(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. :-)
Thursday, 6 March 2008
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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