Punting is what I didn't get to do in Cambridge today because it was way too freakin' cold. But it basically consists of standing in the back of a small boat ("punt") and poling it up and down canals. Definitely a cool thing, and a wonderful experience to have in the repertoire when writing.
Neat thing is, until the friend I was visiting suggested we try it, it had never occurred to me that it might be applicable to my writing. So even though I never got to try it, I still learned that a.) I should give it a try and b.) Maybe some of my boats should be punted instead of rowed.
Long story short, it's just another example of how fate often presents you with opportunities for growth as a writer, if you only manage to notice them.
In other news, I leave on my european adventure tomorrow, which means blog posts should grow more intermittent, but also more interesting. The next time I write it will probably be from an internet cafe in Rome, with visions of gladiators and ancient ruins dancing in my head. Stay tuned for that one.
Saturday 22 March 2008
Wednesday 19 March 2008
Using Common Fantasy Elements
This is something I've struggled with lately---namely whether or not it's wise to use common fantasy elements (I'm thinking especially of elves, dwarves, gnomes, orcs, and whatnot) in one's writing.
When I first began writing fantasy, the thought of doing it without at least a few of these races seemed impossible. I didn't have what it took to create a full world of my own from scratch, so I borrowed from archetypes I was familiar with and worked with them.
As my writing matures, however, I find that my own dwarves and elves (the common elements I chose to work with) are very different from the archetypes I started out with. This of course is a good thing, and had been a goal of mine even when I first set out to use those archetypes in the first place.
But I've now hit a point where they are sufficiently differentiated that I could simply rename the races and forego the archetypes entirely, and I'm not sure whether it's wise to do that. To be certain, there are upsides to it---a lot of people seem to be sick of dwarves and elves, particularly (and importantly) editors and agents, who I'm sure have seen the same old dwarves and elves eight thousand times and understandably get a little queasy when they see those words in a manuscript.
However, I'm not sure that giving up those associations is something I want to do. Certainly you can, and a lot of very successful fantasy writers have. Robert Jordan certainly didn't need elves and dwarves---he had enough new races of his own. But even in looking at his work I can see there are failures to his method as well. While the Aiel wound up being an incredibly cool race, the Trollocs (for me at any rate) fell flat on their faces. And the non-elf, non-dwarf knockoffs of the originals I see in imported Chinese and Korean MMORPGs just make me roll my eyes and decide to play a human instead.
Additionally, other writers have done very well with the archetypes they started out with. The elves of Dragonlance are nothing like Tolkien's elves, and the dwarves of Terry Brooks are a far cry from the stereotypical dwarf. Most readers of fantasy like elves and dwarves, at least up to a point, because it's sort of what we all began with--they're just comfortable, a part of our shared literary past. Giving readers a range of different kinds of their favorite archetypes to identify with can be a good thing to do as well.
So I'm wondering what other people think. Do elves and dwarves have a place in new fantasy anymore?
When I first began writing fantasy, the thought of doing it without at least a few of these races seemed impossible. I didn't have what it took to create a full world of my own from scratch, so I borrowed from archetypes I was familiar with and worked with them.
As my writing matures, however, I find that my own dwarves and elves (the common elements I chose to work with) are very different from the archetypes I started out with. This of course is a good thing, and had been a goal of mine even when I first set out to use those archetypes in the first place.
But I've now hit a point where they are sufficiently differentiated that I could simply rename the races and forego the archetypes entirely, and I'm not sure whether it's wise to do that. To be certain, there are upsides to it---a lot of people seem to be sick of dwarves and elves, particularly (and importantly) editors and agents, who I'm sure have seen the same old dwarves and elves eight thousand times and understandably get a little queasy when they see those words in a manuscript.
However, I'm not sure that giving up those associations is something I want to do. Certainly you can, and a lot of very successful fantasy writers have. Robert Jordan certainly didn't need elves and dwarves---he had enough new races of his own. But even in looking at his work I can see there are failures to his method as well. While the Aiel wound up being an incredibly cool race, the Trollocs (for me at any rate) fell flat on their faces. And the non-elf, non-dwarf knockoffs of the originals I see in imported Chinese and Korean MMORPGs just make me roll my eyes and decide to play a human instead.
Additionally, other writers have done very well with the archetypes they started out with. The elves of Dragonlance are nothing like Tolkien's elves, and the dwarves of Terry Brooks are a far cry from the stereotypical dwarf. Most readers of fantasy like elves and dwarves, at least up to a point, because it's sort of what we all began with--they're just comfortable, a part of our shared literary past. Giving readers a range of different kinds of their favorite archetypes to identify with can be a good thing to do as well.
So I'm wondering what other people think. Do elves and dwarves have a place in new fantasy anymore?
Tuesday 18 March 2008
Query Letters
Okay, I know it's technically Wednesday morning, but seeing as I haven't gone to sleep yet it still counts as Tuesday's blog post---deal? Now, on to the subject at hand:
Query letters. I have struggled with these bastages for coming on five years now. They have been the ever-loving bane of my existence, but I am getting better and better at writing them. I learned a lot of good lessons about what to include at the Pikes Peak Writer's Conference last spring (and I must take this opportunity to plug Writer's Conferences. If you can't afford one, find a way to...even if it means crashing on the floor of a high school friend's empty dorm room to avoid the hotel bill and not going out on the weekends for three months to save the cash. It's totally, completely, unequivocably worth it) and mine is constantly improving.
I thought my query letter was good enough after the PPWC last year. After all, my in-person pitch had gotten the attention of Kristin Nelson, who was my dream agent until she rejected my sample pages (she has now been honorably relegated to incredible-agent-whom-I-wish-had-been-interested), and I figured I was good to go.
Unfortunately, when I sent out my letter to a few more agents that summer, not a single one asked for sample pages. So I thought, hmm...what's missing? The description of my story remained unchanged from the in-person pitch to the written one, so it couldn't have been that. Then I encountered the final paragraph of my query letter. It read, and I quote:
"I am a college student pursuing a Creative Writing degree at Hamilton College in upstate New York, but I grew up in Colorado and plan to return there after I graduate. This is my first novel, and I very much appreciate your time in considering it."
Not bad, or so I had thought. Fairly professional, short, a slight introduction to who I am as a person, and not making much of my lack of credentials. But after my spate of rejections I realized that it was a glaring weak point. There are things that make me very well qualified to write what I write. So I changed that paragraph to include them. Unfortunately I don't have any saved drafts of that version of the query letter template, but it read something like this.
