Category Archive for ‘opinion’ rss

Ye Olde Middle Booke Syndrome

April 24th, 2008 • 15 Comments

Too long has it been, good friends, since I girded my loins (whatever that means), unsheathed my mighty blade, bestrid my charger, and rode forth from my shining citadel to do righteous battle against the forces of evil. Well, not evil in the strictest sense, perhaps, but people who criticise me, anyway, which is the closest thing to pure evil abroad in the world today, in my book. What’s that you say? Yours too? Ah, you stand among the righteous! Let me now, then, strike a blow for noble souls everywhere by letting fall like the hammer of God my well-deserved wrath upon those who had anything but the most sycophantic praise for my middle book, Before They are Hanged.

There are, of course, many sensible, intelligent, cultured, and attractive people out there who love The Blade Itself and its sequel unreservedly as though ’twere their own flesh. There are, believe it or not, a couple of neanderthal losers who hated the first book and hence got no further, but, really, who cares what they think?

But there are also some enigmas. Some human riddles. Folks who evidently missed the point the first time round, but got it the next time. Still more bizarre, plenty who loved the first book but were less impressed with the second. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not enough to simply scream, “insanity!” and call for the brain doctors, for I’m reasonably sure that at least some of these people function in real life almost as normal individuals. We need to find out what’s going on here, for it may be possible that some among them can be saved.

An accusation often used in these somewhat disappointed-sounding reviews is that of “middle book syndrome”. What is this syndrome, and wherefore comes it? Does it turn your brain spongey, like Creutzveldt-Jakob Syndrome? Is it something terrible but that can be survived with the proper treatment, like Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome? Might it even burn a hole straight through the earth, like The China Syndrome?

My dictionary which I use to look up words that I don’t know what I may seem right cleverer than others defines a syndrome as: “any combination of signs and symptoms that are indicative of a disease or disorder.” What, then, are the observed symptoms of Middle Book Syndrome? In particular, from my point of view, what symptoms of malaise does Before They are Hanged exhibit?

I must admit I’ve always been surprised by the diagnosis, because I felt myself that Before They are Hanged was a big improvement pretty much across the board (not that the first book isn’t fantastic, of course, if you haven’t bought it you really should, it’ll change your life etc.) I feel on re-reading that I’m happier with the prose in the second book, in general, though a couple of scenes I’d tinker with now. The pace seems much faster, much more directed, I like the way the different plots inter-relate, peak at different moments or at the same time. It all feels much more fluid to me than the first book, where I was still working out a lot about the characters, the story, and just how to do it. That and simply, with a lot of the setup of characters and settings done, I felt free to get into the story more thoroughly, explore some of the relationships between the characters, broaden the scale to some bigger events, some bigger set-piece battles and adventures and so on. My Mum agrees, incidentally, and she’s always right.

I mean to say, was I not crowned most improved writer of 2007 by Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, with a soaring increase in my scores from a miserable 7.5/10 for The Blade Itself to a resplendent 7.5/10 for Before They are Hanged? Did Publisher’s Weekly not consider my first book “a muddled sword and sorcery … marred by repetitive writing and an excess of torture and pain” but my second a “grim and vivid sequel that transcends its middle volume status … suffused with a rich understanding of human darkness and light”?

Well is it better or isn’t it? Can I not get just one straight answer? Let us see…

Robert, of Fantasy Book Critic, though undoubtedly liking the series, definitely detected a whiff of the dreaded syndrome about Before They are Hanged. He still loves the characters, but he thought the plot had somewhat run out of steam:

“Unfortunately, Before They Are Hanged did not impress me as much and largely that’s a result of being a middle volume. In other words, not much happens … Thankfully the characterization was even stronger than it was last time, so even though the story was disappointing, I still had a blast … [the characters] are unquestionably the strength of the novel – and the trilogy as a whole so far – but the lackluster plot kept me from enjoying the sequel as much as I did The Blade Itself.”

So it was a lack of action, or perhaps of resolution, that was the problem? The middle book of a trilogy contains neither the excitement of new beginnings, or the satisfaction of closure, it’s … the other bit. But in this era of 7, 10, 12 volume mega-sequences, does that mean we are doomed to 5, 8, 10 sub-par linking tomes? Perhaps, perhaps it does, alac the heavy day. But what’s this? Larry of Wotmania fame, had the opposite reaction. He thought the plotting in Hanged was much improved but had problems with the characterisation:

“The choppiness of the first book has been smoothed out and the action develops nicely. There are scenes full of great dramatic tension, but ultimately the uneven characterization and the over-reliance upon cynical takes on stock characters makes for a story whose promise remains somewhat unfulfilled.”

