Where and When Does Genre Matter

In the age of the dinosaurs, when I was in college getting that eminently useful BFA in acting, we were given an assignment to write some scenes for class. The professor PILED on rules and restrictions and expectations until most of the class started squealing.  A demented grin split his grizzled white beard. "It's easier to create inside the stricture of a box than without any constraints at all," he said.

That, to me, is the definition of genre - it's a construct meant to make it easier to create, and subsequently to sell that creation. Fine. That doesn't mean that genre isn't without limitations. By definition. *Glancing at the time travel/steam punk thing staring at me from this hard drive.*

This week, you've seen arguments both for and against genre. I'm not going to pile on. I'm simply going to note that genre only matters based on where and to whom you prefer to sell a story.

Traditional publishing houses have a tendency to stick pretty tightly to genre definitions. That's a distinct marketing choice these houses have made. If you can get all the Word Whores into the same room at the same time, ask us how many of us have had rejections with some variation on the 'we don't know how to sell this' theme. That's the typical response from the big NYC publishers to stories that aren't CLEARLY one genre over another. That being said, gross generalizations always have exceptions to prove the rule and unless someone had been willing to take a chance on a story they couldn't easily classify either as fantasy or as romance, there'd be no paranormal romance. So if you dream of selling to one of the Big Six (or however many there actually are now), your best bet is to stick to genre.

However.

If your heart shrivels at the first hint of a rule about what elements belong in a story, you'll be happier subbing to small presses, e-first, e-only and indie presses. They seem less wed to strict genre categories. Your dystopian paranormal Inspirational (I dare you KAK! :D I'd totally read that if you wrote it.) would find a much warmer reception here. Go to any writerly conference and you'll hear editors from the NYC publishers say, "the small presses can take more and bigger risks." It seems to mean that crossover stories, or novels with many elements, aren't the hard sell in smaller presses than in larger, more codified ones. Happily, what we also seem to be discovering is that readers are less wed to genre definitions than the marketing teams at the Big Six have believed. Absolutely, readers want to be able to sort on things like 'romance' or 'fantasy', but clearly, few of them are going to freak out if there's a little of each in a single story.

I suspect that genre matters a whole bunch early in a writing career - you know - from the standpoint of "You have to understand the rules before you start breaking them." But once you've mastered the finer points of your chosen genre, why shouldn't you branch out a bit if that's what makes your heart sing?

For my part, I like genre because it's what I like reading. I seem to have a voice that shines in one genre above the others I've tried. Sure I write in other genres. In part because my current contract says I have to...but also because of what Linda said - keep stretching. You'll never know what you can do until you run right up against what you can't. But that doesn't mean I don't want a nice, safe writing home to go to from time to time.

So long as it's not a box I've stuck myself into to stagnate.

Mixing Genres & The Tangled Marionette

I'm not certain there are writers out there who don't mix genres. Everybody adds a little sumpinsumpin' from sumpin' else to their work, it's part of what keeps our novels ... novel.

Whatever genre-mash is concocted, I've a Super Big Rule as a writer and Top Demand as a reader:

The novel better deliver on the marketed genre's expectations. 

Your friendly Word Whores have written about those expectations before, so I won't rehash them. Sure, retailers ultimately decide where to display/list the book. However, as an author, I better be able to succinctly answer the most common question put to writers, "What kind of stories do you write?" "Plot Stew" is not an acceptable answer. "I write a little bit of this and a little bit of that," isn't going to help sell your book. You need to be able to say, "I write High Fantasy Mysteries" or "I've published a series of Amish Space Westerns."(hey, the latter could happen, right?)

If you're going to mix genres, do it well and do it for a reason. Tossing assorted genre tropes into your story may give you a lot of rope for creativity, but you're tying your hands to the expectations of readers of those genres.

Be mindful of the marionette. 

It doesn't entertain when it's tangled.

Saving Certain Genres From ... Me

Genres are, for the most part, a marketing construct rooted in readers' expectations.  As long as you write an awesome story that acknowledges the minimum expectations of the readers, then jump, jive, and wail, baby!

That minimum expectation is why I will never write ...

Inspirational.

I'm sorry. I know many of you dear darling readers are gutted by the revelation. Yes, yes, I've noticed the goodly number who look to me as a pillar of joy, hope, indeed even faith.

 ~waits for the tissues to be passed~

Yeah, I couldn't keep a straight face writing that bit.

A genre I could maybe write but only if I could swim in the advance? Anything involving the words "Sweet" or "Cozy."  Well, unless the genre is dedicated to sweet boozy drinks while curled up a cozy fire; then I'm totally your gal. Don't get me wrong, I have mad respect for the authors who excel in those genres. I just happen to get carried away with death and dismemberment.

