Zornhau

You know when you've got your living arrangements right when your own kitchen is more attractive than the kebab shop, even when you're a tad legless thanks to attending the rather boozy launch of a friend's second book.

As I strolled back to our rather central flat, the pangs of hunger finally pierced the alcoholic fuzz. Not the kebab shop for me - the fridge contained flour tortillas, bacon, soured cream and cheese. Allspice was to hand on the spice rack; those of you who like Tex Mex can see the synergies.

...or at least marked up. What I have does seem like the final draft of a non-embarrasing novel. The proof, however, will be in the flogging.

I can't help it. I laugh at people who write longhand, or make a fetish of using an actual typewriter. But when it comes to editing, I have to print the damn thing.


Watch this space.

So, I submitted my penultimate chapter to my fantastic crit group. They pointed out the bloopers and the soggy bits. And picked up on the typos - fixing those was a good task for an evening when I was otherwise out of steam. I also get feedback from single_point, who has to be my perfect beta reader: not a writer, but a keen reader of MilSF and other military genres, a well informed military history fan, and - almost as important - a fellow martial artist who understands the value of feedback. 

Here's what his notes look like:

So, if you dropped Sharpe into Howard’s Tower of the Elephant scenario, (Wikipedia article here ) he’d do pretty well, but it would be a weak story because the original derives it’s running conflict from Barbarian Rogue vs Urban Rogue, and Sharpe is an Urban Rogue (Phut!).

What if Howard had invented Sharpe? Perhaps he happens on copy of “London’s Underworld” , becomes fascinated with the idea of a modern barbarized underclass, and decides to redo his latest half-finished Conan story…

Rolling around in Howard’s head are Sharpe, the Tower of the Elephant (transplanted from Hyborian era Zamoria to 1800s Spain), the sorcerer and the enslaved alien.  He has the rough draft of the Conan version; how will he swap in Sharpe without a major rewrite?

Sharpe will be on a solo mission. The Texan pulpster was never really interested in man management, bureaucracy  - or even friendship. His stories wouldn’t really work if the protagonists had a unit of soldiers in tow. So, the Rifleman must face this adventure alone.

To keep the thematic structure, the antagonists all become aristocratic rogues.  The easy way to do this would be to put the tower in the countryside. However, that would mean binning the cool tavern.

I earlier argued that the Elephant Alien served as a yardstick for Conan. Like Conan, he’s a free-spirited wanderer, but  a flawed one, since he let himself get tied down and then enslaved. Obviously, Sharpe needs a different yardstick.

So…

( Read more... )

So, what's the role of technology in Sharpe novels? Perhaps that'll give us some clues as to how to handle magic.

Strangely, despite the loving depiction of all the weapons and fortifications, the Sharpe novels really aren't remotely about the technology...

How do the threads and the people go together to make a Sharpe novel? Not in the parallel manner implied by one of the comments on my original post. Rather than analyse one of Cornwall's novels in detail - and since there are several of you looking in - it would be interesting to build a MilSF novel collaboratively (wit the caveat that anything you post is up for grabs).

So, we need:

• Campaign summary  (stock genre stuff, nothing too original please.)
• Hero.
• Goals and Antagonists for 4 x threads: 
  • Military 
  • Organisational 
  • Psychological
  • Leadership

Once we have these, we can lace them together and come up with some supporting characters. (And if nobody can be bothered, I'll throw in random ideas myself).

Over to you folks...

UPDATE:

Two so far.. very useful. I'll do the easy one first...

fechtbuchhas posed something bit more challenging, mainly because it would involve a lot of unit stuff. Here's how I'd approach it:</font>






 

I wonder if we could write something like that?

I've been reading Robin "I can't believe she's not that wet Megan Lindholm" Hobb's Shaman's Crossing. It is, of course, rather good. 

What's interesting is that she spends the first third of the book just setting up the world and the character's place it in. There only two episodes which contain live conflict and odd resolution, and only one of them kicks off the rest of the story. Mostly, she's doing the dreaded storyteller cut - providing information that will be significant later. The hellish thing is, it works.

