just so you know, I have heartlessly abandoned this blog as a Vain, Directionless Pursuit of Youth, and instead begun a new Vain, Directionless Pursuit of Slightly Less Youth over here: Curses!! Books!!!
it is not entirely dissimilar to Myrioddity, except that instead of saying I’ll write about writing and writing about books instead I just say I’ll write about books and then do. The introductory post outlines the “purpose” of Curses!! Books!!! in more detail.
❤
E.
Hey! I just got done reading Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys. It was pretty decent! Gaiman’s not really my cup of tea without a collaborator, and (hipster-like) I’m wary of praising him lest I be mistaken for one of the maaaany that worship at his altar, but Anansi Boys was an enjoyable book working successfully with an underused mythology. The plot trotted dutifully along behind the themes. An okay cast brightened by a few excellent characters fell into line and didn’t step on each other’s toes enough to rob the book of its due grace and humor. Its predictability didn’t cancel out its charm, though it did peter out in terms of pathos a few times. I pin the blame on the dual romantic subplots–both female love interests were little more than sketches, and fell in love with their respective dudes in about five minutes. 😦 Sigh.
Our hero’s arc was a little dull, but at least he had an arc. “Fat” Charlie Nancy’s main flaw (as a character, not as a person) was a tendency to be kinda slow on the uptake, and honestly, what protagonist hasn’t ended up with that flaw–even if only for a chapter or two? It is so awfully convenient. And that got me thinking of other Gaiman protagonists, and about protagonists in general, and thence to tonight’s rambling subject.
I’m not really setting out with a thesis here, so bear with me: I want to talk about protagonists a little. Specifically, protagonists in works that fall outside the realm of the strictly realistic. xD (…what are we calling that now, anyway? Speculative fiction? We who gather beneath the twin umbrellas of “fantasy” and “sci-fi,” both expanding as impossibly large and ominous shadows protecting us from normal skies? Sewing patches on our genre jackets adorned with the “-punk” suffix?) Mainly most fiction that strays from realism is under discussion here, excluding “magical realism” because it comes with a whole different set of difficulties–as far as I can figure. Where to draw the line between “magical realism” and “stuff with magic in” is a talk for another time, and also probably for people with a better grasp on magical realism than I have.
Anyhow!
Whether you’re writing in the kingdom of Madeupia, the distant galaxy of Fictional Future X-Blorg-113, or just a version of our world past or present infested by creatures, abilities, or technologies that never existed–your first concern with protagonist creation has to be “Do They Know Shit,” followed swiftly by “How Much Shit Do They Know.” Exposition, man. Let’s start there. Some options:
June? Have I really not blogged since June? Wow. But here I am, per a new accountability pact with WordPress cohorts M.M. Jordahl, Alexandria Darcy, & Anne Bean–our solemn vow is to put something on these damn things by Monday morning every week, come mist, Muse, or malaise. AND SO WE SHALL. (You may imagine our collective fistpump here.) Yes indeed, I am returning to blogtown on account of this accord, and for no other reason.
…Okay that’s not true it’s also because I don’t know what to do with myself since last Thursday night.
I did it, y’all. I finished Terriblebook.
…Now granted, this is a) a thing most of you already know, as I doubt my readership has expanded from five people during my many months of inactivity and anyone I’ve told “I have a blog!” likely already has heard “I have a book!” and b) a less final achievement than it might sound. By “finished” I mean “finished the first draft.” That…pretty much means I have produced with pride a steaming pile of superfluous paragraphs, which I must now shovel hoping to summon all the strength Heracles had in the stables of Augeas. …facing sentences of that structure. …and shit of that stink.
But still!!! I’m really looking forward to it. At long last I’ve finally got a manuscript! Once I go on a Staples Quest to print every last one of its embarrassing five-hundred-plus pages, I’ll get to attack it with red pens of death. Like Mikami from Death Note. “Delete…delete…delete…!” I keep telling myself (truthfully) that I shouldn’t feel so sheepish about how long it is because my editing process has, historically, been one of subtraction. There’ll be new stuff to add, no doubt (“oops, I didn’t know what the plot was yet in this chapter”) but overall I find it easier to get rid of unnecessary text than try to put more in. This is likely because my writing process happens in…gusts of momentum, rather than at a deliberate pace, so trying to step back into whatever crazy race I was running while writing a scene sometimes gets awkward results.
Even so, that’s much less the case than it used to be. Over the course of writing this draft I really learned how to make myself write, even if I wasn’t feeling it that day; how to push through a scene despite it not being one of the ones I deemed Exciting at the outset; how to stop taking the Manic Energy Bus from scene to scene and opt instead for the Steady Focus Bicycle, even uphill; how to stay interested when I knew exactly what was gonna happen.
It’s been such a valuable experience that it makes me want to sincerely say things like “It was such a valuable experience.” Translated: It was tremendous fun and also I learned stuff.
Terriblebook began as a smirk on the face of a terrible character, then a very minor player in some worldbuilding I was doing for a nebulous future project. Essentially–I don’t want to get into plot summary, because then I won’t stop, but, um. There was a hotel and restaurant business being co-run by a couple of gods actually using it as a front for their soul-selling operation. I decided it would be funny if the head chef at the restaurant was a former fantasy villain on a sort of work release program. …I don’t remember why I thought this, but considering that is what he ends up doing in Terriblebook the Second, I apparently still find it pretty hilarious.
But it’s even more hilarious to me now that I know his backstory, which he began to tell me back when I was bored as hell working as a wading pool attendant two Augusts ago. This backstory, mind, started out as a footnote on worldbuilding notes. Then it was a several-page blathering summary full of question marks. Then, it was going to be the first third of a book. Then, the first half. Then it was an outline under which was written “Crap, this is a whole book, isn’t it.” Then it was NaNoWriMo 2011.
343,935 words, 563 pages, 23 chapters, and 15 months later. What’ve I got?
Yay!!
So with that I’ll go sleep for a zillion years, because I am exhausted, I tell you, exhausted from all of this literary brilliance.
By which I mean “from working on Super Bowl Sunday,” ’cause damn. The hordes did descend.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
No really, I will see you next week,
E.
❤
Hoo boy. Do I ever not want to know what George R. R. Martin dreams about.
All right. Let’s back up. Hello, by the way, this is a blog, I keep abandoning it, the worst blogger is me, etc. Pretty much the only reason I’ve returned here “recently” (last post was in March! Geez) is because I want to Opine about something, and lo and behold, I have come here to do it again. Most of my writing energy these days goes straight into working on my novel draft, the still-untitled Terriblebook which is now clocking in at 118k. A little has been devoted to writing a play I shouldn’t be writing and composing the odd poem here and there. But! Discipline! At all times I try to tell myself that if I’m ever going to finish this damn thing, I must keep going and save other projects for later. Chronological order or bust, you sons of mothers. On squeaky wheels of clunky sentences and excessive dialogue, yea, shall I reach the end of the line.
But Terriblebook is fantasy! And I have been thinking a lot about fantasy therefore. Which is why when I happened upon this George R. R. Martin quote (link is to his hilariously ’90s-tastic website) I could not resist having Opinions about it. Here is an excerpt:
Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
Setting aside the purple prose-y quality of the quote (“obsidian veined with gold”? “wines as sweet as summer”? really?) and the general unevenness of its comparisons (honey is to tofu as Cleveland is to Minas Tirith — wait — and anyone who flies Air Icarus is in for a nasty surprise!) … let’s talk about it.
myrioddity 