Category: fantasy (Page 6 of 10)

Magna Carta for Fantasy

June 18, 2020 / / 0 Comments

The “Magna Carta” is an idea I discovered in No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty.

Basically, it’s a list of all the things — plot elements, character types, settings, themes, language, etc. — that you enjoy in a story. Then, with said list as inspiration, you can begin crafting your own story, filling it with as many things from your magna carta as possible, thus ensuring that your novel will be something you enjoy writing. We are all readers first, after all, so if we write what we enjoy reading we will create books that excite us.

I taught a Creative Writing class a couple of years ago, and I used the Magna Carta idea with my students (we also did the Anti-Magna Carta, which is from Baty’s book as well). I modeled it for them by creating my own Magna Carta for fantasy literature. I am not sure it’s an exhaustive list of the things I like, but it includes many elements that I enjoy. Some of them are easily found in today’s fantasy genre, but some (“Stories where violence doesn’t always save the day” or “Mothers and non-traditional protagonists”) are harder to come by (at least to my knowledge).

My Magna Carta for fantasy stories:

  • Magical treasures
  • Lots of magic (but it’s not commonplace)
  • Magic that is numinous, mysterious, and unpredictable
  • Magic that involves transformations
  • Lost/forgotten empires
  • Places/people/things being lost to the mists of time
  • Dragons
  • Female characters being skillful/having professions
  • Characters who aren’t fighters still having an impact on the story
  • Stories where violence doesn’t always save the day
  • Desert settings
  • Cosmopolitan cities
  • Mysterious towers
  • Sinister magicians
  • People who can do a special craft
  • Musicians
  • Music
  • Dungeon crawls
  • Writing that is poetic and mythic
  • Mothers and non-traditional protagonists
  • Characters with lofty dreams
  • Highly flawed characters who have to persevere
  • Characters who need to atone
  • Stories about forgiveness
  • Stories where characters go on an inner journey as well as an outward journey
  • Journeys to strange, new lands

I’m especially interested in women who have professions that aren’t the trope-y, “masculine” professions like assassin or soldier. I want to read (and write) stories about women who are craftspeople, midwives, brewers, scholars, cartographers, apothecaries, and more. I’m interested in women who are mothers who also GET TO HAVE ADVENTURES. Or perhaps a fantasy novel with an elderly person as the protagonist. I’m curious to see how such non-traditional protagonists would thrive in a fantastical world filled with danger and magic. I feel as if far too often, the “ordinary” folk who are tasked with a quest are either A.) young people or B.) “ordinary” men who used to be soldiers/warriors/wizards/ etc. George R.R. Martin explored some of these non-traditional protagonists in his A Song of Ice and Fire series (characters like Sansa and Catelyn), but he still stayed mostly in the realm of high-born people. Not many POVs from regular folk.

However, even though I’m interested in “regular folk” (especially mothers and elderly people), this doesn’t mean I want a low-magic story. What I really love seeing is how ordinary people deal with the numinous, the extraordinary, the strange, the magical. And preferably, they deal with these things in a non-violent way. Not that I don’t enjoy sword-play and action scenes (I do), but it would be nice to have more fantasy that didn’t lead to climactic battles and bloodshed. I’m guilty of this tendency myself; Merlin’s Last Magic, thus far, has lots of violence and killing. But in future stories and novels, I’m interested in exploring how to tell a rousing tale that doesn’t end with a big battle or a violent death.

Overall, the Magna Carta is a useful tool for writers. It’s not meant to limit or restrict writers from pursuing an idea that might not fit their “preferred list,” but instead, it gives them a clearer idea of what they love and what they’re interested in exploring. The things on my magna carta get me excited to start writing; they stir my imagination and feed my muse.

The Things That Shaped Me: MERP

June 2, 2020 / / 2 Comments

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My parents always loved making a big deal out of birthdays, but my tenth birthday was by far the biggest deal they ever made. They decided we were going to drive to Chicago for a family trip (we lived in Michigan, for geographical frame of reference). Why Chicago? Why my tenth birthday? I have no idea, but I made no objections. Who wouldn’t want to go to Chicago for her birthday? We were going to stay at the Water Tower Place hotel, eat at Ed Debevic’s, visit the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium, AND — this is the thing my ten-year-old brain was inexplicably most excited about — we were going to bring a portable TV/VCR in the minivan so my brother and I could watch movies during the long drive (this anecdote tells you how old I am that DVD players and screens didn’t come pre-installed in vehicles).

