I am kind of disappointed because today's writing didn't quite go the way I wanted it to. I had a great idea for a chapter that would've fit in--irony, character development, world building...in short, everything that a chapter really ought to have--but, when I was thinking about it more carefully, I realized that it wouldn't work at this point. The reason was simple: The character I needed in it was in traction, basically, because of getting beaten down a few chapters earlier. So...Euranthedes was unavailable at the moment, what with the fact that he's probably in a quasi-coma at the moment. The idea is still a good one, but I don't know if I'll be able to fit it in. Still, I put down 3800 words, which isn't too bad. My goal of 250k by April will be easily accomplished, I think, if I keep this kind of consistent output going. I'm quite hopeful that I can!
Violence
Today's chapter had a prison break out, which gives me two problems: Repetition and violence. The first one is two fold: I'm writing from a pretty tight limited omniscient narrator, third person point of view. I can't really go into the life history of each guard who gets his body broken by Calistar, the main character in this chapter, so I have to just use the word 'guard' again and again and again. I probably used it over twenty times in the 3800 words, and, to be honest, that's just too many times. I sometimes used a synonym ('the man', usually), but it's just awkward. I don't know how to change that, save giving each guard a nickname that Calistar gives them, but I've done that in a couple of other stories--a Spider-Man fanfic I wrote forever ago, and in Words of the Silenced--and I don't want it to become tropical (that is, a type of trope) that identifies my writing. The second half of repetition comes in the form that violence that I've been exposed to is almost always fantastical. There's a reason why Calistar can behave the way he does in this chapter, and the way he fights is not based upon a realistic fighter going up against impossible odds. It's stylized and impossible--and kind of like all of the action movies I've ever seen. So there's a cliched feeling to the whole thing. Because I'm slowing down the pacing of the story to give details in the middle of the fight, it kind of feels like a Zack Snyder fight scene, but described on the page. Now, I'm a secret fan of Zack Snyder, so this isn't really a surprise, but it certainly feels familiar. Not all of my 'action scenes' are like that, of course--I'm cognizant enough of my inclinations that I can adapt to them and make a worthwhile difference. But there's something somewhat stale and overly familiar in what I wrote today. I'll probably end up keeping it because that's just the way I am--it's serviceable, so I can accept it. But there's something deeper in here, too.
See, violence is coded as 'action' in entertainment--an 'action packed' movie is one with a high body count--and there is a distinct expectation in the fantasy genre that there be a lot of action. According to the omniscient Wikipedia, Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings was somewhat panned for having a 'dearth of action'. I absolutely LOVED that book, itching with envy that such a robust, thoughtful, and character-driven piece of fiction is not immediately followed up by another 1,000 page tome. (Instead, I have to wait a couple of years for the next one to come out, as Sanderson is finishing The Wheel of Time and is focusing all of his effort on that. This last sentence will prove to be both prophetic and anachronistic if read in the future. Just saying.) Anyway, the fact that there wasn't bloodshed on every page is something that I really appreciated about the book.
I'm not saying I don't enjoy the violence of fiction. That's a major reason why I read it (and watch it and play it). In fact, I have a whole theory on violence in video games and why it's there and what it does. But I've been very ruminative about violence ever since I wrote the abovelinked blog, and that intellectual reluctance and analysis has spilled into my writing.
The last book I finished before I started Writ in Blood is a lousy book called Tales from the Flame, which started off emulating Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and devolved from there. In it, the main character, Victor, has a potent reluctance to fight--to use violence--despite the fact that he's a trained warrior whose entire life, up to the point of the story, is built upon violence. So he's supposedly a fantastic fighter (who can't die; but that's beside the point) who, in the book, is forced into violence. I really liked that dichotomy, and, since I'm never going to revisit TftF, I nicked the idea of a great fighter who hates violence and dropped him in Writ in Blood. That character is Calistar (more on him in a moment).
