Ulff Lehmann's Blog: Blogging Lot, page 2

Setting or people?

Currently, although it is not listed here, I am reading a novel by Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Eldritch Palmer. It's part of a collection of Dick's novels I got for my birthday a number of years ago.

Maybe it's the age difference, maybe to appreciate the novel, much like Man in the High Castle, I must have been born at a time closer to the novel's release. I don't know. As with High Castle, the concept, the idea behind the novel, is amazing. And just like High Castle, characterization is minimal. Frankly, I am not really interested in the people, and therein, to me, lies the problem.

I need people I can relate to, no matter the brilliance of the setting, maybe that's why Lord of the Rings never managed to hold my interest for long. Stigmata takes place in a future where due to a significant rise in temperature and unabated, I assume, boinking of humans, people are being shipped to colonies within the Solar system. Life there can be called so only by the farthest stretch of the imagination... and that is to be taken quite literally. A psychotropic drug called Can-D allows the user to inhabit a doll in a so-called layout, some diorama with lifelike and working miniatures that basically simulate life on Earth a couple centuries ago. That idea alone is amazing... A whole bunch of addicts who primarily lead a beyond dreary existence which is only brightened by the time they can take Can-D and enter the virtual world of the diorama. There's only 2 dolls/characters that can be "inhabited" a man and a woman, and multiple people can inhabit the same doll, read 3 men in the man-doll and 3 women in the woman doll. The idea alone is utterly out there, like, damn!

My inner storyteller goes nuts for this shit, the possibilities... we have an Earth that is literally heating up to unbearable temperatures in New York etc, colonists in shitty hovels around the Solar System, a recreational drug linked to a diorama culture that is only useful with the drug, aaaand a medical process that allows humans to evolve any number of years, with major and minor side effects. That alone is pure gold.

But instead of digging into the world there and then, Dick introduces Eldritch Palmer, a genius who has been absent from the Sol System for a decade now, he returns from Proxima Centauri with a new drug that allows each user to create their own reality within their minds which then can be shared by other users... think Minecraft only that instead of spending hours in a drug stupor, time basically stands still for the body while the user's mind is in whatever universe it created or joined... the drug seems to be part of a plot by the Proxis (the natives of Proxima) to take over the Sol System... I haven't gotten that far yet...

Oh, there is one more thing that seems to be of importance, tho with Minority Report having precogs is not that unusual...

So, we have this insane future with so many different facets that each by themselves has incredible story potential. And Dick takes more time to explore these elements than the possible conflicts... it reads almost as pages from a history book with dialogues sprinkled in. No, that is not quite correct, but it comes close. I know, the book was written 50 or more years ago, and the style was different then. Still, it bugs the hell out of me.

Man, the possibilities lost. But from what I know of Dick he was primarily a world builder, taking the most insane concepts and just going with them...

To me, if the folks through whose eyes I experience the story and the world (yes, in that order) are lacking dimension and personality, a part of my interest wanders elsewhere. Which is probably the reason why it took me a few years after High Castle to continue with Stigmata, and while I do not want to compare Dick's work to a D&D sourcebook, the similarities are there. High Castle had no plot, no real climax, nothing, and while I know that Dick experimented with IChing at that time, letting the oracle sticks determine the story's plot, I still say he should have started with the setting and then got to the people, the meat of the story... as such it is more a collage of stories that do not end satisfactory in one way or another.

Or I need to start with recreational drugs and mayhap then see what's what.

Kidding!

A story, to me, is always people. We can relate to stuff characters go through, we can laugh and love and cry and weep with them. Through people we connect with the story on a much deeper level.

At least that is my opinion. I can see why Hollywood is gobbling up Dick stories, they have insane ideas and the stuff I have read so far (granted, a pittance to the man's output) allows for such a width of shoehorning other stuff into these worlds that, yes, they make tasty treats for studios...

"Know what your audience wants"

There are very few statements that disgust me more, on a creative-minded dare I say artistic level. Don't get me wrong, I do care what readers think, why else would I have beta-readers? Sure, there's only a few, but if they have some issue, the same issue mind you, with the text, I have probably made a Bad Dobby, and will correct it.

What I will not do is read whatever genre I'm writing in just so that I do check off all the requirements that make my story a (insert whatever the fuck the genre is) story.

"Know what your audience wants" if we take this statement at face value, we would have to deal with a lot more superficial vampire love triangle stories... then again, we do have Twilight, the Vampire Diaries, and probably a plethora of vamplovetri stories I have never even heard of.

Not that fantasy is devoid of clones... one could say that ever since Tolkien wrote his crap on paper...err... masterpiece, we have been seeing the good old prof emulated all over the place. But that ain't true, sure we got the heroic fantasy blend, with them orcses and dragonses and mighty armies clashing, all in a non-gore PG-13 friendly writing style that drives home the delusion that only the bad guys die and war is a rather bloodless affair. (I wrote about that bit in an earlier entry) These heroic thingies usually involve saving the world, a deed performed by a hero on his hero's journey.

