 Fantasy: November 26, 2008 Issue [#2736] |
  Fantasy
This week: Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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It is literally true, as the thankless say, that they have nothing to be thankful for. He who sits by the fire, thankless for the fire, is just as if he had no fire. Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient. But a thankful heart hath a continual feast.
-W.J. Cameron
Stand up, on this Thanksgiving Day, stand upon your feet. Believe in man. Soberly and with clear eyes, believe in your own time and place. There is not, and there never has been a better time, or a better place to live in.
-Phillips Brooks
Coexistence: what the farmer does with the turkey - until Thanksgiving.
-Mike Connolly
I love Thanksgiving turkey. It's the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts.
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THANKSGIVING
With apologies to our international readers, this newsletter is dedicated to that second most American of all holidays (after Independence Day, of course, which is only superior because it involves explosions): Thanksgiving.
"So, what does Thanksgiving have to do with Fantasy writing?"
Well, gather 'round the hearth and I'll tell you a story.
Long, long ago, facing religious persecution in their homeland, a group of brave Pilgrims set sail across the sea to land at a magical place called Massachusetts. Faced with drought, hunger and otherwise difficult situations, they relied upon the wisdom of the land's natives (whom they named after the natives of a land some thousands of miles away, even though their name was actually the Wampanoag) to keep their disease and death to a minimum.
With the help of the natives, they pulled through, and, as winter approached, they feasted on the fruits of the land (notably, turkey, which was also named after a land some thousands of miles away), made it through the winter (mostly) and, eventually, showed their gratitude by exterminating the Wampanoag and most of their cousins.
As the years passed, it became traditional to celebrate a Thanksgiving every year to give thanks for the many blessings bestowed upon the Pilgrims by God, such as the new land, pumpkins, turkeys, muskets and a resistance to smallpox that the land's natives didn't share. Eventually, some hundreds of years later, the day of Thanksgiving was enshrined by the land's government (which, notably, contained not one single, solitary Wampanoag but did feature a great many turkeys) to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, the following Friday being reserved for sacrifices to the Gods of Capitalism.
Um... yeah. Except most of that isn't true (the part about the government containing a great many turkeys being one of the few grains of truth in the whole story).
First of all, the first Thanksgiving celebrated by Europeans in the New World occurred near modern-day St. Augustine, Florida, celebrated by Spanish settlers upon landing. There was also a Thanksgiving celebrated by the Virginia settlers, some fifty years later, and two years before the first Pilgrim set foot at Plymouth Rock.
Second, Thanksgiving wasn't celebrated yearly for a good long time. Various attempts at declaring a National Day of Thanksgiving, once there was a Nation to declare one, occurred sporadically.
Third, many of the current Thanksgiving traditions have nothing to do with settling what became the United States. These modern traditions include parades, football, and schlepping all over the country to visit relatives you don't like enough to see the rest of the year.
"Again, what does this have to do with Fantasy writing?"
Okay, okay. It's like this: whatever culture you're writing about probably has annual celebrations of one sort or another. Whatever the original purpose of these celebrations, they almost always mutate and change over time, with new traditions being added, until, often, the original focus of the holiday might be obscured.
In general, a celebration begins as an Event: a landing in a new world, the birth (or death) of a god, a military victory, the harvest, the destruction or attempted destruction of a piece of important real estate, or something along those lines. People begin to commemorate the event with various practices designed to help people remember what happened, to pass it on to their children. Over time, old practices drop off the roster while new ones are accreted.
Sometimes, observances merge into newer commemorations, or disappear entirely as they lose their cultural significance.
Such observances are part of a culture's tapestry, and just as you might put exposition in a story to show characterization, it's important to weave in a culture's celebrations to show the character of the culture. It can be background, or it can be an important plot device. But a story that lacks the background of cultural celebrations can too easily lack depth.
Oh, and one more myth... the Wampanoag weren't quite wiped out, though, as with many Native American peoples, they were marginalized. Perhaps they are simply biding their time... |
Some long weekend reading for Fantasy and Science Fiction fans:
BONUS: Please check out this interactive Fantasy story:
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My last newsletter, "Fantasy Newsletter (October 29, 2008)" , was released the week of Halloween; in it, I discussed some of the various forms of undead that one might encounter in a fantasy setting.
Satuawany  responds: *snickersbehindhand* You called Anne Rice a hack. Aw, that's great.
Very entertaining newsletter. Been a while since I snorted so much soda up my nose.