The characters, are the problem, then? Familiarity breeds contempt, and so forth. They’ve got worse, or at least, not better, and therefore stale? John Enzinas, at SFSite, certainly detected such a ‘going off’:

“The world history is fascinating and the descriptions of both the settings and the fights are wonderful. The characters, however, are limp and listless, like vegetables left too long in the fridge. They’ve lost the crispness and freshness they had when we first saw them … It’s clearly a bridging book, meant to get the characters in position for the final act, and this it does admirably. I just wish that the author had taken a little bit more time with it and maintained the level of craft that he managed with his first book.”

Curse my lack of craft! My characters too long in the salad drawer, damn them! But then Monsters and Critics , unmoved by the first book, appear to say the exact opposite, focusing their pleasurable surprise on my wonderfully improved characterisation:

“Where many of the characters in the first book seemed stiff and contrived, here they become dynamic, well-developed personalities struggling to survive the trials of the day … If Abercrombie continues this pattern of improvement, he will undoubtedly become a major voice in the fantasy genre.”

So it’s a problem with characters, or plotting, or possibly a bit of both, or the pace is too fast, or too slow, or maybe there is no problem and I’m way better than I used to be, cos the first book was rubbish. Hmmm. Certainly the specific symptoms of the syndrome are difficult to get a handle on. I’m being unfair, of course, because who said critics have to agree with each other? But from my point of view some consensus would be interesting, perhaps even educational, and hey, i
t’s a blog, who said I have to be fair? Let us delve further, then. Siobhan Carroll at Strange Horizons very much liked the first book, but had a different take on mild disappointment with the second:

“Before They Are Hanged lacks the polish of Abercrombie’s previous novel, The Blade Itself. That book mixed the pared-down prose of hard-boiled detective fiction with the epic scope of a George R. R. Martin fantasy in a plot that steered refreshingly clear of most of the usual fantasy conventions. Now that Abercrombie is further into his trilogy, however, the familiar beats of an epic fantasy series are beginning to emerge.”

This I can kind of understand. I think a lot of readers prefer the second book because the plot in the first is, you know, kind of vague and uncertain (I’d say mysterious), and in the second becomes a bit more clear, easier to follow. Perhaps they’re worried initially that the lack of a clear plot might mean, you know, that there’s no plot at all. Perhaps at the same time this focusing, and the surface (alright, more than surface) simliarities to classic tales of epic fantasy in the second book are the very things that distance other kinds of reader, the ones that precisely liked that unfamiliar, amorphous quality in the first. Is it all a question of taste, then, like every bloody other thing in reading/writing? Or is there more to this middle book syndrome? I think Ken at Neth Space might have come closest to the heart of the problem:

“Abercrombie plays with common fantasy tropes (all-knowing wizard, barbarian from the north, stuck-up nobleman, etc.) – he uses many of them, yet does so with a biting, satirical edge and seems to revel in taking the story in unexpected directions. Before They Are Hanged does all this (and more), but since this is the second book of the trilogy, the novelty of the approach has worn off. With the novelty gone, things almost become tiresome in places … my impression at the moment is that Before They Are Hanged suffers a bit from the middle book syndrome.”

That thing that every author has, no matter how derivative their work, that individuality of style, of approach, of concerns or ideas, the thing that makes them new and interesting (hopefully), that novelty, well, that, alas, will almost always wear off to a degree. We might still love it, but it will never hit us quite the same as it did the first time. I guess that’s the reason why I still love Game of Thrones more than the rest of Martin’s series, despite admitting there’s bigger, better, bolder stuff in the later books. When he does the things he’s so good at doing, I’m never going to be as shocked, as moved, as impressed as I was the first time.

Perhaps that’s the difficulty at the heart of middle book syndrome. An author’s books may get better, but they may well not get better enough…?

Ending Like an Avalanche

April 3rd, 2008 • 35 Comments

SPOILERS * SPOILERS * SPOILERS

If you ain’t read my books, best read no more of this, for it may spoil the (wonderful/shocking/deeply moving) experience somewhat. Certainly don’t read the comments section of this or the previous post, which are sure to BURN YOUR EYES LIKE THE BREATH OF THE BALROG OF MORIA.

What’s that you say? You’ve read all my books so far, and I’m talking mostly about the third one, Last Argument of Kings? Then we may continue…

I’m not that hot on foreign languages if I’m honest, and my Danish? (Finnish? Swedish? Norwegian?) is slightly rusty, but I’m interpreting the headline of this review as:

“Abercrombie’s Last Argument of Kings is Tolkein with a Magnum 44″

That’s all I need to understand. Although I also see, in the way you sometimes do in the midst of a paragraph of incomprehensible foreign words, some English springing out lower down. The words “Hollywood-Ending.” I’ll take a wild guess, and assume he’s pointing out that there isn’t one.