We rented a slew of movies, but the one I remember most was The Hobbit — not Peter Jackson’s Hobbit franchise (which hadn’t been made yet) — the Rankin-Bass animated movie from the 1970s.

This movie… let’s just say, this movie will make a future appearance in The Things That Shaped Me series.

We watched it on the way to Chicago and then on the way home to Michigan, so it served as a bookend to the birthday trip, an opening act and a closing act. I was obsessed with The Hobbit — book and movie — and by extension, Middle-Earth. But only The Hobbit-version of Middle-Earth. I hadn’t read The Lord of the Rings yet.  At ten-years-old, I wasn’t a good enough reader to handle the lengthier, weightier Rings books.

20200602_152858But I loved Tolkien’s world: the forests; the mountains; the dragons, goblins, elves, and dwarves. Mirkwood was as real to me as the little patch of woods that surrounded my grandmother’s house. The Misty Mountains were unspeakably enchanted, a world within a world filled with treasure, ancient lore, and shadowy creatures; I longed to travel there. And the map of the “Wilderlands” and Thorin’s map were like sacred manuscripts.

Although the trip to Chicago was exciting, what I wanted more than anything for my tenth birthday was something much simpler, and at the same time much stranger: I wanted the boxed set for MERP: Middle-Earth Role-Playing.

20200602_153018Back in those days, I had never played a role-playing game before. Frankly, I didn’t have anyone to play a role-playing game with. But I wanted MERP. The cover illustration alone was worth it. Also, there was something dangerously appealing about role-playing games. These games came with a dark reputation back in the 80s and early 90s. I was forbidden to play D&D; I had to work hard convincing my parents that other RPGs were okay and not gateways to Satanism. Somehow, I convinced them that MERP was alright. Maybe they figured a Tolkien-influenced game couldn’t be too bad. But the mystique, the forbidden quality of RPGs was still there, even if the cover said “Middle-Earth Role-Playing” and not “Dungeons and Dragons.”

The old MERP game came in a box, with the core book and several other supplements, including cardboard playing pieces and two ten-sided dice. Whenever I see pictures of the old MERP books — the core book, the different supplement books for the peoples and creatures of Middle-Earth — an overwhelming wave of nostalgia washes over me. I can’t quite explain it; like all old memories, it’s both intense and inexplicable. I can see and smell and sense all the moments from those old days, but I cannot make you see and smell and sense them in the same way.  Memories are like dreams; once we start to tell about them, they inevitably lose their magic, they become pedestrian and plain, they don’t capture the electricity and potency of what we see in our heads. Opening that box-set on my birthday and seeing those Angus McBride illustrations, holding the cardboard cut-outs and the ten-sided dice — it’s a feeling I find hard to describe. When the opening pages of the core book promised that “this game lets you step out of this world and stride boldly into Middle-earth,” I believed it: I was going to stride into Middle-Earth. I was going to experience adventures I’d never experienced before.

20200602_152810This memory is so strong, so central to my childhood, that I know I cannot convey to you what it really felt like. Flipping through the old MERP books brings me back to the past, to being ten-years-old, to being in the backseat of our minivan, watching the Rankin-Bass Hobbit, to being a kid who loved fantasy and who felt like she had to hide that love from the outside world. And there was the forbidden danger of role-playing games: the thrill of reading something that was maybe a bit too adult, a bit too beyond my ken.

Whenever I look at those MERP books now, after all these years, I feel the excitement of ten-year-old me, the sense that I’m about to embark on a strange, unknown, wondrous adventure — like Bilbo stepping outside his door to find the Lonely Mountain. But how can I make you feel these same feelings, or catch a glimpse of what they mean to me? I can’t. I can only hope that perhaps you loved MERP as a kid too, or that you know what it feels like to watch The Hobbit while the moon is rising between the clouds on a summer’s night.

