Roderick T. Macdonald's Blog, page 25

Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 3: Upon What Authority?

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve looked at morality in fantasy writing and world building. This week I’m going to look at what kinds of things a moral framework or viewpoint could be based upon, what people may experience as the root of their morality. In fantasy, as in the real world, there can be many sources of moral authority, and here I’ll pick out a few that may be useful to consider.

Gods and religion is probably the first port of call as an origin for a character’s moral alignment (and no, I’m not going into the D&D model!). Morality as given to mortals, handed down by the divine. The god or gods she believes in, their teachings and their goals become part of the character’s make up, whether faithful, doubting, or rebellious. The moral structure of that religion is something taken for granted by the possessor of those beliefs often until they are challenged. This is equally true of characters who doubt or are rebellious – their problems with the orthodoxy define them, so anything that challenges their doubt or rebellion is problematic for them, if it has become a key part of their identity.

This of course means that the morality can be as diverse as the god who handed down their strictures. A world (or even area of a world) with a single god, but multiple religions or sects who all worship it, can be riddled with personal and social conflicts as the different sects all promote their version of belief in their god as the best and truest way. Differences, rather than commonalities, are highlighted and become divisive. Our own history is littered with examples of this.

In a pantheon, where gods can act as a large and sometimes unruly family, some people may believe more strongly in one god or another, which could easily cause conflict between characters, serious or light-hearted, (swords drawn versus banter over beers) depending on the relationships involved. Stories of the gods may emphasize punishment for disobedience or reward for faith, depending on the god, and the moral lesson to be imparted, all of which is at the discretion of the author. Greek myth is full of warnings, and betrays a worldview that considers gods as capricious and untrustworthy amongst themselves, and more so to any mortals who come into contact with them. Yet still they were venerated, prayed to, and worshipped for thousands of years, as taken together the stories of the gods provided meaning in every aspect of Greek life, from birth to death. Each god had its place and time of prominence, and so the religion, and the morality it helped to reinforce, persisted for millennia. A fantasy world with this kind of background worked in seamlessly (and there is the trick!) will have more depth, and its characters’ actions more significance, I think.

Of course, there can be competing pantheons present in the world – Greek and Egyptian pantheons co-existed (and presumably competed) for thousands of years in their respective (and sometimes overlapping) areas of influence. The possibilities for how that could affect characters in fantasy are almost limitless, but do not always have to be drivers of the top level conflict in the story, more just part of who the characters are, to make them that little bit more real, the world that little bit more lived in.

Sacred scrolls or writings can also be a source of moral authority. Sometimes divinely inspired, but not necessarily so, which is why I count this as a separate category. Ancient knowledge and wisdom of uncertain provenance (perhaps people, perhaps gods, or other non-humans) could easily shape a society and individuals within it, as the message becomes more important than the origin. Again, this gives the fantasy writer huge leeway in what he or she might want to do with the foundation of people’s beliefs, and can be used to serve the story very powerfully.

Another source could be the lessons of great teachers, handed down through generations. Imagine Buddha or Confucius in a fantasy setting. Of course you could imagine individuals possessed of less admirable qualities who had a lasting effect on their adherents! In fantasy this can also be expanded to the lives and acts of legendary heroes, whose decisions and deeds have been held up to people for centuries as a set of ideals, often as defenders of their nation or faith. The author has huge scope to tailor those heroic acts, (or maybe less than heroic) and the lessons drawn from them, to his or her own purpose.

Moral authority derived from ancestors, or founding myths. Many of our cultures have venerated their ancestors, and through that veneration, have adhered to the ‘traditional’ morality of that people and place. The Romans had their foundational myths, and many aspects of the ‘traditional’ Roman character were ascribed to those origin stories: later eras bewailing the increasing decadence of Rome often tried to hearken back to the traditional values of the founding, and of the Republic after the banishment of the last king: a seminal historical event that was made a part of the national character. As you can imagine, that was just one influence on the Roman moral framework as they too had their pantheon of gods to venerate. Immediately there could be a conflict within characters in such a position – what to do when the values of the ancestral ideal clash with the demands of gods who those same ancestors worshipped? How to square a bloody history of pride and conquest with the present need for peace?

Finally, and this list I’ve come up with is far from exhaustive, simple received wisdom. Morality not derived from anything in particular, but based on what has always been in that local area, passed down through generations as the way of life best suited to survival in that environment, not explicitly tied to gods, scriptures, teachers, heroes, ancestors or national myths. I think this is the quite common default in fantasy writing, as it allows general virtues to be espoused (often oddly modern ones) without tying them to anything specific in the world, and avoids the messy overtones of religious conflict that can attach themselves to other sources of moral authority. I think even this approach, tied into folk lore and the land and passing seasons (nature as a basis for morality hasn’t been touched on!) could be made richer and more rewarding for reader and writer alike: creating characters who are steeped in that sense of themselves as part of a tradition and a way of living, either rebelling against it, or acting to defend it.

To finish for this week, I hope from this brief discussion and examples that you can see ways to incorporate morality into your world and characters in a way that could be beneficial to your story. Story first, every time! In my own writing, I am aware of what moral backgrounds influence my characters, but I try not to ram it down the readers’ throats. In future, as wider stories unfold, the differences in the moral foundations of some characters may well cause friction, and when that happens, I hope the readers will not be surprised, as the characters’ viewpoints and backgrounds will have been built up gently over time. In that way, I’m trying to make the disagreements real, not simply grafted in at a later date in order to serve a plot point. I’ll leave it to the readers to decide if I was successful or not!

The Writing Life: Doubts Part 2: The Perfect as Enemy of the Good, or Great

Last week I talked about the primal doubt all writers face: the “am I good enough?” (AIGE?) question. Unfortunately it is not alone in the doubt-riddled ecosystem, and other forms of doubt can sabotage progress even when you have managed to ignore AIGE? long enough to get some writing done, and even *gasp* have enjoyed it!

