I’ve been busy with many things over the past couple of weeks, and it won’t be slowing down until next week sometime. That’s my target for the start of my next writing project.
At this point, I don’t know what to do with Viridia, my YA fantasy. I’ve been seeking representation for it for a few months now and getting nowhere. The only reactions I’m getting are form letter rejections. There’s clearly something wrong with it, but I just don’t know what. I hesitate to try any more revisions on my own, because I don’t have concrete feedback upon which to base those revisions. There are plenty of freelance editors I could consult, but I don’t have the money for that. So for now, I’m setting Viridia aside and waiting.
I have three sequels planned and outlined for Viridia, but I’m not moving on to those until I know what needs to be revised in the first book. It would be a big problem if book three were based on a major plot point in book one that ends up getting completely changed, for example.
I’m also not moving directly to self-publishing, at least not yet. Something does need to be revised; I just don’t know what it is.
That means it’s time to write something else. While the past few weeks have been occupied with non-fiction stuff, I’m ready to start a new novel.
I’ve been brainstorming for quite a while now, doing some research on a few topics and concepts, writing out cultural details, voice journaling the major characters, and so on. When I get back from a big trip this weekend, I’ll dive right into it.
With the working title of Heart of Fire, this is more of the epic fantasy I always wanted to write. It’s still not the world I’ve had in my head since junior high, but it’s a world with characters that have captured my attention and creativity. There is a huge amount that I don’t know about this story yet, including whether it works as a stand-alone novel, or if it needs to be split up into a series.
But the characters and the world… I love it all. If I do this right, your heart will break for the primary protagonist, almost from the first chapter. I hope I do it right.
I’ve been reading The Art of War for Writers by James Scott Bell. It’s one of the best books on writing I’ve read so far, and is written in such an encouraging and easy-to-read format that I can easily see myself coming back to it again and again.
In chapter 24, Bell says “A writer with a credo will not be tempted to settle for mediocrity.” He uses the credo of John D. MacDonald as an example, giving three essentials for a successful novel. After some careful thought, I’ve come up with a rough concept of my own writing credo. Here it is:
I want to write stories that transport readers to another world, make them care deeply about characters in dire situations, and take them deeper into life itself.
This three-part statement mirrors MacDonald and Bell’s essentials somewhat, but worded in a way that is uniquely mine and addresses the essence of what I want to write.
First, transporting readers to another world – this is the suspension of disbelief that is necessary for readers to fully immerse themselves into a fantasy world of my creation. This includes the nitty-gritty details of world-building, but also the sense of awe and magic that are essential. Readers have to be fully convinced that this world I’ve imagined makes sense within the rules I’ve established, but that it is also an amazing place that they wouldn’t mind visiting again.
Second, making them care deeply about characters in dire situations – this is the story itself, with a focus on the characters themselves. The story has to make sense, there has to be a good plotline, but most importantly, the characters have to be real. They have to have their own existence that will draw readers into their lives. And when bad things happen to these characters (as they will, of course), it must be told in a way that makes the readers truly care about what happens next. They need to love the protagonist, cheer when the protagonist succeeds, and weep when the protagonist suffers. They need to hate the antagonist, cheer when the antagonist is defeated, and be horrified when the antagonist succeeds (with variations on these, of course).
Finally, taking them deeper into life itself – this is taken from a lecture by John Stonestreet about entertainment. He said that good entertainment takes us deeper into life, while bad entertainment takes us away from life. This applies to fantasy stories perhaps even more than other forms of fiction. (I could quote lengthy passages from J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous essay On Fairy Stories, but I suggest you go read it yourself. It supports this idea in many ways.)
Fantasy stories have, over the decades, been accused of being nothing more than escapism, while “real life” stories enrich our “real” lives. I find this to be nonsense. While I could, perhaps, enjoy a story set in modern times about a character who struggles with the temptation of absolute power, it would, by its very nature, tend toward sermonizing and tedium. However, place that same kind of story in a world filled with elves, dwarves, dragons and more, make the source of the absolute power a magic ring, and have all the characters within that story react to that ring and its temptation in different ways… now you’re talking. Now I’m caught up in this concept without even realizing it, and learning about the temptation of power.
Or take Lord Foul’s Bane, the epic (and somewhat controversial) fantasy by Stephen R. Donaldson. When a friend first suggested I read it, the concept (involving rape) repelled me at first. I don’t necessarily want to read a story about rape and its consequences. But… put that within the constraints of a fantasy novel with a deep character that you both pity and hate at the same time and… suddenly, it’s something different, something that eventually leads deeper into life.