Inspirations: Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG

August 3, 2018 / / 1 Comment

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The Time: Free RPG Day 2017

The Place: a FLGS in Howell, Michigan

The What: Finding a copy of the 2017 Free RPG Day Dungeon Crawl Classics Quick Start Rules

The Result: Nothing.

I skimmed through the rules, liked the idea of The Funnel (where players create 0-level characters, like farmers and urchins and such, and then run them through an arduous dungeon and see who makes it out alive; livers get to become 1st level characters), and promptly moved on to other things.

I wasn’t really looking to run a new rpg. I had given up being a GM after some rocky experiences with a couple of game systems, my husband was taking over the GM role, we were looking at maybe playing some indie games or maybe even The One Ring RPG, but Dungeon Crawl Classics was just this little slim booklet with the cool cover.

But man, that cover. Every once in awhile, while working at my writing desk, that cover would peak through the stack of books surrounding it and I’d start dreaming. The strains of a Led Zeppelin mixed tape would waft through my brain. The feeling of forbidden adventure would beckon, as if I was ten-years-old again, hanging out at the library and gazing greedily at the AD&D 2nd edition books on the shelves, wishing my mom and dad would let me read them, wishing I could travel across Krynn, down into the bowels of a sorcerer’s underground fortress, to speak with dragons and steal magic swords. The cover of DCC’s rule book made me feel all that and more. It tempted me. Intrigued me.

But still, I didn’t go back to it. I was done GMing. We hadn’t role-played or even played board games in a long while. DCC was just a neat cover with some crazy rules inside. I wasn’t going to get caught up in it.

And then, about two months ago, I did. I grabbed the quick start rules again, read through them, loved the artwork, got somewhat inspired to Game Master an adventure (called “Judging” in DCC), and then told myself I was just flipping through the book to get ideas for Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess. But in the midst of my inspiration-seeking idea-getting I found out I was kinda falling in love with this game. The art. Did I mention the art? It’s so freakin’ old school it makes my ten-year-old heart swoon. The game play (especially the magic) is all about wild, unexpected and chaotic shit happening; I loved the unpredictability, the anything-goes ethos. It WAS inspiring; I felt like my fiction had become too staid, too boxed in, and then DCC came along and said, “Go ahead, do something crazy. Nothing is off-limits. Fantasy doesn’t have to fit into neat boxes.” And now I’m ready to write almost anything, to let my imagination go wild, to write as if I’m a kid again, which is what DCC makes me feel: like a kid.

And kids play. Kids make up crazy shit. Kids aren’t bound by what’s expected or what’s “part of the genre.” Kids just know what feels fun, what excites them. DCC does that. It’s the rpg that speaks to my inner twelve-year-old.

I feel like games can be an awesome source of inspiration. They aren’t “literature” in the typical sense, but they do possess many of the features of narrative: setting, characters, conflict. With tabletop rpgs especially, players are encouraged to create a story together, to weave a narrative from the various numbers and statistics and dice rolls of the game. And with board games too, the imaginative elements are there for crafting stories. What else is the book Jumanji all about, after all? As soon as I finished rereading the DCC quick start rules this last time, I started writing a short story based on the zero-level funnel included in the book, “Portal Under the Stars.” Rpg fan fiction, basically. Something I have never done in my life, but DCC inspired me to do.

So yeah. I bought the core book. I’m reading it now and having all kinds of ideas. I haven’t GMed a game yet (planning on doing a modified version of Beyond the Silver Scream), but when I do, I hope it’s as fun and kick-ass as the game in my head. Regardless of whether I play the game or not, DCC still serves as fertile ground for my own storytelling. The feeling of the book — the vibe it gives off — is energizing. It fills me with the gusto I need to be creative.

Song by Jesse Teller (a TBRindr review)

July 30, 2018 /

35996063So much of fantasy literature these days has what’s called a “magic system,” a.k.a. the rules of how magic works in the story’s world. These rules are often revealed over the course of a novel/series, and the readers expect to have magic “explained” at some point. The idea is that if magic is systematic, then readers can more fully engage with the plot because they can piece together the information about the magic system — much like gathering and analyzing clues in a mystery novel — and then when it comes time for the characters to use their magic, the readers can anticipate, guess, or otherwise make predictions about how and what and when the magic gets used. Apparently, fantasy readers love, love, love them some magic systems. Me? I’m kinda sick of them. Not that I don’t love Sanderson and Stormlight and all the rest, but there seems to be this expectation by audiences that fantasy *must* have a magic system. I disagree.

