Thoughts About Derivation

Posted on February 1, 2008 by Sarah

(Originally posted on LiveJournal)

J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien

I began writing my first fantasy novel in high school. Inspired mostly by Tolkien, actually. In the sense of … it was reading Tolkien’s work that nudged me into actively focusing my writing impulses on creating a fantasy world. I loved the work of many other writers, and over the years they have had major effects on me. But it was Tolkien that really stirred up the storyteller in me (which had already made some piffling attempts at writing).

I even managed to eventually finish that fantasy novel – sometime early in my college career, so the writing process took about 3 years (squeezed in between school work). I was ambitious enough to send it to a publisher. Oh, it came back. And looking back now, I’m so very glad it did NOT see print. I believe the manuscript is buried in one of the boxes of papers stowed in a cupboard. I haven’t looked at it since…. my undergraduate days.

Once that first novel was done, I had attempted to build the fantasy world around it. I drew a huge world map of all the possible lands. I filled out long geneologies, with various history points along the way. I tried creating a mythology to fit this world. But I was never quite satisfied with it all.

So it got shelved. Besides, by that point, I was finishing my Bachelor’s degree and then starting graduate school. A rather work-intensive time.

Then I had an epiphany.

The following passage is from a notebook I started keeping in graduate school. It’s the opening entry (it was journal-style, basically). It’s me talking to myself about process, ideas, questions.

****************
How far this new inspiration will take me, I have no idea, but the impulse is strong enough to merit attention. After reading The Silmarillion, I’ve realized the problem my fantasy worlds have suffered — when compared to Tolkien. Mine have had no mythology – and that the creation of a mythology cannot, in a sense, be worked backwards from a tale-in-hand to the origins of the myth. If one goes the backward route the “mythology” lacks real mythic power.

The challenge is to create something that is not simply a copy of Tolkien – no easy thing. But at the same time, there is no denying that what I may do will be, to quite an extent, derivative – from Tolkien, from Milton, Biblical tradition and so on. In fact, derivation is not such a disastrous thing, not if what is created has any beauty and/or truth of its own to enrich it.

All of which is a stating of stance. I shall begin to rework all my fantasy material. … It may be that all prior work will just be thrown out, leaving only traces of it, but no matter. ….

This rethinking was perhaps “conceived” in the reading of The Silmarillion, but I wasn’t aware of it till today. In the Chaucer class today, we did some talking about the figure of Nature in The Parliament of Fowls. Suddenly, Nature connected with Varda-Elbereth in my mind, turned around and there SHE was. Unfortunately, SHE arrived without a name, at least one that I recognize. Anyway, SHE is one of the Powers.
*************************

A figure of natureAnyway, that was where I restarted making my world. For the next year, SHE was called only “The First Lady” because this time around, I was determined NOT to impose names on things and characters, just because I needed an identifier when coming up with a story idea. A bit over a year later, SHE revealed her name was “Valiya”. What is interesting in the notebook was that about a month before name and character connected, “Valiya” is included in a list of names/words that had caught my fancy in passing. I would note down such things, but again, not rush to impose them on specific objects, instead waited for the “proper connection.”

It took a bit of patience to proceed in that fashion. There are a lot of entries where characters are described along the lines of “the Son of the One who found that sword of star-stone”. (No, there isn’t actually such a character or object – I just made those up right now. But that was how things got identified.) As characters and things acquired names, I’d go back and write the names in above the lines.

But reading the opening thoughts in the journal reminded me again of the issue of derivation. Is “derivation” such a bad thing? I think we get so concerned about how some writers merely end up copying those who inspired them, that anything that looks vaguely like copying is considered second-rate. But even back then (okay, so I was a grad student, so it’s not so “uninformed” about literary processes – 😉 ) , I felt that when a writer such as myself found him or herself in sympathy with the outlooks of a previous writer, was inspired by them, admired them, wouldn’t it be expected that the works of that newer writer would be somewhat similar to the older works? And why would that be considered a failure of creativity?

I think that the real catch is for the new writer to find his or her own voice. It has taken me years to achieve a comfort level with my prose. The balance between clear, analytical prose and lyrical, loaded poetry has not been easy to achieve (and perhaps I still don’t always achieve it). But somewhere along the line, there came a point when my inner ear was no longer striving to mimic Shakespeare, Milton and Tolkien, but was rather listening to my inner voice.

Okay…. that’s a lot of rambling, so I guess I should stop for now. But maybe my next post will deal with the shaping of one or two of the basic myths for my fantasy world – from the first entries in this notebook to their current forms. Because these first two myths are also basic to The Ring of Adonel.

Comments

sartorias – Feb. 1st, 2008

Just as ye olde reality check, there is award-winning M. John Harrison’s take on worldbuilding and Tolkien and any fantasy that he and his particular paradigm-sharing friends don’t write, here
http://uzwi.wordpress.com/worldbuilding-further-notes/

Scum! We are risible scum, worthy only of scorn!

But aside from that, I don’t think there’s any worth in saying derivative is “bad”–there is an audience, as Tolkien himself noted about hobbits, who love the same story over and over, and who expect the same elements used in the same way.

