Roderick T. Macdonald's Blog, page 23

Why I Write Fantasy: The Influence of Horror

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. Fantasy existed in book form, but in other media it was pretty scarce, especially in a UK where only three TV channels existed. For a child looking for images to fit his imaginings of monsters and adventure, it was to the creepy and the kooky that it was easiest to turn.

In an era when fantasy was thin on the ground, horror and horror adjacent imagery was available, and helped to fire my imagination down darkened, inevitably velvet draped corridors. My favourite Top Trumps deck was not one of the many they had of cars (though I did love those), but their horror decks, dripping with gore and unafraid to be blood spattered in a way I’m sure today’s parents would be (ironically) quite horrified by. See the gruesome pics here! I have uncertain memories of an incompleted horror sticker album, (lushly painted with the stickers filling in the illustrations) like those produced by Panini for football, (in 1981 the craze swept my school, by 1982 nobody could be bothered anymore) but a brief internet search has revealed nothing to jog my memory banks.

Perhaps it is the yearly advent of Hallowe’en, but ‘frightening’ masks and costumes were readily available, and as children were permitted to indulge in it, images of horror were tolerated, allowing ghosts, skeletons, ghouls, the odd devil or demon, and of course vampires entry into everyday life. Zombies too, but I never really got into zombies. As a kid we had horror-lite in the form of Scooby doo and his gang (don’t talk to me about Scrappy), with all kinds of monsters to be debunked, but always the thrill of “What if it’s real this time?” and the occasional episode where something else possibly unexplained was seen by Scooby and Shaggy and slid away unapprehended as the grown-ups of the group laughed off the sandwich obsessed duo’s tale.

Of course Dr. Who scared the pants off me, with its wobbly sets and rubber monsters that drove me behind the sofa time and time again. Really, it was not just a cliché. I did hide behind the sofa. Dr Who could be a bit of everything: sci fi, fantastical, historical, contemporary, but the best episodes were the ones that scared me silly.

As I grew into a teen, and He-Man and Thundercats cartoons were still about the most fantasyesque offerings on TV, I stayed up later, and discovered the bodice-ripping glory of Hammer horror movies.

I still love watching these movies. I haven’t done so for a few years, so I think a binge watch may be in order, from the original 50s classics to the 60s retreads where you could play spot the reused sets and even shots from film to film, to the dog eared 70s, which, though the studio was struggling, still produced some flashes of past glories. Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter was a late classic, much beloved by me and my role playing mates, and not just for Caroline Munro!

What I found so great about the hammer movies was the atmosphere, especially in the early classics: Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein, The Mummy. The set design was so gothic, so opulent and over the top, that it created its own sense of place and time – you could not mistake a Hammer movie for anything else. Moreover the early movies especially took the time to linger on those details, and create a sense of something coming to upset that richly realised world. That combination of anticipation and suspense made a lasting impression on me. Yes, the movies got samey, and the impact muddled – I later tended to watch and rewatch them during my college years and after when they were running from 12-4 am and I’d got home from a night at the dancing and didn’t quite feel like sleeping yet. (Or, more often, when I was broke and couldn’t afford to go out, so stayed in and found what I could to watch on the now expanded four, yes four TV channels!!) Those movies became familiar companions, each with its own charm of Transylvanias filled with English folk sometimes bothering to do accents, most of the time giving it a miss.

So it was in horror that monsters lived, and magic was real, if often not on the side of the angels. A fantasy Top Trumps deck did finally appear, after I’d stopped playing them. Horror was a way into other world and realities, lush and atmospheric, thrilling to the mysteries of the unknown. Yes, they all too soon became campy retreads (which had their own fun charm), but some of the old magic still gleamed through at times! (Most often in the first act.) Horror became a channel for my desire for the fantastical, and perhaps some of it transferred the other way too, with my taste in fantasy having lingering elements of the touches of horror I so adored growing up.

Nowadays we live in a golden age of fantasy, with the insane cultural dominance of Game of Thrones that followed on from the massive impact of Harry Potter, which came on the heels of The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Each wave has felt bigger than the one that came before, and now multiple TV shows have elements of, or are outright fantasy. It is hard to imagine now that once upon a time the closest we got to seeing the fantastical on TV (outside of cartoons) was by watching horror.

