Posts Tagged ‘Writing’

IN THE MASTER’S SHADOW: Epic Fantasy in the Post-Tolkien World

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.” –J.R.R. Tolkien

Everybody’s talking about Tolkien again.

Peter Jackson’s rollicking adaptation of The Hobbit recently debuted as the world’s #1 movie, eleven years after his first Tolkien-inspired film. Much has been made of Jackson’s decision to expand the one-volume Hobbit into three movies in the tradition of the Lord of the Rings. Fans and critics argue about the wisdom of stretching this one book (itself a prequel) across three films. Yet any discussion of these movies inevitably leads back to the books themselves. And the book is always better than the movie.

J.R.R. Tolkien is to epic fantasy what Jimi Hendrix is to rock guitar; what Edgar Allan Poe is to horror stories; what William Shakespeare is to drama. It is impossible to write an epic fantasy without being somehow influenced (directly or indirectly) by the work of Tolkien. The man did not necessarily invent the fantasy genre, but he did create the modern conception of what epic fantasy looks and feels like.

After Tolkien, any book featuring elves, dwarves, hobbits, and/or goblins was borrowing elements of his work (or accused of “stealing” them outright). The trilogy became the dominant fantasy format. Even the simple orc has become a hugely popular monster, featured in novels, movies, comics, and games to a degree that Tolkien would never have expected. Tolkien’s imitators are legion, and used bookstores are full of novels written “in the tradition of Lord of the Rings.” This has been the state of the fantasy genre for decades.

Yet does Tolkien hold the “copyright” on the epic fantasy concept? How does a modern writer craft an epic fantasy that goes beyond the Tolkien paradigm and explores new ground, without simply remixing and reinventing what The Master has done?

It has been said that “there are no new stories, just new ways to tell them.” This is the job of today’s writer of epic fantasy: To tell a mythic story in some new way.

Fantasy tropes, plots, and devices are recycled endlessly, and that’s only to be expected. Fantasy fiction is the modern equivalent of the myth cycles of early humanity. The heroes, conflicts, and adventures touch on the timeless themes that run through all literature, from Beowulf to The Odyssey, all the way to Lord of the Rings and modern fantasy epics like George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

In The Books of the Shaper series I set out to create a world that I would enjoy exploring throughout the course of an epic-length novel and beyond. I knew right away that I didn’t want any of the more commonly used elements of “Tolkien-style fantasy”—no elves, no dwarves, no orcs or goblins. These elements (races) are so quintessentially Tolkien that I had no interest in doing “my version” of them. I love Tolkien, but I didn’t want to be him. I wanted to be myself.

Granted, Tolkien was not the first human being to write about elves or goblins or dwarves. Yet he popularized his personal vision of these creatures to such a towering degree that his take on them has largely replaced the actual folklore that birthed them. There are many writers who are entirely comfortable using elves and similar fantasy creatures in their work—and there is nothing wrong with that in principle. However, when a writer chooses to work with these popular elements he has to leap an extra hurdle of creativity to avoid accusations of “ripping off” Tolkien. Ironically, nobody accuses Tolkien of “stealing” generations of folktales, Nordic legends, and European myth-histories—the actual raw material that inspired his works. Perhaps this is because Tolkien was borrowing from uncounted sources drawn from the depths of time, rather than taking his cue from a single influence.

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Elizabeth Moon: My Fascination with ‘Good’ Characters

I spend at least a year – for multi-volume works several years – inside the heads of the POV characters.  Their thoughts, their feelings, their wishes, dreams, fears, and worst moments are part of my daily thought stream. 

It’s like having a stranger move into the house or apartment, sharing every detail of his/her life, dirty underwear and all. 

Yes, of course I know characters are fiction – I made them up – but I have to feel them as if they were real in order to write them.  And that means I’m vulnerable to their moods, their thoughts.  

So I don’t want to spend a year inside the head of someone I wouldn’t want to be around in real life.  Most people wouldn’t want to be around them, either: the bitter, resentful, envious whiner and the arrogant, narcissistic, backbiting, backstabbing, climber just don’t have that many friends.  It doesn’t matter if they’re nice to their cat, raise fancy koi, or paint exquisite miniatures on porcelain: if they’re generally rotten, I don’t want to them in my head, poisoning my days with their constant negativity.  Writing one self-deluded whiny character’s train wreck from the inside (Luap in SURRENDER NONE and LIAR’S OATH) was enough. 

