Certainly they blend
into each other very nicely somewhere around _Sword at Sunset_
and _Shy Leopardess_.
> Are they the same kind of 'real'?
I think that the same sorts of things make them feel real, but
I've never been able to put my finger on them. (And 'real' isn't
necessary for some kinds of fantasy: Cabell and Dunsany come to
mind, and some McKillip.)
[...]
Brian
Boyd & Michelle Bottorff
> It's a while since I read THE DISPOSSESSED, but from what I remember of
> it, I'd be surprised if she wasn't positing some development of the
> children in the utopia or dystopia that was a metaphor for something else,
> rather than a straight description of humans acquiring language. I mean,
> you don't read the bit about the wall, which the novel starts with, and
> first think about the workmanship of the stone-making.
If my area of expertise was stone-working and she described the wall in
such a way that I knew it couldn't have ever been built, I would have
trouble seeing the metaphor because I would be too busy thinking, "no,
that doesn't work" you can't..." But I might *possibly* have been able
to brush it aside and continue the book if the technology and
engineering and so forth of the wall were beside the point to the main
story.
But I can't convince myself that how the children devellop is
inconsiquential to the resulting society. And the society she was
describing seemed to be the whole point of the book. I cannot believe
in a society of people who started saying "my hand" and "my arm" and
then learned not to because no one else ever did. So I put the book
down.
I think that if you are going to use metaphors as story they have to
hold up as both metaphors *and* story, otherwise they don't feel "real"
(which is what the question was about). It might not work that way for
everyone, but it works that way for me.
> > > In reverse, one of the "real" things for me about LOTR is the terrain.
> > All those details about trees and weather and so forth. Those were real
> > trees, and real weather... so this *must* be a real world.
>
> How does that work for you with SF? Or doesn't it? Or does it, but a
> different way?
It depends on the sf. When I'm reading, say, _Crytonomicon_ it works
exactly the same way... (And doesn't work in exactly the same way.
Stevenson does not have the knack of making his settings feel real to
me. He's doing fine, he's doing fine, and then BOOM! he brings in an
element that is apparently supposed to be a joke, but none of the
linking material appeared to be a joke, and for me at that point he
loses me, because it's not self-consistant, whereas in Terry Pratchett
everything DOES hold together because I can *see* that its all a joke,
and in the end I find _Guards, Guards!_ feels more "real" to me than
_Snow Crash_. Hmm... Pratchet is fantasy again... Okay _Phule's
Company_ feels more real that _Snow Crash_ how's that?)
When we're doing completely foriegn/imaginary enviroments, then the
question becomes "how do I know it's a real tree, and real weather?" and
at that point I think it changes to "does the system described hold
together realisticly based on what I know about systems in general?"
Based on what I know of ecosystems, does this ecosystem seem real or
does it have animals running around eating other animals on a frozen
iceball of a planet with no visible way for energy to enter the system?
Based on what I know of societies, does this society seem real or does
it have children that learn first to use words that the author claims
are almost never spoken by anyone else?
When fudging is required, the big things are actually easier to accept
than the little things, because the big obvious fudges become a part of
the matrix... "given that ftl transportation is a possibility...", and
"given that antropod-oids could evolve a structure that would allow them
to become human sized..."
Telepathic/teleporting dragons are easier to accept than computers in
the far future that use DOS as their operating system, because the
telepathy/teleportation was part of the original matrix, and the DOS was
a detail that was thrown casually into the mix, way too far into the
story for me to reconfigure the matrix to include it.
Michelle Bottorff
Brian M. Scott
Michelle Bottorff) wrote:
><mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
>> It's a while since I read THE DISPOSSESSED, but from what I remember of
>> it, I'd be surprised if she wasn't positing some development of the
>> children in the utopia or dystopia that was a metaphor for something else,
>> rather than a straight description of humans acquiring language. I mean,
>> you don't read the bit about the wall, which the novel starts with, and
>> first think about the workmanship of the stone-making.
[...]
>But I can't convince myself that how the children devellop is
>inconsiquential to the resulting society. And the society she was
>describing seemed to be the whole point of the book. I cannot believe
>in a society of people who started saying "my hand" and "my arm" and
>then learned not to because no one else ever did. So I put the book
>down.
Which part is unbelievable? That they start out saying 'my
hand', or that they learn not to? If the latter's the problem,
do you know that there are languages that have different forms of
the first person possessive pronouns for alienable and
inalienable possession, so that 'my arm' (inalienable) uses a
different form of the pronoun from 'my bicycle' (alienable)?
Kids learn their correct use by example.
[...]
Brian
Irina Rempt
> Which part is unbelievable? That they start out saying 'my
> hand', or that they learn not to? If the latter's the problem,
> do you know that there are languages that have different forms of
> the first person possessive pronouns for alienable and
> inalienable possession, so that 'my arm' (inalienable) uses a
> different form of the pronoun from 'my bicycle' (alienable)?
> Kids learn their correct use by example.
But on Anarres supposedly the adults don't use *any* possessive
pronouns; how would the children learn any use at all by example? It's
not as if a pronoun springs fully-formed from the infant's brain the
first time it's able to refer to a body part with more than one word.
In the language they're immersed in, possessive pronouns don't *exist*.
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/~irina/foundobjects/ Latest: 08-Feb-2003
Brian M. Scott
<ir...@valdyas.org> wrote:
>On Saturday 15 February 2003 05:31 Brian M. Scott wrote:
>> Which part is unbelievable? That they start out saying 'my
>> hand', or that they learn not to? If the latter's the problem,
>> do you know that there are languages that have different forms of
>> the first person possessive pronouns for alienable and
>> inalienable possession, so that 'my arm' (inalienable) uses a
>> different form of the pronoun from 'my bicycle' (alienable)?
>> Kids learn their correct use by example.
>But on Anarres supposedly the adults don't use *any* possessive
>pronouns; how would the children learn any use at all by example? It's
>not as if a pronoun springs fully-formed from the infant's brain the
>first time it's able to refer to a body part with more than one word.
>In the language they're immersed in, possessive pronouns don't *exist*.
I couldn't remember the details -- I read it when it first came
out, and it was not a book that I had any desire to reread --
which is why I wasn't sure which part was bothering Michelle. In
particularly, I couldn't remember whether possessive pronouns
were completely absent in adult speech or just absent from
certain contexts. The former apparently being the case, I
completely understand her objection.
Brian
Suzanne A Blom
Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
news:3e4e49bc...@enews.newsguy.com...
dictionary, which only pulls from written sources, will have some words
labeled as children's.
Brian M. Scott
True, but not obviously relevant. If there are no possessive
pronouns in the adult language, there are unlikely to be any in
children's language.
[...]
Brian
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
(Brian M. Scott) wrote:
I wouldn't quarrel with the fact that they can blend, no. I'm just not
sure if they're at either end of the same spectrum, or at a crossover
point between two different ones.
I'm tending to ask myself, now, what is a historical novel /for?/
But then I'd have to define what a fantasy novel's for...
It doesn't help that I'm knee deep in something that some people are going
to call one, or the other, or both, or SF. I'm find I'm losing my grip on
why a historical novel is a worthwhile form.
> > Are they the same kind of 'real'?
>
> I think that the same sorts of things make them feel real, but
> I've never been able to put my finger on them. (And 'real' isn't
> necessary for some kinds of fantasy: Cabell and Dunsany come to
> mind, and some McKillip.)
Good point. I was going to say that Dunsany etc are a different kind of
'real', but what I actually think they are is a different kind of fantasy.
The Sarantium books, or George Martin's current series, are a lot closer
to, say, Dorothy Dunnett, than they are to Dunsany.
Maybe they overdo the anchor of 'real'? Not sure.
It's mimesis rather than realism that I think we're talking about, in any
case, and current fantasy -- especially EFP -- tends to stick closer to
the mimetic ways of writing than it does to the fabulatory. (Even
the magic tends to the 'engineering' variety of magic.) Maybe the mimetic
is just easier to replicate?
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > THE DISPOSSESSED, [...]
>
> If my area of expertise was stone-working and she described the wall in
> such a way that I knew it couldn't have ever been built, I would have
> trouble seeing the metaphor because I would be too busy thinking, "no,
> that doesn't work" you can't..." But I might *possibly* have been able
> to brush it aside and continue the book if the technology and
> engineering and so forth of the wall were beside the point to the main
> story.
It's possible that neither dry stone walling nor child-development
actually triggers my 'this metaphor doesn't work' reflex, of course.
> But I can't convince myself that how the children devellop is
> inconsiquential to the resulting society. And the society she was
> describing seemed to be the whole point of the book. I cannot believe
> in a society of people who started saying "my hand" and "my arm" and
> then learned not to because no one else ever did. So I put the book
> down.
See, now I can happily see that as a metaphor for human infants born
selfish and possessive, and learning to see everything differently in
terms of "ours".
> I think that if you are going to use metaphors as story they have to
> hold up as both metaphors *and* story, otherwise they don't feel "real"
> (which is what the question was about). It might not work that way for
> everyone, but it works that way for me.
I see how it's working -- or rather not working -- for you. And there is
the point of, if no one ever uses 'my', how do they learn it? (You'd have
to posit original sin, or those languages that sometimes develop between
twins.) It probably didn't bother me because I don't have a firm picture
of how children do develop (and no help from having been one!).
> > > > In reverse, one of the "real" things for me about LOTR is the
> > > > terrain.
> > > All those details about trees and weather and so forth. Those were
> > > real
> > > trees, and real weather... so this *must* be a real world.
> >
> > How does that work for you with SF? Or doesn't it? Or does it, but a
> > different way?
>
> It depends on the sf. When I'm reading, say, _Crytonomicon_ it works
> exactly the same way... (And doesn't work in exactly the same way.
> Stevenson does not have the knack of making his settings feel real to
> me. He's doing fine, he's doing fine, and then BOOM! he brings in an
> element that is apparently supposed to be a joke, but none of the
> linking material appeared to be a joke, and for me at that point he
> loses me, because it's not self-consistant, whereas in Terry Pratchett
> everything DOES hold together because I can *see* that its all a joke,
> and in the end I find _Guards, Guards!_ feels more "real" to me than
> _Snow Crash_. Hmm... Pratchet is fantasy again... Okay _Phule's
> Company_ feels more real that _Snow Crash_ how's that?)
<glurk>
Something about the tone of Stevenson means the jokes mesh okay with me, I
guess. I'm trying to think of someone else who I think does what you're
describing, and rather drawing a blank.
>
> When we're doing completely foriegn/imaginary enviroments, then the
> question becomes "how do I know it's a real tree, and real weather?" and
> at that point I think it changes to "does the system described hold
> together realisticly based on what I know about systems in general?"
I'd agree with that -- although I wouldn't call it 'real', I'd call it
naturalistic.
> Based on what I know of ecosystems, does this ecosystem seem real or
> does it have animals running around eating other animals on a frozen
> iceball of a planet with no visible way for energy to enter the system?
>
> Based on what I know of societies, does this society seem real or does
> it have children that learn first to use words that the author claims
> are almost never spoken by anyone else?
>
When I was reading it, I didn't think children would have any trouble
independently coming up with a word for "my", on the grounds that a
society where everything's held in common probably has difficulties with
it 'reverting', and where more likely than with children?
Actually, I don't see a problem with that even now.
> When fudging is required, the big things are actually easier to accept
> than the little things, because the big obvious fudges become a part of
> the matrix... "given that ftl transportation is a possibility...", and
> "given that antropod-oids could evolve a structure that would allow them
> to become human sized..."
>
> Telepathic/teleporting dragons are easier to accept than computers in
> the far future that use DOS as their operating system, because the
> telepathy/teleportation was part of the original matrix, and the DOS was
> a detail that was thrown casually into the mix, way too far into the
> story for me to reconfigure the matrix to include it.
It's kind of a given that if the "big things" are acceptable, we'll be
people who read fantasy and SF. If those things aren't acceptable, we'd
be the people who look at it and Don't Get It (and therefore don't read
it). Which doesn't explain why the telepathic dragons and FTL are a major
roadblock for some, and completely fine with others.
I guess the original question was less about the hiccups such as the DOS
example, and more about what ways you can make telepathic dragons real in
the first place. The word 'horses' springs to mind... :)
And we're nowhere near defining Dunsany, or A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS...
Mary
Boyd & Michelle Bottorff
I didn't answer these questions when I replied before. I don't know why
I didn't so I'm answering them now.