Within me there's an ambivalence between violence and pacifism. Personally a confirmed pacifist, I let that conviction spread into my characters to give them an inherent tension--one that I worry would alienate future readers. Now, I'm not naive enough to 'write to an audience' that I don't know; I'm really writing this story for myself with the hope of selling it one day. I would love it if other people could visit my world and enjoy what they experience while there. But those most likely to give me a chance are those whose reading tastes I understand the best, as theirs is very much like mine. And while I prefer the ambiguity of a pacifist fighter and the tensions that creates, I fear that there are many who would put the book down because "It's too slow." (That there's an assumption that killing on the page speeds up the action, while developing the characters and plot slows it down isn't for analysis here.) Because of that concern, I've been adding more violence to the story than what's actually needed.
For example--and I credit my writing group buddy, Bekah, for pointing this out--I have my Jajiini fighters (Calistar and Herold) get into a scrap with the local militia. It's a pointless thing that hurts the credibility of the plot, but I did it because I felt like there wasn't 'enough action' in the other parts of the story. Saldrae being chased by the mob, Nicomachus being attacked in the alleyway by Aspina (which is, like, chapter 3 or 4), and a couple of other things--flashbacks included--I have specifically added because I thought it needed the spice of violence tossed in there. In the case of the Jajiini fighting the Guards, I will have to scrap it completely. It doesn't fit, and so it needs to go.
With all of that being said, I don't know what to do about my instincts as a writer (to add the action) and my instincts as a person (to remember that most people's lives don't revolve around hurting and killing other people). The characters in this story are chasing people, getting in fights, and using the Poetic magic system all of the time, yet I fear that it 'moves too slowly' for agents or publishers--that the thing that makes the story so intriguing to me as a writer will turn off those who'd help me to spread the story. And that touches on another thing: In part because I watch movies and play video games, the action sequences often feel like the slowest parts. I lose interest part way through almost every action scene. I don't know if it's the impossibility of the violence that I'm describing or if it just feels like a formula--a poorly executed formula--or what, but it always feels stale. I mentioned earlier that I write kind of like a movie plays, and perhaps that's the issue. The derivation from another media seems to work well for people like Sanderson or George R. R. Martin, but for me it always feels hollow.
I should point out that I'm aware that even the title of my book provides an implicit promise of violence. Something 'written in blood' is supposed to be violent. And, if I broke it down, there's probably quite a bit more than I am remembering. But because I'm not plotting toward violent scenes I feel that there's a difference. Besides, the title comes from a line in the sestina that I wrote as the (probable) proem. Of course, I already had the title before I came up with the sestina, but, still....
Calistar
Yes, I know that the picture is of Heath Ledger dressed as a knight from the movie A Knight's Tale (look! Two Chaucer references in one post! Woo!) But it's also the basis for Calistar. I use actors who appear similar to what I'm trying to picture--like I said before, I watch movies, so there are images in my head that feed into my writing. Thanks to gimages, I can pluck out a representation that strikes me pretty close to what I'm trying to say. Sometimes it's a location--the Diol house in Writ in Blood is actually an area of Greece that I found online (pictured below); I did a similar thing for a couple of the locations in Tales from the Flames--and sometimes it's a person.
Violence
Today's chapter had a prison break out, which gives me two problems: Repetition and violence. The first one is two fold: I'm writing from a pretty tight limited omniscient narrator, third person point of view. I can't really go into the life history of each guard who gets his body broken by Calistar, the main character in this chapter, so I have to just use the word 'guard' again and again and again. I probably used it over twenty times in the 3800 words, and, to be honest, that's just too many times. I sometimes used a synonym ('the man', usually), but it's just awkward. I don't know how to change that, save giving each guard a nickname that Calistar gives them, but I've done that in a couple of other stories--a Spider-Man fanfic I wrote forever ago, and in Words of the Silenced--and I don't want it to become tropical (that is, a type of trope) that identifies my writing. The second half of repetition comes in the form that violence that I've been exposed to is almost always fantastical. There's a reason why Calistar can behave the way he does in this chapter, and the way he fights is not based upon a realistic fighter going up against impossible odds. It's stylized and impossible--and kind of like all of the action movies I've ever seen. So there's a cliched feeling to the whole thing. Because I'm slowing down the pacing of the story to give details in the middle of the fight, it kind of feels like a Zack Snyder fight scene, but described on the page. Now, I'm a secret fan of Zack Snyder, so this isn't really a surprise, but it certainly feels familiar. Not all of my 'action scenes' are like that, of course--I'm cognizant enough of my inclinations that I can adapt to them and make a worthwhile difference. But there's something somewhat stale and overly familiar in what I wrote today. I'll probably end up keeping it because that's just the way I am--it's serviceable, so I can accept it. But there's something deeper in here, too.