Peadar O’ Guilin (aplogies for the lack of appropriate accents on those Irish letters), author of The Inferior, has been musing on the subject of the great importance of endings over on his blog. The man makes some good points about how it’s very hard, once you’ve finished a book, for one’s opinion not to be entirely coloured by the ending.

I think this is particularly true of epic fantasy, in which series often start with great promise, but seem to lose focus, bloat out in the middle, and often end with a bit of a disorganised and predictable whimper (apologies, of course, to the many important exceptions). I was very keen when writing the First Law that it should a) stick to three books of roughly the same size, b) build steadily so that scale and pace mounted with each part, and c) have a satisfying end that had some twists, was unusual within the genre, and (hopefully) said something about real life too. Now I hope people won’t think I’m just tooting my horn if I say that I’m very happy with the way it turned out. But everyone has different tastes. Some in the english-speaking world found the ending just a bit too dark, even if they liked the book. Ben from the Deckled Edge:

“When I read other reviews saying Abercrombie took the fantasy tropes and completely tore them up in Last Argument of Kings, I wasn’t sure exactly what they meant. I have to admit I was shocked at how events turned out. The battles were amazing, the character machinations and revelations even more so. What really surprised me was how the reader’s preconceptions of the characters and the world were totally turned on its head. Thus, The only complaint I have of Last Argument of Kings is that the world-view is too cynical for my tastes, but I think that’s Abercrombie’s point.”

‘Tis indeed the point, my man. I like my tea dark and strong, and my endings the same way. If you’re comfortable with it all, then it ain’t really worked. But for some, and I suspect there’ll be more of these as time goes on, the end was … just too much. John Enzinas over at SFSite was pretty keen on the first two books. He seemed almost … wounded by the third, though:

“Like the avalanche, it is powerful, mesmerizing and unstoppable. However, also like an avalanche, the only way things can end is in a crush at the base of the mountain with luck being more likely than skills or bravery to save you … No matter how brilliant the dialogue, how engaging and sympathetic the characters, how fascinating the mythology, or how clever the writing, a story needs to provide an ending that leaves room for hope and change, if not in the lives of the characters, then at least in the world itself. A world without hope is one I can leave behind and not look back.”

I actually think that’s a great review, and, oddly enough, would make me want to read the book more than any other I’ve read. I actually don’t think it’s as utterly devoid of hope as the man felt, but, yeah, you got me, it’s pretty harsh. The thing is, I love a happy ending, when it’s appropriate, but there’s an awful, awful lot of ‘em out there. Even stuff that comes over all cynical-as-you-like to begin with often ends up drowning in a saccharine bog of sentimentality (or overblown tragedy, which in its way rings just as hollow). That’s why I love and admire The Wire so much (more on that later). Real darkness is pretty rare in any genre, but particularly in epic fantasy, I reckon.

So I’ll settle for an ending like an avalanche. A few readers are sure to clamber out cold and unhappy, teeth chattering, saying they’re never going to ski again. Some may even feel crushed. But I reckon most will enjoy the ride, and, even if they don’t, the experience might just give them something to think about…

Fantasy, RPGs, Innovation, and Bile

October 7th, 2007 • 8 Comments

Ariel, the webmaster (which is what spiderman should really have called himself) of myself and several other authors, has drawn my attention to an interesting debate.

Mark Chadbourn a fellow Gollancz author and a very nice bloke has made a post about the impact of RPGs, particularly of the multiplayer on-line variety, on fantasy, and how the resulting leaking of fantasy concepts into the mainstream is making it more difficult for fantasy authors to be original, especially when these online worlds are more immersive, more detailed, beautifully realised down to every blade of grass.

“Fantasy authors – and all the thousands of would-be fantasy authors out there – need to wake up. They’re being squeezed out of the territory they have occupied for the last hundred years or so. They can no longer count on the fact that they’re the only visionaries in town, or the only explorers charting the fringes of the imagination. They’re being supplanted by a much more dynamic and agressive breed.”

I don’t find this worrying, myself. I’ve played a hell of a lot of computer games in my time, though not so much of the MMORPG variety. I enjoy them hugely, some probably have been an influence on the way I write. But they’re very different experiences from reading, and if they’ve increased the potential market for fantasy, I think that can only be a good thing.

These games are written by huge teams, with vast budgets, aimed at the biggest possible markets, and as a result usually are rather bland and cliched, taking as few risks as possible. I don’t think it’s too difficult for an author, who by the nature of his medium is free of the need to worry about every detail, to come up with something that offers a different experience. I think we, the fantasy authors, can find a way to co-exist with our every multiplying video-game brethren. There’s always a need for good writing, in video games as much as anywhere else.

