Category Archives: Writing

Snippet Time – The Long Look

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Sometimes excerpts are the sort of thing you put up when you can’t scrape a real post together, but I think there’s something to be said for them on their own merits. I don’t assume for a moment that everyone or even most people who happen across this site will have a clue as to the sort of thing I do or will have read any of it. Excerpts are a quick and easy way to remedy that. So this will be in addition to the “Story Time” link, but I promise not to do it too often.

Today’s snippet is from The Long Look, Chapter 1 – Fairy Tales:

Tymon the Black, demon of a thousand nightmares and master of none, came to a sudden understanding. “It’s raining,” he said. “And I’m cold.”

He sounded surprised.

The dwarf Seb was not surprised. The chilling rain had started the moment they reached the foothills of the White Mountains and continued all afternoon. Seb’s long fair hair hung limp about his face, and he peered out at the magician through a tangled mat like a runt wolf eyeing a lamb through a hedge. “At last he deigns to notice . . . I’ve been cold for hours! At the very least you could have been miserable with me.”

“Sorry,” Tymon said. “You know I have trouble with some things.”

Seb nodded. “‘Here’ and ‘now’ being two of them.” While day-to-day practical matters were Seb’s responsibility, there was some comfort in complaining. In his years with Tymon, Seb had learned to take comfort where he could.

Nothing else was said for a time, there being nothing to say. Seb, as usual, was the first to notice the failing light. “It’s getting late. We’d better find somewhere dry to camp, if there be such in this wretched place.”

It was beginning to look like a very wet night until Seb spotted a large overhang on a nearby ridge. It wasn’t a true cave, more a remnant of some long-ago earthquake, but it reached more than forty yards into the hillside and had a high ceiling and dry, level floor. It wasn’t the worst place they’d ever slept.
“I’ll build a fire,” the dwarf said, “if you will promise me not to look at it.”

Tymon didn’t promise, but Seb built the fire anyway after seeing to their mounts and the pack train. He found some almost-dry wood near the entrance and managed to collect enough rainwater for the horses and for a pot of tea. He unpacked the last of their dried beef and biscuit, studied the pitiful leavings and shook his head in disgust. Gold wasn’t a problem, but they hadn’t dared stop for supplies till well away from the scene of Tymon’s last escapade, and now what little food they’d had time to pack was almost gone.
Seb scrounged another pot and went to catch some more rain. When he had enough, he added the remnants of beef and started the pot simmering on the fire. The mixture might make a passable broth. If not, at least they could use it to soften the biscuit.

Tymon inched closer to the fire, glancing at Seb as he did so. The dwarf pretended not to notice. Tymon was soaked and neither of them had any dry clothing. Tymon catching cold or worse was the last thing Seb needed. As for the risk, well, when the inevitable happened it would happen, as it had so many times before.

“I never look for trouble, you know that,” Tymon said. It sounded like an apology.

“I know.” Seb handed him a bowl of the broth and a piece of hard biscuit, and that small gesture was as close to an acceptance of the apology as the occasion demanded. They ate in comfortable silence for a while, but as the silence went on and on and the meal didn’t, Seb began to feel definitely uncomfortable. He finally surrendered tact and leaned close.

“Bloody hell!”

It was the Long Look. Tymon’s eyes were glazed, almost like a blind man’s. They focused at once on the flames and on nothing. Tymon was seeing something far beyond the firelight, something hidden as much in time as distance. And there wasn’t a damn thing Seb could do about it. He thought of taking his horse and leaving his friend behind, saving himself. He swore silently that one day he would do just that. He had sworn before, and he meant it no less now. But not this time. Always, not this time. Seb dozed after a while, walking the edge of a dream of warmth and ease and just about to enter, when the sound of his name brought him back to the cold stone and firelight.

“Seb?”

Tymon was back, too, from whatever far place he’d gone, and he was shivering again. Seb poured the last of the tea into Tymon’s mug. “Well?”

“I’ve seen something,” Tymon said. He found a crust of biscuit in his lap and dipped it in his tea. He chewed thoughtfully.

“Tymon, is it your habit to inform me that the sun has risen? The obvious I can handle; I need help with the hidden things.”

“So do I,” Tymon said. “Or at least telling which is which. What do you think is hidden?”

“What you saw. What the Long Look has done to us this time.”

Tymon rubbed his eyes like the first hour of morning. “Oh, that. Tragedy, Seb. That’s what I saw in the fire. I didn’t mean to. I tried not to look.”