"I am a college student pursuing a Creative Writing degree at Hamilton College in upstate New York. I plan to become a professional writer and have put a lot of thought into how to do so. I grew up reading fantasy books, but as I got older my interests grew to include anime and RPG videogames as well. These interests have combined to make my writing something unique--a fantasy novel that combines traits of anime and RPG storytelling.This is my first novel, and I very much appreciate your time in considering it."
Better, I thought, but not nearly good enough. Yes, those are the reasons why my writing is unique, but there's nothing solid there. Telling an agent "I have these hobbies and they contribute to my writing, and trust me when I say that I take my writing seriously" is pretty weak. It was, to use a term familiar to those of us who have taken a creative writing course, telling and not showing.
For a moment, I sat and stared at my sad little paragraph wondering how on earth I was going to convince an agent that I really am a competent writer with an understanding of the industry and plans to write professionally, as well as a unique voice because of the way I blend my influences.
Then I had my great, breakthrough brainstorm. I decided to write the paragraph I WANTED to send, not the one based off of my credentials so far. It read something like this:
"I am a graduate of Hamilton College with a degree in Creative Writing. I have worked as an intern at a major publishing house. In my senior year at college I wrote my thesis on storytelling similarities and differences in Anime, RPG videogames, and fantasy literature. My experience studying Anime and RPGs has made my novel something unique: a fantasy novel that combines Anime and RPG storytelling techniques to drawn in readers used to seeing those types of stories."
I felt I was onto something. Only a sketch of what it needed to be, really, but a much stronger paragraph, and one that has acted since then as a blueprint for my professional development. As I have completed some of my objectives and discovered new ones, the paragraph has grown. At press time, it reads like this:
"I am a twenty-one year old college student pursuing a creative writing degree who has been preparing for a career as a novelist since the age of fifteen. I have a blog about writing that gets about two hundred visitors a month (http://wakaiwriter.blogspot.com). For the past nine months I have worked on maintaining a World of Warcraft community site and am looking forward to creating a website of my own to provide a place for a community of fans to grow once my book is under contract. In Spring 2008 I worked as an intern at the Editorial Department of (name removed, sorry ;-p) in London. In Summer 2008 as the culmination of a research project I wrote a thesis-length paper on narrative techniques in The Dragonlance Chronicles, Gundam Wing, and Final Fantasy VII. My experience studying Anime and RPGs in addition to literature has allowed me to incorporate elements of all three into my writing, all of which should make it more attractive to my target audience, the teen to thirty fantasy crowd."
My kickboxing instructor has a noise he makes when he's demonstrating a technique and it lands particularly devastatingly. It sounds something like "OOoom." I feel like making that noise when I look at this paragraph. It is, by all accounts, pretty close to what people are looking for, and by the time I send it out, it (and probably more) will all be true.
Most of this was my idea---certainly the thought of turning my list of what I was into a list of what I wanted to be was, and it's one I'm particularly proud of---but I also have to doff my cap to the experience and help I got this year while writing my resume and cover letters for internship applications. In many ways a query letter (especially that about-the-author paragraph) is like a job application, and thinking of it as such certainly can't hurt.
So that's part of the development of my own query letter. Hopefully it will be the development of a successful query letter, but it is no matter what a record of the improvement of a query letter, and I hope that it will be helpful to others who are looking to improve their own.
Query letters. I have struggled with these bastages for coming on five years now. They have been the ever-loving bane of my existence, but I am getting better and better at writing them. I learned a lot of good lessons about what to include at the Pikes Peak Writer's Conference last spring (and I must take this opportunity to plug Writer's Conferences. If you can't afford one, find a way to...even if it means crashing on the floor of a high school friend's empty dorm room to avoid the hotel bill and not going out on the weekends for three months to save the cash. It's totally, completely, unequivocably worth it) and mine is constantly improving.
I thought my query letter was good enough after the PPWC last year. After all, my in-person pitch had gotten the attention of Kristin Nelson, who was my dream agent until she rejected my sample pages (she has now been honorably relegated to incredible-agent-whom-I-wish-had-been-interested), and I figured I was good to go.
Unfortunately, when I sent out my letter to a few more agents that summer, not a single one asked for sample pages. So I thought, hmm...what's missing? The description of my story remained unchanged from the in-person pitch to the written one, so it couldn't have been that. Then I encountered the final paragraph of my query letter. It read, and I quote:
"I am a college student pursuing a Creative Writing degree at Hamilton College in upstate New York, but I grew up in Colorado and plan to return there after I graduate. This is my first novel, and I very much appreciate your time in considering it."
Not bad, or so I had thought. Fairly professional, short, a slight introduction to who I am as a person, and not making much of my lack of credentials. But after my spate of rejections I realized that it was a glaring weak point. There are things that make me very well qualified to write what I write. So I changed that paragraph to include them. Unfortunately I don't have any saved drafts of that version of the query letter template, but it read something like this.
"I am a college student pursuing a Creative Writing degree at Hamilton College in upstate New York. I plan to become a professional writer and have put a lot of thought into how to do so. I grew up reading fantasy books, but as I got older my interests grew to include anime and RPG videogames as well. These interests have combined to make my writing something unique--a fantasy novel that combines traits of anime and RPG storytelling.This is my first novel, and I very much appreciate your time in considering it."
Better, I thought, but not nearly good enough. Yes, those are the reasons why my writing is unique, but there's nothing solid there. Telling an agent "I have these hobbies and they contribute to my writing, and trust me when I say that I take my writing seriously" is pretty weak. It was, to use a term familiar to those of us who have taken a creative writing course, telling and not showing.
For a moment, I sat and stared at my sad little paragraph wondering how on earth I was going to convince an agent that I really am a competent writer with an understanding of the industry and plans to write professionally, as well as a unique voice because of the way I blend my influences.
Then I had my great, breakthrough brainstorm. I decided to write the paragraph I WANTED to send, not the one based off of my credentials so far. It read something like this:
"I am a graduate of Hamilton College with a degree in Creative Writing. I have worked as an intern at a major publishing house. In my senior year at college I wrote my thesis on storytelling similarities and differences in Anime, RPG videogames, and fantasy literature. My experience studying Anime and RPGs has made my novel something unique: a fantasy novel that combines Anime and RPG storytelling techniques to drawn in readers used to seeing those types of stories."
