S.A. Bolich's Blog, page 2
May 13, 2012
Horses in Fiction: The Green Horse
It is amazing to me how most fictional horses are just so, so well broken, perfectly attuned to the rider, and know just what to do in any given situation. This is not true of the majority of horses. There are indeed lovely mounts that would stand quietly while a bomb went off in close proximity. Highly-trained show horses and other "working" animals have to be able to cope with new places, new smells, crowds, noise, movement, and all sorts of funny-looking stuff as a matter of course. They are trained to listen to the rider no matter what and to concentrate on getting the job done. A basic level of trust has been established in these animals that what the rider is asking them to do is not going to get them hurt, which makes them willing to give even the weirdest stuff a go. A warhorse was asked routinely to face up to waving swords, screams in its face, roaring cannons, gunfire and smoke, blood, and squishy bodies underfoot. It is doubtful that the wicked spurs worn by knights were the only reason these beasts could be persuaded to enter the fray. The green horse would take one look and bolt.
This trust in the rider can actually make the well-trained horse astonishingly stupid under saddle, however. When I was a kid our old stallion, Gay Bandit Chief, was a champion five-gaited Saddlebred who had been campaigned everywhere in his youth. He would, literally, charge unhesitatingly off a steep bank or over anything in his path if his rider pointed him at it. Bandit was a nasty-tempered creature but oh, so well trained.
The green horse, on the other hand, knows nothing, nothing! Take them out of familiar surroundings and you cannot predict what they will do. I would just love to see a story where the author's intrepid hero unwittingly got his hands on a barely-broken creature of the type so well portrayed in many Charlie Russell paintings. That "Bronc to Breakfast" was a staple of the cattle drive, when half-broken mustangs were expected to sweetly accept saddle, bridle and rider and go right to work. Check.
"Bronc to Breakfast" by Charles M. Russell
Brute force will only get you so far with the young or inexperienced horse. Letting them "buck it out" is fine if you're a really good rider and enjoy having your spine compressed into your skull every morning. Besides, does your hero have time for this? Is it really a good idea to put up with a bucker or a balker or a flighty, green-broke neophyte in the middle of a crowded market square, or on a mountain trail, or just before a battle with the enemy in sight? There is a definite "oh crap" moment when you settle into the saddle and feel the horse hump up under you (I just reluctantly axed a scene like this from a book I'm revising). What happens after that is a matter of rider skill and horsey sensibility. While I love the possibilities for distraction, running gags, and plot mayhem in these scenarios, practicality demands that we get the horse past this stage as quickly as possible if he is going to be of any use to the hero.
Horses have associative memories, so it is, unfortunately, possible to imprint exactly the wrong thing on them without even trying. Your defensive reaction to his playful grab for the treats he can smell in your pocket (a smart smack across the muzzle instead of the neck), may make him head-shy for a week. Your desperate grab for the reins as he leaps a ditch may make him anxious about approaching the next one, not knowing what he did wrong the first time. There is a huge difference between "training" and "subduing" the horse, and the difference comes out in how the poor beast reacts to strange situations.
The green horse is just...dumb. The rider must pay attention on these creatures. He might flounder his way over a young tree rather than around it because, hey, you pointed him at it and he trusted you to keep him out of trouble. On the other hand, he might decide that the young tree in the trail is from Mars and do a quick, amazingly agile swap of where his head and tail used to be and depart smartly back down the road toward home. You may or may not be with him when he goes.
Horses raised in pastures or in the wild are much smarter about these things, but conversely, they don't know about stalls, stables, wagons, cars, trains, wheelbarrows and other modern conveniences. These things are Monsters lurking to assault Horsey so far as he is concerned, and he will react to them, if only to give them a good, long look as he goes by. The flightier beasts will decide the bucket hanging on the wall over there is actually the portal of doom and refuse to walk by it, or be dragged by it, or be beaten past it by three stout grooms. The power of any given horse to defend itself against what it perceives as danger is immense, and should never be discounted.
So how do you get his attention and/or trust? When do you pick the fight and when do you wait it out? It is sometimes difficult to tell when the horse is truly frightened and when he's just playing head games with you. Patience is always best, but sometimes the horse just doesn't want to cooperate that day, and having won the battle, will remember it for next time. This can lead to much retraining if you don't get the drop on him and put an end to it quickly. Sometimes he will walk past the bucket just fine ninety-nine times, and on the hundredth approach pitch an epic fit. Why? Who knows? Maybe the bucket is swinging ever so slightly in the wind. Maybe somebody hung it up with the logo showing. Maybe this is the first time he actually noticed it, and now his little world is oh my god! DIFFERENT! Whatever. You now have a problem.