But other readers will lose interest if they feel they’ve already seen the material, perhaps shaped in prose that appealed more, and if they know where it’s all leading, they feel they don’t have to read to the end.

It’s such a mileage variation thing.

scribblerworks – Feb. 1st, 2008

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

Really, I couldn’t read Harrison’s pompous rant beyond “Note 1”. There’s too much bias there. Flat out bias.

Let’s start with the point that he completely overlooks the fact that the FIRST audience of a writer’s work is the author himself! Therefore anything like “justification”, “verification”, “authentification” is completely pointless when it comes to worldbuilding. The author is NOT doing it for any secondary audience – he’s doing it for himself. At least — I’m certainly doing it for myself! Sure, I hope that others will be interested in venturing into my world. But I created/am creating my fantasy world as a place where I can let my own imagination run free, look at issues or perspectives as I want to.

The idea that a “world” is ONLY created in the minds of the readers (and those apparently being defined as “other than the author”)… ceeds AUTHORity to some figure other than the author! Duh!

But back to the matter of actual derivation….

I do agree with Tolkien in that humans do like to hear the same story over and over. Heck — I’m a great REreader myself. There are many books I like to go back to. I also enjoy intelligent resettings of “famous plotlines” — for instance: I adore Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, but I’ve also enjoyed the various “retellings” of it (The Magnificent Seven, Battle Beyond the Stars); Clueless as a retold Emma. Indeed, one of the “major” stories in my fantasy notes is my personal version of the siege and fall of Troy.

But there’s a big difference between that kind of reflection of previous work, making it personal (and hence new) to the author, and an out-and-out copying of previous work. Of that… I have to admit that the most blatant example to me in fantasy is Dennis McKiernan’s Shadows of Doom from his The Iron Tower trilogy. Beat for beat, sentiment for sentiment, that book matched the crossing of Moria from The Fellowship of the Ring, and it annoyed the heck out of me. Not just for the copying in less satisfying prose, but because I’d purchased the trilogy because of the cover art (New American Library paperbacks). It was an impulse – I didn’t even scan a few pages of text… I liked the covers and bought all three (published at the same time, as I recall) in one fell swoop! Very fell.

I think the distinction between “good” & “bad” derivation is that the “bad” doesn’t really take you to Someplace Similar But New. It takes you to a cheap, cardboard copy of Another Place, maybe in different colors, but without real substance. “Good” derivation takes you somewhere where you get that pleasure of recognition, combined with the pleasure of Something New.

Well… at least that’s how I look at it.

All of which, in the end, is my scholar’s & intellectual’s mind explaining away/justifying the creator’s impulse to do what it wants. And it wants to tell stories “sort of like Tolkien”, without feeling the need to write in Tolkien’s world. (So, yeah…. I’ve also been low on the impulse to write fanfic. At least not in any other form than wanting to write certain TV shows, or comic book characters. 🙂 )

sartorias – Feb. 1st, 2008

Nodding…I’m with you, tho there are many readers out there who think Terry Brooks is far, far better than Tolkien.

scribblerworks – Feb. 2nd, 2008

Yeah, I know many like Brooks’ books. But I could never get very far into The Sword of Shannara. I kept tripping over what I could only consider tin-eared names. I mean, Allanon?? What is this? A Twelve-Step fantasy? (Really, that was my reaction. 🙂 )

margdean56 – Jan. 5th, 2009

Yeah, I kept thinking he should have a sidekick named Alateen. 🙂

wild_patience – Feb. 2nd, 2008

In my view, people (including in fiction) don’t need a mythology as much as they need a religion and a personal history. For what is mythology other than someone else’s religious history?

As a Christian, I’m comfortable with referring to the Christian mythos or mythology, because for some people, that’s all it is. Fantasy/SF in which the characters have a connection with their religion speaks to me and feels real. That was one of the things Peg Kerr did in THE WILD SWANS. She has her female fairy tale character praying as an everyday thing, because that would be a big part of your life in the Middle Ages in Europe. I love Bujold’s Chalion books in which her pantheon is real and affects the characters. Oh, did that speak to me when the Bastard spoke to Ista after she complained about not being sent help and he basically told her that God has no hands but ours!

I sometimes wish authors would think a little less about giving their characters/settings a mythology and more about giving them a religion that’s believable in the context.

scribblerworks – Feb. 2nd, 2008

I suppose we’re not really far apart. My use of the term “mythology” (as I think Tolkien’s was in the final analysis) signifies the stories that reflect one’s religious beliefs. Myths tend to be stories to explain meaning.

And that’s what was wrong with my “first world creation”. I tried to come up with supposedly mythic stories for my characters, but they were imposed from the exterior, rather than organic to the world. They didn’t really mean much. What happened with the restart was that the “mythic” stories are both “real” stories of the actions of the angelic powers on entering the material world, and also reflective of the meaning of the relationship between the created beings and the divine creator (as in God, not me).

But I think I know what you mean about making a distinction between “giving their world a mythology” and “giving them a religion that’s believable”. I just think many worldbuilders don’t understand that the two points should not be separate, but rather one and the same.

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Help Me Build a Ritual!