I felt I was onto something. Only a sketch of what it needed to be, really, but a much stronger paragraph, and one that has acted since then as a blueprint for my professional development. As I have completed some of my objectives and discovered new ones, the paragraph has grown. At press time, it reads like this:
"I am a twenty-one year old college student pursuing a creative writing degree who has been preparing for a career as a novelist since the age of fifteen. I have a blog about writing that gets about two hundred visitors a month (http://wakaiwriter.blogspot.com). For the past nine months I have worked on maintaining a World of Warcraft community site and am looking forward to creating a website of my own to provide a place for a community of fans to grow once my book is under contract. In Spring 2008 I worked as an intern at the Editorial Department of (name removed, sorry ;-p) in London. In Summer 2008 as the culmination of a research project I wrote a thesis-length paper on narrative techniques in The Dragonlance Chronicles, Gundam Wing, and Final Fantasy VII. My experience studying Anime and RPGs in addition to literature has allowed me to incorporate elements of all three into my writing, all of which should make it more attractive to my target audience, the teen to thirty fantasy crowd."
My kickboxing instructor has a noise he makes when he's demonstrating a technique and it lands particularly devastatingly. It sounds something like "OOoom." I feel like making that noise when I look at this paragraph. It is, by all accounts, pretty close to what people are looking for, and by the time I send it out, it (and probably more) will all be true.
Most of this was my idea---certainly the thought of turning my list of what I was into a list of what I wanted to be was, and it's one I'm particularly proud of---but I also have to doff my cap to the experience and help I got this year while writing my resume and cover letters for internship applications. In many ways a query letter (especially that about-the-author paragraph) is like a job application, and thinking of it as such certainly can't hurt.
So that's part of the development of my own query letter. Hopefully it will be the development of a successful query letter, but it is no matter what a record of the improvement of a query letter, and I hope that it will be helpful to others who are looking to improve their own.
Monday 17 March 2008
Not All Trips Are Created Equal
Just got back from spending the weekend in Ireland (for St. Paddy's day, woot!), which is why I didn't post this weekend---again. And the exciting news I have to report is:
I didn't learn much about writing. At all.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time. Cork is an incredible city, the locals are friendly and the company was good, but it didn't compare to my time in Cumbria, or even my afternoon at Windsor Castle, in helping me with my writing.
I'm not sure why I expected it to--perhaps that my European travels so far had been so helpful, or because Ireland has the reputation of being so magical, but other than developing a taste for stout (which in the long run will probably work its way into my writing somewhere or another), I didn't get much material.
Sort of a sobering omen as I gear up for my big three week extravaganza that begins on Sunday. However, just for fun, I'm going to write up odds for getting inspired in the various places I'm going to visit. It should be interesting to compare with the results in a month.
Rome--- 1:7 I mean c'mon, given a couple of scenes in my book, if I don't get anything out of the ruins of a civilization that had its heyday two thousand years ago I'm screwed.
Paris--- 1:2 Thinking mostly of Notre Dame and the catacombs below it here, but there's plenty in the city as well.
Frankfurt--- 3:1 A bit of a wildcard, but I can't think of anything there that seems particularly pertinent, plus I'll be pretty tired after Paris and Rome.
Garmisch (Germany)--- 1:2 Again, a bit of a wildcard, but it's in the mountains, and I seem to find those singularly inspiring.
Prague--- 1:2 Once again not entirely sure what I'll find, but I've heard great things, and I have high hopes for a new architectural style to work with.
Berlin--- 7:1 Not much time here, I've heard it's a very modern city, and I'm meeting a college friend here. Doesn't seem good.
Stockholm--- 1:5 One word for you---fjords. I've heard a lot about them, and now I'm going to see them, and the north coast of my world needs better description. You do the math.
One more thing occurred to me as I wrote this. I'm now much more likely to get inspired in all of the places with good odds because I have something in mind to look for as I go there. That may have been my failure with Ireland in the first place---I just didn't think through what I was likely to find there.
I didn't learn much about writing. At all.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time. Cork is an incredible city, the locals are friendly and the company was good, but it didn't compare to my time in Cumbria, or even my afternoon at Windsor Castle, in helping me with my writing.
I'm not sure why I expected it to--perhaps that my European travels so far had been so helpful, or because Ireland has the reputation of being so magical, but other than developing a taste for stout (which in the long run will probably work its way into my writing somewhere or another), I didn't get much material.
Sort of a sobering omen as I gear up for my big three week extravaganza that begins on Sunday. However, just for fun, I'm going to write up odds for getting inspired in the various places I'm going to visit. It should be interesting to compare with the results in a month.
Rome--- 1:7 I mean c'mon, given a couple of scenes in my book, if I don't get anything out of the ruins of a civilization that had its heyday two thousand years ago I'm screwed.
Paris--- 1:2 Thinking mostly of Notre Dame and the catacombs below it here, but there's plenty in the city as well.
Frankfurt--- 3:1 A bit of a wildcard, but I can't think of anything there that seems particularly pertinent, plus I'll be pretty tired after Paris and Rome.
Garmisch (Germany)--- 1:2 Again, a bit of a wildcard, but it's in the mountains, and I seem to find those singularly inspiring.
Prague--- 1:2 Once again not entirely sure what I'll find, but I've heard great things, and I have high hopes for a new architectural style to work with.
Berlin--- 7:1 Not much time here, I've heard it's a very modern city, and I'm meeting a college friend here. Doesn't seem good.
Stockholm--- 1:5 One word for you---fjords. I've heard a lot about them, and now I'm going to see them, and the north coast of my world needs better description. You do the math.
One more thing occurred to me as I wrote this. I'm now much more likely to get inspired in all of the places with good odds because I have something in mind to look for as I go there. That may have been my failure with Ireland in the first place---I just didn't think through what I was likely to find there.
Thursday 13 March 2008
Internal vs. External Conflict in Fantasy
Ok, here we go--the last of my sort of "Theory of Fantasy" posts, at least for now. Apologies again if it gets a bit academic. Required reading is my previous post on Fantasy Worlds, but to sum that one up: fantasy worlds are generally representative of the hearts of minds of normal people. Either trust me on that one or go read my post to find out why ;-p.
Most of that post was concerned with explaining how external conflict in fantasy is representative of internal conflict in the hearts and minds of normal, everyday, live-in-the-real-world people. I ended it by saying that in the best fantasy, the characters are undergoing this same internal conflict.