In truth, I'm game to give most genres a try. What's the worst that could happen? Negative reviews? Rotten tomatoes at a Con? I will never, ever be hailed as the second coming of Asimov in Sci-Fi, but I wouldn't let my dunderheadedness in Applied Sciences stop me from giving it a whirl.

While Fantasy will always be the genre of my heart, I've children's books, historical romances, and even the crap-draft of an erotica thriller in the boxes under my bed.

So, to echo what Jeffe & James have said: Genres Be Damned; Just Write the Best Story You Can.  When it comes time to put on your marketing hat, remember this is a nation who made bottled water a multi-billion dollar industry. 

Lovely readers, is there a genre you would never read? For those of you who are writers, is there a genre you would never write?

Genre-curious

Genre roll call...

My first writing attempt was fantasy romance. Since I was only eight, it truly lacked on the savvy romance part. It was seven illustrated pages long. My more ambitious second try, at thirteen, was a fantasy rip off of Krull. It was about a hundred and ten pages. At eighteen I wrote another fantasy, this one more complex and actually novel length. Then came a fantasy novella, then a vampire novel set in modern times, then a 152k word epic sword and sorcery fantasy, followed by a demon in modern times novella, an urban fantasy romance with angels and demons, an urban fantasy romance with completely made up creatures, and then the published Persephone Alcmedi series which is urban fantasy with a little romance and a little smut. I'm currently working on a collaboration that is part urban fantasy, part action thriller.

You don't need a crystal ball to see my trend towards fantasy, be it urban or utter this-isn't-earth fiction. But none are repetitively the same, either.

I don't have the ammo to make a case for broad multi-genre writing. It just ain't me. But that doesn't mean I'd poo poo anyone's decision to branch out far and wide. As KAK said, genre is a construct meant to group books based on reader's expectations. It's a good thing, as I'm not often shopping for biographical vegetarian cookbooks. Seriously, the last thing I want is some bookstore getting healthy advice on a meatless lifestyle mixed in with my dystopian sci-fi.

"Wait a minute..."  **lightbulb in my head flickers**  "A whole new genre all my own."  **lightbulb flashes and goes out**  "Nevermind."

As always, the bottom line is write your story. Be brave. Try new things--that may be characters, setting, theme, POV, or genre.

I think the important thing is that YOU PUSH YOURSELF as an author. Push to learn and grow. Push to find the best carriage for your story. Your stranger in a strange land idea isn't working as a Victorian romance? Try it as an earthling-as-the-alien. Try it as runaway-princess-in-*insert the name of your made up world here*. Just never give up on yourself or your story. Keep writing. Sometimes that means unlocking self-imposed doors and stepping outside the comfort zone of your preferred genre. Even if its just a small step, it'll be one in the right direction because you'll be having a new experience. I guarantee it'll spark some creativity!

Love Me, Damn You -- Coping with Demoralization

How do I deal with demoralization as a writer?

~snort~           ~snicker~          ~rolls on floor~

Dear readers, last week I re-engaged in the great Agent Quest. Since this is not my first time into the foray, I find this week's topic a wee bit amusing. You see, my previous stories were shot down in great flaming blazes of form-rejections.

~clutches pearls~

~slaps back of hand to brow~

~nails couch landing~

The first time, I took rejection like a champ. I mean, hey, I have a lot of stories spinning through my head-space. I'll just write something else. Something different. I reminded myself the rejections weren't personal (as if any of these people knew me, psht). I pulled up a new doc and stared at the blank page one.

~blink, blink~

 ~drum, drum~

~spin, spin~

It occurred to me that maybe, just possibly, there was something "wrong" with the way I'd written my first story. I mean, I hadn't even scored a personalized rejection. No one said, "hey, your writing is great but the market's oversaturated with this genre. Sorry." So, analytical me took some classes. I worked on my craft. I learned I'd committed some fairly atrocious sins that were common among beginners. The second story I wrote committed none very few of those tell-tale crimes.

Nobody wanted Story Two.

Honestly, the second round of canned Hell-Nos was harder to accept. I'd done what I was supposed to. I'd honed my craft. It was, I felt, on par with works in print. Why didn't anybody want this story? Why couldn't I get a nibble? Thanks to the handful of professionals who taken the time to personalize their response, I learned what I'd done "wrong." What I viewed as the genre of my story was not what the professionals considered it. Sure, it had elements of Genre A, but it was far more like Genre B, a genre-pool in which they did not swim. When I submitted to folks of Genre B, they responded with "too much like Genre A, we don't want it."

~blink, blink~

 ~drum, drum~

~scowl, scowl~

Fine. Be that way. Since publishing is a game of hurry up and wait, I had written Stories Three and Four. This time, I made sure the stories fit within the tropes and expectations of a very specific genres. I chose Story Four to be the one to brave the Agent Quest again. How will it do? Too soon to tell.

I haven't gotten remotely close to the other potentially demoralizing trials of being an author -- 100 page editorial letters, scathing reviews, poor sales, dropped contracts, etc.  I'd like to think I'll cope with them in the same way I deal with rejections.