Posted on January 17, 2008 by Sarah

(Originally posted on LiveJournal)

Okay. I’ve been piffling my way through revising the early chapters of The Ring of Adonel, I’m also giving some vague consideration to how I shall move forward from where I am stuck. I need to have one of my characters create a new ritual for dealing with a new situation. And I could use having some ideas bounced at me.

So…. I seek your help. Don’t know if anything you suggest will end up in the pot, but anything that makes me define what’s up, will help improve the situation.

Anyway, here are the basics you need to know….

ShunningThe Fynlaren are immortal in the world. Instead of laws, they govern/shape their lives by using rituals. Oaths can be efficacious, particularly if the angelic powers of the world are invoked as witness to the oath. This means that there actually are consequences for oath-breaking. (Mostly a deterioration of health or internal stability – a spiritual consequence, as it were, but real.)

Because they are immortal in the world, they don’t die. Their physical bodies can be destroyed, and the bond between flesh and spirit/soul (or as I term it in this realm, the anshan) can be broken. When that happens, the anshan seeks out a safe place, usually the company of one of the angelic powers, and gradually regains flesh. The re-fleshed Fynlar body is, however, reproductively sterile. And the process is disquieting to the anshan. The original body basically disintegrates quickly after body & soul have been separated.

The thing is, the Fynlaren have an awareness of each other that is a bit similar to telepathy. So, even though one Fynlar might die, those who know that person will have a peripheral awareness, as it were, of the “dead”, even as they go through the process of re-fleshment.

Now, the Fynlaren also have something of an awareness of the mortals around them. A kind of background noise, unless that person is important to the Fynlar. But when mortals die, their anshans leave the circles of the world entirely. They are gone. The Fynlaren find this vaguely disturbing, and so, usually limit their contacts with mortals.

In the story, one of the Fynlaren leaders has committed a couple of heinous crimes – murder of the mortal wife of another Fynlaren lord, in particular. It turns out that other than a handful of close conspiritors, his people are actually appalled by this, and now refuse to follow him, so he had to continue fleeing (since he knows he’s being pursued). And his people now need a new ritual to deal with this brand-new situation.

Basically, they need a ritual that will help them regard the rejected lord in such a way that he will be as if he were dead like a mortal to them. Something that will help them focus and cut off their “telepathic” awareness of him. A “death” ritual.

I’d reached the point in the story where my bardic character Caoin Il-lyran is asked to create this ritual — and I boggled. What to do? What points should he include in the ritual – other than citing the name of the specific person being rejected/cast out?

I suppose in some ways, it might resemble the ritual of excommunication. Except that I’m not Catholic, and not familiar with that (other than one scene in the movie Beckett).

So…. throw some ideas my way. I could use some nudging, brainstorming, thumping, whatever.

Comments

kalimac – Jan. 17th, 2008

You want my opinion? I think your bard is stuck at the ritual because he shouldn’t do it. A people with that kind of mutual awareness should focus on understanding what caused the criminal’s behavior, and dealing with it within their own circles. If the “telepathy” means anything, they’re closer than a human family would be, and a healthy family does not cast out a criminal among them, however much they abhor his crime. (The Unabomber’s family still wants to love him, despite decades of rejection from him and despite the fact that they’re the ones who turned him in.)

When Gandalf cast Saruman from the Order of Wizards, he was cuttin’ of his buttons off and tore his stripes away, but he didn’t hang him in the morning.

scribblerworks  – Jan. 17th, 2008

Hmmm. An interesting take on it.

But I’ve been looking at it as … well, allowing a continued contact with the unrepentant criminal (and he is unrepentant) would be toxic to them.

They’re disturbed already that they didn’t perceive his possible intent. It’s shaken their confidence in what they thought they knew of themselves (and they do know less than they think they do – the danger of being unshaken for centuries).

Still… an interesting point. Perhaps the ritual is to protect themselves, rather than merely reject the offender? (They’re not taking the step lightly.)

Oh, and the offender is not present. So this isn’t like an execution or anything involving physical action against him. Just putting him outside the community.

Heh. You have definitely given me something to mull over, to chew on. 🙂 Thanks.

More bouncing! 🙂

kalimac – Jan. 17th, 2008

Hmm. If he really did have evil intent, I’d think they’d want to learn as much as possible of why they didn’t detect this. If they can’t learn to do so, it might happen again with equally traumatic results.

On the other hand, he might have reasons not realized.

Did you ever read an SF novel called The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell? At the beginning we’re introduced to a character who had, some time earlier, committed an act so hideous and foul that for some time the author refrains from telling the reader what it was, although within the story the entire world knows what it was. The bulk of the book is then a flashback to the events leading up to that act, and at the end the (traumatized, so he had an excuse for not speaking earlier) protagonist finally gets around to explaining that part of his act he was forced into against his will, and the other part was an accident. And everybody says, “Oh. Okay.” And that’s the end of the story.

I consider The Sparrow to be one of the great “What the f?” novels in the canon, and the great flaw is that the other characters just assumed the previously impeccable protagonist had gone ee-vil for some unknown reason, and just shut him up without bothering to try to figure out what was going on.

scribblerworks – Jan. 17th, 2008

More thinking.

Ooo! Oo! Oo! (Gosh, this is just the sort of sounding board stuff I’ve needed, THANK YOU!)