So this week I’m going to mention a classic in the doubt-disguised-as-something-else genre: perfectionism. This is “it’s not good enough,” rather than AIGE? You think you’ve evolved and are no longer doubting yourself as a writer, just trying to improve your writing. You tell yourself these are distinct things. So rather than doubting yourself, you become overly critical of your writing. You doubt your writing, but call it criticism instead. In order to defeat your unacknowledged doubt you need to attain impossible standards. If you can’t get it absolutely right you decide that everything is useless. You obsess over minutiae and let it block you from progressing. Yes I’m being repetitive, because perfectionism is like being caught in a loop, you keep going back over what you’ve written and look only for what’s wrong, and don’t stop to praise what is going oh so right. In fact, you can find and manufacture problems in bits of writing you previously thought were entirely satisfactory, if not great. Because you’re not ready to move on. Or are afraid of moving on, and so it is easier to say that what you’ve written down already isn’t quite good enough yet. Not quite yet. This is revision and editing hell, and malignant perfectionism can grow insidiously during that necessary process. What starts out as a good thing (revisions and improvements to your text), can turn very bad indeed, if you let it.

Now critique is necessary, or our old friend General Zod will rampage out of control and think he’s the best thing since sliced bread again. But if Sally’s unfortunate antithesis the fearful toad arrives and crawls across your manuscript convincing you that each sentence and everything built upon them in terms of plot and character is flawed, then you have a problem. (See last week’s column for an explanation of Zod, Sally, and the toad.)

During revision and editing a writer can experience a crazy new high they’ve never encountered before. They ask for help, receive it, and see their writing get better. Yes! This is AWESOME! However. A trap can be fallen into here. You think “well, if it got so much better after the first pass, and better again after the second pass, and the third, then I’m just going to keep going until it is perfect, an impossible not to love jewel of brilliance! Yes! I can do it!” this is General Zod speaking, because he wants to ensure you get all the praise Sally is basking in, and who couldn’t praise The Perfect Book? He’s a sneaky one. You then put yourself on a treadmill of revisions, at first eagerly, but at some point you begin to tire, and the toad hops along and sits on your chest, eyeing you darkly. It whispers coldly in your ear, “You’ll never get it just right. How many times have you been over this and you still can’t get it right? What were you thinking with this ‘making it better’ idea? Are you sure it wasn’t best when you first wrote it? Have you ruined everything now? Maybe you should just quit.”

Thankfully, for me, when the toad whispered such sweet nothings in my ear I did go back and look at my original, and I recognized how much better I’d made my writing and the story it told. Looking at my first draft helped me realize I was fretting over the small stuff, and that the hard work I’d done had been effective, and I was now chasing phantoms of perfection. So maybe, in a sense, the toad helped out there. Not that I’m thanking it, because a lot of the time it tries to tell you to give up if you obviously (in its traitorous opinion) lack the talent to be perfect. Those kinds of message have to be ignored, but when you are allowing doubt to distort your thinking, and your perception of your work, it is easy to succumb to faulty decision making.

This is why having a team, editors and beta readers you trust, can be so useful. You might want to fall down the rabbit hole of perfectionism, but a good team can help catch you, and tell you you’ve done enough. Or at least remind you of the 80/20 rule and ask if you want to expend massive amounts of effort on the last cosmetic changes you are dementedly insisting are essential. “I’ll lose readers if I leave that ‘that’ in there!! That clunky sentence will kill the book!” If Voltaire and Shakespeare recognized that too much work on a thing can mar its beauty, then I think so can we.

Now I’m not saying revision and editing is the only way to fall into the trap of perfectionism, I’m just saying it is an easy way, as I hope I illustrated above. I think all writers and artists have a streak of perfectionism in them: we all want to present our very best to the world, to entertain, distract, amaze, intrigue, whatever our goals may be. We’re not really interested in putting out substandard work that won’t be as successful as we’d want in getting our message across, so we always strive to do better. This is a good thing, but I think we can trip ourselves up over it and have the striving for more get in the way of ever getting our message out there in the first place. The perfect, or the better, can be a paralyzing enemy of the good, or the great, in my mind. Yes, every first draft is rough and needs help, and yes the story, the characters, the themes can all be made better; the sentences tightened and unnecessary words pruned away, but you’re unlikely get every extra word, and run the risk of pruning away some of the excitement, or joy, or rhythm of your work if you get drowned in the details and lose sight of the bigger, more beautiful picture.

Don’t let dreams of perfection block your vision, and don’t let it trap you in never-ending fixes and rewrites. Take a break, ask for outside perspectives, look back at where you started, and see how far you’ve come down the road toward making something great. Good luck everyone!

Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 2: Beyond Good and Evil

Last week I chatted about the idea that morality in fantasy fiction is often either taken for granted, (painted in simple terms of big evil versus plucky underdog good) or oddly out of step. (Why would 20th and 21st century Western morals be the norm in a variety of quasi-medieval settings?)

I also mentioned that the possibility exists in fantasy to explore moralities based on something other than the good/evil axis. Right and wrong could be measured against something other than promoting weal or woe. This is the aspect of morality I’m going to look into this week.