The Writing Life: Everything Requires Research

The title pretty much says it all, folks. When I’m writing, I’m constantly needing to research things: medieval clothing, swords of various eras, ships, rigging, rope names, sewer system management, tidal estuaries, mercantile societies and the role of guilds within said societies, pre-industrial food staples in different parts of the world, the burial rites of various cultures and much much more. And that is to write fantasy, which when I was young I thought wouldn’t need any research, because heck, I was going to make everything up from scratch! The optimism of youth right there.

But no. Everything requires research.

Advertising on amazon: research. Once you’ve done some and worked out the rules you then have to research keywords that’ll work. Or genre categories that best match your book. Then you can move on to researching Facebook advertising. If you wanna. But maybe I should research my overall marketing strategy first. Or maybe I should have done that before I did my research into how to build my website. Or perhaps do it as part of my ongoing research into what to have on it. (Announcement: I finally made the first chapter of The Thief and The Demon available here on my website, under the Books tab. I meant to do it months ago, but swithered over just the first, or the first four chapters! Just one for now.)

Hiring people to help you with aspects of book production? Research. Wondering about tax implications of book earnings? (Don’t laugh at the back!)  Research. How to run a blog? Research. (Clearly ignored in my case.) Which sales platforms to use and why? Research. What font would I prefer my print edition to be in? Research.

It truly is never ending. And I try to cut it into one hour chunks so it doesn’t get overwhelming. One hour on X subject, then switch to Y before X becomes a rabbit hole and I learn far more than I ever needed to about Scandinavian clinker techniques in shipbuilding. In the 9th-11th centuries. Don’t judge.

The one hour then switch is good for all the stuff around the business of writing, and helps me to nibble away at the things I need to do. Currently it is keywords, and an hour at a time of coming up with new ones and inputting them is about all I can take at one sitting. Then I can spend an hour trying to fashion new advertising copy. Or reworking the old stuff to freshen it up. Or researching what makes the most effective advertising copy!

I think if you turn it into tinkering, rather than labouring, it becomes slightly more fun, and each hour becomes useful, rather than turning into what can often feel like a lost afternoon or evening.

One hour, and one research topic at a time.

Oh yeah, and there’s actual writing to do too…

Good luck to all writers, and may your researches be enlightening, amusing, and fruitful!

Why I Write Fantasy: Inspirations – The Music of Fantasy Part 3: Gothic Dreams

Now the 80s weren’t just the metal years for me, though metal was undoubtedly my first true musical love. I was a mostly closeted Prince fan. (Not metal enough, despite the outrageous guitar skills – I tried to point that out, but my mates weren’t buying it back then.) I went to see the Sign o’ the Times movie multiple times at The Cameo cinema in Edinburgh because it was just so good. The memory of that drum line still gets me every time. I got into electronica and house/dance music, because like metal, you could get lost in the sound and dance until your lungs were burning. Walking home on cold Scottish nights in clammy clothing was not unusual after either a night at a metal or a dance club. Industrial sounds blended both dance and metal and seemed raw and fresh back then – Front 242 and Ministry were a revelation to me when I first stumbled across them courtesy of my much more plugged in friends.

The gothic genre has its own cross-over elements: the rock stylings of The Cult, the industrial and experimental aspects of The Sisters of Mercy, the alternative 80s sound of Siouxsie and the Banshees, who were also unafraid to experiment with their sound from album to album whilst never sacrificing their own unique character, the romanticism of The Smiths, the art house sensibility of Bauhaus. These were what I considered my gothic canon, though of course some readers might disagree with the classification! For me, at that time, these bands felt related in terms of what they were saying and how they said it.

The music and the lyrics were a stark contrast to the pomp and self-indulgence of hairmetal, and did not necessarily promise escape as Dio did in his elaborate fantasies. The viewpoints were different, markedly so, and alive with their own vitality: The Smiths looking at the commonplace with new, outsider’s eyes, Siouxsie opening windows into worlds of experience I had never known before, and barely grasped after having been introduced to them. Sexuality, yearning, the forbidden were discussed in frank new ways, wrapped in dark bows and left for listeners to commune with.