Keep Learning. Keep Writing.

There is only so much within my control.

What about you, darling readers, how do you cope with discouragement?

The Author's Contract with The Reader

I've written before about the importance of the unspoken contract between authors and readers, particularly in genre fiction, particularly if an author wants to keep -- or better still, grow -- their audience. In the past, I harped on the importance of the author delivering on the expectations the reader had based on the genre they'd chosen. Example: Readers of Romance expect a Happily Ever After (HEA) or a Happy For Now (HFN). Readers of Erotica expect explicit sex. Readers of Fantasy expect a magical or non-human element that operates within set rules. Etc.

Two, maybe three years later, and I am compelled to add a new -- yet heretofore implied -- clause to the contract between authors and readers.

 Quality.  

Thanks, Self-Publishing, for putting the spotlight back on this requirement. I'm not saying all self-published books are crap and that all traditionally published books are perfection. Far from it. In fact, the lackadaisical copy editing too often provided by publishers over the last decade is pissing off readers more than it once did. The publisher, in its role as gatekeeper, has violated their contract with the reader and the publishers are scrambling to restore lost ground. Self-published authors who consider their work ready for public consumption simply because they have a Word document and access to the Internet are in breach of contract with the readers the moment they hit "upload."

Any author, regardless of who is publishing their work, cannot -- simply cannot -- deliver a crap-draft to the public. Style and scope of a story are subjective.  If an author or publisher doesn't want to invest in a development edit, fine. Unfortunate, but fine. As long as the author has delivered on the terms of the genre and quality, the reader is far more likely to forgive. Deliver a story riddled with basic errors, and you've lost the reader permanently. Viral marketing will work against the author to more detriment than the publisher incurs. If the publisher is also the author, then the insult is two-fold. Every blip on social media promoting the PoS book is a taunt to the reader, a slap of disrespect, public mockery.

Publishers -- be they self-publishers or traditional publishers -- who invest the extra money and time delivering a story scrubbed of semantic, grammatical, and formatting errors can hold the reader-contract above their heads and shout, "Readers, I value you. I respect you, your time, and your investment in me and my work." The readers will react to that and they'll come. Sure, it may be slowly, but the audience will build. The more quality work built on the expectations of genre the author produces, the more readers will come and the more readers will share and recommend.

An author's contract with the readers is invaluable. It is the foundation of a career.

Respect the contract. 

Respect the readers.

If You Made All The Rules...

...don't break them.

When we were little, a good number of us probably wished we were older so we could make the rules instead of having to follow everyone else's.  ~huff~ ~pout~ ~scowl~ As SFF writers, we make 90% of the rules. Our worlds, our magics, our weirds.  That 10% we don't break are the genre expectations that are part of the writer-reader Contract of Expectations.

So what about that 90% that is within our grubby little grasps? I can't say it better than James did yesterday, so go read his post.

3 Beloved Fantasy Tropes

Long-time readers of this blog know I am a vocal proponent of the Contract of Expectations between author and reader. Tropes are part of what define genre expectations. How an author frames those tropes and leverages them into something interesting and compelling is a big chunk of what makes a book...good.

There are many slivers within the definitions of "trope" that bunch some boxers. Jeffe & James have already reviewed them. On the positive side, I am particularly fond of how WriteWorld carves up the differences among stereotype, archetype, and trope. Their definition of trope is: 

Tropes: Culturally-specific norms in storytelling. Tropes are cultural classifications of archetypes. There can be many tropes found under the umbrella of one archetype.

"Culturally-specific norms in storytelling." I love that. It makes me want to know more about tropes from around the world, particularly non-Western tropes.  I also wonder if there is a hashtag or a thread out there in the Diversity in Fiction discussions focusing on culturally-unique tropes.

So, all that preamble aside, my 3 Favorite Fantasy Tropes are:

1) Whelp-to-Wizard
I do have a soft spot for the nothing-special kid who becomes a kickass wielder of magics. I like to read about the trials of their education, their screw-ups and the plot-changing repercussions of said screw-ups. Pug from Feist's Magician/Riftwar series and Hyacinthe from Carey's Kushiel series are examples. Yes, even Harry Potter, but Harry was a a bit too Chosen One for me. Imagine the story from Neville Longbottom's POV, eh?

2) The Artful Conjurer of Vengeance
Probably due to my deep, deep love for the classic The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas (père), any story that holds my hand through the crafting of the perfect revenge--all meticulous detail of setting up the villains and watching them fall due to their own flaws--I wish I could find more of these. 

3) The Human God
The protagonist begins the book as an every-man and ends the story on the threshold of becoming the deity known throughout history. The prequels of the Divine, if you will. What is not to love about the well-written seemingly plausible prequel?  Epona, The Horse Goddess by Morgan Llywelyn and Red Branch (the stories of Cuchaulainn) also by Morgan Llywelyn.