> > I think that the trick of establishing reality is to carefully drop in
> > appropriate bits of reality, while avoiding inapropriate bits of
> > non-reality. Make sure your unreality is internally consistant, but
> > also make sure it has something in it that your readers will recognize
> > as being 'real'. IMHO, YMMV. Some bits of reality will resonate better
> > with some readers than others, and some errors will pass by some readers
> > unnoticed, and will totally ruin the experience for others -- but that's
> > unavoidable, you can't even get around it by having NO errors, because
> > one person's truth is another's nonsense.
>
> That's interesting. How would you differentiate fantasy from historical
> fiction -- or wouldn't you? Are they the same kind of 'real'?
I basically think of historical fiction as the ultimate in realistic
fantasy.
To me it's all one big sliding scale -- we take reality and we make up
some bits we can't fill in from research, and then we invent some
people, and then we change what happened a little, and a little more,
and ultimately we are describing the history of another world entirely
and/or have rewritten the laws of nature.
> I suspect that the nearer you get to 'realism' with landscape, the more
> you tend to get tempted by realism in the sense of how little fun there
> can sometimes be in the real world. Come to think of it, there aren't a
> lot of laughs in LOTR. If it's epic, it's epic tragedy.
I have always found the LOTR fun. I've been reading it out loud to my
6-year-old, and there are lots and lots of little bits of humor in the
first parts, as the omniscient narrator drops assorted bits of hobbit
lore in, and in the interactions between the characters. As I recall
eventually Frodo and Sam's journey gets pretty stark, but I seem to
remember finding things to smile at the whole way through, and I
*really* don't see how you can call it a tragedy.
Humor, heroism, romance, and poetry are all fun. And the Lord of the
Rings is all of those things in various proportions. I also enjoy
science, exploration, and mysteries.
Child abuse, starvation, rape, illness, torture, and futility I do not
find fun. The LOTR has hardly any of those.
Michelle Bottorff
Brian M. Scott
Michelle Bottorff) wrote:
><mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
>> I suspect that the nearer you get to 'realism' with landscape, the more
>> you tend to get tempted by realism in the sense of how little fun there
>> can sometimes be in the real world. Come to think of it, there aren't a
>> lot of laughs in LOTR. If it's epic, it's epic tragedy.
>I have always found the LOTR fun. I've been reading it out loud to my
>6-year-old, and there are lots and lots of little bits of humor in the
>first parts, as the omniscient narrator drops assorted bits of hobbit
>lore in, and in the interactions between the characters. As I recall
>eventually Frodo and Sam's journey gets pretty stark, but I seem to
>remember finding things to smile at the whole way through, and I
>*really* don't see how you can call it a tragedy.
Ask Frodo, or, better yet, Arwen. If it's not a tragedy, it's
definitely melancholy: too much is gone. For me the very last
chapter sums up the overall tone.
Brian
Brian M. Scott
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>In article <3e4c2fc8....@enews.newsguy.com>, b.s...@csuohio.edu
>(Brian M. Scott) wrote:
>> On Thu, 13 Feb 2003 22:17:17 +0000 (UTC),
>> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
[...]
>> >How would you differentiate fantasy from
>> >historical fiction -- or wouldn't you?
>> I'm not sure that I would. I recognized already as a child that
>> they had the same kind of appeal to me. Certainly they blend
>> into each other very nicely somewhere around _Sword at Sunset_
>> and _Shy Leopardess_.
>I wouldn't quarrel with the fact that they can blend, no. I'm just not
>sure if they're at either end of the same spectrum, or at a crossover
>point between two different ones.
And I just thought of a type that mixes without really blending,
exemplified by Pearce's _Tom's Midnight Garden_. I suppose that
_Puck of Pook's Hill_ goes here, too.
>I'm tending to ask myself, now, what is a historical novel /for?/
>But then I'd have to define what a fantasy novel's for...
>It doesn't help that I'm knee deep in something that some people are going
>to call one, or the other, or both, or SF. I'm find I'm losing my grip on
>why a historical novel is a worthwhile form.
Because I like it, of course! Seriously, I'm not sure that I
find the question meaningful. Can you give an example of a form
that in your opinion is *not* worthwhile?
>> > Are they the same kind of 'real'?
>> I think that the same sorts of things make them feel real, but
>> I've never been able to put my finger on them. (And 'real' isn't
>> necessary for some kinds of fantasy: Cabell and Dunsany come to
>> mind, and some McKillip.)
>Good point. I was going to say that Dunsany etc are a different kind of
>'real', but what I actually think they are is a different kind of fantasy.
Perhaps; certainly Dunsany is closer to fairy tales and the
thousand nights and a night. But you get the same sort of split
in science fiction between Lafferty and Schmitz, never mind
someone writing hard sf. It seems to me that it's at least
arguable that they're at different points on a reality continuum,
with Thomas Burnett Swann and Richard Purtill, for instance,
somewhere between them. Come to think of it, if you're willing
to classify John Erskine's _The Private Life of Helen of Troy_ as
a historical novel, you've got the same split there as well.
>The Sarantium books, or George Martin's current series, are a lot closer
>to, say, Dorothy Dunnett, than they are to Dunsany.
>Maybe they overdo the anchor of 'real'? Not sure.
You mean because you recognize too much of the real world behind
the paint? What about Turtledove's Videssos books? They're
perhaps even closer to actual history, yet they strike me as
having far less feel of this world and its history.
Were you one of the people who weren't particularly taken with
Sarantium and Thrones? If so, how do you feel about Gillian
Bradshaw?
>It's mimesis rather than realism that I think we're talking about, in any
>case, and current fantasy -- especially EFP -- tends to stick closer to
>the mimetic ways of writing than it does to the fabulatory. (Even
>the magic tends to the 'engineering' variety of magic.) Maybe the mimetic
>is just easier to replicate?
Perhaps not a great deal easier to do well, but easier to do
adequately. I'm reasonably sure that I'm more likely to enjoy
munitions-grade fantasy if it's mimetic than if it's fabulatory.
But I think that it's also a more common taste.
On further thought, it seems to me that one of the biggest
problems with what I think of as EFT is that it tries for mimesis
and falls short. To put it a bit differently, the reality is too
thin, with too much resting on current conventions.
Brian
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Bottorff) wrote:
>I basically think of historical fiction as the ultimate in realistic
>fantasy.
>To me it's all one big sliding scale -- we take reality and we make up
>some bits we can't fill in from research, and then we invent some
>people, and then we change what happened a little, and a little more,
>and ultimately we are describing the history of another world entirely
>and/or have rewritten the laws of nature.
ObFactoid: You're describing the theory which says that there is no
realism and there can never be.
And it's got a point. But only a point.
Putting invented people and/or events doesn't mean the book is fantasy
in the strict sense. If we go by that measure, all of Michener would
be fantasy, which he definitely isn't.
vlatko
--
_Neither Fish Nor Fowl_
http://www.webart.hr/nrnm/eng/
http://www.michaelswanwick.com/
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I didn't answer these questions when I replied before. I don't know why
> I didn't so I'm answering them now.
>
> > > I think that the trick of establishing reality is to carefully drop
> > > in
> > > appropriate bits of reality, while avoiding inapropriate bits of
> > > non-reality. Make sure your unreality is internally consistant, but
> > > also make sure it has something in it that your readers will
> > > recognize
> > > as being 'real'. IMHO, YMMV. Some bits of reality will resonate
> > > better
> > > with some readers than others, and some errors will pass by some
> > > readers
> > > unnoticed, and will totally ruin the experience for others -- but
> > > that's
> > > unavoidable, you can't even get around it by having NO errors,
> > > because
> > > one person's truth is another's nonsense.
> >
> > That's interesting. How would you differentiate fantasy from
> > historical
> > fiction -- or wouldn't you? Are they the same kind of 'real'?
>
> I basically think of historical fiction as the ultimate in realistic
> fantasy.
That's interesting -- I tend to see mainstream as the ultimate in
realistic fantasy. :)
> To me it's all one big sliding scale -- we take reality and we make up
> some bits we can't fill in from research, and then we invent some
> people, and then we change what happened a little, and a little more,
> and ultimately we are describing the history of another world entirely
> and/or have rewritten the laws of nature.
Something about that feels wrong, but I can't tell you what it is.
>
>
> > I suspect that the nearer you get to 'realism' with landscape, the
> > more
> > you tend to get tempted by realism in the sense of how little fun
> > there
> > can sometimes be in the real world. Come to think of it, there
> > aren't a
> > lot of laughs in LOTR. If it's epic, it's epic tragedy.
>
> I have always found the LOTR fun. I've been reading it out loud to my
> 6-year-old, and there are lots and lots of little bits of humor in the
> first parts, as the omniscient narrator drops assorted bits of hobbit
> lore in, and in the interactions between the characters. As I recall
> eventually Frodo and Sam's journey gets pretty stark, but I seem to
> remember finding things to smile at the whole way through, and I
> *really* don't see how you can call it a tragedy.
It's about loss. Loss everywhere. The Elves. The Ents. Middle-Earth
losing everything but Men. Individuals -- Frodo, who can't get over his
victory, because the road to it was too traumatic. And in their own ways,
Arwen and Aragorn; Theoden, Saruman, Eowyn; all about corruption or loss.
There's the odd bit of fun with the hobbits, but it's pretty much the same
as the officer-and-batman relationship between Frodo and Sam. At home (in
the Shire) nobody knows the Great War is going on, but the trenches of
Mordor continue to swallow down hundreds of thousands, and in the end it
will feel more like an armistice than a victory.
>
> Humor, heroism, romance, and poetry are all fun. And the Lord of the
> Rings is all of those things in various proportions. I also enjoy
> science, exploration, and mysteries.
>
> Child abuse, starvation, rape, illness, torture, and futility I do not
> find fun. The LOTR has hardly any of those.
There are things in LOTR that will bring all those things into the centre
of the picture, if they win, and they're only just off-stage -- the
destruction of the Shire in Galadriel's mirror; Elladir and Elrohan and
their raped mother. Gollum is tortured in Barad Dur, is starved, and ill,
and ultimately his life is futile (from his own view): Smeagol loses to
'Stinker', and he dies in the moment of his victory, because providence is
on Frodo's side.
That is still _is_ a victory is a tribute both to Tolkien's writing, and
to the frame of mind that can regard Theoden's death as a victory -- the
same mind-set that created Beowulf and "The Wanderer" and "The Seafarer",
in a world where the giants are dead, we only see their ruined (Roman)
buildings, and we ourselves are smaller than men who have gone before.
To me, it's epic tragedy because, no matter what anybody does throughout
the epic, the world that survives will be so much lesser than what has
been shown to us.
Mary
Stuart Houghton
news:b2ooq6$qps$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk:
>
> I'm tending to ask myself, now, what is a historical novel /for?/
>
> But then I'd have to define what a fantasy novel's for...
>
> It doesn't help that I'm knee deep in something that some people are
> going to call one, or the other, or both, or SF. I'm find I'm losing
> my grip on why a historical novel is a worthwhile form.
>
Isn't that like asking why any kind of novel is a worthwhile form?
If 'historical' is a genre (or a mode, or whatever) then it is as valid an
arena for a story as any other.
Whenever I start down this line of inquiry, I always seem to end up orbiting
the question 'Is a totally made-up story, in a made-up setting, worth
anything?'.
I think it is. I'm not *sure* it is, but I *am* sure that it is as valid as
a 'realistic' story set in a mundane location, featuring regular-Joanne
characters.
Genre is just the framework to hang a story from. It gives you a set of
rules that can give your story a form. These rules need not be restrictive,
I hope.
--
Stuart Houghton
Geoff Wedig
> OK, thinking cap time.
> Not all fantasy has the same "depth" of the fantastic -- Peter
> Beagle's Fine and Private Place isn't the same as kind of work as
> Jorel of Joiry -- but good fantasy lets you get lost in it without
> doubting while you're imersed in it.
> What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
> techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
> superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
> doesn't work anymore?
I asked a similar question some time ago here (almost a year ago), more
specifically about the Laura Joh Rowland books. They're not fantasy, but
they share much the same problem, as they're mysteries set in 17th Century
Japan, and extremely well done for 'sense of place', much more so than
virtually any fantasy I've ever read.
You can probably search for the thread, but the gist seemed to be how she
molded details such that it was clear that what you saw was part of a
bigger, deeper picture. Often in fantasy, I feel that the details presented
don't really attach to anything else; they're just cardboard and paste movie
sets.