For instance, imagine being brought up in a rigidly hierarchical society where maintaining social order is viewed as the highest good. Deviating from assigned roles, not accepting your place in society, would be a great sin. Sounds like many dystopian fantasies does it not? Where the plucky hero starts off as a rebel against the faceless conformity everyone else accepts. In this society law and order are king, and agents of government tasked with imprisoning or killing any who rebel against convention would not consider their murderous actions immoral, because the highest good is to follow the law and preserve the status quo. The reader might then ask why is the status quo so valuable to that society? I think if that question is answered convincingly you can put the reader into a position where, although they are inclined to support the rebel protagonist, they begin to understand and sympathize with her adversaries. Especially if the rebel’s actions threaten to destroy that society without providing a clear alternative, or at a great cost of life. Who then is acting more correctly? Our own moral positions are then involved: we as readers can’t really help but think in terms of our own moral compass, normally based around good and bad, and would start weighing outcomes on that basis, and perhaps find our loyalties shifting between protagonist and antagonist(s), depending on the information available. This is a richer experience, in my view, and one that I think will involve the reader more deeply, and make your book more memorable.

Or imagine a society where duty to family is the ideal. What happens to a protagonist torn between two familial obligations of equal strength? How can she satisfy society’s demands upon her? What other criteria can be used to break the tie, and should they be used, or would she be considered selfish to do so? She may love one side more strongly, but still feel obliged either to do nothing, or destroy herself in an attempt to reconcile the demands made upon her. She wouldn’t be deciding based on good or evil outcomes, but on what could satisfy the need to put duty to family most faithfully. This could lead to actions or omissions of action that we as readers could have a hard time sympathizing with, as our own feelings about family would come strongly into play. Another scenario would be how would a character who has been brought up to always prioritize family (and by extension, his extended family, and his nation, or race) over outsiders deal with his prejudice against outsiders when the only way to save his family would be to work with, ally, or even marry into an outsider family or culture? That would be an interesting dilemma to watch unfold, as the protagonist would be likely to make many decisions that might look strange to us, but make sense to him, and could easily result in a tragedy we as readers would be tearing our hair out at seeing unfold, as the character’s code would be incompatible in some ways with our own. We’d be shouting at him to get over his prejudices and save his family, even as he refuses to cross that line, precisely because of the lessons instilled in him at his mamma’s knee.

Of course, both the above examples are simplified. Indeed, they could be combined quite easily. Imagine an ancient Spartan who falls in love with a Helot, who then tries to convince him to free her people, which would destroy the Spartan way of life. In one fell swoop you have order versus chaos, conformity versus rebellion and family versus outsider moral axes all accessed at once. As I said last week, I think of morality as something of a social construct, with ancient roots but evolving through time, and is part of the agreements that keep a society cohesive and the individuals within it linked by common cultural bonds. In the real world multiple different moral or social pressures can exert themselves upon us at any given time. In fantasy we have the opportunity to be as complex, or as simplistic as we like as writers, depending on the goal we have in mind. To examine something in detail it is often beneficial to strip away complicating factors and keep the core conflict simple. There is a reason why monolithic good vs. evil tales resonate so strongly. But in order to reveal the fault lines in say an order versus chaos based morality, it might be necessary to not muddy the waters with too many other moral conflicts, in order to share the essential problems you want your reader to interact with as unambiguously as possible. Of course you may decide to layer multiple different conflicts over each other and have them all intersect in one poor character (like our love-struck Spartan, above) who has to deal with all these things happening at once! If you can do that effectively, greatness awaits!

Next week, I’ll look at where moral authority comes from in any given society, and how it becomes the received wisdom that underpins why people should believe in, and act upon, their version of right and wrong. Religion, spiritual teachers, sacred texts, ancient heroes or pivotal events, national origin myths could all be regarded as the source of moral authority, things to be admired and emulated, their examples passed on through the generations. And of course morality at some stage has to be differentiated from ethical systems that can be developed or taught later in life and that can come into conflict with the morality a person learns from childhood. The more I talk about this, the more there is, but I’m trying to keep it to bite sized chunks! And remember, I am not setting myself up as an authority here, just sharing opinions that could easily be wrong! See you next week, I hope!

Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality: Part 2

Last week I chatted about the idea that morality in fantasy fiction is often either taken for granted, (painted in simple terms of big evil versus plucky underdog good) or oddly out of step. (Why would 20th and 21st century Western morals be the norm in a variety of quasi-medieval settings?)

I also mentioned that the possibility exists in fantasy to explore moralities based on something other than the good/evil axis. Right and wrong could be measured against something other than promoting weal or woe. This is the aspect of morality I’m going to look into this week.

For instance, imagine being brought up in a rigidly hierarchical society where maintaining social order is viewed as the highest good. Deviating from assigned roles, not accepting your place in society, would be a great sin. Sounds like many dystopian fantasies does it not? Where the plucky hero starts off as a rebel against the faceless conformity everyone else accepts. In this society law and order are king, and agents of government tasked with imprisoning or killing any who rebel against convention would not consider their murderous actions immoral, because the highest good is to follow the law and preserve the status quo. The reader might then ask why is the status quo so valuable to that society? I think if that question is answered convincingly you can put the reader into a position where, although they are inclined to support the rebel protagonist, they begin to understand and sympathize with her adversaries. Especially if the rebel’s actions threaten to destroy that society without providing a clear alternative, or at a great cost of life. Who then is acting more correctly? Our own moral positions are then involved: we as readers can’t really help but think in terms of our own moral compass, normally based around good and bad, and would start weighing outcomes on that basis, and perhaps find our loyalties shifting between protagonist and antagonist(s), depending on the information available. This is a richer experience, in my view, and one that I think will involve the reader more deeply, and make your book more memorable.

