Inspirations: Fighting Fantasy
I'm going to go ahead and make a bet
with you. Go on, a simple one. If you are a UK fantasy or
science-fiction fan, aged between 26 and 35, I'm going to bet that
your first introduction to the genre was Fighting Fantasy. Did I win?
I thought so. Looking back at my early inspirations, it's definite
that those books were high on the list; I got into them at almost
precisely the right time, I think I vaguely remember getting my first
one at around ten. That meant that they were in bookshops – but
also that they were in second-hand bookshops and charity shops, which
put them nicely in reach of a ten-year-old's budget.
They were of their time perfectly;
catching the post-OD&D era and giving a vibe which I'm going to
bet ended up in pretty much all campaigns run by people of the
period. (And anyone writing thieves in cities stories...I'm on to
you. Port Blacksand, right?) They took all the traditional fantasy
tropes – elves, orcs, dwarves, dragons, sorcerers and all, and put
them into the 'you choose your fate' package. Those books got me into
fantasy, and into roleplaying. Yes, its their fault. (Star Trek got
me into science fiction a year or two earlier...so it's their fault
as well!)
Now, these came back into print again
not that long ago; I believe they are still just about in
print, in fact. Periodically I pick up a few of them...but really,
you can't go home again. (What I want is them in computer format –
like the Lone Wolf books with Project Aon.) Still, at a very
impressionable time they made a big difference, and I think they
still strongly inform the sort of writing I do. It's something I
always have at the back of my mind when I'm writing, because I very
definitely believe that one has to know
one's influences.
There
were about sixty or so of them, as I recall, and I think at one point
I had all of them up to about forty-something, when I began to peter
out – and the books started to get a little hard to get, I think
the publisher had lost interest, sales tailed off as computers reared
their head – I got my first computer, an old 386/25, when I was
eleven, and yes, computer games then became a big part of my life –
but there are some I still remember very fondly...and mostly from the
earlier period of the books, perhaps not surprisingly...
So...my
top five...
5:
Warlock of Firetop Mountain
The
first in the series, and there are times it shows, but this is a
dungeon crawl at its very best, and follows all the usual D&D
tropes. I don't know this for a fact, but this smells very much to me
as if it was actually run through by a group at some point. This is
certainly not a bad thing, quite the reverse. I
think this probably was one of the first ones I had, and I fear I
don't remember ever actually completing it...
4:
Forest of Doom
This
one was wilderness – exploring the, well Forest of Doom, and I can
remember this one seeming to have a really immense scope to it. Lots
of replay value, and it seemed to mesh with later ones in the series
as well. You could easily imagine that you were the same adventurer
going from one quest to another at the time, something that was lost
when the story element got heavier. This is really a sandbox – but
again, a good one.
3:
Citadel of Chaos
On the face of it, this really is just 'Firetop Mountain', take two,
but...you had spells, and that really amazed me at the time. I'm
pretty sure this was the first one I had, and I actually
completed it, which is a bit of a milestone for me. Wandering through
an immense mansion, and this one...it just worked really well for me,
but I'm aware that I am really hit by nostalgia here rather than
anything else. Another fun dungeon crawl.
2:
City of Thieves
This
one was a true classic. A city-based adventure, where you must
venture into the peril-ridden streets of Port Blacksand to gather the
ingredients for a weapon to kill an evil necromancer. The city just
has so much character, so many interesting people and events, that it
gets a life of its own; it still remains the city I want to emulate,
all these years later. The author really did their homework here,
there is just the right tone without it collapsing into farce. It
became a key part of the setting, and it is very easy to understand
why.
1:
Caverns of the Snow Witch
This
one might surprise...but it was the first one I played that was in
two parts, and I was really surprised by that, the first time around.
You fight and kill the Snow Witch, which is difficult enough, and
then have to venture out in search of the secretive Healer to get a
Death Spell lifted from you, by travelling to the top of Firetop
Mountain and seeing the phoenix. This ties into Forest of Doom, as a
sort of prequel...but having the adventure be in two parts was just
amazing to me when I was a kid. I even finished it!
Any
other candidates I'm not thinking of? Anyone want to share their
favourites?
State of Play
The observant among you will note that
the word counter for 'Tip of the Spear' has gone up, and 'Sword of
the Serpent' has remained at zero...well, I've decided that the
fantasy piece just isn't – quite – ready yet. I need to spend a
little more time thinking about it, but I need to write something,
so I'm pushing ahead with Alamo 4. This one directly follows on from
Alamo 3 in a way the previous books didn't, so I think it only fair
to get it out there next – also, there is something else in the
works which is rather dependant on Alamo 4 being produced.
