Lea Carter's Blog - Posts Tagged "fantasy"

Silver Princess began as an attempt to record something that had happened to me, personally. As I wrote in the third person, I accidentally created a character with her own distinct personality and story to be told.
I found myself working in fantasy because it was easy for me to mold and shape. Most genres require a certain deference to existing rules, like gravity or time. Fantasy, on the other hand, is an absolutely blank canvas to be filled with the story as it is created.
I should probably admit that I rarely worry about describing what a character is wearing; in fact, I usually don't know. In general, my characters are wearing modest, sensible clothes that suit the occasion - a dress for a dance and slacks for riding. Right, moving on. ;-)
As a reader I find myself far more interested in what the character is doing and why than in what they are wearing. My style of writing reflects that preference. Silver Majesty was almost a teaching exercise for me. I still spent most of my word count on events rather than clothes and furniture, but I began to enjoy adding a little color and depth to Princess Rebecca's world.
I look forward to finishing Silver Sagas with the third story, whose title I'm still searching for. I also look forward to trying a new genre for me, science fiction. I have written a few short stories in that genre but nothing I was really satisfied with until lately. More on that later. :-)

I can see this both ways, really. Wait, let me start back at the beginning. I'm thinking about the difference between writing a story that's brand new and continuing a story that's already begun to be told.
Take Silver Sagas for example. Unlike many series with which I am familiar (the Sacketts, Anne of Green Gables, etc.) the fairy tribes have some very fixed attributes that are easy to mix up. It can throw me right out of a creative spurt, for example, if I realize that I've been describing a Plant Fairy with blue eyes. Far worse is what happened when I suddenly understood that I was about to attribute a basic Sky Fairy function to another tribe in Troubled Skies. That threw the whole book off! (I'm still determined to finish it, but it's a perfect example of it being far easier to do something correctly the first time.)
Now, if I'm writing a brand new story, certain aspects of it are much simpler. Had Troubled Skies not been set in Fairydom, I could have finished it by now. Cambrian, our understated hero, would have made huge strides in his personal life, and the mystery of the missing windship The Talon would have been solved about two months ago.
And now to make my argument the other way 'round. If it's a brand new story, there are no points of reference. (I write fantasy, primarily.) So and so is youngish (which boils down to what number, pray tell?), with clear gray eyes and an anti-gravity belt. I don't know where s/he's from, or going, why, when...whew. That can be fun, but it can also be as exhausting as trying to keep all the details of an already constructed world straight.
And there we have it. In some ways one is easier than the other. And vice versa. ;-)

Polling the audience! :D How do you find your advance review copies? Do you watch a group? Are you in an author's mailing list? Would you be open to having an author whose last book you favorably reviewed contact you directly?

And any other tidbits/venting that comes to mind on the subject. :D

I'm trying to do a better job of prepping this next book, so I really appreciate your input!