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 |  This is a continuation of my blogging here at WdC |
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This will be a blog for my writing, maybe with (too much) personal thrown in. I am hoping it will be a little more interactive, with me answering questions, helping out and whatnot. If it falls this year (2024), then I may stop the whole blogging thing, but that's all a "wait and see" scenario. An index of topics can be found here: "Writing Blog No.2 Index"  Feel free to comment and interact. |
| Characters - An Overview Just some notes on characters. 1. Realistic Characters I started my writing like many others, basing characters almost completely on people I knew. Made it easy because they were real people. But, for a writer, I feel we should probably go beyond that. To write a realistic character, still think about real life, but all the people you know. What makes you despise certain people and adore others? Ask other people what they like/dislike about a person. You will be surprised how things are so different. What you like, they might hate; what you can’t stand they might find endearing. What I am trying to say is that there is no universal “like/dislike”. I think the character of Juliet is over-dramatic and a real prima donna, while Romeo is a guy under the thrall of his friends and his ego and won’t admit it. I have a former partner who thinks Juliet is in the throes of deep love and Romeo is trying to be her hero – she loves both characters. We read the same play and got different things out of it. (FWIW, in the play, Mercutio is my favourite character because he sees how stupid the situation is and calls them out before dying.) In this case, actions really help a writer. Bad guys are a tough call to get right without going into cartoon villainy. They don’t have to be as overt as drowning kittens, but a dislikeable character might talk down to a shop staffer, roll their eyes at some-one’s idea, shake their head when they see what some-one else is reading – being judgemental or superior or condescending works well. On the other hand, in the case of a hero, make some-one too sweet and wanting to be liked can have the opposite effect and the reader gets sick of them. Little actions help – they might hold a door for a stranger, they might listen to the shop-keeper’s story of the last customer and laugh at the right place, they might simply ask some-one who can do them no favour how they are going. But you also need to add reality. A nasty character might still ring their mum every Sunday; a good character might still roll their eyes when they see some-one reading Twilight. It’s a fine line. Shades of grey actually work well in making characters realistic. Not completely evil or completely good, but with layers. Also, remember that nearly every bad guy does not think they are doing the wrong thing; they can usually justify all of their behaviours. Something else important to note – we seem to have reached a point where the gender of the protagonist does not matter. What matters is if they are relatable, realistic, and do what fits with the character... and that the story they are in is engaging. As an addendum, writing a character into a horror scenario, it is best to make them as ordinary as possible, because if the main character is an ‘everyman’ type, then it becomes all the more horrific because the reader gets the feeling it might be them in that situation. 2. Writing Characters Sometimes we find characters easy to write. These are the ones who are generally like us. But that is a very small percentage of the world. We need to include others in our stories. Sure, we can do it superficially, and if that is what you want, that is fine. But if we want some more realism, then maybe we need to ask. I used to have the issue of writing female characters who were actual people, not two-dimensional cut-outs. What I did was deliberately write a few all-female stories, gave then to a number of female readers (like, maybe, 5 or so), and sit down with each of them over coffee and cake while they told me what I’d got wrong. If more than 2 of them told me the same thing, then I knew I’d really messed up. In fact, there were an unfortunately large number of things that all of them told me I was lousy at. By the time we got to the fourth or fifth story (and we are talking maybe eighteen months or so later) there were a lot less things they were picking on me for. Now I feel so much more comfortable writing a female character, and I have even had female-led stories published. I have done the same thing more recently with gay characters, both male and female, and male Indigenous Australian characters. This comes back to something I mentioned before – ask. Not just occupations, but based on other aspects of their belief system, their race, their sexuality, their gender, their religion. And you would be surprised how much we all have in common as well, which makes it easier to write these characters sympathetically. If people know you are a writer, they are even more likely to talk to you, in my experience. Again, if you want to have stereotypes in your stories, then that is fine. It might be a hard sell, but it is your story. Even some big-sellers rely on them (J.K. Rowling, E.L. James, etc.), so do not feel you have to get everything perfect. It is, again, your story to tell the way you want to tell it. However, avoid the Mary Sue/Marty Stu (Gary Stu) character. Never, ever a good option. Most common in fan-fic, but still there in other forms of writing. 