I've
been rather remiss of late in, well, writing. The first three Alamo
books have done well, well enough that I am falling victim to not a
little bit of, well, self-doubt. I'm telling this as a cautionary
tale; I have spent too long 'thinking' and not enough time 'writing'.
I think I perhaps needed a short break after Alamo 3, but it's
getting on to two and a half months now, and I'm tangling myself up
in knots. I need to get back into the routine again; my original plan
was to try and write a book every month, maintaining a steady release
schedule, and this is something I must get back to again.
Going
back to Alamo has been a lot easier than I'd feared, I must say; the
characters are like a well-worn pair of shoes to me, and I'm not
having any difficulties in switching back to them again – it's like
I'd never been away. There are a couple of arcs I want to tie up in
this one that I opened up in the last book, and I'm getting some
progress on that; three chapters written, twenty-five or so to go.
Fingers crossed I'll have it completed in a couple of weeks, release
sometime next month.
Then,
I can concentrate on fantasy. I still badly want to write that book,
that trilogy, really, but I know I need a little more time to put
everything in order, and more to the point – I want to be able to
sit down and write the whole thing, one after another, just as I did
with Alamo. It just makes things so much easier if I can do it that
way, and there is the not insignificant aspect that the readers won't
have to wait too long
to find out what happens. Writing a contained piece as opposed to
Alamo – which I have in mind still as an ongoing series, rather
than anything with a set 'ending' (Well, I have a last novel in
mind, but that's a long way off yet) – should be an interesting
experience as well.
So,
that's the state of play as it stands.
Rest Day (2 of 11)
Well, all beginnings are hard. The
re-beginnings are sometimes not so hard, however; though I didn't do
any writing today, I did do something that is equally important – I
drew a map. Something I had really been struggling with in the
previous draft, but today I just sat down with a pad of squared paper
and did it in two hours. It isn't publishable quality, obviously –
that will come later, almost certainly involving me hiring someone
for the job (any suggestions?) but it is sufficient for me to use
when writing at least the first book, and probably for the whole
series.
I knew what areas had
to go on the map – that I needed some mountains, forests, castles,
and so on – so the first step was simply listing everything I
wanted. I already had a rough idea of what the land would look like,
but then when I came to put it on the page...it didn't work. (Which
has led to another little problem, in that I was planning to do the
map so that it would be 'portrait', and it ended up as
'landscape'...something for me to ponder later on, maybe by adding
more stuff to the south.) I was planning to do Greenland, but I ended
up with, well...(at this point, I wish I had a working scanner...)
Iceland connected to an ice cap at the north, with Crete underneath
it. To give you an idea of the shapes.
Once I
had the outline, I filled in the gaps – half a dozen towns, a city,
tall mountains – the 'Giant's Teeth' – surrounding an inner
forest, some hills, a smaller forest...and then I realized I still
had some gaps. So...well, usually when I'm doing maps for fantasy
settings, it is for D&D campaigns, and it is always best to fill
in such gaps. So the 'Doommire' was born, filling a nice piece of the
map, even though at the moment I haven't the faintest idea what I'm
going to do with it. I'm sure I'll think of something eventually...or
ultimately it will just be an
interesting feature on the map I never use. And yes, the name is a
placeholder at the moment. I like it enough that as a name to drop
in, it's fine, but I'd probably want something better if I was
actually going to use it seriously...any thoughts?
Rest Day 1 (of 11)
Well...it just wasn't working. I hit
Chapter Seven, and pretty much bounced. The story was meandering too
much, taking too long to get anywhere...but must important of all,
the three plot arcs I was working on were just not dovetailing, and
that's pretty fatal. This has already had a first draft...well, I am
tonight declaring the 'second draft' completed, and will now start
work on the third. Bluntly, this isn't one story, it's three, and
while each of them individually is good, they do not improve as a
whole. The solution is obvious – pick the one I am most interested
in, and write it as a shorter book!
This has happened to me before. Though
the second and third books in the 'Battlecruiser Alamo' series were
two-draft, with the second being revisions and edits, nothing
fundamental, the first book, 'Price of Admiralty', went through four
complete drafts, the first three of which bore little resemblance –
other than some names – to the finished work. That occupied most of
a year, the last year I was at my old job. So...I was rather
expecting this to happen...