There was a sense of a whole other universe in their music; a different way of interacting with our landscape seemed to exist in this genre. Negative emotions were expressed and explored, rather than repressed and brushed under the carpet. It was okay to not feel okay. Pain and depression could be spoken of at a time when it just wasn’t the done thing in polite company. The Smiths especially were ridiculed for being depressing – I rather think because the lyrics cut too close to home sometimes, and it was easier to laugh at them than it was to admit how common those experiences were.

And it was popular. With the exception of Bauhaus, all the other bands were semi-regular visitors to the charts of 80s UK. Regular appearances on Top of the Pops (so cheesy, but it still ruled the roost as I was growing up) both showcased how different they were from standard 80s pop, and also made them somehow acceptable – a kid growing up in that era would have been exposed to all these bands, and more, like The Mission, New Model Army, The Cure. (Lots of ‘The’ bands!) Getting into gothic music, the gothic style, while strikingly different from the mainstream, wasn’t so outlandish as to be disconcerting to the general public, who had so recently been more horrified by the punk explosion in the late 70s. (Again I wouldn’t really call New Model Army gothic, (more punk, but even that doesn’t cover it…) but they were most definitely not mainstream of that time, and had a look and feel that was not out of place among their truly gothic brethren.)

As it was I ended up a strange hybrid of metal,gothic,glam and industrial, and had a great time with it! Your teens – identity experimentation is go, or it was for me, anyway.

Gothic music gave me another strand of thought, another vocabulary with which to express yearning and desire, different imagery with which to experiment, to incorporate into the realms of fantasy I wanted to create. Most of all I discovered new perspectives that I would never otherwise have been exposed to, expressed by artists of intense creative power. I had always loved the dark, but now it possessed new and alluring textures, that haunted my gothic dreams.

The Writing Life: Managing Priorities

Life has recently gotten a lot busier for me. I’ve started a new job. I’ve set a final editorial schedule for my next book. I’ve got a panel to moderate at Denver Comic Con. Each of these three things takes up time, and mental energy. I have a lot to learn, a lot to do, and a lot to research. Time, something I had plenty of just a few weeks ago, is now something to be tightly rationed and used well. That’s a challenge I embrace, first because I have no choice, and second because I wasn’t making the most of my time off before, so having this structure to work around may actually be to my advantage. Yes, that is what I’m telling myself, and for now, I totally believe it!

Having a job and income has enabled me to set my editorial schedule in stone. I believe in working with an editor, and paying a professional for their work – I tried to save money by foregoing editing for a number of years, and wasted a lot of time in the process. Eventually I hired an editor, and almost immediately realized the massive benefit to my writing (which remained my writing) it represented. I regard editorial services as a necessary step to producing a polished piece of work I’m proud of. Now maybe after four or five more books I will have learned a lot more about all the ins and outs of editing and feel I don’t need quite as much assistance, but even then I suspect I’ll keep using the service, just work through it faster, utilizing the lessons I’ve learned. I believe outside editing is indispensible for me, because as much as I might wish it, I’m no Joseph Conrad, turning out perfect copy on demand. If even he did that!

I’m looking at developmental, line, and copy editing passes to be completed by the end of November 2018. So I’d be planning to publish The Killer and The Dead by the end of this calendar year. During the periods of time when my editor is working on that book, I plan to use those weeks starting in on the first pass of the next novel – the more I get done of that, the better shape I will be in to get the next book out during calendar year 2019. I think the goal of a book a year is not unreasonable, though it is a lot of work.

Of course between now and July, when the developmental edit is scheduled to start, I will need to juggle the new job, finishing and tidying up the first draft, and prepping for and then moderating the panel at Denver Comic Con. And of course continuing to write these here blogs, and trying to keep up with what other people are writing and doing. And and and… With less time available, the emphasis will be on using the free hours I get productively, being able to plug in and go when I have the chance. Everything will be about priorities, what has to be done now versus what can wait a while; when to try to carve out time for longer tasks, when to make sure I don’t slack off and miss out on a chance to get some work done on a blog or panel research.