Going deeper into life means that my stories have to have meaning. That doesn’t mean they have to have some easily-quotable theme or pithy lesson. But they do have to make one think and care. And maybe even consider changing something.
That’s my credo. Now comes the difficult part: living up to it.
My favorite hobby involves deep thinking and (usually) a number of dice. I love board games.
By board games, I mean real tabletop games, not the ones that are sold at Walmart and Toys R Us. Imagine if the major video game companies today were still trying to persuade people that Pac-Man and Donkey Kong (the originals) were the only video games worth buying and selling, and that’s all you could find in the major retailers. That’s basically what the major toy companies have done with board games, trying to convince everyone that Yahtzee, Sorry, and forty-seven thousand variations of Monopoly are the only board games. No wonder so many people have the wrong idea about board games! Any time my friends and I are playing games in a place where people can see us, we get the exact same questions: “So… is this like Monopoly?” “Oh, it’s like Risk?” (or if there’s anything fantasy-related) “So basically this is Dungeons & Dragons, right?”
Sigh.
If this is you, go visit boardgamegeek.com and educate yourself. If you’ve actually played something like Settlers of Catan, at the very least, then there are still hundreds more games you might enjoy.
I own over a hundred board games, and my collection pales in comparison to others I know. My absolute favorite games include Twilight Imperium, War of the Ring, Heroscape, and Twilight Struggle. All of them are huge, sprawling epic games that engage my mind and imagination.
And that’s the key. While I enjoy mental exercises, I don’t want to spend my free time solving algebra problems and calling it entertainment. My imagination has to be engaged as well. I want to fall into the theme of the game. Most of all, I want to see the game tell a story, and to be a part of shaping that story.
For example, Twilight Imperium is a sci-fi themed board game where each player takes on the role of a major alien race struggling to gain dominance in a galaxy where the previous empire has collapsed. You have to balance military tactics with diplomacy, economics and exploration. It’s one of the longest games I own, so it doesn’t get played very often, but every time it does… there’s a huge story.
War of the Ring is the closest you can come to actually playing the storyline of The Lord of the Rings… but with changes. What if Boromir doesn’t fall to the Ring’s temptation and goes with Frodo to Mount Doom? What if Gimli leaves the Fellowship and rallies the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain to march forth? What if the Balrog leaves Moria and lays siege to Rivendell itself? All these things can happen, and it’s all awesome.
All of my favorite activities involve stories and problem-solving. My board game hobby has definitely inspired my writing in numerous ways. A crazy round of Heroscape might be the source for a fantasy story. A tense session of Twilight Struggle might be the source of a Cold War spy story. Stories are everywhere.
As I write this, tomorrow is International Tabletop Day! Play some board games! I have some friends coming over and we’re introducing another friend to some new experiences, starting with the classic Axis & Allies. From there, we’ll try the X-Wing Miniatures game and the who knows? Like stories, the possibilities are endless.
Over the weekend, my dad had a minor heart attack. Prefacing “heart attack” with the word “minor,” doesn’t negate all the feelings that the term naturally inspires. Thoughts of death immediately spring to mind, whether you want them to or not.
Dad’s doing okay now, so the scare has passed. But it also made me think about how this applies to writing fantasy stories.
The fear and uncertainty of death is a vital part of human existence. When creating a new fantasy world, this needs to be addressed or else it will never “feel” truly real. How do the characters in this world feel about death? Do they have a terror of it? Do they believe in an afterlife? What kind?
In one of his letters, J.R.R. Tolkien claimed that the real theme of The Lord of the Rings is Death and Immortality. When you pay close attention, you see this throughout. The elves, with their mysterious immortality, are fascinated by human mortality. The dwarves speak of the halls of waiting and the earth being renewed. Valinor, the realm of the Valar (angels/gods) is referenced numerous times, and is the subject of the final chapter, when Frodo and the others set sail to reach it.
In the movie version, Peter Jackson took the description of what Frodo saw at the end and gave the words to Gandalf. He describes it to Pippin when hope seems lost at Minas Tirith. (Video clip.)
In Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy, one of the characters spends much of his life researching dozens of religions and exploring their beliefs. The topic of death and the afterlife comes up repeatedly. At the end, he discovers the truth and references the major characters who died as being in a pleasant afterlife.
