It's always raining, here in the half-dark. Drops ping on empty helmets, run down gun barrels, roll dripping from the tips of blades. Wet fabric of olive green and black and red and every other heraldric combination possible, all of it once worn so proudly. And yes, the rain soaks bones and torn skin and outstretched hands, all of it unmoving and silent in the endless wet.
It is not a beautiful country.
It has no frontier, no edges, no fences or walls beyond which lies some respite. Just the cold rain and endless ground, disrupted by the fallen.
Here they lie, as they fell in their wars, and conflicts and "special actions," unrotting, unchanging, and ultimately: unremembered.
Except by me. I watch them come, drifting like ash, sometimes slowly and sometimes sifting through the rain in countless thousands. This ground, this holy and terrible country, is theirs: the killed.
There is no sun and there is no day, so it seems strange to begin a story thus: one day I saw something I had not seen in all the long ages of my watching.
Movement.
There was something moving where nothing had ever moved. Something that fluttered, like a thought made real, and it twisted and jerked over the fields of the dead.
It was shaped like a man. It knelt over down, plucked something from the ground, then hopped sideways as if dancing a jig. It jiggered and skipped and plucked, and when it was near enough I saw that it was indeed a man.
It straightened to face me. Arranged its face into a pale smile.
"Hello, watcher."
I nodded.
"You don't know me, do you?" The man gestured in a wide and loving circle. "I have sent you so many. So many."
He jingled something in his breeches and I realized what he'd been plucking from the ground: the coins from the eyes of the dead.
He saw me frown but did not quail although my rage can be terrible. "Ah," he stated. "The coins." The smile opened into a grin. "Waste not." And he wiped the rain from his lips. "Do you know my name?" he said. "Have you guessed it?"
I made no answer. An eternity of silence makes thought more habitual than speech.
He leaned closer. His eyes were so bright in that grey place, and he they were open, unblinking, in the rain.
"I am Calvar Rex."
"Go," I finally said. "This is not your place. This is holy--"
"Holy ground," he finished. "Yes, yes, It is not ours to consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground of the fallen, blah blah blah. It matters not."
I felt a heat growing in me where for so long there had only been cold.
"Your fallen," he said, his lips pulled back from his teeth, "Your fallen will burn. Your graveyard will burn. This country will burn. All of it."
The anger warmed me and one hot-breathed word erupted past scalding lips.
"GO!" And the terrible fire of the holy glowed in that dark place. It glowed long enough for me to see his grin as he tattered like fog and fled.
The rain and the dead still came, as they always had and always would. As my heat faded I swore I would remember his name.
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
I Nearly Forgot the World
As I swim through the quicksand slurry that is revision, I have found that it's time to further flesh out (not "flush out," as current corporate speak would have it) the world that embraces the story.
I've heard -- and felt the tidal pull -- of the desire to play God, to sketch maps and outline lines of kingly descent, to chart trading routes, ocean currents, street names, economies. To build an imagined world so richly complete that it can seem more real than our own. And this is now my task -- or at least, to continue this.
But the reason I haven't done too much of this already is that I wanted to tell the story first.
Story first, quoth I! Now that that story is written I can go back and fill in the blank spots on the map. I worried that if I did it the other way around -- world first -- I'd go so distracted and fascinated by it -- not to mention intimidated by the vastness -- that I'd never get around the story.
Plus, the story called to me.
So this morning I sipped you-know-what and made up city names, roads, cosmologies. It's a task that could go on forever. After all, look at our own world, where we still struggle to catalog and understand its complexity. But in this case my guide is the story. IT determines relevance, not me. Which is wonderful and humbling.
Stringer update: #4 is complete!
I've heard -- and felt the tidal pull -- of the desire to play God, to sketch maps and outline lines of kingly descent, to chart trading routes, ocean currents, street names, economies. To build an imagined world so richly complete that it can seem more real than our own. And this is now my task -- or at least, to continue this.
But the reason I haven't done too much of this already is that I wanted to tell the story first.