And yes, there are some tropes that even I have surrendered to. Then again, these are tropes that have been around since mankind started telling stories. War is an all time classic, be it the Iliad, or Romeo and Juliet, we've always got a war. Sure, in the Bard's tragedy it's a gang war, so to speak, but if the two families were having no issues whatsoever the two crazy kids would meet at a party, fall in love, and eventually marry. Kinda boring. Hells, even Stephanie Meyer realized that to get some tension running, you need to have a conflict. So calling this a trope is maybe not correct...

Big Bad wants to rule the world, ok, that is a trope, Voldemort, Sauron, Takhisis, Lord Foul, the list is long. Add to that megalomania, the flaw these villains have... usually there's more than one.

The hero... or the group of heroes... they are on a quest, whether bestowed by the gods or some manipulating consortium of good guys who are too lazy to get their own hands dirty. The heroes go willingly and knowingly, solve many a problem and are victorious, there might be some satisfying end at the first volume but that's not a requirement.

The antagonists... the orcses and whathaveyous that throw their bodies in the heroes' path and on their weapons, because let's face it, whether it's stormtroopers or orcses or whoknowswhat they never pose a real threat! They are there to allow the heroes to shine, look at Leggolass and his archery skills, blindfolded with one hand behind his back he still manages to shoot by pulling on the string with his teeth...

The love interest... it's usually the hero's weakness, something the bad guy can use against the hero, far be it from the love interest to kick just as much ass as the hero! Yea, bad trope, that... usually, in our patriarchal western fantasy, we have the damsel, usually in distress, and the shining, male, hero who rescues her, heroically of course. Bad trope indeed.

The wise old man (or woman) goes hand in hand with the entire hero's journey...

I could go on, but frankly I don't wanna.

Read Shattered Dreams, just the first chapter, it shows what I do with tropes. Of course I can't escape them all, that is impossible. The protagonist is a person, even a robot has a personality, so whether male or female or gender-neutral, we read about a person, or persons, going on a perilous journey. That person is different, in one way or another, otherwise, when danger looms near, that person would cower un-heroically behind a bush, hoping the bad things go away.

Some tropes we cannot escape, but I don't need to read the fiction top 10 to know that. Others... why the fuck would I want to copy the stuff someone else already did??? Seriously! Were I to write the umpteenth clone of Lord of the Rings, would you wanna read that? No! Of course not! Because you have read the original, and this isn't pizza where everything is basically a variation of dough with tomato-sauce, cheese, and whatever that particular vendor wants to dump atop the pie (or what you want dumped on top the pie). You don't buy a book to get the same old same old, because in the end you want to be entertained, and while my 5 yr old quasi-goddaughter loves Frozen there will come a time when she will not want to watch it anymore because she has seen the film too many times.

And I don't write for 5 yr olds. I do not write variations of the same just because everyone and their dogs is reading Twilight or whatever the fuck is the latest fad. I write stories I would love to read! I want to be surprised, shocked, kept focused on the story, knowing whatever happens, it will be unexpected. So I write this sort of thing, because I believe a story where tropes are put on their heads, stories that mix genres (from a narrative point), stories that will keep you guessing, that will keep you wanting more are superior to the shit that the audience expects you to write.

I want to read stories that keep me guessing, that are as relentless in pace and suspense to rival The Dark Knight... and so I write them.

Fuck whatever expectations someone may have!

Reality in fantastic worlds

A couple days ago, I watched a rather scathing review of the last Indiana Jones movie... not that there's that many positive things about it... the reviewer made a terrific point when remarking that every act of violence was made "kid-friendly." There were bullet holes, sure, but the victims of random and directed violence were all rather bloodless.

Same thing with Star Wars, even though in A New Hope the arm sliced off by Ben Kenobi does lie there in a bloody puddle. To be fair, I would have expected the wound to be cauterized, but still. A New Hope and Raiders of the Lost Ark do have a lot in common, same as Crystal Skull and the Star Wars prequels. The former, while not skimping on violence, do show the consequences, be it blood or holes in storm trooper armor, while the latter make it all seem like a big video game.

The same could be said about certain aspects of fantasy, more so than science fiction, but overall the level of violence displayed in certain volumes of the respective genre is made cartoonish by the lack of blood.

This ain't D&D or World of Warcraft! We expect a reader to suspend their disbelief about dragons, magic and whatever else, we invite them into the realms of our imagination, expect them to live and suffer with our characters, let them participate in the battles and skirmishes the protagonists may face, yet at the end we hold back...?

Why?

No, seriously... why? Sure, we provide an escape from the harshness of our world, but if you are like me, you will marvel at the daring of Paul Verhoeven who did not shy away from showing the very real consequences of equipping a prototype robot with large caliber guns and then have said robot go berserk on a manager.

Is the scene in the original Robocop nice? Fuck no! It's not meant to be nice, it is meant to be sickening! Most people will never get the irony of that scene. People will complain about the level of violence, yet support legislation that allows everyone access to guns that while not inflicting wounds as gaping as those in the film will still kill people. The irony is right there.