It’s true that, with these games, and the Lord of the Rings movies too, the tropes of fantasy have become even more widely and instantly recognised. But to me, it’s precisely the familiarity of those tropes that is the point. When everyone’s expecting the same old same old, even small deviations can be interesting and surprising. In fact small deviations are especially interesting, because large ones break that sense of familiarity and leave the reader feeling disorientated, let down, and, often, bored.

Jonathan McCalmont responded over at his blog SF Diplomat, by turning the question on its head. I think it’s safe to say he’s not a fan of fantasy, particularly of the epic, post-Tolkein kind that we’re talking about here:

“The MMORPG market, much like the world of fantasy literature, is one that operates on the basis of narrowed horizons. In the world of console gaming, the lack of innovation has reached such a point that any change is treated as earth-shattering. The best example of this was a gun in Half-Life 2 that allowed you to lift things up at a distance. To my eyes this was a new swirl of icing on a cake largely unchanged since the days of doom, but to gamers everywhere it was an innovation.”

I totally agree. The first-person shooter is an area with way too little innovation, as the rather disappointing Bioshock seemed to me to prove. But it’s interesting that it’s also a genre of gaming that is even more overrun with the tropes of bland military sf than the RPG is overrun with the tropes of bland epic fantasy. I think video gaming as a whole is prone to the bland, but it’s nothing to do with an ‘infection’ by fantasy. Much more it’s because – as with the blandifying of movies – it’s becoming increasingly a corporate big business with vast teams and huge budgets, and that set-up does tend to push things in the direction of the mediocre. He goes on to say:

“The same lowered bar holds sway over innovation in the mainstream fantasy and RPG markets with any fresh deviation from Tolkienian roots seen as an innovation and sufficient grounds for fans of the new work to sneer at the fans of other works (this was something I learned from my run in with George R. R. Martin’s fans… to me the books appear to be yet more tales of battle, magic and great men but to the devoted fantasy fan these are worlds away from other works featuring battle, magic and great men).”

I’m not convinced he learned anything from that run-in with Martin’s fans apart from how to turn his comments off on potentially incendiary posts. This is exactly the same as claiming High Noon and Unforgiven are identical films because they both feature gunfights, six-shooters and sherriffs. They are both small-town westerns, yes, but a world apart in their presentation of character, their investigation of morality, their approach to violence, right down to the manner in which they are shot and edited. Both great films, incidentally. Likewise, Martin and Tolkein both write epic fantasy, but their approaches are nothing alike. Martin was an innovator in his use of realistic dialogue, in the gritiness (a term that has itself become a cliche, but still) of his world, in his ruthlessness towards his characters, in his tight focus on single points of view to tell the story. Epic fantasy can be bland and derivative, for sure, but to fail to notice the difference between Martin and Tolkein is poor criticism.

“The problem here is that the vast majority of fantasy fans simply have no interest in innovation. If fantasy authors were to hear Chadbourn’s rallying cry I suspect that the result would be a decrease in sales across the genre. The problem is not with the world of RPGs or lazy authors, it is the audience and until someone finds a way of evolving the tastes of that audience, the market will reward the writers who are able to pleasingly re-arrange old ideas and not those who present us with new ones.”

To me this both patronises and misses the point in equal measure. The majority of readers of any genre have little interest in innovation. They want to read/play/see something that’s just like the last thing they liked. That’s what a genre is. That’s what a popular market is. The same is true of crime writing, of chick-lit, of westerns, romance, black-ops action, and pretty much everything else. Sci-fi is perhaps the one exception because, more than any other, it is the genre of new ideas. But even there, anything very successful always spawns a great slew of unimaginative imitations, and the more successful, the more it’ll be imitated. Epic fantasy is, in book terms, extremely successful and so it tends also to be conservative. But that doesn’t mean you can’t offer something new while still working within the form. And it doesn’t mean that readers are too dumb to appreciate something new if you present it to them in a familiar framework, in a form that appeals.

Of course you need innovators. Of course you need the new, the bold, the wildly imaginative. There’s a daring romance to throwing caution to the wind, and it’s important to push the boundaries. But you can’t expect to shift shed loads of units that way, and you shouldn’t bitch when you don’t. Those who tend to achieve lasting commercial success are those who, like Martin, carefully combine a few new ideas with the familiar, and send the genre in a slightly different direction, usually spawning their own generation of imitators in the process.

The fact is, for the vast majority of readers (and I think I probably count myself among them), too much innovation is boring. Too much innovation is pretentious. Too much innovation is … wank.