How she did this is still somewhat mysterious to me, though. One of the
things she did, which I mentioned in the other thread, was placing actors
within the scenes, such that you didn't just see the street, but the people
bustling through it. You didn't just see the sand pit where criminals
waited for their punishment, but also the prisoner kneeling there. The
touches of humanity made the place more real by establishing how the place
worked, not just in the context of the story, but in the context of the
world.
That's part of it, but not one I completely grok yet. There's also more
there to be explored. I need to find more of her books, so I can form some
more hypotheses, but I recommend them to anyone exploring the art of
creating a fully realized world.
Geoff
Boudewijn Rempt
>
> I asked a similar question some time ago here (almost a year ago), more
> specifically about the Laura Joh Rowland books. They're not fantasy, but
> they share much the same problem, as they're mysteries set in 17th Century
> Japan, and extremely well done for 'sense of place', much more so than
> virtually any fantasy I've ever read.
>
I think that this is caused by authors giving heed to exhorations to
never do more work on world-building than is absolutely needed for
the story. If you've got a good, rich, full and juicy exotic world
to suck on, then the feeling of a bigger, deeper picture will come
(almost -- depends on writerly ability, too, of course) automatically.
van Gulik gives me the same impression you talk about above; of a complete,
complex world, and of fantasy, too (with black fox girls running about and
so on) and then, when you start studying Chinese, you suddenly discover
that there are few details van Gulik had to invent for his stories. From
the gibbons in Four Fingers to the poetress in Poets in Murder, all have
been drawn from this world he knew better than any of his readers.
And then you cannot help but touched by Judge Dee's youngest son who's
allowed to stay for dinner, because he doesn't want to be separated from
his mother's head-dress, in The Phantom of the Temple.
I read little generic fantasy, it seems -- since the first half of December
the only book I read that I can honestly call fantasy is 'The Blood of a
Dragon', and I didn't even finish that, so I cannot compare fantasy to
judge Dee, but some of the books I read less recently could best be
described as (stereotype) Californians maudlinly marauding in a movie
setting.
--
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
Geoff Wedig
> Geoff Wedig wrote:
>>
>> I asked a similar question some time ago here (almost a year ago), more
>> specifically about the Laura Joh Rowland books. They're not fantasy, but
>> they share much the same problem, as they're mysteries set in 17th Century
>> Japan, and extremely well done for 'sense of place', much more so than
>> virtually any fantasy I've ever read.
>>
> I think that this is caused by authors giving heed to exhorations to
> never do more work on world-building than is absolutely needed for
> the story. If you've got a good, rich, full and juicy exotic world
> to suck on, then the feeling of a bigger, deeper picture will come
> (almost -- depends on writerly ability, too, of course) automatically.
Well, like most writerly things, it's a continuum. Put in everything you've
created and you get a tract on a made up society rather than a novel, put in
too little and you get cardboard. It's knowing how much you need and what
to *exclude* as much as anything.
> van Gulik gives me the same impression you talk about above; of a complete,
> complex world, and of fantasy, too (with black fox girls running about and
> so on) and then, when you start studying Chinese, you suddenly discover
> that there are few details van Gulik had to invent for his stories. From
> the gibbons in Four Fingers to the poetress in Poets in Murder, all have
> been drawn from this world he knew better than any of his readers.
> And then you cannot help but touched by Judge Dee's youngest son who's
> allowed to stay for dinner, because he doesn't want to be separated from
> his mother's head-dress, in The Phantom of the Temple.
Certainly dealing with a real culture helps, in that you don't have to make
up the details, but making it feel real is *hard*, even then. I've read
'historical' that should have been spelled 'hysterical' for all that they
followed the true setting. But that's a somewhat different issue (getting
the setting right vs making the setting you get feel complete) and I have
enough trouble with the first one.
> I read little generic fantasy, it seems -- since the first half of December
> the only book I read that I can honestly call fantasy is 'The Blood of a
> Dragon', and I didn't even finish that, so I cannot compare fantasy to
> judge Dee, but some of the books I read less recently could best be
> described as (stereotype) Californians maudlinly marauding in a movie
> setting.
Yes, and a movie setting made up from stuff the Art Director found lying
about the back lot, not even a *new* movie set.
Geoff, who suffers from world-builders disease, but still can't make the
setting feel real
David Friedman
Geoff Wedig <we...@darwin.epbi.cwru.edu> wrote:
> Certainly dealing with a real culture helps, in that you don't have to make
> up the details, but making it feel real is *hard*, even then. I've read
> 'historical' that should have been spelled 'hysterical' for all that they
> followed the true setting. But that's a somewhat different issue (getting
> the setting right vs making the setting you get feel complete) and I have
> enough trouble with the first one.
I think part of making it feel real is reading stuff written from within
that culture--the sagas for Iceland, al-Tannukhi for the Abbasid
caliphate, and the like. They give you a feel that history books
generally don't.
...
> Geoff, who suffers from world-builders disease, but still can't make the
> setting feel real
You might find that it helps to start with a real society, get a feel
for that, and then modify to fit your environment. My protagonist's
society is modelled on saga period Iceland--but located in valleys on
the west side of a high mountain range, and separated from the "parent"
culture east of it by a high pass, not water. That gives me a bunch of
consistent, interrelated features as a first approximation.
Dan Goodman
news:b3667q$1tp$1...@eeyore.INS.cwru.edu:
> Boudewijn Rempt <bo...@valdyas.org> wrote:
>
>> I think that this is caused by authors giving heed to exhorations to
>> never do more work on world-building than is absolutely needed for
>> the story. If you've got a good, rich, full and juicy exotic world
>> to suck on, then the feeling of a bigger, deeper picture will come
>> (almost -- depends on writerly ability, too, of course)
>> automatically.
>
> Well, like most writerly things, it's a continuum. Put in everything
> you've created and you get a tract on a made up society rather than a
> novel, put in too little and you get cardboard. It's knowing how much
> you need and what to *exclude* as much as anything.
>
I think there's at least three issues -- not wholly independent, but not
completely dependent:
1) How much detail you have _including, but very much not limited to,
what's in the story_.
Note that this may not be conscious -- much less worked out and set down
before you start writing. Ursula K. Le Guin knows a good deal more about
any of her worlds than she's consciously thought out.
2) How much detail there is in the story itself.
3) The readers' perception that the story is set in a fully-realized world.
Lucinda Welenc
>
> Geoff Wedig wrote:
>
> >
> > I asked a similar question some time ago here (almost a year ago), more
> > specifically about the Laura Joh Rowland books. They're not fantasy, but
> > they share much the same problem, as they're mysteries set in 17th Century
> > Japan, and extremely well done for 'sense of place', much more so than
> > virtually any fantasy I've ever read.
> >
>
> I think that this is caused by authors giving heed to exhorations to
> never do more work on world-building than is absolutely needed for
> the story. If you've got a good, rich, full and juicy exotic world
> to suck on, then the feeling of a bigger, deeper picture will come
> (almost -- depends on writerly ability, too, of course) automatically.
then the worldbuilding may, in and of itself, generate more stories.
What happened to that world after the time of the first story? What
happened *before*, to make the land what it is?
That's what I want to do with mine, an inter-related series but not
necessarily sequential -- the kind of thing that MZB did with Darkover.
--
Alanna
**********
Saying of the day:
We have ears, Earther -- FOUR of them!
Dan Goodman
news:3E57D387...@cablespeed.com:
> Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
>>
>>
>> I think that this is caused by authors giving heed to exhorations to
>> never do more work on world-building than is absolutely needed for
>> the story. If you've got a good, rich, full and juicy exotic world
>> to suck on, then the feeling of a bigger, deeper picture will come
>> (almost -- depends on writerly ability, too, of course)
>> automatically.
>
> If you take the time to build a good, rich, full and juicy exotic
> world, then the worldbuilding may, in and of itself, generate more
> stories. What happened to that world after the time of the first
> story? What happened *before*, to make the land what it is?
>
> That's what I want to do with mine, an inter-related series but not
> necessarily sequential -- the kind of thing that MZB did with
> Darkover.
>
Marion Zimmer Bradley did _not_ build a good, etc. world for the Darkover
stories. She wrote one story set on Darkover, did another, a few more....
And eventually decided she needed to make the background consistent. Which,
I'm told, required banishing at least one novel (_Two to Conquer_).
Michael R N Dolbear
Boudewijn Rempt <bo...@valdyas.org> wrote
[...]
>
> I think that this is caused by authors giving heed to exhortations to
> never do more work on world-building than is absolutely needed for
> the story.
I thought the standard advice was not to put more * into your book *
than is needed for your story. Like the Historical Novelist who insists
on getting all the research they did into print somehow.
If you've got a good, rich, full and juicy exotic world
> to suck on, then the feeling of a bigger, deeper picture will come
> (almost -- depends on writerly ability, too, of course)
automatically.
>
> van Gulik gives me the same impression you talk about above; of a
complete,
> complex world, and of fantasy, too (with black fox girls running
about and
[...]
--
Mike D
Boudewijn Rempt
>
> Certainly dealing with a real culture helps, in that you don't have to
> make
> up the details, but making it feel real is *hard*, even then. I've read
> 'historical' that should have been spelled 'hysterical' for all that they
> followed the true setting. But that's a somewhat different issue (getting
> the setting right vs making the setting you get feel complete) and I have
> enough trouble with the first one.
>
I'm reading one of those -- The Coffee Trader, by David Liss. A decent
enough book, even if not up the standards writers are held up to in
this newsgroup (there's even a literal 'little did she know'), but my
main impression is that the author interbreeded his homework with an
off-the-shelf plot. It doesn't help that he, for all his research,
refer to the 'Damplatz' in Amsterdam.
But it's a nice story, and quite the page-turner, for small quantities
of pages.
> Geoff, who suffers from world-builders disease, but still can't make the
> setting feel real
Well, I'm a sufferer, too -- how about a spot of reciprocal close-reading &
critiqueing?
Boudewijn Rempt
>
> Boudewijn Rempt <bo...@valdyas.org> wrote
> [...]
>>
>> I think that this is caused by authors giving heed to exhortations to
>> never do more work on world-building than is absolutely needed for
>> the story.
>
> I thought the standard advice was not to put more * into your book *
> than is needed for your story. Like the Historical Novelist who insists
> on getting all the research they did into print somehow.
>
I think I've had both variants dished out, with the caveat that if
you absolutely cannot limit your cat-vaccing, then you shouldn't let
it show. It's a fine boundary to tightrope on, but I've never read a
fantasy book that dropped down on the side of 'too much worldbuilding'.
SF that's basically born-again-Moore, yes, and certainly in historical
fiction, but a thorougly-done fantasy world is quite elusive.
Brian D. Fernald
I have tossed a book aside because of 'too much worldbuilding' and don't
suffer the hard-explanation wonky sf much either.
--
Brian F.
FSOBN.
Dan Goodman
$e4fe...@dreader4.news.xs4all.nl:
> Michael R N Dolbear wrote:
>
>>
>> Boudewijn Rempt <bo...@valdyas.org> wrote
>> [...]
>>>
>>> I think that this is caused by authors giving heed to exhortations to
>>> never do more work on world-building than is absolutely needed for
>>> the story.
>>
>> I thought the standard advice was not to put more * into your book *
>> than is needed for your story. Like the Historical Novelist who insists
>> on getting all the research they did into print somehow.
>>
>
> I think I've had both variants dished out, with the caveat that if
> you absolutely cannot limit your cat-vaccing, then you shouldn't let
> it show. It's a fine boundary to tightrope on, but I've never read a
> fantasy book that dropped down on the side of 'too much worldbuilding'.
Several books originally published as by Eric Iverson have been reissued as
by Harry Turtledove, with all the cut material added back in. One (I can't
recall which) definitely had more detail than I considered necessary.
For one thing, I already knew how to use a chamberpot; and did not need
details directions.
Steven H Silver
> Several books originally published as by Eric Iverson have been reissued as
> by Harry Turtledove, with all the cut material added back in. One (I can't
> recall which) definitely had more detail than I considered necessary.
Dan-
Turtledove only published two books under the Eric Iverson name
(Wereblood and Werenight). They were combined in a reissue in 1994
under the title Wereblood and nothing new was added from the original
publication (although a few names were changed). The combined
Wereblood was reissued in the omnibus Wisdom of the Fox in 1999, but
again, nothing new was added.