3. Secondary Characters I’ll just list what helps make secondary characters work in a story: I) Put the same care into a secondary character as a main character. Base them on people you know, make them realistic, whatever works for you. II) Secondary characters are often written as a walking personality trait. That is the uninspired way of doing it (and appears often in animated films). They need to be more than “emo boy” or “perky girl” or whatever. Make them three-dimensional, not just two-dimensional things. III) Secondary characters should not just be mirrors of the main characters. If a main character reacts a certain way, there is no reason secondary characters would do the same thing. They need to be treated as individuals. IV) Likewise, secondary characters should not just be there to play devil’s advocate either. They need to behave the way a friend, or companion, or peer, or sibling, or whatever the relationship is, would in real life. V) Description can help make secondary characters come to life. As the ancient Greeks used to say, "Clothes make the man." Clothing can be really helpful in showing (as opposed to telling) who a person is/wants to be – trendy, jock, etc – especially when it comes to teenagers and young adults. For older characters, it could also give an idea of what they do for a living. But going for exactitudes – “Tom was six foot one, weight 214 pounds and could bench press 250 pounds” – is nearly always not important. In fact, it generally isn't even needed in main characters. Having said all that, some stories have bland secondary characters to focus the reader more on the main characters. Most Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft tales fall into this category. 4. Character Construction Some people use templates of character sheets to help them flesh out their characters. This stems from Role Playing Games where character sheets are vital for keeping tabs of everything. When I write fantasy, I use them all the time, and I do know other people who have developed their own versions. And even though by the end of a story, they can end up a mess as extra details are added, it does help keep things consistent. But to really bring a character to life, there needs to be inner thoughts. Their actions should reflect who they are. Further, their motivations should make sense. This last one is often neglected unfortunately. And characters do need to be consistent in their actions. Characters need to exhibit emotional responses (unless the characters are sociopaths or robots or aliens). If a character does not respond emotionally to any situation, then you are leaving out a huge chunk of motivation and what drives a character forward (or otherwise). A character is wounded – revenge or fear has to come from it. They are dumped by the girlfriend – they might stoically go on but inside they are broken. Their mum dies – they are sad. If you ignore the emotions, then you are ignoring your character. If using non-humans (this can include gods, animals, demi-humans, aliens, etc.) as secondary characters, remember they are not human and should not act as humans in a different skin. Otherwise, why put them in your story at all? Why not just have more humans? This is a problem in a lot of fantasy and science fiction. Looking different and actually being different seems to be lost in a lot of works. Characters need to do things that are realistic. For example, a common one is an untrained person running for a few dozen miles to escape something. That adrenalin rush does not last that long, and if you don't tear a muscle, your lungs will scream at you and make you stop anyway. Their responses also need to be realistic. Seeing a dead body for the first time does not make some-one come up with a quick witticism – it is disgusting and horrible and your first instinct is to back away or throw up. And they stink. Moving a body is really awkward – they are a complete dead weight (excuse the pun) and flop around and are just unpleasant to even touch, or if rigor has set in, they are even harder. And, yes, that is personal experience talking. Finally, and this is the most important thing – characters, especially the main characters, need to grow during the course of the story, not just be the same after it's all over. Or else what has happened has meant very little. That is brief (no, really, it is), and very generalised, but I hope it does help someone. |
| Autobiography In Fiction Reader request again! "How much of yourself is in your fiction?" Nowadays, it's hard to say, because I have over half a century of experience and also of listening to other people. However, when I started writing, a lot of the incidents I included in my work were autobiographical, especially the day-to-day, run of the mill stuff (the stuff about travelling to alternate worlds, fighting demons and that... not so much... honestly). But it was the characters who were really drawn from reality. In fact, my first few long works, written when I was in high school, my friends had great fun trying to work out who was who. (In primary school, in the long work I wrote, my friends knew who was who because I didn't change the names!) As I've got older, I will still use little incidents that happened to me or around me or viewed by me because it just adds a touch of realism to my own mind, And, considering I write predominantly horror, it helps to make the horror (again, to me) more visceral, especially when focused against the real and mundane. If I look at the story Lines Of Communication in my port ("Lines Of Communication" ), the first three chapters happened almost exactly as I wrote them to the coupling pair. (He was one of my good mates, while she was a girl I came to know as a good friend over the years.) The stuff around them in those chapters was an amalgamation of various incidents from other parties, but they all happened as well. While they were both my friends, after that third year, we'd left school and the whole party scene just stopped. However, for the story, I just took it and ran with it. The later chapters were based on other things I saw with other couples. Only a few of the incidents actually came wholecloth from my imagination; I just made unconnected vignettes into a hopefully coherent story. Autobiographical? Maybe.But, to be honest, it did make it harder to write, because I really wanted to hide who was who... However, if I look at Invasive Species, not a single thing in that is based on reality. The story started when I found some snakes living in my shed, and a friend from the gym had her long hair cut very short and all her friends gave her grief about it. The teacher was based at the start on someone I worked with, then i added so much extra that it wasn't him; the snake-catcher was from my imagination. So, no autobiography there, and yet it is probably one of the best things I have written. I guess I haven't answered the question, so: Reader request again! "How much of yourself is in your fiction?" *It depends on the story and how much of my life I need to put into it to make it work realistically. |