Maps. Craps?

October 2nd, 2007 • 68 Comments

Tolkein, Jordan, and Martin, all have them. Scott Lynch doesn’t, so he put some on his website. Mervyn Peake couldn’t possibly. M. John Harrison would probably murder you for suggesting that he should. David Gemmell didn’t have any, then he bowed to pressure and included one done by a fan which (apparently) everyone thought was crap. I don’t have any printed, but you can bet your ass I’ve got a whole load of ‘em in a ring-binder somewhere.

What are we talking about? Why, that universal staple of the hefty fantasy series, of course, the MAP.

What kind do you go for? Do you have a huge one that folds away, except you can never quite fold it up right once you’ve opened it, like the one I accidentally tore in my Dad’s edition of the Fellowship of the Ring then denied all knowledge of? Or do you have one of those tiny, incomprehensible ones that seems to have been badly photocopied like handouts at school, and a significant portion of the dotted line indicating the “journey of the mismatched group of champions” has been destroyed by the gap between two pages of your printed-on-toilet-paper mass-market paperback?

Should you have one that marks every village in the imagined world in painstaking detail, thereby advertising all the sweat you expended on your system of gnomish nomenclature? Or one that has six cities involved in the story and everything else pretty much just a big white splodge with the coastlines barely even squiggled up properly that just screams, “couldn’t be arsed to think up more than twelve names, but my publisher said I had to do this!”

Talking of publishers, I was at the Gollancz Autumn Party the other night, and Editorial Director Simon Spanton was spewing venom (alright, he was being mildly irritated) on the whole subject of maps. He don’t like ‘em much. He certainly doesn’t think they’re in any way necessary. He objects to the way they’re sometimes included on a knee-jerk. He feels that books are a piece of written work and should stand on that basis without the need for often inaccurate and ugly bodges on the fly-leaf.

I agree with him, up to a point. My own feelings, often repeated and rubbed soft and thin like the material of a favourite shirt, is that maps aren’t really suitable to the type of book I write, that is one centred tightly around the characters. To use a film metaphor, I feel that epic fantasy is often told too much in wide shots, which is to say we are shown vast events from a great distance, we are shown little people in a huge landscape, we perhaps lack that feeling of closeness with, and understanding of, the characters. And there’s no wider shot than the whole world on a page, right?

I wanted my readers to feel like they were right there with the characters – right inside their heads, if possible – part of the action rather than floating dispassionately above it. I wanted to tell a story as close-up as I could, so you can smell the sweat, and feel the pain, and understand the emotions. I want a reader to be nailed to the text, chewing their fingernails to find out what happens next, not constantly flipping back to the fly-leaf to check just how far north exactly Carleon is from Uffrith, or whatever. The characters often don’t know what’s going on – they don’t have a conveniently accurate map to hand, why should the reader?

I kind of worry that the need for maps is part of a mindset that I’d like – in the gentlest possible way – to be steering readers away from, at least while they’re reading my books. A focus on world, and setting, and getting all the details straight, that maybe gets in the way of submersion in the characters and the story. I’d rather they just let it flow over them, left the details in my (hugely capable) hands, and concentrated on each event as it’s presented.

Call me foolish as well, but I do think having a map there can damage the sense of scale, awe, and wonder that a reader might have for your world. It’s like that moment in the horror film when you finally see the monster. What? That’s it? I was scared of a piece of foam rubber? The unknown can be mysterious, exciting, in a way that a few squiggles on a piece of paper often … aren’t. It’s a bit like the problem I have with literal fantasy artwork of the characters on a cover. Pictures work very powerfully compared to words. Straight away the reader’s imagination is constricted by what they’ve seen there, and I’d like to think of my readers’ imaginations running wild and free, roaming far and wide like a noble mountain goat, or something.

I also reckon that, while the hardcore fantasy fan (and that probably includes 90% of the readers of this blog, but hey, let’s go down in a blaze of glory) would often like to see a map, the more general fantasy reader isn’t that bothered, and in fact might be quite glad when there isn’t one. You see it in the front there, and you kind of feel you have to look, and get some sense of it all before you start, know what I mean? As if the author’s suddenly going to appear at some point and test you.

So I guess you could say I’m in the anti-map camp, if we have camps. But the thing is, there’s a part of me that loves maps. That understands why readers sometimes complain about their absence. That part that long ago sat happily drawing each tiny tree in the forests on a massive sheet of A2 while the first episodes of Star Trek Next Generation burbled happily away in the background. That part that still likes to take the old RPG supplements into the bathroom so I can peruse the layouts of Orthanc while on the toilet.