There you have them, dear reader, my favorite fantasy tropes. If you have any recommendations, let me know!

Genre Synthesis

If the story type you automatically gravitate towards is provided within the same parameters (formula) over and over and over, you might find comfort in repeatedly having your expectations met but unchallenged. Or you might find your satisfaction is waning as you recognize the predictable beats and dub them stale.

I recently watched some reruns of an old sitcom I loved as a kid. Then, I could watch one after another and be utterly entertained by the wacky plots, but now I found it tedious, boring, and juvenile. (No it was not intended for children.) Growing up, thirty years of life experience and exposure to other more dramatic shows has made me a more savvy and demanding viewer.

Seems logical to assume that readers get similarly savvy and demanding.

As an author, IMHO, you should be challenging yourself with each new story. Your abilities should be growing and you should want to show them off. Readers may dig it; readers may reject it. The Almighty Sales will speak with a voice like thunder and motivate your publisher. You may have to flaunt these shiny new skills within the construct of publisher expectations or give up your notion of receiving funds from their coffers and having their logo on your book spine...but if its a great story, why would they restrict you?

All the 'great' stories I can think of, in books, on the silver and small screens, have one thing in common: diversity.

RECIPE: Take one plot with heart, add: action, characters I can get attached to (invariably taking big risks). Steep these in some element of mystery or the unknown that the character must uncover, and sprinkle with romance. Add heat and brew into a cohesive tale.

So challenge yourself! You do something you haven't done before. Maybe you swan dive into another genre like the ambitious Monday Man-whore Moore. (FYI, that is not a character besmirching statement--he is a fine chivalrous gentleman, but he blogs Mondays, is a man, and we are word-whores.) Maybe you test the waters by invoking some suspense and mild horror into your usual Urban Fantasy. Maybe you slip a little romance and mystery into your Sci-fi.  (Mind the rules KAK provided yesterday.)

Try mingling those genre flavors into a medley that works for both your particular tastes and the demands of your story. The concoction may not be for you, and then again, that mishmash may be the best thing ever.

"Anachronisms" in Fantasy - Keeping It Real

My mom sent me these gorgeous flowers last week to celebrate that THE TALON OF THE HAWK, book 3 in The Twelve Kingdoms series, received  Top Pick from RT Book Reviews. That makes two Top Picks and a Top Pick GOLD for this trilogy, which is just...I can't even express how validating this is. They said:

“The saga of The Twelve Kingdoms returns in grand style! It takes a great deal of trust for Ursula to accept that Harlan is interested in her as a woman; his position as a mercenary means he’s skilled at playing courtly games. She’s always possessed a physical strength, so it’s beautiful to watch her accept her own personal power, as a woman and as a daughter of Salena, even when her stubbornness gives you fits. Harlan is her perfect match because his talent at observation allows him to see beyond the tough warrior image she employs to avoid showing her feelings. This is a complex world full of danger, subterfuge and secrets with empowering female characters who are not afraid to fight for their future.”– RT Book Reviews, 4.5 Stars Top Pick

It's so wonderful when someone GETS exactly what you're trying to do with a book. Especially when not everyone does. I'm writing in this odd cross-section of fantasy and romance. It makes me happy and it's exactly where I want to be, but I sometimes run afoul of the genre expectations of both sides of the fence.

But mainly from the fantasy folks.

Because, let me tell you: the sci fi/fantasy (SFF) folks have RULES. It surprises me less coming from the sci fi contingent. A lot of those readers and writers are also scientists and engineers. I've spent much of my life working with both and I know the mindsets. Very much about linearity and sticking precisely - even pedantically - to the rules.

I'm just so not a rules kind of gal.

Really, it's not that I can't. It's that I don't want to. An attitude the pedants don't care for at all. So, you know, I get what I gets.

Which is criticism for using anachronistic language in my fantasy romances. I've seen less enthused reviews for this series calling out phrases like "national security" and "fan club" as anachronistic. Um, okay. Because, this is MY fantasy world, right? I'm careful not to use tech-related metaphors in my non-tech world. No electric shocks or going off like bombs. But how can those phrases be anachronistic when they're drawn from basic words that WOULD have meaning in that world?

It is apropos, however, of this week's topic Realism in SFF: trying to maintain the suspension of disbelief. The argument, I suppose, would be that these phrases are ones that readers attach with modern, popular culture and they thus feel jerked out of the alternate world, losing that lovely suspension of disbelief. It could also be argued that this is a voice thing. I *like* tossing in more current language, to mix things up. But then, I also believe in adopting the slang and alternative usages in our ever-evolving language, where I know many people believe in clinging to some kind of "pure" concept of what is and is not correct.

(Frankly I fall in with those who feel the concept of correct or pure English is a fallacy. Languages by their nature evolve with use, changing to fit the needs of the speakers and listeners. English, in particular, partly because it's the language of technology which is changing at a rapid rate.)