They certainly can’t keep him “in”, whatever they do. But their desire for this separation ritual, could – plot/story-wise – be an erroneous choice on their part! That would REALLY work with everything that is going on, both in this story, and what happens after it. A Really Big Mistake.

Because, yes, in point of fact, they won’t actually lose their base-line perception of the criminal. The base-line perception of others actually figures in the story at another point, regarding a totally different character/situation. Something folks have been so taking for granted they never considered really testing it. Until too late.

Hmmmmm. Must think some more. But this is good nudging!

kalimac – Jan. 17th, 2008

Re: More thinking

Yes. That’s kind of what I was nudging you towards. They want to do it, they try to do it, and the bard gets stuck. Now what? Well, they think again, that’s what.

scribblerworks – Jan. 18th, 2008

Re: More thinking

Well, plot-wise, the ritual will happen, though not to the effect the Fynlaren were hoping. For one thing, the Bad Guy senses something is up because they attempt it. (That had always been part of the plotline.)

But this idea-bouncing is helping me figure out the whys of it all. And giving me nudges toward some good character interaction stuff, that will allow me to set up some other things that will be paid off later.

Oh, goody!

I think you’re earning yourself a spot in my acknowledgements, David! 😀

wild_patience – Jan. 18th, 2008

The way I see it, he can’t die, but he must die to the community. Therefore this must be a symbolic death of sorts. What are the rituals surrounding the death of a mortal in this world? Do something like that, but there must be something representational of the person to substitute for the dead body.

The symbol could be something resembling a person — figurine, photograph. Or it could be symbolic of the person’s place in the community. Make a funeral pyre of bury it deep or whatever. There has to be some ritual prayer of casting-out, recited by each member in his/her turn, perhaps accompanied by a turning of one’s back on the symbol of the person.

How would you end such a ceremony? Would everyone walk away, singly, in silence? Would there be some sort of communal gathering to mark the occasion — perhaps the opposite of feast food, a meal of penitential foods. (Bitter herbs and the seder ritual come to mind.)

Anyway, that’s my two cents.

scribblerworks – Jan. 18th, 2008

Photograph? Hee! (It’s a Tolkienesque world, between Classical & Medieval in technology. But you made me laugh!)

I think I’d been considering ending in silence, and with backs turned toward whatever will represent the excluded one. Sort of like the Klingon … what is it? Discommodation from ST:TNG.

translatorius – Feb. 13th, 2008

I got an optical idea for you, and some thought, too!

Hi!

Take a look at this sequence from one of my all time favourite RPG’s, FINAL FANTASY X from developer Square (nowadays Square-Enix):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeSdiOAuoqk

The person you see there is the Summoner and Medium Yuna. In the world of Spira, the Summoners guide the souls of the deceased into the afterlife. It’s a wordless and verty touching and beautiful ritual, as you will see (and the CGI movie is, although made in 2001, great to look at, not to mention the music!).

The bodies are buried in shallow water, but the souls wait fur a Summoner to fulfill the rite that is necessary for them to transcend into what comes after death. A soul that is not transcended this way will become a fiend eventually, a spiteful entity in animal or demonic shape that will turn against humans.

I love the scene since the first time I played the game (in 2002, gosh!), and I loved the peaceful and spiritual idea behind this part of the game’s story.

How about a transcending ritual of a kind similar to the depicted one in the movie that can be altered by some black aspects of religion / shamanism / magic into a ritual that condemns the soul of the person to become some fiend … no, wait, better: … to stay alive, sort of, but become haunted by fiends that may or may not be real? Make him transcend into some kind of pre-limbo, still walking in the real world, but haunted by those who have been tortured and killed by him?

Drop me a line, if you like, to dantalion@freenet.de about what you think of this idea – and how you liked the movie sequence :-)!

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More Poetry From The Ring of Adonel

Posted on October 13, 2007 by Sarah

(Originally published on LiveJournal)

I need to re-motivate myself to get back on track on various creative projects. And there’s nothing like “public exposure” to assist in that.

Much of the opening third of the book takes place on Midsummer. The ceremonies and mythology of the day are important to the story as a whole, which is the principal reason for that focus. The following poem was (inside the story) composed by Caoin Il-lyran (one of Darael’s sons) for the celebration.

Now, since Caoin is supposed to be an exceptionally fine poet, I’d really set myself a challenge here. I needed to create something that could believably come from a master poet, which meant I needed to find a sophisticated prosody to work with. In grad school, I’d taken 2 semesters of Old Irish, and had become somewhat acquainted with some of the forms of Irish poetry. One trait is that the first syllable, word or line of a poem is also used at the end of it.

So, I hauled out my trusty copy of The Book of Forms: A handbook of poetics by Lewis Turco. Therein I found the form for the Rannaigheacht mhor. Here’s the description of it —

Rannaigheacht mhor is a quatrain stanza of seven-syllable lines consonating, not rhyming, abab. There are at least two cross-rhymes in each couplet, and the final word of line three rhymes with a word in the interior of line four. The internal rhyme in the first couplet may be slant-rhyme. In the second couplet the rhymes must be exact. Two words alliterate in each line, the final word of line four alliterating with the preceeding stressed word.

