The Wizard of the North

The ghost of Sir Walter Scott haunts the pages of Will's adventures.

He is mainly there in place names. There is a river in Aeoland called the Bradwardine, which is also the name of a character in Scott's debut novel, Waverley. Rogan Ascarion, the villainous Redgauntlet, and his fellow fanatics take their name from a similarly fanatical character - and novel - of the same name.

More broadly, Scott is an influence on all fantasy writing because of his enormous influence on the novel as a form. 

But Scott also taught me a valuable lesson in epic narrative in the first person. And that lesson was agency. It can become all too easy for a first person narrator to become the victim of the plot, blown and thrown this way and that, always pushed and never pushing. Many of Scott's heroes suffer from this. The narrator is, of course, the reader's eyes and ears, and as the reader can't do much to influence the plot, so, too, the narrator. It would have been easy to make Will a passive participant and let all the other characters make the decisions and drive the story.

For the first-person narrative to be truly effective, the narrator has to make things happen. They have to make decisions that change things. Will is, for the most part, a self-confessed observer, lucky enough to be along for the ride. But from time to time in The Blade Bearer, he steers the plot by means of his actions. This was important to me as the writer, as someone with a lot invested in this character and in his voice.

I'm not sure where this leads.  In later posts I'll have more concrete examples to share, but for now I'll just say that there's a very good reason why the narrator, the man who the whole thing is named after, is called 'Will'.

Handle With Care

I was listening to a podcast the other day where they were discussing magic in films.

The general opinion was that magic is a terrible idea in movies because it makes anything possible. Your hero is stuck in a jail? One quick spell and she's out. A terrible villain breathing down everyone's neck? Wave your magic wand and all is well.

Not the most subtle argument against magic in films, but there is a good point in there. In short, for magic to actually work in narrative terms, for it to have a part to play, there needs to be something standing in its way. If everyone can do it, then why don't they? Fear? Suppression? Both good, but for me the main thing is that magic is damned difficult. And there's a very good reason why.

Language, as you will know, bears no direct relationship with the things it represents. The sign and the signified are separate and the link between them is entitrely arbitrary. There is nothing dog-like about the word 'dog'. If there is, then how do we explain the gazillion other words for dog in countless other languages? But for magic to work, or, more accurately,  for spells to work, there needs to be a direct link between the word spoken and the thing it speaks of. There must be something that binds the thing that is a dog to the word that represents it. How, otherwise, would you be able to say words and have those sounds make real changes in the actual world?

It follows that any language that connects directly with the real world must not only have a lexicon beyond comprehension, but will also require a grammar complex beyond words. With a language so complicated, the only way to make it work, to ensure the recitation of a spell has the desired outcome, is to have the intelligence and gift for languages capable of taking on such a mammoth and complex linguistic task. And you'd have to be jolly clever to boot.

So magic becomes the preserve of the gifted few, of those capable of committing immense amounts of time to learn its infinite variety. Men and women who must lock themselves away to even begin to grapple with this challenge. Preferably somewhere quiet. That is, sorcerers. 

In The Blade Bearer, Rayne of Irenia explains all this better than I have, by the way.

First Step Into A Larger World

Earlier this week, The Blade Bearer went up on Amazon.

This was all very exciting until I noticed the enormous typo on page 1. Queue me frantically editing the text then reloading it to KDP. Then I notice the video I enthusiastically uploaded says at the end that the book is only available chapter by chapter through Patreon  (my original idea for selling it). So down comes the video. 

It's then that the enormity of building a readership hits me. How how do I get all you lovely people out there to find, preview, read and buy the book? 

So last night I made it free for a couple of days. I'm not in it for the money after all. Lo and behold,  this morning two people have 'bought' the book. Two amazing, wonderful human beings.

UPDATE (because the world is waiting to hear): after twenty-four hours, ten delightful people have downloaded The Blade Bearer. Here's hoping at least one leaves a positive review...

There's a big world out there...

I've spent the last few days trying to better understand the world of self publishing online. I'm amazed at how many options are out there, and how much there is to learn.

The one thing I've already learned is not to jump in too quick on more than one platform. I learned this the hard way when When I set up this website then also created a Facebook page and a Patreon page.

I'd heard from someone that you could use Facebook to promote your website, so I went running into a paid promotion without really thinking about my aims or, indeed, whether it was the right thing to do. I spent a modest sum of money but it produced nothing. Just the other day I read a blog that said not to bother with Facebook promotions. So, lesson one, there is a ton of experience out there, so take your time and read what others have said. I'll link to some of the better blogs I've read, but what really impresses me is how many people are willing to share their experience. Despite the massive, almost unimaginable competition for readers, authors are still happy to encourage beginners to get stuck in and give it a go.

The second thing was deeply annoying. After a bit of light googling I realised it was wise to change the name of my principal character. In the text this was an easy find and replace, but on my various digital platforms it was a pain in the neck. I had to manually update every reference to the character on all the platforms, change images, redo videos, and on and on. It took ages and turned me right off writing the character's name ever again.

So, simple lessons. One, wander the blogs and read the tales of those that have travelled this road already. There is wisdom there. Second, don't go rushing into set up every possible digital medium because the weight of it may just drag you right down.

Fantasy in the First Person

When I first started writing Will's adventures, I quickly realised that they had to be written in the first person. Even though I hadn't read much fantasy fiction, I knew that this was rare. After all, how can you tell an epic tale, with tons of characters and lots of exciting events, when everything has to be seen through the eyes of one person?

Excellent question, and one I struggled with when writing the novel and still struggle with now that I'm continuing with the story. All I can say is that I love the directness of the first person, the sense that Will is sitting by your side, sharing his experiences. Indeed, the novel originally opened with a prologue where Will does just that: sits down by a fire in a wind-battered tavern and says he's going to tell his tale. I also find it easier to write in this voice.

A first person narrative does limit what you can do. How long before the writer is constantly having to contrive more and more outlandish coincidences or plot points to get his or her narrator to the scene of the action. Also, the temptation is to fill the story with lots of other stories told by other people, but that doesn't really work either. You lose the immediacy of the first person, of the feeling that the story teller might be there with you, telling you about their experience.

Of course, there are moments in Will the Wayfarer where other people tell their stories, hopefully in their own voice. But I tried to keep these to a minimum and let Will be our guide throughout.

The solution, I found, was simply not to worry about it. Just let Will tell his story and see where it goes. If there are other events happening 'off screen' then that's fine. It just means more responsibility on the writer to ensure that the experience is a satisfying one for the reader. And it is the you, the reader, who will determine if it works or not.