The glorious warrior cutting his way through waves and waves of orcs, yet in the end his clothes show only some sweat stains, if that. And then we expect our readers to buy into the pathos of said warrior elaborating on the grimness of war and the suffering and hardship... in his pristine, maybe sweat-stained, clothes.

Who's laughing at the stupidity? I am!

I have never swung a sword at a live opponent. Thankfully. But I have held a sword, hacked away at vegetation with it, and used an ax on wood. So I do have a vague idea how much force one brings to bear with such a weapon. Aside from cutting myself shaving, the tip of my thumb had a rather messy encounter with the revolving blade of a bread-cutting-machine, I caught a falling knife, received my fair share of blows to both body and head, and while none of that even comes close to being on the business end of a sword blow (thank fuck for that!) it does show how easy it is to draw blood, and not in the ouch-paper-cut variety either. So a cut -- not a swing, mind you -- by any kind of blade will leave you slightly bloodied, if not downright gushing, depending on the location. A full swing, unhindered by armor, will kill, and not in a PG-13 way, either.

And that is exactly the point, we tell stories, stories have meaning, or should have, and in the end we want to point to our tales and say "Here, this is the point I wanted to make, him looking out over the field, on which so many of his friends have died, where he lost his leg trying to save his brother, here is where he realized that wars fought over religion are shit. Here is where he realized there was no god, or if there was, he did not care one bit."

Sure, such a scene could've been written PG-13, with lots of bloodless death, and maybe the message would still have come across, but chances are that message will sound preachy because the reader has not suffered through the fighting, because the protagonist has only observed caricatures, bloodless avatars from his favorite video game go down, not his friends and neighbors.

I prefer blood and tears and pain and joy and regret over the scrubbed cleanliness of PG-13 any day of the week.

Fan Fiction

take 2

Yesterday I had already written a couple of paragraphs when I decided they might come across as too snarky. Today I realize "hey, it's me, I AM snarky!"

So, without further ado...

I did write fan fiction as well, some Indiana Jones piece back when I was 13 or so, long before PCs and the commonly available internet. I wrote it because I wanted more Indy stories, let's face it, we all could do with more Indy stories. I think that was the only piece of fan fiction I ever wrote...

I understand the need to write in whatever universe, be it that sequels to beloved books take too long, or that they take so long that children you named after beloved characters now read them books too.

Then there is the other side of fan fiction... or masturbatory fantasies for those who think porn is too naughty for them. Seriously, what is it with those people who sit down and write their alternate version of what happened in Batman v Superman. XXX-style. Imagine the most absurd, out there topic, like Gandalf and Bilbo in a steamy sex scene, and it probably has been done. Why? Is there not enough porn on the internet? There's probably a porn category for hairy men and dwarfs as well... seriously, what is wrong with you people? And the worst thing about all this is that people actually made money with it. Yes, I'm looking at you, 50 Shades...

Admittedly, aside from a few bits of terrible, terrible prose, I have not read it. Neither did I read the inspiration to 50 Shades, Twilight. Though I watched the films (with a LOT of beer, well, for my current self a lot of beer, two decades ago that six pack would have evaporated during the first half of the first film) and I still struggle to understand how shallow and thin a story such as this could have an impact on millions of people...

And then a steamy, bondage-abusing masturbatory fantasy to Twilight conquered the internet, and got a book deal. Millions of people buying the book because of the hype made around the amazing success. They butchered whole forests for that thing! (I have nothing against paper books, nothing at all) But in the end very few people read it, many brought it to second hand stores until the store owners demanded for people not to bring anymore issues, the hundreds of books that were not selling at all might have made good insulation for tree houses or lining for bird cages.

I don't begrudge anyone their success, E L James must have wanked long and hard to get her... crap... must have worked(!) long and hard to get the story together. And the publisher must have worked long and hard to make... crap... wanked a whole lot after seeing the sales numbers. (seriously, it's difficult to keep a straight face writing this) And then a movie deal... one which was not made by a porn company... tho they could've used the dialog as written and none of their performers would have noticed the difference between that and their usual "scripts."

Now back to fan fiction, the normal, non-smutty kind. I get it, new stories... it's also a playground where one can stretch their writing muscles without being ridiculed... but in the end a writer needs to work on their own, original material. Is it tough to come up with a plot? Yes, and it should be. There's no story that has not, in one way or another, been covered in millennia of fiction, so getting something original is difficult. (please don't call out Twilight as a counter example of a rich background and whatnot, the woman dreamed of a hot man for fuck's sake, that was her inspiration)

Take your first guided, so to speak. steps in writing by writing fan fiction, no problem, you might even improve something that is already existing (a la Star Trek TNG, to which Ron Moore wrote a screenplay and got a job) but those chances are astronomical to begin with.

So please read a lot, do not read the latest fad, do not think just because you read Twilight in its entirety that you have read a lot, read different genres, and take your first unguided steps into the world of writing without the handhold familiar characters might offer. It is tempting to fall back on those, yes, but the danger lies in you never making any progress as a writer...

And please stop perverting our heroes, go and look for porn like normal people!

Finding one's voice

If you ask my editor: "what's Ulff like? How does he talk?" she will most definitely say: "Read his book, you can hear his voice in his style."
And she would not be the only one.