The suspension of disbelief is important, but what is "real"? The word "club" goes back to the 1600s. "Fan" goes back to the 1800s and is a shortening of "fanatic," which goes back to the 1500s. Put together, the phrase dates back to 1930. "National" and "security" are likewise words from the 1500s, put together sometime in the early 1900s. I could see that, okay, those are usages that came into play after the Industrial Revolution.

But, at what point do I draw historical line? After all, in Chaucer's day, "nice" meant "stupid" - not at all how we use it today. When Norman Mailer coined the term "factoid," he very deliberately meant it to convey a fabricated statement. Now our government websites use it to mean a small fact. An irony lost on many.

I think one could go crazy, trying to parse all of this. And is it worth it? Suspending disbelief for the reader: Yes. Totally worth it. Appeasing those who hold to what seems to me to be an arbitrary set of rules? Eh. Yes, Tolkein wrote great fantasy. I read them all, even THE SILMARILLION. But I don't think that this is some sort of academic standard to which we all must adhere. Language changes. Genre changes. If we don't play with the rules, how can we be creative?

What do you all think - am I crazy here?

Partial Assimilation

By KAK   

Assimilation: a notion intellectually revolting yet socially necessary (as Laura explained yesterday). Why do we, as a culture, say we resist it when our actions prove otherwise? Is it a learned fear of Hive Mind? Is our desire for individuality innate? Can we be led by the nose into the homogenization of beauty, value, and ethics yet instinctively rebel when left to our own devices?

You bet your bippy.

Novelists are too familiar with the dichotomy. Every genre has a set of reader expectations that shape rules to which a writer must conform in order to have repeat customers. As a consumer, when I buy a romance, I expect at least two protagonists to develop a symbiotic relationship that leads to a happy ending.  When I purchase a thriller, I expect a protagonist, an antagonist, and imminent peril. To fulfill the expectations, the successful author assimilates these rules, and in so doing becomes assimilated by the writer and reader communities.

Logical, right? Reasonable, even.

Why then do so many authors fight it? Because they are ar-tee-sts? No. They rebel when subjective preferences are masked as rules – be it in structure or content. No head-hopping is a subjective preference. Proper punctuation is a rule. Cock and cunt in Erotica is a subjective preference. Science in Sci-Fi is a rule. Among the writing community there are the clashing views that those who follow all the subjective preferences are formulaic and those who break all the rules are troglodytes.  

It’s reflective of our society over all.

Those who follow all the rules are dismissed as mindless. Those who excel know which rules are actually subjective preferences. Those who win know which deviations enhance the Contract of Expectations.

Assimilation isn't bad, but resisting it is futile.

Which POV Is Right...For Me?

Point(s) of View, the POV, the biggest decision a writer has to make before actually writing that first page.

For me, it's not a hard decision. Since I don't write instruction manuals or Choose Your Adventure books, I don't use Second Person (see James's article from yesterday for the definitions).  I write in Limited Third Person, some might say "deep POV." It's not the "I, Me" of First Person, but has the same constraints of the story being told from how the protagonist perceives the world.

Why Limited instead of Omniscient? High Fantasy often uses The All-Knowing Narrator, so I wouldn't be breaking the Contract of Expectations with readers if I chose Omniscient. The reason I choose Limited is because it is intimate. It more easily allows the reader to become the character. And, frankly, allows me, as the writer, to stay in my protagonist's headspace. To remain true to her motivations, actions, and reactions.

I have Under the Bed books written in First Person--one an Epic Fantasy, and more than one Urban Fantasy. At the time I wrote the books, First Person was a "must" for Urban Fantasy. There were whispers about that spreading into the Epic genre, so I gave it a go. (No wonder it's languishing in the dark with dust bunnies!) But trends changed and sub-sub-genres emerged. Industry pros relented in their fervent demands, and now the sub-sub-genres are a mix of First and Third POVs.

For now, my creativity is firmly seated in the High Fantasy sub-genre, so my stories will continue to be written in Third Person Limited.  What will likely change from one series to the next is the number of POVs in each book. Don't worry, dear readers, I'm a fervid believer in head-hopping being a literary sin.

To Trope, Or Not To Trope

Tropes

Tropes is another word for cliches. Know why cliches exist? Because they have an element of truth to them. Lots of stories involve the Nerd: male or female, very studious, often shy, almost guaranteed to be skinny and bespectacled or pudgy and wearing braces. Know why? Because every person who has gone to school in any area that is even moderately civilized has run across a nerd. (Moderate civility could be considered an important aspect here, because without that civilization and a touch of technology, we are left without the glasses or the braces, and because nerds are, by the nature the Outsider and Outsiders often die quickly or are crushed beneath the heels of the strong in areas without civility.)

