Category Archives: Ramblings

10 reasons why fantasy is the greatest literary genre

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10, no, 12 reasons why fantasy is the greatest literary genre

Fantasy is a genre unique, because it’s a massively selfish act on the part of the author, but is simultaneously entirely about the reader. Fantasy is and always has been the genre I enjoy reading the most. Why? Read on. Then leave a comment telling me why I’m wrong. Or, you know, being nice.

 

1. Freedom. What is it that possesses people to search out books set in the normal world about crappy relationships, or walking dogs, or someone’s family? How can any of those scenarios be better than a book about crappy relationships between dragon riders, or someone’s family when Dad just happens to be ensorcelled by the Demon Azgaroth? Or walking trolls?

OK, I’m not sure the last one has much scope, but really, why limit yourself?

2. Language. I’ll admit, the Demon Azgaroth isn’t the most exciting use of the English language ever, but the wonders created by Tolkien, or Rowling (please forgive me for the unintentional comparison. (I know, I know, but how good a word is ‘muggle’? It’s just perfect)) are glorious. Without Fantasy these words and languages might never have come into being.

3. Worlds. This is as much for writers as readers. How exciting is it to plunge into a new world, a place never before walked by one of your own kind? You can write about London until the cows come home, but unless it’s being invaded by sloth aliens from the planets Shnoo, it’s still London. I love London, but when I sit down to read, I’d rather go to Daruhjistan, or Dros Delnoch.

4. Contrast. In direct competition with the one above, if, like me, you write the awkwardly titled Contemporary fantasy, it may be the glorious contrast of the terrible Schnoo aliens with the Houses of Parliament that particularly excite you.  (I’ll admit it now, Schnoo is the worst name for an alien race ever conceived. Ever).  This contrast, the ability to skew what is normal and expected is, sometimes, what makes fantasy so compelling.

5. Characters. I’m back to the questions with this one. You have two choices. You’re going to read about a terrible moral dilemma , possibly involving theft and even death. Would you like the person going through this dilemma to be a) Dave, computer engineer and father of three or b)Drake Hardsack, gifted swordsman, wench magnet and all round, well, hardsack? You just look at that and think, ‘well, Dave, I’m sure your story is compelling and deeply moving, but me, I’m going for the swords and shit’.

6. Rules. When is a story ever going to be made worse by the main character having the ability to fly? Wuthering Heights, Heart of Darkness, Catch 22. All great books (except for Wuthering Heights. Honestly, that just bored the hell out of me), but can you truly stand up and say they wouldn’t have been more fun with some simple levitation or maybe a death ray in there somewhere? Fantasy has rules, don’t get me wrong. If it’s written well, the rules are the same as for any other story. You must care about the characters, they must do what people would do in any given situation and so on. But, and this is the important bit, you always have to follow those rules (unless the Schnoos are around, in which case you can probably just throw it all out the window), so why not get rid of the dull ones at least, like gravity, or not hitting people with big spiky bits of metal?

7. Variety. If you like to read fiction, you’re likely to hit some pretty similar themes, places and so on fairly quickly. There is of course nothing wrong with this. Fiction so often resonates for that precise reason. But I love knowing that when you open a fantasy book, anything could happen. Swords, magic, fair maidens, evil wenches, fiends and demons, superheroes, star cruisers, aliens, talking animals and so…hang on, sorry scratch the talking animals, some things just shouldn’t be allowed. You get the idea. If it’s written well enough, you can still get the emotion and the Schnoos, all in one place. OK, I’ll stop with them now. Promise.

8. Your own mind. This may seem a little obtuse, but I think it bears saying. As I mentioned earlier, London will always look like London. A good author may help you to see it in a different light, but it’s still pretty much as is. I’m fairly certain that no one in the world sees the Discworld quite the same way as me. That’s not because Mr. Pratchett doesn’t describe things well, quite the opposite in fact, but because it only exists in my head. It exists in millions of other’s as well, but my version is the only one that counts, because it’s my experience of it that matters.

9. Swords

10. Chicks with swords.

11. Chicks with swords riding dragons at the head of a huge army, hell behind them and victory or death in front.

12. Schnoos.

 

 

 

 

7 days of soundtracks, the perfect accompaniment to writing horror

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Diamanda Galas – Wild Women with Steak Knives.

Writing horror? Want to scare the pants off both yourself and your audience? Look no further. This is only a voice, so might not be easy to use whilst you’re actually writing, but I know no better piece of music for getting yourself into a really strange place! If you can last the entire 12 minutes, you’ll probably be ready to star in your own book, but assuming you’ve stayed the right side of sane, you’ll be feeling entirely ready to create some truly weird and terrifying stuff.