Fact of the matter is, I say what I think, and I write what I think. There is no filter between me and the page, or me and the sound for that matter. I've got in "trouble" because of that, telling a store manager that his lack of action was utter shit, or taking down my superior in the army because he accused me of lying, while he was, in fact, the one who told the lie.

What you hear/read is what you get, I don't fuck around. In film I'd probably go for all handheld cameras and shit just because I feel it feels more intimate.

But while I spoke my mind pretty much from the get go, not giving a fuck what others might think, I did not start out that way in writing. Far from it.

Everyone, in any creative art category, starts copying whatever influenced them to pick up the pen, brush, guitar in the first place. It takes practice to feel different. I daresay that you need to know yourself in order to find your voice; and I don't mean the facebook profile knowing, but realizing who the fuck you really are, down to the core.

Much like the musician or painter, a writer's best work comes when heart and learning meet, a metaphysical wedding so to speak. You need the latter to play your instrument, be it keyboard or pen, colors and brushes, or frets and strings and fingers. Without knowing what goes where, all one ever accomplishes is hapless scratching that is painful to behold. (side note, some will, correctly, say that there are works of art out there that resemble nothing more than boogers on white canvas. To me that is as much art as a car alarm is music)

So once you know what you're doing, you can start writing, painting, composing, right? Sure you can! And it will be proficiently done, the meter's right, the colors have the necessary shading, the rhythm is impeccable. Yet it's as sterile as the inside of an unopened syringe bag. That is not to say that it can't be good, most people will probably be impressed by one's work... sadly, a computer might soon be able to do the same: learn the theory, analyze the practical application, randomize, and voila, an impeccable piece of assembly-line art. Hey, if it works for all the casting show people, it will work for you, right?

This is where voice comes in. I'm pretty sure there are enough people out there who would be quite satisfied with being the literary equivalent of Brittney Spears, wait, that already happened, her name is Stephanie Meyer, and unlike Ms Spears she wrote all of her own stuff. So yea, you can be like Stephanie Meyer, having sold lots of books, and who will be remembered for the inspiration to the book (I kid you not) "I dreamed of a beautiful man" end of inspiration.

Or you can be the literary equivalent of Queen, you know the Radio GaGa, Bohemian Rhapsody Queen. Hand-crafted excellence. Sure, you might not sell gazillions of books and your integrity, but you will have fans, loyal not only beyond the next fad but also beyond death.

Personally, I'd rather be Queen.

But how does one achieve such a thing? Love. All you need is love. Beatles antics aside, it is love. Love for your craft, love for the words, love for yourself, your ideals, your vision. Sure, you might take away the love for yourself and still achieve the same, albeit posthumously, become the Kurt Cobain of literature then, won't work for you, obviously, but the rest of a generation and beyond will remember your name, maybe.

Every character should, ideally, be confronted with the same questions: Who am I? Where am I going? What the fuck am I doing here? Sure, we can make up motivations galore, and there's a lot of books out there who toss motivation, personal motivation, overboard and just get on with the bloody plot. And while plots are nice, the thing we remember most from any of those novels is the little moments, the personal ones, when a character we have grown to love suddenly dies of a heart attack, or the misguided warrior realizes his mistake and dies trying to atone for it, or just the notion that a mother is so shell-shocked she packed her daughter's severed head in a basket because of how well she had braided her hair that day.

These people die or suffer in some cases without having found the answer to any of those questions, yet it is those questions that touch us.

If you've found the answer for yourself (my answer by the by is: "I am a writer, if I don't write I die, and the next bout of writing will soon come, oh wait it's here, I am living it right now!") finding your voice is easier.

I don't like high-brow speeches, I abhor pretentiousness, and I loathe self-serving arrogance. All that is reflected in my speech patterns and my voice when writing. I am I and I don't give two fucks if I offend someone. If something smells like shit, I will say so; sure, some might say that swearing doesn't make you a better writer, and they are right, swearing alone does not make you a better writer! It does, however, make you a more honest writer.

Imagine, if you can, this scene, in an English trench at a little place called Somme, in France. Shells are exploding regularly, on both sides. They plow through the already churned earth, sending geysers of mud and blood and bone and flesh and wire into the air. The last mustard gas attack has just finished and the signal that the air is clear has just been rung.

"Hey, my good man, do you happen to know whose foot this is?" the sergeant asked, pointing at the limb next to him.
"Why no, sir, I'm not quite sure."
"Neither am I, sir, but we can ask Kenny. Kenny, do you know whose foot this is... Kenny? Oh my gosh they killed Kenny!" (this was the PG version, written by some pretentious idiot who has no idea of army life!)

now the same, written by foul-mouthed, honest me

"Oi!" roared the sergeant. "Headcount! I wanna know whose fucking foot this is!"
The soldiers he commanded gave their names, glancing at each other to confirm their friends were still in one piece.
"Shit," swore MacDugan. "They got Kenny."