You know why so many writers include a nerd? because they can relate. We are, by and large, book nerds. if we were not, we would n to be writing and reading as voraciously as we do.

Now that we know what tropes are (by my personal definition), let's move on, shall we?

Sword and Sorcery Tropes:

Swords--Weird, huh? Swords show up in most Sword and Sorcery and do so prevalently. The type of sword often varies, and in a few cases there ARE no swords. Instead we get axes, spears and the occasional mace. But the idea is the same. There are large bladed weapons, normally wielded by the sort of guy you never, ever want to meet in a dark alley and most often would cross the street to get away from.

Sorcery--Well, come on now! If you're gonna have a mean fighter, now and then there has to be a challenge. The average dude with an axe has no chance, so now we need a sorcerer or two. They are, as a rule. dark and sinister and full of hatred and greed. If not, what good are they?

Damsels--of COURSE there are damsels. Depending on who you talk to the Sword & Sorcery genre is loaded with the most stereotypes. Every cover has a scantily clad woman cringing at the edge of the cover and the Big Dude With The Sword standing between her and the monster/demon/dark knight summoned by the Sorcerous Bad Guy.

There. three tropes.

Except, like most every other genre, those three still exist but have changed over the years.

Damsels-Mark Two: A handful of names come to mind for most people and chief among them is Red Sonya. Despite her tendency to run around in a metal bikini, she's tough as nails and a superior warrior. Note please, that I did not say Robert E. Howard's Red Sonja, because the man who created Conan did not, in fact, create that most popular of female sword-wielding bad asses. In fact, comic book writer Roy Thomas created her. But because she was created as a part of the Conan Comics and those comics are owned by the licensors, she was swallowed into the Howard Estate. Howard himself created Red Sonya )Note the difference in spelling) and Valeria and the pirate Belit, three tough customers, but did not create the red-maned menace of a thousand men.

Fun article on the notion of S &S Damsels can be found here.

A few you should look up if you want to see well-done female leads in Sword & Sorcery include C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry. Very likely the first ever main female character in a S & S setting, which is fitting as C.L. Moore was a female writer who wanted a strong female lead.

Marsheila Rockwell's Shaala. Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Tomoe Gozen (A samurai), Andrew J. Offutt and Richard K. Lyon's Captain Tiana of Reme (another redhead, this time a pirate but decidedly a tough one) from the War of the Wizards series. Joe Abercrombie's Monza Murcatto is one of the darkest heroines I've ever read and the story is not cheerful, but, damn, that is a fabulous character. There are plenty more and I can even throw myself a bone because several readers have told me how much they like Swech of the Sa'ba Taalor from my Seven forgers series. There is nothing of distress when it comes to that particular damsel. There are plenty more, of course. That is quite literally just the tip of the iceberg and I can safely say a few of my floor attendees at the here brothel could chime in with a character or two (and are encouraged to do so!).

Sorcery-Mark One: Sorcery is, by the standard tradition of the books, evil in nature. Remarkably few wizards in most Sword & Sorcery books are on the side of good. Why? because they must make sacrifices to the dark powers in order to gain  their power, and that means they are, by their nature, rather on they selfish side and a bit greedy with whatever power they can achieve. There are exceptions, of course, but not all that many.

But, Jim, what about Gandalf? What of Merlin?

I said Sword & Sorcery, that's slightly different from most fantasy (excluding only Grimdark, which is like S & S on crack and with a very negative attitude.). We're talking the sort of bad guys that Conan ran across, and Solomon Kane, and Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser. Those guys NEVER ran across happy,c cheerful magic wielders. They ran across megalomaniacs bent on revenge, power and ending entire nations in a seething tide of blood, fire and disease.

Swords-Mark Two: There are swords and then there are SWORDS. One of the tropes played with most often involves WEAPONS OF POWER. Anyone can wield a sword. Some better than others. And then, we have weapons of power. Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone was a powerful sorcerer in his own right, but he was also a man born with a few health issues. His albinism was one sign of the troubles he suffered and in order to win back his empire from his cousin, he sought and found a powerful weapon, a short sword called Stormbringer, which quite literally ripped the souls out of the people it killed and fed part of the power it stole into its weirder. Suddenly, Elric the meek became Elric the feared. His sorcery and his skill with a sword were impressive before but after claiming the sword he became a true terror. Not at all surprisingly, his story ends unhappily. Great fun for the readers, not so much for Elric.

The One Ring: Like I said, the Lord of the Rings is not Sword & Sorcery, per se. It does NOT follow all of the tropes, and in fact the most powerful weapon in the whole of Middle Earth is a ring meant to bind all under the servitude of the Dark Lord Sauron. If you don't know that story by now, you should just go to the store right now and either rent the movies or better still read the amazing books by J. R.R. Tolkien. from this wellspring most of the waters fantastic do flow.