Having multiple hard deadlines has always tended to focus my mind usefully. I can’t say I’ve always hit them, but I learned severe lessons from the occasions I did not, and have avoided missing one since. And of course time and tide wait for no man, and I’ve let enough time pass that being forced to work harder now to keep up with my schedule is to be welcomed: if I don’t think I can afford to let up, then maybe I won’t.

One book a year is the plan, with life, love, and travel thrown in. And here we go.

Why I Write Fantasy: To Connect the Dots…

Last week I talked about how sometimes ideas assail me, story concepts or character ideas that want to make the difficult transition from idle fancy to fully-fleshed reality.

It is really easy to just daydream the good bits: the dramatic confrontations, the epic climaxes, awful betrayals, heartbreaking deaths, hard-earned victories. And any amount of acid-tongued conversation. I think a lot of people get stuck at that stage, or perhaps after sketching out their favourite sections, villainous villains being especially venal, and then their richly deserved defeat and downfall, long-awaited and eagerly anticipated. Those are the easy parts, the fun-filled stage where you can imagine what you want, insert whatever you need, because there is no narrative structure to constrain you, yet. Sooner or later, however, you’ve got to take the story, and your hoped-for readers, along the long road from Alpha to Omega, from story set-up to completion.

The problem is bridging the gap in time between your (for instance) villains getting away with murder and finally receiving their just deserts. In The Thief and The Demon there was a lot of ground to cover between the opening and the final confrontation between the title characters. A whole world of ground. I had a lot of ideas studding the time between, and quickly wrote a long outline detailing it, but even that left gaps that would need to be written: bridging material to make all the high-points work.

Connecting the dots can be less fun than writing the set pieces you first fell in love with. Or it can be more: it is very hard to tell which will be which before you start writing it. I’ve experienced the process a few different ways in the course of my writing career. Sometimes the connective writing becomes so much more exciting than imagined, adding tons of texture to the characters, story, and themes I was building. This is an absolute delight to experience as a writer: the ideas flow into each other and create a new, stronger whole. Or the interludes can be as difficult as anticipated to bring to life and made to fit in terms of feel into the other parts of the story I clearly enjoyed writing more. (That was more the case in my earlier unpublished writing, I feel – but of course I could be blind to current examples of the same tendency!) I’ve also slogged through writing what I thought would be a fantastic scene, a great set piece long imagined, only to find the first writing of it to fall terribly flat – I’d told myself that part of the story so many times when walking, showering, or waking up that actually putting it down seemed a pale echo of the better versions I had already created.

I am drawn to fantasy by vivid imaginings, but I am impelled to write it by the need to put flesh on the bones of those scenes, to give those shining flashes context worthy of them, and to make everything in that world work as a whole. My desire is not to be content with a fifteen second elevator pitch of the groovy bits, but to put the story together as a complete entity, and for everything to complement the original conception I had, and hopefully in writing actually improve upon the original ideas. When I have breakthroughs as I’m writing the bridging sections of the story, when I realize how and why these sections are just as important as the highpoints I imagined first, then I know I’ve got a real tale worth telling.

To the writers out there: does your experience reflect mine at all, or do you have a very different process? Do you start out wanting to write the highlight reel sections of the book and get bogged down in what you can’t help but think of as ‘filler’ at first, or do you treat every section the same? Or some other approach? I’d love to hear how you deal with this part of translating the original ideas for a book into the finished article!

The Writing Life: Finding Yourself Involved in a Comic Con

So a while ago you will recall I chatted on Jesper Schmidt’s YouTube channel about Morality in World building. See it here, if you missed it! My blog series on morality in fantasy starts here.

Well, he mentioned that it was not a topic he’d ever come across when discussing fantasy fiction before, so I decided to pick up that ball and run with it, and submitted a panel suggestion to Denver Comic Con: “Morality and Culture in Fantasy Fiction”, and guess what? It has been accepted, and I shall be presenting a panel at the Con this June! How cool is that? I mean look at the incredible guest list – what an honour to be part of that experience!

More details to follow as I get them, but sometime over June 15th to 17th I’ll be introducing the topic and having a chat with panelists and the audience about the joys of exploring morality and culture in fantasy!

Now I really should organize some bookshop readings, it seems backwards to do a convention before doing signings, but hey, I’ll roll with it!

Thanks to Jesper for being interested in this subject and giving me the confidence to go further with it.