Turco then gives a simplified schematic of this quatrain form, but I won’t copy that here. I did copy it in my work notebook, however. It was tricksey and required me giving various lines trial runs. On top of that, the whole poem needed to hint at the mythic narration that “inspired” it.

In the end, I’m pretty much satisfied with what I produced. Using the Irish form in the English language gives the poem enough of the difference I was looking for, to distinguish a serious work of a Fynlar as different from that of a mortal.

So, here goes. I’ll be interested in the reactions. (Ask questions if you have any.)

Light lay soft in dreaming gloom.
Darkness then did roam and drift.
No sudden shift in blue dome
Where morning-foam made light lift.

Softly sighing sleep of birth,
There the breaths of dark times slip.
Dorchaile walking whips his mirth,
Dearth of knowing gleams he grips.

Darkness deep in heart and mind
Bids him bind himself to dark.
Dart of envy, anger bends,
Rends til blood in streaming starts.

Aelianus struck in eye,
Streaming light in sky and smoke,
By the stroke in heaven high
Gave a cry from kindling cloak.

Flaming blood upon sky Step,
Down the steep streaming fire came.
Maimed, did Aelianus weep
That darkness deep should bear blame.

From grief came glory to glow,
From foul blow to mountain cleaved,
Brief earth-bound tor where flames grow,
Then sunshine shows to light leaf.

Dorchaile in flight sees gold sun.
None of shadows soothes his spite.
For the bright deed which was done;
As one, the Powers lifted light.

****
Well, there you go. I suppose it’s not really fair to toss this out without explaining the myth. But I can always do that in another post. 🙂

Comments

sartorias  – Oct. 14th, 2007

Some of those images are pretty in deed, but some puzzle me (I can’t make sense out of Dearth of knowing gleams he grips–and I don’t respond to a kindling cloak, or the repeated image of light lifting–it makes light sound heavy. There is so soar in that particular verb, no burst of incandescence. Also, ‘bright deed’ and ‘darkness in heart, etc’ are pretty worn in human terms, so I’d want to see something Gerald Hopkinsish with imagery from these higher forms of being. I did like, very much, the ‘dart of envy, anger bends’ and except for the dark bit again, I loved this line: Softly sighing sleep of birth, There the breaths of dark times slip.

FWIW

scribblerworks – Oct. 14th, 2007

Well, in this case, you could indeed say that light was “heavy” – in the mythology, the Sun is the peak of the highest mountain in the world set aflame by the spilling of the blood of one of the Attondar, Aelianus (also known as Adonel) in this case. It was destructive to the world that way, so the Attondar took the top of the mountain off and cast it into the sky. Hence the Sun. In referencing the hymn I posted earlier, because it was set alight by the blood of Aelianus, it is called the Gift of Aelianus.

In the story, I have my “clueless newbie” ask what it means, so it can be explained some.

You did latch onto the line I’m least satisfied with, though — Dearth of knowing gleams he grips. I haven’t figured out a way around it though. Basically, it’s meant to signify that Dorchaile doesn’t understand some crucial things, and he proudly clings to his lack of understanding. I’ll have to give that one some more thought … and see if I can make it work in the prosody. (Now, that’s a challenge. Heh.)

sartorias – Oct. 14th, 2007

Ah, now I see! I like that myth imagery.

kalimac – Oct. 14th, 2007

The prosody is what interests me here. Some of the use of internal rhyme, particularly where the exact rhyme in the fourth line is on the second beat and there are no unstressed syllables between the third and fourth beats (e.g. the first and fifth quatrains) remind me of the Pearl meter and Tolkien’s employment of it in “The Nameless Land” (though that doesn’t use internal rhyme, the cutting of the end-rhyme line structure across the phrases gives a similar effect).

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From Text to Image

Posted on August 16, 2007 by Sarah

(Originally published on LiveJournal)

One of the things about being both a writer and an artist is that eventually, the artist gets an itch to draw something that the writer has written. Of all the possible scenes, characters, and events in The Ring of Adonel that appeal to me, however, I did not expect the first one to be the following one. Mainly because the character is quite fantastical.

But I’ve now done a preliminary sketch for an eventual pen & ink drawing. I’m not going to start on that for quite a while (at least, I don’t think I will be). But it amuses me to put the sketch before you, my friendly readers. 🙂

The text from which this comes follows. The setting is a big midsummer celebration, and my hero, Gidion, is performing a solo dance that is quite blatantly drawn from the Highland Fling (heck, I’m half Scottish, so I come by it honestly).

*******

_____In the dwindling light, an earth-green glow was beginning to form before him, shaping itself into the form of a powerful man, one who danced with him. Gidion glanced at Caoin and saw a strange look on the face of the Rinden musician, as if he were compelled to play and could not stop. Gidion sensed that he too was caught in the compelling spell, which drew more and more from musician and dancer. He looked back at the other dancer and his eyes widened.

_____The other danced with his fists planted on his hips, for he had no need to suggest antlers. Sweeping back over his dark head was a pair of gleaming antlers.

_____Except for the sound of the bagpipe and drum, an utter silence had fallen upon the shian. Then, as if from far off, Gidion heard Narin’s voice.