Or imagine a society where duty to family is the ideal. What happens to a protagonist torn between two familial obligations of equal strength? How can she satisfy society’s demands upon her? What other criteria can be used to break the tie, and should they be used, or would she be considered selfish to do so? She may love one side more strongly, but still feel obliged either to do nothing, or destroy herself in an attempt to reconcile the demands made upon her. She wouldn’t be deciding based on good or evil outcomes, but on what could satisfy the need to put duty to family most faithfully. This could lead to actions or omissions of action that we as readers could have a hard time sympathizing with, as our own feelings about family would come strongly into play. Another scenario would be how would a character who has been brought up to always prioritize family (and by extension, his extended family, and his nation, or race) over outsiders deal with his prejudice against outsiders when the only way to save his family would be to work with, ally, or even marry into an outsider family or culture? That would be an interesting dilemma to watch unfold, as the protagonist would be likely to make many decisions that might look strange to us, but make sense to him, and could easily result in a tragedy we as readers would be tearing our hair out at seeing unfold, as the character’s code would be incompatible in some ways with our own. We’d be shouting at him to get over his prejudices and save his family, even as he refuses to cross that line, precisely because of the lessons instilled in him at his mamma’s knee.

Of course, both the above examples are simplified. Indeed, they could be combined quite easily. Imagine an ancient Spartan who falls in love with a Helot, who then tries to convince him to free her people, which would destroy the Spartan way of life. In one fell swoop you have order versus chaos, conformity versus rebellion and family versus outsider moral axes all accessed at once. As I said last week, I think of morality as something of a social construct, with ancient roots but evolving through time, and is part of the agreements that keep a society cohesive and the individuals within it linked by common cultural bonds. In the real world multiple different moral or social pressures can exert themselves upon us at any given time. In fantasy we have the opportunity to be as complex, or as simplistic as we like as writers, depending on the goal we have in mind. To examine something in detail it is often beneficial to strip away complicating factors and keep the core conflict simple. There is a reason why monolithic good vs. evil tales resonate so strongly. But in order to reveal the fault lines in say an order versus chaos based morality, it might be necessary to not muddy the waters with too many other moral conflicts, in order to share the essential problems you want your reader to interact with as unambiguously as possible. Of course you may decide to layer multiple different conflicts over each other and have them all intersect in one poor character (like our love-struck Spartan, above) who has to deal with all these things happening at once! If you can do that effectively, greatness awaits!

Next week, I’ll look at where moral authority comes from in any given society, and how it becomes the received wisdom that underpins why people should believe in, and act upon, their version of right and wrong. Religion, spiritual teachers, sacred texts, ancient heroes or pivotal events, national origin myths could all be regarded as the source of moral authority, things to be admired and emulated, their examples passed on through the generations. And of course morality at some stage has to be differentiated from ethical systems that can be developed or taught later in life and that can come into conflict with the morality a person learns from childhood. The more I talk about this, the more there is, but I’m trying to keep it to bite sized chunks! And remember, I am not setting myself up as an authority here, just sharing opinions that could easily be wrong! See you next week, I hope!

The Writing Life: Doubts Part 1: Am I Good Enough?

Last week I talked about dissatisfaction, and in the process mentioned its big brother, doubt. Doubt manifests for writers in quite a few subtle guises, so I’m going to dedicate a column a week for a while (with potential interruptions to allow folk to recover!) looking at how doubt can sneak into a writer’s life.

Of course it doesn’t have to sneak. For many writers, even the great ones, doubt is a regular visitor, if not a constant companion. The first and most basic doubt a writer has to face is this hoary old chestnut: am I good enough?

This is the fundamental demon, the primary nemesis of most writers and creatively inclined people. Before you’ve written a word, put brush to paper, spoken your first line, cut fabric, spun the wheel, lifted a chisel, whatever it is that begins your artistic process, this question raises its head. And annoyingly, it refuses to go away after the first paragraph, first chapter, first draft. (You fill in the blanks for those other creative starting positions, but from now on I’m sticking to what I know, and that is writing!)

Some people write as therapy, and for them the act of writing is a release and a gift. For most of the rest of us, myself included, therapy may be involved, but primarily I believe it is an act of performance, we write to show others what we have written, for them to read. So we have an urge to write, and we believe we’re good enough that others will like and enjoy what we have written. If only the story ended there.

I have a very simple imagining of two sides of a writer’s personality. One half is General Zod, Terence Stamp version, demanding all kneel before him. The other is Sally Field receiving an Oscar and being amazed that people like her. Zod raises his head when things are going well, or when you haven’t been critiqued in a while. He’s a deluded monster, but it’s fun to indulge him and imagine yourself an absolute master of the writing universe, waiting for your slavish followers to inevitably appear. Sally is what writers yearn for, and are afraid of never getting: that affirmation, that applause, that unique accolade. It is not getting what Sally is celebrating that writers fear to their core. Not having anyone like them, appreciate their writing, find their story engaging, inspiring, entertaining, or whatever the writer hoped to achieve when he or she first put pen to paper.

This fear, and the doubt it engenders, profoundly sucks. You doubt anyone will like what you’ve created because you fear it won’t be liked, an evil feedback loop. That doubt can’t be erased until you’ve created something, exposed it to scrutiny, and THEN, only then, received positive responses (it needs to be plural, let’s be honest) saying it is good. If only that positive feedback could end the story.

But doubting if you are good enough is more insidious than that. Just as Zod is a megalomaniac who believes he is the best thing since ShakesHomerSpeare on the basis of three brilliant pages produced on a rainy afternoon, the fear of not getting what Sally had can whisper in your ear that just because some people liked it, doesn’t mean anyone else does. The people who liked it might be sycophants, or worse, family – how can you trust them? Or the fear prefers to listen to detractors, the negative critiques, the voices that cut deep and say what you’ve always secretly thought was true, that this thing, this passion you have, is misplaced, and what talent you imagined you had does not exist.

That is the toad that squats on your chest and licks your face with a cold and unkind tongue. Zod shrivels and falls into an icy abyss when the toad slithers heavily into position. This is why writers should not read negative reviews, because the toad feeds on them, and can grow unmanageably large, even as Zod feeds on positive reviews and grows ever more deranged as a result. Are all writers wildly bipolar? No – just my imagining of them for the purposes of this column!

