Mar 23

Why Characters in Books are Idiots

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Have you ever read a book in which, if the characters had not all been incredibly stupid, the situation would have been resolved in five pages instead of 300?

That’s the result of overdoing a legitimate literary technique, dating back at least to Greek tragedy, in which the plot arises out of the characters’ flaws.

It’s commonly used in sitcoms, too. Consider Seinfeld, Friends or Frasier, three popular and long-running sitcoms which I happen to have watched a lot. In the typical episode, if the characters had acted like adults, told the truth, kept their promises, made sensible choices and communicated clearly, there would have been no story.

Why do we watch these things? Is it because we see our own flaws exaggerated and learn better from the antics of the idiots? Is it so we can feel superior, because at least we’re smarter than that?

Maybe both, maybe something else. In any event, it’s not the only way to tell a story. It’s a popular way, but it’s not the only way.

At least, I hope it’s not. I’m telling a story now about a group of elite Gryphon Clerks, trained to communicate well and to respond to unexpected situations creatively, chosen because they have been through experiences where they’ve demonstrated strength of character. A lot of the time, they’re simply not going to make the stupid choice.

But that, in turn, makes it hard to generate interesting plot. Plot arises when characters make choices under conditions of challenge. And some of the time, they need to lose.

It’s the Superman dilemma. How do you make Superman interesting? Any interesting Superman story has to be about how he uses his strength of character and his intelligence to overcome a situation that tests him at his points of vulnerability. Kryptonite, obviously (which was invented as a plot device exactly because it’s hard to write an interesting story about a hero who can easily beat all comers), but also Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane and the rest of them.

In other words, one answer to “How do you write an interesting story about someone with godlike powers?” is “take away the powers and see what’s left”. Another is “locate his vulnerability outside himself, in his relationships”.

And then there’s “fit opposition”. If your hero is ridiculously awesome, put up a ridiculously awesome villain, like Doomsday, against him. Now you have two guys fighting, but they’re fighting with ridiculous awesomeness. Plus, once again, defeat is on the table, so the conflict means something.

And then there’s the technique, used more often in writing Batman than Superman, of exposing the flaw that is at the extreme end of his strengths (obsessiveness being dedication taken to its ultimate).

Or you can take the “with great power comes great angst” approach, the Spider-Man solution.

So, applying that to my problem (and it is a problem), how do I write an interesting story about mature, sensible people who make good decisions?

Firstly, I could look for the flaws or vulnerabilities they have, and hit those vulnerable spots as hard as I can, so they get an opportunity to show their strength of character in overcoming challenges.

It’s easy to come up with key flaws for each one, too. Patience, the aristocrat, hero-worships Victory and automatically trusts people in her own class. Berry wants to belong. Rain is afraid that she really is the violent sociopath she once pretended to be.

That’s the basis for my “things that can go wrong” list. What if Patience discovers that her friend, the charming aristocrat Confident, is using her charity to launder criminal funds? What if another shaman challenges Berry and implies that she’s not a real shaman? What if Rain has to defend herself in a desperate situation and kills someone?

Problem is, I ran that middle scenario and Berry acted like an adult and basically won a shaman-off hands down, making the other shaman look foolish. And it doesn’t work any other way in my head. That’s who she is, that’s what she’d do.

So maybe I need to work the “vulnerability through relationships” angle. Berry’s vulnerability is Rain, and when Rain is attacked, Berry stops being quite so adult.

Then there’s the “fit opposition”. I’m bringing in a kind of Nazi party, the political face of the Human Purity bigots, and for them to be any kind of decent opposition at all, they have to have been severely underestimated. Even by Victory, who has the best strategic intelligence (in both senses) of anyone.

I’m thinking the dwarves caved way too easily on the emancipation of the gnomes, too. They’re big industrialists. They’re bankers. They’re used to having power, and they’re not going to give it up easily.

I need more villains onstage. And they need to be smart villains, whose villainy consists in the fact that they are out to enhance their own interests at the expense of others (whereas the Gryphon Clerks are out to enhance others’ interests at, if necessary, their own expense). But they need to be otherwise equally matched.

Mar 16

Gnome Day

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The memo went round, everywhere Gryphon Clerks worked.

Attention: Important: Command of the Realmgold: Effective Immediately, Internal Distribution Universal Prompt Required, External Distribution Prohibited with Penalty.

As at midnight tonight, a clarifying law takes effect which defines slavery in such a way that it includes the dwarvish concept of gnomeservice. The effect of this law is to emancipate any gnome who is outside a legally constituted dwarf hold.

Should any gnome or gnomes seek refuge or assistance at your place of work or ask you for assistance in any place or time, you are to provide such refuge and assistance until otherwise advised.

Register said gnomes using form GA-Reg/001.01 (attached) and return to Office of Gnome Affairs as thereon indicated.

