The Fantasy Foliage Dilemma

I have been plotting a new fantasy novel lately, and have run into a familiar dilemma. In describing the natural environment, do I fall back on the typical earthly descriptions i.e. elms, oaks, willows etc or do I create a completely new ecology?

This is a kind of a double dilemma for me because I grew up in the southern hemisphere with wattles, wallum heath, eucalypt forest and saltbush. If I described all these in my fantasy book it would look weird to people who recognised them and would probably just be bizarre to readers from other climates.

The other problem I have is that although I am more than comfortable using my own native flora and fauna in urban fantasy and contemporary fantasy, it does not have a classic fantasy feel to me. All the fantasy and heroic fantasy fiction that I have really enjoyed has drawn the setting from Europe and the northern hemisphere, with oak groves, willows and aspens etc.

Yet as I writer I do not want to just recreate this northern setting, despite how familiar it feels. So am I stuck. If I go the route of creating a completely new ecology, I may have to sacrifice some of the evocative natural descriptions I love simply because I did not have the extra few months of free time needed to create all the name lists and really dream it all up properly.

As it is, I will probably go for an invented ecology, probably sprinkled with a few familiar terms.

How do you handle the Fantasy Foliage Dilemma?

Keeping it Current

When writing SF - particularly near-future SF - being able to write the setting and technology in a way so it does not look outdated in ten or twenty years and appears "current" is a real challenge. Doing it and staying true to your own vision is even harder - particularly if you think some things will stay the same. This leaves you open to being accused of lack of inventiveness or lack of understanding of technology, regardless of the fact you are being judged against standard SF tropes.

Reading some Heinlein recently, I found it almost like reading an alternate history - but set in the future. He had an excellent grasp of what technology would do, but it was pictured as an extension of existing technology. Things were still recorded on tapes and wires, and of course everything was analogue. People still smoked (I guess in the late 1950s it was impossible to imagine a world where they did not) and flying cars and taxis landed on the rooftops.

The other thing that often falls flat is money - it loses its value so quickly. As a rule of thumb basically losing half its buying value every decade (but guess what, they were getting $5k advances in 1970 - same as now - work that one out in terms of the 1970s buying power and it will knock your socks off). I was thinking that probably the best thing is to avoid the use of any term that connects with contemporary currency i.e. don't use dollars, yen or rubles. Instead use something in the line of 'credits' - but whatever make sure it cannot connect with the current value of money. At the beginning of the 20th century a millionaire was stupendously wealthy, now the average Western couple would not contemplate going into retirement with around that same value in assets, cash and investments. Millionaire from then probably translates almost as trillionaire in the now.

The other thing that bugs me writing near-future SF is that I believe certain technological elements will remain static. Take the keyboard for example. Our hands and fingers are just such an excellent way of getting data into a computer system. Not that I am saying there will not be some amazing graphical interfaces - but that there will still be keyboards in three hundred years - or at least some version of them. Interfaces, and their success, also depend on the hardwiring of the human brain. I could not write a book into a microphone to save myself - no matter how good the dictation software is. I just think better on the page - and using my fingers.

Despite my contention that keyboards or some version of them will still be around, some critiquers are determined that any SF should be 'really different' and do not see any SF featuring a current interface as being legitimate.

I tend to think, OK, we all use electric lights, but every house has a dozen candles as well, and they have been around a long time. Some things will also layer.

Can you think of any other current technology that you think might remain into the far future because of its utility? Do you agree we me on the keyboard? Or should I admit defeat and replace it with integrated brain-chips? (Grrr. Would you really want a computer in your head? How quickly would you need another surgery to replace it with the latest model? You can't leave your head with the IT guys for the week either. OK, there I go again.)

Here and Now

Sometimes your sins find you out. Imagine my delight – not – when I found my entry into a sort of who-is-who in sf/f and it said something like “often uses the weather for effect and tone.” I knew IMMEDIATELY what they were talking about.

In my first published – I have mentioned that despite the fact I think it’s a fairly decent read, I was still struggling with plotting and making the plotting fit the story, right? – when I became stuck and needed to get myself moving again, I filled in with weather. It rained, it was sunny, it was hot, it... It probably is assigned as a read in meteorological schools the world over.

I feel vaguely guilty about that, because it was eliminated by book two of the series, and now I often go for pages and pages without mentioning a single cloud formation. Unless, of course, it is needed to complicate the characters’ lives – like at the beginning of Gentleman Takes A Chance. (But I guess an entry saying ‘often uses weather to torture characters’ would just make everyone go ‘duh!’)

