As the summer approaches and I ready for my creative writing and mythology courses I find myself drawn back into a web of fantasy an sic-fi writing that both thrills and annoys me. There are conventions I see in authors that help define genres in ways I enjoy and in ways that I detest. For example, Brett Battles, a noted post-apocalyptic thriller writer is as noted for his inability to create legitimate female characters. He uses the ‘As good as it gets’ method. In other words, he, thinks of a man and removes reason and accountability. This in turn creates a host of female leads that reflect badly on the genre and often alienate readers (that same chick he writes for every female character is super annoying).
In the same vein, the best fantasy authors tend to focus mainly on the same part of the fantasy world. Few write about Joe the cobbler. Many write about Prince Joe and his many devious friends. I am no different. My epic fantasy presently focuses on a series of characters adjacent to the crown. It is a milieu piece at heart, which attempts to show the life of the commoner by having characters who either came from those roots or masquerades as such. I’m disappointed in myself. I feel that I could just as easily tell the human story–the commoner tale–from the perspective of a commoner swept up in all of the crazy of the high society. In truth I’m better equipped from a knowledge standpoint to do so. I don’t almost entirely because everything else I’ve read has been about the people who ‘matter’ and there is a sense of trepidation about pitching a book about people who don’t matter.
Tropes run sci fi and fantasy. They run literary fiction as well, but it is more often viewed as a starting point, with the character story driving the value of the literary work. Hell, Jane Eyre is a trope built with tropes as building blocks.
I guess all this is to say that we need something new in terms of vision from the sci-fi and fantasy realms. Harry Potter was cute but it was just another coming of age story set against the backdrop of the out of place rich kid with skills in a school of established people. New is difficult. We’ve long operated on the premise that there are only seven basic plots and we multiply that by character, location, and perspective to create limitless tales. However, these tales aren’t limitless. It is time for an 8th and 9th plot. We need something new.
Some Thoughts:
- Last night I was reminded of a valuable lesson: Sleep. Do it often and fruitfully. Without such machinations ones writing resembles the slow and random hacks of a monkey at play.
- Monday I cut the cord. Bye bye DirecTv.
- 1787 marks the publication of the Federalist papers in the U.S. This also coincides with the George Mason’s offering of a bill of rights (which was immediately and vocally shot down) and, perhaps more tangentially, when Arthur Philip launched his fleet of criminals towards Botany Bay in Australia–yet another British effort to rid the kingdom of undesirables and upstarts. I wonder why Australia never gained the traction USA did. On the other hand, perhaps Australia’s time is yet to come…
- There is something to be said for waking to the howls of young children waging war over minutiae. They want to fight each other and it doesn’t matter what they fight over. The question is why?