To take a rather canonical and widely-known example: in The Return of the King Frodo struggles (and eventually, in one of Tolkien's best moments, fails) to overcome evil in himself (his desire to keep the ring) even as Middle-earth at large struggles to overcome evil in the form of Sauron's armies.
And that larger struggle, of course, is representative of the struggle between what we see as good and evil ourselves, as normal live-in-the-real-world human beings. So we have an internal conflict (in Frodo) that mirrors an external conflict (in Middle-earth) that mirrors an internal conflict (in ourselves).
That sort of double set of mirrors is, I think, what really makes fantasy hum. It's what makes it difficult to put down, and what makes it stick in your mind long after you finally do. The first mirror (the internal conflict in a character that mirrors the external conflict in his/her world) gets you looking for mirrors, and also lends the character's internal struggle much greater urgency---since often the outcome of the external struggle depends on the outcome of the internal.
Once you see the first mirror, you see the second. You have a, "Wait a second, if there's this link between internal and external struggles for this character that I love and identify with, maybe there's one for me, too?" You start to look for ways that the book mirrors your own life, and it's there that fantasy really serves its most useful purposes.
My experience with this, as a budding author, is that I initially did it unconsciously. In creating a story that I thought was cool and exciting, and characters that I thought were interesting, I wound up putting my characters in exactly this type of mirror-of-a-mirror-of-a-mirror situation. But recognizing that that's what I'm doing has given me a much greater degree of control over when, where, and how it happens, and as a consequence made my writing much better.
So to others doing the same thing---look for it in your work. You don't have to be conscious that you're doing this in order to do it, but once you are you can do it much better.
Most of that post was concerned with explaining how external conflict in fantasy is representative of internal conflict in the hearts and minds of normal, everyday, live-in-the-real-world people. I ended it by saying that in the best fantasy, the characters are undergoing this same internal conflict.
To take a rather canonical and widely-known example: in The Return of the King Frodo struggles (and eventually, in one of Tolkien's best moments, fails) to overcome evil in himself (his desire to keep the ring) even as Middle-earth at large struggles to overcome evil in the form of Sauron's armies.
And that larger struggle, of course, is representative of the struggle between what we see as good and evil ourselves, as normal live-in-the-real-world human beings. So we have an internal conflict (in Frodo) that mirrors an external conflict (in Middle-earth) that mirrors an internal conflict (in ourselves).
That sort of double set of mirrors is, I think, what really makes fantasy hum. It's what makes it difficult to put down, and what makes it stick in your mind long after you finally do. The first mirror (the internal conflict in a character that mirrors the external conflict in his/her world) gets you looking for mirrors, and also lends the character's internal struggle much greater urgency---since often the outcome of the external struggle depends on the outcome of the internal.
Once you see the first mirror, you see the second. You have a, "Wait a second, if there's this link between internal and external struggles for this character that I love and identify with, maybe there's one for me, too?" You start to look for ways that the book mirrors your own life, and it's there that fantasy really serves its most useful purposes.
My experience with this, as a budding author, is that I initially did it unconsciously. In creating a story that I thought was cool and exciting, and characters that I thought were interesting, I wound up putting my characters in exactly this type of mirror-of-a-mirror-of-a-mirror situation. But recognizing that that's what I'm doing has given me a much greater degree of control over when, where, and how it happens, and as a consequence made my writing much better.
So to others doing the same thing---look for it in your work. You don't have to be conscious that you're doing this in order to do it, but once you are you can do it much better.
Wednesday 12 March 2008
Hazah for the UK!
Exciting news today! At least for me...and other people who read/write/love high and epic fantasy.
I had to go to the big flagship Waterstone's (think Barnes and Noble, but everyone is British) yesterday to pick up a book for one of my classes. While I was there I naturally scoped out the sci-fi/fantasy section of the store. Of course, in the middle of the section was a big table full of books titled "Bestsellers." So I headed over to see what was making it big-time in the UK. And what did I find?
High and epic fantasy. Finally! Not a vampire, werewolf, detective with magic powers or motorcycle-riding vixen in sight. Nothing against urban fantasy, but I'm getting tired of hearing about how it's all people want to read these days. So hurray for the UK and its taste in fantasy! There is at least one safe haven left in the world for those of us whose tastes are a little more old-school.
I had to go to the big flagship Waterstone's (think Barnes and Noble, but everyone is British) yesterday to pick up a book for one of my classes. While I was there I naturally scoped out the sci-fi/fantasy section of the store. Of course, in the middle of the section was a big table full of books titled "Bestsellers." So I headed over to see what was making it big-time in the UK. And what did I find?
High and epic fantasy. Finally! Not a vampire, werewolf, detective with magic powers or motorcycle-riding vixen in sight. Nothing against urban fantasy, but I'm getting tired of hearing about how it's all people want to read these days. So hurray for the UK and its taste in fantasy! There is at least one safe haven left in the world for those of us whose tastes are a little more old-school.
Tuesday 11 March 2008
Gorge Scrambling, or "Rocks are really hard"
So while in Cumbria I had the opportunity to participate in a hobby they call "gorge scrambling." Basically, it consists of putting on a big wooly suit and some waterproofs, then jumping into a fairly substantial stream and climbing up it. We were particularly lucky because our stream had been swollen by three days of rain and had become a bit more like a raging river of death.
Most of the experience was just sort of cold and weirdly amusing anyway. It was also fun to discover that even though the icy cold water would numb your feet after about 30 seconds once it got into your boots, your feet would eventually warm it up again. Kind of a neat trick of physics I guess.
But the great cognitive leap for me came at the end of the excursion, when we army crawled through one of those drainage tunnels that goes under roads. In case you didn't hear me right---we army crawled through a drainage tunnel that ran underneath a road. It was probably about 3 ft. by 2 ft. Crazy, crazy, experience. Going into that dark, cold, wet, rocky death trap was one of the most horrifying experiences of my life. The first few feet my whole body was just screaming, "What do you think you're doing!? Idiot! Turn around!"
Naturally, I ignored it and crawled on anyway. I even made it around the large rock in the middle of the tunnel just before the end, fun as that was, and survived the experience with only a few bruises and a cut up hand (funny how you can cut yourself pretty easily on rocks when you're completely numb). Anyway, what I learned was that rocks are really, really hard, and water is really, really fast.
There's a scene in my book that involves an underground river, and one character in particular sort of bouncing off of its rock ceiling. That scene will now be amended to include some moss, because bashing your head on a rock at the speed said river is supposed to be traveling would, I'm fairly certain, kill you.