For the more overused undeadlies, I find that it's easy to roll my eyes and back out of the formula writes (definitely the best way to kill a vampire). But, when you hit one that's really good, there's no backing out. I love it when someone takes something that's overused and makes me remember why it's so popular a subject.
Thanks for the comments! It is true that good writing is good writing, no matter if the subject matter is overused.
Colin Back on the Ghost Roads  writes: I have a correction for you. It's not commonly known, but the lich was not invented recently, they come from ancient Persian tradition, and the original lich was far worse than anything to come out of Dungeons and Dragons (a favorite game of mine :)).
The Persian lich was a powerful sorcerer who performed a forbidden ritual that ended with him disembowling himself and storing the viscera in an enchanted glass contraption. As a result, his unlife was bound to the viscera, and so his body was unkillable. Even if burned to ashes, the ashes would float back together and reform the body. If the viscera were destroyed, however, the lich would die.
And then come back in the form of a black mouse. If the mouse killed a rat, the lich would become a rat. If the rat then killed a cat, it would become a cat and could progress to a dog, a jaguar, and then a man through the same process, and upon killing a man, he could perform the same ritual again, and resume his unlife as a lich. Scary
And this is an example of why one should never use Wikipedia as a primary source. Thanks for the correction! Now go edit Wikipedia. 
nebroc says: Halloween is known in Irish as Oiche Shamhna. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31 the boundary between the living and the dead dissolved, and thus brought a lot of superstitions such as making bonfires and sacrifice livestock to keep away the evil spirits, dressing up as evil spirits themselves in order to pacify them, putting salt into children's hair to protect them from the evil spirits, candle lanterns were put outside houses during the night, and if the spirits were to get past these there would be parcels of food left out for them so they would spare the house for another year, and when the bonfire dyed down, stones would be placed in the ash for each family member, and if any were missing the next day then those members would be believed to die within the year. The people would serve the evil spirits out of fear. This celebration's pagan history is steeped in demonism and fear of death...we must ask yourselves, is this the kind of celebration we wish to be involved in?
Yes.
333rd Legend enters: First things first hats off to the editor. Going from aliens to undead is awesome. I just had a thought, I believe I've never come across an zombie-alien story or a tale of a Martian vampire. Imagine if the Sith could use the Force to raise an army of Alderaanian ghosts, all those lost souls killed so quickly would definitely affect the fabric of the spiritual plane vs. the mortal plane something evil.
That would be a vast disturbance in the Force. I don't do much fanfiction, myself (though I did have the idea to rewrite the entire Star Wars story from the point of view of the romance between C3PO and R2D2), so go for it!
spidey  spins: One of the coolest newsletters I've read in a while! I think I learned a few things in this one. Thanks! 
Thank you for reading and responding!
Bonus comment and response:
nebroc wrote in to a previous newsletter: If you have written most of a story, but it doesn't add up the the amount of words that you wanted, and so you decide to add another chapter or two somewhere into the story, how would you go about deciding where to place the added chapters? I have a story that I feel is getting close to its finish, and I need more words, a chapter or two more words, but the whole story connects together quite well, and I don't know where I should intercept.
This is a question that applies to all writing, not just fantasy - and there are probably as many answers as there are writers. I'll take a stab at it, especially since my answer to your other question was so short.
First of all, ask yourself this: why do you have a certain number of words in mind? I'm doing NaNoWriMo right now (and if I stay on track, I'll be finished by the time you read this), and as you probably know, that exercise requires a specific word count goal - usually 50,000. But other than NaNo, the only reason I can think of to set a specific word count is to meet a publisher's requirement. A story is only as long as it has to be, whether it's flash fiction or an epic seventeen-volume saga. So think about why you'd want to add stuff to a completed story. If it's to flesh out plot, description or characterization, go for it. Otherwise, think hard before you do it. Most finished works need to be cut, not added to.
Second, if you do have a reason to stick in more chapters, look at how published works are structured. Most novels are told from more than one point of view. There are, certainly, exceptions, and if you're writing in the first person it can be awkward to switch in the middle of a novel, but there are probably breaks in your story where you could insert an interlude or two. A good place to do this is after a particularly harrowing cliffhanger.
Finally, though, only you can decide how to edit your own story. But it often helps to have a trusted reader go through it, not only to point out where stuff could be added, but to help you find those little inconsistencies or awkward passages that usually creep in. In other words, without reading your story, no one can give you specific advice on how to edit it. Good luck!
So that's it for this Thanksgiving edition of the Fantasy newsletter. I'll be back next month for the next holiday. Until then...
DREAM ON! |
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