words

I don’t need to see more characters taking a piss

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Lev Grossman has a fun list of 20 things he wants to see characters in fantasy novels do more often. Someday I’ll do a list of all the reasons the internet is about lists, but this one is pretty fun.

However, I don’t much need to see characters peeing, unless it’s important to the story. Are they trapped somewhere for a long time? Are they showing their contempt for someone? Go for it. Otherwise, leave it implied.

Also, number 1, forgetting things, wouldn’t fit the sort of stories I like to read or write. For most of us, the expectation is that characters will perform to the best of their abilities. If the troll army is marching through a forest, the elven ranger might be able to successfully elude them while the city tax collector could not, but we expect both to do their best. This is why we invented the term “idiot plot.”

Frankly, fiction is artificial enough without adding complications from obstacles like “I swear I packed our weapons!” It seems too much like author manipulation.

As for number 19, I figure worlds on the other sides of portals would be pretty much like ours, in the most basic way. I mean, if I’m not taking up arms against the Dark Lards in our world, why would I believe myself capable of doing it in another?

Short fiction on the donation model

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All around cool guy Saladin Ahmed is giving away a Sword & Sorcery tale on his website, with a request for donations. Times are tough for a lot of people, but as someone with out-of-date prescription glasses, I can tell you how incredibly hard it is for a writer who struggles to see text.

Give the story a read and, if you like it, send a couple of bucks his way.

Publishing some fiction on my blog

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In other news, I just paid for the right to publish my son’s first “novel” on my blog. It’s a comic fantasy called “The Twin Swords of Zordain,” and it’s almost ten thousand words long. I haven’t decided if I’m going to post it all in one post (behind a cut, obviously) or break it up.

I just need to format it a bit and I’ll post it.

I give away a book.

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Want a free book? Well, I have a free book and I intend to give it away.

My contributor copies for the Don’t Read This Book anthology have arrived, and I’m going to give one (signed by me) away. Anthology, you say? Here’s a list of the contributors:

Stephen Blackmoore
Harry Connolly
Rich Dansky
Matt Forbeck
Laura Anne Gilman
Will Hindmarch
Mur Lafferty
Robin D. Laws
Ryan Macklin
C. E. Murphy
Josh Roby
Greg Stolze
Monica Valentinelli

Chuck Wendig is the editor. The stories are set in the nightmare world (literally) of the Don’t Rest Your Head rpg. Oh look! A picture of the books!

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I’m keeping two.

Anyway, if you want to be entered for a chance to win one, sign up for my newsletter by Friday. At that time, I’ll send an incredibly easy question to everyone on the list, and will randomly choose a winner from the responses.

Yes, this is a naked attempt to get people to sign up for my newsletter. Hey, I hope to have even more new books out soon, and I figure that anyone interested in this anthology would want to hear about them, too. Of course, after the drawing you can ask to be taken off the list again. Also, due to the costs of international shipping, this is going to have to be U.S. only.

You have until late Friday to sign up. Free book!

If it’s from Pixar, it must be good

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Pixar, right? They make good movies that are affecting and also make sense. Sort of a rare thing now.

Anyway, Pixar story artist Emma Coats has been basic story “rules”.

Now, I’ve mentioned before that there is really only one rule: Be interesting. However! Her advice is pretty good. I especially like #6 and #15, and I’ve recommended people do #10, #12, and #20 already. I should probably be better about #2 and #5.

But it’s good stuff.

“… anyone who wants to talk about Wheel of Time and doesn’t get that it’s metafiction isn’t really worth listening to.”

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Here’s an idea I didn’t really consider when I read and reviewed The Eye of the World: that it’s a meta-fictional take on the fantasy genre.

Aidan Moher linked to my writeup on Reddit and let’s just say the reception wasn’t warm. That’s cool by me; I’m not all that concerned with having everyone agree with me. And while some of the reactions were dumb…

[It’s meta-fiction, which is] why you have in-world main characters (ta’veren,) an in-world mechanism that drives plot contrivances (the pattern,) and characters who are savvy enough to manipulate the inherent illogicality of their world (Mat abusing his luck, people being able to find Rand by his trail of improbable events). It’s a fantasy series that deals with the implications of living in a fantasy world, but does it subtly without being an outright parody. I’m tempted to say that after Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan is probably the second most genre-savvy author in fantasy

Meta-fiction? Or is that being a savvy munchkin about the rules of your own setting? Or something else?

Obviously I haven’t read the whole series but I’m sure some of you have. What do you think? Comments on the blog are turned off due to spam, but you can reply by tweet, on Facebook, or join the conversations on LiveJournal.

Components of a popular book: An examination of THE EYE OF THE WORLD

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I started The Eye of the World weeks ago, but only just finished it this weekend. A lot of people love it, I know, but to be honest I found it a bit of a slog. However! I am keenly aware that it was incredibly popular at the time of its original release (1990) and continues to be so today after the author’s death.