 

 

So there’s a quick 7 soundtracks in 7 days, with a bonus day thrown in for free. There are plenty more artists you could look at. DJ Shadow creates excellent city music and no heist story would be complete without some Propellerheads, but these should provide some excellent starting points. I hope you enjoy sound-tracking your writing and please let me know of any gems you may use as well.

7 days of soundtracks, Bela Fleck, for when you want to go somewhere new

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Bela Fleck and the Flecktones

This is another act that have a plethora of tunes to pick from, depending on the occasion. They play a kind of country funk jazz, for want of a better phrase, but don’t be put off! More than a few of their tracks are beautifully atmospheric and can be really inspiring to write to.

 

I use some of their more peaceful pieces when I’m creating a new place, to set the tone I want. ‘Big Country’, whilst clearly being inspired itself by the US, is a gorgeous, warm song, whilst ‘New Math’ conjures feelings of isolation and discovery.

 

For characters, try ‘Flight of the Cosmic Hippo’ (I have an ambiguous stranger in a western in my head) or, well, there are stacks to choose from. Pick out any album of theirs and you’re guaranteed to be taken away somewhere new.

7 days of soundtracks, todays choice Old Man Gloom

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Old Man Gloom – Gift

This song does have words in it, but they’re fairly unintelligible so I can still write without getting distracted by them. This is the case for most Old Man Gloom stuff it must be said and of all the ideas I’ve suggested over the last few days, this is the one you may find hardest to go with. However, this song in particular has a wonderfully creepy atmosphere of foreboding and fear.

 

 

For anyone writing that Scandinavian murder mystery in snow and darkness, this can be a really powerful tool for getting yourself into the mindset. I also stick it on when my characters are going to have an argument, just to get me riled up!

 

Soundtrack your novel – a 2 part guide to using music in writing

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Try to imagine the beginning of Trainspotting (the film) without ‘Lust for Life’ banging out of the speakers. Try to imagine the first half of Wall-E without any music. Try to imagine any Harry Potter movie without that really annoying ‘dee dee, deedeedee, dee dee’, and so on, you get the idea.

In movies, good ones at least, the music is integral to the emotion. With film scores, the music will often tell you exactly what’s going on, adding to and emphasizing what the director is trying to get across. With soundtracks, the songs will do a similar job. With truly brilliant sound-tracking, the music will add another layer above what the characters and dialogue and setting are already doing.

This post will be in two parts. The first is for when you are writing your WIP, the second for after, when you are collecting original music to transform it into a fabulous multi-media release.

So, Part 1: Before we write.

We’re going to start with your characters. Imagine each one making his or her entrance. Trawl your record collection until you find the song that creates just the right impact. When exploring your collection, it may be that you find a song that changes how you see the character, which can be for the good, or you may hear something that makes you grin every time you picture your hero. Keep searching until you find a piece that really helps you develop that character.

In short, give your characters a theme. You may find that what fits them when they are being classy and cool, is entirely wrong when they are sobbing and coughing up snot, so more than one piece might be appropriate. What it will do is add another layer to your vision of them, making them that bit richer on the page and hopefully enhance your writing experience.

Now to the scenes. I often only have a couple of scenes in my head before I begin writing, so I’ll do this at various points throughout the process. A classic technique used by some movie directors is storyboarding, blocking out each part of the scene in varying degrees of detail before they begin. You can do this with music.

Ask yourself, how does your scene begin? Is it mysterious, or action filled, is it a slow build, a gradual reveal, or is the reader going to be thrown in the deep end? The right music can give you the momentum or rhythm to get those opening beats bang on. Sometimes, it can be useful to use a cue from a movie you know well. You might have pictured your scene and want a particular feel reminiscent of something you’ve seen. If so, find that music and put it on, get into the atmosphere.

You can also decide whether you will have just one piece of music, or whether you want to have many, moving the scene forward through changes in mood and tempo.

The aim of this is to add that extra something to your writing experience, which will hopefully translate to the page. You may of course think that the soundtrack has so much impact that you want to share it with your readers. As ebooks get better and better, it will become easier to include music with a book, which opens up a whole new realm of possibilities.

 

This brings us to part 2: After we’ve written.

Let’s look at choosing music for a multi-media book release. I’m going to focus on the specifics of music, picking apart the basics to give you the tools to trawl music libraries and find what you need without too much frustration and heartbreak.

There are a few fundamental musical elements that can help you to choose, or at least search in the right area, for the right kind of music. I’ve included examples for each tempo band. These are taken from films, which feels like the best point of reference at the moment. Hopefully, if I re-write this in 10 years time, I can use examples from books!