No pretentiousness there, it's as it could have happened. Fuck, it probably happened all over the place, not with bare feet, but I'm fairly certain meat puzzles were nothing out of the ordinary back then in the trenches of the Somme.

But even the pretentiousness could be pulled off by someone who actually believed in it. Look at all the war journals and eye witness accounts written by aristocrats during the Somme or any other battle, They were detached from it all.

Problem is, if you write from the eyes of a common soldier, one who has not been raised by Puritans and Bible-fetishists, soldiers will be foulmouthed bastards amongst themselves, so chances are you must write them that way, unless you want to sound utterly artificial.

All that, however, you will only truly understand the moment you understand and like yourself, because that is the moment you can truly empathize with and understand others.

The devil's in the details...

or "How the hell is this relevant?"

I've been thinking a lot about how to write this one, and while I'm still not sure this is the right way, I just told myself "fuck it, let's get it over with..." So that I don't have to repeat myself again and can refer people to this bit of blog-wisdom.

If it is wisdom... you decide.

Now, I recently had a conversation with a few writers regarding details and how many to use, with me saying that we miss 80% or more of whatever the hell goes on around us. The reply I got was that they were paying attention to everything people wore etc. So I asked them something like this "When you go to work in a crowded rush-hour type morning, you will notice everything everyone wears?" To which I got a simple "yes" as answer. I think I said something like "Damn, you must never be on time... if you arrive at all."

Not sure if the people were seeing what I was getting at since I let the conversation rest. This ain't admitting defeat, but I don't like tilting against windmills... if I see someone not getting it I see no point continuing the conversation.

Now, details. Wherever one lives, I assume that other than just recently being cured from blindness or having just moved there people have lived there for a while. Meaning they have done the "sight-seeing" and while there probably are corners they have yet to discover, walking from one's apartment to anywhere familiar is like walking from the living room to the bathroom. Read, under normal circumstances you just don't give a fuck about the surroundings.

Now, entering a bar with friends waiting. With an even number of both sexes represented, and interest focused on finding one's friends, the details of what who is wearing fade into the background. Sure there are exceptions, but if you are meeting friends, your focus is on finding them.

Entering the same bar "on the prowl" is a different thing, but even then one follows a hunting scheme, dismissing everyone who does not fall into one's preferred category and those who are no "threat" which again leaves a majority of the people in the background, noticed only in order to not bump into them.

The same goes for getting to work, shopping, traveling, whatever.

We do not pay attention to everybody's clothes.

As I said somewhere else, for me the most important and compelling aspect in a story is the characters through whom I experience the world, their lives, their stories. So if I read a novel which flip-flops between 3rd person narrow and semi-omniscience on a regular basis, I usually put the book away. Why? Because I do not want to have a guide-narrated tour through a place... "and behold, to either side of the stream, the Argonath, the statues of the olden kings of Gondor..." bad example, I know, since Tolkien used the tour guide/omniscient narrator style anyways, but it serves to get the point across.

I live in a town which has a lovely medieval part that somehow survived WW II. Part of my apartment, the part I am currently writing in, has been built in 1713 or so, and there are buildings that have been standing for some 500 years or so. I live here. Guess how many times a day I stop and gaze at the beautiful wattle-and-daub houses. Come on, you know the answer... Zero times. But why? you ask. It must be beautiful, you say. Yea, but I fucking live here, I have been through this city so many times, drunk, sober, elated, depressed, talking with friends, watching girls, smoking, at day, at night, I don't fucking care ! I live here!

Now, were I to put a typical day of mine into prose, this is what would be in the text. Me searching for my shoes (thought I put them next to my chair last night, but I must have put them elsewhere). Me patting my pocket for my keys (which are attached to my jeans, I know, yet I don't wanna lock myself out, at all). Me opening the mailbox, noting that the state of its contents are still the same. Then I have a cappuccino, chat with the staff or read, ponder whether to buy some pastry afterwards and deciding against it, seeing that I'm kinda low on funds.

All this tells the reader something about the character(me). I am scatterbrained, obsessive yet uncaring towards any mess. A creature of habit who likes pastries but pays attention to money, or lack thereof.
An omniscient narrator could've summed it up pretty much the same way I just did, and we would've skimmed over it because it's boring. Seen through the character's eyes, things become more intimate, and yet they are not on the nose. What's even more interesting is that once a reader knows a character, they can tell what's out of character. If faced with some everyday thing, a character will not notice it, because he has seen it so many times.

I love GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire, but in the latest books he has gone out of his way to describe all the banners lining a sodding room's walls. Sure, Jon Snow might have noticed it, a few years ago, but the boss of the Night's Watch has a few more important things on his mind than to make a mental list of the banners! Fan service of the worst kind, a useless pointless detail that is utterly out of character for someone as pragmatic as Jon. And I'm pretty sure I was not alone in noticing it.

If something is new, details come to the fore, but even then our character noticing them is guided by necessity. Take the bar example and replace bar with cavern, and instead of waltzing in and looking for friends (or a potential lay) the character sneaks in and tries to free a friend. Will he notice the wall paintings or graffiti? Unless he huddles behind a rock upon which someone wrote a colorful insult that might make him stifle a chuckle, he will have his attention on the kidnappers, and possible silverware which might fuck up movement. He will notice weaponry, maybe identify the most lethal fighters, but he will not notice that the shoes of that warrior woman were made by the expert hand of Dolce'n'Gabba, the famous shoemaker!