Seb threw the dregs of his own cup into the fire and it hissed in protest. “I rather doubt it matters. If it wasn’t the fire, it would be the pattern of sweat on your horse’s back, or the shine of a dewdrop.” The dwarf’s scowl suddenly cleared away, and he looked like a scholar who’d just solved a particularly vexing sum. “The Long Look is a curse, isn’t it? I should have realized that long ago. What did you do? Cut firewood in a sacred grove? Make water on the wrong patch of flowers? What?” Seb waited but Tymon didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to be listening. Seb shook his head sadly. “I’ll wager it was a goddess. Those capable of greatest kindness must also have the power for greatest cruelty. That’s balance.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Tymon, who was listening after all. “And a Hidden Thing, I see. So let me reveal it to you—there is one difference between the workings of a god and a goddess in our affairs. One only.”

“And that is?”

“Us. Being men, we take the disfavor of a female deity more personally.” Tymon yawned and reached for his saddle and blanket.

Seb seized the reference. “Disfavor. You admit it.”

Tymon shrugged. “If it gives you pleasure. The Powers know you’ve had precious little of that lately.” He moved his blanket away from a sharp rise in the stone and repositioned his saddle. “Where are we going?”

Seb tended the fire, looking sullen. “Morushe.”

“Good. I’m not known there—by sight, anyway.”

Seb nodded. “I was counting on that.”

“It will make things easier.”

Seb knew that Tymon was now speaking to himself, but he refused to be left out. “I know why we were heading toward Morushe—it was far away from Calyt. What business do we have there now?”

“We’re going to murder a prince.”

Seb closed his eyes. “Pity the fool who asked.”

“I never look for trouble. You know that.”

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Fantasy as Consolation – Not

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“More people want to change the world than want to change themselves.” – Leo Tolstoy

Our subject for today is fantasy as the literature of reassurance and consolation. This is a fairly common view of fantasy, just not one I agree with. At all. Now, I’m perfectly willing to concede that fantasy often is generic, and reaffirming of the status quo, and all the other things that it is accused of, usually when the person doing the accusing is pointing out its inferiority to science fiction. The basic problem with that argument is that it’s just as true of a great deal of science fiction, and just as irrelevant, applying only when we confuse fantasy and sf as marketing categories with fantasy and sf the forms of storytelling. Fantasy and sf that are more market-driven often fit that description, but in neither case is it a limitation of the form. Anyone who argues otherwise has their work cut out for them so far as I’m concerned.

The other truism I keep hearing is that fantasy is “backward looking” while science fiction is “forward looking.” Ummm, no. Some science fiction is forward looking. A lot more isn’t. A lot more, rather, is more solidly rooted in the here and now than anything John Irving ever did, but no one’s saying that such stories shouldn’t be called science fiction. I think it’s truer and more useful to say that fantasy is “inward looking” while science fiction is “outward looking,” though even that view doesn’t fully describe either genre. I admit it’s a shaky platform, but we have to stand somewhere.

“Now wait a minute,” I hear my Mr. Strawman say, “isn’t it true that most fantasy is set in the past?” Actually, no. Very little fantasy is set in our actual historical past. Just as “urban fantasy” is not really set in our present. It may look like this world or some close variation, but that’s deceptive. Fantasy is almost all set in a place beyond time and history. Beyond the Fields We Know. Anyone ever heard of it? Some call it Fairyland. That has its own unfortunate associations, but it’s not wholly inaccurate. Then there’s Beyond Ultima Thule. To the West. To the East. Over the Rainbow. In the Underworld. On Mount Olympus. At Tir na Og. Avalon. Downtown Detroit. Call it what you want, it’s not what it seems, and it’s not here and it’s not now. It’s not a place any of us have been. It’s a place we’ve all been.

“You do realize that you’re speaking absolute nonsense, don’t you?” asks Mr. Strawman (and give the guy credit—he never misses a cue). Sure I am. I’m rather fond of Nonsense as a destination. Edward Lear was a master of it. That’s how I first found out about the Jumblies, and how they went to sea in a sieve. Fascinating creatures and fascinating place. Nonsense is a setting that I definitely should have mentioned.

Setting is important. The difference, at least in my opinion so feel free to have your own, is that, in science fiction, the setting is most often a representation, however crude, of the physical universe, and the story a look at our relationship with that universe. In fantasy, the setting is a metaphor for ourselves only. The settings in fantasy are the universal inner landscapes of the human psyche, beyond space and time. It’s what and who we are, and only really, truly accessible in the stories we tell each other about us. Per Jane Yolen, storytelling is “our first and best method of casting out demons and summoning angels.” All the rest is stagecraft.

So what do we see when we go there? Marvels. The clash of armies, the birth of the Gods, the fall of the Gods. Each other. We see anything we’re capable of seeing, for better or for worse. That’s not safe, nor should it should be. Ursula Le Guin in THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT likened certain writers’ and readers’ attitude toward Fairyland as being the same as obvlivious tourists in Yosemite, having a grand old time until, say, they try to get their picture taken with the cute bear and the cute bear eats them. Sure, there are cute bunnies and horsies in Fairyland. And some of the bunnies drink your blood and some of the horsies drag you off to the loch for drowning and devouring at leisure. There are also worse things lurking. Far worse.

