 Fantasy: September 25, 2013 Issue [#5904] |
  Fantasy
This week: Backstory Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.
-Terry Pratchett
Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!
-J.R.R. Tolkien
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle Earth.
-George R.R. Martin |
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So, you're writing about a different world.
Maybe it's Earth, but in the distant past or future. Maybe it's an Earth in an alternate universe. Maybe it's Mars, facts on which are generally available (There's even a Mars feature in Google Earth. Go look at it. It's free. You're welcome.) Or maybe it's something completely made up out of your head. That's what we do, as writers: make up stuff. Sounds basic, but it's important; as far as we know, we're the only species in the universe that can lie creatively.
But, as usual, I digress. What I'm trying to start with, here, is that while every work of fiction exists only in the mind of its creator (at first), we here at Science Fiction and Fantasy have the added onus of having to make up more of our worlds out of nothingness.
So it's tempting to start with something like (and this is only one example): "Maximus was a big world. Five times the size of Earth, it was deficient in many of the heavy elements that make up our own planet. Therefore, the gravity was only twice that of Earth's. Five hundred years ago, settlers from Earth on their way to the far more hospitable world of Pair-O-Dice crash-landed there, losing half the colonists and seventy percent of the genetic stock they'd taken for terraforming..."
You didn't read that whole thing, did you? I know I wouldn't have. I'd have wanted to skip to something important. Well, unless I get past the whole History, Part 1 and finally get to the characters and it's something like "Breela was a curious girl of Generation 2M-1, as the 1,999th generation was known on Maximus. With long, flowing blonde hair, purple eyes, and the stocky build that had evolved in the colonists to make up for the heavy gravity, Breela enjoyed being outside much more than she did her studies. One of her studies was History of Old Earth, where..."
Yeah. At this point, I put the book down.
I've said this before, but it bears repeating, especially for SF and Fantasy writers: By all means, have all of that information in mind, and more. Write it down somewhere. Somewhere that's not the actual novel. In a notebook, or separate file, or on a bunch of note cards, or whatever works. And maybe a few of the facts actually make it into the novel, a piece at a time: a bit of dialogue here, a fragment of necessary exposition there, but for Tolkien's sake, don't weight the front of your story with a lot of world-building details or the characters' life stories.
I know the temptation is there, because I've had it, myself. I know it's there, because I'm always coming across books - movies, even - that overdo this kind of thing.
If you *must* throw in vital information, do it quickly, and make it interesting.
Blade Runner is the greatest movie of all time. This is indisputable. That is, the Director's Cut is. But the original version was pretty forgettable. The difference? Harrison Ford's voiceover in the original, having to explain every damn thing that's going on in the movie, and how it got there. With the narration, it's just a story. Without the voiceover, it's art. The viewer has to infer a few things, but explanations don't get in the way of the story. (There is a very brief text block at the beginning of the movie, explaining about Replicants and such. But it's brief. Shorter, even, than the world-famous scrolling text at the beginning of Star Wars, which is actually kind of boring and doesn't make a lot of sense until AFTER you've seen the movie.)
The sadly short-lived TV series Firefly makes no explanations at all. You're just in their 'verse, flying along with Captain Tightpants and the crew, though it's clear that Joss Whedon had the entire backstory plotted out in his head first - a backstory that we finally see in the movie Serenity (again, briefly, and as part of a flashback sequence that takes place in an educational setting, which makes sense) how humans got to that system in the first place, and why.
And, of course, there's Tolkien. His world-building is legendary, but does he hit the reader over the head with The Silmarillion before the beginning of The Hobbit? No, of course not. He had it all in his head, and eventually it got published because Tolkien, but he didn't lose sight of the purpose of storytelling: to tell a story, not write the Book of Genesis.
Many writers are planning to participate in NaNoWriMo this November. Hate to tell you this, but that's only a bit more than a month away, now. People who set their stories on Earth, in contemporary or near-contemporary times, might be able to dive right in with a vague idea of characters, setting and plot, trusting their own experiences and that of their readers to fill in any blanks in the storytelling.
We Fantasy/SF writers don't usually have that luxury (well, my last successful NaNo was urban fantasy set around my hometown in the present day, so I didn't have a lot of world-building to do...) so I'll strongly suggest that you take time between now and November 1 and write your own Book of Genesis for whatever world or universe you're using as a setting. Doesn't have to be detailed or pretty - because you're the only one who will ever see it. Write it, know it, absorb it. And then remember it when you're writing the actual story in November, but never let it see the light of day. |
Before I get into this week's Fantasy and/or Science Fiction picks, allow me to recommend the greatest NaNoWriMo preparation method ever developed. And don't worry if you're not planning on doing NaNo; this is *still* great practice for preparing to write anything longer than a short story.
And now, this week's picks...
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Last time, in "Fantasy Newsletter (August 28, 2013)" , I talked about incorporating cultural diversity in fantasy or science fiction worlds.
brom21  : You raised an interesting point I never really examined closely before. Diversity brings selection and conflict as well as bonding moments between races or ethnic groups; kind of like a “Possibility Soup.” Thanks for the read!
Very true. It's not just diversity for the sake of diversity, but it adds more layers to a story. Thanks for reading and commenting!
Joto-Kai  : To an outsider, humans might all seem the same. For example, my "Urgans" call Humans "Thorga"- fool workers- because we make things too fragile. (Especially ourselves.) They believe in trying to break everything they get, before reluctantly trusting it to use. They range from emotionally retarded barbarian raiders, to drill sergeants, structural engineers, security consultants, and political analysts, but always, their attitude shines through: destroy all things, and trust only what survives. They don't see it, but to us, they're really all the same... Nasty, brutish, and short. 
Also a good point - the outsider's perspective is, after all, one reason we read otherworldly fiction.
And that's it for me for this month - see you in that most fantastical of times, October! Until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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