Story first, quoth I! Now that that story is written I can go back and fill in the blank spots on the map. I worried that if I did it the other way around -- world first -- I'd go so distracted and fascinated by it -- not to mention intimidated by the vastness -- that I'd never get around the story.
Plus, the story called to me.
So this morning I sipped you-know-what and made up city names, roads, cosmologies. It's a task that could go on forever. After all, look at our own world, where we still struggle to catalog and understand its complexity. But in this case my guide is the story. IT determines relevance, not me. Which is wonderful and humbling.
Stringer update: #4 is complete!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
I am afraid. Be afraid.
Today the cows scared me. Wait! I can explain.
The grass is that almost electric green of late spring, and though the sky was dark it glowed with that bad light just before a storm. I love that. It made the grass even greener; the clouds even darker.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a black cow on a green meadow, and I jolted, because it reminded me of something. The herd of cows were so deeply black, and so sharply defined against the grass that it looked like they'd been chiseled right out of the green to show the void beneath.
It's funny how long it took -- several seconds -- before I realized why this was familiar. Those few of you who have read a draft of The Turning Away will recognize it as an iconic image from the first part of the book. It's meant to be scary, and it wasn't until today, when I saw it, out my car window, that I felt that little shock of fear that I'd been describing in my main character.
It didn't help that, at the same time, I was listening to Sympathy For the Devil, and thinking about this poem, and how evil can seem so attractive in its power and certainty. It's bad-ass, and who wouldn't want to be bad-ass? Especially if you've been victimized all your life, that dark power must be a pull as strong as the tides when it finally calls your name.
We've been waiting for you, I thought. That's what it would say.
"Hope you guess my name!" Jagger howled. And then I saw the cows.
So. Cows? Not scary. Black shapes in a green field? In the right context: scary.
The grass is that almost electric green of late spring, and though the sky was dark it glowed with that bad light just before a storm. I love that. It made the grass even greener; the clouds even darker.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a black cow on a green meadow, and I jolted, because it reminded me of something. The herd of cows were so deeply black, and so sharply defined against the grass that it looked like they'd been chiseled right out of the green to show the void beneath.
It's funny how long it took -- several seconds -- before I realized why this was familiar. Those few of you who have read a draft of The Turning Away will recognize it as an iconic image from the first part of the book. It's meant to be scary, and it wasn't until today, when I saw it, out my car window, that I felt that little shock of fear that I'd been describing in my main character.
It didn't help that, at the same time, I was listening to Sympathy For the Devil, and thinking about this poem, and how evil can seem so attractive in its power and certainty. It's bad-ass, and who wouldn't want to be bad-ass? Especially if you've been victimized all your life, that dark power must be a pull as strong as the tides when it finally calls your name.
We've been waiting for you, I thought. That's what it would say.
"Hope you guess my name!" Jagger howled. And then I saw the cows.
So. Cows? Not scary. Black shapes in a green field? In the right context: scary.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
The in-between
The idea of liminal or in-between spaces has been discussed in anthropology for a hundred years. The basic idea, first outlined by Arnold van Gennep and then expanded by Victor Turner, is that rituals tend to go through three stages: a “before,” and in-between, and an “after.”
This originally described rites of passage such as the transition from child to adult, but what excites me is the idea of applying liminality to other things: locations, people, states of awareness. (This is triggered by the interesting discussion on D. M. Cornish’s blog.)
I should point out that although once I was an aspiring academic, I have long since come to my senses. So it may be that there exists a whole body (or “corpus”) of work (or “text”) that studies this phenomenon (or text. That’s right, you use texts to study texts. How glad I am to have escaped that Ouroborean madness.) Point is, this may not be an original idea.
A liminal space or moment exists in between two normal places, or normal periods. These liminal spaces are places of danger, ambiguity, potential, uncertainty. The normal rules that govern everyday behavior and our expectations ... have shifted. The world pauses, power crackles in the wings.