It’s one of those series people complain about all the time; that’s a sure sign of success. But why was it a success?

I want to talk about what I liked, what I disliked, and what qualities it has that I believe made it popular.

ObDisclaimer: Saying: “These are the qualities that made this book a best-seller” is not the same as saying: “These are the only qualities that make a best-seller.” This may seem obvious, but this is the internet. What interests me here is the way this book is similar to mainstream bestsellers by people like Patterson, Koontz, etc.

Spoilers, obviously. Continue reading

“Actually, ‘Dhoom’ is Old Elvish for ‘bucolic paradise'”

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The column rode out of the city, armor gleaming, lances high, banners snapping in the wind. An old tinker, resting on a stump at the side of the road, called out: “Mean you to ride to the Mountains of Dhoom?”

“We do! We should arrive there just as the leaves turn. We’re going to tap those kegs, do a little fishing… you know, guy time.”

Honest to God, I do not want to see something like “The Mountains of Dhoom” written on a fantasy map unless the protagonist has a time-share there, and they love to ride paddle boats on Lake Dheath and plan to take their toddler to pick wildflowers on Dhestruction Meadow.

Eye of the World is an old book, I know, and I’m sure these jokes have all been told before, but as dull as this thing is, “Dhoom” hit me pretty hard. I took it as a personal insult.

Anyway, I’m nearly finished with it and plan to write up a post about why I suspect it was so popular. Soonish.

In other news, I’m writing this Thursday night and setting it to publish Friday am. I’ll be off the web pretty much all day, this being my wife’s birthday and all. I’ll be making meals, cleaning up, and generally making things easy on her today, and that means I won’t have much time for posting and tweeting. See you Saturday.

One Thing You Shouldn’t Say To A Writer

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“I’ll never buy one of your books!”

Seriously. Don’t say this.

It used to be that, whenever authors went online, people told them “Be careful what you say! Don’t be political! Don’t be controversial! You’ll drive away readers!” And people believed that, too, until it became clear that it just wasn’t true.

The truth is that most writers don’t care about some stranger who pops up and swears they won’t give us money. That just means they’re part of the largest set of human beings on the planet: My non-fans.

What’s more, it just makes a reader look silly. So if you are never going to read some particular author’s work again, go for it. Hey, blog about it or Twitter about it with your friends. But don’t bother telling the author, because they don’t care.

In other news, life has been determined to interfere with my revisions on A Blessing of Monsters but I’m making headway. In fact, I’d be nearly finished with them right now if I hadn’t come up with a startling new idea that really pulls things together.

Tomorrow is going to be another big working day. I’m tempted to go on an internet fast so I can wrap this sucker up.

In which I opine on two TV shows I haven’t seen

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Over on Tor.com, Shoshana Kessock compares the portrayal of women in Game of Thrones and Girls and comes down on the side of the genre show, despite its problems.

Me, I haven’t seen either show. I have read Martin’s novels and I listened to an interview with Lena Dunham on NPR. Maybe that limited exposure should disqualify me from commenting on the topic, but this is my blog and I can be wrong if I want to.

Anyway, while listening to Dunham on NPR, she specifically addressed the whole “Voice of my generation” bit, making it clear that the character was ridiculous even when she wasn’t stoned and that she hoped viewers would recognize it wasn’t to be taken seriously. In fact, she made it clear that she was making an effort to portray a character who was not admirable at all–she admitted that others involved in the show had to make her pull back on the amount of humiliation heaped on her.

And my first thought was “She’s writing to literary protocols.”

Years ago when I was studying everything I could find about writing, someone (I’ve forgotten who) said that genre characters always (or nearly always) operated at the best of their ability. Whether it’s Conan fighting a giant snake or a CPA who discovers that her daughter has been kidnapped by a motorcycle gang, the characters may not always have skills and competence in a particular situation, but they do the best with what they have. If they do make mistakes, it’s either like Peter Parker letting the crook escape (a lesson that needs to be learned/kick off the story) or it’s the cop who arrests the wrong person (a mistaken action based on a misunderstanding of the evidence at hand).

When a character persists in their error, the way Neo continues to resist the idea that he’s living in a computer simulation, the instinct is to become exasperated with them. The same is true for stories where the audience wants the protagonist to operate at their best but they don’t (or don’t appear to be) such as addiction stories.

But in stories aimed for a literary market (at least the ones I’ve read) the characters rarely operate at their best. They’re feckless, selfish, self-delusional, or flawed in all sorts of ways. They don’t get out when they should. They don’t address their problems in a way that would fix them. It’s like Joe Gillis in Sunset Blvd: The movie starts out with him shot to death, and you see the long awful comedy of errors that led him to that fate.

Obviously, there’s overlap here; you can’t make large generalizations about groups of books (or readers) without begging exceptions or edge cases, but to me it looks like a clash of two conflicting artistic impulses.