Steven Silver
Dan Goodman
news:bd25830b.0302...@posting.google.com:
I've _got_ to stop crosstiming in my sleep!
I _think_ it was in _Prince of the North_ -- which was later, and published
as by Turtledove. But in any case, it wasn't added material,it seems.
Stuart Houghton
> Turtledove only published two books under the Eric Iverson name
> (Wereblood and Werenight). They were combined in a reissue in 1994
> under the title Wereblood and nothing new was added from the original
> publication (although a few names were changed). The combined
> Wereblood was reissued in the omnibus Wisdom of the Fox in 1999, but
> again, nothing new was added.
>
Iverson == Turtledove? Gosh, who knew?
_Wereblood_ used to be one of the books that you were guaranteed to find in
Woolworth's bargain-bin. The other was Dan Simmons _Carrion Comfort_.
--
Stuart Houghton
Geoff Wedig
> In article <b3667q$1tp$1...@eeyore.INS.cwru.edu>,
> Geoff Wedig <we...@darwin.epbi.cwru.edu> wrote:
>> Certainly dealing with a real culture helps, in that you don't have to make
>> up the details, but making it feel real is *hard*, even then. I've read
>> 'historical' that should have been spelled 'hysterical' for all that they
>> followed the true setting. But that's a somewhat different issue (getting
>> the setting right vs making the setting you get feel complete) and I have
>> enough trouble with the first one.
> I think part of making it feel real is reading stuff written from within
> that culture--the sagas for Iceland, al-Tannukhi for the Abbasid
> caliphate, and the like. They give you a feel that history books
> generally don't.
Not sure I entirely buy that, though. Certainly true for real historic
societies that it can help bring life, but I don't think it's required, or
even a major component, in my experience, in fiction.
>> Geoff, who suffers from world-builders disease, but still can't make the
>> setting feel real
> You might find that it helps to start with a real society, get a feel
> for that, and then modify to fit your environment. My protagonist's
> society is modelled on saga period Iceland--but located in valleys on
> the west side of a high mountain range, and separated from the "parent"
> culture east of it by a high pass, not water. That gives me a bunch of
> consistent, interrelated features as a first approximation.
Generally, I do start with a few basic premises like that "Renaissance
France with a bit of German, but with more of a rigid caste system" or
whatever. The same sort of what-if game I do with other details: Start with
what you know and add something strange, then work out the ramifications.
Geoff
Geoff Wedig
> Geoff Wedig wrote:
>> Geoff, who suffers from world-builders disease, but still can't make the
>> setting feel real
> Well, I'm a sufferer, too -- how about a spot of reciprocal close-reading &
> critiqueing?
Right now, I've got nothing for critiquing. I have a rather longish
extended break from writing, thanks to a series of events from August until
the end of last year. January and February has been spent digging out from
under it. I hope to be writing again soon.
But I'll keep the offer in mind. ;)
Geoff
Van Garland
> On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 19:12:08 -0500, "Brian D. Fernald"
> <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>
> >Define real.
> >
> >Most modern fantasy seems to attempt to put itself forwards as if it
> >were a complete simulation of a real world, is this a real world to you?
> >
> >Others might go for the reality of the individual experience? If it is
> >real to the character, regardless of whether it is real to all the
> >characters, is this a real world to you?
>
>
> What makes it work for the reader. We're talking experience of the
> reader. You are a reader -- what makes fantasy real for *you*. If you
> never get that involved with a book, then fantasy doesn't work for you
> and this isn;t a question for you.
>
> Steve
>
> The Tomorrow Log: order now at fine stores everywhere
> Scout's Progress, a Prism Award Winner, from Ace
> Elsewhere and Otherwhen -- from http://www.embiid.net
A good example of what makes fiction, or fantasy in particular, feel
"real" to me would be being able to relate the conflicts to things
around me. Aragorn fended off advances from Eowyn (spelling) while his
heart belonged to Arwyn (spelling again). I've read the books, or
listened to them on audio unabridged, almost 6 times all the way
through now. My spelling is surely off.
Tolkien used real characters to tell a fantastic story. That is what
must be done with a story set in a world which people cannot relate
to. Everyone can find certain parts of the world they will latch on
to... but if the characters are flat and unchanging the world loses
it's interesting qualities also.
Someone could create the most unfathomably creative world ever and
have horribly unrealistic emotions in their protagonist and antagonist
and then what do you have? A history book about a world which doesn't
exist.
Just my two cents. Spend a good deal of time making an original
setting. But spend one hundred fold more on creating characters which
people can attach themselves to.
Also, kill a main character every once in a while. It really boosts
realism.
Catja Pafort
> Not all fantasy has the same "depth" of the fantastic -- Peter
> Beagle's Fine and Private Place isn't the same as kind of work as
> Jorel of Joiry -- but good fantasy lets you get lost in it without
> doubting while you're imersed in it.
>
> What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
> techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
> superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
> doesn't work anymore?
The question is worded in a manner that makes it harder to answer.
I read and write mostly fantasy. I'm perfectly at home with the
supernatural in any way, shape or form. (Believing is not the same as
liking). I'm even happy with gods that take a personal interest in
what's going on in the world. What I'm not happy with, and what might
very soon lead to a R. Hobb's Assassin pt III/wall interface are
prophecies that all come true and are revealed at just the right moment
in the plot. It's the combination that makes things unbearable.
Oracles like Delphi, which are open to misinterpretation won't
necessarily draw me out of suspension of disbelief - but plot should
stem out of characters; even when those characters are powerful enough
to control others. A god who stands in for the author in 'I can make
anyone do anything and that needs to happen right now' feels false.
(I must say that I don't like Assassin, Part Three anyway. Too much
sameness - Fitz gets captured, beaten up, somehow escapes, mills around
for a bit, finds help, gets betrayed, captured... several times. The
longer the quest goes on, the more pointless it seems. Or rather, it's
heading for a deus ex machina ending. Most of the middle of the trilogy
was given over to setting up The Fall; and the first third of the
_third_ book shows how badly the kingdom has gone downhill. I'm two
thirds through and they're *still* hunting The One Guy who could save
them all - which, as he's got very strong enemies and hasn't been able
to come back and help them so far, sounds very unlikely. Pacingwise, The
Fall should have been the end of book one; The Quest book two, and
Overcoming The Enemies Book three - as it is, there just isn't the time
to solve the domestic problems *and* the outside problems before we're
running out of book; so whatever is going to put the world to rights
(and The Prophet has said that it must be saved, so it can't be a story
of 'poor folks hold heads down and make the best of a nasty situation -
it's not that kind of book) will have to be very out of the ordinary.
The situation reminds me a bit of the end of World War Two, when the
Nazis told the general population about this wonderful weapon that would
make everything right. The whole empire was falling to pieces, and it
took a very strong belief in authority to think that one single weapon
would overcome what the combined power of The Reich had not. But as I
said, it's not that kind of book - the antagonists must be overcome
because they are a) Evil and b) The World Must Be Saved; so it will be.
And I have a very strong inkling that I won't like the solution at all.
Catja
Mary Messall
> (I must say that I don't like Assassin, Part Three anyway. Too much
> sameness - Fitz gets captured, beaten up, somehow escapes, mills around
> for a bit, finds help, gets betrayed, captured... several times. The
> longer the quest goes on, the more pointless it seems. Or rather, it's
> heading for a deus ex machina ending.
That's interesting. The first Robin Hobb book I read was actually book
one of the Tawny Man (I started there because it said "book one"...)
So, I knew all the while I was reading the first three how they would
end. With that perspective, it seemed to me that the groundwork was
being laid for that ending all along.
Well, she tells you that their last hope is for, um, The One Guy Who
Could Save Them All to succeed at what he is trying to do, so I'll bet
the ending you see coming is that. Carefully dodging spoilers here...
The fact that you see the ending coming is evidence that it doesn't
come out of nowhere. But if it goes off just as you expect, it will
still be a sort of deus ex machina, because it will rely on rescue by
greater powers, rather than coming from the characters' own abilities
and decisions. Yes?
Well, it won't go off exactly as planned, of course. And as far as I'm
concerned, the Ultimate Weapon has been on stage since act one, so it's
all right. <g> Plus, the next five books are *about* the "weapon," sort
of, and the consequences of re-introducing it into the world. So, from
the other end of those books, looking back at the first three, the
ending has much more of a ring of inevitability. There is something
these characters don't know about their world. If you *do* know it,
you're just waiting the whole time for them to discover it... So when
they do, that feels like a satisfying resolution and not a convenient
coincidence.
I'm trying to figure out whether it would be better for the author to
tell us straight out what's going on, perhaps in a prologue, and then
let us follow the characters as they try to figure it out, rather like
those murder mysteries where the reader knows who dunnit all along. Is
the confusion a valuable sort of suspence, or just frustrating?
Especially if the reader builds up a theory and then the author turns
out to intend something else, Big Secrets like this can be very
irritating... The something else may well seem implausible under those
circumstances. And I found these books complusively readable in spite
of knowing how everything was going to work out... What I'm wonder is
whether it was in fact *because* of knowing how everything was going to
work out. I wasn't impatient with the various captures, beatings-up,
betrayals, and re-captures, possibly because I knew they didn't have
anything to do with the war as such, and followed them like you'd
follow episodes in a television show, mostly contained within
themselves. I got my suspence from wondering what would happen to
Regal, and counted the Red Ship Raiders as background.
All of this is the more interesting to me because in the thing I'm
working on, I decided to let prophecy be the one element of actual
magic in the world. I want to use it to tell people the ending, sort
of. In fact, it turns out to take too long for me to get to the point
where I can give my character a vision (or the audio equivalent of a
vision... An audition?) so I am toying with the idea of putting "But
this is not a story about me. This is a story about a man I met in the
bar, who eventually became king of a small island, through no fault of
his own" into the first paragraph (where you can get away with
anything, right?)
I figure that if the reader accepts as a part of the premise of the
book that this guy is going to become king, then it will necessarily
seem a lot more believable when he does. (I am going to great lengths
to make him *not* the standard kingly type, you see, and the
consequence of this is that even I have trouble believing he's going to
end up on the throne. Especially since he *really* doesn't want to.)
The prophesies are a way for me to introduce little flashes of
precognitive violence during all of the character building, so's not to
let it slow too much and to raise suspense about how we get from here
to there. (And, of course, I feel obliged to include something
supernatural in it somewhere, to qualify it as fantasy.) Oh, and it
gives me the opportunity to have my character angst some about Gods and
logic and faith and fate, my favorite topics for angsting.
With the understanding that the predicted ending shouldn't really count
as a happy ending, and given your opinions on Robin Hobb and
prophesies... What do you think of this technique?
-Mary
Geoff Wedig
> Catja Pafort wrote:
>> (I must say that I don't like Assassin, Part Three anyway. Too much
>> sameness - Fitz gets captured, beaten up, somehow escapes, mills around
>> for a bit, finds help, gets betrayed, captured... several times. The
>> longer the quest goes on, the more pointless it seems. Or rather, it's
>> heading for a deus ex machina ending.
> That's interesting. The first Robin Hobb book I read was actually book
> one of the Tawny Man (I started there because it said "book one"...)
> So, I knew all the while I was reading the first three how they would
> end. With that perspective, it seemed to me that the groundwork was
> being laid for that ending all along.
Other than changing the final situation halfway through, yeah (By this I
mean that several things about the world of Story Now is not true at the end
of the trilogy, and *can't* be) Of course, I've yet to find anyone else who
remembered the section that contradicts, so maybe it was so subtle that even
the author forgot.
Geoff
David Bilek
Or maybe you misremembered?
What is the section that contradicts the ending?
-David
Mary K. Kuhner
Geoff Wedig <we...@darwin.epbi.cwru.edu> wrote:
[Assassin's Quest]
>Other than changing the final situation halfway through, yeah (By this I
>mean that several things about the world of Story Now is not true at the end
>of the trilogy, and *can't* be) Of course, I've yet to find anyone else who
>remembered the section that contradicts, so maybe it was so subtle that even
>the author forgot.
I don't know if we are thinking of the same things, but I haven't
forgiven Hobb for setting up "The Raiders never let themselves be
captured, but we didn't understand why until much later" and then
not really following through with it. And yes, the ending seemed
flatly inconsistent, emotionally and factually, with the beginning.