So if you know of a convention you can get to (being a local boy may have helped me out here a little) and that is looking for panel submissions, the lesson here is to have a subject you’re passionate about that is a bit off the beaten path and submit it. You never know what might happen!

 

Why I Write Fantasy: The Recurring Ideas That Won’t Let Go

I write fantasy stories because ideas for them keep popping into my head, almost always when I am in no position to write them down or record them. Life’s ironic like that.

When I’m half-awake is a classic, that’s when ideas for dramatic situations come to me, cliffhangers without the set up that my still partially dreaming mind begins to colour in haphazardly. If the imaginings of this semi-conscious state persist until I am fully awake and continuing to actively daydream the images I woke up with and fashion them into something concrete, then I have a story idea… if I bother to write it down that day, or the next. If I don’t I run the risk of losing it, but the most persistent ideas keep coming back until I make sure to record them.

One of the ways these dreamy imaginings impinge upon me is to mug me with dialogue. I’ll be in the shower and a spoken sentence will ring out in my mind. A conversation starts and I follow along, enjoying the story I’m telling myself, but the trick is to not get too analytical, to just let the two characters (it is almost always just two) fight it out (and it is almost always an argument) until it either comes to a resolution, or peters out on its own. What normally happens is the conversation runs along very fluently until I have the smart (read: foolish) idea to re-run it from what I might recall as the beginning, and look for different emphasis, or try to make a different point. This most often kills the fluency of the speech and characters stone dead, (and I also often lose exactly where the conversation started, if it has meandered on long enough before I decide to interfere too much, so restarting means chopping the conversation into sections and thinking about how each worked, and what the whole point might be, hopefully before I get too frustrated at losing some parts that felt great the first time around and that I now can’t quite remember) but sometimes, just sometimes, the conversation deepens, becomes richer, and threads attach to it, linking it to the dreams of settings and dramas I have had at other times, and a window into a world is created. Again, I have to remember to quickly write it down, or it will be lost. Many random conversations that occurred when out walking, or washing dishes whilst looking out the kitchen window (another favourite) have been lost because it was so vivid I feel sure I’ll remember it later, but when I finally try to recapture those half-forgotten thoughts they become elusive, or irritating cardboard cut-outs of the cavorting characters they had been before.

But then again – some scenarios stick with me and keep coming back until I write them down, and when I do, they either show themselves to have real potential, or remain lost fragments in search of a story to fit into. There’s an old salt miner’s tale that remains a hollow fragment, still looking for the spark that will turn his story into a book of the future. For over a year, maybe more, I would occasionally entertain a pair of tremendously bitter old rivals, a man and a woman, who would dig up the relics of their shared past, impale them, and throw them at each other with delightful viciousness, always with the threat that this time, one or the other would finally end their rivalry, most likely in the form of some sadistic revenge plot for the many past injuries each had done to the other. Or could they? Did they enjoy their shared pain too much to end it now, after so many years of opportunity?

When finally I wrote down one version of their tirades against each other, a whole story came out, a solid seed for an epic tale of a difficult present (which had never appeared before) for these bitter enemies to navigate, shot through with the painful memories of their often glorious, frequently futile past. It is only five pages long, just over two thousand words, but that outline makes me certain that the story could be told, and be one that would delight me in the telling. The first draft is the story you tell yourself, after all!

And so there is another reason why I write fantasy – because the ideas keep coming, and sometimes (just sometimes) when I write them down, the certainty that these situations can grow into novels is born.

If only it were as easy and as quick to write the novels as it is to have the ideas that originate them!

Good luck to all dreamers and dwellers of the imagination out there. If characters or situations, kingdoms or dilemmas keep cropping up in your thoughts, write them down, and see if you’ve found a new fantasy to make real, at least on the page!

The Writing Life: What Have Deadlines Got to do with Past Tense Boxes of Chocolate?

I don’t know what I’m going to write this week, so I’m just going to start like this and see where my mind takes me, and come up with a title to match the verbiage produced.