| Types Of Love There are many, many types of love. And they should be utilised more in all aspects of writing. This is an interesting topic, and is one that I actually did an essay on when I did my Bachelor of Arts (got a distinction, so it wasn’t terrible). Why should this be of interest? Because, in my experience, people who write about personal relationships tend to use two terms – love and friendship. Well, there are a lot more than just those two. The ancient Greeks had 8 different forms of love. Modern psychology has added a few extras to that list. And CS Lewis confused it all by condensing it to 4 and changing the definitions to suit his Christian-centric world-view; however, Lewis’ words have maintained some connection with people. So, here is the list. The first 8 are the Greek ones, the following 4 are the newer additions. To be honest, there are around ten new additions, but most are simply nit-picking, splitting hairs sort of things, when they can really be covered by the Greek terms. So I took in my essay the four that really did not fit in with what the Greeks described. Greek 1. Eros: This is physical love, sexual passion. There does not need to be an emotional component to this sort of love, though there may be. It can be coupled with other forms of love, however the attraction in Eros is physical at its core. 2. Philia: This is that strong, deep friendship that lasts through thick and thin. This is often experienced by those with shared upbringings or shared trauma. The people who share Philia have a deep connection mentally as well as emotionally. 3. Ludus: This is the friendship that is slightly less than Philia, but can also lead to more intense forms of love. The new love between a couple, the playfulness of a friendship group, children at play – this is where Ludus comes in. In Latin, ludus means “game” to show where the word led. 4. Agape: This is love for everyone, and can best be summed up by the term “empathy.” It is a universal sort of love, and involves not only acceptance, but also forgiveness and trust. The Greeks felt this was the ultimate in love, and the hardest to achieve. 5. Pragma This is the love that has lasted a long time. It has gone beyond Eros into being as one with the other person. Some consider this the act of staying in love, not falling in love or just being in love. 6. Philautia: This was the one many Greek philosophers considered the most important – love of oneself. In fact, the Greeks considered this the foundation of all other forms of love – how you love yourself is how you love others. Modern psychology takes a different tack, and it can be that those who dislike themselves are more affectionate towards others as a form of transference. If taken too far, the Greeks felt it become narcissism, which was a negative thing (and is now seen as a psychological disorder), but actual self-love is considered positive. 7. Storge: This is love for family. Not just family of blood, but those life-long friendships that have not passed over into another form of love, and are not born of Philia. However, even though there may be antagonism on the surface, the Greeks believed that family members shared Storge no matter what. 8. Mania: This was the negative form of love to ancient Greeks, and we would call it “toxic” today – an obsessive love. Nearly always unrequited, or if returned, done on one person’s terms only, it is when a person thinks another will ‘complete” them or make them “better”… or when they feel the pairing “needs” to be together. This is where stalking in all its myriad forms resides. Extra 9. Paraphilia: This is a relatively modern form of love to be named, though it has existed for centuries. A Paraphilia is a love for something deemed unnatural. It could be harmless – a man who loves blue eyes to the extent he can only date a woman with blue eyes – or it could degenerate into something hideous or really unnatural. But it is a love that induces strong emotions in the person. 10. Zoophilia: While there are some negative associations with this term, this is a love of animals – including pets – beyond humans. It is not physical (that is bestiality, a paraphilia, although the DSM-5 equates the two, which is unfair), but it is deep-felt. 11. Hatred: This is an intense feeling of the absence of love towards something. Having said that, it is an emotion and it is adjacent to love, and the line between them is very thin. There is a reason the “enemies to lovers” trope exists. 12. Apathy: This is the opposite of love (and hate) in all its forms. It is a lack of emotion towards something or someone. Same sex love used to be seen as a paraphilia (DSM-1, DSM-2 and DSM-3), but now is not even regarded as something to be mentioned separately when discussing love. In fact, as far as the Greeks were concerned, the forms of love they had applied to same-sex love as much as opposite-sex love. Now, C.S.Lewis tried to mess it up in his attempts to Christianise the Western world. His book The Four Loves describes love forms thus: 1. Storge, a love based on empathy and dependency, as found in family 2. Philia, a love based on long-lasting friendship; he considered this the least natural 3. Eros, the romantic love bond of a sexual nature, with a mental connection as well 4. Agape, the unconditional love of God, and to which he felt all Christians should aspire As can be seen, he took four of the Greek concepts and changed them based on his own brand of Christianity. Anyway, ignore Lewis and his propaganda. There are many different forms of love that can make a relationship unique and stand out in a work of fiction, and an understanding of all of them could help make your characters really come to life. |