Submit any cost claims using cost code GA-000000001-01.

Volunteers sought to open offices overnight, partially paid. Advise availability to Office of Gnome Affairs.

Attention: Important: Command of the Realmgold: Effective Immediately, Internal Distribution Universal Prompt Required, External Distribution Prohibited with Penalty.

Mage-minor signmakers had been at work for days in the cities of Koskant, placing glow-in-the-dark silver gryphons beside the entrance to any office where a Gryphon Clerk could be found. They activated or deactivated when touched by one of the clerks’ gryphons, so they could mark whether an office was attended.

A hat manufactory had received, some time before, a large government order for traditional gnome hats, but sized to fit humans. The dwarf in charge shrugged, and had the hat blocks moved around. His business was making sure that orders were filled, not asking why the Realmgold wanted human-sized gnome hats.

Among the gnomes, no memos circulated. Whispers and, in the noisier factories, handsign had to do instead. But the message was carefully phrased to be easily memorised:

The human Realmgold is declaring gnomeservice illegal from midnight tonight.

If you want to leave, look for the sign of the silver gryphon and ask for help, and you will be helped.

Keep it quiet, pass it on.

 “Something’s up with the gnomes,” said one dwarf overseer to another over a cup of mushroom broth.

“Ah, they’re always muttering about something,” said his colleague.

 

Shortly before midnight, in the industrial district south of the river, large, unmarked steam vans belonging to the Realmgold’s agents chugged quietly to several key intersections and stopped. Their sound went unremarked among the normal brick-building-muffled noises of steam engines, compressors and power tools from the factories on either hand.

Black-clad agents bearing silver gryphons on their chests, and wearing the tugboat-shaped hats that gnomes wore outside to protect them from the sun, slipped quietly from the vans and went to lurk in nearby shadows.

Suddenly, just on the stroke of midnight, first one factory, and then another, started to shut down. The Realmgold’s agents straightened and, against their long-trained instincts, moved forward into the light, where their hats and their gryphons would be visible to anyone coming out of the factories.

As the machines fell silent, from some of the nearest factories they could hear shouting in Dwarvish. First one voice, then it was answered by another, and finally a shout went up from many throats at once. The agents, all of whom understood Dwarvish, looked at each other. The shout had been “shvv,” the Dwarvish word for “victory”.

Moments later, the factory doors burst open and a flood of gnomes spilled into the street, chanting “Shvv, shvv, shvv.” In between the chant the agents could faintly hear increasingly obscene and desperate shouts from the overseers inside.

The agents waved, but the gnomes had already spotted their hats and headed towards them.

A burly, no-nonsense-looking gnome approached one pair of agents and gave a tilt of the head that communicated, “I acknowledge that you’re here in front of me, what now?”

“Greeting,” said one of the agents, in rough but serviceable Dwarvish. “Do you need help or directions?”

“We were going to head into the city,” said the gnome.

“Yes, that’s right. Look for the silver gryphon on any building.”

The gnome nodded and led his people off.

As the street cleared, a couple of dwarf overseers came panting up. “Are you in charge here?” one asked.

“Yes,” said the lead agent.

“Can’t you do something?”

“We’re doing it,” said the agent.

“What? You’re just standing here.”

“We’re providing directions,” said the second agent.

“Directions? What about my runaway gnomes?”

“Realmgold says they’re not your gnomes. They belong to themselves.”

“That’s right,” said the senior agent. “No slavery in Koskant.”

“But… but…”

“You have a problem, you submit it to the Office of Gnome Affairs in the morning,” said the senior.

“Since when is there an Office of Gnome Affairs?” asked the dwarf who hadn’t spoken previously.

“Since now.”

“You can’t do this,” wailed the first dwarf. “Our grandmothers will be furious.”

“Office of Gnome Affairs,” repeated the senior agent. “Not our problem.”

 

The Office of Land Registration happened to be opposite the Municipal Theatre, and both had silver gryphons glowing outside. Also glowing were a couple of portable braziers, on which sat large metal urns filled with water. Eight or so volunteer Gryphon Clerks were enjoying a brew-up on the Municipal Theatre side of the street. As the midnight bells sounded from a couple of public clocks, they came alert and took their places by the doors.

Before long, a tramping noise could be heard, coming across the Long Bridge from the north bank of the river. Over the sound of many feet came jubilant cries of “shvv!” and “trr-kn!” (“freedom”).

A middle-aged clerk turned to the youngster beside him, a keen young lad just out of the Clerks’ College. “You’re watching history tonight,” he said. The youth nodded, his eyes shining, and they moved forward to greet the oncoming gnomes.

Mar 14

On Steampunk

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I’ve been reading a bit of steampunk lately, and so far I’m only middling impressed. I’m sure there’s great stuff out there, but I haven’t found much of it yet. I’ve mostly found the ones that are by hack writers who think that putting in plenty of brass, steam, mechanical computers, crystals and clockwork (even when it makes no sense), plus somehow referencing the Victorian era, is all you need to do.