I want magic to be, well, magical. I want it to be mysterious and hard to comprehend. I want it to bend and often break the “rules,” whether it’s the rules of physics or the rules of belief or the rules of what the characters thought might be possible. Magic systems have become, for me anyway, akin to mathematical equations: plug in these numbers to the formula and get back an answer. I’m cool with math in my sci-fi, but in my fantasy, I want something a bit more poetic.

Thankfully, the magic in Jesse Teller’s novel, Song, is not systematic or formulaic or anything resembling that. The magic in Song is the good old fashioned kind: levitation, energy blasts, dark ritual magic, third eyes, demon portals, teleportation, disguises, auras, etc., and most of the time, we’re not sure what the characters will do or what they’re capable of. The wizards and witches get to do crazy, powerful stuff, and it’s extremely cool with not a rule or system in sight. I’m sure Teller has his own internal rules for how his magic works, but we as the readers are left to ponder the power and danger of these magic-wielding characters. I like it.

I also like the dream-like way the book is written (at least in the first half; the second half becomes more “standard” fantasy action-adventure). Rayph Ivoryfist must gather a bunch of powerful fighters and mages to help him capture a slew of diabolical criminals and such (the criminals have all escaped from their prison and Rayph feels responsible for apprehending them). But as Rayph travels around, gathering companions and setting up his plan, the story feels like we’re in a dream, following Rayph from place to place, but never quite getting our bearings for where we are, who we are meeting, or what exactly is going on. I was reminded very much of the dream narrative in George MacDonald’s Phantastes. And at times, the writing in Song is lyrical and evocative in the same way that MacDonald’s prose can be. There are some strong images here, ones that I find myself recalling to mind quite often.

However, despite the crazy amounts of magic and the mixture of fantasy lyricism and grotesque horror, I found myself not very engaged in the story. I lay the fault at the fact that I couldn’t connect with any of the characters. Rayph, Konnon, and other key characters often feel very strong emotions, but I never really shared in their feelings. Their hearts would break, they would weep, they would laugh with joy, but half the time, I wasn’t quite sure *why* they were feeling these things. We get told about their feelings, but being told how someone is feeling is not the same as sharing in that feeling. This is where I disengaged with the story. The characters felt thin, a bit flat, especially the female characters. All of the little girls in the story were more symbols of innocence and purity as opposed to real, believable people. The sassy and mysterious barmaid is flirty and street-smart and all-around wonderful, but without any flaws or an inner life of her own; she existed simply to be worshiped by the male characters. Other females are either badass warriors/witches/demons, or ciphers. Because of the dream-like way the first half is written, things felt episodic, and since I never really felt connected with the characters, there was not much to pull me into the book. It isn’t a super-long novel, but it took me a long time to read. For many readers, this might not be a big deal — Song has plenty of action, plenty of gore, and some very cool set-pieces — but without the character connection, I couldn’t stay engaged.

Teller is a highly imaginative writer, and the world in which Song is set is varied and strange and vast. But because the characters never felt flesh and blood to me, I had a hard time making it through. I appreciated the way magic was used, I enjoyed the moments of grotesque fantasy-horror, but I just never felt the emotional connection.

3 stars

Big thank you to Jesse and Rebekah Teller for providing me a free copy of Song as part of TBRindr.

Side Projects: Untitled Sword and Sorcery book

July 19, 2018 / / 0 Comments
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If I ever publish my book, I want a bitchin’ cover like this. (Hat tip: The Black Gate)

I’m really bad at doing one thing at a time. Even as a kid, I had multiple stories brewing in my notebooks, multiple role-playing games I was learning to play,  a stack of books I was reading all at the same time. There were moments when one thing would overwhelm all the others and I’d get obsessed with, say, finishing The Voyage of the Dawn Treader before reading anything else, but most of the time, I had multiple irons in multiple fires.