I would have thrown the book, but my husband still wanted to read
it. I felt about as cheated by that ending as I ever have by any
book. I've never managed to read any of the later ones. And no,
it's not that it was unhappy; an unhappy ending was in the cards from
page 1. But it was just...*wrong* on so many levels. And it has
the Character Who Knows But Won't Tell, a trope I really, really hate.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Mary K. Kuhner
> What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
> techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
> superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
> doesn't work anymore?
For me, a big one is having some texture and detail to day-to-day
life: weather, food, the practicalities of travel or of living
in the described setting.
Another is having characters whose thoughts are consistent with
their expertese and experience. For example, if someone is
supposed to be very skilled in the wilderness, that should show
in his thoughts and words. If he refers vaguely to "forest"
and doesn't think about forest-related situations (will bears eat
my supplies?) in any detail, he won't be believable, and the
world won't either.
This is especially hard when the character's expertese is in something
fictional like a specific school of magic. You don't want to snow
the reader with details, but you do want to establish that the
character is master of a real body of knowledge. I guess the key
is to pick a few well-chosen details and let them stand in for
the others.
McKillip does this well in _The Riddlemaster of Hed_, at least for
me; enough of Morgon's skill is shown that I can believe he really
studied this topic at the university. And the glimpses of university
life are believable.
(On consideration, one key detail here is the time where Morgon
recounts a riddle, comparing it to his current situation, but
then can't remember the `stricture' or punchline.)
Having some sense that the world exists in the past, and in places
away from the characters, is important. In _Watership Down_ the
rabbits tell various stories, most of which don't really have much
to do with the specific plot. In _Tailchaser's Song_, which tries
to imitate _Watership Down_, the cats apparently tell only one
story and it's critical to the plot resolution. This makes me think
that the world was mocked up purely for this one book.
A pet peeve of mine in SF is past history seen from a 20th (21st)
century POV even though the story is set in the 24th century.
I'm currently reading Kingsbury's _Psychohistorical Crisis_ and
he does an unusually good job of avoiding this--when he quotes
real Earth history it's more likely to be Julius Caesar than 20th
century sources.
A lot of weaker fantasy exists in a vacuum. The only past the
characters think about is the past faked up to support the
present plot or their own individual characterizations. They
don't compare the current situation to history. Nowadays when we
contemplate an Iraq war the discussion is full of comparisons to
Viet Nam, comparisons to WWII, comparisons to Desert Storm,
even comparisons to the Crusades. If a fantasy war is seen in
complete isolation from history it won't sound very real to me.
(A place could have no history because it's too magical, but then
you have to support that theme and not have the inhabitants be
otherwise ordinary everyday humans.)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Lucinda Welenc
>
> steve asked:
>
> > What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
> > techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
> > superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
> > doesn't work anymore?
> Having some sense that the world exists in the past, and in places
> away from the characters, is important. In _Watership Down_ the
> rabbits tell various stories, most of which don't really have much
> to do with the specific plot. In _Tailchaser's Song_, which tries
> to imitate _Watership Down_, the cats apparently tell only one
> story and it's critical to the plot resolution. This makes me think
> that the world was mocked up purely for this one book.
Perhaps some authors use up their time or imagination just in developing
the story, and feel that it's silly to 'waste' any more of it making up
pages of backstory that will be condensed down to a 'throwaway' line.
Or history doesn't interest them, the way economics doesn't interest me.
> A lot of weaker fantasy exists in a vacuum. The only past the
> characters think about is the past faked up to support the
> present plot or their own individual characterizations. They
> don't compare the current situation to history. Nowadays when we
But would, say, a medieval peasant _have_ much of a sense of history?
Other than "my forefathers have always been here" and "we've always
hated the dirty stinking <traditional enemy>"?
> contemplate an Iraq war the discussion is full of comparisons to
> Viet Nam, comparisons to WWII, comparisons to Desert Storm,
> even comparisons to the Crusades. If a fantasy war is seen in
> complete isolation from history it won't sound very real to me.
--------
"And one more thing," the God added. "He who takes Ormstung makes
Ulfgeirr's choice."
Styrgeirr made a convulsive movement toward Griffin and then froze.
Ulfgeirr's choice. Was that the plan of this foreign Crone? Steal
everything that he loved, so that he would blindly thrust his head into
the waiting noose? If it was, it had worked.
--------
No more mention of Ulfgeirr until near the end of the story, when
Griffin is dead and an hysterical Nadra demands of Styrgeirr:
---------
"He knew he was going to his death? And you knew too?"
Styrgeirr nodded soberly.
"Dearest Lady Mother, _why didn't you tell me?"_
Shock battered its way across his face. "But -- but you heard Sumrakh
tell him that taking Ormstung was to make Ulfgeirr's choice. And...oh,
Gods. Dear and blessed Gods! That's one of our tales, not yours. You
didn't know what it meant."
"I would if you'll tell me!" she screamed.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, his own tears falling
on top of her head. "Ulfgeirr was a hero in the beginning of the
world. The Gods offered him a choice: a long, happy, uneventful life
and obscurity at the end of it -- or an early death in battle, and
glory that would live for a thousand years. He chose the thousand
years."
_That's what made his face look so bleak. That's why he never said
another word to us about our betrayal. Oh, Goddess, please, did you
have to?_
-------
Enough sense of history? Or is it just a 'throwaway' mention?
--
Alanna
**********
Saying of the day:
"A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three
times before lying down." -- Robert Benchley
David Friedman
mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
> steve asked:
>
> > What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
> > techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
> > superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
> > doesn't work anymore?
>
> For me, a big one is having some texture and detail to day-to-day
> life: weather, food, the practicalities of travel or of living
> in the described setting.
>
> Another is having characters whose thoughts are consistent with
> their expertese and experience. For example, if someone is
> supposed to be very skilled in the wilderness, that should show
> in his thoughts and words. If he refers vaguely to "forest"
> and doesn't think about forest-related situations (will bears eat
> my supplies?) in any detail, he won't be believable, and the
> world won't either.
A related point, and one that is a little tricky, is having
conversations reveal the fact that the characters have a shared body of
knowledge. The extreme (real world) case is a conversation between
husband and wife, which might be in part incomprehensible to an outsider
because it takes for granted implied literary references, ideas they
have discussed in the past, shared beliefs, and the like.
In my novel, the protagonist's "command group" is, in essence,
family--his oldest son, his oldest daughter, the daughter's mother. Even
people who aren't literally family are likely to be close friends. I try
to signal that by what doesn't have to be said as well as by what does.
Obviously the risk is that the reader, who doesn't have that shared body
of knowledge, won't follow it, which is what makes it tricky.
Mary Messall
> In article <b3o7fa$7d5$1...@eeyore.INS.cwru.edu>,
> Geoff Wedig <we...@darwin.epbi.cwru.edu> wrote:
> [Assassin's Quest]
> >Other than changing the final situation halfway through, yeah (By this I
> >mean that several things about the world of Story Now is not true at the end
> >of the trilogy, and *can't* be) Of course, I've yet to find anyone else who
> >remembered the section that contradicts, so maybe it was so subtle that even
> >the author forgot.
I certainly don't, and I read them all within about two months, and
knew the end at the beginning... What was it?
> I don't know if we are thinking of the same things, but I haven't
> forgiven Hobb for setting up "The Raiders never let themselves be
> captured, but we didn't understand why until much later" and then
> not really following through with it. And yes, the ending seemed
> flatly inconsistent, emotionally and factually, with the beginning.
[Spoiler Space]
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
You don't think that it's because the Raiders believe the Six Duchies
folk know how to Forge too? After all, they apparently learned it from
papers they got from the Six Duchies, and part of their grievance was
that it had been done to them in the past. I think that revelation
counts as follow-through.
And again, my perception of the ending is colored by the fact that I
already knew the ending when I read the beginning ("Ah, so that's who
Verity was. I see.") so... What felt emotionally and factually
inconsistent?
-Mary
David Friedman
Lucinda Welenc <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
> Perhaps some authors use up their time or imagination just in developing
> the story, and feel that it's silly to 'waste' any more of it making up
> pages of backstory that will be condensed down to a 'throwaway' line.
Perhaps they should pick a setting, such as here and now, where they
(and the reader) already knows the background.
> Or history doesn't interest them, the way economics doesn't interest me.
Economics doesn't interest you? Can I recommend a book? The first
chapter includes the economics of why armies run away and the uniforms
of the British army in the American revolution, along with a reference
to Njalsaga.
More seriously, I don't think it has to be history or economics in any
scholarly sense. I am interested in history--but my novel is set in an
invented world. But whether or not the author is interested in history
or economics, he is telling a story, which requires a persuasive world
to tell it in. And the most immediate elements of economics--how do
people make their living and get the stuff they want, and why--and
history are familiar to the author from his experience of his world. He
just has to work through the equivalent for the world of his story.
> > A lot of weaker fantasy exists in a vacuum. The only past the
> > characters think about is the past faked up to support the
> > present plot or their own individual characterizations. They
> > don't compare the current situation to history. Nowadays when we
> But would, say, a medieval peasant _have_ much of a sense of history?
> Other than "my forefathers have always been here" and "we've always
> hated the dirty stinking <traditional enemy>"?
A lot more than that. Kinship relations within his village, whether
people say the weather and the harvest were better in the good old days
(they do), which family is rich that used to be poor and which of the
struggling types have only the remnants of their grandfather's holdings.
Whether the previous king did a better job of protecting them, or
collected less labor tax, or .. . Which friends died in the famine five
years back. Most of it isn't the history that shows up in a modern
history book, but it is his history.
It gives a sense of history--and of people from different cultures, and
of the natural assumption that everyone knows what you and those around
you know. But to my ear it jars because it is resetting a familiar bit
of Greek myth/history in a Norse setting. The nearest Norse equivalent
that occurs to me is:
Cattle die, kindred die, Every man is mortal:
But the good name never dies Of one who has done well
But that doesn't serve your purpose.
All of which raises a somewhat different problem--the use of references
to real historic cultures in stories set in fictional cultures. The
advantage of using Norse names is that you pull in a whole cluster of
implied detail in your reader's mind--how much depending on the reader.
The disadvantage is that ... .
In my case, I do it for Norse, which I know a good deal about. For the
other cultures I use names that sound vaguely Greek or Italian or
whatever but don't try to imply or maintain a close connection to the
real world culture.
Mary K. Kuhner
>> A lot of weaker fantasy exists in a vacuum. The only past the
>> characters think about is the past faked up to support the
>> present plot or their own individual characterizations. They
>> don't compare the current situation to history. Nowadays when we
>But would, say, a medieval peasant _have_ much of a sense of history?
>Other than "my forefathers have always been here" and "we've always
>hated the dirty stinking <traditional enemy>"?
I think they would, yes. I have just been rereading Tuchman's
book on the 14th century, _A Distant Mirror_, and it seems as though
recent and even somewhat less recent history was very much on
everyone's mind. We don't have written records from the peasantry,
of course, but the people who did write were constantly comparing
the current situation to the Crusades, or to the previous war with
England, or to stories from the Bible, or to the Roman Empire.
And there's local history. Everyone gets to hear about the Duke
their grandad lived under, and can compare him with the current
Duke.
They have stories--Robin Hood was really popular among the
*French*, oddly enough, during this period. They have Bible
plays and the like; you could compare your annoying neighbor to
Cain. It doesn't have to be real history.
I don't believe in the timeless peasant for whom everything's just
as it's always been. I don't think he really exists. People may
have no sense of the big story, but they have their own little
stories. That's the pond where Murdoch's daughter drowned herself,
and her great-grandma before her.
[snipped cool example]
>Enough sense of history? Or is it just a 'throwaway' mention?
Works for me, though it's hard to judge anything about a novel-
length work from excerpts. One of the things I love about novels
is that you have *time* to build up a sense of history. It must
be very different in a short story.
I would probably just gloss over the names (as a reader) on
first mention, since there is no context for them; but the second
mention made the point very clear. I wouldn't mind if you could
weave the second-mention info into the first mention, though, since
the first mention is clearly a very important scene and it would
be good to understand it fully.
Pamela Dean does something like this in the Secret Country trilogy
--it takes three books before anyone explains "the choice made by
Shan" in any detail, despite multiple earlier references. And it
works fine there.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Mary K. Kuhner
It didn't work for me. I can't say why, precisely, though I'll make
a vague stab at it. (I only read the book once, some years ago, and
barely made it to the end.)
