A guest post from M. Todd Gallowglas
This is Richard speaking, but just for a second. Please enjoy a guest post from fantasy author M. Todd Gallowglas and then check out DEAD WEIGHT: THE TOMBS and his other works here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=m.+todd+gallowglas&sprefix=M.+Todd+%2Caps%2C228
Take it away, Todd!
“Begin in an experience, real or imagined.” – Richard Hugo
I’ve read a lot of fantasy. A LOT. I’ve been reading fantasy since I got The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe back in the second grade. That was a long time back. Back when really, the only mainstream fantasies either had a talking lion or a ring of power. But I digress. With all the fantasy I’ve read, I’ve made the observation that fantasy writers have two mindsets when they compose a work of fantasy. One is, “I’m writing this for fantasy readers, so I’m going to trust them to suspend disbelief so I can jump right into the fun weird stuff.” The other is, “I’m writing this for anyone who might pick up my book, who may or may not be a fantasy reader, and so I need to ground the story firmly in a believable reality before jumping into the fun weird stuff.”
When I first started writing, like seriously writing with the intent to be a professionally published writer, I fell into the first group. That was in high school. I remained in this for the better part of two decades. It took reading Steven Erikson, Jeffry Eugenides, some Jim Butcher, Naomi Novik, lots of Harlan Ellison, World War Z, and a degree in Creative Writing to move me firmly into the second camp. DEAD WEIGHT was a big part of that change. Now, I’m not saying one way is right, and the other way is wrong. It’s just about knowing the audience you’re targeting your story toward. Many a devout fantasy fan will turn away from a book where the weird stuff doesn’t start showing up soon enough.
I wrote the initial draft of DEAD WEIGHT with the fantasy reader in mind. The very first scene opens with a skirmish between a platoon of Marines and some faerie cavalry mounted on unicorns. No build up. No setting or easing the reader into this strange world where Marines are tromping through the back woods of Arcadia. I just went right for combat: guns firing, blood spraying, screams, and death. No context for any of the magical and legendary things. That was in my second semester at SFSU.
Later that semester in my Characterization class, I wrote a piece for a writing prompt that turned out to be the actual beginning of the story, or at least, what I thought was the beginning of the story. If you’ve read DEAD WEIGHT: The Tombs, this exercise was the very first draft of when Boy Scout wakes up in the dingy apartment. Off and on throughout the next few semesters, I played around with different scenes that I thought might or might not be part of the Dead Weight world. I wound up using it for the primary project in an independent studies course, and as my final project for graduation. Through nearly iteration of the story, Alice LaPlante helped guide me to seeing the story for what it could be. She helped me take it from a gritty war story that existed as a series of moments out of context, to a rich story about a cast of characters dealing with a surreal war and coping with the aftermath.
Most of our focus was that first scene with Boy Scout in his apartment. We determined that I was, in fact, going to begin the whole story there, and that would frame the rest of my tale. Through carefully guided questions and exercises over three classes over three semesters, Alice instilled in me the idea that the greatest speculative fiction must pull the reader in with a sense of almost hyper-reality, and that must happen well before the strangeness happens. Then, when the strangeness does happen, the writer must, so as not to jar the reader from the world of the story, do so with such fluidity and skill that the reader completely accepts whatever strangeness creeps into the narrative.
This is not easy to do. A close friend, who happens to be a fairly savvy and intelligent reader, gave me the greatest compliments I’ve ever received from DEAD WEIGHT. She was a beta reader for part of the story before I turned it as my final project. She read what would eventually become the section title “Uninvited guests.” When we met to go over her comments, the first thing she said was, “When I started it, I thought you weren’t writing a fantasy. It wasn’t until {spoilers retracted} that stopped and realized it was a fantasy. Yay me!
Really, that’s the job of all writers, to draw the reader into the story’s reality without raising questions or suspicions. It’s hardest for those of us writing about things that don’t and can’t exist within the real world. If we want our stories accessible to all readers, we have to work double time and triple time to get people to buy in and go along for the ride. If we can create a sense of truth behind the fantastic, they’ll follow you – not only in spite of the weirdness, but if you really set it up well, they will follower faster and more eagerly because of the weirdness.
M. Todd Gallowglas is professional storyteller and word spinner. When he was a child, he wished that he could be a left-handed red head, because he thought they were the most special and different people in the world. Because he was a brown-haired righty, life had forced him to create his own path to being special and different. He chose to make up stories of fantastical worlds of adventure, believing in them so completely, that several of his teachers questioned whether he knew the difference between fantasy and reality. The jury is still out. He is the bestselling author of the Tears of Rage sequence and the Halloween Jack books. DEAD WEIGHT is his first published foray into Urban Fantasy. He lives with his wife, three children, more pets than they need, and enough imaginary friends to provide playmates for several crowded kindergarten classes. Find out more about M Todd Gallowglas and his books at www.mtoddgallowglas.com
Take it away, Todd!