So...the counter is reset to zero, and
tomorrow or the next day – depending on how much more rethinking
time I need – I will start work on the third draft, this one to be
back down to 80k...which means, interesting, that despite the fact
that I'm writing off five days, I expect to have the book finished a
week or two earlier than I had originally planned! Essentially, what
I did was write down the bits of the story that were working up in my
head, and made sure they tangled together into a plot, and something
I am a lot happier with.
Spoilers? One tag line. 'Crusader State
on Celtic Greenland.'
Writing Day 3 (of 24)
An odd day, this. While it went much
more according to plan, in that I started a lot earlier than normal,
I only just passed five thousand for the day, though I did the two
chapters I had in mind when I started. The first one was pretty
difficult, I'm not sure why, looking back, but getting the flow to
fit was not easy – though at least that did mean that all five of
my point-of-view characters were now in play, and that the plots were
all beginning to move forward. That wasn't really the problem –
more that the second chapter ran short, just 2,300 words instead of
the 3,000 I had planned as a minimum...and looking at it again, there
wasn't really anything I could add, nothing that would not have
seemed like padding, in any case. It's actually a good chapter, I'm
happy with it – it is just that it went a lot faster than I'd
expected.
Now, for my purposes, word counts and
word limits are a somewhat artificial measure. I've targeted 140,000
words, but if it ends up running at 130,000 or 150,000, that isn't
really going to be a problem. I'm not dealing with a publisher
demanding a specific length, or anything like that, so I'm not going
to worry about this overmuch. In fact, it might prove a little
liberating; I've felt a bit that I might be setting myself a somewhat
artificial stricture.
Total for today, 5,014 - 986 under
target. Hopefully I'll be able to make this up tomorrow.
Writing Day 2 (of 24)
Yesterday didn't start well, and if
anything, today was worse. With one thing and another, I didn't
manage to get to my desk to start writing until after 1300, leaving
me a hair under five hours to do what I had hoped to write in seven
or eight. It was a bit of a struggle, but I had a slightly clearer
idea of what I was doing this time, so I just about managed to get
the two chapters I planned to do today. I really didn't want to fall
behind on the second day of this; frankly, I've been hoping that I
might manage a couple of longer days to build myself up some leeway
if I need it later on. That hasn't happened yet, but...given that I
managed to do the total in two-thirds the time I was calculating, I
might be able to do more in later days, especially when I start to
build momentum.
Two new POV characters today, and both
of them had their own complications, but with the fourth chapter I
was finally able to progress a story somewhat, which was a bit of a
relief. The plots are all in motion now, and though I still have a
POV character to introduce – which I shall do in the fifth chapter,
tomorrow morning (with luck) – at least things feel like I'm moving
forwards now. One thing I already have decided, and that is that I'm
probably dropping down to five POVs rather than six, but with four
plots rather than three. That's going to have some interesting
implications with regards to balancing the story out and tying it all
together at the end, but I just can't think of anything satisfactory
for the sixth POV to do, at
least, not in this book. Plenty for the next books once those
characters are in motion. I can always add another POV later, if I
feel one is needed – there are a few good candidates already.
So, the total for today is 6,158 words,
158 over my target...pretty consistent so far. Let's hope it stays
that way.
Writing Day 1 (of 24)
Well, I'd by lying if I said that today
had gone anything like to schedule. I got up an hour later than I had
intended, but that wasn't a problem...given that I spent about three
hours postponing the start, for one reason or another that now seems
completely and totally trivial. That blank document is always pretty
daunting, and this time was no exception. Finally, I managed to pull
myself together and actually make a start on this thing. Two chapters
a day is my rough plan; for the Alamo books I set myself a minimum
chapter length of two thousand words, but this time I'm going to
three – I think the genre I'm now working in will benefit,
especially as the POV characters are going to be more spread out than
usual.
The first chapter went pretty much
according to plan, a nice character introduction and battle scene,
setting the first of the three plots into motion. I only realized
today that this is what I am doing – entangling a trio of plots for
this book, and it's already had an impact. The battle scene initially
went about as tortuously as usual – for someone making a living
writing action/adventure, I surely struggle getting the action down
on paper, especially at the start – but I was rather satisfied with
the outcome, so that went well.