Which is kind of like the writers of the Halle Berry Catwoman movie thinking that putting Halle Berry in a leather catsuit was as much effort as they needed to make.

Anyway, since The Gryphon Clerks is at least a little bit steampunk, it got me thinking about that elusive subject, genre definition, and what appeals to me, specifically, about a steampunk setting. And I decided that it’s a particular aspect of the Victorian era that isn’t (apparently) the one that a lot of writers first think of.

Different people have different associations with the word “Victorian”.

For some, it’s all about the class struggle, and you can do good things with that (Brand Gamblin does, in The Hidden Institute, which is neo-Victorian – like The Diamond Age, another of my favourites.)

For many others, the first association is “uptight, old-fashioned, prudish and hypocritical”, which is certainly a perspective. Not an entirely accurate perspective, or one that interests me much, but a perspective.

Some pick up on the “adventure, discovery, colonialism” vibe, which somehow has a wormhole in it leading to 1930s-style pulp plots.

But to me, one of the most interesting things about the Victorian era was not its conservatism, not its injustices, not even its colonialism, but its pursuit of scientific knowledge, technological progress and human rights.

Part of that I attribute to the fact that I’m a New Zealander. New Zealand was colonised starting in the 1820s, and the Treaty of Waitangi, its founding document as a nation, was signed in 1840, not quite three years after Victoria’s accession. So the early history of the country and the city that I live in is Victorian. To me, then, the Victorian era is one of building and development and new things never seen before.

Besides which, we New Zealanders have the proud claim to have been the first to grant women the vote, in 1893. At the end of the 19th century we were the social laboratory of the world.

Back in England, meanwhile, Charles Dickens was only one of the most prominent people campaigning for the betterment of the poor and increased social justice in the still relatively new conditions of an industrial society.

So that’s why The Gryphon Clerks involves freeing the gnomes from their industrialist dwarf oppressors and promoting education for the lower classes. That’s why I’ve included the tribal society of the beastheads getting the opportunity to participate in wider civilization (duly informed by postcolonialism, since, in a sense, that wider society is itself postcolonial, or at least post-Elvish-Empire).

That’s also why, to me, the most interesting thing about the new magical technologies is how they affect society (though that’s always the most interesting thing about technologies for me). They’re not just gizmos for the sake of atmosphere.

What’s more, the Victorian themes that interest me are very much relevant today. There are still workers struggling under industrialist oppression, they’re just in China rather than Manchester. Education is still an issue, as it probably always will be. For that matter, a hundred and twenty years after women got the vote they’re still not equally paid or equally represented in positions of power. (I work around that, in a way, in The Gryphon Clerks by positing that the Elvish Empire had already achieved gender equality centuries before, and the humans have inherited that cultural attitude – but in dwarf and gnome culture there are still very strongly defined gender roles. Meaning it can be an issue to explore or not, depending.)

I’m no Dickens, and I don’t want to be all preachy (or “relevant”, which means “irrelevant in another five years”). But I want to write books that are intelligent as well as entertaining, and that means paying some attention not only to the headlines, but to the human universals behind them.

Mar 13

The Burning Eye of Tolkien

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So, yet another list of favourite books has come out topped by The Lord of the Rings. (This one from NPR.) It got me wondering: Why?

Now, I read the trilogy at least eight times, in the paperback single-volume edition that my grandmother gave me sometime in my early teens or thereabouts. (I will say I haven’t had the urge to read it lately.) I love the movies, too, with the inevitable few carps. And yet…

LOTR has significant flaws. The overly-massive backstory (which Tolkien’s son is still publishing in umpteen volumes) is probably not one of them, but it doesn’t make it an easy book to pick up and immediately understand. The prose is… old-fashioned, at best, exactly the kind of thing you’d expect from an Oxford don who’d been in World War I.

There’s Tom Bombadil, rightly cut from the movies (I don’t think I’ve heard anyone express anything other than relief at that decision), and the songs, likewise. The story is slow to get moving. There are only three female characters to speak of, only one actually does things (Eowyn), and she does things by disguising herself as a man.

The politics belong to the 1930s, when an educated person could say “lesser races” with a straight face (not that Tolkien uses the phrase, as far as I remember, but he doesn’t need to – it’s implied clearly enough). I could go on.

So why is this consistently the most beloved book, getting onto list after list – and not only on the lists, but usually at the top?

Let’s speculate.

It could be its iconic status as what you might call a “genre fount”. Epic fantasy owes its genesis to LOTR, after all – though I suspect that epic fantasy is, otherwise, a minority taste, so it can’t just be that. I would have expected its pulpy sword-and-sorcery predecessors to have more status, if that was so. Of course, sword-and-sorcery is a genre with multiple defining books, whereas LOTR founded epic fantasy all by itself.