Fantasy stories are by nature full of danger and death. The protagonists will face at least the possibility of death likely multiple times. If they don’t at least contemplate this possibility and what it means, then the story is not as real or deep as it should be.
As a Christian, I have pretty firm beliefs on the topic. However, I’m not writing about Christian characters in our world; I’m writing about characters in other worlds. In my current work, Viridia, the protagonist has a near-death experience mid-way through the book. Since he’s rejected his society’s belief that the dragons are gods, he can’t help wonder about the existence of other gods or an afterlife. This is not an attempt to sneak Christianity into the story; it’s a natural exploration of what he would be wondering at a time like that. It also leads to specific development in his beliefs on killing others.
I’m brainstorming my next fantasy novel, and I’m just beginning to explore what the different people groups within it think on this topic.
Death is probably not the first thing you think of when considering worldbuilding, but without it, an invented world will not seem fully developed. If characters do not consider the reality of death, they’re never really alive.
Well, I’m not sure where I stand with my current novel manuscript.
Back in February, I began querying literary agents. So far, I’ve received nothing but form letter rejections. Over 30, in fact.
I’ve also entered several contests trying to win the attention of an agent or editor, and I’ve lost out on all of those.
The big problem is that I don’t know what I don’t know. That is, I’m struggling to understand why I’m getting nowhere. I’ve studied and studied. I’ve revised numerous times, both the manuscript and the query letter. Based on everything I read, I’m doing everything right. I’m not making any obvious mistakes. I would happily adjust/change/edit anything, if I only knew what to adjust/change/edit.
So the big question is: now what?
Many people have suggested hiring a professional editor. Unfortunately, I cannot afford even the cheapest one of those, and will not be able to do so for the foreseeable future.
Others suggest going to a writers’ conference. Again, the problem is money. It’s simply not feasible at this time.
Do I abandon Viridia and move on?
I’m not ready to do that. I’m waiting on some (hopefully) helpful feedback from a couple of people. After that, I have a list of a few more agents I will query. If I continue to receive nothing but form rejections, I may have no choice but to move on.
At that point, yes, I will probably consider self publishing. The problem is that I’ve never been very good at selling things. But it’s a consideration I will make, very carefully and thoughtfully.
But at the same time, I’ve been brainstorming my next project. While I have three sequels to Viridia loosely plotted, I won’t work on those for now. Instead, I’m toying with ideas for another fantasy novel that will be very different from Viridia. It’s more of an epic, high fantasy.
Regardless of which direction I go, I will continue to write. My head is too full of stories not to…
Last week was a series of unfortunate events.
Also, I watched A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix.
My personal set of unfortunate events were primarily due to jury duty. Despite being number 55 in the jury pool, I still ended up on the jury for the entire week. To make matters worse, the case was aggravated sexual assault against a child. To make it even worse, I was the alternate juror.
Alternate juror = worst job in the world. It means you have to sit through the entire trial with the jury, but then when the jury goes to deliberate, you have to sit outside and wait. You have no voice, no input. Unless, of course, one of the “real” jurors has a sudden heart attack, or something.
Because I’m self-employed and my work is deadline-based, I also had to keep up with my regular work every evening after jury duty. As I said, it was a series of unfortunate events.
And that brings me back to Netflix. I don’t know why I chose to start watching A Series of Unfortunate Events, but as it turned out, it was the perfect antidote to the real-life ugliness I was being forced to hear about during the day.
I had not read the books and knew very little about this series prior to the Netflix show. Some, I know, have criticized it for being too dark, especially for a children’s story. But Patrick Warburton is narrating, and Neil Patrick Harris is the villain. I could watch it just for those two reasons.
In this story, for those who don’t know, a trio of children go through a continuing saga of bad things happening to them and those around them. The humor is dry and dark throughout, beginning with the theme song, in which Harris warns everyone to go watch something else.
As a writer, I have to make one big observation about this series. It’s really no different from what all fiction writers do… just more honest about it. Face it. As fiction writers, we put our characters through horrible things to see how they come through it, what it says about their character, etc. And because it creates drama. In stories that continue over long arcs, whether a book series, or comic book title, or “long-form television” (as Count Olaf describes it, while glancing at the camera), the protagonists experience a continuing series of bad things. When has anything of lasting good ever happened to Peter Parker, for example? How often has Batman had to fight the Joker? How many times does Hiccup have to fight bad dragons or Vikings? How many murders take place in Santa Barbara?