Tempo: The speed of the music. Almost all music libraries will have their tracks listed by tempo. Here are the basic tempo markings with genre and outlines:

60 – 90 bpm: This is pretty slow, a good setting for ballads and some rock. Also, a lot of hip hop works at this speed

Examples: Gangsters Paradise by Coolio (80bpm), from Dangerous Minds.

Uninvited by Alanis Morissette (63bpm) from City of Angels.

90 – 120 bpm: This is a little more upbeat. Most rock and Americana fit in here, along with classic pop.

Examples: Kiss me by Sixpence None the Richer (100bpm) from She’s all That (sorry about the movie)!

Axel F by Harold Faltermeyer (115bpm) the theme from Beverly Hills Cop

120 – 150 bpm: This is now dance, upbeat rock and modern pop stuff, excellent for action scenes.

Examples: Spybreak by Propellerheads (127bpm) from the lobby scene in The Matrix

Power of Love by Huey Lewis (120bpm) from Back to the Future

Canned Heat by Jamiroquai (130bpm) from Napolean Dynamite

150 bpm and up: This is fast stuff, drum and bass, punk and some 80s pop. Although it can be very fast, it is often used in movies as it works well with quick edits, something you may want to duplicate on paper.

Examples: Lust for Life by Iggy Pop (200bpm) from Trainspotting.

Footloose by Kenny Loggins (173bpm) from, well duh.

 

Timbre: The choice of instrument determines the timbre and it is the individual qualities of each instrument that create the timbre of the whole piece. Some may describe it as the colour and feel of the sound. Some storytellers use them to great effect and it’s worth thinking about as it’s another way to refine your searches.

Cello: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was smothered in the wonderful cello styling of YoYo Ma, and created an atmosphere perfectly in keeping with sense of duty and tradition and doomed romance that permeate the movie.

Drums: The Lion King, amongst many others, uses the sound of drums to great effect, creating an aural backdrop to accompany the stunning scenes of the African savannah. Avatar also uses tribal-style drumming at key points to support certain environments.

Synthesiser: Blade Runner is the classic example of how to use synths well. The sounds are deliberately alien and were very unusual at the time. Although far more common these days, there are still so many synthesized timbres that haven’t been explored and could be incredibly evocative.

Strings: From the haunting Adagio for Strings from Platoon to the entire soundtrack from Lord of the Rings, a strong string section can do pretty much anything.

Voice: Used to great effect in everything from ‘Oh brother where are thou?’ To ‘Sister Act’, both solo voice and choirs are in many ways the most powerful of all instruments when used right. The accent, the style, everything about how someone sings will give your reader a more complete experience.

Orchestra, acoustic guitar, trumpet, there are so many choices and each one will impact on the experience your reader has.

 

Tonality: this is the key of the piece, which means very little if you haven’t studied music, so to put it better, if a little simply, the tonality will inform the listener whether a piece is happy or sad, joyous or melancholy.

Major: this pretty much means happy, positive and everything’s ok. That isn’t to say that a major piece won’t have moments of sadness within it, but that’s the general gist.  Major songs from above: Kiss Me, Axel F (the latter being a great example of a song in a major key that doesn’t sound all that happy! It’s to do with starting on the sixth note of the scale, but that’s a whole different post)

Minor: Rather predictably, this means sad, or lonely, or haunting.

Modal: This is where it gets a bit tricky, but this can be for those in-between moments, where the listener has to make up his or her own mind. Modal music can be what’s called ‘tonally ambiguous’, not giving too much away.

Atonal: This is for the crazy moments, where you just want to scare people.

 

Time Signature: this is, again quite simply, the number of beats you feel in a piece, when you tap your foot to it.

4/4: by far the most common, every song in the tempo section is in this time signature. Tap your foot to each one and count 1, 2, 3, 4 and all should become clear.

3/4 and 6/8: For use when people are waltzing, or being generally romantic.

2/4: Marches, military goings-on and the like. Also good for a hoedown.

5/8, 7/8 and 15/16: For those crazy times again.

These are a bit simple, so apologies if you are a musician, please don’t shoot me, it’s about making it useful.

 

That’s the basics covered. Now you have your book written and you’ve used some classic songs to help you. The next step, go to the library and for that scene you wrote whilst listening to Moonlight Sonata on repeat, type in ‘60 bpm/Piano/minor/4/4/classical’ and you should be on the right track. Not that you’ll find anything quite as good as that, so maybe just use the original. Ho hum.