| Setting – A Final Word I hope this is going to answer three questions: 1) Is setting important? 2) What makes up setting; what goes into it? 3) How much is too much? (aka: Does the colour of the curtains actually matter?) Look, I think over the course of a series of posts, I’ve established that setting is vital to giving a story of decent length a grounding. You’re not going to have the word count in a drabble or flash fiction to do it, and even some short story lengths are not conducive to establishing setting beyond the bare bones. But if you have the word count, it is very important. It is said by some academics that “a story needs three things – a protagonist, stakes and a place where it happens” (a setting). (This is a direct quote from the lecture notes from my Creative Writing degree.) Without that setting, a story does not feel quite real; it “floats there” (same lecture). If a reader has to ask themselves where the characters are, then they are lost. So, is setting important. Yes. Now, as to what goes into setting, that same lecture (that I am going to keep referring to for this) indicated there are 4 components: Location – the physical place where it occurs. This is what I have been talking about up till now. The house, in the town, in the region, in the country. Geography in all its myriad forms. Don’t forget weather in that (or climate if talking longer term). Time – not only time of day, but time of year, and year itself; a story set in 1980 will be very different to one set in 2020. Politics & Culture – this was something I talked about in World Building. While it might not be included explicitly, a story set in Australia and the USA are going to be different because the cultures vary a lot; a story set in Russia and the UK are going to be different based on politics alone. History – this was also mentioned in World Building, but it can also be very specific. Not just big history, but the history of the haunted house – who built it, who died there, how did it fall into disrepute, etc. – is important. Not the personal history of characters; that is not setting, that is character. As to how much detail should be included varies, realistically, across genre. A story set here and now needs much less than something set 40, 60, 100, 1000 years ago. Science fiction and fantasy will need more detail given than a contemporary romance. What is needed to build the world in the mind of the reader is what is needed. However, a lot of writers do go overboard, especially in fantasy. No, we really didn’t need to know the seventeen different colours of flowers around the tree in the back yard of the Hobbit-stand-in’s hovel-cave, no matter how pretty you think it looks, if he’s going to leave said hovel-cave and never go back and the flowers mean nothing to the story. Of course, greater word count does mean greater detail. A novel will have more than a novella, will have more than a short story. That doesn’t mean you can add extraneous and irrelevant information, just that you have more room to expand on the things that matter. If done well, a setting can be a character all its own, one that feels as alive and vibrant as the actual flesh-and-blood characters. Think Pratchett’s Discworld for a magnificent example. So we come to the final question, and what makes too much detail? Some readers like the less is more approach; other readers love family trees, maps, lists of characters that read like the white pages of a decent sized town (does that analogy still fly nowadays?) and descriptions of the mountains, plains, rivers and forests. However, the issue comes when info-dumps occur. You’ve done your research for your story set in 18th century Oxford, but the reader does not need a list of every shop on the main street. You know all about manufacture in the 1600s, but the reader does not need a treatise on smithing in the middle of their historical war novel. This is back-story. We don’t need to know the life story of the infantryman in World War I who is hit in the face by a bullet next to the hero; likewise, we don’t need every little object in a room described and listed and everything else in a bedroom if they are never going to be used. (Okay, yes, Mario Puzo did tell us about every insignificant character’s life story in the book The Godfather… and that is why this is a rare case where the film is better than the book.) Quote again: “Setting is very important to every story. However, the two things that matter most are what the characters are doing and what is going to happen to them next.” |
| World Building I mentioned in the Speculative Settings post that world-building when it comes to setting is important, if not vital. However, even though it is fantasy, unless you are going for something beyond the ken, there needs to be some sort of basis of realism, a concreteness to support the whole thing. Some great worlds have been built in literature. Discworld from Terry Pratchett. Middle Earth from Tolkien, Howard’s Hyborian Age, Lieber’s Erewhon. So many great worlds. So… how do we world build? First, and this has to be a given now: DRAW A MAP! Everything I mentioned in my last post needs to be there. Placement of towns, terrain, farmlands, where things are made, etc. Also, look at rivers. Rivers do not just appear and flow; they start higher up and gravity carries them. They need to come from where it snows or rains a lot to give water, or from some sort of natural sporing or the like. No such thing as spontaneous water. What created the mountains? What created the islands? How many landmasses are there? Why? There is a lot to consider just physically. Now you have to populate it. Is it human only? Humans and creatures of mythology and legend (elves, dwarves, etc.)? Creatures you have made up? Are they just humans in a different skin, like the alien races in the Star Wars and Star Trek universes? If they are different, how? In the traditional publishing world, many publishers, especially in science fiction, will now ask: if they act like humans with one personality trait dominant and with some knobs or extras added on, why not just use humans? Think about the creatures. Intelligent beings who can fly will have a completely different mindset to we land-bound humans. Creatures who live underground will hate light and have heightened other senses. It must all be considered. It might even be good to look at the evolution of your creatures. Cameron did this with Avatar. He did the whole history of life on Pandora. Amazing. Released it as a book. But is it in the film? No. Doesn’t need to be. But that sort of care comes out in the world. Maybe you could look at government systems. We have sort of democracies in most of our world, but would they fit your fantasy world? Even in your historical romance set in a central European principality? In my main fantasy world, most nations are monarchies (some absolute, some with what we would call parliaments advising the monarch), there are a few theocracies (because there is a very dominant religion in my world), a few plutocracies (which tends to lend itself more towards villainous governments, to be honest), and a couple of kraterocracies. The thing is, these help the reader because they can relate in some way to them, and world build so simply. However, if you decided to have a government