This is the time to engage the fight, when you know he knows better. If gentle soothing and sweet talk don't get him past it, find a whip. A gentle tap or two on his hind leg usually readjusts his attitude. If it escalates into a pitched battle, you really do have to win it, which may involve enlisting help, or simply waiting him out until he gets tired and walks past it. The more excited he gets, the worse off you are, as you are now making this a Big Effing Deal in his mind. The more excited you get, the less trust he has in you. The vicious circle in motion.
Welcome to horse training.
Remember that the green horse really doesn't know what you think he should know. His vision is different from yours, his sense of smell and hearing more acute, and he is unaccustomed to not reacting in whatever way he pleases to what he smells, sees, and hears. Your reflexive check of his instinctive reactions could send him into orbit. Nor has he learned the meaning of the confusing signals he's getting from the twitch of the bit in his mouth, the shift of your weight on his back (which he may or may not know how to balance without staggering), the creak of the saddle and the touch of the reins on his neck. He is nervous, anxious to understand what you want him to do (or sullen about the whole affair), and totally unpredictable. He may step over a four-inch pole on the ground or take a mighty leap to the moon. He may stand like a rock when you get on, or nearly fall over on top of you trying to adjust for your weight. He may accept a bird flying up in his face with wonderful equanimity, or have a meltdown over a motionless boulder beside the trail. He is constantly listening and watching for danger (and expecting it, too), with half his attention forever on the strange thing clinging to his back.
Put your hero on a green horse deliberately to create plot tension or to shape a scene around the horse's reactions (or the rider's reaction to the horse). Do not just put your rider on any old horse that comes along and expect it to be perfectly well broken and up to any situation. That is unrealistic, and contrary to how the real horse world works. Riding stables, dude ranches, and liveries might have an entire complement of broke-to-death horses in order not to incur lawsuits. It is doubtful that any large stable, traveling group, or horse dealership was ever stocked that way. Like the rest of us, horses only acquire experience by doing, which means that sometime, somewhere, someone is going to end up on a green one, with all the attendant, and interesting, consequences.
Have fun writing them! As always, I am open to your questions and comments. Please do share your personal experiences. I'd love to hear them.
This trust in the rider can actually make the well-trained horse astonishingly stupid under saddle, however. When I was a kid our old stallion, Gay Bandit Chief, was a champion five-gaited Saddlebred who had been campaigned everywhere in his youth. He would, literally, charge unhesitatingly off a steep bank or over anything in his path if his rider pointed him at it. Bandit was a nasty-tempered creature but oh, so well trained.
The green horse, on the other hand, knows nothing, nothing! Take them out of familiar surroundings and you cannot predict what they will do. I would just love to see a story where the author's intrepid hero unwittingly got his hands on a barely-broken creature of the type so well portrayed in many Charlie Russell paintings. That "Bronc to Breakfast" was a staple of the cattle drive, when half-broken mustangs were expected to sweetly accept saddle, bridle and rider and go right to work. Check.
"Bronc to Breakfast" by Charles M. Russell
Brute force will only get you so far with the young or inexperienced horse. Letting them "buck it out" is fine if you're a really good rider and enjoy having your spine compressed into your skull every morning. Besides, does your hero have time for this? Is it really a good idea to put up with a bucker or a balker or a flighty, green-broke neophyte in the middle of a crowded market square, or on a mountain trail, or just before a battle with the enemy in sight? There is a definite "oh crap" moment when you settle into the saddle and feel the horse hump up under you (I just reluctantly axed a scene like this from a book I'm revising). What happens after that is a matter of rider skill and horsey sensibility. While I love the possibilities for distraction, running gags, and plot mayhem in these scenarios, practicality demands that we get the horse past this stage as quickly as possible if he is going to be of any use to the hero.
Horses have associative memories, so it is, unfortunately, possible to imprint exactly the wrong thing on them without even trying. Your defensive reaction to his playful grab for the treats he can smell in your pocket (a smart smack across the muzzle instead of the neck), may make him head-shy for a week. Your desperate grab for the reins as he leaps a ditch may make him anxious about approaching the next one, not knowing what he did wrong the first time. There is a huge difference between "training" and "subduing" the horse, and the difference comes out in how the poor beast reacts to strange situations.