It’s no different now that I’m grown up. I still read several books at a time, I still noodle around with dozens of ideas in my notebooks, and I still work on multiple projects at the same time. Currently, I am working on the first draft of Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess, but I’m also working on a draft of a fictional memoir called Avalon Summer, and just recently I’ve been delving more deeply into this Sword and Sorcery idea that sprung up earlier this winter.

At first I was thinking this S&S thing might be a series, but now I’m thinking I want to write one really solid, really gonzo book, and see how that goes. No trilogies or series. No marketing strategy. Just one book (and hopefully a good one).

I knew that I wanted a hook, something that would make my hero unique and cool and give him lots of opportunities for adventure. I knew that I loved certain things in my fantasy stories: dragons for sure, lots of magic, mystery and a sense of the numinous. I wanted a hero who would kick ass but also have some depth, some potential for growth and self-reflection. I know that in all of my writing, character and emotion are two areas where I need to improve, so I looked at this untitled S&S book as a sandbox where I could develop my skills. I liked the idea of writing a S&S novel but then write rounded, dynamic characters who experience emotional growth. A Conan story with lots of feels, basically.

So I’ve been noodling around. I created a central city for the characters to inhabit, a larger world for some crazy possible adventures (maybe in some short stories???), and a set of anchor characters who would drive the narrative. I’m not gonna lie: I’m excited about this book, about the characters, about the possibilities. But then, books/ideas are always exciting at the beginning, before any real writing has happened, before I’ve had a chance to screw anything up.

That’s always the trouble with having lots of projects going at once; as soon as one thing starts to disappoint, there’s always something else — something shinier, something new — that lures one away into greener pastures. I know that I can’t let this S&S thing overwhelm my job #1, which is finish my draft for Ysbaddaden, but at the same time, I’m having a lot of FUN noodling around in this new story-world, and I don’t want to give that up and go back to the sticky morass that is my Ysbaddaden draft.

And yet, the excitement of the side project often has a way of bleeding into the malaise of the main project. Even though I’ve not made huge progress on Ysbaddaden, I feel a sense of renewed confidence and energy when it comes to my writing. The side project creates a little retreat from the main work of writing, a kind of holiday — a mental health day, let’s say — that makes it a lot easier to go back to the tougher job of finishing that work in progress.

Now what, exactly, is my S&S novel about? What are the hooks and the magic system, and who are my characters, etc.? I’m not sure I’m ready to reveal that yet. There is a dragon, that much I’ll say. And I’m hoping to include several varied and interesting female characters (including a grandma! Fantasy needs more grandmas). But there’s a part of me that wants to keep this side project hidden, buried away in my notebooks, a hidden treasure where I can examine the rubies and spell-sewn hauberks all on my own. To open it up to the world would be to spoil some of the playground/sandbox fun. Right now, it’s my own private Idaho. I need it. I need the space and the freedom it provides. To bring it out, to rush its debut, would be to crush it and suck away the fun.

For now, it’s on the side. It’s my crazy something. It’s helping me get passionate about storytelling again. I guess that’s the beauty of having a restless imagination.

Kings of Paradise by Richard Nell (TBRindr review)

June 26, 2018 / / 0 Comments

kingsparadiseAny book that can make me feel sympathy for a cannibalistic child-killer is obviously doing something profound. Richard Nell’s first book in his Ash and Sand series is nothing if not ambitious. Which I love. I love when writers try to actually say something with their work, when they try to find deeper truths. Exploring the inner workings of a broken sociopath while also delving into big questions like, “Why is the world unjust?” and “How are we called to respond to that injustice?” is a feat unto itself. Most writers satisfy their ambitions by trying to write a good plot with good characters; few writers seem up to the challenge of writing a great story, great characters, and powerful themes. Nell attempts that here, and I find that immensely exciting.

As soon as I read the first few chapters I knew that Kings of Paradise was trying to do more than just tell a ripping good story. It was trying to say something, to explore themes, to offer meaning, to stick to the bones in a way that had me immediately hooked. It also helps that Nell is a gifted writer with an amazing knack for creating characters that are dynamic, rounded, and utterly engaging. Whether it’s in the story line of the aforementioned sociopath, Ruka, or in the idealistic survivor Dala, or in the struggles and heartbreaks of the fundamentally-decent Kale, Nell’s characters feel fully alive, and I wanted to join them in their journeys of revenge, self-discovery, and enlightenment.

