Image by Brenda Clarke , via Flickr Building other worlds, and entire planets, is one of the perks of being a SFF writer. I’m often asked, incredulously, how I even start with the worldbuilding process. My response: With a little bit of magic and a little bit of science. First Concepts In Madison Lane and the Wand of Rasputin I began with the idea of a contemporary teenager (armed with an iPhone!) landing in a Renaissance-era-like world. When one of the plot twists turned out to involve quantum physics, I decided what I had here was Earth’s twin planet separated at “birth” but still quantum-entangled with Earth. I named it “Ground”. Time and Relative Location in Space (a.k.a. Cosmology) Even though Madison Lane involves time travel, I decided that the sequences taking place on Ground would be occurring in contemporary time. Except that Ground is not as technologically advanced as Earth. Why? The answers to that question led me on a rabbit trail of worldbuilding. Let’s ...

Photo by Biking Nikon SFO , via Flickr My husband and I were recently editing the first draft of his latest Y/A comic fantasy novel. 1 Because these books are being published in Britain, one of the minor, but besetting issues has to do with conveying measurements like height, width, depth, weight, and distance. When Britain entered the EEC in 1973, the government agreed to adopt the metric system. Since then British children have grown up using millimetres, centimetres, metres and kilometres in place of inches, feet, yards , and miles ; milligrams, grams , and kilos in place of ounces, pounds , and tons . The metric system works brilliantly in modern scientific and industrial contexts, including contemporary and futuristic fiction. However, if you’re writing a fantasy novel, the use of metric terminology seems incongruous, not to say anachronistic. When I read a sentence like The dragon stood twenty metres tall or The golden sword weighed three kilograms, the effect r...

Photo by Peter Dutton , via Flickr When it comes to fiction, rules and limits almost always inspire me. And I’m not talking about grammar rules. My first manuscripts were crime novels written for adults, and I wrote without restriction, free to pepper my dialogue with swear words exactly as I heard them spray from my characters’ mouths. Then I rediscovered tween/teen and young adult fiction. And, before I knew it, a bubbly teenager stepped into my writer’s brain and rattled off a fantastic story I couldn’t wait to get down on screen. But I’d have to curb the curses if I was writing a book for kids. Easy enough, surely? Except, sixteen-year-old boys don’t go around saying “drat” and “darn” when something goes wrong. It was an interesting writing challenge to imply, but not actually specify, strong language. Another (self-imposed) limit was that none of the main characters could die. Again, it sounds simple enough – but it removes a lot of easy tension and conflict. More creati...

This post was first published here on January 28, 2013. Every plot hinges on a central question. Posing the question at the beginning of the tale and answering it at the end is sound story architecture. Does that task make your head spin? It shouldn’t. It’s as easy as choosing a story skeleton. Let’s explore a few examples. 1) The Romance skeleton poses the central question: Will they or won’t they end up together? The answer had better be yes or a satisfying equivalent. The girl can find out guy A isn’t what she wanted after all because she found guy B, but this is not the genre for an I’m okay on my own ending. That story uses the Literary (or Women's Fiction) skeleton. Romance readers want passion and fulfillment and are very disappointed if they don’t get it. 2) The Mystery skeleton poses the central question: Who did it and will they catch him? The answer is yes . The criminal may escape at the last moment to torment the detective another day, but the case t...

Writers search for the ‘right’ names for the people who populate their books (or, they should!). There are many resources available for finding everyday names, of course. At the foot of this post you’ll find a suggested list; but wait a moment before you drop down there. Why? Because here I want to invite you to consider the naming of characters living in invented worlds. Fantasy, of whatever sub-genre, generally requires names that aren’t in common use. Read any epic fantasy and you’ll find it brimming with constructed names, some memorable and others that ought never to have been forced onto the reading public. In fantasy, perhaps more than any other genre, it’s essential to invent names that don’t appear in other books, otherwise readers may associate your masterpiece with the work of another author. But, how to do it? How do you ‘invent’ names? For me, the most important aspect is the ‘mood’ or ‘feel’ of the work. When preparing the background for my fantasy A...

Love is Strange: Outdoor park sculpture in concrete and rebar by artist Seth Goddard (2005), Willow Park, Iowa City, IA. Photo by Heather Paul via Flickr  Last Friday was Valentine’s Day.  The occasion set me mulling on the subject of “romance” from a slightly unorthodox, but hopefully interesting perspective. Fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White exemplify the “traditional” narrative pattern of a romance.  We all know how it goes: hero and heroine meet and fall in love, only to have their love frustrated by some hostile external agency (an unscrupulous guardian, a jealous rival; a stroke of ill fortune, etc.).  There follows a period of adversity during which both lovers are put to the test. Eventually, however, they are reunited and live “happily ever after.” This pattern has been the norm in romantic fiction for a very long time, (Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre utilizes the pattern to perfection.)  But with the emergence of Science Fictio...