The Six Duchies folk knew, very early on, that their enemies *could*
Forge. They had seen it firsthand. And yet we are not told that
Six Duchies folk always committed suicide to avoid capture. (And I
wouldn't believe it if we were; people aren't really that homogeneous,
and suicide is hard.) So why did it have such a universal effect
on the Raiders? Especially late in the war, when they had had some
opportunity to learn that the Duchies did *not* have the secret?
>And again, my perception of the ending is colored by the fact that I
>already knew the ending when I read the beginning ("Ah, so that's who
>Verity was. I see.") so... What felt emotionally and factually
>inconsistent?
The Fitz who wrote the first chapter does not seem to me to be the
Fitz who was the protagonist of the last few. The emotional tone
is just not the same. The first chapter speaks of personal defeat
in the cause of national survival. The ending does not resonate with
that, because Fitz knows perfectly well that he's perpetuated the
problem--and besides it is not important to him anymore. Also,
Fitz now knows that magic needn't be a self-destroying obsession, but
the first chapter has no hint of that.
Fitz' emotional reaction to the ending revelations didn't ring true to
me. His reactions to Olivia and--the elderly mage, I don't remember
her name--didn't ring true either. He seemed to tolerate Olivia
only due to plot necessity; I can't see why a professional assassin
would put up with her otherwise. She is a liability.
The elderly mage seemed to come from a different cosmology, one where
the practice of magic is really good for you, not really bad for
you--why was it necessary to do that? It undercut the series, and
felt fake and wrong. "Oh, sorry, I've been telling you for two books
that magic is like this--painful, dangerous, ultimately destructive--
but that's just not so at all, it's really life-extending and
wonderful." But then nothing comes of this revelation.
And the grand mystery just didn't fit its clues with a satisfying
click--more like a "huh?" I don't know exactly what I expected, but
it would have made all the clues stick together in an illuminating
way. The thing you cite above, the reason why the Raiders never
surrender--well, it's vaguely plausible, but there's no "Yes! Of
course, that's why" quality to it for me. And the scene that would
justify "but we didn't find out until much later" doesn't really
exist--we never see Fitz or the others realizing this. We're left
to suppose it ourselves. I know, the reader has to do some
work of her own, but the lack of reaction here reduced my feeling
that this is what really happened.
I was left feeling that the story really had some other ending, and
I'd been given this one by mistake.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Lucinda Welenc
<grin> that's in the WIP, too -- and not (ultimately) as a throwaway --
the climate is changing, dropping into a 'little ice age'.
> (they do), which family is rich that used to be poor and which of the
> struggling types have only the remnants of their grandfather's holdings.
> Whether the previous king did a better job of protecting them, or
> collected less labor tax, or .. . Which friends died in the famine five
> years back. Most of it isn't the history that shows up in a modern
> history book, but it is his history.
Point well taken.
That's one of the major themes -- culture clash. "Everyone knows" that
decent women don't go around showing their bare feet to a man unless
they want to sleep with him. "Everyone knows" (on both sides!) that
"those people" indulge in sexual depravity. "Everyone knows" that utter
barbarians can't possibly speak more than a broken form of our language
-- it's too sophisticated for them. "Everyone knows" which side is the
better warrior.
>But to my ear it jars because it is resetting a familiar bit
> of Greek myth/history in a Norse setting. The nearest Norse equivalent
> that occurs to me is:
>
> Cattle die, kindred die, Every man is mortal:
> But the good name never dies Of one who has done well
>
> But that doesn't serve your purpose.
No, not really. The allusion to the hero who chooses the thousand years
of glory seems to me a natural one for any culture that all but deifies
the Warrior. Achilles is just the best known of them. Hm, what if I
chopped out that word 'early' in reference to Ulfgeirr's death?
> All of which raises a somewhat different problem--the use of references
> to real historic cultures in stories set in fictional cultures. The
> advantage of using Norse names is that you pull in a whole cluster of
> implied detail in your reader's mind--how much depending on the reader.
> The disadvantage is that ...
Which name caused you the strongest identification with Norse?
Ulfgeirr? Styrgeirr?
Lucinda Welenc
> I was left feeling that the story really had some other ending, and
> I'd been given this one by mistake.
Editorial meddling?
*I* had a different ending for _Leopard Lord_, but the editor insisted
on a deus-ex-machina -- I guess her thinking was that since a deity was
the cause of all the trouble, only another deity could give them a final
solution.
Thomas Lindgren
Lucinda Welenc <lwe...@cablespeed.com> writes:
> Which name caused you the strongest identification with Norse?
> Ulfgeirr? Styrgeirr?
I wasn't the one you asked but ...
My second name is Ulf ("wolf"), so I suppose it's that one. But both
"Ulf-" and "Styr-" in fantasy make me think of vikings. Geir is a
Norwegian name, AFAIK.
Best,
Thomas
--
Thomas Lindgren
"It's becoming popular? It must be in decline." -- Isaiah Berlin
David Friedman
Lucinda Welenc <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
> > It gives a sense of history--and of people from different cultures, and
> > of the natural assumption that everyone knows what you and those around
> > you know.
>
> That's one of the major themes -- culture clash. "Everyone knows" that
> decent women don't go around showing their bare feet to a man unless
> they want to sleep with him. "Everyone knows" (on both sides!) that
> "those people" indulge in sexual depravity. "Everyone knows" that utter
> barbarians can't possibly speak more than a broken form of our language
> -- it's too sophisticated for them. "Everyone knows" which side is the
> better warrior.
My version of that is subtler--perhaps because the main cultures
involved have had quite a lot of contact over the past fifty years or
so. There may be less subtle versions in the sequel, if I write it,
since that brings in another culture with which there has been less
contact.
My protagonist's title is "Senior Paramount." "Paramount" actually means
"one of the people through whom other people plug into the legal system"
(Roughly "Godi" usually mistranslated "chieftain" in the context of saga
period Iceland, although my version of the legal system is a little
different from theirs). "Senior" is purely honorary--it means that he
has inherited the paramount position (a transferable bundle of right
with respect to the legal system) first held by one of the first
settlers of the Vales. He isn't a king, or a lord, or anything
equivalent to that, because there are no such positions in his
society--as his son puts it in the prolog, "The Senior Paramount doesn't
have an army. West of the mountains nobody owes allegiance to anyone."
The two other cultures (the Kingdom and the Empire) that play a large
role are more hierarchical. So people from those cultures tend to assume
that Harald, with his impressive sounding title, is "the lord of the
Vales" or something similar.
The Emperor, who is a very competent man, doesn't make that mistake--as
he says in explaining why he (mistakenly) thinks Harald isn't going to
be able to bring a substantial army of his own people to the current
campaign:
"My guess, the Vales fought a hard campaign their side of the mountains
this spring, sent Harald, a few hundred men, that's probably it. Asks
for more and they don't come, not a damn thing he can do about it."
His mistake is a more subtle one. He takes it for granted that since,
although Harald is obviously a superb general, he is also a barbarian,
he can't be expected to engage in long run planning. Part of the reason
the Emperor loses the final campaign is that Harald is always one step
ahead of him.
It is also what the final scene of the book is about. The defeated
Emperor tells Harald that although he has won this round, in the long
run he is going to lose, since Harald is getting old (although not as
old as the Emperor) and once he is too old to command, the (very
competent) next generation on the Imperial side will defeat the (not
very competent) young King who is Harald's ally, and who will no longer
have Harald to command the allied army.
In fact, although the Emperor doesn't realize it, Harald has two more
generations of commanders waiting in the wings (his daughter and his
grandson), one of whom is mostly responsible for winning one of the
earlier campaigns (the Emperor takes it for granted that it was her
mother, also getting old, who was in command). And Harald has opened
lines of communication to the Emperor's most likely successor, with the
long run objective of persuading him to abandon his father's very
expensive project of expanding south.
> > But to my ear it jars because it is resetting a familiar bit
> > of Greek myth/history in a Norse setting. The nearest Norse equivalent
> > that occurs to me is:
> >
> > Cattle die, kindred die, Every man is mortal:
> > But the good name never dies Of one who has done well
> >
> > But that doesn't serve your purpose.
>
> No, not really. The allusion to the hero who chooses the thousand years
> of glory seems to me a natural one for any culture that all but deifies
> the Warrior. Achilles is just the best known of them.
It's the only one I know. That doesn't mean there aren't others, but I'm
probably a good deal better read than your average reader, so the odds
are that any reader who recognizes the story will connect it to Achilles.
> Hm, what if I
> chopped out that word 'early' in reference to Ulfgeirr's death?
But that weakens the story, since there is then no price being paid for
the fame.
> > All of which raises a somewhat different problem--the use of references
> > to real historic cultures in stories set in fictional cultures. The
> > advantage of using Norse names is that you pull in a whole cluster of
> > implied detail in your reader's mind--how much depending on the reader.
> > The disadvantage is that ...
>
> Which name caused you the strongest identification with Norse?
> Ulfgeirr? Styrgeirr?
Probably both.
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
[...]
>I wasn't impatient with the various captures, beatings-up,
>betrayals, and re-captures, possibly because I knew they didn't have
>anything to do with the war as such, and followed them like you'd
>follow episodes in a television show, mostly contained within
>themselves.
Which for my taste amounts to saying that they were just padding.
It's been a while, but a seem to remember getting bored. Perhaps
it makes a difference that I don't watch television?
[...]
Brian
Mary Messall
> Forge. They had seen it firsthand. And yet we are not told that
> Six Duchies folk always committed suicide to avoid capture. (And I
> wouldn't believe it if we were; people aren't really that homogeneous,
> and suicide is hard.) So why did it have such a universal effect
> on the Raiders? Especially late in the war, when they had had some
> opportunity to learn that the Duchies did *not* have the secret?
Maybe later in the war they do allow themselves to be captured, and
Fitz just doesn't comment on it/know about it?
As for why the Six Duchies folk (Duchians? Dutch? Heh) don't suicide as
universally as the Raiders (though some of them certainly do, and some
of them kill their own children...), I suppose I found that natural.
They're civilians; and civilized. Whereas the Raiders are 1) fighters
2) contemptuous of the "soft farmers" of the Duchies. So they kill
themselves out of honor rather than allow themselves, as they think, to
be Forged.
> >And again, my perception of the ending is colored by the fact that I
> >already knew the ending when I read the beginning ("Ah, so that's who
> >Verity was. I see.") so... What felt emotionally and factually
> >inconsistent?
> The Fitz who wrote the first chapter does not seem to me to be the
> Fitz who was the protagonist of the last few. The emotional tone
> is just not the same. The first chapter speaks of personal defeat
> in the cause of national survival. The ending does not resonate with
> that, because Fitz knows perfectly well that he's perpetuated the
> problem--and besides it is not important to him anymore.
But, but... He hasn't perpetuated the problem, at least, not the
problem of the Raiders (he may have unintentionally helped Regal in
acting rashly against him). And he's lost *everything*. Shrewd's gone;
Burrich and Molly have built a life together with no room for him in
it, and then Verity leaves, the person for whom he's done everything.
It's still about personal defeat in the cause of national survival. He
slinks off to spend fifteen years alone, almost a hermit.
> Also,
> Fitz now knows that magic needn't be a self-destroying obsession, but
> the first chapter has no hint of that.
The two magics are the Skill and the Wit. Throughout the book,
everybody else says that the Wit (the animal bonding magic) is
disgusting and horrifying, but Fitz believes it is invaluable. And I
think the Skill is just as much a double-edged sword at the beginning
as at the ending. It saves them a dozen times, but the first Tawny Man
book opens with him sitting out on a cliff, Skilling to passing
sailors, eavesdropping on their minds when he can no longer resist the
urges of his addiction, and then succumbing to pounding headaches
afterwards.
> Fitz' emotional reaction to the ending revelations didn't ring true to
> me. His reactions to Olivia and--the elderly mage, I don't remember
> her name--didn't ring true either. He seemed to tolerate Olivia
> only due to plot necessity; I can't see why a professional assassin
> would put up with her otherwise. She is a liability.
He's not really a professional assassin. He's a boy, a fifteen-year-old
pawn. (And do you mean Molly? or Starling? I don't recall an Olivia.)
> The elderly mage seemed to come from a different cosmology, one where
> the practice of magic is really good for you, not really bad for
> you--why was it necessary to do that? It undercut the series, and
> felt fake and wrong. "Oh, sorry, I've been telling you for two books
> that magic is like this--painful, dangerous, ultimately destructive--
> but that's just not so at all, it's really life-extending and
> wonderful." But then nothing comes of this revelation.