Telling a fantasy story is the act of going to the place that we all live and taking a good hard look at what’s there. Like taking a look in the mirror. We often look in the mirror but only now and then we get a glimpse, maybe no more than that, but a true glimpse of what’s there to see. Do you find that reassuring when it happens? Consoling? I sure don’t. In fact, it scares the hell out of me every time I sit down to write. But sometimes the act of storytelling tells us something we didn’t know before. Or didn’t know that we knew. Which, despite the danger, is more than enough reason to keep making the journey.

At least, when we get it right.

Muse and Writer Dialogues – Continued

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Curtain rises, to reveal The MUSE, dusting. Picture a tall and lithe Greek Goddess in a chiton dusting a library shelf with an old-fashioned feather duster. Not that she’s doing any actual work. It’s more of a symbolic gesture. WRITER enters, stage right.

WRITER: “What do you think you’re doing?”
MUSE: “Dusting. It’s a symbolic gesture. Don’t you read the stage directions?”
WRITER: “You know what I mean. I want to talk to you about that story you dropped on me Friday.”
MUSE: “What about it?”
WRITER: “What about it? The series was finished! What were you thinking,  inspiring a  new story in the series at this point?”
MUSE: “What part of ‘Muse’ don’t you understand?”
WRITER: “The story arc was complete! I put a lot of time and thought into that concluding episode.”
MUSE: “So what’s your problem? You know the story you wrote Friday has no time cues, so it fits into the continuity anywhere you want to put it.”
WRITER: “That’s not the point! This is the first time I’ve ever concluded a character’s story arc, for a series. I was rather proud of that.”
MUSE: “I’m a Muse, not a therapist. Don’t tell me your troubles. Though I will point out that you’re a writer, complaining about having a story to write. That’s just stupid.”
WRITER: “But I had it planned! I had told the character’s story! I was done!”
MUSE: “Oh, now I get it. You’re suffering under the delusion that you’re in charge.”
WRITER: “A writer should take charge of their career. I read that in a book somewhere.”
MUSE: “A book. Right. Written by?”
WRITER: “Ummm. Some writer?”
MUSE: “You make my point. Besides, am I telling you how to market? How to do readings or if? How to do signings or if? What venues a story fits best?”
WRITER: “Now that you mention it, I could use some help in that department.”
MUSE: “Again, what part of ‘Muse’ don’t you understand?”
WRITER: “I don’t understand anything, apparently.”
MUSE: “You understand that much, then. I call that progress.”
WRITER: “So what’s the symbolic significance of you dusting my shelves?”
MUSE: “Something neglected has been refreshed, brought to good order. Think about it.”
WRITER: “Oh.”
MUSE: “Honestly, what would you do without me?”
WRITER: “Damned if I know.”
MUSE: “That’s right. Now fetch me a new duster. This one’s got dust on it.”

Look It Up in Your Funk and Wagnall’s

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Yeah, I know. Ancient history reference. Which is appropriate, because today I’m going to talk about research.

The subject of research came up elsewhere recently. Specifically, some people make the argument that, for fantasy especially, “You’re just making stuff up and so you don’t have to do research. Even for work set on earth in a particular point in history, no one’s going to ding you for minor oopsies other than some anal history types. Regular readers don’t care.”

To start, I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a  “regular reader.” I think readers are varied people with varied interests, and are likely to know a bit about the period you’re writing in and dang well do care, but that’s actually not what I want to talk about (ok, “write about.” Don’t be so dang literal). See, I believe the premise that research is unnecessary is wrong-headed on at least two levels, and I want to concentrate on the second, not the first.

On the first level, yes, you do research to “get it right.” This is the “Will this be on the Test?” theory of research. To a degree I can sympathize. Put this way it sounds a lot like scutwork, but there’s a lot more to it than not giving the Normans 13th century English longbows at Hastings or referring to an 11th Century Japanese nobleman as a “samurai.” Research isn’t just about avoiding mistakes. That’s important but secondary. Even if you’re working in a world of your own, it’s going to be based on or a reaction to historial analogues. Nothing comes from nothing. So you do research to enrich your story and, in some cases, to find the story in the first place.

I’ll use examples from my own stash since, well, they’re the only ones I have. One of the Goji Yamada stories (Prime Books 2013, plug or fair warning) concerns Kenji and Goji making a trek to the frozen north ofJapan to help with a delicate political matter. That delicate matter proves to be that the local “barbarian” leader’s daughter-in-law has been kidnapped. Two problems: the leader’s son is dead and his daughter-in-law is a wooden doll. No, the leader is not crazy. It was the custom in that part of Japan that, when a boy or young man died before marriage, the family would create an effigy of a bride, have it blessed by a priest, and symbolically marry the figure to the deceased before donating it to the temple for safe-keeping. It was believed that the doll’s spirit would then serve as the deceased’s “wife,” giving him the company and support in the spirit world that he never had in life. Now, was that merely a research detail? Heck no. It was the genesis of the entire story. I stumbled upon that piece of information while doing research for another piece, and once I found it, I knew there was a story there. No research? No story.