All fiction is a series of unfortunate events. Most of the time, of course, there are some good things that sort of resolve the bad things. Count Olaf’s repeated defeats are good things, even if they don’t last.
The big key to all of this, usually, is the happy ending. But that’s a topic for another blog post.
I’ve never read any literary commentary on A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I can’t help feeling that the author, in addition to all the other humor, is subtly mocking fiction writing at large. That is quite all right. We could use it. And for me, this week, it was exactly what I needed.
When I wrote my blog post about dragons yesterday, I had no idea that my children would ask to spend the evening watching the new version of Pete’s Dragon on Netflix. I also had no idea that I would be moved by one scene in particular, and catch the subtle references to one of my favorite writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.
In the movie, Robert Re
dford’s character Meachum describes the time when, as a young man, he had a brief encounter with a dragon. He talks about being scared and almost shooting it, but then deciding not to, because… there was magic. He couldn’t find any other word to describe it but magic. He tells his daughter how this magic affects him: “It changes the way I see the world – the way I see trees, the way I see sunshine, the way, even, I see you.”
Meachum is speaking of what Tolkien called “recovery” or “a re-gaining – regaining of a clear view.” Tolkien said this was not seeing things as they are, but as we are meant to see them. He elaborated on this very extensively in his famous essay “On Fairy-Stories.” I highly recommend reading the entire thing.
Meachum’s daughter, Grace, is a forest ranger. In her first appearance in the movie, we see clearly that she loves the forest. She tells Pete that she grew up loving it and so took a job to help protect it. But she scoffs at her father’s dragon stories. When the evidence of a dragon mounts, she tells her boyfriend, “I know this forest like I know the back of my hand! How could I have missed a dragon?”
This is exactly what Tolkien was talking about. He spoke of appropriating things that are familiar to us, so that they become trite: “We say we know them. They have become like the things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their color, or their shape, and we laid hands on them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to look at them.” This was Grace’s problem. Even though she still loved the forest, it had become “known” to her, to the point that she was missing the true beauty and wonder hidden within it.
A couple of weeks ago, my family was at Carlsbad Caverns. We wandered slowly through the majestic rooms, in awe of everything around us. Only one thing perplexed us: there were constantly people rushing past us. They weren’t just moving at a more rapid pace – they were literally rushing to get through, barely even glancing at things around them. They were missing out on extraordinary beauty.
Tolkien speaks eloquently of how fairy stories or fantasy can help us recover the seeing of things the way we should. “Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else (make something new), may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds.”
I’d love to quote pages of the essay, but I’ll leave off with one more: “It was in fairy-stories that I first discovered the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.”
It is through the fairy stories, the magic in the woods, and yes, the dragons, that we truly see the world around us. We recover the way we are meant to see it – as something magnificent and powerful, not trite and boring.
In The Two Towers, Eomer* asks,
“Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?”
“A man may do both,’” said Aragorn. “For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!”
*Fun tidbit: in the movies, Eomer was played by Karl Urban, who also starred in Pete’s Dragon.
It’s no secret that my current novel features dragons in a big way. In fact, dragons have somehow managed to show up in almost everything I’ve written, even when there are already dinosaurs involved. (Yes, you can have dinosaurs and dragons in the same story. Stop it!)
Some would say dragons are played out, overused, exhausted for story potential. After all, they’ve been around for a while. Almost every major culture throughout the planet has legends and stories of dragons, dating back many thousands of years in some cases.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest stories of all, references dragons and dragon fangs. Some even interpret the monster Humbaba as a dragon (though I don’t think so).
Dragons are even in the Bible. In the book of Revelation, the dragon is used as a symbol of Satan. But in the ancient book of Job (possibly the oldest part of the Bible), God describes the leviathan as a fire-breathing dragon, and uses it as an illustration of His (God’s) creative power.
In modern fantasy fiction, dragons are abundant. I glanced over my bookshelves before starting this post and saw at least ten books with the word “dragon” in the title, and that doesn’t include obvious dragon-central stories like The Hobbit!
Dragons are so integral to fantasy in general that the all-time king of fantasy role-playing games includes them in the title. (Dungeons & Dragons for those five of you who didn’t get the reference.) Multiple game systems and fantastic worlds of writing have been filled with detailed descriptions of dragons and their abilities, culture, lairs, and so on.
Now I’m not going to try to get into deep psychological analyzation of the human mind’s fascination with dragons. If you want that, I suggest using Google to find it. It’s out there. I have no idea how much, if any, of it is actually worthwhile.