So if anyone claims they pay attention to every single detail, I want to know the clothes of every sodding person they encountered during their ride on the subway on their way to work, including jewelry and shoes and perfume! The answer more than likely is "how the fuck should I know?" Which is exactly my point!

Sometimes it's easy

Looking at the title, it could be to a pretentious book on writing... what is easy, one may ask, and rightfully so.

There are texts I can immerse myself in, and then there are others that make swimming against waves feel easy. I don't know if I'm a good person to ask for a critique, mainly because I'm such a hard ass regarding my own prose and my compulsive need for stuff to make fuckin' sense!

For example: a story I read involved vampires, and their lack of a reflection. So along comes an Ulff, asking a silly question like "why don't they have reflections?" If the answer goes along the line of "because no vampire has a reflection," I go postal. Sure, vampires in classic literature cast no reflection, that is the canon, for Dracula movies! Not sure if Stoker makes an effort to explain the reason, or if he had a reason at hand for reference. The issue is this: that's Stoker's bloody vampire who doesn't cast a reflection! What's the point of copying something another writer has done before and not make it one's own?

So I asked again, "Why do your vampires cast no reflection?" What followed was a lengthy brainstorming session in which we finally determined that everything that has a soul (or whatever) also cast a reflection, even the trees have souls, just ask a shaman. A vampire is a soulless thing and thus does not show in a mirror. Sure, we hadn't addressed furniture and clothes, bet they also had souls, or maybe we came up with a different explanation, the point I was trying to make is that everything needs to make sense... if the world is a disc on the back of four elephants riding the back of a giant turtle in space, the sun better wander through the gloom in between two elephants, hopefully not singeing them in the process, to pop up on the eastern side come the next morning. Silly? Yes, definitely, but also logical. If your fantasy world is like this, it needs to make sense, even in the insanity of a flat world on the back of a bunch of elephants.

If there's acid rain fucking up the world so badly that people need to wear protective clothes, then the food consumed needs to grow where? Sure, for the casual reader it don't matter where the taters come from, but I am far from the casual reader. I read, sadly I must say, with an editor's eye and a world builder's heart. Stuff needs to make sense...

If you have a city, and you've established there is no sewer system, cuz the people have yet to invent it, or maybe they forgot how to, like almost everyone when Rome collapsed, where does the shit go? Well, and the piss, but you get the picture. Chamber pots need emptying. And they usually just open the window and pour the shit out. Which, of course, gives the village a nice morning aroma.

Now a stinking village is barely important for any plot, but it does make for nice, um, flavor text. Think about it, the protagonist is bone tired, has spent some time in a swamp and is just looking for a bed of straw and some fresh water to wash off the stink of rotting grass. After a long soak, he collapses in a friendly farmers barn and wakes, not from the cock crowing on the dung heap, but from a nightmare he was drowning in the swamp's muck. To top it all off, the farmer's wife, empties their chamber pot atop the dung heap. Ah the simple life in the countryside, now the protagonist remembers why he hates leaving the city!

Is it necessary? Probably not. Will most readers notice? Um, nope. But it feels good to have not only the world fleshed out a tad more (outside the city, it's a fucking jungle) but added a bit to the protagonist's personality. (why yes, he is a city person)

Most of the novels I've read do the proper thing and tune out when the characters take a leak or dump, given that that's the puritanical way of doing stuff, no wonder, but imagine the shit they might be missing out on. Pun intended, and if all people were puritanical peons, intent on pretending their shit smelled like roses, they might be right, but chances are the good folk of Westeros never heard of Puritans, and if they did, they would laugh them the fuck out of King's Landing. So characters in a world with non-christian religions rarely have the pious laughing stock.

In ancient times, people met in communal shit-houses, shared gossip and sports news and the gods know what else while emptying their bowels. Deals were brokered whilst sharing toilet paper (or the equivalent). That bit of knowledge alone is gold for a story. Of course there'd be communal toilets, people talk with each other, even when taking a dump. These community toilets led into the sewer and the water flowing there took the shit to the ocean or river.

Sure, I don't wanna school folks on the history of latrines, but if you know that much more about your world, an obstacle like "how does X find out about the plot to assassinate the king?" can be solved quickly, and rather dirtily. X was looking for his money bag which he lost while taking a dump, now in the sewers he overhears two people planning the damn thing.

If you know stuff like that, sometimes finding the solution to a completely different problem is that easy!

The easy or the hard way?

I guess I need to do some definition work here.

I've seen lots of people offering their prose for very low prices, if not totally free for a certain amount of time. To stir up excitement, y'know. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but as with everything free, I have my doubts that this will lead to a greater circulation, or a larger circle of readers. Sure, I don't have the numbers to prove this either way, it's just a gut feeling.