It could be its nobility and high-mindedness. I’m actually serious. Sword-and-sorcery is down and dirty, urban (mostly) and gritty. It’s not aspirational literature. Epic fantasy gives us a myth of striving to preserve what is left of our noble origins in a degenerate age, which is, after all, an appealing theme, even if it’s also an elitist and reactionary one. It also romanticises rural life, feudalism and chivalry, and as westerners we’re suckers for that, apparently.

It could be, of course, that Tolkien, a philologist who loved the Kalevala and the Elder Edda and Beowulf and all those other obscure classics that only get read by students these days, was getting his mythopoea first-hand rather than, like his imitators, second-hand and diluted. I suspect that the feel of mythic power in LOTR is a big factor in its popularity, and a factor that’s a lot harder to reproduce than the externals of epic fantasy which we’re all so tired of. (Clash of great nations, quest, Chosen One, Dark Lord, McGuffin, mixed group of companions, swords and horses, nobility, mysterious old wizard, twilight of the elves/gods/empire, yadda yadda yadda.)

(For anyone wanting to write better epic fantasy, by the way, I’d suggest reading the obscure, wonderful Well at the World’s End by the multi-talented William Morris. The link is to the free text at Project Gutenberg. Both Tolkien and Lewis knew and loved it, which is why I read it, and I’m glad I did.)

Perhaps, having attained the status of a “classic” because of its freshness when originally published, its mythic depth and its many imitators, LOTR continues to be cited out of reflex when people think “great fiction” or “great F & SF”. Maybe it’s one of those “I fell in love with the genre through this book when I was young” things. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I want to bring down the burning eye of Tolkien by casting the quest-epic into Mount Doom, because even though he does it so well, many other people do it so, so badly. This happens in every genre, of course, particularly ones that start selling well. Publishers will shove out any old dreck in a popular genre once a breakout hit has made it popular, while overlooking, in general, the next breakout hit because “it’s not what’s selling currently”. So goes the world. Need I say more than “vampire”?

Feb 24

Excerpt from Book 2

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[Grass Badger is a beasthead shaman, and Stone is the Gryphon Clerk sent to negotiate with the beastheads. They’re at what is basically a hui (Google it if you’re not a New Zealander).]

When Stone sat down, there was a pause, and then Grass Badger stalked out of the crowd and seized the staff.

If the speeches up until now had been aimed at unity and friendship, Grass Badger’s set a new tone. Marching back and forth, gesturing with the staff to emphasise his words, occasionally pounding it on the ground, he spoke of the growing number of incidents between beastheads and humans, the evils of the liquor trade, the greed incited by trade goods, fights over metal tools, and, above all, the raids of the Human Purity movement – though he didn’t identify them by name. He didn’t propose a course of action, but simply listed the grievances and then sat down – but inside the edge of the circle of people, not back in his place. Tiny Bird explained quietly that this meant that he intended to say more, but was giving a space for discussion of what he had said so far.

Berry expected Stone to stand up and say something, but he left this to the Clangolds and other respected speakers from the local and visiting clans. The first woman spoke directly to Grass Badger and pounded the staff on the ground as she distinguished between the humans who attacked them and the humans who defended them, the humans who traded liquor and Stone, who tried to stamp out the trade. She pointed at Stone with her other hand while she said this and shook her finger vigorously in time with the thumps of the staff.

Other speakers either agreed with Grass Badger or supported the first speaker’s points, in alternation. After six more speakers – three on each side – apparently Grass Badger’s supporters had run out, because there was a long pause, and then Grass Badger came up again to give his real speech.

Despite her attempt to retain a shaman’s calm, Berry’s stomach sank a little as Bird murmured the translation.

“Recently,” said Grass Badger, “I met a human woman who claims the status of a shaman. Now we all know that shamans own nothing. We respect a shaman because a shaman owns nothing. A shaman stands alone, walks alone, except for an apprentice perhaps. A shaman is not beholden to a Clangold, because a shaman is beyond clan and belongs to everyone. A shaman belongs to the beast, the natural beast, the beast of the land, who has marked and claimed that shaman. A shaman teaches the shaman knowledge to other shamans and to shaman apprentices – not to healers, not to mages, not to potters or weavers, but to shamans. A shaman serves apprenticeship faithfully, staying close to the master shaman who teaches, and is chosen by the natural beast of the land, who alone can release the apprentice oath, so that the office of shaman remains uncorrupted and the knowledge is passed as it is meant to be passed.

