This week: Feast or Fast Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon.
-Terry Pratchett
In anything, there has to be that moment of fasting, really, in order to enjoy the feast.
-Stephen Hough |
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With Thanksgiving coming up fast here in the US, and Christmas not far behind it, I thought I'd talk about food.
Culturally, we tend to commemorate past events via food. This takes two basic forms: feast, and fast.
What does this have to do with fantasy writing? Well, if you're inventing a different culture, or just modifying an existing one, chances are they'll have their own feast or fast days (or weeks, months, etc.) So it might be good to think about what some of those might be.
We can use our familiar cultures as examples - after all, you usually don't want to stray too far from the familiar, lest you lose readers' interest.
So, for instance, Thanksgiving is a feast day in the US commemorating early European settlement of North America. As such, many of the dishes are deliberately New World - the ubiquitous turkey, for example, is native to this continent. One can, of course, substitute vegetarian options, though symbolically, it's still turkey. But if someone made, say, a Thanksgiving pizza? Well, while that would be delicious, but it wouldn't quite fit the spirit of the holiday. Even if you did choose turkey as a topping.
In general, feast days are meant as celebrations, while fast days are intended to be more solemn occasions. Examples of the latter include the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, in which nothing is eaten for about 24 hours, or the Christian observance of Lent - not a true fast, but a time with dietary restrictions for religious purposes - or Ramadan in the Muslim community, which involves daytime fasting.
Most of these observances, of either type, have religious purposes - though Thanksgiving can be seen as a national, not religious, holiday - but it wouldn't be outrageous to come up with secular ones in fantasy writing.
A few guidelines:
There will probably be a significant gap between an event and its traditional commemoration. To continue to use Thanksgiving as an example, it wasn't established as a national holiday until the 1860s or thereabouts, while the event it celebrates took place in the 1600s. It takes time to realize the full historical significance of something.
Because of this time gap, there are often mythological or mystical aspects to the observance. Historic facts tend to be lost to time, or glossed over with meanings added later. You may know the "true facts" of your culture's past events, but time can change the narrative that people use.
As I noted above, the nature of the observance depends on the event in question. A tragedy won't usually be remembered with a happy feast, nor will a miraculous event be commemorated with a fast. This can, of course, be played with, and many events contain elements of both - consider the Jewish observance of Pesach (Passover), for example, which contains elements of both feast and fast.
Food can help to define a culture, so we can use that in writing to illuminate the character of a society. |
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Last time, in "Keeping Track of It All" , I talked about remembering details for a longer story.
s  : One thing I notice an increasing number of fantasy writers feel they have to do is tell the reader everything about their world. They've created this world and, dagnabbit. they're going to show everyone their world is fully conceived! The writer doesn't need to do this; if it's important, it'll come up; if not, it'll be there for the next book in the world (because heaven forbid people write standalone stories anymore).
Yes... I've ranted about that sort of thing before. It's been a while, though; might be time to revisit the topic soon.
Octavius : I struggle with character descriptions as well however I've herd some say that you don't really need them. I can agree sometimes. It all depends on who you are writing if your character has a personality all on his own, then the reader can fill in the gabs themselves. As far as world building is concerned, I prefer to use it as a way to add conflict. For instance, In Worlds Fate, I have two earth like planets orbiting each other doomed to crash into each other. I feel that worlds should be used as a tool to add conflict to your story. Famines, floating islands in danger of plummeting will enrich any world you create. [Submitted item: "World's Fate" [18+]]
My personal preference is to only mention descriptive things if they matter somehow, for character or plot. Like I said in the editorial, I tend to skip, or at least skim, them when reading. This makes Victorian novels quite speedy for me to read.
BIG BAD WOLF Feeling Thankful  : One has to figure out the rules.
Or make them.
So that's it for me for November! Until next month,
DREAM ON!!! |
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Fantasy: November 20, 2019 Issue [#9876]
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