Funny how you learn little things like that in the strangest places.
Most of the experience was just sort of cold and weirdly amusing anyway. It was also fun to discover that even though the icy cold water would numb your feet after about 30 seconds once it got into your boots, your feet would eventually warm it up again. Kind of a neat trick of physics I guess.
But the great cognitive leap for me came at the end of the excursion, when we army crawled through one of those drainage tunnels that goes under roads. In case you didn't hear me right---we army crawled through a drainage tunnel that ran underneath a road. It was probably about 3 ft. by 2 ft. Crazy, crazy, experience. Going into that dark, cold, wet, rocky death trap was one of the most horrifying experiences of my life. The first few feet my whole body was just screaming, "What do you think you're doing!? Idiot! Turn around!"
Naturally, I ignored it and crawled on anyway. I even made it around the large rock in the middle of the tunnel just before the end, fun as that was, and survived the experience with only a few bruises and a cut up hand (funny how you can cut yourself pretty easily on rocks when you're completely numb). Anyway, what I learned was that rocks are really, really hard, and water is really, really fast.
There's a scene in my book that involves an underground river, and one character in particular sort of bouncing off of its rock ceiling. That scene will now be amended to include some moss, because bashing your head on a rock at the speed said river is supposed to be traveling would, I'm fairly certain, kill you.
Funny how you learn little things like that in the strangest places.
Monday 10 March 2008
Cumbria is Cool, or "How the Dwarves Became Shepherds"
Woot! Back from my weekend up in Cumbria (Northwest England), and it was absolutely amazing. The mountains there are positively gorgeous, strangely reminiscent of the ones I'm used to in Colorado yet also completely and utterly different. It was a great place to be and a great place to get some ideas for my writing.
Most notably, I figured some things out about my dwarves (who are becoming less and less cookie-cutter as time goes on, which is great...by the time I'm done with them I might not even call them dwarves anymore, we'll see).
One of the things that always bothered me about dwarves and typical high fantasy dwarven civilizations in general was how they were supported. I grew up in the mountains. I know that you can't really farm there. The soil is usually bad and crops don't grow well on slopes. You could terrace your mountains like they do in some places in Asia, but terraces like that would make an impression on visitors and were never described when people came to dwarven cities for the first time in the books I grew up on. Dwarves just lived underneath mountains, and that there was enough food for everyone was taken for granted---maybe it was all imported?
That's one of the things I struggled with as I was creating my own dwarves---how did they manage to have these cities up in the mountains when it's really not practical to have cities in the mountains? Luckily the English have solved that problem for me: sheep.
There are sheep EVERYWHERE in Cumbria. Probably more sheep than people. You've all seen pictures of English fields---how they're all divided by walls and hedges, look the same shade of green, and have the same length of grass. They're kept that way by armies and armies of sheep, and the mountains are no different. Whereas the Rockies, where I grew up, are bare because trees can't grow that high, the mountains in Cumbria have been cleared (the guy I went hiking with said probably in the 1500s), divided up (there are stone walls that literally go straight up the sides of and over the tops of mountains---absolutely incredible feat of engineering if you ask me. I'll post pictures once I figure out how), and are continually being mowed by sheep.
So my dwarves became shepherds. It just fit for them, somehow. Most of their cities aren't underground and they were never meant to be Tolkien-esque, Norse-derived greedy diggers. They're more like short people with dreadlocks and a love for mountains and stone. Herding sheep all over their beloved mountains and building stone walls over their whole realm just fit perfectly for them.
I also gained some valuable experience for a particular scene in my book (which those of you who have read it will, I hope, remember) from my Gorge Scrambling expedition...but I'll let that wait until tomorrow.
Most notably, I figured some things out about my dwarves (who are becoming less and less cookie-cutter as time goes on, which is great...by the time I'm done with them I might not even call them dwarves anymore, we'll see).
One of the things that always bothered me about dwarves and typical high fantasy dwarven civilizations in general was how they were supported. I grew up in the mountains. I know that you can't really farm there. The soil is usually bad and crops don't grow well on slopes. You could terrace your mountains like they do in some places in Asia, but terraces like that would make an impression on visitors and were never described when people came to dwarven cities for the first time in the books I grew up on. Dwarves just lived underneath mountains, and that there was enough food for everyone was taken for granted---maybe it was all imported?
That's one of the things I struggled with as I was creating my own dwarves---how did they manage to have these cities up in the mountains when it's really not practical to have cities in the mountains? Luckily the English have solved that problem for me: sheep.
There are sheep EVERYWHERE in Cumbria. Probably more sheep than people. You've all seen pictures of English fields---how they're all divided by walls and hedges, look the same shade of green, and have the same length of grass. They're kept that way by armies and armies of sheep, and the mountains are no different. Whereas the Rockies, where I grew up, are bare because trees can't grow that high, the mountains in Cumbria have been cleared (the guy I went hiking with said probably in the 1500s), divided up (there are stone walls that literally go straight up the sides of and over the tops of mountains---absolutely incredible feat of engineering if you ask me. I'll post pictures once I figure out how), and are continually being mowed by sheep.
So my dwarves became shepherds. It just fit for them, somehow. Most of their cities aren't underground and they were never meant to be Tolkien-esque, Norse-derived greedy diggers. They're more like short people with dreadlocks and a love for mountains and stone. Herding sheep all over their beloved mountains and building stone walls over their whole realm just fit perfectly for them.
I also gained some valuable experience for a particular scene in my book (which those of you who have read it will, I hope, remember) from my Gorge Scrambling expedition...but I'll let that wait until tomorrow.
Thursday 6 March 2008
Music and Writing
(Note: I'm going up to the Lake District this weekend, where I will have no internet, which will be great for me, but not so great for the blog. Expect to hear all about what I learned about writing on Monday)
This one is more a curious question to any other writers who might be reading the blog--do you listen to music when you write? What about when you brainstorm? Are you reliant upon it to do either?
Personally, I tend to listen to music when I do both, but when I'm writing it's absolutely not necessary, and I often find that whole CDs of music have gone by without me noticing when I'm really in the flow of things. When I'm brainstorming, however, music is often key.
I can brainstorm in the middle of the night without music just fine--insomnia is sort of the other great trigger of my imagination, or maybe it's the other way around, I can never tell. But if I'm awake I get distracted without music to keep me focused on the stories I'm crafting. Most of the brainstorming for my first novel was done on the school bus going back and forth between my house and my high school. A lot of the rest was done while running with music on.