See, violence is coded as 'action' in entertainment--an 'action packed' movie is one with a high body count--and there is a distinct expectation in the fantasy genre that there be a lot of action. According to the omniscient Wikipedia, Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings was somewhat panned for having a 'dearth of action'. I absolutely LOVED that book, itching with envy that such a robust, thoughtful, and character-driven piece of fiction is not immediately followed up by another 1,000 page tome. (Instead, I have to wait a couple of years for the next one to come out, as Sanderson is finishing The Wheel of Time and is focusing all of his effort on that. This last sentence will prove to be both prophetic and anachronistic if read in the future. Just saying.) Anyway, the fact that there wasn't bloodshed on every page is something that I really appreciated about the book.
I'm not saying I don't enjoy the violence of fiction. That's a major reason why I read it (and watch it and play it). In fact, I have a whole theory on violence in video games and why it's there and what it does. But I've been very ruminative about violence ever since I wrote the abovelinked blog, and that intellectual reluctance and analysis has spilled into my writing.
The last book I finished before I started Writ in Blood is a lousy book called Tales from the Flame, which started off emulating Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and devolved from there. In it, the main character, Victor, has a potent reluctance to fight--to use violence--despite the fact that he's a trained warrior whose entire life, up to the point of the story, is built upon violence. So he's supposedly a fantastic fighter (who can't die; but that's beside the point) who, in the book, is forced into violence. I really liked that dichotomy, and, since I'm never going to revisit TftF, I nicked the idea of a great fighter who hates violence and dropped him in Writ in Blood. That character is Calistar (more on him in a moment).
Within me there's an ambivalence between violence and pacifism. Personally a confirmed pacifist, I let that conviction spread into my characters to give them an inherent tension--one that I worry would alienate future readers. Now, I'm not naive enough to 'write to an audience' that I don't know; I'm really writing this story for myself with the hope of selling it one day. I would love it if other people could visit my world and enjoy what they experience while there. But those most likely to give me a chance are those whose reading tastes I understand the best, as theirs is very much like mine. And while I prefer the ambiguity of a pacifist fighter and the tensions that creates, I fear that there are many who would put the book down because "It's too slow." (That there's an assumption that killing on the page speeds up the action, while developing the characters and plot slows it down isn't for analysis here.) Because of that concern, I've been adding more violence to the story than what's actually needed.
For example--and I credit my writing group buddy, Bekah, for pointing this out--I have my Jajiini fighters (Calistar and Herold) get into a scrap with the local militia. It's a pointless thing that hurts the credibility of the plot, but I did it because I felt like there wasn't 'enough action' in the other parts of the story. Saldrae being chased by the mob, Nicomachus being attacked in the alleyway by Aspina (which is, like, chapter 3 or 4), and a couple of other things--flashbacks included--I have specifically added because I thought it needed the spice of violence tossed in there. In the case of the Jajiini fighting the Guards, I will have to scrap it completely. It doesn't fit, and so it needs to go.
With all of that being said, I don't know what to do about my instincts as a writer (to add the action) and my instincts as a person (to remember that most people's lives don't revolve around hurting and killing other people). The characters in this story are chasing people, getting in fights, and using the Poetic magic system all of the time, yet I fear that it 'moves too slowly' for agents or publishers--that the thing that makes the story so intriguing to me as a writer will turn off those who'd help me to spread the story. And that touches on another thing: In part because I watch movies and play video games, the action sequences often feel like the slowest parts. I lose interest part way through almost every action scene. I don't know if it's the impossibility of the violence that I'm describing or if it just feels like a formula--a poorly executed formula--or what, but it always feels stale. I mentioned earlier that I write kind of like a movie plays, and perhaps that's the issue. The derivation from another media seems to work well for people like Sanderson or George R. R. Martin, but for me it always feels hollow.