Free, or nearly free, to me at least is something you pick up, like a sample of one product or other, take it home, try it, and unless it's supremely exceptional you forget about it. Hells, I've forgotten about books I paid for and bought a second time. Then again, maybe I'm just scatterbrained like that. I guess if you fire enough bullets into the dark night, a couple might actually hit something worthwhile. Other than that, this high, this feeling of accomplishment when you see some 100 people picked up your free book, will dissipate rather quickly, especially if no reviews come along and the sale is moving more than sluggish.

Sure, you can brag about 100 people having picked up your book. 100, wow, 100 people maybe reading your book. Chances are, some are sampling it, most will forget they ever downloaded it.

Yes, I've read the recommendations about offering it for free for 2 weeks prior to official release, that it is a viable method of publicity. But I don't know... it sounds too easy... hence the easy way.

The hard way doesn't necessarily promise a better outcome. After all, hundreds of thousands of people publish their novels on kindle and create space, and each and everyone of them hopes they wrote the new Twilight or 50 Shades, and they'll attract millions of readers. Not that Twilight or 50 Shades is something anyone should aspire to, in my opinion. 50 Shades, I've read articles in which used books shop owners asked people to not bring in any more of those, they already could build a wall of the ones they had, and nobody was buying the fucking things. I suspect that most people bought the book for the same reason you poke an aching tooth with your tongue, you know the outcome but you can't stop yourself. Once the tooth is pulled, or the junk read, you don't want to do it again.

I went the hard way, I ask an appropriate price for my work, for it is my work. I've worked on the story on and off for 20 years or more, I am proud of it, and since I've had people tell me long before it went "live" how much they enjoyed it, I know what I had written had value. Fuck, I put years of my time into its creation, I know my worth, and my work's value. If I were to offer it for 99 Cents, what would that say about how much I value myself? Have I slaved for so long to sell my creation so cheaply? Matters of self worth aside, psychology is a factor not only for myself. If I sell the book for something more like industry standard, what does that say about me? (snarky voices would call me a greedy bastard, I know) There is this little voice inside everyone's head comparing all the time, counting, wondering:

"Why is X selling the book so cheaply? Does he think it isn't worth more? If he has such a low opinion of his work, it must suck. Sure, it's only 99 cents, but this other guy, he asks more, much like a normal book..."

Perception matters a lot... 6.99 for a novel or .99 for a novel... in your mind the cheaper novel is always "cheaper" and if you read the sample this impression is along for the ride, whispering about how this sample is from the cheaper book. In job interviews, one of the greatest most important motto is to not sell yourself under value, and in a way the sampling and the pricing of your novel is like a job interview! After all, if someone buys your novel, it's your job to entertain this person. My 6,99 promises I know what I'm doing, and that you will be entertained. Sure, the sample helps, but in a potential employer's/reader's eyes, the price, the self worth, matters. It says: "Here's a writer who knows what he is doing, and he is not afraid to ask a higher price for his work!"

Now let's be honest, one's knee jerk reaction to 99 cents goes along the lines of "This can't be any good." Two apples, next to each other, one for 50 cents, the other for 1 dollar. The very first question people will ask is "What's wrong with the cheaper apple?"

Granted, if you don't follow through with your confident proclamation of self worth, you're pretty much fucked, bad reviews and bad word of mouth. People won't forget the bastard who cheated them...

But! If your novel holds what it promises through the price and the sample, you will have a happy, dare I say very happy, customer, who will tell others of his latest employee, because in a way we writers are employees, of the entertainment variety but someone has bought our work, the hundreds of hours we put into the product. And in the end that is what matters most!

I do not aim to please every reader, but thankfully Shattered Dreams' first chapter makes a fucking loud statement about what people can expect, so those who don't like it will stop before they even buy the novel.

I chose the hard way, but no good thing in life is ever easy, in my opinion.

Creating homogeneous world

In many fantasy stories we encounter races like elves, dwarves and orcs, for instance. We also encounter a pantheon of gods that had a hand in creating these races.

Even if you buy into "creationism" and for the sake of fantasy world building we have to, some things, like language, usually evades said creationist rules. Why would a group of gods create a world and then toss species about as if they want to pin the tail on a donkey, each with their own culture and language. Sure, it helps if you can say that this country is more dark ages Britain (not that there was such a thing) and that country is more renaissance Italy, but does it make sense? No, not really, not even if you tie my hands behind my back, blindfold me and spin me around, the only result you will get is projectile-like vomit.

If the world was created by a group of gods, sure they could have decided that a specific group of people spoke language A, and another one language B. In order for either speaker to communicate with the other, they would have to stand on equal ground, linguistically speaking. Enter the ominous Trade or Common Tongue, a cheap ass short cut ignoring the inherent problem.

First off, why would the gods create multiple different cultures with different languages? Sure, they are gods and can do as they please, and yes, puny humans like us will never understand the mind of gods... unless, of course, we take a step back and look at it logically. A bunch of deities first creating the entire world, their sandbox so to speak, then set out to create their people... so far so Greek. But this is where logic bites the Common Tongue's and the differing cultures' ass! If one group is responsible for creating the world, why the fuck would there be different cultures, who not only speak different languages but behave differently than the core peoples and possibly worship different deities?