Often I find that albums tend to define my novels for me. For instance, I plotted out each of the novels in the trilogy I'm currently working on while listening to a different Linkin Park album. Those of you who were around know how incredibly excited I got when I found out they were releasing their third album, because I'd been having a devil of time trying to plot my third novel and I just knew somehow that that CD would give me something to work off of. Sure enough, it did, and it took me to scenes I never expected to include, but that will really help tie off the story arcs of some of the characters. And the idea for my fourth novel was actually launched by the Three Days Grace song "Never Too Late," (much sooner than I expected and, to be honest, sooner than I'd hoped---I won't get to it for years) and specifically the line "Even if I say it'll be alright still I hear you say you want to end your life"--which just so perfectly encapsulated the problem that one of my main characters was going to face after the end of the aforementioned trilogy and immediately gave me the catalyst I needed to figure out how to wrap up his story. When I bought the album with that song on it, I was able to plot out that novel within a few days.
Anyway, this is getting a bit rambly, but my point is that for me, at any rate, music is a huge part of my creative process, and I'm curious whether it's as important for others---and which bands and albums in particular have launched novels for people, because I'd love to give them a listen---you can never have too many good ideas. :-)
This one is more a curious question to any other writers who might be reading the blog--do you listen to music when you write? What about when you brainstorm? Are you reliant upon it to do either?
Personally, I tend to listen to music when I do both, but when I'm writing it's absolutely not necessary, and I often find that whole CDs of music have gone by without me noticing when I'm really in the flow of things. When I'm brainstorming, however, music is often key.
I can brainstorm in the middle of the night without music just fine--insomnia is sort of the other great trigger of my imagination, or maybe it's the other way around, I can never tell. But if I'm awake I get distracted without music to keep me focused on the stories I'm crafting. Most of the brainstorming for my first novel was done on the school bus going back and forth between my house and my high school. A lot of the rest was done while running with music on.
Often I find that albums tend to define my novels for me. For instance, I plotted out each of the novels in the trilogy I'm currently working on while listening to a different Linkin Park album. Those of you who were around know how incredibly excited I got when I found out they were releasing their third album, because I'd been having a devil of time trying to plot my third novel and I just knew somehow that that CD would give me something to work off of. Sure enough, it did, and it took me to scenes I never expected to include, but that will really help tie off the story arcs of some of the characters. And the idea for my fourth novel was actually launched by the Three Days Grace song "Never Too Late," (much sooner than I expected and, to be honest, sooner than I'd hoped---I won't get to it for years) and specifically the line "Even if I say it'll be alright still I hear you say you want to end your life"--which just so perfectly encapsulated the problem that one of my main characters was going to face after the end of the aforementioned trilogy and immediately gave me the catalyst I needed to figure out how to wrap up his story. When I bought the album with that song on it, I was able to plot out that novel within a few days.
Anyway, this is getting a bit rambly, but my point is that for me, at any rate, music is a huge part of my creative process, and I'm curious whether it's as important for others---and which bands and albums in particular have launched novels for people, because I'd love to give them a listen---you can never have too many good ideas. :-)
Wednesday 5 March 2008
Fantasy Worlds
Alright---fair warning, this one may get a bit heady, but welcome to part two of the "posts inspired by my fantasy violence post" extravaganza, dedicated to Fantasy Worlds and what they represent.
The answer, of course, is everything! Or at least they can, depending a little bit on the world in question and a whole lot on the reader in question. That's part of what makes them so wonderful. But what has always jumped out to me when I "read" fantasy of any kind (including videogames, movies, etc.) is that all the worlds seem to represent, at least on one level, the hearts and minds of humankind.
Sounds a bit too heavy to be true, right? Sounds like something a writer of epic fantasy might say? Perhaps, but I think the hypothesis holds pretty well. One thing fantasy features more often than any other genre is conflicts between good and evil---good generally being defined as those who fight only in response to the aggression of others, have (or develop) a healthy respect for ideals like love and justice, are tolerant, and more often than not are pretty...basically those who reflect the ideals that, as a culture, we think we're supposed to be reaching for.
Quick tangent! When I say "we as a culture" I mean those who are drawn to fantasy for one reason or another, worldwide. We've been called a subculture long enough--I think there are enough of us to justify dropping the sub. More on that in another post someday (man, they just keep stacking up!).
Anyway, back to the issue at hand: fantasy worlds more often than not feature conflicts between good and evil. It's part of what draws people to the genre. Even when it is difficult to tell who's good and who's evil, the fact that we desire to define between the two only demonstrates even further that in fantasy we expect a conflict between them.
Okay, phew. Still with me? Good and evil. Where else do good and evil fight each other? Not in the real world--there is no universal good and evil. Even religious fanatics will back off the term evil when pressed about it and find other words to describe the people whose ideas they are fundamentally opposed to. So where else do good and evil fight each other? The only place they exist--in our hearts and minds.
We each have our own conceptions of what is good and what is evil and are constantly evaluating our own lives and actions against them. I'm convinced that good and evil are very real for most people, even if they don't think of them as such. For instance, when you walk past a homeless guy on the street you have to decide what you're going to do: Do you give him money and trust that it will wind up being used for a good purpose? Do you walk right past him and try to ignore him? Do you smile at him in a friendly way? Do you wish him the best? Do you laugh at him? Do you kick his cup over and tell him to get a job? And what do you want to do? And what does that say about you? Where does it put you on the continuum between good (ideal) and evil (opposite of ideal)?
People who are more introspective are aware of this process. I think people who are less introspective generally either feel awkward or angry without knowing why. Most fantasy readers are more introspective people, because fantasy invites introspection. And why does fantasy invite introspection?
Because fantasy worlds make explicit the conflicts that exist in the hearts and minds of people all over the world.
This is, of course, leaving out entirely the fact that characters (or at least main characters) in fantasy are generally torn by these same conflicts, but I'll speak more about that when I post on internal vs. external conflict in fantasy. This has gotten long enough.
As always, comments are encouraged. :-)
The answer, of course, is everything! Or at least they can, depending a little bit on the world in question and a whole lot on the reader in question. That's part of what makes them so wonderful. But what has always jumped out to me when I "read" fantasy of any kind (including videogames, movies, etc.) is that all the worlds seem to represent, at least on one level, the hearts and minds of humankind.