“Everyone knows this. But this human woman knows better. She broke her apprentice oath. She walks around wearing silver, the silver symbol of her oath and service to a Realmgold. She claims that her totem beast is a gryphon, a magical creature and no natural beast. She teaches the shaman knowledge to anyone who wants it, and she does not walk alone, she walks with friends who are not shamans. And she comes here, in her arrogance, to change our society and our people, to break what is true in front of us and toss it away, to lead us into her corrupted imitation of what it is to be a shaman. Oathbreaker, I name her, faithless and without principles, a teacher of wrongness and distortion. And I say that this is what we can expect if we allow these people in. Corruption, corruption, corruption and oathbreaking and evil, all the time. We are better off without them.”

He looked straight atBerry, raised the staff and slammed the end into the ground so that the shaft sank in a hand’s breadth, and stood leaning on it for a moment, breathing hard, before stalking back to his place.

There was a stunned silence. Berry felt a great calm descend from somewhere, as if she was pulling back from her body and observing herself from a distance. She saw herself stand and walk unhurriedly into the circle, and touch the staff – but not pull it from the ground.

“May I speak?” she asked quietly, and various members of the crowd called out different answers. She looked at the elder Bird, who said, clearly, in Peqtal, “Yes.”

She still didn’t pull the staff from the ground, nor did she raise her voice. But she raised her head so that the sun shone off the gryphon’s beastmark on her forehead.

“My parents are shepherds,” she began, and paused for Tiny Bird’s translation from his place in the crowd. Even sitting, his huge chest had enough resonance to reach easily to the edges of the crowd. “They have almost nothing, but I never noticed that they received much respect for that.” There were a few chuckles, some before and some after the translation – there were a number of Peqtal speakers in the audience. “A shaman is respected because a shaman needs nothing, nothing but the blessing of the totem beast, who alone can make or unmake a shaman. A shaman does not need power, or respect, or to be thought right, but only to listen to the world and to the totem beast. And a shaman is fallible.

“Grass Badger speaks of corrupted shamans. I was apprenticed to such a one. Although she had the beastmark, she did not want to be a shaman, did not want me as an apprentice. She was always angry.” Here she paused a little longer than the translation required.

“She was so angry that her anger destroyed the oath that was between us. Any shaman has seen this. Anger burns at the oathbond, pushes oathbound lovers or friends or master and apprentice or Gold and Copper apart, and one day it snaps. So it was.

“I fled in fear. I came to the Gryphon Clerks, and they took me in and treated me with kindness. I became one of them and Victory, the Realmgold and the mother of the Clerks, gave me her silver gryphon to wear in token of my service to her and to her realm. It is not mine, it is given to me in trust, and she alone can take it from me.

“I was no longer apprenticed to a shaman, but I kept some of the practices of a shaman. I lived more simply than those around me, though not as simply as a shaman does. I spent time in trance. And one day when I was in trance the Gryphon came and spoke to me, touched me on my forehead as you see, and left its mark. It is not mine, it is given to me in trust, and the Gryphon alone can take it from me.

“The Gryphon spoke to me, and told me to serve Victory, and so in serving her I obey the Gryphon. If the Gryphon tells me otherwise I will stop, for I must obey the Gryphon. Only the Gryphon has authority to tell me who to serve.

“So I come here, for Victory has sent me. And she has sent me to do this: to discover and report to her what the people who live here need, and how it can be given to you.

“Not what you want. Not what we want to give you. Not what will make you exactly like us. What you need. I do not know yet what you need. If I knew that, I would not need to come, I would not need to speak to you. So far I know that you are a happy people, you are a healthy people, and most of what you need you already have. Perhaps you need nothing from us, and we can leave you as you are. We do not know yet.

“What I do know is that Victory would not want us to impose on you against your will. Anything you get from us, you will get because you have agreed with us that you need it. And we will ask as many of you as we can. Golds, Silvers and Coppers. Cattleheads, dogheads, goatheads, sheepheads, horseheads and catheads alike.

“But I ask you this. Do not let the people who are angry decide what you need. Do not let the people who are afraid decide what you need. Do not let the people who are greedy decide what you need. I have lived under the rule of an angry master. I did not learn much, except that angry people don’t think very well.

“I am a shepherd’s daughter from the mountains, and I grew up in a little world. Now I live in a much bigger world, and it is full of wonders. I never regret having opened up my little world, because I am not afraid of what might be out there. If you are afraid, talk to us, and perhaps we can show you a way out of fear. And perhaps you can show us wonders that we do not know yet.

“Thank you for listening to what I had to say.”

Feb 15

The Why of Names

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One of the things about good worldbuilding is that at each point, you need to stop yourself and think, like an observational comedian, “why do we do things that way? What’s that about?” But unlike an observational comedian, you also need to find out the answer – to become aware of your cultural and historical roots, and think about how things could have been different.

Which leads me to a Pet Peeve about poorly-thought-through fantasy settings.

You’re reading away, and the religious background of the setting is, of course, paganism-lite (because of Gary Gygax, probably, though I suppose he got it from Robert E. Howard or someone). That’s just what unthinking genre-fantasy authors do, it’s the default. 

