I recently read that George R. R. Martin (who wrote Game of Thrones) described himself as a writer of the Gardener Type. He considers that there are two sorts of writers, the Architects, and the Gardeners, and that he belongs to the latter category.
All right! I was struggling to describe how I wrote, and this is the perfect description!
I wrote that what I do is create a character, and then other characters, and follow them around, seeing what they do, and reporting on the action! Read the article at the link above, to see why he calls J. K. Rowling an architect.
Gardeners, in contrast,
". . . dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it," [Martin] told the Guardian. "They kind of know what seed it is, they know if [they] planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows."
Gosh. I have to agree that his is a more poetic description of a procedure that is ultimately essentially the one I follow. And this is given as the reason why it takes so long for stories to get completed. When Martin says that he has to wait to see how the tree grows, because of the way his "seed" has been constructed, there are some characteristics that are built-in. The circumstances of course cannot be built-in.
In the interests of complete disclosure, I have to reveal that I have not read a single book of Mr. Martin's; nor have I watched any of the TV episodes (or movies, or whatever).
Meanwhile, I was introduced to a writer called Sarah J. Maas, who has an enormous following. She says she started writing in high school, and kept writing all through college, until her first novel: Throne of Glass, was published, and became a blockbuster. (My antivirus says this is not a safe link; I'm not sure what the problem is.)
The title reveals how much George RR Martin has been an influence on Sarah J. Maas's generation. But generally speaking, the feudal world is attractive to romantic souls, because of the mystique of the nobles and royals. To authors, the powers of discretion, the ability to act without being hindered, those are also attractive, because otherwise the hero gets stymied by rules and regulations and lack of funds at every turn.
There is a crazy series of books about a young hero named Artemis Fowl, whose author goes in a different direction: the books are set in the present day, but the hero is impossibly rich, and his mother is impossibly easy to trick into letting him having his way! (My problem with the hero's first name is that it is the name of a female, and the last name is sort of bird-like.)
Alexandra
Alexandra
One of the few stories I wrote about a queen is Alexandra. It is sort of very unimaginative steam-punk; in fact, when I started writing the story, I did not even know of the existence of the genre. (Apparently I was writing in a genre called Victorian—which might need an extra word in front, to distinguish it from actual Victorian.)
Spoiler alert: I must have been so unhappy with the fact that I had selected a queen as my protagonist that I made circumstances make her almost powerless. As a result, the plot becomes almost bafflingly interesting; I could not have consciously dreamed up that plot if I had written in the architectural style, as GRR Martin describes. That's just the first half of Alexandra. The second half is pure self-gratification, on my part. Well, read it; it's completely free, as of date of writing.
Prisoner!
Prisoner!
This one is set in an alternate universe, in a late Bronze Age. (Steel had not been discovered yet. Many great romances are set just at the period when steel weapons are first discovered, and magical properties are attributed to steel swords, for instance.) Anyway, the main protagonist, Maia, is a young girl taken prisoner in a war, and brought back (with hundreds of other slaves) with the conquering army. She is taken to be the personal slave of one of the two royal princesses, and a tortured romance develops between Maia and her mistress. There are some particularly fantastic elements to this story, which I will not disclose at this point.
The other stories are set in the present, or at least the late Eighties, before cellphones were common. (Cellphones change the conditions of the stories in confusing ways.
An interesting feature of fantasy novels is the fact that many successful novels of this kind end up being series. Some authors, perhaps, hope that their story will be adapted into a television series, or perhaps into movies. I think, rather, that because these fantasy stories require a certain amount of work in creating the Worlds in which they take place; once that World is constructed, it seems a terrible waste to set only a single story in it. This is true of J. K. Rowling's World of Harry Potter; Tolkien's World of Middle Earth; the World of Star Wars; the World of Game of Thrones—it probably has some name; the World of Star Trek, and so on. Even Sarah J. Maas's World has given rise to close to a score of books. Philip Pullman's World of His Dark Materials is particularly interesting, because it is a many-worlds parallel worlds world, where you can cut an opening from one world into another. So is S.J.Maas's World, and many other fantasy Worlds, but unlike in these other Worlds, a lot of the action (of Golden Compass / Dark Materials) takes place in several of the alternative worlds in Pullman's fantasy, which begins with The Golden Compass. I did not mean to leave out Discworld, in which the stories of Terry Pratchett take place. And how could I forget?: PERN, the World of the Dragon stories of Anne mcCaffrey, and Darkover, the World of the Darkover novels of Marion Zimmer Bradley.
Though GRR Martin describes the seed he plants in very general terms, I have confessed that the seed I plant is a set of interesting characters. I'm not sure how much detail goes into the characters who are parts of Martin's seed, but the character of Helen, for instance, in Helen stories, is based on a fantasy character whom I imagined long ago, when I was day-dreaming, as a sort of imaginary friend, or an imaginary person I wanted to be. All the things Helen could do were all the things I wanted to do. I could actually do some of those things, and most of them pretty poorly, but Helen could do them beautifully. I can flop around in the water, but Helen can swim for miles without tiring. I can't dance at all, but Helen can dance like an angel. So that sort of shows you why Helen is the way she is. I find it difficult to resist temptation; Helen finds it impossible! (At the outset.)
Unlike me, Helen is an awesome teacher!
[By the way, I have started a story about a middle-aged English college professor approaching burnout, confused by a couple of relationships with other women which are becoming alarmingly intimate. So far, it's got—let me go look—32,000 words, and it is all about relationships and feelings. This is about the point at which a plot will have to rear its ugly head… ]
[By the way, I have started a story about a middle-aged English college professor approaching burnout, confused by a couple of relationships with other women which are becoming alarmingly intimate. So far, it's got—let me go look—32,000 words, and it is all about relationships and feelings. This is about the point at which a plot will have to rear its ugly head… ]
This was not intended to be very insightful or very long; I just wanted to mention Sarah J. Maas, in case I had more insights about her in the future. I have finished the story Throne of Glass, and I have several more books by her from the local library, which I must either read, or give back promptly. The main protagonist, Celaena, is very young: 18 or so, and there are two heroes that she is drawn to, and who are attracted to her. The author is, even at the end of the story, keeping her options open, which annoyed me! Also, the dialog is snappy in the style of present-day speech—which is what we got in Star Wars, if you think about it; "I've got a bad feeling about this..." etc—which doesn't work for a story in a feudal environment. But I get the feeling that the non-snappy dialog in my stories probably turns away a lot of young readers. Well, that's all for now, folks.
Addendum: I am at about the quarter point of another story titled Heir of Fire in Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass cycle. I must say that the writing in this story is many steps superior to that in Throne of Glass. [I apologize for the critical tone of that remark, but this is my blog, and I can venture opinions about other authors, even those who have plotting skills greatly superior to mine!!]
This is where J.R.R. Tolkien, and Richard Wagner, and even J.K.Rowling have been such a great influence on us. The names of the characters simply must be convincing, and they must be cleverly chosen to convey implications about rank, and origin, and role. In the case of Rowling and the Wizarding World, Rowling simply gives her characters funny names, like Mundungus Fletcher, which are quite unjustified, but she gets away with it because—who knows the meaning of Wizarding traditions, anyway? But Ms. Maas has cleverly latched on to the cultural peculiarity of Elves and their ilk, that they often have many names. So a poorly chosen name can be quickly replaced by something more appropriate, when the character is revealed to be, well, something unusual or special. In principle, the name of the character could be changed numerous times, as a sequence of stunning revelations about him or her are made! (We have George Lucas doing the same thing with Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader.)
Kay