Sounds a bit too heavy to be true, right? Sounds like something a writer of epic fantasy might say? Perhaps, but I think the hypothesis holds pretty well. One thing fantasy features more often than any other genre is conflicts between good and evil---good generally being defined as those who fight only in response to the aggression of others, have (or develop) a healthy respect for ideals like love and justice, are tolerant, and more often than not are pretty...basically those who reflect the ideals that, as a culture, we think we're supposed to be reaching for.
Quick tangent! When I say "we as a culture" I mean those who are drawn to fantasy for one reason or another, worldwide. We've been called a subculture long enough--I think there are enough of us to justify dropping the sub. More on that in another post someday (man, they just keep stacking up!).
Anyway, back to the issue at hand: fantasy worlds more often than not feature conflicts between good and evil. It's part of what draws people to the genre. Even when it is difficult to tell who's good and who's evil, the fact that we desire to define between the two only demonstrates even further that in fantasy we expect a conflict between them.
Okay, phew. Still with me? Good and evil. Where else do good and evil fight each other? Not in the real world--there is no universal good and evil. Even religious fanatics will back off the term evil when pressed about it and find other words to describe the people whose ideas they are fundamentally opposed to. So where else do good and evil fight each other? The only place they exist--in our hearts and minds.
We each have our own conceptions of what is good and what is evil and are constantly evaluating our own lives and actions against them. I'm convinced that good and evil are very real for most people, even if they don't think of them as such. For instance, when you walk past a homeless guy on the street you have to decide what you're going to do: Do you give him money and trust that it will wind up being used for a good purpose? Do you walk right past him and try to ignore him? Do you smile at him in a friendly way? Do you wish him the best? Do you laugh at him? Do you kick his cup over and tell him to get a job? And what do you want to do? And what does that say about you? Where does it put you on the continuum between good (ideal) and evil (opposite of ideal)?
People who are more introspective are aware of this process. I think people who are less introspective generally either feel awkward or angry without knowing why. Most fantasy readers are more introspective people, because fantasy invites introspection. And why does fantasy invite introspection?
Because fantasy worlds make explicit the conflicts that exist in the hearts and minds of people all over the world.
This is, of course, leaving out entirely the fact that characters (or at least main characters) in fantasy are generally torn by these same conflicts, but I'll speak more about that when I post on internal vs. external conflict in fantasy. This has gotten long enough.
As always, comments are encouraged. :-)
Tuesday 4 March 2008
Pen Names
So I've never given much thought to having a pen name. I mean, I like my name. I think it's a pretty good one.
Unfortunately, it is also the name of some actor from Canada who seems to be growing more and more prominent, which I can't help but think may someday cause me problems. A few years ago when I googled my name, there would be one or two hits for this guy. Now the entire first page belongs to him, with two or three entries from IMDB which no amount of effort on my part (except buying an ad, and how weird would that be?) will push off the front page until I'm so famous that nobody needs to google my name anymore.
I've often wondered why authors sometimes go by their initials, but in my case, at any rate, googling J.L. Seymour turns up a whole bunch of nothing. Maybe that's got something to do with it. Pen name, HO!
Unfortunately, it is also the name of some actor from Canada who seems to be growing more and more prominent, which I can't help but think may someday cause me problems. A few years ago when I googled my name, there would be one or two hits for this guy. Now the entire first page belongs to him, with two or three entries from IMDB which no amount of effort on my part (except buying an ad, and how weird would that be?) will push off the front page until I'm so famous that nobody needs to google my name anymore.
I've often wondered why authors sometimes go by their initials, but in my case, at any rate, googling J.L. Seymour turns up a whole bunch of nothing. Maybe that's got something to do with it. Pen name, HO!
Monday 3 March 2008
The wisdom of Chris Metzen
Today was a great day, because I discovered that Blizzard (creators of Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft) has released the second episode of their podcast, and in it was included a very long interview with Chriz Metzen, their lead designer and the guy in charge of the stories for all three franchises, some of which have been excellent and all of which have wound up being "read," if you will, by millions upon millions of people all across the world. Needless to say, I was excited to hear his thoughts on storytelling.
He actually spent about five straight minutes of the interview talking about the creation of the storyline for Starcraft, which is one of the better videogame storylines of the 1990s and can duke it out with Warcraft III for the honor of best RTS storyline I've ever encountered. I'll post a few quotes from that section of the interview that really struck me:
"as momentum really started picking up on the science-fiction thing, the group response is like ‘well, let's simplify this, right. People, they understand space-ships. They understand creepy, spidery aliens. They understand psychic brain aliens, right? So let's just cut down to the core motifs that are really classic in science-fiction. That's where we should start."
"the way you build a world, it starts with tanks and fighter jets and just cool-looking alien shapes and ultimately that starts growing into a setting. Who's this? Where's that vehicle from? Who pilots this?"
"It wasn't the story-line, specifically, the linear flow of events, the overthrow of the Confederacy, Kerrigan, Raynor, the Protoss, the destruction of their homeworld. A lot of that stuff wasn't clear from the get-go. We were just making the broadest science-fiction universe we could and trying to make sure it really resonated with people"
"the whole ice-skater debacle was going on with Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. ‘Haha, how funny, we'll make our super assassin named Kerrigan on this one map.' And it was a total throw-away character but as we started discussing it and really getting in to this character, we kept coming back to her; she had a lot of gravity. It really created a cool, kind of triangle of tension between Mensk and Raynor and this emergent Kerrigan character.
Ultimately, it was pretty late in the game when we decided that she would be betrayed and become the Queen of Blades."
The rest of the interview can be seen/read at http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode2.xml
To be fair, the storyline of Starcraft was meant chiefly to serve a commercial purpose. At the end of the day Blizzard's goal is to sell as many units as possible, and as storytellers people like Metzen have to keep that in mind no matter what.
But seeing the process that they went through from an insider's perspective was very educational for me simply because the result of it was so commercially successful, and I am a subscriber to the school of thought that says, "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, so what?" or in clearer terms, "Art that nobody cares to look at, listen to, read, or think about is pretty much worthless." More on that, perhaps, in a later post.
Regardless, Metzen's style of world-building is one worth trying out--of beginning with a setting and then waiting for characters to emerge out of it. To use a Lego analogy, of building something neat out of the blocks and then figuring out why the little men live there instead of figuring out who the little men are and building them a place to live. And his words on Kerrigan are especially worth remembering, because Kerrigan and her specific story arc wound up being the most compelling part of the Starcraft storyline (if you haven't played it, go find it and do so---the single-player campaign takes maybe ten hours, less if you use some cheat codes). "Throwaway characters" as he puts it, can turn into incredible characters very easily, and minor characters can often inspire readers as much as main characters, all the more so because the details of their lives are left to the imagination. See the Wikipedia entries on Wedge Antilles and Admiral Piett from Star Wars if you don't believe me.