Chapter two, on the other hand, was a
bit more of a struggle. During the first chapter I stopped twice, in
the second I lost count of the number of times I paused for some
inspiration, and that despite the second chapter being the one that
was clearest in my head. Again, this was character introduction and
plot kickoff – I have another one of these to do tomorrow, before I
can start actually progressing
the plots a little. Already this is going to feel strange – in that
normally I've written at least one chapter for each POV character
every day, and this time it's going to be impossible. I'm not even
going to revisit these characters until the fourth day from a POV
perspective...
Speaking
of which, I've already changed perspective POVs! I still have six,
but I'm now working on the idea of having two for each plot, and as I
was starting, one of them had three...and while I liked the
character, it was a struggle to see why he needed a POV in this book.
I can promote him for Book 2, and probably will, but for
this book, he's dropping down to 'major character' status – and
fortunately, I have a character in the wings to step into his shoes,
so that won't be a problem. And god, Scrivener's 'random name
generator' is useful, I was working it overtime today, and expect I
will be in the future!
So the
score for today: 6,366 words, 366 over my target. A good start.
Tomorrow Beckons...
It's been almost three
months since I last put finger to keyboard on a new project, but
finally I'm ready for my next project, and this is going to be a big
one. I can blame George R.R. Martin for this, but I'm launching into
epic sword and sorcery for this one – I have the desire to write
something with big scope, something with multiple swirling
plot-lines, epic battles, and most of all on a large scale. I've been
feeling towards this one for a while now, and almost started the
Mercian series – which this is not, and which doesn't feel quite
ready yet – twice while I was feeling towards it, but just a week
ago I had the key breakthrough.
I read 'Four Thousand
Years Ago', by Geoffrey Bibby. The Bronze Age has always fascinated
me, and that truly brought it alive – and then with a little more
reading, everything started to just fall into place, and the plots
that had been swirling around my head settled down into a form that I
wanted to get started on. I've sketched out a few maps, made a few
notes, worked out my naming patterns, and watched a few documentaries
– and I'm just about ready to launch into it. Bronze Age fantasy.
I have to admit that I'm
a little nervous. This will be my fourth book intended for
publication, but will be at least twice as long as anything I have
previously written. My last book had three POV characters, this one
will have six. My longest work to date has been 74,000 words, this
one is at a minimum 140,000, and probably longer. No wonder I'm
nervous, but I've got a lot of story to pack into this, and I've been
doing my homework – so I hope that I'm going to be equal to the
task.
What I am going to do is
more with this blog; I tend to blog more when I'm writing in any
case, but this time I'm going to do a day-by-day play-by-play of how
things are going – my progress, the books I've been reading, how
things are generally going. I'm targeting doing this in 24 writing
days at an average of six thousand words a day, and working on the
presumption of ten days a fortnight – so five weeks, with an extra
'day off' if I feel like I need it. With a little luck, this one will
be out before Christmas. I'm pulling out all the stops with this one
– I'll be commissioning a proper map of the setting, possibly more
than one – as it would feel wrong to have a fantasy epic without a
map – and may even explore a paperback. Again, I'll be going over
this whole process on the blog, the process of writing 'Dagger of the
Serpent' from first word to hitting 'publish'...
A Book That No-One Will See
Today I wrote five thousand
words...words that almost no-one are ever likely to see. Well, I'm
tempted to post them here,
and may indeed do so, but these constitute a first draft that I
didn't actually know I was writing. What I thought
I was writing was the first part of a ten-thousand-word novella, the
idea being to get to know a character and a world that I was putting
together as part of a new series, but what I ended up doing instead
was coming up with a new concept for a sword and sorcery series.
(Once I add more sorcery, that is.) As I was writing it, well, the
characters were speaking to me, the core concept of the story started
getting interesting, and I decided that hell, this
was the fantasy series I have been reaching for these last months.
Doing
totally scrapped drafts is nothing particularly new. I did about
three takes at Battlecruiser Alamo before the final version came
through, none of which were finished. They got to the half-way stage
before I decided to try again – it would be interesting to read the
final versions in the alternate universe where I pressed ahead with
that idea, I suppose. I've got them all saved somewhere, of course,
and I might dredge them out someday – think there might be some
traction in a 'books that never were' book? (Nope, I don't think so
either.)
I'm
giving myself a week or so to re-ponder the setting and flesh out the
plot – taking it from a ten-thousand word novella to an
eighty-thousand word book that is to be the first in a series is
going to require a bit of work, obviously – but I do know that the
'Forgotten Frontier' series is going to be the one that runs parallel
with Battlecruiser Alamo, with 'Mercia' being the historical epic
that I am going to write afterward. That's getting to grow in scope
beyond anything that I'm attempting at the moment...I've rather filed
it as 'next year'.