_____“Fiad!”

********

End of chapter. Actually there should be an accent over the ‘a’, but I’m too lazy to go hunting it right now. The name is /fee – AHD/.

Hmmm. Antlers on a humanish head. How’s this going to work?

Head of FiadSo I did the following preliminary sketch —

This was based on working from some pictures of stags, and the proportion and position of the antler sweep to the rest of the head. I also discovered that human or Fynlaren ears weren’t going to look right with the antlers. Hence the stag’s ears.

 

 

 

 

Fiad dancingFrom there I went on to do a “thumbnail” (except that it’s about 2/3rds the sketchbook page) of Fiad dancing. Thus —

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually, when I do get around to doing the pen & ink piece, I want it to come out something in the style of an old picture I’d done from The Silmarillion – Elwing greeting Earendil.

Elwing Greets Earendil

Comments

sartorias     Aug. 17th, 2007 01:15 pm (UTC)

Ooooh, evocative!

kalimac      Aug. 17th, 2007 01:54 pm (UTC)

One of the things about being both a writer and an artist is that eventually, the artist gets an itch to draw something that the writer has written.

You do have a knack for reminding one of Tolkien, don’t you?

Is it OK to suggest a change of wording in your passage? One part might be rephrased something like this: “The other danced with his fists planted on his hips. He had no need to suggest antlers – for there the pair of gleaming antlers were, sweeping back over his dark head.” I think that suggests more the surprise of seeing them. (Also, compelled/compelling in the previous graf.)

scribblerworks     Aug. 17th, 2007 04:23 pm (UTC)

You do have a knack for reminding one of Tolkien, don’t you?

Heh. I guess I can take that as a compliment. But certainly, when I found out that Tolkien also drew pictures of his world, I felt very akin to him. But I’ll never be the linguist he was, so I don’t pretend to that.

And thanks for the rewrite suggestions. I should have said the passage was from the unrevised first draft, and needs some tweaking. I noticed the compelled/compelling chime when I typed it to LJ, but didn’t change it. But I do need the word once.

kalimac      Aug. 17th, 2007 04:56 pm (UTC)

Yeah, “chime” – that’s the technical term I needed. I was fixing on the chime in both passages. Using the word once each, though, is of course appropriate.

Don’t worry about clumsiness in your first draft, though. Tolkien didn’t. (I’m going to keep on making encouraging comparisons like that so long as they’re appropriate.)

jpantalleresco     Aug. 24th, 2007 08:11 pm (UTC)

Awesome pieces Sarah. I really like the last one in particular.

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Re-Entering a Subcreation

Posted on August 11, 2007 by Sarah

(Originally published on LiveJournal)

In between doing household chores this weekend, I have been rummaging through various notebooks connected to my fantasy novel (okay — it would be easier just to refer to it by its title: The Ring of Adonel – also abbreviated RofA). The most recent notes are ten years old. I know this because I have this obsessive habit of dating my manuscripts. I write the first drafts of many of my bits of writing long-hand. A habit begun in childhood, and continued in college. There’s just a different rhythm to the composition when writing long-hand than there is when composing at a keyboard. Anyway, whenever I sit down to work on a manuscript (long-hand), I date the beginning of the section. So I know when last I worked on it.

I won’t even go into how long ago the manuscript was begun — because I can’t possibly be that old! (What’s that they say? “You’re only as old as you feel”? So, don’t make me feel it! 😉 )

Gwyric & Darael look at the night sky.

The particular notebook I was looking at today is one where I would write down scenes as they occurred to me – well in advance of where I was in the actual manuscript. I mean, if a good, powerful scene occurs to you, you should not just keep it in your mind until you get there. You might not remember it by then. And in reading some of these scenes, I was struck by the fact that I had not remembered many of them.

One of the major issues I needed to work out for the novel – and for the world in general – was the nature of certain of the races of the world. The combined influences of Tolkien, fairy stories, and Norse mythology had led me to include a race of immortals in my world. That is, they are (as I call them) “Children of the World”, part of this creation, and not members of the angelic beings who entered it from “outside”. Like Tolkien’s Elves, and in fact, they were originally called “Elves”.

But way back when, “in the dark ages”, my friend Sherwood Smith (sartorias) was hearing parts of the MS being read to her, she made the suggestion that using “elves” would point far too much toward Tolkien. And she was right. My creatures deserved something more clearly “their own”.

After listening very, very carefully to my work, I “learned” that they were called the Fynlaren. And so they have been to me every since. To look back over the earliest parts of the MS and see the word “elves” feels very, very strange.

However, the influence of Tolkien also taught me something. For myself, the Fynlaren needed a more specific nature than I felt Tolkien’s elves have. Well, admittedly, the Elves may have had a specific nature to Tolkien, but I never quite felt it. And in my creation the “first generation” of the Fynlaren were created as adults, who “awoke” at the beginning of their lives (rather like Adam & Eve).  So, now I’m going to inflict one of those “advance” passages on you. This is one of those I’d forgotten I’d written. But it has such an interesting concept behind it that it struck me this evening. Just so you know the players, Gwyric and Darael are both of the “first generation” of the Fynlaren, and they’ve known each other for… oh, at least a thousand years, I think. A long time. Gwyric had wed a mortal woman 22 years earlier (his son is the hero of the book), and Moira had been murdered earlier in the story. What Gwyric is about to tell his friend, he has never told anyone.