The green horse is just...dumb. The rider must pay attention on these creatures. He might flounder his way over a young tree rather than around it because, hey, you pointed him at it and he trusted you to keep him out of trouble. On the other hand, he might decide that the young tree in the trail is from Mars and do a quick, amazingly agile swap of where his head and tail used to be and depart smartly back down the road toward home. You may or may not be with him when he goes.
Horses raised in pastures or in the wild are much smarter about these things, but conversely, they don't know about stalls, stables, wagons, cars, trains, wheelbarrows and other modern conveniences. These things are Monsters lurking to assault Horsey so far as he is concerned, and he will react to them, if only to give them a good, long look as he goes by. The flightier beasts will decide the bucket hanging on the wall over there is actually the portal of doom and refuse to walk by it, or be dragged by it, or be beaten past it by three stout grooms. The power of any given horse to defend itself against what it perceives as danger is immense, and should never be discounted.
So how do you get his attention and/or trust? When do you pick the fight and when do you wait it out? It is sometimes difficult to tell when the horse is truly frightened and when he's just playing head games with you. Patience is always best, but sometimes the horse just doesn't want to cooperate that day, and having won the battle, will remember it for next time. This can lead to much retraining if you don't get the drop on him and put an end to it quickly. Sometimes he will walk past the bucket just fine ninety-nine times, and on the hundredth approach pitch an epic fit. Why? Who knows? Maybe the bucket is swinging ever so slightly in the wind. Maybe somebody hung it up with the logo showing. Maybe this is the first time he actually noticed it, and now his little world is oh my god! DIFFERENT! Whatever. You now have a problem.
This is the time to engage the fight, when you know he knows better. If gentle soothing and sweet talk don't get him past it, find a whip. A gentle tap or two on his hind leg usually readjusts his attitude. If it escalates into a pitched battle, you really do have to win it, which may involve enlisting help, or simply waiting him out until he gets tired and walks past it. The more excited he gets, the worse off you are, as you are now making this a Big Effing Deal in his mind. The more excited you get, the less trust he has in you. The vicious circle in motion.
Welcome to horse training.
Remember that the green horse really doesn't know what you think he should know. His vision is different from yours, his sense of smell and hearing more acute, and he is unaccustomed to not reacting in whatever way he pleases to what he smells, sees, and hears. Your reflexive check of his instinctive reactions could send him into orbit. Nor has he learned the meaning of the confusing signals he's getting from the twitch of the bit in his mouth, the shift of your weight on his back (which he may or may not know how to balance without staggering), the creak of the saddle and the touch of the reins on his neck. He is nervous, anxious to understand what you want him to do (or sullen about the whole affair), and totally unpredictable. He may step over a four-inch pole on the ground or take a mighty leap to the moon. He may stand like a rock when you get on, or nearly fall over on top of you trying to adjust for your weight. He may accept a bird flying up in his face with wonderful equanimity, or have a meltdown over a motionless boulder beside the trail. He is constantly listening and watching for danger (and expecting it, too), with half his attention forever on the strange thing clinging to his back.
Put your hero on a green horse deliberately to create plot tension or to shape a scene around the horse's reactions (or the rider's reaction to the horse). Do not just put your rider on any old horse that comes along and expect it to be perfectly well broken and up to any situation. That is unrealistic, and contrary to how the real horse world works. Riding stables, dude ranches, and liveries might have an entire complement of broke-to-death horses in order not to incur lawsuits. It is doubtful that any large stable, traveling group, or horse dealership was ever stocked that way. Like the rest of us, horses only acquire experience by doing, which means that sometime, somewhere, someone is going to end up on a green one, with all the attendant, and interesting, consequences.
Have fun writing them! As always, I am open to your questions and comments. Please do share your personal experiences. I'd love to hear them.
October 27, 2011
Horses in Fiction: The Frightened Horse (and Terrified Rider)
One thing that bugs me a lot about Hollywood is how the riders (especially the females, because gur-lls just can't stick on, you know) are always so easily dislodged from their mount. For dramatic effect, of course, but still. Let the horse raise both front hooves off the ground together, and plop goes the rider with a loud "eek!" and the horse jets off into the sunset.
Oh, please.
There is nothing difficult about riding a horse that rears. They go up, you lean forward a little and squeeze a l...
Oh, please.
There is nothing difficult about riding a horse that rears. They go up, you lean forward a little and squeeze a l...
Guest Author Karina Fabian: Zombie Exterminator
For something a bit different today, and just in time for Halloween, which, yes, I confess is a favorite holiday of mine, here is award-winning horror author Karina Fabian talking about her life as a full-time writer. Karina's latest offering is Neeta Lyffe Zombie Exterminator, and if we know Karina, it is going to be a fast-paced romp. What better stress reliever could there be than whacking zombies in the near future...that might just be coming?