David Gemmell's seminal character Druss does not weird a sword. he swings an axe called Snaga the Sender, and wields it very well indeed. One of the fun parts of the tales is the question of exactly whether or not Snaga is truly a mystical weapon or Druss is really that fierce in combat.

Three tropes, all with different takes. My favorite thing about chinches are as follow: 1) They are shorthand for elemental truths. 2) The truth, however solid it might seem, is more than mere fact. By that I mean a nerd in a story is a nerd, but that doesn't mean said character cannot be strong, brave and heroic. A sword officially only exists to kill (or possibly coronate) but the reason that sword is wielded and how well it is handled can make or break a story and a world. Damsels might be female, but that does not mean they are delicate.

Ultimately tropes are starting points, short cuts, if you will, to help the writer shape a tale and to help a reader identify with the same. Take away each and every trope and what you get for your trouble is a longer story that likely will not meet expectations.

James A. Moore

And here we have three tropes for the price of one: Sword, Sorcery (I feel safe in assuming that background implies same) and Damsel.

Worst Writing Advice

by KAK  

Top 5 Worst Bits of Writing Advice:

1. Write What You Know -- Gods help us, the aliens really have taken over the White House, Nostradamus is a zombie, and England is being overrun by Dukes.We don't talk about Maine. NOBODY MENTION MAINE.
2. Writing is like painting, one must copy the masters to become a master -- Pretty sure that's called plagiarism. Teachers know to copy and paste chunks of their student's papers into the search engines to check for such "practice." (We won't mention the oopsies that snuck by the publishers since the advent of the internet and web search engine.)
3. No Adverbs, Adjectives, or Complex Sentence Structure -- Apparently, the majority of Americans didn't pass 3rd grade English. See Spot read.
4. Dumb it Down / Don't Make the Reader Think Too Hard -- Right. We wouldn't want it to be known that reading could make you smarter. We get all the vocabulary we need from video games. That ability to connect the dots? Psht. That only applies to actual dots. On a tablet screen.
5. Break All The Rules -- When I grow up, I want to be internationally known as a douche. I'll show the business-side of publishing my mad genius by refusing to follow submission guidelines, meet deadlines, or accept editorial input. I'll amass hordes of fans by ignoring consumer-expectations of the genre and blurring the lines by calling my work of fiction non-fiction.

The best bit of writing advice I've received? If you read Jeffe or James's posts this week, then it isn't going to be a surprise.

WRITE.

 (and stay off the internet until you've reached your daily word-count goal)

Who Are Your Influences?

So, whenever that question pops up, I can't help but think of Jimmy Rabbit, trying vainly to hold auditions for the Hardest Working Soul Band in Dublin.

It's funny, because when I think about the books that influenced me, I'm kind of at a loss.  I mean, nothing that I read in my youth really match what I write.  I cite Zilpha Keatly Snyder and David Eddings as influences, and it's true.  They both opened my idea of what fantasy could be, and more specifically what it didn't have to be.  

That was important, because on some level I was always dissatisfied with the trappings of 'traditional' fantasy.  Even though Eddings fits in that category, it did it in a way that defied my earlier expectations.  Both Green-Sky and The Belgariad showed me that Fantasy didn't have to fit neatly into the genre boxes.  

I'm kind of thrilled that there is such a wealth of fantasy nowadays that doesn't fit neatly into the boxes.  The stuff that's proliferating today is exactly the sort of thing I craved back in the day.  And I'm glad to be a part of that.  Because the stuff I'm writing is, to a large degree, the sort of thing I wanted to read back then.

Hopefully that will influence some writer of tomorrow.

Respecting the Building Blocks

About a year ago, I was on one panel, and my initial response to a audience member's question was, "That's a bad cliché that gets overdone."   After a bit more discussion, I said, "I want to amend what I said earlier.  I should say that it's a common trope that's easy to do badly."

Because you can't hate on genre tropes.  They're the building blocks of all the storytelling points we work with.  Sure, some of them have been done to death, and yes, a lot of times they signpost where a story is going so perfectly that you could write an accurate summary of the whole things after just getting through the first quarter of it.

But that's all right.  Because the other side of using tropes is finding ways to subvert or tweak them, or combine them in new ways.

After all, using tropes is often the easiest way to describe our stories.  I had to embrace The Thorn of Dentonhill being called "Harry Potter As Batman", or A Murder of Mages being referred to as a "fantasy novel buddy cop movie".  Both descriptions tells you, quite simply (though perhaps too simply) what you're going to get and what to expect.  

And our best use of tropes, as storytellers, is using them to both manage and subvert expectations.  Stay on the path too narrowly, audience gets bored; deviate too wildly, audience gets lost.  

All right, time to head into the word mines.  See you down there.