Is the writing life like a box of chocolates? If so, have I been chewing on the same near solid toffee/hardened caramel for the last few months? Chewing and chewing on one scene, to finally escape it, thinking maybe I’ll be done with this toffee and get onto my favourite cream centres, a whole run of lovely bits of action and conversation, but no, the toffee just shifted and got stuck to my teeth with the very next bite, locking my jaws together in that way that has you fearing you’ll pull a tooth out when you manage to snap them apart. Hot tea through a straw might help break it down. Now what could that be a tortured metaphor for?

Maybe for the decision to schedule an editor and as a result create a hard deadline for myself. It worked last time! (Really well, though this time I’ll be juggling in work too. I’m up for it!) Everything in the story is mapped out, with room for me to add in some thematically too good to ignore surprises if they occur to me, the words just need to be, you know, written down! (I have a strong sense that good ideas are waiting to erupt out as I write the final act, which may be why I haven’t embraced writing it – but inaction really does you no good. I’ve used the “I’m letting my subconscious work the problem” excuse enough times to know when it has been exhausted!)

I’ve also been thinking about what happens after I get this draft done. Specifically about tenses and continuity, things I want to have had a very solid whack at before my words go out for editorial input. The Killer and The Dead is written in the first person, something I wanted to do for the challenge of it, because it suited my story, and because I’ve always wanted to write a first person novel since I first read a somewhat mildewed copy of Nine Princes in Amber. I still have that copy. It’s awesome.

Anyway, writing a tale recounted in first person can be tricky, because you are by definition telling a story that has already taken place, so embedded in the past. The problem is, if you are replicating a teller of a tale, there are times when the teller him or herself will get taken up in their tale, and retell an incident as though it were happening in real time. How to do this without getting hopelessly confused, or confusing the reader? How to tell when it is the speaker of the tale getting involved in the story so much they shift tense versus our clumsy scribe just forgetting his tenses and switching to versions of the present because that is how he’s thinking that afternoon? It is going to be an interesting problem to deal with. I suspect shifting to past tense all the time outside of my framing device will be the sensible option. Which can be grudgingly explored!

Much easier is dealing with continuity (Ho ho!) – I started out with one chronology, but realized it needed to be telescoped in order to make sense of the decisions made and actions taken by the significant actors in our tale. Fixing that will be fun and not too tricky. More complex is making sure that everything in the book either adds to, or enhances world building elements of The Thief and The Demon, and sets up revelations to come in The Slavegirl and The Traveller, and subsequent tales. This is accepting of course that not everything has to agree, and sometimes I deliberately want it not to, as a prelude to ‘truths’ being discovered later. It’s the best kind of brain ache, one that begs for a Gordian knot of a flowchart to keep track of all the truths, lies, and misunderstandings. I prefer fifty and one hundred page ‘planning’ documents, with various key nuggets lost at random on pages 34 and 77. More toffees for me to chew on right there, but my brain needs the steady supply of glucose to keep on top of all of that, so the chewy chocolate covered delights are welcome then!

So that’s it for today. I suspect I could break this into two or three separate articles, each with their own theme, but what the heck, this is where the road has meandered for now. Let’s think of this as blog seeds for later! Have a good day all! Random Tina Turner shout out seeing as she kind of lurks in the title I came up with!

Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 4: A Clash of Codes

You can check out earlier discussions of morality in fantasy writing here, here, and here.

This one goes long, as I felt the need for examples to make sense of what I was saying, so saddle up!

This week let’s talk about something a little tricky – the minefield where morality and ethics meet, because in this difficult terrain there are so many opportunities for character conflict and plot development for your stories it’s almost criminal.

First, let’s set some crude and easily disagreed with parameters here. (i.e. what I consider the crucial differences between what I term ‘general morality’ and ‘ethical systems’, or codes of conduct.)

I understand ‘general morality’ as a social and cultural artifact, rules of behavior and accepted norms in any given society that have varied greatly in our own human history, but tend to share some core characteristics: they promote social cohesion and the ability for people to live and work together, to organize their lives around common assumptions. Cultural norms and the sense of what actions are acceptable to a particular people have varied across time and geographical location within our own world, and there is no reason to believe that in fantasy literature those variances could not be more sharply drawn, and would form part of a rich fabric that could enhance and improve any fantasy story.