For me this core doubt came in waves, battering the unrealistic Zod (whose mania was no better – the crazed Zod part of me thought no more work had to be done, that his genius did not need full stops or actual sentence structure to get in the way of his incredible message!) into submission and for years kept me from putting anything into the public sphere. Zod would read books and boldly proclaim that they should kneel before him, that their writing was inferior, and that mine would dominate the world in which they were allowed to exist, until the toad hopped along to coldly ask why I imagined I knew better than the agents and publishers who had allowed that book to be printed? It wasn’t a pleasant milieu in which to exist, fluctuating between elation and depression. Ultimately doubt won, because the fear of finding out that I wasn’t Sally and that nobody would like me stopped me from releasing anything. I’d rather not know, than discover doubt was right. This was a terrible mistake that I urge any writers reading this column to ignore. Do not let doubt paralyze you. Get help, and publish!

How did I get past it? In some ways I didn’t, the doubt does not go away, and it’s hard to believe in yourself and not wonder if you are deluded. As we’ll see over the next few weeks, doubt assumes all kinds of guises. What happened was I got older. I realized time was passing, like sand through that hourglass, and it was now or never for me. Denying the toad wasn’t enough, I kicked Zod out too, in order to take advice and be grateful for it, and above all, pay attention and use it to make my writing better.

I realized that if I let the toad squat on my chest for the rest of my life, my life would end and I’d never have said a word. That scared me more than the thought of nobody liking what I had to say. So I have spoken. I hope you like it. I’m okay if you don’t.

Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 1

Today I had the pleasure of talking with Jesper Schmidt about morality in fantasy world building, one part in an extended series of  discussions on this topic that are well worth watching. He has a great YouTube channel dedicated to all things fantasy writing related – check it out here! He also helps to run a very welcoming and friendly group on FB for fantasy authors, so if you need support and advice, drop in here.

You’ll be able watch our chat in a few weeks (Feb 26th is the likely date, I will let you know when it is finalized), but let’s break the ice on this subject now!

I think that when we consider the word morality, most of us consider the ideas of good and bad, closely followed by right and wrong. These words are tied to the ideas of actions and behaviours that could be considered as good or bad, right or wrong. If you are asked, “What is the moral choice here?” you are likely to assume the question is looking for the answer that fulfills a positive outcome, something ‘good’ or ‘right’.

In fantasy the option exists to create moralities that do not seek solely for that type of positive outcome. Further, many versions of ‘good’ or ‘right’ can exist, and can be in conflict with each other. Morality in Fantasy is often assumed: that there is one good side against the monolithic evil. The moral positions are taken for granted.

This need not be the case, and one of the strengths of fantasy writing can be an exploration of wildly different world views, and how those different world views might play out.

My feeling is that when it comes to creating fantasy worlds, the morality of a character’s time and place is an often neglected aspect of their experience. The society they grew up in, the taboos they have internalized, the rules they take for granted and obey all have a huge impact on them, as they do on us. So why would it not have an equally pervasive effect on our characters, and be played out in their actions and choices?

I only ask that question because all too often in fantasy literature we have this jarring experience of looking into a quasi-medieval world, but finding everyone acting on and being judged by late 20th, early 21st century Western standards, without any grounding for why the protagonists have values so closely allied to those dominant at the time of the novel’s writing. It is assumed that what is ‘right’ here and now in the world of the author should also be ‘right’ in the world of the fiction, without any explanation, because we assume our morality, our social norms, are correct, and so they are imported into the fiction without a pause for reflection, to consider if those values match the world into which they are being projected.

But morality is fluid. It changes through time, even in one locale. I think we’ve all heard of Victorian morals, and I doubt most of you reading this would imagine that you share them. That is only 150 years ago, and they were a widespread norm in Western Europe and parts of the USA in their time. Time and culture moved on, and that morality shifted, because I believe that morality is something of a social agreement – the rules by which a society agrees to live and govern itself, sometimes embodied in law, most definitely enshrined in custom and habit. Every generation seems to introduce its own wrinkle though, and so it evolves on, even as old, or even ancient standards or core beliefs can be held up to each generation as an ideal to be striven toward.

In fantasy writing the opportunity exists to pit different moral expectations against each other, or to show a normal that seems alien to us in our 21st century experience. To make readers wonder if they would respect such strange taboos, or find it normal to keep grandmother’s skull on the mantel. To give readers not only the chance to see dragons, but experience a different world down even to the daily expectations of life, and interactions with neighbours and friends. I think part of the desire for fantasy literature is the wish to visit strange lands, and I think that seeing and experiencing the different cultures that inhabit those lands is equally important, and something forgotten at times in the fantasy of my 80s youth. Now I think readers are ready to dive right in and be surprised by the worlds they enter, and perhaps shocked (or at least challenged) by what they find, but that is okay, because they know they will return home at the end of the story, having experienced something truly new. Fantasy can be travel of the mind, if the road goes far enough.

Next week I’ll look in more detail at what it means to construct an alternate foundation for morality (Order vs Chaos, Duty vs Rebellion, Family vs Outsider, The defeat of earthly desires vs. the pursuit of pleasure), and what cultural artifacts that morality could be based around. Morality governs both society at a macro level: rules of government and laws, and the micro: acceptable behavior amongst your peers, what the individual conscience allows and forbids. For fantasy writers who are considering the effects of morality on their worlds and characters I remind them of this – we all learned our first lessons at Momma’s ankles – what to do and not to do, what was allowed and forbidden. In constructing an alternate fantastical morality it seems wise to me to consider how mothers would teach their children to respect those rules, and what tales and sayings would exist to reinforce those mores. (In my novel I used fragments of songs and sayings to inform those ideas in ways I hope was not intrusive, plus the simple attitude of the characters when facing problems.) Visit Victorian tales and children’s stories and prepare to be amazed at what was considered normal only 150 years ago. The alien is closer than we imagine.

Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality: Part 1

Today I had the pleasure of talking with Jesper Schmidt about morality in fantasy world building, one part in an extended series of  discussions on this topic that are well worth watching. He has a great YouTube channel dedicated to all things fantasy writing related – check it out here! He also helps to run a very welcoming and friendly group on FB for fantasy authors, so if you need support and advice, drop in here.

You’ll be able watch our chat in a few weeks (Feb 26th is the likely date, I will let you know when it is finalized), but let’s break the ice on this subject now!

I think that when we consider the word morality, most of us consider the ideas of good and bad, closely followed by right and wrong. These words are tied to the ideas of actions and behaviours that could be considered as good or bad, right or wrong. If you are asked, “What is the moral choice here?” you are likely to assume the question is looking for the answer that fulfills a positive outcome, something ‘good’ or ‘right’.

In fantasy the option exists to create moralities that do not seek solely for that type of positive outcome. Further, many versions of ‘good’ or ‘right’ can exist, and can be in conflict with each other. Morality in Fantasy is often assumed: that there is one good side against the monolithic evil. The moral positions are taken for granted.

This need not be the case, and one of the strengths of fantasy writing can be an exploration of wildly different world views, and how those different world views might play out.

My feeling is that when it comes to creating fantasy worlds, the morality of a character’s time and place is an often neglected aspect of their experience. The society they grew up in, the taboos they have internalized, the rules they take for granted and obey all have a huge impact on them, as they do on us. So why would it not have an equally pervasive effect on our characters, and be played out in their actions and choices?

I only ask that question because all too often in fantasy literature we have this jarring experience of looking into a quasi-medieval world, but finding everyone acting on and being judged by late 20th, early 21st century Western standards, without any grounding for why the protagonists have values so closely allied to those dominant at the time of the novel’s writing. It is assumed that what is ‘right’ here and now in the world of the author should also be ‘right’ in the world of the fiction, without any explanation, because we assume our morality, our social norms, are correct, and so they are imported into the fiction without a pause for reflection, to consider if those values match the world into which they are being projected.

But morality is fluid. It changes through time, even in one locale. I think we’ve all heard of Victorian morals, and I doubt most of you reading this would imagine that you share them. That is only 150 years ago, and they were a widespread norm in Western Europe and parts of the USA in their time. Time and culture moved on, and that morality shifted, because I believe that morality is something of a social agreement – the rules by which a society agrees to live and govern itself, sometimes embodied in law, most definitely enshrined in custom and habit. Every generation seems to introduce its own wrinkle though, and so it evolves on, even as old, or even ancient standards or core beliefs can be held up to each generation as an ideal to be striven toward.

In fantasy writing the opportunity exists to pit different moral expectations against each other, or to show a normal that seems alien to us in our 21st century experience. To make readers wonder if they would respect such strange taboos, or find it normal to keep grandmother’s skull on the mantel. To give readers not only the chance to see dragons, but experience a different world down even to the daily expectations of life, and interactions with neighbours and friends. I think part of the desire for fantasy literature is the wish to visit strange lands, and I think that seeing and experiencing the different cultures that inhabit those lands is equally important, and something forgotten at times in the fantasy of my 80s youth. Now I think readers are ready to dive right in and be surprised by the worlds they enter, and perhaps shocked (or at least challenged) by what they find, but that is okay, because they know they will return home at the end of the story, having experienced something truly new. Fantasy can be travel of the mind, if the road goes far enough.

Next week I’ll look in more detail at what it means to construct an alternate foundation for morality (Order vs Chaos, Duty vs Rebellion, Family vs Outsider, The defeat of earthly desires vs. the pursuit of pleasure), and what cultural artifacts that morality could be based around. Morality governs both society at a macro level: rules of government and laws, and the micro: acceptable behavior amongst your peers, what the individual conscience allows and forbids. For fantasy writers who are considering the effects of morality on their worlds and characters I remind them of this – we all learned our first lessons at Momma’s ankles – what to do and not to do, what was allowed and forbidden. In constructing an alternate fantastical morality it seems wise to me to consider how mothers would teach their children to respect those rules, and what tales and sayings would exist to reinforce those mores. (In my novel I used fragments of songs and sayings to inform those ideas in ways I hope was not intrusive, plus the simple attitude of the characters when facing problems.) Visit Victorian tales and children’s stories and prepare to be amazed at what was considered normal only 150 years ago. The alien is closer than we imagine.

The Writing Life: Dealing with Dissatisfaction

Writers, it is often said, are their own worst critics. I take this to mean that writers, and artists in general, tend to be very harsh on themselves, though it could of course mean they are simply poor judges of their own work, and are incapable of accurately critiquing their own output by virtue of simply being too immersed in it. So having a faulty perception of our own work could also lead us to being extra hard on it, and ourselves. Ah, the joys.

The world is full of harsh voices – look at any book with hundreds of reviews and you will see some scathing responses, so I’m not sure that writers are the actual harshest critics of our work, but I do agree we don’t go easy on ourselves.

How does a writer deal with this sense of dissatisfaction? The specific sense that anything written could have been done better, more fluently, more emotionally true, more correctly grammatical, more iconoclastically ungrammatical, more precise, more ambiguous, more dramatic, more more more. (Or less less less, depending on the writer’s origin of dissatisfaction – it is a bottomless rabbit-hole down which to fall.) How does a writer deal with the nagging unease that comes with a completed work that just never feels complete?

I distinguish dissatisfaction from doubt. Doubt is a whole other beast in a writer’s life, and I have an at least 4 part series to come detailing its unlovely aspects. Dissatisfaction may be a form of doubt, but it hits after you’ve overcome enough doubt to actually finish a lot of the processes that lead to publication, and can linger afterwards. To be clear: if dissatisfaction stops you from putting your work out there, it is doubt. If you put your work out there, but still find fault in it on occasion, it is dissatisfaction.