 

To finish, my personal favourite of all soundtracks is the scene in Goodfellas where the bodies are begin discovered, in garbage trucks, abattoirs and so on. Playing in the background is the unlikely choice of the wonderful outro from Layla by Eric Clapton. I’m not a huge fan of the rest of the song and you might not even recognize the two parts as being from the same piece of music, but the piano-led end section is beautiful and entirely at odds with the horror on the screen. And you know what, it really works.

The conventions (clichés) of the Heroic Fantasy Genre

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As with all good genres, Fantasy has a few conventions that simply must be followed. I am of course generalising massively, but it’s good fun, so there.

  1. Weapons are never simple. Why have a sword, when you can have the enchanted sword of Ashkerah, home to the demon Myshogoth? Why have an axe when you can have the Axe of the Great Beard, handed down through a hundred generations of great beard wearers? Even a simple knife is the dagger of Plenty, taken from the tomb of the mighty Skoloth and bearing the jewel of Lyanna, ancient priestess and wearer of diaphanous gowns. In a world where everyone is almost certainly involved in violent actions at some point, weapons become the car and house and smart phone all in one, the ultimate status symbol. What kind of a hero would you be if you simply carried ‘a sword’? hah, I spit on your simple piece of pointy metal. No, when it comes to fantasy, weapons are never simple.
  2. People don’t swear. Picture the scene. Your blood brother has just lost his hand fighting the Dragon Master of Elleth. Simultaneously, you have watched the woman you’ve spent the last 200 pages trying desperately to find whisked away by said Dragon Master just seconds before you would have grabbed her. On top of that, you’re out of arrows and the Orcs are closing in. Put in that situation, I would probably be saying ‘fuck’ quite a lot, or at the very least ‘shit’ or ‘bollocks’. However, it turns out that in these times of blood, violence and no table manners, our heroes are impeccable with their language, muttering perhaps a God’s name under their breath, at a real push. I should mention that this isn’t true if you read George R R Martin, or Joe Abercrombie. Their characters are far ruder and as such cannot qualify as bona fide heroes, merely dudes and chicks with swords. Sorry, them’s the brakes.
  3. Magic users are wusses. Sometimes there’s an excuse and sometimes there isn’t. Perhaps we could blame the lack of cheap gyms on fantasy worlds, but the fact is, the life of a magic user is clearly entirely incompatible with a regular workout. You wouldn’t need much, just an hour on the treadmill every few days. But no, it’s pretty much the law. No magic and muscles. I blame the magic schools for not educating their students properly. Any good place of learning would ensure that their students understood the importance of physical fitness and health in a busy lifestyle. Particularly when so many of their pupils are destined for a life on the road, adventuring, being threatened regularly with a painful death and so on. Ho hum.
  4. Dwarves are grumpy. Whether this the ultimate manifestation of short man syndrome or something more sinister, I’ve never figured it out, but it’s safe to say that the people known as dwarves are a bunch of miserable sods. Not only are they miserable, but they are normally all-too-happy to spread the misery around some. Of course, they use that grump to hide their heart of gold, lest they be viewed as big girls’ blouses by their tough guy adventuring pals. However, were I adventuring with said grumpy bastard, I think I would find it all too tempting to knife the moany sod in the middle of the night and run the risk of missing out on the soft squishy bit that should emerge at some point near the end of the book.
  5. Fantasy guys don’t like to share. Whether it’s women, swords or emotions, Fantasy characters just don’t enjoy sharing their stuff with anyone. I imagine their round the fire chats to be much like that of the Wiggum lad from Simpsons.

“So, do you like, umm, stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“Umm, like swords and stuff?”

“Ahhh, therein lies a tale, let me tell how I came upon “hoarfrost thunderfuck”, my trusty blade”

(2 hours later)

“So, ummm, how about other stuff?”

“Huh?”

And so on… not much in the way of exploring their inner feelings I’m afraid.

  1. Don’t go underground. Despite what their brain should be screaming at them and indeed what everyone else is actually screaming at them, your average heroic hero will happily plunge deep into the earth in search of a good adventure. Of course, he probably hasn’t read many fantasy books and is therefore ignorant of the inevitable horde of goblins/giant spider/huge scary monster thing/ghosts/evil termites (delete as applicable, unless you really hate your character, in which case just throw everything at the stupid bastard) that dwell in the deep. Nonetheless, this feels like a feeble excuse when facing a deep tunnel, lined with webs and general ‘really? You really wanna go down there?’ vibes.

 

So there you have it, a few of the choicer gems from the wonderful world of fantasy. Have I missed any? Are you even now readying your mighty pen of Zenthrax to smite me for my impertinence? Let me know.