An ethical system, by way of contrast, is not the rights and wrongs you learned at your mamma’s knee, or absorbed from your peers and elders as you grew up, but is something that as an adult you choose to investigate, consider, agree with, and embrace. Or, over time, reject or enhance, according to your own understanding. My favourite example is the good old Romans. (Cue Michael Palin chained to a wall.) People could in general grow up surrounded by the actions and beliefs of their families, the social structures built around the Mos maiorum and the Roman Virtues, but as adults some could also then be educated in, and choose to follow systems of ethical belief, in the hopes of living the in the best possible manner. In ancient Rome ethical systems like Stoicism and Epicureanism (and many other ‘isms’) existed in addition to, alongside and often in conflict with both each other and sometimes traditional Roman values. And that is before you even consider the religious and cult affiliations present in Roman society – an individual in that culture could have many conflicting demands placed upon their actions and their consideration of what was right, and a vast array of reasons to disagree with people within their own society about how best to act, never mind what to do when they met people raised within a different culture with its own moral norms!

A host of extra options to develop conflicts between characters, nations, religions, and races exists when you add in the wrinkle of personal ethics and ethical orders or schools. You can then easily have scenarios where people on the same side, with the same moral upbringing, can sincerely disagree on how best to meet a challenge, because of their differing ethical viewpoints. This may help to further involve your readers in the story as they feel compelled to take one side or another, or wonder which point of view truly is ‘better’ if there is a ‘better’ option at all! This leads, I think, to an enriched storytelling experience. Now, if only I could practice what I preach!

In fantasy, consider the oaths and strictures of Knightly orders – codes of behavior beyond the standard morality of their people, and how that can complicate things when characters who want to adhere to those codes are placed in a position where their code clashes with their own morality, or the morality and codes of those they are working with. And of course consider the personal anguish if the character realizes they have to compromise their code in order to do the morally correct thing. For instance: a holy warrior fights only for his church, and who adheres to a code of non-interference in secular political matters finds himself compromised when he feels compelled to save a royal child from a dynastic assassination attempt – what consequence will that have for him within his order (will he be cast out, given a penance, sentenced to death?), and almost more importantly, within his psyche? If his identity is tied up in his ability to adhere to his code, what will breaking it mean for him? Beyond that, what will the political result be? How will the enemies and friends of this royal child react to his actions – someone who had sworn never to involve themselves in secular politics is drawn by one action into a web of it, the last thing he (or his order!) ever desired. That could be the entire seed for a story idea, or just one facet of a wider narrative, but I hope you can see how the clash between the character’s code (ethics – his decision to dedicate himself to holy conflicts as the only correct reason for him to fight) and his sense of morality (his inability to stand by and let a child die when he can intervene to save him, though the act is not one furthering his church) has led him into a very interesting and difficult place. He might not be comfortable, but hopefully your readers are very interested in how he will deal with the many possible ongoing conflicts in his life, internal and external!

But it doesn’t have to be only knights in shining/dented/rusty armor that have codes: any character could have a reason for a highly developed personal code of conduct, that they stick to in addition to, or often despite of, the prevailing moral order. An oath of revenge at all costs, the decision never to kill, the refusal (or commitment) to accumulate wealth, the adherence to a rigid ethical hierarchy of actions (lying, then thieving, then murder as bad actions with associated punishments for instance, or a similar hierarchy of ‘good’  actions, which the character may prioritize over more pragmatic concerns), the belief that anyone can be redeemed, the determination to never act on emotion, all these things could be major issues that could cause conflict between characters, or be the seeds for enmities that grow much more profound. The advantage is in having the roots of those conflicts lie in something your readers can trace for themselves and understand, even if they may disagree with them! This, I believe, leads to far deeper characterization, and better development of plot, as the conflicts will have a more personal and organic resonance between the characters, and for the reader.

Another form of code can be caused by trauma – a compulsion formed because of, or as a reaction against something that happened in the character’s life. Think Batman. There can be ethical and moral repercussions, but these codes tend to be more irrational, harder to control on the part of the character, yet also something that they could learn to be free of, if they can either resolve their original trauma, or learn to put it behind them. Or they could remain trapped in that behavior – it is the writer’s call, and is a very strong story hook indeed.