I should point out that I'm aware that even the title of my book provides an implicit promise of violence. Something 'written in blood' is supposed to be violent. And, if I broke it down, there's probably quite a bit more than I am remembering. But because I'm not plotting toward violent scenes I feel that there's a difference. Besides, the title comes from a line in the sestina that I wrote as the (probable) proem. Of course, I already had the title before I came up with the sestina, but, still....
Calistar
Heath Ledger...or Calistar a'Sandren. It depends on my mood.
The inspiration for the Diol house.
Anyway, Calistar a'Sandren is from Jajiin (the adjectival form--and plural--is Jajiini), which is a country that's more traditional fantasy. They have a theocracy with the Master Viceroy on top (who speaks for their god, Fajiin), with seven assistant Viceroys beneath him, each in charge of a particular aspect of the government. Their names are supposed to evoke a more northern European feeling than the Greco-Roman style of the Corathans. I use more R's and A's, along with a surname system based upon prefixes. (The lowercase a in a'Sandren means that Calistar is the son of Sandren, his father's first name. If Cal were to have a child in wedlock, the child would be a'Calistar for a boy, or e'Calistar if she were a girl.) The direct allusion to patriarchy is to help differentiate this country from Meleah and her obvious matriarchy.
Jajiin is not only theocratic, but also theological: Many people believe that you have to be a natural born Jajiini in order to be taken into Fajiin's Embrace upon dying. This fits in with the predestination that fuels their dogmas--everyone is destined for the Abyss or the Embrace, as Fajiin is an all-knowing and omnipotent god. His goodness is not necessarily guaranteed, however, which nicely (if somewhat dishonestly) sidesteps the theodicy that Christians struggle with. Fajiin as a god is somewhere between the Hebraic Yahweh and the conventional Christian monotheistic paradigm. This is a tricky position for me, since, as a Mormon, I'm pushing a somewhat heretical view on a deity. Of course, the bigger problem isn't my Mormonism as much as it is the tropes. Tropes are all well and good, but one of the things that I'm really trying to do in my writing is to use--rather than rely on--tropes. Tropes relied upon become cliches, and it is definitely cliched to create a monotheistic religion that's just another world's name for Christianity. (I think of Sara Douglass' Wayfarer Redemption series as proof of that.)
In order to try to put a little distance between the Tagan Continent and our world's religions, I decided that each country--and her prevailing philosophy/religion--feeds into the same afterlife. Just about everyone who is at all religious believes that he or she will either go to a positive afterlife (the Embrace for the Jajiini; the Halls of the Heroes for the Corathans; to be with the Daughters for the Meleahans) or they'll end up in the Abyss, which is the same for everybody's paradigm. It makes a separate heaven but a common hell. It isn't perfect, and I'm still fine-tuning it, but it's a start.
Much above, I mentioned that Calistar is the reincarnation of Victor (minus the invincible/immortal aspect). I took that basic tension and let it come out in my Jajiini militiaman-turned apostate/traitor-turned quasi-iconoclastic guide. He has had a very diverse history, considering his age, and he is also, quite unexpectedly, the relationship character of Nicomachus.
Now, I don't mean that in a romantic way. Instead, he fits the trope (hopefully not the cliche) of being the most like Nichomachus. I know I haven't mentioned Nic that much, but I wanted to write down this analysis before I forgot it. Both men have great power within them that they are afraid to use, both wish to get out of Coratha as soon as they can, both have had spousal issues, and both have a vested interest in getting the Writ returned as soon as possible. They are going through similar trials, yet they react differently. It makes for an interesting combination, I think--though that someone feels as though the story has already been told from one point of view and now I'm going back through familiar territory is something I worry about.