****

At last Gwyric spoke. “There are the First Awakened, and then there is the First Awakened. All of you, waking in Kyradon, when you woke you knew and understood what you saw. The world had names. Everything had order. For you, that is all you have ever known.”

A silence fell between them and Darael was astonished by what he saw in it.

“Do you mean–?”

Gwyric gave a heavy sigh. “You cannot possibly know. When there were no words, how can there be words to describe it?”

Darael felt the pressure of the hidden listener’s attention. “Try.”

The pause was so long, Darael almost prodded again.

“Adonel woke me with a touch. Such glory. Such a bright scattering of pieces. My hands were empty, my mind empty. Yet through them tumbled everything. To be conscious without knowing. It is a terrible thing, li-delf. Perhaps if my living heart were ripped from my body and I still lived, perhaps that might be a faint experience like that first moment. Like this moment. Adonel, of course, realized what I lacked. His second touch gave me language. He had been too eager to greet the Children of the World. If he had not—”

Gwyric shook his head. “The flood of language, of knowing. Yes, it was a joy. But I alone of the Fynlaren have known … aloneness in such a way that none other has. And now it grows in me again. That moment swells in me. Like a dark wave, it rolls over everything in my memory. As Jernathien sank beneath the waves, the green hills and fair stones overwealmed by the dark, clear waters….”

He threw out a hand, trying to push something away from himself.

“She is gone. And I cannot see, and there are no words.”

***********

I suppose some of this will be revised when I get to this point in the story down the road.  But in the meantime, I’m rather enjoying being surprised by my own work.

Comments

sartorias     Aug. 12th, 2007 02:59 pm (UTC)

Go for it!

kalimac     Aug. 12th, 2007 03:04 pm (UTC)

Had Tolkien written a similar concept, it would have been … interesting. But as I understand him, the Elves invented language on their own. Some other contrasts between you and Tolkien come to mind: I have this obsessive habit of dating my manuscripts. And Tolkien studies would be very different if he’d done the same. I “learned” that they were called the Fynlaren. And so they have been to me ever since. Tolkien had a hard time giving up on “Bingo” and “Trotter”. You’re fortunate.

jpantalleresco     Aug. 12th, 2007 11:37 pm (UTC)

“The pause was so long, Darael almost prodded again.” bothers me. Not because of the line itself. I get the impression you leave too much unsaid there. I get the feeling this should be a very sad scene. What is going on with Gwyric during the long pause? Why does it take so long? It feels like that line is the start of a missing paragraph, not the whole paragraph in itself. He’s reflecting on that time. What is in his eyes or face when he pauses? You don’t need a lot of detail here, exactly, but I think you need a line to showcase something is going on. Otherwise it sounds good. JP

scribblerworks     Aug. 13th, 2007 06:53 am (UTC)

Thanks, Josh! I’ll keep your observation in mind. And yes, this is part of a sad scene — only a part of it, mind. I wouldn’t want to give away too much this far in advance, but I will say that the scene takes place at night, and the “hidden listener” is in fact Gwyric’s son, Gidion. But “hidden” only in the sense of out of their sight, and supposedly sleeping. But I like your questions. They’re the kind of questions I would want a reader to be having at this moment. 😀

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Poetic Presumption

Posted on August 7, 2007 by Sarah

(This was originally published on LiveJournal)

So, I’ve mentioned this fantasy novel that I’ve hauled out of my files and am beginning to get back into working on. I suppose I could tell any readers here a bit about it as I go along on that.  Let’s start with influence: Yup, Tolkien. The whole prospect of creating an entirely separate fantastical world, with its own mythology, all that appealed to me. I’d been reading whatever mythology stuff I could get my hands on since elementary school. But Tolkien wasn’t the only influence. I’d read E.R. Eddison before I’d ever read Tolkien, and Eddison’s stately language is another influence. As is Milton and Paradise Lost. And always, especially when it comes to poetry, Shakespeare and Keats. Which brings us to my decision to include poetry in the novel.

Tolkien was very confident when he included poetry in his fiction. He liked what he wrote and he had a mastery that allowed for different types of poems for different occasions and speakers. Anyone attempting to follow in his footsteps that way was really taking a chance. Because you’d have to be able to be as versatile as Tolkien. That’s a tall order. When I began the novel, I chewed my nails a bit over this matter. Because I really liked the way the poems in The Lord of the Rings gave color to the characters and backstory. Could I pull it off?

Well, I’d never know unless I tried.

sunrise

So I decided I would indeed do it. Hopefully with the same variety that Tolkien achieved. What follows here is the first poem in the novel. Basically, it is a hymn to the sun on Midsummer morning. Now, mind you, the characters are not “sun-worshipers”. But the creation of the sun is a crucial turning point in the mythology of … hmm, my world has no name other than “my world”. Heh. And celebrating the creation of the sun at Midsummer is an important connection to the forces of good in my world. (There will be more about this when I get around to posting a poem that appears in a later chapter.)

Anyway… here it is. I’m curious about reactions to the poem, as a thing-in-itself.