In popular culture Batman’s refusal to kill, borne of his early personal experience, has had many unfortunate unintended consequences, but it is a code he will not break, and drives many dilemmas in his adventures. It would be easier for him long-term if he just killed his enemies rather than returning them to Arkham. Simpler, but how much would be lost to his mythos, and how much weaker would the stories that can be told about him be, if he just killed his opponents. And of course he would then lose his grip on being a hero with a moral compass to be admired: his code is what elevates him above the criminals he fights. Speaking of the criminals he fights, Two-Face similarly bound himself to a code that in his case can be a weakness when often the flip of the coin results in him committing to actions that are not in his best interest, that a rational actor would have avoided: this makes him a much more compelling antagonist, as you know that once he flips that coin, he is all in, whichever way it falls. You can wish he would make the other choice, but for him his code (or psychopathy, let’s be honest) forces him to honor the coin. The Joker… well the Joker is a morass of contradictions and whims, most deadly, and could take an entire series of articles on his own to pick apart and explore!

Anyway, I hope this helps you see that ethical codes can add dimensions to your characters and reasons for their actions beyond just the morality of their culture or indeed their religious beliefs. These three things can often confusingly interact and seem very similar, (I did say it was a minefield!), but if you can draw the distinctions, at least for yourself as a writer, then I think it helps your characters become more real and nuanced in your mind, which I believe will translate onto the page, and into the reading experience. Not every character or antagonist needs to have a code of ethics, (they will all have some sort of moral position, however) but if any do, I think the code begs to be challenged, to make the character’s struggle more intense, and more real for the reader.

Next time I hit this series I’ll discuss morality and social class. Does, and should social status effect moral decision making, and how can that impact storytelling in fantasy?

The Writing Life: The Lessons of Genre

Hello there!

I’m a writer of fantasy. This is the genre in which I have always wanted to work, into which my intuition and imagination have drawn me. I cannot conceive of doing anything else.

However.

There is much to be learned from other genres: the well crafted misdirect of murder mystery, the connection of human experience across time in historical fiction, the emotive thrill of romance, the capturing of moments in literary fiction, the propulsive plotting of the thriller, the down in the dirt immediacy of military fiction, the exploration of ideas in science fiction, the creeping shift of consciousness in horror, the lush atmospherics of the gothic, and so many more. (But wait! Buy this boxed set and get these three limited edition graphic novels free!)

If I had to write in other genres I think I could jump into crime or mystery most easily, science fiction with some effort, historical fiction with a lot of research. (Fantasy requires quite a bit of research, but not to the level of detail demanded by historical fiction.) Maybe not horror, but gothic noir would be something I’d enjoy doing, undoubtedly with supernatural elements, so it would become fantasy in sumptuous crushed velvet skin.

Now that last is the truth: I could write any genre, as long as I mixed a little fantasy in. I think if I want to try out the techniques typical of other genres it is likely I will approach them through the prism of fantasy.

I admire writers that can hop genres, and write convincingly in more than one. If you have the story in you that requires a particular form, I imagine it would be natural to write in the genre that best expresses the story you want to write. But I believe I’m a one genre man, and cleave to fantasy (in all its variety) I shall, but I think the lessons, the strengths of all the genres listed above (and many more… keep reading for 30 more seconds to receive a very special offer…) can be incorporated into fantasy. Certainly I, in my more maniacal moments, imagine I could do so.

For example, I have written twenty six thousand words of a contemporary and literary novella that rapidly showed me it had no intention of remaining slim and novellaesque (yes, I know), but for all its realism, the main premise was a fractured conversation between our heroine and Lucifer, (that may have been real, or a symptom of mental distress – I left it for the reader to decide) so let’s be honest, it was a fantasy, because that is where I’m most comfortable, but I was trying to capture some of the moments of life that literary fiction allows the reader to identify with so strongly, as well as the lingering sense of “What is real?”, so prevalent in the psychological thriller. I have plenty to say in the fantasy field, but I want to learn from other genres, first by reading them, second by implementing what I have seen into my own favoured medium. There is a lot to learn from trying other forms, but I don’t think I want to stray too far from my passion when experimenting with other genres in order to expand my own writing range.

What do you think? Can genre writers learn from other fields? Should they? Are genre distinctions useful today when you look for books to read?