Mostly, when fantasy authors do this, it sucks goats so badly that there's a queue of horny billygoats right down the hall and into the street. You know the kind of wince-making-heir-to-Tolkien-my-ass kind of thing I mean. Reading it is like having a monologue playing in your head. "Look, elves in the woods. And here's a mysterious stranger. And there are rumblings on the border." I give old, established authors (who might get around to some sort of story) about two chapters of this rubbish before I quit.

Robin Hobb, on the other hand, gets away with it. She does this by dishing out the setup in contradictory layers, which is to say it's presented to the reader in a string of reversals not unlike an actual plot.

For example: Civilised guys are nice, but they oppress the barbarians, but they ostensibly do it for plausible altruistic reasons, but the romantic barbarian way of life is gone, but the barbarians are all misogynist headhunting bastards anyway, but you can only understand them in context, but...

On it's own this isn't enought. Just like a proper story, the flipflop chain of exposition needs to be interesting, and have emotionl impact.

In rare cases - especially in comedy - interesting is enough. Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Galaxy is full of whacky infodumps which, not only have no emotional impact, they don't even have much to do with what passes for his plot. Unfortunately, interesting isn't usually enough. Unlike in historical fiction and modern thrillers, the reader knows that you're just making stuff up. They don't a priori  really care about your unicorn breeding customs.

Mostly, we find stories compelling because they engage our emotions. They usually achieve this by either appealing to universal themes, or by getting us to identify with a character who will experience the emotions for us. Hobb's extended setup does both. On the one hand, she raises issues of imperialism, racism, and challenges our cultural relativism. On the other, she makes all this matter to the protagonist. So, despite wading through pages and pages of descriptive setup, we're hooked... for a while at least.






 

We are, it seems, in the midst of a TV SF&F boom. Empowered by the new easy CGI, TV channels are churning out serious SciFi shows and shoving them into high-profile slots.

I think it's the times we live in. Obviously, there's much to escape from - something the Guardian article makes much of.

However, I think it's more than that. 

 56. My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.
(From The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord)

 
Update: EE Knight reviews Eragon here.

(All IMHO)
It's a challenge knowing what things to describe and what to leave out of your story.  I find it helps to treat a story as a game in which the struggling players (protagonist, antagonist, others...) take turns to make moves.

 

Sir Ranulph, trusty greatsword, 'Steelcutter' in hand,  is hacking his way towards Jasmine. He's not in a very good mood:

Sir Ranulph burst through the melee. His eyes found her, even as Steelcutter whirled, sliced through the cabin roof, drew sparks from a strut, then whipped down to cut a man diagonally from shoulder to waist. Internal organs spilled to the deck. The two halves of what had once been a human being toppled in opposite directions, connected only by a mist of blood. The big knight advanced between the quivering joints of meat.

(Or why I couldn't just polish up what I had and send it out)

The problem with a first novel, whether or not its outlined, is that you don't know what works and does not. The story grows in the telling, leaving a trail of out-of-date earlier sections.

So, suppose in the original version:

1. Boy hates tea but Girl likes tea.
2. Boy goes to India (as part of somebody else's plot thead) and accidentally discovers he loves tea.
3. Meanwhile, Girl drinks too much tea and decides she hates it.
4. Boy returns with a tea addiciton, and is determined to set up a teashop based on Girl's expertise.
5. Girl refuses, but boy introduces her to a rare Indian tea. HEA

Hmmm. Boy's adventures in India (#2) seems somewhat passive! What if he went there on a quest for tea? Better.

Taptaptaptap! End of draft!

Ah. Bugger.

The conflict in #1 no longer makes sense. But if I swap the roles, then #3 makes no sense. Without #3, #5 is down the toilet.

So what the novel needs is more scenes.

Hence why I haven't tossed [HIGH CONCEPT HERE] out of the door.