Had my publisher wanted a map, either in the UK, the US, or anywhere else, I’d happily have given them one. Even a rubbish one. It would have been a very long way from a deal-breaker, I can tell you that. But none of them have asked. Perhaps one day I’ll stick some up on the website, just for the hell of it. But then I hear that little voice whispering, “What if someone notices that Carleon isn’t quite as far North of Uffrith as you said it was, eh? What then? You’ll be a laughing stock…”

Zounds! Swearing in Fantasy

September 23rd, 2007 • 32 Comments

Here’s one we can all get our teeth into. An issue that comes up from time to time, and one that looks as if it will come up a bit more for me since publication in America, is that of the use of ‘modern’ swear-words in fantasy.

Blast my potty-mouth, it gets me in all kinds of trouble. Since sensitive souls may well stumble upon this particular post, I will use asterisks to spare their blushes.

John, over at Grasping for the Wind, is having a very polite, dignified and well-thought out discussion with my American editor, Lou Anders on this very topic, and he’s taken his recent reading of The Blade Itself as his starting point. So naturally I thought I would throw in my obscene, over-dramatic and ill-considered thoughts.

There was an interesting discussion of this very issue (which again started with a reading of The Blade Itself , blast my potty-mouth again) over at SFFWorld a while back. Some of the objections raised to swearing there (and I underline that these are not necessarily John’s objections) were: that these are ‘modern’ swear-words out of context in a ‘ye olde’ fantasy setting, that you’re better off making up a culture-specific oath like ‘by the holy orb of Zalxoz I will destroy thee!’, that you can just make up your own non-offensive word to substitute for the evil English creations (like BSGs frel, for example).

So allow me to viciously destroy this straw-man I have myself created, by repeating parts of the post I made there:

The notion that ‘folks all spoke nice in them old days’ is entirely a Victorian invention. The three words that I believe we are chiefly talking about here (F**K, S**T, and C**T, forgive my euphemisms) are all words with long and proud traditions in the english language, going back hundreds of years.

Of course, fantasy is not history. Fantasies can include all kinds of different elements corresponding to different time periods. Furthermore, even if we are describing a pseudo-medieval setting, no-one could pretend that we are writing for a medieval audience. As I see it, an author has to select the mode of expression which he feels best communicates his meaning, or the meaning of his characters, to a reader of modern English. It’s a question of judgement, and, as with the explicitness of sex or violence in a book, every author will find his own way, and different readers will have their own unique response.

For me, as a reader, I find complicated oaths (by the holy beard of Swarfega etc.) to be unconvincing (and often truly risible) unless very well integrated into some specific element of a fantasy culture, and even then they are rarely a good substitute for a simple S**T in times of high excitement. When I stub my toe I very rarely reach for a culture-specific mouthful such as, “by the golden boots of David Beckham!” or some such.

To make up a word simply to act as a substitute for a perfectly good English word seems to me almost cowardly, and as a reader I would find it extremely irritating. After all, if frel or whatever is supposed to mean F**K, why not just call a spade a spade? And if it doesn’t mean F**K, then what the f**k is it supposed to mean? I can see the point if it means a TV show can air before the watershed, but I can’t for the life of me see the point in an adult work of fiction.

Take that, you straw motherf*cker!

But seriously.

For me, the inclusion of swearing isn’t about trying to inject grittiness, or to make my books adult, or even to try and make them sell (though that would be nice). It’s a question of honesty. You see, when I started writing, my Mum said to me, “Joe, you’ve got to be honest. You’ve got to think about every description, every line of speech, every image that you use and ask yourself – is this true? Is this how that thing really looks? Is this how a person would really speak? Keep everything absolutely true, and you can never go far wrong.” Best piece of advice I’ve ever had. Apart from don’t eat yellow snow, of course.

Now some folks might say, “hey, it’s fantasy, it doesn’t have to be real,” but I’d say the exact opposite. It’s happening in a made up place, so it has to be more real than ever. Its being fantasy doesn’t forgive its being unconvincing, its being dishonest, its being false. Between you (which of course is potentially the entire world, but f*ck it) and me, I think fantasy is a genre where authors get away with weak-ass, lazy dialogue way too often.

It goes without saying that, ultimately, every reader’s interpretation of what is false or unconvincing is going to be different, and some are going to find the use of swear-words jarring, but it isn’t the reader’s opinion that’s important here, it’s the writer’s. Precisely because every reader will see things differently, you simply can’t take their potential opinons into account when you write. You have to write for yourself first. You have to write the kind of book that you love, that you find true, and just hope you’ll be carrying some people along with you. The alternative is just to turn out bland, commercial pulp that you think is going to please the widest market, and that type of sh*t rarely works, even commercially.