Well, she really comes from a later trilogy, rather than a different
cosmology. <g> Later, it turns out her life has been just as screwed up
by magic as Fitz's. But we also begin to learn that the pain when he
Skills was partially the result of a "block" of some sort placed there
by the evil Skill-teacher. Finally, there's a lot more stuff about the
connection between the Skill and dragons, dragons and long life (much
more explanation of "The Elderlings"), and the possible uses of the
Skill for healing (at great cost to the body's reserves.)
> I was left feeling that the story really had some other ending, and
> I'd been given this one by mistake.
I think I'm realizing how not-an-ending it is. For one thing, you still
don't know anything about the dragons or the Elderlings even after
reading the whole trilogy. (They are not actually the same--and the
beings at the end are Elderlings, not dragons, who have put themselves
into the forms they carved.) You find that out in the course of the
Liveship Trader books, mostly. All of the conflicts that become
important in the Tawny Man books are left hanging after they're
introduced in the Assassin books--the hatred of the Witted, the nature
of the Skill, the Farseer succession, the motivations of Out Islanders.
That's probably not going to make you like them better, knowing Robin
Hobb decided to stretch this stuff out over nine huge books instead of
three... But it's not that she forgot about those themes, anyway.
-Mary
Brian M. Scott
<lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>David Friedman wrote:
[...]
>> All of which raises a somewhat different problem--the use of references
>> to real historic cultures in stories set in fictional cultures. The
>> advantage of using Norse names is that you pull in a whole cluster of
>> implied detail in your reader's mind--how much depending on the reader.
>> The disadvantage is that ...
>Which name caused you the strongest identification with Norse?
>Ulfgeirr? Styrgeirr?
I'd expect both to strike a great many people as fairly obviously
Norse. From my point of view they're both transparently Old West
Norse, though I also happen to know that the first is barely
attested and the second not at all.
Brian
David Friedman
Lucinda Welenc <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
> *I* had a different ending for _Leopard Lord_, but the editor insisted
> on a deus-ex-machina -- I guess her thinking was that since a deity was
> the cause of all the trouble, only another deity could give them a final
> solution.
Interesting question. Just how much editorial meddling do the published
authors here expect to have to put up with?
In my nonfiction writing, I put up with almost none--my usual policy is
that the copyeditor tells me what is wrong and it is up to me to figure
out how to fix it. I find it hard to imagine making a major change to my
novel just because an editor told me to, although of course I might make
a change if the editor persuaded me it was an improvement. Am I taking
an unrealistic view of the matter? All the editor can do is decide not
to publish the book, and if one publisher is interested presumably
another will be.
Lucinda Welenc
>
> On Fri, 28 Feb 2003 16:47:04 -0500, Lucinda Welenc
> <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>
> >David Friedman wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> All of which raises a somewhat different problem--the use of references
> >> to real historic cultures in stories set in fictional cultures. The
> >> advantage of using Norse names is that you pull in a whole cluster of
> >> implied detail in your reader's mind--how much depending on the reader.
> >> The disadvantage is that ...
>
> >Which name caused you the strongest identification with Norse?
> >Ulfgeirr? Styrgeirr?
>
> I'd expect both to strike a great many people as fairly obviously
> Norse. From my point of view they're both transparently Old West
> Norse,
Why do I have this sudden vision of my Hero and Sidekick wearing
ten-gallon hats and blazing away with six-shooters[1] at the Bad Guy?
--
Alanna
**********
Saying of the day:
"A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three
times before lying down." -- Robert Benchley
[1] revolving swords?
Dan Goodman
news:3E5FC219...@cablespeed.com:
> But would, say, a medieval peasant _have_ much of a sense of history?
> Other than "my forefathers have always been here" and "we've always
> hated the dirty stinking <traditional enemy>"?
>
That varies a great deal from one culture and society to another. For
example, a Welsh peasant might know about the Roman emperor Macsen (who
happens not to have existed, but that's a mere detail).
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
Spoilers for Assassin Books
>> Fitz' emotional reaction to the ending revelations didn't ring true to
>> me. His reactions to Olivia and--the elderly mage, I don't remember
>> her name--didn't ring true either. He seemed to tolerate Olivia
>> only due to plot necessity; I can't see why a professional assassin
>> would put up with her otherwise. She is a liability.
>
>He's not really a professional assassin. He's a boy, a fifteen-year-old
>pawn. (And do you mean Molly? or Starling? I don't recall an Olivia.)
I don't either. Nor an elderly mage.
vlatko
--
http://www.niribanimeso.org/eng/
http://www.michaelswanwick.com/
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr
Mary Messall
>
> On Fri, 28 Feb 2003 23:14:41 GMT, Mary Messall <mmes...@ups.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Spoilers for Assassin Books
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
> >> Fitz' emotional reaction to the ending revelations didn't ring true to
> >> me. His reactions to Olivia and--the elderly mage, I don't remember
> >> her name--didn't ring true either. He seemed to tolerate Olivia
> >> only due to plot necessity; I can't see why a professional assassin
> >> would put up with her otherwise. She is a liability.
> >He's not really a professional assassin. He's a boy, a fifteen-year-old
> >pawn. (And do you mean Molly? or Starling? I don't recall an Olivia.)
> I don't either. Nor an elderly mage.
I think this is Kettle.
-Mary
Heather Jones
Furthermore, he might well have known as a certainty that he was
descended from the survivors of Troy (also not true), and likely
had notion that once upon a time people of his nation/culture
ruled throughout the island of Britain before the coming of the
Saxons (roughly true). All these themes show up regularly enough
throughout medieval Welsh literature as offhand references that
they are quite likely to have been part of the general
consciousness, rather than being limited to a cultural elite or
limited class.
Heather
--
*****
Heather Rose Jones
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
*****
Brian M. Scott
<lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>"Mary K. Kuhner" wrote:
>> steve asked:
>> > What is it that makes fantasy feel real? Can you name one or two
>> > techniques (and authors using them) that produce fantasy with a
>> > superior feel of reality while being read? What doesn't work, or
>> > doesn't work anymore?
>> Having some sense that the world exists in the past, and in places
>> away from the characters, is important.
[...]
>Styrgeirr nodded soberly.
It certainly indicates that there *is* some history, or at least
some legendary history, but to judge by this extract it's so
completely integral to the story that it doesn't measurably add
to the sense of history. (I also found Ulfgeirr = Achilles
slightly disconcerting, since the attitude seems just a bit 'off'
for the Norse.)
Brian
Brian M. Scott
<lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>"Brian M. Scott" wrote:
>> On Fri, 28 Feb 2003 16:47:04 -0500, Lucinda Welenc
>> <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
[...]
>> >Which name caused you the strongest identification with Norse?
>> >Ulfgeirr? Styrgeirr?
>> I'd expect both to strike a great many people as fairly obviously
>> Norse. From my point of view they're both transparently Old West
>> Norse,
>Why do I have this sudden vision of my Hero and Sidekick wearing
>ten-gallon hats and blazing away with six-shooters[1] at the Bad Guy?
>[1] revolving swords?
Spinning axes. Specifically, Fola öxar, the six-bitted kind.
Brian
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
dd...@daviddfriedman.com (David Friedman) wrote:
> In article <3E5FDA9B...@cablespeed.com>,
> Lucinda Welenc <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>
> > *I* had a different ending for _Leopard Lord_, but the editor insisted
> > on a deus-ex-machina -- I guess her thinking was that since a deity
> > was
> > the cause of all the trouble, only another deity could give them a
> > final
> > solution.
>
> Interesting question. Just how much editorial meddling do the published
> authors here expect to have to put up with?
Not the amount that Lucinda's talking about.
I'd tell the editor to stick it up her jacksie -- my endings may not be
perfect (I wish!) but they're _my_ endings. If I wanted to earn good
money doing something I didn't want to do, there are plenty of other
careers.
Caveat: I make a distinction between an editor telling me to fix something
that I don't think is broken, and an editor pointing out something that --
when I see it in those terms -- I go 'thank god that didn't get into print
that way!' and fix it pronto.
> In my nonfiction writing, I put up with almost none--my usual policy is
> that the copyeditor tells me what is wrong and it is up to me to figure
> out how to fix it. I find it hard to imagine making a major change to
> my novel just because an editor told me to, although of course I might
> make a change if the editor persuaded me it was an improvement. Am I
> taking an unrealistic view of the matter? All the editor can do is
> decide not to publish the book, and if one publisher is interested
> presumably another will be.
I've had one example of an editor breaking a novel. By the time she'd
finished telling me that my unrelated hero and heroine should be brother
and sister, and that another character should change their gender, and
there couldn't be a plague (so hero and heroine couldn't spend any time
nursing the survivors), and I should ditch the sections in the past and
just write those set in the future... well, by that time, it was busted.
For some reason -- okay, for the reason that I was extremely young, and
the book had been rejected in its prior state and I thought my revised
synopsis made it publishable -- I sat in her office and nodded agreement
all through this. Mainly because I was stunned at what she was doing.
_She_ doubtless had no idea of the damage she was doing, because I didn't
tell her. Dumb. The book didn't get rewritten or published; it never
will be. It's one of the few things to which I no longer have the
original typescript.
Since then, I've got much smarter. Editors are readers: if you tell them
'x has to happen, because otherwise a, b, and c don't make sense', they're
as liable to go 'oh I SEE' as any other reader. There may be some
fiddling to be done to highlight the fact in the text, but that's a
different matter.
With regard to your last point, it's not quite as easy to say 'stuff 'em,
there are other publishers!' about a change to a novel when it's the novel
that's going to pay your electricity bill. I think it's necessary to
stick to your guns, but I wouldn't ever denigrate someone who did make a
change on that basis. The worst of it, I guess, would be seeing something
out there with your name on it that you're not happy with.
Mary
Thomas Lindgren
Mary Messall <mmes...@ups.edu> writes:
> I think I'm realizing how not-an-ending it is. For one thing, you still
> don't know anything about the dragons or the Elderlings even after
> reading the whole trilogy.
Perhaps the problem was that one can't read the "trilogy" as a
finished story. I know the terrible decline in quality through those
three books made me lose my taste for Hobb. (APPRENTICE: excellent;
ROYAL: uh, did everyone forget about the bad guy? yes; QUEST:
pointless, unresolved tedium, signifying nothing, ending with deus
ex machina.)
> That's probably not going to make you like them better, knowing Robin
> Hobb decided to stretch this stuff out over nine huge books instead of
> three... But it's not that she forgot about those themes, anyway.
Would I have continued if Hobb had somehow indicated that QUEST was
just a filler, rather than the conclusion? More likely, though I felt
the story was sliding to a halt beginning in ROYAL. In particular,
with traitorous Regal being accepted into the fold again; back we
troop to square one.
Why this dissatisfaction? On reflection, though I read them a few
years ago, because the post-APPRENTICE books never seem to really
confront or develop the problems that were set up. We never learn much
more about the bad guys, or get to stop them, AFAIR. They just keep
being bad, again and again. Stasis.
(Well, the deus ex machina does finally resolve it all, which is
astoundingly unsatisfying: _if_ the big conflict is interesting, why
keep the camera off Verity's work, which is the actual action?
Possibly a worse ending than Fitz returning home, finding Veritys head
on a spike and then getting forged himself. At least that would be
consistent with the general bumbling we see.)
Phew. I feel better now :-)
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>> I'd expect both to strike a great many people as fairly obviously
>> Norse. From my point of view they're both transparently Old West
>> Norse,
>
>Why do I have this sudden vision of my Hero and Sidekick wearing
>ten-gallon hats and blazing away with six-shooters[1] at the Bad Guy?
Norse opera?
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>I've had one example of an editor breaking a novel. By the time she'd
>finished telling me that my unrelated hero and heroine should be brother
>and sister, and that another character should change their gender, and
>there couldn't be a plague (so hero and heroine couldn't spend any time
>nursing the survivors), and I should ditch the sections in the past and
>just write those set in the future... well, by that time, it was busted.
Um, any idea why didn't _she_ write the novel she wanted?
Catja Pafort
> "Mary K. Kuhner" wrote:
> > I was left feeling that the story really had some other ending, and
> > I'd been given this one by mistake.
>
> I think I'm realizing how not-an-ending it is.
<snip stuff that happens>
> That's probably not going to make you like them better, knowing Robin
> Hobb decided to stretch this stuff out over nine huge books instead of
> three... But it's not that she forgot about those themes, anyway.