Last thing I want to mention about Calistar is how I ended up getting him in the first place. By the time I had hit the sixth chapter, I needed a break from Nicomachus. Not because I was tired of writing about him (not in the least: He currently has 37% of the story in his point of view--Calistar has 31%), but because I needed the tension of being away from him. The crisis of the story is revealed fairly early on--then fades into the background because I'm bad at writing--and I needed the reader to be put into a position of seeing someone coming into the trouble, albeit unwittingly.
Enter Calistar.
I distinctly recall that I was wanting to write something more spooky and atmospheric. I jumped onto Grooveshark (since Spotify didn't exist yet) and added some music from Silent Hill. I then created the Swamps of Coratha and let the unfolding scene create a new character, new dynamics, and the interplay between the three countries that I had created. Calistar quickly became an interesting new voice, in part because he was not so depressed as Nic, but, at the same time, he seemed to be pining for something. The second chapter I wrote about Cal told me that he has a wife whom he misses. This intrigued me, and I decided to pursue it further. He ended up becoming something fun and unique to the story.
That's what I love about writing. These small impulses for variety give such a great new texture to the tale I'm telling. I think it's also why I don't bother outlining; the serendipity of having characters walk in and take over is so rewarding and so unanticipated that I can't picture doing it outside of the story itself. The details that come in while I'm actually composing the piece are so spontaneous that I wouldn't get the same--and, I'd argue, right--story if I were to outline the thing, even if it were a 'detailed' outline. For me, I have to stew inside of the story for good long while, considering lots of different aspects of it before I can move on. Then, once I'm there, I have to go with the flow.
Now, I don't mean that in a romantic way. Instead, he fits the trope (hopefully not the cliche) of being the most like Nichomachus. I know I haven't mentioned Nic that much, but I wanted to write down this analysis before I forgot it. Both men have great power within them that they are afraid to use, both wish to get out of Coratha as soon as they can, both have had spousal issues, and both have a vested interest in getting the Writ returned as soon as possible. They are going through similar trials, yet they react differently. It makes for an interesting combination, I think--though that someone feels as though the story has already been told from one point of view and now I'm going back through familiar territory is something I worry about.
Last thing I want to mention about Calistar is how I ended up getting him in the first place. By the time I had hit the sixth chapter, I needed a break from Nicomachus. Not because I was tired of writing about him (not in the least: He currently has 37% of the story in his point of view--Calistar has 31%), but because I needed the tension of being away from him. The crisis of the story is revealed fairly early on--then fades into the background because I'm bad at writing--and I needed the reader to be put into a position of seeing someone coming into the trouble, albeit unwittingly.
Enter Calistar.
I distinctly recall that I was wanting to write something more spooky and atmospheric. I jumped onto Grooveshark (since Spotify didn't exist yet) and added some music from Silent Hill. I then created the Swamps of Coratha and let the unfolding scene create a new character, new dynamics, and the interplay between the three countries that I had created. Calistar quickly became an interesting new voice, in part because he was not so depressed as Nic, but, at the same time, he seemed to be pining for something. The second chapter I wrote about Cal told me that he has a wife whom he misses. This intrigued me, and I decided to pursue it further. He ended up becoming something fun and unique to the story.
That's what I love about writing. These small impulses for variety give such a great new texture to the tale I'm telling. I think it's also why I don't bother outlining; the serendipity of having characters walk in and take over is so rewarding and so unanticipated that I can't picture doing it outside of the story itself. The details that come in while I'm actually composing the piece are so spontaneous that I wouldn't get the same--and, I'd argue, right--story if I were to outline the thing, even if it were a 'detailed' outline. For me, I have to stew inside of the story for good long while, considering lots of different aspects of it before I can move on. Then, once I'm there, I have to go with the flow.
Comments
Also, it's fun to see how you envision things via the pictures you find. For example, I'd been imagining Calistar as looking more Sean Bean-ish, though a bit younger. It makes me wonder what pictures people have in their heads of things and people I've described, and if they're similar at all. :)