At any rate, I'm still working through what all this means in terms of writing fantasy, but it at least raises the question of whether it makes sense to find out what people will want to read and then layer one's particular thematic, artistic, or moral concerns on top of it, rather than the other way around (as I think a lot of writers, especially young ones, try to do). It also, interestingly enough, comes at a time when I've been extensively working on the backstory of my world (following writing a research paper on Tolkien that was an epiphanic moment in my writing career) and re-formulating my pitch into one that emphasies the uniqueness of my novel's setting in addition to its characters (following the first negative face-to-face reaction I'd had to my tried and true pitch centering purely on the main character of my novel).
As always, I'd love to hear the thoughts of others.
He actually spent about five straight minutes of the interview talking about the creation of the storyline for Starcraft, which is one of the better videogame storylines of the 1990s and can duke it out with Warcraft III for the honor of best RTS storyline I've ever encountered. I'll post a few quotes from that section of the interview that really struck me:
"as momentum really started picking up on the science-fiction thing, the group response is like ‘well, let's simplify this, right. People, they understand space-ships. They understand creepy, spidery aliens. They understand psychic brain aliens, right? So let's just cut down to the core motifs that are really classic in science-fiction. That's where we should start."
"the way you build a world, it starts with tanks and fighter jets and just cool-looking alien shapes and ultimately that starts growing into a setting. Who's this? Where's that vehicle from? Who pilots this?"
"It wasn't the story-line, specifically, the linear flow of events, the overthrow of the Confederacy, Kerrigan, Raynor, the Protoss, the destruction of their homeworld. A lot of that stuff wasn't clear from the get-go. We were just making the broadest science-fiction universe we could and trying to make sure it really resonated with people"
"the whole ice-skater debacle was going on with Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. ‘Haha, how funny, we'll make our super assassin named Kerrigan on this one map.' And it was a total throw-away character but as we started discussing it and really getting in to this character, we kept coming back to her; she had a lot of gravity. It really created a cool, kind of triangle of tension between Mensk and Raynor and this emergent Kerrigan character.
Ultimately, it was pretty late in the game when we decided that she would be betrayed and become the Queen of Blades."
The rest of the interview can be seen/read at http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode2.xml
To be fair, the storyline of Starcraft was meant chiefly to serve a commercial purpose. At the end of the day Blizzard's goal is to sell as many units as possible, and as storytellers people like Metzen have to keep that in mind no matter what.
But seeing the process that they went through from an insider's perspective was very educational for me simply because the result of it was so commercially successful, and I am a subscriber to the school of thought that says, "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, so what?" or in clearer terms, "Art that nobody cares to look at, listen to, read, or think about is pretty much worthless." More on that, perhaps, in a later post.
Regardless, Metzen's style of world-building is one worth trying out--of beginning with a setting and then waiting for characters to emerge out of it. To use a Lego analogy, of building something neat out of the blocks and then figuring out why the little men live there instead of figuring out who the little men are and building them a place to live. And his words on Kerrigan are especially worth remembering, because Kerrigan and her specific story arc wound up being the most compelling part of the Starcraft storyline (if you haven't played it, go find it and do so---the single-player campaign takes maybe ten hours, less if you use some cheat codes). "Throwaway characters" as he puts it, can turn into incredible characters very easily, and minor characters can often inspire readers as much as main characters, all the more so because the details of their lives are left to the imagination. See the Wikipedia entries on Wedge Antilles and Admiral Piett from Star Wars if you don't believe me.
At any rate, I'm still working through what all this means in terms of writing fantasy, but it at least raises the question of whether it makes sense to find out what people will want to read and then layer one's particular thematic, artistic, or moral concerns on top of it, rather than the other way around (as I think a lot of writers, especially young ones, try to do). It also, interestingly enough, comes at a time when I've been extensively working on the backstory of my world (following writing a research paper on Tolkien that was an epiphanic moment in my writing career) and re-formulating my pitch into one that emphasies the uniqueness of my novel's setting in addition to its characters (following the first negative face-to-face reaction I'd had to my tried and true pitch centering purely on the main character of my novel).
As always, I'd love to hear the thoughts of others.
Saturday 1 March 2008
Castles!
I had the opportunity this weekend to go visit Warwick Castle in England, and I have to admit that not only was it breathtaking, but that going to a place like that can invaluable in getting experience with which to write.
There's a scene in my novel which takes place on the ramparts of a city wall (not a castle, but hey, you have to work with what you've got), and I spent a solid 5-10 minutes standing on the ramparts of Warwick, gazing out over the town and envisioning it unfolding before my eyes. Sure, I held up the group I was with and caught some weird looks from other tourists wondering what on earth I was staring at, but I now have a much better feel for what it would actually be like to stand on a city wall and watch a city burn, which is important if I mean to write a scene of such.
I also got to visit Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace, which aside from being a sort of literary mecca has some very cool period-style buildings that made good research material as well. In short, England is a great place to research fantasy, and as much as I hate to admit it, doing a little research can be very helpful for one's writing. Part of the appeal of writing fantasy, to me, is the opportunity to create a world from scratch--but like it or not nobody ever creates a world completely from scratch, and it pays to understand the elements you borrow from history or theology or wherever else as much as possible before you use them.
There's a scene in my novel which takes place on the ramparts of a city wall (not a castle, but hey, you have to work with what you've got), and I spent a solid 5-10 minutes standing on the ramparts of Warwick, gazing out over the town and envisioning it unfolding before my eyes. Sure, I held up the group I was with and caught some weird looks from other tourists wondering what on earth I was staring at, but I now have a much better feel for what it would actually be like to stand on a city wall and watch a city burn, which is important if I mean to write a scene of such.
I also got to visit Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace, which aside from being a sort of literary mecca has some very cool period-style buildings that made good research material as well. In short, England is a great place to research fantasy, and as much as I hate to admit it, doing a little research can be very helpful for one's writing. Part of the appeal of writing fantasy, to me, is the opportunity to create a world from scratch--but like it or not nobody ever creates a world completely from scratch, and it pays to understand the elements you borrow from history or theology or wherever else as much as possible before you use them.
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