Judaism and Christianity have never existed in the setting. And here’s a character, and what’s her name?

Rachael.

I mean, think for just a moment.

Bad Fantasy Name Syndrome

Approach number 2 to naming fantasy characters, if you don’t just use familiar Western names without any regard to their origins, is to make them up.

Most people are not good at this.

I read a series once which, though enjoyable overall, had a number of flaws. One of them was that the hero’s girlfriend, his horse, and his brother (or maybe it was his sword) had very similar names to each other, and it was hard to keep them straight.

And then there are names full of apostrophes. Now, some people really have names with apostrophes in them, mostly Pacific Islanders. The apostrophe has an actual function, which is to separate repeated vowels and make it clear that they are repeated, with a little pause between, not just allowed to become one long vowel.

An apostrophe can also indicate a glottal stop, as in the Cockney dialect. Glo’al stop, Guvnor? It’s an actual sound, although a subtle one.

And then there’s the Bad Fantasy Naming use of apostrophes, which is usually just as decoration and serves no purpose whatsoever, except as a warning to the discerning reader.

Naming the Gryphon Clerks

So when I came to write the Gryphon Clerks, I needed a sensible naming schema that didn’t just give me Bill, George and Tl’ca’varuna, possibly in the same family.

Here’s what I did.

There are two main religions in the Gryphon Clerks setting (in real life, there are often two or more religions in a geographical location, but this is a lot less common in fantasy). The Asterists are, mostly, more upper- and middle-class and follow the rather abstract star religion of the old Elvish Empire. (It’s a very mild Tolkien joke.) The Earthists are, generally, commoners, and kind of paganish in a way that is slightly more accurate to historical paganism in our world than the usual genre-fantasy polytheism.

They have different naming schemes, but both of them are based on words from ordinary language. They’re not made-up combinations of sounds – I do that a bit with some place-names, but I’m no Tolkien, I don’t want to spend half my life making up a bunch of languages before I can start telling stories.

The Earthists are named after natural phenomena and objects – Brook, Breeze, Leaf, Rain, Berry, Bird. (They’re never named after specific plants or animals, though, because those names are reserved for shamans who have got those plants or animals as totems through an ordeal.) Their clan names describe where their clan worships – Sandybeach, Lichenrock, Ashgrove. Men and women can have the same names.

Asterist women are named after desirable abstract qualities: Victory, Patience, Prudence, Kindness. Asterist men have similar names, but where women’s names are nouns, men’s names are adjectives (I made this decision partway through when I noticed that I’d generally followed that practice): Vigilant, Determined, Honest, Faithful, Magnanimous.

The other distinction in Asterist names is between members of the Silver and Gold classes – that is, the middle class and the ruling class. Silvers typically have names of affiliation (they aren’t really surnames in our sense) taken from their trade or occupation or that of their recent ancestors: Farmer, Carter, Carpenter, Miller.

Golds take their names from their family’s estate. Tranquil of High Spur, for example, is a member of the family that owns the High Spur estate. The head of the family gets to drop the “of”, and if you’re ruler of a territory you can, if you choose, call yourself after the territory when you’re being official.

And if you’re Copper class and an Asterist, for example a servant, you might take a name like “Hope at Merrybourne” to indicate that you belong to the Merrybourne estate, but not as a member of the family.

I won’t go into dwarf and gnome naming except to say that a dwarf gets his or her parents’ names and a birth number until craft graduation and then takes a name related to the craft – usually a tool, material or technique – and gnomes are called by names related to their family’s function in a similar way. Hence Mr Bucket, whose family are cleaners.

The main point is not the details of how all this works, but to point out that I spent some time thinking about how names would work. My goals were:

  • Keep the lack of realism restricted to the fantasy elements. My feeling is that when you’re writing fantasy, all the mundane stuff should be reasonably believable and the suspension of disbelief should only be required for the magic parts.
  • Make the names easy to spell and remember, for my sake as much as anybody’s.
  • Communicate something about the characters by their names, rather than just using them as arbitrary labels.

I think I’ve achieved that.

Feb 09

Finished my second draft

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I’ve just completed my second draft. By including the first bit of a subplot that will get a lot more airtime in volume 2, I’ve managed to just edge over 50,000 words. Hey, I write short. No epic fantasy phonebooks here.

I’m putting the invitation out now for beta readers. My first lot of betas have been very quiet, and I’m not sure why. The only one who’s got back to me didn’t like the first draft, but he had some constructive suggestions about why he didn’t like it, which I’ve tried to follow in Draft 2.

The clerks’ stories are now expanded and contain more showing and less telling, more dialog and description and less narrative. I think that’s a definite improvement, and one I can take into Vol 2.