Look at a passage from Tennyson’s Ulysses, one of my favorites. We’ve just spent several stanzas reading about the narrator’s quiet and boring home life, the looming threat of old age and weakness, and the wildness of the world outside his door. A thought tickles his mind: “Some work of noble note may yet be done...” And then the poem pauses from the narrative.
In the next line we learn that he’s decided to leave the comforts of home and return to the wild. He’s leaving, and that liminal moment is when he made the decision. The in-between moment when anything is possible.
A frontier on the edge of an empire is a liminal place. Beyond here be monsters. Something that looks mostly like a person but which is not quite human: liminal.
It is the moment of freefall as an acrobat goes from one trapeze to another. Tidal pools between ocean and rock. The quiet whispered exhalation just before a thunderstorm.
When I stand in the bookstore and get pulled into a book and lose all sense of time and place and who I am ... and then straighten up, rub my eyes, and look at the shelves of books and the world I knew and they seem completely foreign: that “book madness” as I pause between the book and returning to my own world, is liminal.
Like almost everything, this can go too far. My pencil is dull, so it’s in a liminal state between sharp and unused. My liminal sandwich is half-eaten, hovering between existence and non-existence. Come on.
But the idea that these in-between moments (or places, or people, or anything potentially) have special significance, special power, fascinates me.
This originally described rites of passage such as the transition from child to adult, but what excites me is the idea of applying liminality to other things: locations, people, states of awareness. (This is triggered by the interesting discussion on D. M. Cornish’s blog.)
I should point out that although once I was an aspiring academic, I have long since come to my senses. So it may be that there exists a whole body (or “corpus”) of work (or “text”) that studies this phenomenon (or text. That’s right, you use texts to study texts. How glad I am to have escaped that Ouroborean madness.) Point is, this may not be an original idea.
A liminal space or moment exists in between two normal places, or normal periods. These liminal spaces are places of danger, ambiguity, potential, uncertainty. The normal rules that govern everyday behavior and our expectations ... have shifted. The world pauses, power crackles in the wings.
Look at a passage from Tennyson’s Ulysses, one of my favorites. We’ve just spent several stanzas reading about the narrator’s quiet and boring home life, the looming threat of old age and weakness, and the wildness of the world outside his door. A thought tickles his mind: “Some work of noble note may yet be done...” And then the poem pauses from the narrative.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;Something is about to happen.
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices.
In the next line we learn that he’s decided to leave the comforts of home and return to the wild. He’s leaving, and that liminal moment is when he made the decision. The in-between moment when anything is possible.
A frontier on the edge of an empire is a liminal place. Beyond here be monsters. Something that looks mostly like a person but which is not quite human: liminal.
It is the moment of freefall as an acrobat goes from one trapeze to another. Tidal pools between ocean and rock. The quiet whispered exhalation just before a thunderstorm.
When I stand in the bookstore and get pulled into a book and lose all sense of time and place and who I am ... and then straighten up, rub my eyes, and look at the shelves of books and the world I knew and they seem completely foreign: that “book madness” as I pause between the book and returning to my own world, is liminal.
Like almost everything, this can go too far. My pencil is dull, so it’s in a liminal state between sharp and unused. My liminal sandwich is half-eaten, hovering between existence and non-existence. Come on.
But the idea that these in-between moments (or places, or people, or anything potentially) have special significance, special power, fascinates me.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Oops, I win. That was easy.
There are lots of wonderful things about Patrick O'Brian's superb Aubrey-Maturin series, and when I try to explain them to someone who hasn't read them it feels like introducing Christmas or the idea of kissing or cookie dough to someone for the first time. O the riches that await you!
Once of the most interesting things about the plotting of the books is that sometimes things just don't work out. People try things and fail, or they guess wrong, or something goes awry and they have to improvise.
Note: These are not O'Brian spoilers; the plot below is made-up.