Or not. Where do you stand on the topic of literary sex scenes? Some readers avoid it like a dread disease while others run towards it with wild abandon. Most readers are somewhere in the great in-between, a pinch of spice at the appropriate time makes for a well-rounded story, but it’s not the whole story. I engaged in a very long internal debate about adding sex scenes to my novel, The Last Prospector . There were some strict mandates I needed to follow, self-imposed mandates all. But I set out to write a story that would satisfy me as a reader, so one of those mandates was every word, every scene had to propel the story. For the most part, sex in books is just scenery, it rarely moves the story forward and this was a problem. Erotic fiction is everywhere lately, courtesy of Fifty Shades of Grey .  (I haven’t read 50SOG and don’t intend to. It’s not a judgment of sex or kinky sex, I’m just plain old not interested). Since publishing isn’t afraid to ride a trend t...

Photo by William Warby , via Flickr In the animal kingdom, chameleons are noteworthy for being able to change color in response to their environment. This makes the word chameleon an apt metaphor to denote that specialized class of Fantasy characters whose moral priorities and personal loyalties are (or appear to be) in a state of flux throughout the story. If you’re a Fantasy writer, having a chameleon in your cast list is like having a wild card up your sleeve in a poker game. I.e., it can really liven things up when the chips are down. To begin with, the chameleon often has a touch of “the alien” about him. 1 He may be racially distinctive (one lone dwarf in a company of elves); he may come from a suspect place on the map (a Southron merchant visiting Minas Tirith), or he might belong (or might once have belonged) to a socially dubious caste or profession (a former imperial inquisitor who claims to have renounced his past). Whatever the nature of his “difference”, h...

The previous posting on the subject of Sidekicks vs. Henchmen was devoted to exploring what these secondary characters have in common.  In this installment, we’ll be examining the significant ways in which they differ. images.google.com Broadly speaking, there are two issues to be considered.  On the one hand, there is the personal relationship which exists between the group leader and his/her second-in-command.  On the other, there is the question of how henchmen relate to one another as members of a group. One key difference between Sidekicks and Henchmen is predicated on altruism. A Sidekick, consciously or unconsciously, is dedicated to serving some Greater Good as embodied by the Hero.  A Sidekick has the best interests of the Hero at heart.  His operant faculty is intuition:  in extreme instances, a good Sidekick will “go with his gut” even if that means disobeying a direct order given by the Hero.  If, in spite of all good intenti...

Batman and Robin Photo by Dave Keeshan , via Flickr In an earlier posting, I noted the fact that Heroes and Villains alike are intelligent, resourceful, and charismatic. It naturally follows that individual members of both parties should attract followers. Those attached to a Hero are popularly referred to as Sidekicks ; those attached to a Villain are commonly known as Henchmen (or alternatively “minions” 1 ). Insofar as these subordinate characters perform similar narrative functions, they belong to the same species. When it comes to personal affinities, however, they belong to rival clans. This installment will be devoted to examining the points of comparison. I will be exploring their distinctive differences in Part 2. No man is an island. This saying holds true for the Heroes and Villains that occupy the pages of modern Fantasy. These individuals can exist as one or the other only in a populated environment – which is where this discussion begins. Sidekicks and H...

Setting is a character. It can be a friend, foe, or antagonist. It lives and breathes. It can set the tone and atmosphere. It can create obstacles or remove them. The last series I wrote took a year to research (pre-written-history Greece). I took some liberties with it, given there is no documentation. My current novel is set in Victorian England and will involve a vast amount of research. Yes, I am a glutton for punishment. There are a number of ways to approach the setting for your book. Contemporary settings and real locations are probably the easiest, but that does not let you off the hook when it comes to research. 1) You can use a real place. This requires that you research the place in question. You can use Google maps as a start or visit the town if you want to be precise. It gets trickier the further from home you go. If you choose a foreign country, you need to thoroughly research it to get the feel for how the people think, operate, dress, speak, and mo...