Volume 2

I’ve started the second book (before I went back and revised the first one thanks to my friend’s feedback), and I have a list of things that can go wrong for the characters. The trick will be spacing them out, or as Jim Butcher puts it, setting up all the dominoes and then knocking them over. My besetting sin as a writer is to solve my characters’ problems for them instead of letting them struggle and triumph over their challenges.

More and more characters keep turning up. After 22 pages I have seven or eight new ones who are likely to recur, plus three minor ones who may or may not get speaking roles. In addition to the 10 major characters and their hangers-on, introduced in the first book. That may be a little out of hand.

It is very much an ensemble cast, though, even if Berry is the viewpoint character most of the time.

I know I don’t have many subscribers here yet, but I’ll say this anyway: Comment if you want to be a beta reader. But only if you’re going to read it and get back to me quickly!

Jan 06

Map of Koskant, Progress, and Title Ideas

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I spent a bit of time yesterday and this morning fixing up this map that I created a few years ago, back when the background to the Gryphon Clerks was going to be a game setting. (I built in so many story hooks that I finally couldn’t resist telling the actual story. Besides, writing a game is hard, takes a lot of testing that I don’t have time for, and brings you a lot less reward per hour spent unless it’s really popular.)

Map of Koskant

In case you’re wondering, I used AutoRealm to make it. I’d forgotten how annoying AutoRealm can be (those jungle bits have hundreds of trees in them, and it slowly redraws them every time you move the viewport – which may be partly my using AutoRealm wrong, of course). You have to switch off all the toolbars – one at a time – to make the jpg export capture what you want it to capture. And it hasn’t been updated since 2006, and doesn’t work on my Mac (I had to dig out the old Windows machine, which makes it even slower). But it does make good-looking maps, eventually.

I moved the railways and the River Koslin (which used to let out much further north), added the Tussocklands and the Gulf islands, labelled the provinces and added and named their capitals, added the trail from Snakebridge to Gulfport and named Snakebridge and the Dragonpeaks, but otherwise this is pretty much how the map has looked all along. (The little coppery moons, if you’re wondering, indicate that the feared Copper Elves infest the forests and jungles.)

I’m about to send the characters to the Beasthead Country for what may turn out to be Book 2.

Progress and titles

I’m at 46,000 words in the current draft, and by the time I fill in some odds and ends I should be comfortably over 50,000. My thinking at the moment is that that will be Book 1 of a trilogy (yes, I know), and Act I in the continuing stooory of the Gryphon Clerks.

I have a nice ending in mind, but haven’t decided on a title. My candidates at the moment are “Stories” and “Introductions”. So the whole trilogy is The Gryphon Clerks, and the first book is The Gryphon Clerks: Stories (or Introductions). Has kind of a Fables title feel to it, and I love Fables (the Bill Willingham graphic novel series, that is, though I also love fables-the-phenomenon).

So the trilogy could be titled Introductions, Challenges and Resolutions, which is kind of hanging a lampshade on the three-act structure, or I could start with Stories (or maybe Origins?). Still mulling that one over. If you have an opinion, leave me a comment!

Dec 12

What I’m not doing with the Gryphon Clerks (and why)

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The thing about a well-established genre like fantasy is that it has certain conventions that everyone just assumes.

This is both a trap and an opportunity. A trap, if you go in unthinkingly and just do things because that’s how they’ve been done by hundreds of other authors before you, in which case you are contributing to a perception of the genre as derivative and unoriginal. Contributing to making that perception accurate, in fact.

It’s an opportunity, on the other hand, if you take those now-classic riffs and give them a whole chunk of funk.

Here are a few of those assumptions, overused ideas and conventions, and how I plan to subvert them, twist them and otherwise funkify them.

The hero is the big guy on the horse with the sword

We can trace this one, if we want to, back to the invasions by mounted barbarians that swept from east to west across the European plains, and the fact that history is written by the victors.

In my setting, the big guy on the horse with the sword is solving the wrong problem. The hero is the one who’s making tough choices that benefit other people as his or her own cost, and doing so through working together with other people of goodwill. Hence the tagline about heroic civil servants.

Actually, the hero is the sassy kick-ass girl these days

Big guys on horses are increasingly giving way to smart young women with attitude. Unfortunately, they are still, generally, solving the same kind of problems in the same way (beat people up until they stop opposing you), only with better banter and wearing better shoes.

I actually think women are capable of solving problems more creatively than that. Men, too.

OK, The unlikely hero is the little guy from an ordinary background who saves the world

The thing about the way most fantasy heroes save the world is that it’s intensely protective of the status quo. We mostly have Tolkien to thank for this, though any genre that looks back in time for its models and then idealises them is going to be inherently conservative. The traditional fantasy hero is reluctantly drawn into vast events when his small, comfortable world is threatened.

My little folks (who are, for the most part, only figuratively little, and do not have hairy feet – or light fingers) don’t react to threats so much as they have an ideal of a better world and believe they can help to create it. I’d say that they’re progressives, except that a particular political agenda which isn’t always my agenda is associated with that word.

