 Fantasy: August 02, 2017 Issue [#8421] |
  Fantasy
This week: Write What You Know Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.
― Madeleine L'Engle
If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
― Stephen King
Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.
― Lloyd Alexander |
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I'm not a teacher. This is a good thing, because I don't have the temperament for it. All someone would have to do would be to ask me - just once - some version of "But will we ever use this in real life?" And I would immediately want to not teach that person.
It's bad enough coming from anyone, because it displays the kind of willful ignorance that plagues society today, but I especially don't want to hear it from a writer, even an aspiring one. Especially an aspiring one. And I also don't want to hear "but there's only so much room in my head, so I don't want to learn anything I won't use." This is utter tosh. We don't have hard drives that max out at some number of terabytes. Minds are way more flexible.
One of the most common bits of advice you hear about writing is to "write what you know." This is advice I can get behind. But if you purposely limit your knowledge, you're at a disadvantage as a writer.
This is especially true, I think, for fantasy writers. After all, we're here reading and writing about dragons, wizards, magic, worlds that only exist in imagination... how can we "know" any of this stuff? The answer is that the more you know, the more you can make such things believable and interesting.
One of the foundational aspects of most fantasy (and science fiction) is the concept of world-building. I've gone into world-building several times during the decade ( !) that I've been an editor here, and I hope I've given people something to think about. But the actual craft of world-building requires some passing knowledge of many, sometimes related, sometimes disparate, subjects: geology, planetology, cosmology, hydrology. Physics, geometry, mathematics (including the more difficult aspects of it such as chaos theory and fractals), meteorology, chemistry, and other branches of science also play a part. Also, the more obviously related subjects such as language theory, biology (including evolutionary biology), architecture, engineering, medicine, botany, fashion, sociology and anthropology are evident in many fantasy stories. And don't forget such technicalities as spelling, grammar, and punctuation - the foundation of anything is intimate knowledge of the tools of the trade; don't pretend that spell checkers or editors are going to save you from every error. Having a passing knowledge of more than one language helps, too - remember that Tolkien, the prototypical fantasy author, was a polymath, but he had a special interest in linguistics.
I'm sure there are many I've left out of the above lists, but I hope you get the point. They say knowledge is power; this is certainly true for writing, as a wider knowledge translates directly into more interesting, believable and enduring fictional landscapes.
Of course, it's not possible to know absolutely everything (though some people seem to think they do), so there's nothing wrong with focus. My professional focus was civil engineering; it doesn't come up much in my writing, though, so was that useless to me? No, of course not - it earned me a decent living so I wouldn't have to depend on something as fickle as the publishing world.
You never know when you'll learn something you can use in your writing, though, so never snub the opportunity to learn anything, even if you can't immediately see why it would be useful. If I had only one piece of advice to add to "write what you know," it would be "make sure you know a lot." |
Some reading for your edification and enjoyment:
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Last time, in "Solar Eclipse" , I talked about the upcoming total eclipse for the US.
Quick-Quill  : I live in Oregon and my mom has a home in Lincoln City, OR. Guess where my sister and I will be on that Monday. I plan on returning to Portland the following morning as Im sure there will be a mass exodus afterward. Its at around 10:00am so I have the rest of the day to play at the beach, eat crab and write!
Hope you folks (and all the others) have a great time!
And that's it for me for now. Until next time,
DREAM ON!!!
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