by the person with the most intelligent pet owl, people are going to wonder (a) why that form of government would work, (b) how that form of government even developed, and (c) what that form of government would mean for the people who lived under it. At least with the old tried and true forms of government, the people and their political ambitions or lack thereof can be explained and understood. I will say that if you decide to base a world on a similar system to Lord of the Rings, it has been done to death. Even before J.R.R. Tolkien died, he was so sick of it he approved the parody book Bored of the Rings. Dungeons and Dragons was based on LotR in part, and so all fanfic from D&D goes back to LotR. What all this means is whatever you want to do in this field, it's probably been done before so be prepared for a lot of rejection letters. As I mentioned in the Speculative Settings post, you need to look at many things in your world. Okay, your characters wear armour and everyone has a sword. That means that metal ores must be common and blacksmiths even more so. Your characters eat, so where is the food? They make clothing from many materials – where did they come from? How are they made? Also, think about religions. Are they important? How many? Monotheistic or pantheistic? Most non-technological cultures have strong religious overtures to everything they did. Or does religion not matter at all, as in Middle Earth? I will say, I find the use of religion in fantasy on Earth-like worlds feels more realistic – pantheistic, differing across cultures, some cross-pollination. Then there is the issue, especially in extraterrestrial fiction, where the worlds are mono-environmental. Sure, there might be a snow area "at the north", but the worlds have one climate, one terrain, the same trees and plants and animals are everywhere, there is no variation in weather. Star Wars is shocking for this. But look at Earth - that is not the case. That is why we humans have managed to become such a thriving dominant species – exploiting the entire world. So, some extra quick-fire mistakes I’ve seen: characters in most fantasy books rarely pass farms, the towns do not have industrial areas, lower socio-economic people are generally portrayed only as beggars, there are coins available to everyone (and nearly always based on D&D coinage systems), religions are just Christian allegories. That’s just the blatantly obvious. Then we have scene setting that often involves ruins. Why are they where they are? Why haven’t other cultures built in the same place? What happened to those old civilisations? Did they collapse, were they conquered, or did a natural disaster impact them? This historical world-building can also add flavour. I have been asked about using invented fictional languages (which Tolkien did magnificently, Harrison in the West of Eden series did surprisingly well… and no-one else has even come close). I would avoid it if possible and find a way of using different text stylings (fonts, a combination of italics and in square parentheses, etc.). Here is what one of my publishers and I came up with: [Ho, stranger! What do you do here?] to indicate a foreign tongue being spoken (in trad publishing, they do not like different fonts and really hate different colours). As it is, I tend to base my fictional languages on a mixture of Latin and ancient Greek, and/or a combination of French and German. Change a letter here and there, but use the declensions/ conjugations so that it isn't coded English. However, don’t call a cow a ‘Splonk’. If it looks like a cow, moos like a cow, gives milk like a cow, then it’s a cow. Science fiction writers are shocking with this – they write with a graphoplex; why not a pen? Which is an example I found in a story I read years ago. Now, many fantasy writers do create their own worlds. The problem is a lot of writers (especially fantasy writers) put a lot of work into their world-building, and they feel they need to show the reader how much work they’ve put in and how clever they are. They've created this world and, dagnabbit. they're going to show everyone their world is fully conceived! Expositions, info dumps, stuff that hardly matters – Chekhov’s gun is very important. Does knowing about the time the eagle-people stole the mouse-king’s sceptre add anything to the story? No? Then leave it out. Write it as a separate, stand-alone short story. Or do what Tolkien did, and write a shed-load of essays. They were intended for him and him alone, but most ended up published. The writer doesn't need to include everything in the story; if it's important, it'll come up; if not, it'll be there for the next book in the world, or you’ll know you’ve done a thorough job. Either way, do it because without it, you’ll have a gap. Drip-feed info, let characters experience it, let them learn, and let some things remain unspoken. However, we don't need to know everything. Especially scenery. Either drip-feed or cut scenery description to what is vital for the plot. A great example is a book I read a few years ago where they spent two long paragraphs describing a waterfall. This waterfall was just a piece of scenery. It meant nothing, and was only mentioned once more when they said something like, "It's near the waterfall." I had the feeling the writer was too in love with their descriptive prowess and the metaphors they'd used and didn't want to lose it. So, that long-winded rant is world building. TL;DR: Use a map. Create everything. Don’t show your readers everything you’ve created. Placement, names, creatures, living aspects, religion, government all needs to make sense. And I have a feeling if anyone bothers to reads this, this will be the first of my hopefully helpful posts to get abusive responses. (Note: I have not spoken about magic. That is a different rant for a different day.) |