For example, say the characters are onboard a British ship of War (in 1802 or thereabouts) slanting downwind toward the French coast, on a mission to close with the shore, slip in under the coastal artillery fire, and take, sink, or burn the French ships in the port. The main characters are gathered in the captain's room at the stern of the ship, a low-ceilinged space of curved lines and small windows. A fresh breeze keeps them tearing ahead across the English channel. The captain and his aides are walking dividers across a chart, studying the shape of the harbor, likely tides, the accuracy of French cannon fire.
Everything is ready; everything is progressing, and as readers we are swept ahead of them, inexorably it seems, to France and the waiting battle.
Now, pause. Remember that these are the heroes of the book, the British are the good guys, and we even know that Napoleon was ultimately defeated. So we (or I did, at least) expect a swashbuckling fight scene, certainly some hardship, but ultimately victory. Our heroes must prevail, after all. And so much is at stake: they must defeat the French!
In Star Wars Luke must use all of his training, all of his patience and willpower and ability to bullseye womp rats in his T-16 back home to destroy the Death Star. There is only one way to destroy it, and he is the only person who can do it. And SURPRISE, he's successful.
Was it really that surprising?
Back to our British frigate coursing towards the French coast. The land draws near. The men run out the guns and rig the ship for battle. The smoke of burning slowmatch drifts along the deck. Closer. The captain orders the sails re-set to slow the ship.
They round the point of land and find the harbor empty. They run aground on an uncharted rock. The French ships slip around a distant point and the battle is over without firing a shot. Our heroes are captured and placed into French prison. They escape and face a dangerous overland journey to a port, where they are smuggled back to England in the dead of night.
SURPRISE: the mission to attack the French was a complete failure, and the result of a series of misjudgement so severe that our heroes were lucky to escape with their lives.
To me this seems to be a richer, deeper plot, more reflective of actual life and the choices we make that -- like it or not -- are sometimes wrong. When the characters are forced to live through the consequences of their own occasional bad judgement, the story feels more real.
Now. There are many, many reasons why comparing O'Brian's books to Star Wars is a bad idea. And certainly I'm not suggesting that characters should get to the climax of the story and then fail. But think about it: was Luke really ever going to do anything else than destroy the Death Star?
Flawed characters are more interesting than flatly perfect ones. Flawed ideas are more interesting too. It's not just a matter of avoiding situations that are "too easy" for characters, I think there should be occasional ... let's call them "diversions from immediate success."
Another example. China Mieville's Un Lun Dun, a wonderfully odd book about an "Un-London" that exists below/alongside London. Two girls discover UnLondon and learn that one of them is The Chosen One who must -- you guessed it -- save the world from evil. Sound familiar?
But instead of slipping into the rut of a traditional fantasy story, Mieville throws us a curve. The Chosen One is knocked out in a fight and returns to our world, defeated and, frankly, pretty useless. It's her friend, Deeba, until now the sidekick, who ends up returning to UnLondon and ultimately saving it.
The story doesn't just slide past the issue of The Chosen One, it catapults past it and in doing so, gives us the message that who you are or what a "prophecy" says are less important than what you do. "Forget the prophecy, we have work to do."
[Edited to add:] Sarah Rees Brennan brings up a very similar point on her blog. It as actually her posting that got me to read UnLunDun in the first place.
Once of the most interesting things about the plotting of the books is that sometimes things just don't work out. People try things and fail, or they guess wrong, or something goes awry and they have to improvise.
Note: These are not O'Brian spoilers; the plot below is made-up.
For example, say the characters are onboard a British ship of War (in 1802 or thereabouts) slanting downwind toward the French coast, on a mission to close with the shore, slip in under the coastal artillery fire, and take, sink, or burn the French ships in the port. The main characters are gathered in the captain's room at the stern of the ship, a low-ceilinged space of curved lines and small windows. A fresh breeze keeps them tearing ahead across the English channel. The captain and his aides are walking dividers across a chart, studying the shape of the harbor, likely tides, the accuracy of French cannon fire.
Everything is ready; everything is progressing, and as readers we are swept ahead of them, inexorably it seems, to France and the waiting battle.