The writer of the most haunting haiku can think it clunky, or not reflect the subject matter properly, or capture the moment elegantly enough. I’m sure Shakespeare shook his head at many of his lines, but the show had to go on. So how to deal with it?

Indulge it in some ways, ignore it in others. I would love to say that I can be zen and accept the flaws I see in my own work, and that the key to happiness is to embrace that approach and let dissatisfaction fade from view, but let’s be real here. (I do have a blog planned on Acceptance, and it is important, but I think I’ll need to write it when I’m in a more accepting frame of mind!)

So I indulge it sometimes. I stress only sometimes. I get feedback from people reading my book, and they tell me where they are in the narrative. I go and look at that part of the book (not every time, I’m not crazy). I am, by and large, horrified by what I see. (Sometimes I LOVE what I read, which can be equally misleading – remember what I said at the top about writers and their faulty perspectives!) Most of the time I close the book and tell myself to move right along, nothing to be done now, it is what it is, quit your bellyachin’. Ignore it. But recently I decided to open the book with a pencil in hand, and to circle the things that bugged me. Highlight the sources of dissatisfaction. Extra words, ugly sentences, anything that makes me wince. I read the entire book out loud more than once, how did these errors get through?

Because you cannot be perfect. Chasing the perfect leads to dissatisfaction. Attaining the perfect is a goal though, so we create this hideous rod for our own backs, if that is the goal we choose to pursue. That has to be accepted. It is hard. I’m chasing my tail here, and that is what dissatisfaction is, endlessly chasing your tail, biting at it, and perhaps making something fine into something bedraggled.

So I make my pencil marks. Do I plan to do anything with them? Maybe, once I’ve covered every chapter. The joy of self-publishing is you can do edits and revisions post-release, and so far my gripes are all minor, which is reassuring in itself. But in making the marks I scratch the itch of dissatisfaction, and it goes away for a while. If I felt a full revision was required I am sure I would look over my pencil marks and disagree with a bunch of them. Hell, I’ve erased a few as I went, which showed me how transient these quibbles of mine can be. I made editorial decisions already, and for a reason, thank you very much! But other changes may well be beneficial, things I (and my editors) missed for staring at them so many times they became invisible, but which now, months later, I can see more clearly than I could when in the rush of final preparation for publication. Does this make me wish I’d done one more pass, taken yet more time? No. I’d still have pencil marks to make. Some the same, some in new places.

So that’s how I deal with dissatisfaction – I acknowledge it. I mark some pages and put the book down. I don’t act on it, because I know my perspective may change again. By quantifying the things that irk me, by seeing that in the grand scheme of things my dissatisfactions are quite minor, I help put them behind me. For today, anyway. And that seems fair enough.

Why I Write Fantasy: The Blind Faith Edition

So two weeks ago I talked about the infinite possibilities in fantasy, then last week I discussed why it can sometimes seem repetitive, at least in terms of setting. These things would appear to be contradictory, but I think can resolve quite easily, even as I believe we will see new authors pushing or shattering the boundaries of the traditional medieval quasi-European fantasy setting.

I think this is the case because there are still so many stories to tell, even within settings that may seem at first glance to be stolidly traditional. I believe any writer with a strong vision will be almost by definition original in their presentation of that vision. And where a totally new creation is not present, I think that playing off and against earlier stories can yield interesting landscapes of character, motivation and theme to explore. The well in fantasy is far from dry.

There is a long way to go before we reach a situation like that in the middle ages, where the audience had heard every bible story before, and knew all the common folk tales, and were interested more in the style of the telling than the substance of the story, until such artists as Chaucer and the Pearl Poet came along to either break old rules, or use existing conventions to brilliantly remind their audience of the power of the original story. There are simply too many possible tales, and tale tellers out there for the genre to get stuck in one rut.

Not that it hasn’t tried. Chosen ones, Dark Lords, hidden heirs to various thrones, terrible invaders from over there (often up North, the bad guys were often at the top of the map in the books I read in the 80s and 90s), retellings of the Arthurian legend, re-retellings of the Arthurian legend, but with various role reversals and switches. (This is still going on, and I think shall never end, which shows how enduring and magical the original tales are.) Updates on fairytales from the world over are also ever popular, and for very good reason. We all loved the originals, and sometimes just want to keep those stories going past bedtime, and a good retelling does just that.

Despite all that familiar ground exposed, the urge to visit magical worlds continues to exist. Every new generation wants its Narnia, or Hogwarts to grow up with, its Middle-earth or Osten Ard to explore as adults. And each generation of writers absorbs part what came before, and seeks to tell their own distinct stories. Some fail, and feel more like echos than something new, others are unapologetically generic, written precisely to please crowds who want more of the same things they have always loved, but in slightly different clothes.

And here come I, with my urge to write fantasy, my own heroes from childhood and youth, my own desire to write something new and interesting. You have to have faith as a writer that your ideas, and your execution of those ideas will be strong enough to pull readers in, and then keep them reading. When I set out to write my first books there was only instinct, and some (lots of!) imitation. The imitation I hope to have left behind, what remains are ideas for stories I haven’t seen anywhere else, set on worlds I have not encountered in my own reading. I write from that instinct. It’s where I’m most comfortable. Not originality for its own sake, or a contrived effort to subvert expectation for no reason other than to surprise without much purpose, but a set of stories based on “What if?” questions that arose in the course of my life, sometimes as a result of reading other books, other times entirely at random. As I’ve said before, for me there has to be an underlying structure or theme for my writing to work, and I have to have yet more faith that the theme that strikes me and the story it inspires will be of remote interest to anyone else. These are the chances you take as an artist.