When you’re writing the first draft of your Fantasy novel, it’s perfectly acceptable to characterize your primary villain simply as a Nasty Piece of Work. In the next draft, however, when you’re trying to iron out all the wrinkles in the story, you may find it useful to delve into your villain’s personal background. If (as is often the case) the villain is the primum mobile of the plot, you owe it to yourself to explore what makes him 1 tick. He Has Arrived by DoodleDeMoon , Flickr It may be helpful to bear in mind there was a time when your villain was potentially an Everyman. To discover what he was like at this stage of his existence, start with what your villain is like NOW and work backward until you arrive at the moment where, confronted by a crucial moral choice, this otherwise “ordinary” individual crossed a line and embarked on a path of no return. This reconstruction impels you to look your villain as a fully rounded character, and this knowledge can help you for...

Photo by David Bleasdale , Flickr The Screwtape Letters , by C. S. Lewis, purports to be a collection of letters written by a senior devil (Screwtape) to his nephew Wormwood, a junior tempter. In one of these missives, Screwtape notes, the great (and toothsome) sinners are made out of the very same material as those horrible phenomena, the Saints . Screwtape is here alluding to the fact that certain people are born with a potential for greatness, endowed with exceptional gifts and talents which set them apart from the general population, and enable them to shape their own destinies. The same principle holds true when it comes to characters in literature. To restate Screwtape’s observation from a Fantasy-writer’s perspective: a first-class villain is a hero gone bad. 1 Quentin Crisp once defined charisma as the ability to influence others without the use of reason . This is a prime attribute of heroes and villains alike: wherever they go, they stand out in a crowd. Heroes t...

It can be argued that a good Fantasy novel is defined as such according to the stature of the hero or heroine’s principle Adversary. To put it another way, every good story needs either a worthy monster (like Moby Dick) or a worthy villain (like Darth Vader), or some combination of the two. Leaving aside the issue of Fantasy Villains, I thought it would be fun to devote this month’s entry to Fantasy Monsters . Hydra by John Roberts of 36Peas.com , via Flickr People love stories about monsters. All of us vividly remember the shivery thrill of telling ghost stories in the dark; or the squirmy suspense of watching an old Hammer Horror film on late-night TV ; or the nerve-shredding tension of looking on while Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss investigate the floating wreckage of a small boat. All over the world, time out of mind, myths, legends, and fairytales abound with monsters of all kinds. In Western Civilization, this material has been accessed by writers, century after...

Years ago, while playing Dungeons and Dragons , my character acquired a Magic Ring – without the user manual. The results of using it were randomly generated by the Games Master using percentile dice. One time, I unleashed a stream of butterflies into the face of an attacking ogre. Another time, my character metamorphed into a griffon and clawed a party of orcs to ribbons. Within the game, the random magic was Great Fun. But does the same “anything goes” principle apply to magic in Fantasy fiction? If only! Unfortunately, one of the distinctions between a good Fantasy novel and a not-so-good one has a lot to do with the mechanics of magic . This phrase may seem like a contradiction in terms; but in fact, magic in Fantasy works best when the writer takes time to figure out How the Magic Works. Here are some considerations: What’s the source of the magic in your world? (I.e., are your magic-users dealing with forces or entities ?) Is the magic natural (involving imper...

When I began writing fantasy, one of my goals was to present an imaginary world with depth enough to satisfy my own standards as a reader.  When my first novel The Burning Stone 1 was released in 1987, a  reviewer for Locus Magazine complimented me on creating "a lived-in world, and lively one". So what (besides geography and history) makes for a "lived-in, lively" fantasy world ? The definitive factor is what I like to call "deep structure".  Deep structure encompasses a range of background details which have created the situation your characters find themselves at the start of your story.  Contributing factors include customs, traditions, codes of behavior, technology, art, philosophy, and metaphysics (especially important with regard to how magic works in your world) Deep structure isn't meant to present itself as full-on exposition (the infamous info-dump).  Ideally, it should surface in the form of casual referencing. The technique of sel...

Because Modern Fantasy fiction comes in so many flavors, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a definitive recipe for writing The Perfect Fantasy Novel. What I propose to do, in this and subsequent posts, is to examine technical strategies for producing a good fantasy novel regardless of sub-genre. One of the first distinguishing features of a fantasy novel is that it takes place in a setting defined by the imagination of the author. Where (as in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings ) the setting is completely detached from the mundane world as we know it, the author must reckon with the sub-creative process known in the trade as world-building . World-building entails “realizing” your fantasy world by endowing it with features analogous to the world we know. These features include geography, history, languages, culture, and technology. As a general rule, the more “concrete” your fantasy world in terms of these attributes, the more convincing the setting becomes to your readers. ...