Who Wants a Fight?

In Chapter 13 of The Blade Bearer - buy it now , you won't regret it - there is a scene where Will, Markham and Rayne save an innocent peasant from some nasty soldiers. This involves a short and fairly brutal fight in which Will (our narrator and a jolly good archer) shoots some of them with arrows, Markham (a knight) lays about one or two with his sword, and Rayne (a sorceror) casts a type of energy bolt spell.

I originally wrote the scene to break up a long spell of travelling. A friend of mine once said he had no interest in the Lord of the Rings movies because, 'Why spend almost three hours watching some people go for a walk?' That stuck with me, so I wanted to make my characters' walk fairly perilous. The encounter was also an opportunity to show the reader how lawless certain parts of Aeoland were becoming, rather than having characters point it out. And that was about it for the reasons why.

When I went back to the novel and started editing I realised that this fight was actually a waste of time. It was intended to inject some excitement but, apart from breaking up a travel sequence and imparting some simple information, it served no purpose. Nothing was different after the encounter was over. It hadn't moved on the story and it certanly hadn't affected any of the characters. This is usually where the writer has to make that difficult decision: do they remove a scene that doesn't need to be there, no matter how much they like it.

Instead of just cutting out the scene or editing it down, I stepped back from the screen and thought about what purpose this fight might serve. If the scene had to argue against being edited out, what would that argument be? The answer lay in what the fight did to the characters, how it changed them or made them think differently. The most profound effect was on Rayne, a theoretical practitioner of magic who had barely stepped outdoors in his life never mind killed someone. What would this do to him? It's unlikely he'd just shrug it off. So Rayne had to come to terms with taking someone's life, even if that someone was a villain. Having Rayne troubled by what he'd done then presented an opportunity for Will to show his more compassionate side, showing concern for what Rayne's act had done to him and, in so doing, reveal to the reader a little more about what motivates Will. For Markham it was easier. He sees very clearly that Will is a much better archer and he doesn't like it. I didn't emphasise this too much in the story, but I'm glad it's there. A constant theme in the novel is Markham waking up to not being quite the big shot he thinks he is. This encounter gave me a chance to give that bubble another pop.

So, yes, I know it's obvious to any seasoned author, but this taught me a simple and memorable lesson. Fights can help with story development because they are inherently dangerous and we need risk to make the plot work. But where fights really make your story sing, is by offering a short intense way to develop your characters. Threat forces choices, and choices display and develop substance in your characters.

There is a lot more to the role of fighting and action in fantasy novels. I'll return to this subject again.

Memory and the Citadel of Chaos

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Albert Camus

I'm no existentialist, so forgive me if what follows completely misses the point Camus was making, but this quote echoes in my head a lot.

The act of writing Will's adventures is, in large part, an attempt to return to a feeling, to a vibe, that I remember from when I was a child. It's the feeling of discovering other worlds, of having a glimpse into a realm that is thrilling yet also somehow reassuring. I'm sure many of you can name moments when you first encountered the work of a writer - Tolkein? le Guin? Iain Banks? Neil Gaimain? - when your mind was opened to something beyond the everyday but, at the same time, it felt like coming home. You discover a place or a voice that sounds like where you want to be or how you want to speak. These moments linger long in our memory. In times of distress we might draw on them. Or when we turn to create our own worlds.

One memory that looms large when writing Will's story is of The Citadel of Chaos, the Fighting Fantasy book by Steve Jackson. It's a cold day, and I'm off school, probably not feeling well. I'm in bed in my room, warm and comfortable, 'playing' the book with my pencil and my dice. Those books were so evocative, so immersive, borne of the immediacy of being directly involved as the protagonist and the wonderful illustrations by Russ Nicholson. There is a kind of snug darkness about this memory, an odd combination of travelling to a perilous world without ever leaving the security of home. And there was a sense of a world waiting to be discovered, of adventures yet to be had, all in a fully realised world. Good writing does this, especially when combined with good illustration - it evokes a world beyond the story, a world you want to explore. Curled up in my room, I was taken to this other place, but the memory is defined by that atmosphere of potential, of setting out.

I want to generate that feeling in what I write. Obviously, I can't do it for the reader, but if I can do it for myself, maybe I'll be able to take you somewhere also.

I'm aware that this is a tricky business, leaning very close to self-reflexive nostalgia, an escape from difficult life into the security of memory. I don't want Will's story to be too safe a place - it has to feel real, risky, and not excessively derivative. It is, I suppose, the difference between performing cover versions and composing original material. What is it that you want to do? Are you happy to keep going back to the stuff that first got you excited, that introduced you to these other worlds? If so, there is a vibrant community of fan fiction writers out there, ready to welcome you. Or do you want to take those vibes, those early memories and use them to tell new stories?

For what it's worth, I'm trying to use those great and simple images in whose presence my heart first opened as the foundation for something new. And, if not new, then at least exciting.

Where's Gandalf?

The thing about Lord of the Rings - you've heard of it, right? - is that everyone pretty much knows what's going on. They know what's at stake.

For example, the main reason Frodo knows all about the Ring and its power is because Gandalf is there to tell him. Bilbo's disappearing act makes Alf suspicious so off he goes to find out more then hotfoots it back to The Shire to clue in Frodo. Everyone knows the significance of the ring and acts accordingly, despite its many temptations.

But here's my question. What if Gandalf hadn't made it back to Bag End? What if all Frodo knew was that this ring was a bit special and nothing more? Well, the Black Riders would have rocked up at his door and tried to get it. And what would you do if some nasties tried to take the thing that your wizard pal had told you was so jolly important? First, you'd run for it. But second, you'd remember what Uncle Bilbo did back at his party. He disappeared.

'Splendid,' you say to yourself. 'I'll just pop the ring on and no one will be able to find me!' Next thing you know your kebabed by a Ringwraith.

There is a point to this. I like a mystery. I like the idea of having our main character hamstrung by not knowing. What if Frodo had the Ring but had no idea where it came from or what it was designed to do? And that's what happens in The Blade Bearer. Three companions, each with their equivalent of the One Ring, but with no idea what the things do. All they know is, how the thing makes them feel, and that it wants them to go North...

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.