As a reader, there’s nothing more irritating to me than faux-shakespearian dialogue, “verily, my liege, we should teach these goblins a harsh lesson.” I swear a lot in my everyday work and home life, it’s part of my everyday mode of expression and that of most people I relate to, so it would seem odd to me if my characters didn’t. It would certainly seem very, very odd if characters who are, to put it nicely, scum, didn’t swear in life-threatening situations. There are some words I don’t use, because they don’t feel right in the setting. I don’t use b*ll*cks. Too English rugby club. I don’t use d*ck (if you’ll allow the expression), but I’ve nothing against c*ck and pr*ck, depending on who’s talking. After all, what are you supposed to call it? Or should you just avoid talking about it at all?

Incidentally, I’m not knocking writers who don’t use piles of swearing. That’s their business, and it’s all part of creating a consistent atmosphere that feels right and honest for them and their readers. Lord of the Rings wouldn’t be improved if Gandalf told the Balrog to f*ck itself, for example. Or maybe it would?

Having said all that, on reading the Blade Itself recently, I did think I’d gone a bit too far with the swearing – not necessarily in the quantity – but in the variety of characters and situations I’d applied it to. I think perhaps when you write two chapters and have a swear-word in each, for example, in the experience of writing, those words might be a week apart. In the experience of reading they might be only five minutes apart. And overuse definitely does reduce impact. As everyone would, I’m sure, agree, it’s a delicate balance. But one that, ultimately, every author has to find their own way with. If you spent your time worrying about what might offend every possible reader, you’d never write a word…

Writing a Series

September 2nd, 2007 • 26 Comments

Heroic Fantasy tends to come in series. It’s a well known fact. Only look at the classics. Lord of the Rings. Elric. Earthsea. Notable stand-alone fantasy books are quite the rarety.

In fact, it’s hardly a new observation to point out that the biggest-selling fantasy series of the last decade or two seem to be of more volumes than ever, and those volumes thicker than ever. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire – slated to be 7 books of apparently ever-increasing girth. Goodkind’s Sword of Truth – 10 doorsteps of fantasy. Jordan’s Wheel of Time – 12 huge big books. Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series (not as big selling perhaps, but certainly very well rated among the fantasy in-crowd) – 10 whacking volumes. In the core market of epic fat-fantasy, therefore, the trend seems to be for series that are fatter than ever.

Which is why it has often struck me as odd that the most common criticism I read of The Blade Itself is one along these lines, from King Rat (and I’m really hoping he’s a human that calls himself a rat, rather than actually a rat that types) over at Rat’s Reading:

“I will say right up front, that this book has no conclusion. That’s not always a bad thing in series fantasy writing. I know several people who prefer long series with no conclusion until the end. I don’t like it, but I can put up with it for good writing. I’d prefer my series to be separate yet intertwined stories. This is not a story in itself. It is the first part of one.”

On occasion the responses to this perceived lack of closure are slightly … more intense. These from my worst two reviews on Amazon.co.uk:

“I know loads of people seem to love this book but I just don’t see it. It is the most blatant ‘read on in book 2′ opening novel that I’ve ever read. When I read a book, I like it to have a story that is completed. Nothing is completed within these pages. Shame, really.”

“It’s all set up for something to happen in later books but I read a book for something to happen now, not in volume six. If this novel actually had a plot and a satisfying conclusion I would have been tempted to buy later volumes. I don’t really know if the plot is any good, because it isn’t here. Maybe it’s in volume six?”

Well, very sorry about that, kind sirs, but, you know, it does say Book One on the cover, and … and … there are only going to be three books actually … so … I mean … sirs? Sirs! Please come back sirs!

Of course, there are many different ways to write a series as far as continuity and long-term plotting go. You don’t necessarily have to leave your readers hanging, at least, not that much. Two extremes of approach suggest themselves. One is perhaps close to a classic crime or western series – a set of books that feature the same central character or characters, often in similar settings and situations, each time tackling a new and self-contained problem. A TV example might be one of my old favourites, Star Trek: Next Generation. Each episode is a self-contained scenario, neatly wrapped up after an hour, and the status quo is pretty much always regained at the end, ready for the next adventure. Long-term story arcs and character developments are kept to a minimum, and usually there’s nothing to stop you jumping in at the start of any episode and still having a pretty good notion what’s going on. Scott Lynch’s celebrated Gentleman Bastards sequence (first book – Lies of Locke Lamora) would seem to be close to this approach. That isn’t to say that it lacks long-term arcs or development necessarily, just that each book is a single, self-contained story, but linked and featuring the same central characters.