“Begin in an experience, real or imagined.” – Richard Hugo
I’ve read a lot of fantasy. A LOT. I’ve been reading fantasy since I got The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe back in the second grade. That was a long time back. Back when really, the only mainstream fantasies either had a talking lion or a ring of power. But I digress. With all the fantasy I’ve read, I’ve made the observation that fantasy writers have two mindsets when they compose a work of fantasy. One is, “I’m writing this for fantasy readers, so I’m going to trust them to suspend disbelief so I can jump right into the fun weird stuff.” The other is, “I’m writing this for anyone who might pick up my book, who may or may not be a fantasy reader, and so I need to ground the story firmly in a believable reality before jumping into the fun weird stuff.”
When I first started writing, like seriously writing with the intent to be a professionally published writer, I fell into the first group. That was in high school. I remained in this for the better part of two decades. It took reading Steven Erikson, Jeffry Eugenides, some Jim Butcher, Naomi Novik, lots of Harlan Ellison, World War Z, and a degree in Creative Writing to move me firmly into the second camp. DEAD WEIGHT was a big part of that change. Now, I’m not saying one way is right, and the other way is wrong. It’s just about knowing the audience you’re targeting your story toward. Many a devout fantasy fan will turn away from a book where the weird stuff doesn’t start showing up soon enough.
I wrote the initial draft of DEAD WEIGHT with the fantasy reader in mind. The very first scene opens with a skirmish between a platoon of Marines and some faerie cavalry mounted on unicorns. No build up. No setting or easing the reader into this strange world where Marines are tromping through the back woods of Arcadia. I just went right for combat: guns firing, blood spraying, screams, and death. No context for any of the magical and legendary things. That was in my second semester at SFSU.
Later that semester in my Characterization class, I wrote a piece for a writing prompt that turned out to be the actual beginning of the story, or at least, what I thought was the beginning of the story. If you’ve read DEAD WEIGHT: The Tombs, this exercise was the very first draft of when Boy Scout wakes up in the dingy apartment. Off and on throughout the next few semesters, I played around with different scenes that I thought might or might not be part of the Dead Weight world. I wound up using it for the primary project in an independent studies course, and as my final project for graduation. Through nearly iteration of the story, Alice LaPlante helped guide me to seeing the story for what it could be. She helped me take it from a gritty war story that existed as a series of moments out of context, to a rich story about a cast of characters dealing with a surreal war and coping with the aftermath.
Most of our focus was that first scene with Boy Scout in his apartment. We determined that I was, in fact, going to begin the whole story there, and that would frame the rest of my tale. Through carefully guided questions and exercises over three classes over three semesters, Alice instilled in me the idea that the greatest speculative fiction must pull the reader in with a sense of almost hyper-reality, and that must happen well before the strangeness happens. Then, when the strangeness does happen, the writer must, so as not to jar the reader from the world of the story, do so with such fluidity and skill that the reader completely accepts whatever strangeness creeps into the narrative.
This is not easy to do. A close friend, who happens to be a fairly savvy and intelligent reader, gave me the greatest compliments I’ve ever received from DEAD WEIGHT. She was a beta reader for part of the story before I turned it as my final project. She read what would eventually become the section title “Uninvited guests.” When we met to go over her comments, the first thing she said was, “When I started it, I thought you weren’t writing a fantasy. It wasn’t until {spoilers retracted} that stopped and realized it was a fantasy. Yay me!
Really, that’s the job of all writers, to draw the reader into the story’s reality without raising questions or suspicions. It’s hardest for those of us writing about things that don’t and can’t exist within the real world. If we want our stories accessible to all readers, we have to work double time and triple time to get people to buy in and go along for the ride. If we can create a sense of truth behind the fantastic, they’ll follow you – not only in spite of the weirdness, but if you really set it up well, they will follower faster and more eagerly because of the weirdness.
M. Todd Gallowglas is professional storyteller and word spinner. When he was a child, he wished that he could be a left-handed red head, because he thought they were the most special and different people in the world. Because he was a brown-haired righty, life had forced him to create his own path to being special and different. He chose to make up stories of fantastical worlds of adventure, believing in them so completely, that several of his teachers questioned whether he knew the difference between fantasy and reality. The jury is still out. He is the bestselling author of the Tears of Rage sequence and the Halloween Jack books. DEAD WEIGHT is his first published foray into Urban Fantasy. He lives with his wife, three children, more pets than they need, and enough imaginary friends to provide playmates for several crowded kindergarten classes. Find out more about M Todd Gallowglas and his books at www.mtoddgallowglas.com
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