Besides providing the germs of story ideas, research enriches what you’re already doing. Does this really need to be explained? Probably not to anyone here, but you never know. I’m amazed any working writer would take the “research is unnecessary” position in the first place, but apparently some do.

In “Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge,” I needed a letter to disappear from a heavily-guarded Imperial compound and a princess to vanish in front of two alert guards, and both in a way that was both integral to the story and plausible in context. Related reading on the nature on Japanese theories of magic in the Heian period gave me exactly what I needed–the shikigami. In To Break the Demon Gate (PS Publishing, late 2012), a bad guy has taken over a temple that guards the eastern approaches to the Capital. A temple? How is that a threat to our heroes? Two reasons: Warrior monks (sohei) and the concept of the ikiryo, the first from historical reading and the second straight from The Tale of Genji. Could I have written the book without those two bits of information? Sure. Would it have been as good as I humbly think it is? I seriously doubt it.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Ok, here’s something not quite so obvious, and why this particular meme is so insidiously dangerous–when someone says, “Oh, I never do research” what they’re really saying is “I’ve already done all the research I’m going to do.” They already have what they need, in their opinion: HS or college-level history. Earlier readings and stories, including childhood reading that they’ve already done ages ago. There’s some validity in this. I didn’t do any new research when I wrote “Kallisti,”  because I really had already done what I needed. I knew the story of the Judgment of Paris so well that it was no problem at all to do my own take on it. I didn’t do any new research for “The Plum Blossom Lantern,” because I already knew the Edo period ghost story that it was based on. The research was already done. This is extremely useful when it happens, but it can also be a trap.

That’s right—trap. Once you stop searching, once you think “Ok, I’m done” it means you’ve lost interest, both in your subjects and in the idea of getting better. You’re no longer finding new information, and more to the point, new connections between those bits of information. You’ve stopped looking for the tools that would help you grow as a writer. You write about the same things, with the same toolkit, that you’ve always had. You have a hammer, so to speak. It may be a very fine hammer, but that’s all it is. All you can do is assemble the pieces of wood as they are. Pretty soon you’re repeating yourself because, well, you can’t do anything else.

That’s the trap. And the ones caught by it don’t even realize it. But I can gurantee you their readers do.

Muse and Writer Dialogues

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Writer: What are you doing?
Muse: Isn’t it obvious? The crossword. Five across, four letters. “Rank and ___”?
Writer: “file”
Muse: Thanks.
Writer: Is this what I pay you for?
Muse: You don’t pay me.
Writer: You know what I mean. We should be at work.
Muse: I am at work.
Writer: So what’s my next story?
Muse: How am I supposed to know that if you don’t?
Writer: !
Muse: Oh, wipe that look off your face.
     You know very well that I don’t exist. I’m
     a convenient personification of Inspiration.
Writer: Since when have you been convenient?
Muse: I’m certainly on-call for blame 24/7.
Writer: But if you don’t exist…
Muse: Right. You’re talking to yourself. Again.
      Fortunately, you’ve picked an avocation
      where that’s not unusual.
Writer: I’ve got stories to write!
Muse: And this affects me how?
Writer: Dammit, think of my posterity!
Muse: I don’t see why. She never thinks of you.
Writer: But…
Muse: You walk in front of a bus tomorrow and you’re
       One column inch in the next Locus. Maybe.
Writer: But…
Muse: Twenty more years of work, and it’s three
       column inches and a fuzzy picture. Maybe.
Writer: But…
Muse: Most writers, good and bad, are totally forgotten
        within fifty years of their deaths. I give you
        five, but only because I’m feeling generous.
Writer: But…
Muse: But what?
Writer: I want to write a story.
Muse: Why? Didn’t I explain about posterity clearly enough?
Writer: Writing stories keeps me sane.
Muse: Hel-lo? Talking to yourself?
Writer: Relatively sane, then. There are worse things than talking to yourself.
Muse: I suppose so. Oh, all right. Go read a poem called
      “Moon Over Mountain Pass” by the Chinese Poet Li-Po.
Writer: Why?
Muse: Your next story is hiding there. Go look for it.
Writer: Umm… ok. By the way, now you look Asian. Weren’t
      You a redhead in a babushka just a minute ago?
Muse: What’s your point?
Writer: I guess I don’t have one.
Muse: That’s right. By the way: Seven Down, nine letters, “Everyday, ordinary”?
Writer: “quotidian”
Muse: Thanks.
Writer: Yeah. Same to you.