At the other extreme are series that make minimal attempts at narrative closure with each book or episode, perhaps just ending at a suitably important event, but leaving very little resolved in terms of overall plot. Often with these type of series long term development of characters is to the fore. Examples from TV? Why, none other than my favourite SF/F show of recent years, Heroes, or my favourite TV show of any kind, the utterly masterful in every department The Wire. In the case of The Wire each series is a single, sprawling investigation, with numerous threads left running between series. It’s confusing enough if you’ve seen every episode, let alone if you try and jump in halfway. The First Law is much closer to this approach. In effect, the trilogy is a single book, split into three parts at (relatively) suitable moments.

Of course, there are many positions between these two extremes. Not-quite as good as the Wire but pretty damn bloody-good cop show thankyou very much the Shield is one example. Each episode tends to revolve around a single case, often tied up before the hour is up, and you could probably still jump in anywhere and still basically get the picture, but each series has its own long-term plotlines, developments and themes. Most fantasy series would seem to occupy this middle ground to some degree.

So what approach is best? An impossible one to answer, since every book or TV series includes a whole range of different factors and every reader or viewer brings different tastes to the table. Plus series both of books and TV often develop as they go along, starting more episode-orientated and becoming steadily more series-orientated. There are certain advantages to both approaches, though. In the case of the self-contained book or episode, there is definitely a satisfaction for the reader or viewer in reaching the end of a part and seeing the various plot-threads come together. They are not left irritatedly drumming their fingers for a week to see the next episode (by which time they may have forgotten some of the previous one) or a year for the next book (by which time, fantasy being generally pretty complicated, they are sure to have forgotten quite a bit of the detail). There is therefore an instant pay-off. With the more drawn-out story, there can still be a satisfaction to the characters and the situations as you go, but the big pay-off really comes at the end (providing it’s done well, of course), as the reader sees the disparate plot threads come together and appreciates the way the journey has gone. With the Shield you enjoy every episode, with the Wire you find yourself a bit non-plussed after the first few of a series, intrigued after the next few, and then stunned by the ingenuity of the writers as the apparently unrelated components come together in unexpected ways.

Now in TV there has been a definite shift in recent years from the Star Trek ‘episode based’ approach, to the Heroes ‘series based’ (or even longer term) approach. Shows like The Sopranos have been hugely successful, despite often not resolving plotlines at all, let alone tying off an episode neatly. The focus here is much more on the characters, and their responses to situations, rather than the resolutions of plot. It isn’t really about what happens to Tony in the end, it’s about what he does on the way there, and why. Broadening the discussion to include a review of an author other than me (which of course I never like to do), this from John Berlyne over at SFRevu onPatrick Rothfuss’ highly successful debut The Name of the Wind:

“More of an issue for me though is the way in which The Name of the Wind fails to adequately resolve its plot lines … It seems to me that currently there is change going on in fantasy – the concept of the trilogy is being redefined. It used to be that such a sequence of novels would tell three separate, but linked and above all complete stories, events overlapping and influencing each other, but with each narrative having a definitive and satisfyin
g resolution at the end. This is not so with The Name of the Wind … it reads as the long first act in a story split three ways and the impression it left me with, after 650 pages, was of something unfinished and therefore unsatisfying.”

The shift Mr. Berlyne observes seems similar to the one taking place in TV, and I wonder if the two are related at all and part of a larger trend – if there is a general shift in entertainment towards more long-term story arcs and away from more traditional one story per episode entertainment. Certainly I feel that recent TV shows like The Sopranos have been a big influence on the way that I put my stories together – possibly a much greater influence than other recent genre books which (honestly) I don’t tend to read that much of.

But it is worth noting that there has been a corresponding shift in the way that TV is watched – a lot of people now download programs or buy them on DVD, perhaps then watching whole series in a few days, rather than spread out over a dozen weeks. This approach particularly favours shows like The Wire, where one can more easily take in the complexity of the whole series in a few sittings. There has been no corresponding shift with genre books. They’re still published, in general, no faster than one a year. In the case of many of the more popular series, they’re published an awful lot slower than that. Waiting a week for the next installment in an unresolved plot can be a pain. Waiting five years for one is something more serious.

But then The Lord of the Rings, surely the sun around which all epic fantasy orbits, makes little effort to wrap up its individual books on anything more than a relatively important moment. No-one ever seems to criticise Fellowship of the Ring for leaving a lot of threads dangling. Perhaps that is the key thing about long arcs. They can be frustrating while readers drum their fingers waiting for the next installment, but once the series stands complete, and the reader can just go and get the next one off the shelf (providing the author didn’t make a balls-up of the ending) such issues are soon forgotten.

With respect to The First Law, at least, I guess only time will tell …

Man that was long. Really better do some actual writing now.