The world of The Thief and The Demon opens in a very old school European setting. It was my intention to start off with the familiar, and slowly unravel the new before my readers’ eyes. This process I have rather optimistically designed to continue over a number of books, until the world of Fistmar and his friends is laid bare, and the “What ifs?” that led to its creation become more obvious. Why do it that way? Because it pleases me, and because I think it adds to and deepens every drama that will unfold in that world. I have to have blind faith in my creation, that it will capture others in the same way it first captured me.

Writing fantasy, once a niche genre, now a torrent of glorious creators, has become an exercise in faith, faith that your stories and characters will somehow make it through the wall of noise and find people to speak to. I don’t know if mine will, but the urge to create remains, and will be followed. I am going to give the world of The Thief and The Demon, and my work in progress The Killer and The Dead, every chance to come alive for readers before moving on to other places and stories, each of which will require their own leaps of faith. I hope you can join me on that journey, but if not, I trust that you all believe in your own visions, and do your best to make them as real as possible.

My thanks to kat at The Lily Cafe for inspiring this column with her comment last week!

The Writing Life: Commodity Versus Art, the Eternal Challenge.

Ursula K. Le Guin died this week. I read The Earthsea Trilogy (as was) a few times in my youth, and loved it. I really should get around to reading the complete Earthsea fictions, and of course many of her other works often referenced in this week of obituaries and commentaries mourning her passing.

In the course of reading about her life I came across this speech, and it struck me as very interesting on a number of levels, and once again challenged my sense of who I am as a writer, and what I seek to achieve.

The killer quote (and there are quite a few in a five minute speech) that set me to thinking is this one:

“Right now I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art.”

It’s a bit of a punch to the gut for me. Do I want to produce a commodity, or practice my art? Is it possible to do both? What is it I have produced so far? Into what camp does it fall? I want it to be art, but to sell like a hot commodity. Is that a fatal contradiction?

I had to sit and think about this a while.

The advent of self-publishing has only accentuated what always existed in publishing: the rush of writers into genres that become popular, seeking to ride the coat-tails of some sudden success. People trying to recreate Hogwarts in the early 2000s, who then graduated to sparkly vampire fiction in the mid 2000s, dystopian futures in the late 2000s, grimmer and more ’realistic’ fantasy in the wake of the gigantic success of HBO’s Game of Thrones in the 2010s. Once it would be publishing houses authorizing similar works in order to try to cash in on a new trend, write to a market, now everyone can go for it individually. And more power to their elbow, I say, but that isn’t who or what I want to be, or do.

(An aside. I recall in 1998 or so when I first read A Game of Thrones, how utterly novel the idea of having chapters written from a specific character’s point of view was, and having multiple separate viewpoints intersect to provide the tapestried whole of the book. I was reasonably well read, and had never come across it before. That technique, or close variants of it, is now almost de rigueur nowadays. A testament to the impact of his books, I think.)

When you are living in a social media universe that is inhabited by such tight throngs of writers all searching for, and talking desperately about their markets, their target audiences, their break even points, it is easy to get swept up in it, and forget why you started writing in the first place. But you have to learn about keyword advertising (for instance), and optimize your own ad campaigns, or your art, such as it is, will languish ignored on the virtual bookshelf. And what’s the point of an unread book?

One of the things I have is editorial freedom. I can write what I want, in the style I wish. No editorial department, under pressure from sales teams or bean counters, is going to try to push me in a direction they think more profitable. This could be both good and bad. The errors and missteps I make will be my own. I can only hope they are not catastrophic. I receive advice, take feedback, but ultimately the subjects chosen, and the methods of their delivery are my own. I am resolved to be comfortable with that. It isn’t always easy. Doubt is a writer’s constant companion, and now I have strategic doubts to add to the usual suspects that infest the writing process. It is what it is, I tell myself.

But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m compromised by the machine of commerce I must participate in, in order to try to share my stories with others. This has always been the difficulty for writers. Ursula herself did deals with publishing devils, most apparently good for her, given her long career, but others she regretted, such as the creation of the TV show based upon the Earthsea books, which she referred to as “McMagic.” How utterly damning. Even she, as august an eminence in writing as can be imagined, could not avoid falling foul of TV contracts and false promises. She witnessed her art reduced to commodity. Thankfully the miniseries sank without trace, and critics agreed the show missed the point of the books by some margin.

The last thing I want to produce is “McMagic” though. Ugh. The idea fills me with dread. I have never come up with stories with a market in mind. Since childhood I’ve had compelling ideas occupy my thought, enough that I had to write them down to preserve or explore them further, as even vivid imaginings can be forgotten if they are left alone for too long. I have a catalogue of stories I’d like to write, and the ones I’m not taking on yet are those that I think will be better served once I have more experience and skill. There is a vampire story in me (it first arose as an idea for a ridiculous art house movie), but not a lot happens in it. That tends to curb my enthusiasm for the tale currently – you need to have a lot of skill to carry off a story where most of the action is either anticipated, or lies in the past, not the present!

Of course wise voices warn that to ignore the market is to doom yourself to making no money. As of today (and this may well change, I’m no paragon) I’ve decided I’d rather produce my art as I envisage it, and to hell with chasing after money. For as Ms. Le Guin finished her speech:

“But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. It is freedom.”

I’d rather write free and let the chips fall where they will in terms of monetary success. Easy to say now, from this position of literary obscurity, but there you are. When it comes down to it, I’d rather try to produce art than sales copy. Art that can still be enjoyable, engaging, and entertaining. Stories aren’t much fun if they can’t do those things. That is my circle to square, and my artistic reach may well exceed my technical grasp, but what the hell, I can’t do anything else but what makes the most sense to me, and Ursula’s words have reminded me of that fact. Everyone has their own road to travel, and this is mine. I wish you well on yours.