| Speculative Settings This is worlds that you create wholecloth out of your imagination. A fantasy setting, a new planet for sci-fi, anything in the speculative sphere. And I will start this by saying something I have already said in the last two posts – draw a map! But also do some research as to why towns are where they are in the real world. Just putting towns wherever might make for a cool looking map, but if it makes no sense in the economics or politics of your world, then the world-building needs work. Here are some examples of places where settlements would be built and why: 1) Mountains, because of mining or for defence. Maybe they protect a pass through the mountains, and so there would be a stronghold there. If for mining, there is a chance the town would be rich, or there could be a lot of minor shanty towns stuck on the sides precariously. In both cases, there is a chance there would be things for soldiers or cashed-up miners to do and so a seedy underlife would exist. 2) Rivers, because of trade. Boats in fantasy settings are the best way to get large amounts of good transported at once quickly. River mouths would also be where the largest trading towns would exist, so they can receive boats from other areas across the ocean as well as upstream. 3) Forests, because of mining (again) or the timber industry. 4) Fields, as a centre for surrounding farmlands, or as a stop-over for cross-country travellers. 5) Royal cities. These would grow where the most important aspect of the nation’s economy exists. If it’s farming, then it would in the middle of a plain; if a trading nation, then near water, etc. For ease of defence, however, they would be on higher ground, and with access to a quick escape. What this means is that a history is probably great to work out in your world-building. But that is part of world-building and not necessarily setting. Sp, one more thing to remember is that the world might be fantasy, but the inhabitants still have to eat, mine, make goods, make clothing, breed animals (including horses for travel). There still needs to be a means of trade (barter, goods swap, coins). They still need modes of transport that make sense for the terrain and people involved. Your world should reflect these inanities of life. If your world has non-human races, what are they? Are they integrated or, like Lord of the Rings, have their own domains? Do they follow traditional archetypes from mythology (dwarves mine and live in mountains, elves love nature, etc.)? Are they your own creation? Where did they evolve/develop and why? How do they interact with humans? Are there even humans? These are the questions for every fantasy setting to make sense for a reader. Then you go to the future setting or alternative history setting. What will have changed? Why? In science-fiction, what about the aliens they might meet? Are they like the creatures in the film Avatar and are hexapods (as opposed to all terrestrial animals that are tetrapods)? Are they carbon-based like us? Or something else? Or are they like the races in the Star Wars and Star Trek universes, and just mostly humans with added bits? It’s your story, your call. But it still needs to make sense. Your setting needs internal logic. Yes, there are a lot of things to look at, and there are many books and YouTube videos on how to put these together realistically. Before I give you some helpful videos, remember - this is all a part of world-building. You need this as a writer. That does not mean the reader needs it all. Lord of the Rings is a good example. Have you read all the essays and supplementary works? There's your history, your world-building, your explanations. in the books themselves? Not so much. So, here's 5 videos to start you on your fantasy world creation. And, remember - make a map. It'll help you and readers love maps! Some pitfalls in hard world building: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODY21Z9zNCw Naming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcKMbVXpRRA Island countries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTYpjsGcKgQ Mountains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSFIEYmOAp0 Fallen civilisations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdH3RqVNUaE |
| Fantastic Realism Settings Continuing with the settings theme, this one is a little obscure and does follow on from the last post. Fantastic realism Settings are those where a really out-of-place thing is set in the real world. More than just another town or suburb, this is taking something that really does not exist and placing it in our world. For example, a castle in Ireland is hardly fantastic; a castle in New Zealand is really out there. Or it could be a cave system underneath Rhode Island, a eucalyptus grove in Germany, etc. Or, going further, a magic school in England, an Egyptian temple in South Australia, etc. In these cases, the magic place has to react with the realistic setting which surrounds it. This is really hard to do. Even something as well thought-out and created as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter universe is somewhere that is hidden by magic and somehow Muggles don’t see or notice magic trains or kids running into walls. First, you have to work out how things could be there. What created the caves? Underground rivers, lava, limestone erosion, a subterranean civilisation? If they are just caves, then that makes no sense. Fantasy or not, the setting you have chosen is still our world and these things need to make sense in our world. In my own cave-based book, the caves were dug by a lizard-man civilisation. That was it. In another book I read, the writer set the caves in the side of a mountain, and the indication they were the results of an old volcano. Makes sense. Another classic example is that castles were built for defence; placing one in the middle of a field or a town that is not a capital of some sort makes no sense. Even Harry Potter gets this right – Hogwarts is on top of a mountain, protected by water on some sides. That’s where an old stronghold would have been built. Even in horror, these things need to make sense. That two storey run-down house in the bad end of town that is haunted indicates that, at some time, it was a rich area, and so the world should reflect that past glory. So, while you have this fantastical place in our world, its placement does need to make sense if you want it to exist in our world. Now, a personal opinion and a tangent (and one I have seen reflected in "what we don't want" lists in publisher websites). Special fantasy schools in young adult fiction are becoming cliché, and I can see why the publishers are rejecting these sorts of stories more and more. Since Harry Potter, they are being done to death in fantasy. Magic schools, fighting schools, schools to read language, rune schools – I have read so many of them. I do understand that many YA novels have a majority of action at schools nowadays, not out of the school system, as it was in my day. I think this is because a lot of youngsters only interact face to face with others at school (the out of school interactions are online), and that is fine, and publishers don't seem to mind normal schools, but these specialised fantasy schools have been overdone. |