The world of Kings of Paradise is a neat little twist on the usual geography we residents of the Northern Hemisphere usually get in our fantasy settings. The Ascom, with its vaguely Norse-inspire names and culture is actually an Antarctic-type continent where South is colder than North. And the island kingdom where Kale lives and is prince is modeled on South East Asia (it’s a great economic power in the region, so maybe we are meant to see nods to the great Malacca trading empire of the Middle Ages). I’m not familiar with many fantasy epics that take place in a S.E. Asia-inspired setting, so for that alone, the book is intriguing.

What’s also intriguing is how Nell creates a matriarchal society in the Ascom, a place where a theocratic regime of women priestesses rules the land, and where families are known by their mothers’ names. One of the things I find most exciting about this world is the tension between the different religious beliefs: the old ways which seem to be more pantheistic and which favor traditional manly values like strength and feats of arms, versus the priestess-religion which focuses on one god (actually a goddess) and its values of law and orderliness. The dichotomy is set up between a might-makes-right/Chaos belief system and a follow-the-laws-and-conventions-of-society/Lawful system. Of course, as we discover, the matriarchal Lawful society is actually brimming with corruption, so we also get to explore themes related to dealing with a corrupt system and what to do when the laws and conventions of a society break down. This stuff: I LOVED.

And I also loved the journeys the characters went on — at least through the first 3/4 of the book. Ruka and Dala’s journeys were my favorite — not because they were good people, but actually despite their not-good-ness. They are each crusaders, fanatics in their own ways, and yet I was sympathetic to them and to their brokenness. Kale, despite being the nicest guy in the book, was actually my least favorite of the three major story lines. While the Ruka/Dala stories felt original and startling, the Kale story felt a little bit like a hodge-podge of other stories (a little Kaladin and Bridge Four at times; other times I felt like I was reading the “Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei” sequence from Kill Bill vol. 2). The Kale story isn’t bad by any means, but the lessons he learns and the themes that get explored felt a bit trite, especially when contrasted with the stories set in the Ascom.

For three-quarters of the book, I was entranced. Unfortunately, that last quarter was a bit of a disappointment. All of the thematic questions raised earlier in the story seemed to get dropped by the end. One of the characters deals with his “goal” at about the 70% mark, and then from that point forward switches into a much more straight-forward villain. He goes from having a complicated and twisted motivation — something that I both wanted him to achieve and also not achieve at the same time — to having a simplistic “Let’s go conquer stuff” motivation that I found uninteresting. It moves the plot forward, I guess, but it’s not as rich as what was happening earlier in the book.

The other characters, as well, end up being less interesting when the final chapters roll along. I don’t want to spoil things, but one character gets dropped from the narrative almost entirely, and the other turns into something from a video game. Almost everyone goes from being multifaceted to being one-or-two-dimensional by the end.

EXCEPTION: One of the female characters does something so deliciously soap opera-y at the very end that I was immediately hooked to read the next book. So that’s a good thing. Ending on a crazy high note cliffhanger is always good. And what’s great about the gonzo ending is that even though it’s outrageous in some ways, it also makes some kind of crazy sense too. Now I’m fascinated to discover more about this person and her inner motivations and desires. Again, Nell has a way of hooking us with great characters who have hidden depths.

I know I am in the minority in finding these kinds of flaws in the book, but the last quarter of the story really left me disappointed, especially in comparison with what came before. The pacing was perfect up until about the 70% mark, but then during the last 30% new POVs kept getting introduced, events happened at a breakneck speed, and it felt very “off” compared with the earlier sections. All of this rushing about meant that the themes suffered, the characters grew flatter, and the promise of early greatness felt a bit dashed.

All of these criticisms aside, Kings of Paradise is a very good book. The writing, at a craft level, is stellar. Nell knows what he’s doing with language and it shows throughout. He also knows what he’s doing with character (for the most part), and I am excited to see where things go in the next book. I cannot say this is a book I will reread, but it is a book I will heartily recommend.

4.5 stars

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