That may be, and I thank you for pointing it out. I have read the
liveship traders a number of years ago; and had a similar problem with
it - there is so much story in those books, and so much
characterisation, that the 'fiting into the larger picuture' rather than
enhancing the books, took something away from them.
I do have a problem with a story that stretches over nine books,
especially as they're not insubstantial. I think that a trilogy should
have a beginning, middle and end - if that's not the case, I feel
cheated somewhat. It's difficult enough to make time to read that much;
and much more difficult to keep all of it in your head; and to a certain
degree, you need to do that, otherwise it doesn't make sense.
Catja
Helen
<hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu> writes
>
>Furthermore, he might well have known as a certainty that he was
>descended from the survivors of Troy (also not true), and likely
>had notion that once upon a time people of his nation/culture
>ruled throughout the island of Britain before the coming of the
>Saxons (roughly true). All these themes show up regularly enough
>throughout medieval Welsh literature as offhand references that
>they are quite likely to have been part of the general
>consciousness, rather than being limited to a cultural elite or
>limited class.
>
>Heather
>
hollow tree where Owain Glyndwr hid the body of his murdered cousin.
And *that hill over there* was where Owain Glyndwr beat the English,
though greatly outnumbered. And *that rock up there* is where they used
to throw condemned men to their deaths. And *that old circle of stones*
is where they used to hold cock fights and once a man was coming home
drunk from there saw some of the fair folk. And *out there under the
sea* there's a drowned city and you can hear the bells ringing on stormy
night.
Helen
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
David Friedman
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> With regard to your last point, it's not quite as easy to say 'stuff 'em,
> there are other publishers!' about a change to a novel when it's the novel
> that's going to pay your electricity bill.
Yet. I can see that as someone who makes his living in other ways I'm in
a much more comfortable position for that sort of choice.
David Friedman
b.s...@csuohio.edu (Brian M. Scott) wrote:
> >Why do I have this sudden vision of my Hero and Sidekick wearing
> >ten-gallon hats and blazing away with six-shooters[1] at the Bad Guy?
>
> >[1] revolving swords?
>
> Spinning axes. Specifically, Fola öxar, the six-bitted kind.
Repeating crossbows. Brought back by the Viking expedition that burned
Canton.
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr (Vlatko Juric-Kokic) wrote:
> On Sat, 1 Mar 2003 11:23:03 +0000 (UTC),
> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>
> >I've had one example of an editor breaking a novel. By the time she'd
> >finished telling me that my unrelated hero and heroine should be
> brother >and sister, and that another character should change their
> gender, and >there couldn't be a plague (so hero and heroine couldn't
> spend any time >nursing the survivors), and I should ditch the sections
> in the past and >just write those set in the future... well, by that
> time, it was busted.
>
> Um, any idea why didn't _she_ write the novel she wanted?
No, and no idea why I didn't ask her that very question...
Mary
Lucinda Welenc
>
> On Fri, 28 Feb 2003 19:53:32 -0500, Lucinda Welenc
> <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>
> >> I'd expect both to strike a great many people as fairly obviously
> >> Norse. From my point of view they're both transparently Old West
> >> Norse,
> >
> >Why do I have this sudden vision of my Hero and Sidekick wearing
> >ten-gallon hats and blazing away with six-shooters[1] at the Bad Guy?
>
> Norse opera?
>
> vlatko
AUGH! <THWACK! with Rolled-Up Newspaper of PUNishment>
--
Alanna
**********
Saying of the day:
My ship finally came in . . . . it was the Kobayashi Maru.
Marilee J. Layman
<dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
>In article <3E5FDA9B...@cablespeed.com>,
> Lucinda Welenc <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>
>> *I* had a different ending for _Leopard Lord_, but the editor insisted
>> on a deus-ex-machina -- I guess her thinking was that since a deity was
>> the cause of all the trouble, only another deity could give them a final
>> solution.
>
>Interesting question. Just how much editorial meddling do the published
>authors here expect to have to put up with?
Heinlein's editors insisted he change the ending of Podkayne to make
it happy. (Bad decision) And took lots of dross out of Stranger in a
Strange Land. (Good decision)
--
Marilee J. Layman
Handmade Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
Keith Morrison
>>>But would, say, a medieval peasant _have_ much of a sense of history?
>>>Other than "my forefathers have always been here" and "we've always
>>>hated the dirty stinking <traditional enemy>"?
>>
>>That varies a great deal from one culture and society to another. For
>>example, a Welsh peasant might know about the Roman emperor Macsen (who
>>happens not to have existed, but that's a mere detail).
>
> Furthermore, he might well have known as a certainty that he was
> descended from the survivors of Troy (also not true), and likely
> had notion that once upon a time people of his nation/culture
> ruled throughout the island of Britain before the coming of the
> Saxons (roughly true). All these themes show up regularly enough
> throughout medieval Welsh literature as offhand references that
> they are quite likely to have been part of the general
> consciousness, rather than being limited to a cultural elite or
> limited class.
Examples of that are even found today. As one possible example,
while many Americans have no doubt remembered that the Battle of
Bunker Hill was important in the American Revolution, how many
remember that it was one the Americans lost (let alone that it
was actually fought on a different hill)?
Another one, which is largely due to the media: with a few
exceptions, the image that springs to mind about the American
Revolution involves American troops in practical colours
hiding behind trees and sniping at the idiotic British troops
lined up in bright red coats, and that's how the Revolution
was fought.
Yes, I know the history is probably taught correctly, and that
films made more recently have tended to be more accurate in that
regard, but still most of the media I saw growing up (mostly
American, so no foreign bias involved) gave the impression
that that was how things were.
Every nation has these widely-held beliefs that are, for the
people, important, passed on to kids, and quite often wrong.
--
Keith
Manny Olds
Is there an authorial equivalent of Smithee?
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
"I will make dim the light, I will attempt to spend my love within her.
But though I try with all my might,
She will laugh at my mighty sword, She will laugh at my mighty sword
Why must everybody laugh at my mighty sword?"
Randy Newman, "A Wedding in Cherokee County"
Joann Zimmerman
mjla...@erols.com says...
> And took lots of dross out of Stranger in a
> Strange Land. (Good decision)
I'm in the middle of pondering that; I recently got round to getting the
uncut version and am occasionally reading it at breakfast. An incredible
amount of the cuts seem to involve the word "the". So far no important
(or even unimportant) plot element or description seems to have been
eaten whole by the editors, and the impression I'm getting of the uncut
version is a much more relaxed work; the edited version seems--and not
just in retrospect--to be almost steely. It was compressed even in
comparison to the earlier works. (Despite being at least twice as long.)
--
"I never understood people that don't have bookshelves."
--George Plimpton
Joann Zimmerman jz...@bellereti.com
Lucinda Welenc
>
> In article <jgh26vsdbqv8ccdrp...@4ax.com>,
> mjla...@erols.com says...
>
> > And took lots of dross out of Stranger in a
> > Strange Land. (Good decision)
>
> I'm in the middle of pondering that; I recently got round to getting the
> uncut version and am occasionally reading it at breakfast. An incredible
> amount of the cuts seem to involve the word "the". So far no important
> (or even unimportant) plot element or description seems to have been
> eaten whole by the editors, and the impression I'm getting of the uncut
> version is a much more relaxed work; the edited version seems--and not
> just in retrospect--to be almost steely. It was compressed even in
> comparison to the earlier works. (Despite being at least twice as long.)
Wasn't _Stranger_ Heinlein's first non-juvenile novel? It could be that
the editors were afraid that a 'big, thick book' would scare away his
target audience. "Gee, looka that! It must have almost a thousand
words in it!"
Similar editorial angst is being reported now about the later Harry
Potter books.
Blanche Nonken
> In article <jgh26vsdbqv8ccdrp...@4ax.com>,
> mjla...@erols.com says...
>
> > And took lots of dross out of Stranger in a
> > Strange Land. (Good decision)
>
> I'm in the middle of pondering that; I recently got round to getting the
> uncut version and am occasionally reading it at breakfast. An incredible
> amount of the cuts seem to involve the word "the". So far no important
> (or even unimportant) plot element or description seems to have been
> eaten whole by the editors, and the impression I'm getting of the uncut
> version is a much more relaxed work; the edited version seems--and not
> just in retrospect--to be almost steely. It was compressed even in
> comparison to the earlier works. (Despite being at least twice as long.)
The change that struck me was that the uncut mentioned marijuana.
Blanche Nonken
Joann Zimmerman
says...
> Wasn't _Stranger_ Heinlein's first non-juvenile novel? It could be that
> the editors were afraid that a 'big, thick book' would scare away his
> target audience. "Gee, looka that! It must have almost a thousand
> words in it!"
Nope, there were also _Double Star_, _Door Into Summer_ and _The Puppet
Masters_. Quite aside from _Beyond this Horizon_, _Methuselah's
Children_, and _Sixth Column_, all of which began life as serials, and
_Starship Troopers_, which seems a highly unlikely candidate for a
juvenile, even if there was no sex.
Granted, non of these were outrageously long ...
Catja Pafort
> Wasn't _Stranger_ Heinlein's first non-juvenile novel? It could be that
> the editors were afraid that a 'big, thick book' would scare away his
> target audience. "Gee, looka that! It must have almost a thousand
> words in it!"
>
> Similar editorial angst is being reported now about the later Harry
> Potter books.
Well, every book so far seems to be (<sum of boks before> x2). Given
that #4 is a substantial book by most people's standards (and almost too
much book to easily lift in hardback); and #5 is reported to be longer
still, and there will be two more books in the series, I can somewhat
understand that anxiety..
Catja
Brian M. Scott
news:MPG.18cd6de6a...@newshost.cc.utexas.edu in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> In article <3E63A5BE...@cablespeed.com>,
> lwe...@cablespeed.com says...
>> Wasn't _Stranger_ Heinlein's first non-juvenile novel? It
>> could be that the editors were afraid that a 'big, thick
>> book' would scare away his target audience. "Gee, looka
>> that! It must have almost a thousand words in it!"
> Nope, there were also _Double Star_, _Door Into Summer_ and
> _The Puppet Masters_. Quite aside from _Beyond this
> Horizon_, _Methuselah's Children_, and _Sixth Column_, all
> of which began life as serials, and _Starship Troopers_,
> which seems a highly unlikely candidate for a juvenile,
> even if there was no sex.
I've always considered the first two juveniles, especially
_Double Star_. So did the Amherst, Mass., library in the late
50s. I'll give you the others, though.
Brian
Joann Zimmerman
b.s...@csuohio.edu says...
I was operating on the theory that "juvenile" = "published by
Scribner's". This lets both _Double Star_ (Street & Smith/Doubleday, so
it was serialized, too) and _Door into Summer_ (Fantasy House) out.
Not to mention that for juveniles, there is a surprising lack of juvenile
characters in both. And the nudist club in _Door_ puts "juvenile"
straight out the window.
Marilee J. Layman
<jz...@bellereti.com> wrote:
>In article <jgh26vsdbqv8ccdrp...@4ax.com>,
>mjla...@erols.com says...
>
>> And took lots of dross out of Stranger in a
>> Strange Land. (Good decision)
>
>I'm in the middle of pondering that; I recently got round to getting the
>uncut version and am occasionally reading it at breakfast. An incredible
>amount of the cuts seem to involve the word "the". So far no important
>(or even unimportant) plot element or description seems to have been
>eaten whole by the editors, and the impression I'm getting of the uncut
>version is a much more relaxed work; the edited version seems--and not
>just in retrospect--to be almost steely. It was compressed even in
>comparison to the earlier works. (Despite being at least twice as long.)
No, there are *long* polemics that were removed.
Dan Goodman
> In article <3E63A5BE...@cablespeed.com>, lwe...@cablespeed.com
> says...
>
>> Wasn't _Stranger_ Heinlein's first non-juvenile novel? It could be that
>> the editors were afraid that a 'big, thick book' would scare away his
>> target audience. "Gee, looka that! It must have almost a thousand
>> words in it!"
>
> Nope, there were also _Double Star_, _Door Into Summer_ and _The Puppet
> Masters_. Quite aside from _Beyond this Horizon_, _Methuselah's
> Children_, and _Sixth Column_, all of which began life as serials, and
> _Starship Troopers_, which seems a highly unlikely candidate for a
> juvenile, even if there was no sex.
Heinlein submitted _Starship Troopers_ to Boys Life, I believe.