| Using Pseudo-Real Settings The second of my indeterminate number of posts about settings! This time I'll be looking at pseudo-real settings. A pseudo-real setting is a place that has been created by the writer, but exists amongst genuinely real places. The famous two that spring to mind are King’s Derry region and Lovecraft’s Innsmouth. This way, the writer has a real setting in a country or region they know well, with real people, but the town or towns they have created are purely creations of the imagination. I’ll use a town I made up for one of my published novels as an example. I live on the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, and if you follow the east coast of the peninsula the towns in order are Clinton, Price, Tiddy Widdy Beach, Ardrossan, Port Julia and so on. So, I placed my town of Wills Creek south of Price, at the southern end of the Wills Creek Conservation Park. In reality, there is nothing there. I based the set-up of the town on a section of Clinton plus a chunk of Dowlingville, drew a map (including a small caravan park, a deserted shop and an old church), created the natural surrounding geography – extra trees and cliffs – and then set the big final battle in the town, destroying half of it in the process. This has all the advantages of a real setting with the added bonus you can put things where they need to be. Again, my recommendation would be draw yourself a map, and then take Google maps, print off the area you want, and work out how to fit the town in. Personally, I find it best to put my made-up town where nothing exists; renaming and changing an existing place has some issues of its own (like Gotham and Coast City in the DC comics), but can also be done. However, there is a little more freedom in going the way of complete invention. Remember to map the entire place, and make it fit in with surrounding geography, comparable towns. Your story will not use everything you create, but so long as you have created it, it will be completely real in your setting. This does not mean map out every single block of land and what is on it, but make sure you have major landmarks and homes of characters that are important. Like I said, I based Wills Creek on bits of other towns, and my map had the church, shop, caravan park, a dozen homes, a disused CFS station, the boat ramp, the cliff-top look-out, the jetty and the picnic park at the entrance of the national park labelled. Only half of them appeared in the story. When looking at historical settings, this can actually be easier, because finding the real geography of a town a hundred, two hundred or more years ago can be very difficult unless you have access to a large library in the area concerned, but you know someone out there will have a map and call you out if you make a mistake. So, instead of setting your Georgian romance in Cardiff, set it in the much smaller Car-Wynn-Eld, a day’s horse-ride from Cardiff. You can have all the historical detail you need, without panicking over whether this street existed during the reign of King George III. Of course, this is, again, my opinion. You are writing, in the end, a work of fiction. So long as you put your disclaimer at the start, it is fiction. Having said that, it is often best not to change famous sites. Does it matter that the streets Broadway and Amsterdam in New York City don’t meet, but you have that as a major intersection? Yes, it does. Does it matter that you have the roads Montague and Wright in Valley View meet, when they are actually parallel? Probably only for the people who live there (and that could upset your audience). Does it matter that your made-up streets of Lincoln and Washington meet in your made-up suburb of Peterborough? No – you made the streets up, and you have a disclaimer. Of course, it is your story, and you can do what needs to be done to make your story work. But the points about distances travelled with time mentioned in the previous post still hold true. The laws of physics and the size of countries do not change. But, really... MAPS! |
| Using Real Settings Setting is where the story takes place. Obviously. In many stories, setting almost becomes a character itself. Think of Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (J.R.R. Tolkien), the Derry setting in many of Stephen King’s stories (or especially the titular Pet Sematary), or H.P. Lovecraft’s Innsmouth. In longer works, the setting is vital to give the story a sense of place, grounded in the reality of the story. So, what I am going to look at here is using real settings for stories, and some things to watch out for. Just in case this is confusing, real settings are places that exist in our world, either now or historically. The “write what you know” dictate is vital here. If you make mistakes in the geography of a real location, a huge chunk of your audience will know and they will come down on you in this age of hyper-connectivity. For that reason, many writers set their stories in the locations they are familiar with. They might have grown up there, live there currently, have relatives living there, or something else. The major advantage of using a setting you know very well is that you have the geography in your head already. This means your preplanning for settings is done by your lifetime of experience. Sure, you might change a street name here or there, put a Church where the hotel is, put a cemetery where the shopping mall is, change the name of the place, but if it is your town, you know it, and that familiarity will come through in the characters, and that in turn will be conveyed to a reader. However, be careful with these little changes, and if it is a book that gets published, indicate that changes have been made for the sake of a work of fiction in the notes section near the front, or in that bit that tells readers that “…all characters are fictitious…” This will generally keep critics at bay. I had to do that in Invasive Species, where I changed the layout of the school. Most of my stories are set in Australia, and that really does help set the characters as well, and ground them in my reality. I also find that if I take the