But surely There must be a chosen one to combat the Dark Lord?

The whole Chosen One/Dark Lord plot has been so done to death I won’t even read a book that signals it in the blurb. GET A NEW PLOT, PEOPLE!

No Chosen One. No Dark Lord. Some of my villains don’t even kick puppies, they just have a different agenda from the heroes and are sometimes less ethical about what they’ll do to advance it.

It’s not actually necessary for a villain to wear black and twirl his moustaches while tying a girl down in the path of an oncoming train. You can be a bit more subtle in your depiction of opposition. This isn’t American political television.

Ahem. So, um, elves – they’re all noble and emo, right?

Why? Just because Tolkien’s were?

Read some of the original source material about the elves. They’re vicious bastards, and they think humans are scum. They’d enslave them if they could. So yes, they are “noble” if by “noble” you mean “like the actual medieval nobility”.

So, in my setting, they had an empire that was a bit like the Roman Empire and a bit like the British Empire and, in places, a bit like the Third Reich. And humans managed to get out from under them by a process that I may or may not get around to explaining fully, but they still have a lot of culture and religion derived from the Elves. The human nobility, whose ancestors were mostly house-servants and who took over the mansions when the Elves saw the writing on the wall and bailed out, still worship the Elves’ star-gods, for example. High culture is conducted in Elvish, or at least in the Elvish script.

Oh, and the Elves were bioengineers. They made gryphons and flying horses and werewolves and kelpies and beast-headed people and medicine cows that are milked for pharmaceuticals. They made humans stronger and healthier and capable of using magic. All their stuff looks – and probably is – grown rather than built. In contrast to the dwarves.

Dwarves? Little hairy guys with axes and helmets?

Little industrialists with ledgers and scale balances. Technologists and businesspeople. They coin all the money, since everyone trusts their contracts and the purity of their alloys, even if they don’t like the money-grubbing little buggers. Anything made out of metal is made in a dwarf-owned workshop – usually by gnomes, who are a dwarf underclass and your basic exploited industrial workforce.

A dwarf won’t fight when he can trade. He doesn’t carry an axe – he has people for that sort of thing.

Trolls, right? Or goblins or something?

Nope. No “evil races” or “lesser races” or “degenerate races”. We’re not in the 1930s. There are people, and other kinds of people.

At least tell me there’s a quest

Oh, Harry Potter and the Far Too Many Plot Tokens? No.

Oh, there are magical gizmos and so forth, and they’re useful and amusing, but no McGuffin. You don’t need one if you have a real reason for people to take action, like, I don’t know, redemption, or revenge, or protecting your people, or proving to yourself that you’re not that guy, or any of the dozen reasons that real people have for the things we do.

Realism? You’re writing a realistic novel?

No, no, no. I find realistic fiction boring, because the sets are so predictable. Give me a flying ship powered by magically-generated steam and a levitation spell any day.

So it’s steampunk?

Well, there’s the aforementioned steam, plus at least one set of brass goggles, and probably magical artificial intelligences/computers. The female ruler’s name is Victory, too. But she’s not even slightly Victorian, and the dialogue is mostly normal contemporary language. I did “period” in my last novel, and I think I pulled it off, but it’s a lot easier to write the way I talk.

I will say this: Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from mad science.

Bioengineering, antigravity, computers – why not just stage it as sci-fi?

I have a funny relationship with the science fiction and fantasy genres. See, I have a little scientific training, and that’s my worldview, for the most part, but I find a lot of contemporary science fiction bleak, alienated and hopeless. Fantasy is a lot warmer and more human, and it’s more about human values and ideals, which is what I’m most interested in. But I can’t stop thinking like a scientist, so it’s hard to just say “a wizard did it” and move on.

Hence this strange collision of retrofuture-sci-fi-inspired technologies in period steampunk dress, powered by magic.

Genres are there to make it easier to lay out a bookshop, after all. They shouldn’t become boundaries of the imagination.

Dec 06

A New Blurb

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Still a work in progress:

Dig is a mad scientist who spent 10 years in jail for sedition. Hope was nearly expelled from the university for attacking an unfaithful lover with magic. Rain is an ex-gang member who once slashed another woman’s face with a broken bottle. And Berry was a shaman’s apprentice, until she broke her oath and ran away.

These are just half of the elite group of Gryphon Clerks that Victory, ruler of Koskant, has assembled to solve her most pressing problems. There’s also a statistician, a religious scholar, a noblewoman and a nervous werewolf.

Because when the dwarves are illegally exploiting gnome workers, when beastheaded farmers are asking for protection from savage Copper Elves, and when the proliferation of steam carriages threatens the magical flux in the city – you need the most heroic civil servants.

You need… the Gryphon Clerks.