Hail to thee, thou gift of Aelianus,
Light of life and flaming foe of dark!
Life-blood to earth, thou raiseth up the green grains,
quickening the fruits and bringing forth the flowers.
Though rain and nightfall gather all around us,
Thy dawn and bright beams drive out their lingering hold.

Hail to thee, thou gift of Aelianus,
Guardian and warder of the fields of blue!
At each day’s rising, victor over darkness,
Raising the hearts of all who gaze on thee!
Through all the seasons still thy course runs truly
Over the realms where Mortals live and die.

Comments

jpantalleresco     Aug. 9th, 2007 08:18 am (UTC)

Not a bad poem. You should include an author’s name at the bottom in my view and possibly a timeline when it occurred It’d add some prestige to it I think in the book. Just a thought. JP

scribblerworks     Aug. 9th, 5:18 pm (UTC)

You mean like saying “by Joshun of Galen, year 12 of the reign of Mardenvul II”? Heh. I never considered it. Mainly because in this case, this poem is something like an ancient song amongst the speaker’s people. I don’t think (within the fantasy world) that the date or author of it is known. And it is recited within the story, not “cited” in a scholarly manner. So providing a pseudo-provenance didn’t occur to me. Some of the other poems do have their “authorship” discussed in the story. (And of course, objectively speaking, I’m the only author involved. 😉 )

kalimac    Aug. 11th, 2007 04:36 am (UTC)

In Tolkien, characters reciting poems sometimes ascribe them to their fictive authors in the course of the dialog. But sometimes, just as enticingly, they do not.

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Public Commitment

Posted on June 24, 2007 by Sarah

Originally posted on LiveJournal)

Given that I have mastered the art of Procrastination, I’ve really needed to find a way to dislodge inertia. And there’s nothing like having friends nudging and holding one accountable. So I decided to take this plunge, of using a journal to talk about works-in-progress, and anything that might be connected to them. And I think I will start off by saying that after being re-inspired by a collection of online friends, I recently hauled out the manuscript for a fantasy novel that had been sitting in my files for a long time now. About half completed.

Manuscript and notes

In order to get back into the novel, I decided I needed revise the completed chapters. This actually is needful, since when I began the work, my prose tended to be a shade over-written. So paring it down, tightening it up, that’s all a good thing. And doing it this way let’s me re-familiarize myself with the characters and places. Last weekend, I was working directly from the handwritten manuscript, because the version of Chapter 2 that I had on my computer was not complete. So I finished typing in Chapter 2, and found myself getting hooked on the story.

It was a strange – but very, very satisfying – feeling. Here I was reading something I’d written years ago, and I really liked it. I’m usually too close to my work to feel certain of liking my own writing because it is really, truly good – mostly, I like my own writing because it says what I wanted it to say. So… after typing Chapter 2, I was skimming ahead in following chapters and enjoying all the elements I had been weaving into the story. I was gratified to find that in spite of my huge cast of characters, they did not all seem to run together.

I need to set myself on some sort of work schedule for the book – like saying “Polish a chapter on Mondays” or something like that. Haven’t quite figured out what that will be, given that certain social obligations are changing at present. But, having found the work to be acceptable, I’m actually getting a bit excited at the prospect of getting back into it and finishing it. Behind that, in a very slow-moving project, I’m laying the groundwork to publish as print-on-demand a long narrative poem of mine.

Most all commercial publishing arenas just don’t have any place to put a 400 plus line narrative poem in iambic pentameter blank verse. (I could do a rant about magazines that have a 20 line limit to poems they’d accept, but I won’t.) I want to have some illustrations done to go with certain passages, and I’m still doing the break-down of the text for that. This is one occasion where I would not do my own illustrations. I know my limits, and how my own artwork comes out …. and it’s not the look I want for the book. Which is an interesting feeling. There are, of course, other projects on the immediate “to do” list. But I won’t talk about them yet. Surely “going public” about these two is enough for now. Sarah.

Comments

jpantalleresco    Jul. 2nd, 2007 09:51 pm (UTC)

Just as someone who has gone on the print on demand route, the real key to doing poetry that way is to keep the look of your book consistant. Printers HATE poems that flow every direction. Your wallet will suffer immensely for it. My only other piece of advice: black and white illustrations. Go all out on your cover but make sure that your illustrations on the inside are black and white. Much much cheaper again. Good luck. I look forward to seeing your works. Later Scribbler Mr. Pants

scribblerworks     Jul. 11th, 2007 06:45 pm (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, Josh. I’d considered the black & white option, but … it’s a long narrative poem, printing it at all is a labor of love. I’ve been thinking of finding someone who can do watercolor illustrations. I want the illustrations to be a background for parts of the text. Hard to describe in words, but I know what I want. And for this, I’ll be willing to pay for it. I’m planning to post the opening lines of the work shortly. I don’t have the text with me right now, but ideally tonight, the first 40 lines or so will show up here on the Journal.

(UPDATE: 7 April 2017 – Some things continue to move slowly. Although the story of the novel has advanced from where it was ten years ago, it is still unfinished. Alas, life keeps getting in the way. But I am working my way closer to the end of the novel gradually.)

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