stories to rural Australia, where I live now, the sense of isolation makes the horror (my preferred genre) all the more tangible. It does also tend to mean that, for an overseas market, they apparently have the feel of somewhere different (almost exotic), which is a selling point, which is how I have managed to sell two of my novels. But this does mean geography is important. An author from the USA had written a horror story set in the late 1800s I read years ago. At one point, the characters come to Australia. They travel by horse and cart from Melbourne to Adelaide in a night. Say it was the dead of winter, that'd be maybe 12 hours. So? you may ask. It takes 7 to 8 hours by car nowadays with decent paved roads, travelling at the current speed limit of 110 km/h (70mph). Therefore, his timing made me go, "Huh?" I put it down to not understanding how big Australia is for some-one in another country (we're talking pre-Internet days here, the 1990s). A few years later I was reading a book in a different genre to my usual by an Australian author. She had a couple drive from Perth to Sydney in a day. That's about 4000km (2500 miles), so averaging 165 km/h (100mph) without stops for petrol, without slowing for going through towns, without eating anything, without going to the toilet, without getting caught by the over-zealous NSW police, after the car had already been described as "20 year old second hand Datsun" (or words to that effect). That is not happening. Recently, in one of my stories, I had a family travel from Manchester to Hastings in the UK, a country I have never been to. It's about 450km, so, thinking Australia, I said it'd take 3 to 4 hours. Then I was chatting to a friend online, and asked her. She said it would be closer to a 5 or 6 hour journey because of the speed limits, toll roads, towns to go through, everything else. Those extra 2 hours actually changed what I needed for the story, so I had to do a complete rewrite of the events. These may not seem like much, I admit, but in this modern global world of writing and publishing, you need to ensure all your readers are going to understand the reality of what you are writing. And setting will be one thing people can point to and go, "Hey! That ain't right!" On a side note, and this is something that I think older writers do forget: in settings, don’t forget things like cell phones, mobile phones, smartphones. They're so pervasive that to leave them out or ignore them makes the work feel like it's too unreal, or that it’s set 20+ years ago. Keep up to date with technology and what is a part of the wider world. Again, the setting of the real world. I'll take this into other setting types in the next few entries! |
| Book Series (A Rant) This is my personal opinion, so this means nothing in the grand scheme of things except it is where I stand. First, I have to say, I get annoyed with book series a lot of the time. By the time the next book has come out I’ve forgotten what happened in the last book, or if I read them all at once, especially a long series, I get bored and forget who people are. I have enjoyed two trilogies (Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and West of Eden by Harry Harrison), and one series (Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy by Douglas Adams). That’s it. I couldn't finish Wheel Of Time or Game Of Thrones; too many characters, I needed a scorecard. I have a sextet of books (War of Powers) that falls apart in books 3, 4 and 5; that would have been a better trilogy. For me, give me a good stand-alone novel, where I can enter a world, lose myself for a week or so, and I'm happy. (Aside: okay, look at that: do all trilogies and most series need the word "of" in their titles?) Authors who write their books with the aim of it being a trilogy (or longer), especially beginner writers, I think miss the idea of what it means to write a story. And, especially these inexperienced authors, write the first book, leave it open-ended, and then the second never comes out. Just write a novel. Or novella. Or short story. Now, I have written one trilogy, but I did not go into it as a trilogy. I wrote the first as a stand-alone novel (125,000 words), and thought I’d finished it. However, my beta reader said, "What about XYZ?" which is mentioned in passing at one point. That got me thinking and it led to a second book (119,000 words). The same reader then said, "You mentioned PQR happening in both books. How did it happen?" Bang – book 3 (109,000 words). To be honest, the final book feels forced to me (though my beta reader liked it more than number two). Apart from that one collection, all my stuff stands alone. Okay, in short stories, I have a long series of over 100 stories with recurring characters, but apart from maybe a few short stories that are direct sequels to others, the idea is you can read any of them and not need to read any other. I also have a series which are narrated by the same character, and they come in an order of the character getting older, but they have been written (and 2 sold) as stand-alone as well as part of the longer, over-arching idea of a man telling tales before he dies. Back to my novel trilogy. For me, going into it like I did, writing three stand-alone books that are related, written because of questions that were raised previously, means I feel I do not alienate an audience. If someone only reads book one, then they are not left hanging. if they read books one and 2, they are not left hanging. Also, by doing it that way, if they didn't get written, the reader would not have actually missed out on something promised. Now, once you are an experienced writer, aiming for a trilogy (or longer) is fine. You will have your work and writing habits down, you will know your style, you will have an idea of how you write best, you will know how to develop plots and make characters interesting. But I do think that is something that comes with practice. To start your writing life aiming to be the next Tolkien (or George R.R. Martin or Robert Jordan) is a fine ultimate goal, but, to my mind, should not be the initial goal. Build up to the trilogy. Start with short stories, then the stand-alone novel, then a few more of each, then hit the big magnum opus. Build up to it, is what I am saying. I am not telling you not to aim for it, but take your time getting there. In my opinion. |
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