Sure, we as writers try to stick close to what we know from our world, so we get nations like Dark Age Britain (which did not exist as a nation) renaissance Italy and post-modern France merrily living next to each other... because the world's creator (aka the writer) thought it might be interesting, and because that sort of stuff also happened in D&D. But if you look at mythology, none of these myths actually deal with different pantheons and stuff. There are no language barriers in the Iliad, the people all speak Greek, they all worship the same gods.

From a purely logical standpoint, a bunch of deities will cobble together a world and people it with their folks and be done with that process. Why would they do more? And no, "because it fits the story," or "because I need a different culture" makes no sense in regards to the internal logic of the tale. If the Greek gods had created the world, every fucking person would speak Greek and worship the same sodding deities and maybe travel to Mount Olympus once in their lives. Because, you know, the Greek deities created the world. Well, the gods came later, technically, but you get the gist.

D&D worlds aren't that good a role model when it comes to creating your own world, Terry Pratchett's discworld is a much better example at creating your own world because it is purely founded on mythology. (Yes, there was a time when the world was flat and all that, at least in the minds of the people.)

Taking our world, aka Earth, as an example for a fantasy world doesn't really work, because, well, history. Each culture had their own gang of gods, their own language, their own way of dealing with strangers... with each culture comes another tale of how the world was created, and since we are dealing with gods that are "real" the powers they give their most devout are also "real." Well, at least some of them have real powers, because, you know, the other gods cannot have created the world. Unless, of course, you have a bunch of godly gangs coming together and in a moment not so unlike Grease, they sing some nonsense and each gang creates their own culture and then the push and prod until the lands fit together atop the giant turtle swimming thru the ether. Or some such thing... problem then is: humans and faith, I mean look at our pitiful existence. For the past 2000 years monotheistic religions have monopolized (see what I did there) their sole truth, slaughtering others and one another in droves.

(Disclaimer: I am not attacking your delusion... err... religion (okay, now I did attack it) but trying to make a point!!!)

The pantheon religions of ancient times never really fought over their faiths, they just adapted what they liked and moved on. Problem is: they are as real here as any other religion... in a fantasy world, they are real!

If you design your world, make it logical. One pantheon/religion, one language with a multitude of dialects, and one "stock" of people (if the elves came before the humans, they still will be of only one "stock") It is the only thing that makes sense.

bla bla bla title bla

The hero's journey... young person leaves hearth and home to become a fabled something or other. It really doesn't matter, we all heard this shit so many times we know it by heart. "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope" and all that. (and yes, I am aware that the message is not directed at Luke... I can atomize hairs with the best of them)

But the guy who runs into a burning building and saves a child, he doesn't go through the hero's journey crap, unless the child is magical and part of the quest, of course. Or the youth who vacates his spot on the bus to make room for the Syrian woman loaded with groceries, sure the only thing he did was offer her a seat, but in a country where the bigotry and ignorance is vomited at these poor bastards, such an act of kindness can be interpreted as very heroic.

I'm not saying there should never be another hero's journey, but how about redefining what makes a hero and what constitutes as his journey? Are these people I mentioned above lesser heroes because they did not pull some scrap metal from a stone? Not heroic enough? How about the soldier who throws himself onto a grenade and saves his comrades? Is he a hero?

In the same train of thought, sitting right across from the hero is the villain... the bad guy... and of course, every hero needs a villain, Frodo had Sauron (although a more proactive villain is preferable in the penultimate struggle to throw a ring into a volcano... ok, bad example) Kirk had KAHN!, Robin Hood had the Sheriff of Nottingham, Heracles had his father's wife, Hera, movie Batman (the Michael Keaton version) had the Joker... sure Heracles doesn't butcher Hera, Robin doesn't kill the Sheriff, they don't because they, in essence, belong to the pulp version of narratives, campfire stories, which needed to go on. Hells, if you look at the comic book version of Batman, the Joker will always live on for the next boring evening at the campfire, and that's good as it is....

Now, if we take movie Batsy and Joker, of course the clown bites the dust at the end, it's the frickin' movies, and they need a happy end... kiss the damsel and whatnot... patriarchal crap if you ask me but nobody does... ask me that is. They didn't know if there was going to be a sequel, so they needed to tie stuff up with a neat bow. If I were to write a story based on this, set in our time, I would probably use some of the Dark Knight Returns beats, with some parents group hounding Bats because of his violent ways and all that, while the poor sod is just trying to do what is right... he'd fight the Joker, but instead of killing him, it is he who is taken down by ideologically fucked up cops and it's he who is locked up in Arkham... this way, when it comes to the inevitable sequel, we would meet an even more hurting Bruce Wayne who has lost his fortune due to being revealed as a vigilante, who now is an inmate of an insane asylum... how does he get out? What will he do when he gets out? These are the kinds of questions I find way more compelling than the old hero/villain spiel.

I know it ain't everyone's piece of cake, but, frankly, I really don't give a shit about demographics and focus groups... if the story is good, it is worth telling.