So,
serious progress being made, which is good. Frontier #1 to be written
this month, Alamo #4 next month. I need to get some more books out
there...though I need to write them first!
What,
you want to see that five thousand words? Tell you what...if three
people comment on this post that they want to see it, then I'll post
it. There you are. Call that an incentive.
Conan's Conflict
For the past few weeks, I've been
rereading the old Conan anthologies among other things; I still have
a long way to go and am pressing ahead, but I've already learned a
great deal. This is the first time that I've approached them with
that attitude, not to be entertained but to be educated, with the
goal of improving my own writing for the sword and sorcery series I
have pending. (This is not
the Mercian Saga; that one is increasingly heading in a different
direction, and while it is definitely going to happen, it isn't going
to happen yet.)
So here I go with a little analysis; brace yourself.
The
core of any story is conflict. With Howard – certainly with the
Conan stories – what we have as the core 'conflict' is civilization
versus barbarian. A conflict which – in Howard's mind, we know that
much from his writings and letters – the barbarians were always
going to win. There is considerable historical evidence to support
this theory, but the truth of the maxim is not the point here; simply
that at the heart of his stories was civilization meeting the
barbarians and being found wanting.
Conan ultimately falls victim to the same trap; by becoming King of
Aquilonia he becomes more civilized, and we know that despite all of
his efforts, ultimately that kingdom is crushed by the barbarian
hordes. It outlives his time, but that is all.
There
is the heart of Conan, and the 'riddle of steel', if you like. That
civilizations can last for thousands of years, but ultimately will
fall; and Conan – and his chronicler – are on the side of the
barbarians. He isn't Belisarius, he is Theodoric. (Howard must
have been familiar with the fall of the Roman Empire. There are too
many Conan-esque characters in that time period for him not to be;
any number of Goths and Vandals gathered armies, conquered kingdoms
and reigned...) King Kull can
be taken as an even starker depiction of this battle. By This Axe I
Rule is laden with such symbolism; there the barbarian has conquered,
and the ancient kingdom will never be the same again. Forever will
the laws be changed, whether for better or for worse.
On a
purely subjective basis, my favourite Conan tales are those set in
exotic lands, and there we have the clash of cultures as well – but
more in the orientalist style. He's using these settings for the
flavour; he isn't writing about the clash of West against East, or
anything like that. This is barbarian against civilization, and he
doesn't care where the barbarians come from. They can be Picts from
the frozen wastes or Afghulis from the desert steppes; they remain
Conan's allies against the strange ways of ancient lands. (On
that aside, expect me to do something a bit different for a few
days...reviewing old issues of Oriental Stories. I managed to snag
some reprints...)
So –
we see the tale of the Barbarian. The question therefore is...what of
the Civilized Man? The thought that immediately occurs to me is that
the story is just as interesting the other way around, that of
civilization attempting to keep back the darkness for one more day,
one more week, one more battle, knowing that ultimately they will
lose. I am well aware that this is not a new thing – I'm looking at
you, Admiral Flandry – but in the sword and sorcery genre it
strikes me as an interesting angle for me to explore.
For –
I want to wrote sword and sorcery, but I don't want to write a
Clonan. If the opportunity ever arose to write a Conan, or a Kull
saga, that I would happily do, I'll say that here and now. (Someone
listening to this? Kindle Worlds, please?) But I don't want to write
a thinly-veiled clone, I want to strike interesting ground that has
been less travelled, and this strikes me as a good avenue to attack!
Another
lesson, well learned, is the exotic setting, and that's somewhere
else I intend to explore. Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, the Black Sea, the
desert tribes as far as the Tibetan Empire and Greco-Bactria, all of
these have potential as interesting settings for stories, once I get
a handle – a final and complete handle – on the character. In one
way I want to follow Howard, a character that roams,
that wanders the limits of his world. Conan had a story, an arc, but
he was not tied down. Today I fear there would be the temptation to
make his character the lead in a trilogy, maybe the 'Conquest of
Aquilonia', or something of that sort, when that does not really suit
the character. More than that, from a simply logistical point of
view, as a writer it makes sense to have a world that can support
multiple stories, a character that can persist for dozens of stories
rather than simply a three-book series. To make that
work, of course, the character has to be a strong and deep one, and
Conan certainly was. He must have been – eighty years on, and we
still talk about him.
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