This is a roundabout way to bring us to our setting, or the place where things take... er... place. I’m highly in favor of setting. It prevents your characters from floating around in ether sometimes – if you remember to give us expressions, say – as giant floating heads, or perhaps (I knew a beginning writer who was notorious for this) just giant floating expression-components (her eyes twinkled. Her mouth twitched. Her nose followed the scent – then realized it was lost and came back to hang out with the mouth and the eyes.) Seriously, if I had to list it from most important to least, my list of why you should spend some time thinking of your setting and making sure it feels “real” to us would go something like this:
1- It gives a sense of reality to the scene. No matter how important the argument or how hot the lovemaking, it rarely takes place in a void. (Unless the characters are aliens.) So give us how people around are looking at them as their voices rise, or perhaps the sound of birds stops overhead. Give us the sheet getting tangled around an ankle. Throw us a crumb so we remember your characters exist.
2 - Worldbuilding. You can bury any number of worldbuilding and even historical clues into setting. “They walked past the tower of Peace, which was built to commemorate the establishment of Peace III after Peace I and Peace II were bombed out of existence.” Or “He leapt from his flying car.” Or “She looked up towards the wizard’s castle” or... “He could smell the unicorn pens. Someone had forgotten to muck them out again.”
3 - Stage business. “Said” might be invisible and it’s certainly preferable to “interrupted”, “objected” or – shudder – “ejaculated” as a dialogue tag, but if you have a page of “he said” “she said” or worse, “he said,” “he said” it can get pretty tedious. Besides, the characters start to feel – to me at least – like they have no bodies and are just talking mouths. Stage business avoids the need to say “he said” like this: “No.” George ran his finger along the shelf and stared at the dust on the fingertip. “No, I don’t believe I found your cigarette case.” It also allows you to build on the character. For instance, perhaps George is an incurable toucher-of-things, not a nitt picky householder and perhaps we can show him touching and fidgeting with everything. (If this is a murder mystery, he probably absent-mindedly picked up that case and set it somewhere.
4- To emphasize moods or bridge an awkward spot. I.e., describing the space ship might just work to give a sense of distance from your last scene before you launch into the new one – because you want to give the idea a month has passed, and that’s hard to believe internally. To make your character seem depressed, you can have him notice peeling paint and dirty floors, for instance, as he goes into a new place.
5- Special effects. Movies pay tons for this. It took me until the year before I was first published to realize people like them, even when all you’re giving them is a description. If your character is in a magical glade, by all means, hit the reader with the eldritch.

A couple of caveats, (they took me long to learn, so I’m going to share them!) Try not to have similar scenes take place in similar places, because it will “feel” repetitive, even if it isn’t. So, don’t have your characters argue in the car twice. Move that second argument to the shopping mall. If you’re writing an historical, try to keep the setting as period as possible and use the opportunity to throw in those cool bits of research you can’t put anywhere else. (i.e., instead of infodumps that make the reader suffer for YOUR art.)
All this said, when I’m stuck for a story, I’ve found starting out in a diner (no, I don’t know why I’m fascinated with diners) usually invites a story to come along...
Do you have a go-to setting? What other ways have you found to use setting? (I’m
sure I missed half a dozen.) What’s your favorite way of making a setting feel real?

*the picture is my son's cartoonified version of me, as "super writer" in front of my favorite diner. Yeah, he DID "superhero" the body a bit.*

Also, for those who haven't checked it out yet, I have a new blog at http://accordingtohoyt.com I even manage to blog almost every day.

Adding Color / Society for the Encouragement of Cruelty to Characters

Reading some fantasy recently, I came across in insane character. He was only slightly insane - and he also knew he was insane. Not that I have never read insane characters before, just not for a while.

It made me realise that there is so much scope to add color to characterization. Joe Abercrombie did some interesting things in his series, particularly with his crippled Inquisitor-type character. In this case the extra dimension was the pain and physical impairment that the character had to continually deal with (JA also altered the prose between character sections to give them a distinct feel. Nicely done.).

We take it for granted in modern society that 'pain free' is normal. You don't need to go back more than one or two generations to find people who just carried on with chronic pain, toothache . . .whatever. My mother was like that. She would just shrug her shoulders and say 'It will work itself out, eventually.'

Yet despite this - and that fact that almost all fantasy is set in medieval/historical settings - pain and discomfort are rarely mentioned.

You don't want to go too far and overwhelm the reader with an in-your-face setting that is just too grim to enjoy, but little touches can go a long way to make characters distinct for the reader.

Outcasts and aliens - people on the outside of society are always fun as well. This immediately adds conflict, both internal and external.

This all just goes to prove how damn sadistic authors are. So far I have made my potential characters insane, then given them chronic pain and introduced them to Albert Camus. At least I haven't broken their hearts - yet. MuahahahahaHAHA!!

So what other interesting elements of characterization have you explored? How have you tortured your poor characters lately?

Combining the Elements

Happy Easter! Although by rights the Saturday is not really celebrated, I’m excited because this is the beginning of a three week holiday. Next Friday I’ll be on Flinders Island visiting a certain Monkey person.

Pondering over things as I did my last post, I realized that you cannot really have one element that makes a story work.

I have always liked the rule of three with story construction – Setting, Character, Conflict. I know there are so many more elements, but if I had to pick three, these are always a great guide. If you are trying to give a few guidelines to someone new to writing, it is also a very easy framework to hang onto, something that is really quite powerful.

The idea, as this concept was taught to me, was that these three elements should interrelate. The setting should be so integral to the story that if you took it away, you would have a different story – or would not be able to tell the story. The character also has to be unique to that story, formed by that setting, primed for that conflict.

What is it about that character that will drive that story? How is that character unique to that setting? The conflict also has to be something unique to that world or setting and something that intimately involves that character.

Try telling Lord of the Rings without the backdrop of Middle Earth. In some ways I respond the world as a character in LoR, or series of characters. You can really see JRRs love of nature in the way he paints the backdrops in the early part of Frodo’s journey.

Can you think of any stories that combine and weave these multiple elements? Can you think of any good examples of book that have used settling as a particularly integral part of the storytelling – or to the extent that it becomes a character in its own right?