No One Will Hear You Scream

Everyone has had uncanny experiences in life, right? These are the situations or occurrences that leave you shivering with dread or talking about how creeped out you are even if there’s a rational explanation for what happened. For some people, it’s watching medical shows on TV. For others, it’s laying on the grass of the front lawn one summer evening and seeing something in the night sky that shouldn’t have been possible. Yes. A hasty retreat was beat into the confines of the house. It’s possible the blankets were also pulled waaaaay up over this person’s head for the night, too.

It seems that fear is universal among the human species, something I learned after reading one science book too many. Apparently, scientists showed pictures of faces displaying fear (eyes wide, eye brows up, etc) to people across cultures. No one was confused about what emotion they were seeing. Even infants as young as four months (possibly earlier, but I guess that’s tough to prove) can recognize and respond to these fear cues in the faces they see. From an evolutionary standpoint, and in the interests of not becoming some cheetah’s chew toy, fear makes all kinds of sense. Meaning there’s some really rich ground for story tellers to exploit.

Look at the first Alien movie. I hold this one up for your horror genre consideration because it’s the only ‘horror’ movie I’ve ever managed to watch and enjoy. This analysis will contain spoilers. So if you’ve been living under a rock and didn’t already know everything there is to know about the movie from pop culture references, go get the movie from Netflix or something. Make spaghetti for dinner that night. Turn off all the lights. Watch the movie. We’ll wait. You’re welcome. Never eat pasta again? You didn’t really need the carbs anyway.

What makes Alien work? After all, you don't really see anything bad happen to anyone but Kane (the guy with the face hugger and the subsequently fatal case of alien indigestion). Here's a partial break it down.

1.       Something unusual happens – these people are awakened from hibernation when they shouldn’t have been. They expected to wake up and be home. Instead, they wake up to realize they’re in the freaking middle of nowhere, nearly a year’s flight time from earth. And it’s all because of a signal the ship’s computer picked up – a signal that indicates someone’s been here before them.

2.       Isolation – while the crew of the Nostromo have one another, the seven of them are completely cut off from the rest of humanity. They can phone home all they like; help is at least a year away. That sense of being utterly cut off is intensified, first by the fact that this crew isn’t united, and second, by the fact that they’re picked off one by one.

3.       Hostile environment – deep space doesn’t like humans much. Vacuum is damned unforgiving. While the crew and the ship seem rock solid and reliable, in watching these people suit up in space suits, or detach the tug for a trip away from the rest of the ship, most of us are very aware that the crew are one minor accident away from disaster. (Not to mention that in horror movies, whenever you split the party, you know it’s bad news.)

4.       Dark, the inexplicable, dead bodies, foreboding – the entire scene sequence of investigating the crash site, the discovery of the fossilized body, and the egg chamber touch on several primal fears: solitude (Kane is alone when he drops into the egg chamber), darkness, the dead body in the cockpit, and the things that go bump in the night – namely the alien in the egg that moves when Kane shines his light through the egg and the fact that the landing party cannot possibly identify any of what they’re looking at. Add into that the fact that Ripley decodes the signal that brought them to investigate only to find it *wasn’t* an SOS – it was a warning and she can’t get through to the team inside the wreck to tell them to get the heck out.

5.       Unfulfilled expectations – Alien did this brilliantly. At every juncture, you know something bad could happen. You brace. Nothing bad happens. You relax. But you don’t relax back down to your starting point. You brace again for the next possible bad thing. Rinse, repeat in a rising cycle of tension. Alien puts you through the rinse, repeat cycle an amazing number of times before an alien breaks out of an egg, melts Kane’s faceplate and melds to his face. You’re all ‘something bad happened, I can relax now’, except Kane’s not dead. And he’s being carried back to the ship where he’ll get medical treatment. Uh oh. It wasn’t a bad enough bad thing, was it?

6.       Precious little blood shed – in this movie, there aren’t buckets of blood. There’s one scene of bloodshed. Poor Kane. After the face hugger drops way, dead and Kane is revived, everyone finds out he’s merely a host for an alien baby that hatches by exploding out of his chest. If I remember correctly, this is the only time you watch someone die in this movie – sketchy on this point, though, so feel free to correct me. From a story telling and psychological standpoint, you don’t need to see anyone else die because you know the stakes and they are messy. Most people I know say the worst part of the movie is near the end, when the only other female crew member is under attack and screaming. Her shrieks stop in mid-scream. Chilling.

7.       You never get a clear view of the threat – admittedly, you never get a clear view of the alien because the director didn’t want to give away seven foot guy in a mask – but this bit of cinematic trickery works on a psychological level because you’re never allowed to face your fear head on and come to terms with it. And what the human brain isn’t allowed to study and catalog, it approximates, filling in all kinds of possible details, in this case, each worse than the last.

Granted, you’re not setting out to rewrite Alien, but the techniques the movie used translate into any kind of story that requires a bit of scary. So go wandering through the Doomwood Horror forest, armed with the knowledge that you're all alone out there in the dark. Good luck. Hope your flashlight battery holds.