Elizabeth Moon's epic fantasy trilogy 'Paladin's Legacy'
Elizabeth released ECHOES OF BETRAYAL, the third epic fantasy novel in her Paladin's Legacy series, just last week.

Of course I still do write bad characters, but I write them from outside (or mostly outside) where I can show their effect on others and offer some glimpse of how they got to be bad, if that’s important to the story.  Sometimes it’s not: a story with a single strong protagonist – especially one with an unusual viewpoint, like Lou in THE SPEED OF DARK – would lose its intensity if the reader’s attention were diverted to his employer’s viewpoint.  Bad characters vary in their own motivations.

Good characters aren’t perfect – they would be boring if they were – and their flaws, their mistakes, their internal conflicts with their own competing motivations make them interesting companions for the time I spend writing them (in a several-volume story, it’s several years).  In fact, my “good” characters are so flawed that I’ve had some people question how I can possibly consider them good.  None of them qualify for the Perfect Person of the Year award by conventional standards of Perfect.

After all, Paksenarrion (THE DEED OF PAKSENARRION) disobeyed her father, ran away from home to become a mercenary soldier, has a hot temper, and killed people for a living.  Gird (SURRENDER NONE, LIAR’S OATH) not only led a violent peasant revolt resulting in thousands of deaths, he drank too much and had a ferocious temper.  Heris Serrano, in the Serrano/Suiza books, disobeys an order (albeit a vicious order), makes bad decisions, quarrels with her family, and is contemptuous of rich civilians – like her employer.  Ofelia, in REMNANT POPULATION, evades an evacuation order, deliberately staying behind so that she can be alone (she thinks) on the planet, free to indulge herself for the rest of her life, using whatever was left behind as if it belonged to her (misappropriation of property, if not worse).  Ky Vatta, in the VATTA’S WAR series, gets a thrill out of killing – she’s shocked at herself, but she can’t change the reaction.  Her batty Aunt Grace, a harmless-looking old lady who bakes fruitcakes, breaks the law on a regular basis and brings down a government. 

So . . . why do I insist they’re good?

Because good isn’t simple.   And these characters do more than whine, rage, complain and posture about themselves.  They intend to be constructive and not destructive, even when they’re starting quarrels that have dire consequences (Esmay Suiza) and trusting the wrong person (Ky Vatta).  If Paksenarrion had been conventionally good, she would never have saved the lives she’s saved (and she’d have made a very bad pig-farmer’s wife).  All the “good” characters are bad sometimes – all have had enough trouble to last a lifetime – but they are capable of growth and change, and how they change – exactly what decisions they make under the pressure of past experience and current events – is what interests me. 

 

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

When Harlan Ellison was asked “Where do you get your ideas from?” he famously answered “Schenectady.” Ellison was commenting on the absurdity of pinning down a process as ephemeral, multi-dimensional and just plain murky as the origin of an idea. However, if the question had been modified to exclude the final word from the sentence then Ellison’s answer would work for me.

Author by Mohawk River in Schenectady

I’ve lived in Schenectady. It’s an industrial city on the Mohawk River in Upstate New York. It’s famous for being the site of the Schenectady Massacre of 1690, where French and Native American forces attacked the fledgling settlement at midnight, burning it to the ground and slaying sixty men, women and children who were still in their bedclothes, and also for being the place where Thomas Edison chose to headquarter his fledgling General Electric Company. Schenectady is built on land that was once the territory of the Mohawk nation, and its name comes from the Mohawk phrase, “over the pine plains.”

I wrote a great chunk of Watcher of the Dead within the city’s limits.  And as the answer to the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” is always “Where I was physically located at that moment the idea occurred to me,” then my ideas are officially from Schenectady. (more…)

Back Story: Deprecated

Back when I was a wee lad and just starting to write, I used to create huge, sprawling backstories for my works: Complete histories going back thousands of years, maps and other archival documents, diaries for characters—none of which was ever meant for the book itself. It was just for my sense of realism and to convey a sense of history to the work through the casual dispensation of details that were vetted against each other and thus quietly consistent.

Obviously, I could also have begun this essay with the sentence, Back when I was a wee lad and just starting to write, I had few friends other people could see, but let’s not go down that road. (more…)