Dragons, through various stories, have been friends or enemies, good guys or bad, helpful or hurtful… but always dangerous, always powerful, and usually near invincible.
So what makes me think I can add anything to the dragon mythos?
To be honest, I didn’t start out thinking I would be writing about dragons. It just happened. Apparently, they’re so close to my imaginative process that they just forced their way into my thoughts and plotting.
Once I had dragons in the story, though, I had to start thinking about their abilities and origins and so on. In this, I hope I’ve been able to do something somewhat unique. I think the origins of my story’s dragons are something unusual. When the book eventually arrives, maybe you’ll agree.
Or maybe you’ll ignore it altogether because “dragons are so 2000 (B.C.)!”
I am a voracious reader, when I want to be. There have been some times where reading has sadly taken a back seat to other pursuits, but it’s always come back as one of my primary hobbies. I can’t go long without reading.
When visitors enter our home, the first sight they see (and usually comment on) are bookshelves. I’m quite proud of our little library. We’re always adding to it, but sometimes it takes big jumps in size.
One time, when another book collector donated everything to a local library, I helped sort it all and got my hands on a dozen or so books related to J.R.R. Tolkien and his writings.
A few years ago, I did book reviews online and got lots of free books in the mail. That was awesome, but took up too much time which my family needed. I was reading and reviewing up to five novels a week at the height of it all.
All of this reading influences my writing, of course. But certain writers and their books have had much more of an influence than others.
It should be obvious by now that J.R.R. Tolkien is my hero. The man’s creative power amazes me. I can read The Lord of the Rings every year and still enjoy it. The sheer depth of his world-building combined with his meticulous choice of wording creates writing that I can lose myself inside, over and over.
C.S. Lewis is second. While I’ve loved the Narnia books since my dad read them to me very early, I’m also a big fan of his Space Trilogy. I adore the way he weaves deep philosophies into simple scenes.
The living writer who’s had the most influence on me is probably Stephen R. Lawhead. I have read everything he’s written, and while some of his more recent work isn’t as enthralling as it used to be, the Pendragon Cycle, the Song of Albion trilogy, and Byzantium rank among my all-time favorites. He excels at the first-person narrative, taking the reader directly into the story, full of blood, sweat and tears (but minus the nihilism of other modern writers).
I would be greatly remiss I didn’t mention comic book writers. The globe-trotting, history-based adventures of Scrooge McDuck as written by Carl Barks and Don Rosa filled my young head with short but well-crafted tales. The action and intrigue of G.I. Joe by Larry Hama gave me countless ideas for stories (and battles!).
Time would fail me to tell of Brandon Sanderson, Orson Scott Card, Anne Elisabeth Stengl, Tom Clancy, Athol Dickson, not to mention all the classic writers – Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Leo Tolstoy, George MacDonald, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, and so on.
It’s a great cloud of writers who have gone before (and are still going). I hope I’ve absorbed the best I can from each of them.
Ben Burtt, sound designer for Star Wars, famously said, “Movies aren’t released — they escape!” The same could be said about novels.
I’ve been through multiple full revisions of my current novel. I’ve gotten feedback from beta readers and revised significant things based on that. And I’m constantly tweaking a line or two here and there, the longer the process goes on.
If I get an agent, that agent will almost certainly request changes to the manuscript, possibly major changes. Then, if a publisher gets interested in the book, the publisher will suggest/request more changes, some of them possibly major again. Changes will keep going on for quite a while.
I’ve been facing a lot of rejection the last few days. I know, I know. “Famous Author X also got rejected 14 gajillion times.” You know what else Famous Author X got? An acceptance.
I’m not giving up, but there are times where the sheer number of rejections, all of them without any real feedback whatsoever, start to feel oppressive.
And that leads to thoughts of more revisions. Maybe if I change this up, or switch that around, or fundamentally transform one of the characters… Last night, I actually mapped out a major revision of the last 1/3 of the book, not based on any feedback I’ve received, but only on my own perception of what might work better.
Unfortunately, even that revision, if I had already done it, wouldn’t have affected any of the rejections I’ve already received. They’ve all been based on queries and opening pages. So while the revision I’ve conceived might improve the book, it’s not clear that it would help me take the next step (get an agent).
So will I make those revisions? Maybe. Will I receive more rejections? Certainly. Someday, in some way, this book will be released. Or rather… this book will escape.