Karina says:
Karina says:When I first dropped writing...
October 21, 2011
Horses in Fiction: We Love Our Warhorses, Yes We Do!
Let's face it. Fiction and Hollywood love a warhorse. That big (preferably black or snowy white) beast, champing and shaking his head so fearsomely, tossing his mane in wild allure like Justin Bieber on crack.... Oh, yeah. We all want one of those.
Except...except those are mostly a figment of Hollywood's imagination, and hence, many writers'. The massive, 17-hand destrier never existed. "Great horses" were a little bigger, a little stouter, than the average beast ridden by the lowly man-at...
Except...except those are mostly a figment of Hollywood's imagination, and hence, many writers'. The massive, 17-hand destrier never existed. "Great horses" were a little bigger, a little stouter, than the average beast ridden by the lowly man-at...
Horses in Fiction: We Love Our Warhorse, Yes We Do!
Let's face it. Fiction and Hollywood love a warhorse. That big (preferably black or snowy white) beast, champing and shaking his head so fearsomely, tossing his mane in wild allure like Justin Bieber on crack.... Oh, yeah. We all want one of those.Except...except those are mostly a figment of Hollywood's imagination, and hence, many writers'. The massive, 17-hand destrier never existed. "Great horses" were a little bigger, a little stouter, than the average beast ridden by the lowly man-at...
October 20, 2011
New website coming!
Heh, heh, heh. Note the new background of this blog! It's a sneak peek at my new web site which I hope will be up very soon. The designer has been oh so patient and great to work with. I can't wait until it's all finished. Now, if I could just force Blogger to stop repeating it down the page...
Can you tell I write fantasy? :)
Just had to drop a note to ease the shock and let you know that, yes, you're still on the right blog. We return to our regularly scheduled horse posts tomorrow.
Can you tell I write fantasy? :)
Just had to drop a note to ease the shock and let you know that, yes, you're still on the right blog. We return to our regularly scheduled horse posts tomorrow.
October 14, 2011
Horses in Fiction: Making Your Horse a Character
As promised, it's time to talk about how to really entwine your fictional horses into your story as genuine characters in their own right. This does not mean they need to talk, act human, or be anything but what they are--equine critters with their own instincts, needs, desires, and habits.
There has been a lively discussion over at Broad Universe of late, sparked by this blog, about taking fantasy horses into new territory such as making them carnivorous. That would really leave the realm of ...
There has been a lively discussion over at Broad Universe of late, sparked by this blog, about taking fantasy horses into new territory such as making them carnivorous. That would really leave the realm of ...
October 7, 2011
Horses in Fiction: How Far Can I Travel?
The response to last week's post was so excellent that I've decided to continue with the series on horses in fiction and how to make them more authentic even if you are not blessed with a horse out your back door to study.
A question I hear a lot is "How far can a horse travel in a day?" Oh, my, do you want the dissertation or the short answer? Since this is a blog, here is a short list of questions to ask yourself about your characters and their horses in trying to decide how fast your group ...
A question I hear a lot is "How far can a horse travel in a day?" Oh, my, do you want the dissertation or the short answer? Since this is a blog, here is a short list of questions to ask yourself about your characters and their horses in trying to decide how fast your group ...
October 1, 2011
Horses in Fiction--What Writers Get Wrong
Where to start with this topic? As someone who grew up with horses (yes, that's me in the saddle, oh so long ago), horses have been a continuing part of my life and generally figure prominently in my fantasy fiction. I have done everything from teaching a horse to joust to packing into the wilderness for days at a time to 3-day eventing and dressage. I rode in a mounted drill team as a teenager, performing at rodeos and parades, and did 4-H and playdays and horse shows and everything in betw...
September 22, 2011
Character Building in Fantasy
I hate talking about myself and screaming "buy my book!" all the time, though I am (ahem) proud of the reviews Firedancer has gotten thus far. I would far rather talk about the writing process and share some of the painfully-won knowledge that has shaken out of my own writing journey.
Characters, of course, are what make or break any fiction effort. The worldbuilding in fantasy better be plausible, but the characters in any fiction had better be even more so. I just saw a discussion about Ma...
Characters, of course, are what make or break any fiction effort. The worldbuilding in fantasy better be plausible, but the characters in any fiction had better be even more so. I just saw a discussion about Ma...
