Detail is the Devil

I was listening to an interview with the splendid Brian Eno the other day, where he spoke very eloquently about creative types doing too much. When writing music, there is a tendency to fill in every gap, to build up layer upon layer, proving by accretion that your work has weight. The requirements of the creator are often different from those of the listener or reader. What the consumer wants is nowhere near as much as the creator puts in. In other words, we overdo it, and by overdoing it we actually spoil our creation. 

This came into my mind when I was talking to some real, live people about fantasy writing. Two of us complained that a certain incredibly-famous fantasy author had rendered his work unreadable by giving too much lengthy detail about his world. Endless descriptions of clothing, ponderous depictions of meals. Another responded that there was a YouTube channel all about digging deep into this detail and showing what a magnificent achievement it is, how the author has drunk deep from the well of history and myth.

This is where writers of fantasy can go wrong. We create these detailed universes, filled with culture, racial and social tensions and memory, building and building our worlds. But then we forget that the reader - on the whole - wants a story. They want interesting characters and a strong plot, not page upon page of the writer proving how good he or she is at imagining alternate worlds. That, I'd argue, is what appendices are for. Some readers do want the deep dive and we should provide that background if we feel it's wanted. But not in the story. 

The problem is that we spend a lot of our time on world building and so we feel the effort has to be shown in the text. It certainly does, but not with excessive detail that puts the reader off. Build the world, devise all that lovely detail and context, but then get on with the business of spinning your yarn. The background will take care of itself and be just that: background. Detail in the story is there to help the reader understand the motivation of the characters, why things are happening and what might happen. Occasionally, we might permit the odd myth or history lesson, especially if it's short and to the point and not completely Basil Exposition. 

I've tried very hard with The Blade Bearer to keep the detail in the background and only bring it out when it's needed. If I ever start boring you, you will let me know, won't you?

Lazy Boy

I've come to the conclusion that I am not a fantasy novelist. I'm actually a lazy historical novelist.

Fantasy, and SFF in general, works best when it uses the fantastical element to do something that it couldn't do without that element. Otherwise what's the point? Nostalgia? Another level of escapism?

My stories have very little actual fantasy in them, particularly the short stories I'm working on right now. I could probably replace the modest amount of magic in these tales with some other device and the story would still work. Indeed, some of these stories - if not the novel - could actually be set in our world, maybe with just a few tweaks to make the story and characters real.

Trouble is, I am part historian and that gets in the way. I studied history at uni for many years so I have a thing about getting it right. The details need to be bang on, the setting and the culture and the religion and the politics all need to be as historically truthful as can be. Get something wrong or be too anachronistic and the reader is taken out of the story, as well as the author getting annoyed. Then there's research. I'd need to do a lot of work understanding the historical moment I'm using for the story and, quite frankly,  I've done enough historical research for one lifetime.

This is one of the reasons why I like writing fantasy, or made-up worlds. I get to use what I've learned about the past and how it works, but don't have the responsibility to get my facts right. It's my world, so I decide what's correct. There are exceptions. I do have to understand a little about how, say, medieval weapons work, how day-to-day life is led. Get that sort of detail wrong and it might spoil it for the reader. But overall I'm free to invent the world without too much need to read tons of biographies and social history. 

Which is why I think I'm not really a fantasy writer. I'm a historical novelist who can't be bothered with history. 

This doesn't answer the question of why have magic? Aeoland etc is pretty much medieval Europe so why not make it an alternate version of our world but without the wizards and hobgoblins? Excellent question. Any answer?

On International Women's Day

It was International Women's Day on Wednesday (I'm writing this on Saturday, 11th March) and this video came up on my Facebook newsfeed. The point it makes is simple: where are all the rounded female characters in children's fiction?

I'm not writing for children, but still this got me thinking about two things.

The first is that The Blade Bearer has next to no women in it. They are referred to but they are off the page. In a sense, the women in Will's word are telling their stories somewhere else, stories that are talked about but are not part of the tale Will is telling. Originally, the absence of women from the story was a conscious choice. When I wrote The Blade Bearer, fantasy fiction seemed to be mainly about men and boys, with very few principal woman protagonists. They were all one-dimensional matriarchs, prostitutes, witches, elf queens, or little girls. Same with role-playing games: it was a boy's world, played by males and marketed at them. I even came up with an in-world reason for why women were absent from Aeolish society: the idealisation of womanhood was central to Chironism, hence they were separated from the world and we don't see them.

This was all very well but now writing women out of the story to make a point about why women are written out of stories seems pointless. So I want to change it.

Here is the second thing. The beauty of publishing online, whether for e-readers or for publish-on-demand is that you can change stuff. Spot a huge typo you missed first time round? Fix it, upload the new copy, and bingo! - all is well. No reader is going to mind too much. But the reader might mind if you change a huge chunk of the novel. What if I decided my story would be more balanced - and more interesting - if I made one of the principal characters a woman? It's not as if hundreds of people have downloaded the book to date, so what's the harm if I do a rewrite to bring a better gender balance? But that seemed like cheating, like reacting, perhaps even patronising. Changing the sex of one of the main characters is, I decided, not the way to go. It seems tokenistic - 'Quick! Put more women in!'

There are women in books 2 and 3, not to tick some box, but because it makes the story so much better. As I was building the story for these books, some new characters fitted better as female. It helped dramatic tension, it helped with understanding their motivations, it helped with determining their goals and, so, how they move the story on. I'm glad to say this happened naturally, not because I wanted to appeal to half my readership. (I ran an advert on Amazon recently and half of the clicks were from women and half from men. That said, half were from the UK and half were from Germany. Does this mean I have to have more Germanic characters?)

The stuff I put in The Blade Bearer about why women were marginalised in Aeolish society is actually helping to drive the story in The Spell Weaver and The Shadow Dweller.

Con the Numpty, Episode 1

Another quick post, but this time to apologise.

More precisely, to apologise to the hundred or so people who've downloaded The Blade Bearer and had to tolerate the comments links still in-situ in the first few chapters. And the typos that crept in while I wasn't looking. These errors should now be removed. I hope it didn't spoil your enjoyment of the book.

I'm working on a couple of short stories right now, telling more of Will's tales. Once these are done I'll stick them online. I promise there will be minimal typos or other stupid-author-related distractions. 

Who Wants Another Fight?

A quick post.

I'm a big fan of The Nerdwriter. His pieces are thoughtful and not afraid to talk about complex stuff. I was looking through some of his older posts the other day and saw this one: Movie Violence Done Right.

It's about the use of violence in the movies of Shane Black. I'm not Black's biggest fan - sometimes I wish his characters would just shut up - but I really enjoyed The Nerdwriter's point about the way Black uses violence to help move the story along. Hopefully it resonates with my blog from back in February.