Now, pause. Remember that these are the heroes of the book, the British are the good guys, and we even know that Napoleon was ultimately defeated. So we (or I did, at least) expect a swashbuckling fight scene, certainly some hardship, but ultimately victory. Our heroes must prevail, after all. And so much is at stake: they must defeat the French!
In Star Wars Luke must use all of his training, all of his patience and willpower and ability to bullseye womp rats in his T-16 back home to destroy the Death Star. There is only one way to destroy it, and he is the only person who can do it. And SURPRISE, he's successful.
Was it really that surprising?
Back to our British frigate coursing towards the French coast. The land draws near. The men run out the guns and rig the ship for battle. The smoke of burning slowmatch drifts along the deck. Closer. The captain orders the sails re-set to slow the ship.
They round the point of land and find the harbor empty. They run aground on an uncharted rock. The French ships slip around a distant point and the battle is over without firing a shot. Our heroes are captured and placed into French prison. They escape and face a dangerous overland journey to a port, where they are smuggled back to England in the dead of night.
SURPRISE: the mission to attack the French was a complete failure, and the result of a series of misjudgement so severe that our heroes were lucky to escape with their lives.
To me this seems to be a richer, deeper plot, more reflective of actual life and the choices we make that -- like it or not -- are sometimes wrong. When the characters are forced to live through the consequences of their own occasional bad judgement, the story feels more real.
Now. There are many, many reasons why comparing O'Brian's books to Star Wars is a bad idea. And certainly I'm not suggesting that characters should get to the climax of the story and then fail. But think about it: was Luke really ever going to do anything else than destroy the Death Star?
Flawed characters are more interesting than flatly perfect ones. Flawed ideas are more interesting too. It's not just a matter of avoiding situations that are "too easy" for characters, I think there should be occasional ... let's call them "diversions from immediate success."
Another example. China Mieville's Un Lun Dun, a wonderfully odd book about an "Un-London" that exists below/alongside London. Two girls discover UnLondon and learn that one of them is The Chosen One who must -- you guessed it -- save the world from evil. Sound familiar?
But instead of slipping into the rut of a traditional fantasy story, Mieville throws us a curve. The Chosen One is knocked out in a fight and returns to our world, defeated and, frankly, pretty useless. It's her friend, Deeba, until now the sidekick, who ends up returning to UnLondon and ultimately saving it.
The story doesn't just slide past the issue of The Chosen One, it catapults past it and in doing so, gives us the message that who you are or what a "prophecy" says are less important than what you do. "Forget the prophecy, we have work to do."
[Edited to add:] Sarah Rees Brennan brings up a very similar point on her blog. It as actually her posting that got me to read UnLunDun in the first place.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Check and check
Kristin Nelson has an interesting list of fantasy "don'ts" on her March 28 blog, from a fantasy editor. I was pleased to see that The Turning Away comes out looking pretty good. Though I am a bit biased.
Among the turn-offs: The protagonist is The Chosen One. There is a lost magical item and the search for it drives the story. Characters must pass through a portal to begin the story (like a wardrobe, ahem). The protagonist wakes up and begins his or her day in the opening chapter. The protagonist is an orphan who must live up to their dead parents. ("Living up to" dead people is an odd phrase but just go with it.)
I was going to list all the ways The Turning Away deftly avoids all these, but you'll just have to read the book. Extra credit for anyone who remembers the Time Life ad from the 80's that gave us that phrase.
Among the turn-offs: The protagonist is The Chosen One. There is a lost magical item and the search for it drives the story. Characters must pass through a portal to begin the story (like a wardrobe, ahem). The protagonist wakes up and begins his or her day in the opening chapter. The protagonist is an orphan who must live up to their dead parents. ("Living up to" dead people is an odd phrase but just go with it.)
I was going to list all the ways The Turning Away deftly avoids all these, but you'll just have to read the book. Extra credit for anyone who remembers the Time Life ad from the 80's that gave us that phrase.
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