So, the fine folks over at the Grim Tidings podcast invited me to the rambling round table, and we had a delightful chat.
The Grim Tidings Podcast with Deborah A. Wolf
We talked about the writing process, getting published, controversies in popular fantasy, and weiners.
We talked a lot about weiners.
Thanks for having me over, guys, I had a great time!
Jai tu wai,
Debi
Deborah A. Wolf is a weaver of tales, a lifelong student of pretty much everything, and sworn to slay the dreaded Grammarwocky.So, the other day I was asked by a nice young writer whether and how a group might sneak past a hibernating bear in its den without waking it. He wanted to write a believable scene and wanted to ask a real barbarian how such a thing might be accomplished.
Can’t fault him for that, I suppose, but I was horrified.
I mean, what a waste of a perfectly good bear.
I get it, I really do. You love your character and don’t want anything bad to happen to her. You’ve probably got an end scene already in mind, complete with explosions and disemboweled villains and teeth-rattling Epic Victory guitar solos. As she takes the path from Innocent Farmgirl to Cyborg Pirate Queen, you want to wrap her in cotton and bubble wrap and Northern Quilted Bathroom Tissue. The first time Sulema ever rode through the Valley of Death, she was able to sneak through without much of anything happening to her. Phew! Made it!
And then I thought, wait a minute…I’ve got this perfectly good Valley of Death, and she just SNEAKS THROUGH UNSCATHED? Why would I do that? Do I hate my readers? I promised them the Valley of Death and gave them the Valley of Nothing Ever Happens.
So, yeah, spoiler alert: nobody rides through the Valley of Death unscathed, not anymore.
If you’ve got a cave with a bear in it, for fuck’s sake, wake the bear! Let it chase your characters, maul a couple, maybe eat one. If your cave doesn’t have a bear, throw one in there. Give her babies to protect and take away her coffee. And maybe an earthquake too for good measure.
Make your characters pay for daring to be in your story, because the payoff for your story–and for your readers–will be sweet as honey eaten from the skull of an enemy.
Jai tu wai,
Debi
Deborah A. Wolf is a weaver of tales, a lifelong student of pretty much everything, and sworn to slay the dreaded Grammarwocky.I am delighted to announce the sale of the first three books in my saga, THE DRAGON’S LEGACY, to Titan Books.
Congratulations to Deborah A. Wolf on the new book deal:
Deborah Wolf’s THE DRAGON’S LEGACY (Books 1-3), pitched in the tradition of Guy Gavriel Kay’s THE SARANTINE MOSAIC and the darker folkloric tales of ARABIAN NIGHTS: set in a desert world of sand and honey, the series balances and contrasts the grim with the wondrous, the heartbreaking with the humorous, and takes an unflinching look at real-world issues such as the plight of indigenous peoples in a world mad for power, to Alice Nightingale at Titan, by Mark Gottlieb at Trident Media Group.
Deborah A. Wolf is a weaver of tales, a lifelong student of pretty much everything, and sworn to slay the dreaded Grammarwocky.Sharing a short excerpt from today’s worldbuilding exercise: I’m writing a concise history of Atualon.
The Wyvern’s Rebellion
Solarus ap Serpentus ne Atu, during a visit to the capital city of Khanbul, abducts the young Imperial Princess Zhaolin and installs her as his Consort. Emperor Pu Yet Sin seds his fifteen-year-old son Ghanzhi as an Imperial envoy to Atualon to secure her release or, failing that, demand an Imperial dowry and instatement of Zhaolin as Sa Atu. Ghangi, against his father’s explicit orders, demands his sister’s immediate and unconditional return, but Serpentus laughs in his face and tosses the Imperial Prince into the dungeons of Atukos.
When the Emperor learns of his son’s disobedience he disowns the boy and refuse to pursue the matter further. Imperial Prince Tiachu is named Heir and immediately challenges his father to mortal combat, which he wins. Emperor Tiachu then raises an army and sends it west to Atualon.
The Matreons of Atualon, fearing war, demand that the Imperial Prince and Princess be returned immediately to Sindan, and reparations paid as well. But Solarus has already defiled the girl and it is reported that the boy prince has taken wetlung and is not expected to live. The Matreons are divided in their responses to this outrage; some demand that Solarus be stricken from the line of succession, others that he be allowed to succeed his father but required to install the girl as Issa Atu and pay reparations to the new Emperor. When Serpentus refuses to negotiate with the Matreons, the Matreons return to their Houses and take up the matter with their Patreons.
Several of the Houses issue a Denuntiatio, or formal intent to remove House Serpentus from the throne. Serpentus declares all titles and lands belonging to the families whose Patreons have signed the Denuntiatio forfeit. Houses Ursos, Equos, Corvos, and Wyvernos raise the standard of rebellion.
And that’s all I’m going to tell you, for now.
Jai tu wai!
Debi
Deborah A. Wolf is a weaver of tales, a lifelong student of pretty much everything, and sworn to slay the dreaded Grammarwocky.Most of you who are writers have probably already heard about the Hero’s Journey. Described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949), The Hero’s Journey—or monomyth—is a basic pattern that can be found in stories and legends around the world:
The Hero’s Journey
The Journey can be broken down into four stages. In Stage 1, the Hero leaves the familiar world behind. In Stage 2, the Hero learns to survive in a strange new world. In Stage 3, the Hero uses this new knowledge to master the unknown world, and in Stage 4 the Hero returns to the familiar world, having gained some necessary bit of knowledge or shiny object.
This is an oversimplification of a very complex and fascinating topic. I would encourage you, especially if you are a writer, to read further here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheHerosJourney
And here:
http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php
And here:
http://www.thewritersjourney.com/hero’s_journey.htm
Consider this your Call to Adventure.
I’ve spent a lot of time geeking out about the Hero’s Journey, because storytelling is kind of my thing. If writing is an adventure—and believe me, writing is an adventure—I feel like I’m at stage 2.5. I’ve almost got the hang of this strange new world and I’m getting to the point where I don’t cut myself with my own sword too often. And I’d like to share some thoughts on the Hero’s Journey in storytelling.
I sat down one day and made a Hero’s Journey spreadsheet, and broke down parts of the story lines of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Robert Jordan’s Eye of the World, and George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones.
This is what I do in my spare time. Don’t judge me.
When I did this, I noticed something interesting.
In each story, the Call to Adventure was precipitated by an unlooked-for and somewhat unwanted visitor. Here we have a protagonist, our will-be Hero, happily smoking a pipe, helping Dad with farmboy chores, or lopping off the head of a deserter—Familiar World stuff—when along comes a Sage with some bit of news. Grab your boots and walking-stick, it’s time for an adventure.
What I found interesting was the thought that this Sage—who may become a mentor or helper character in the not too distant future—is an unwelcome visitor. Of course the Call to Adventure is often resisted at first, because who wants to leave a nice Hobbit-hole and a larder full of cheese and bacon? But the Hero’s initial reaction to the person initiating the call is worth examining further. This visitor is often seen as a helper or mentor character, but I would argue that this is also an antagonist.
I began to call this character the Fey Visitor. There’s something otherworldly, powerful, and vaguely frightening about this person. This visitor is viewed with suspicion and unease, and a general wish that they would just go away and leave the Hero in peace.
Of course, the Fey Visitor is a herald to another character or group of characters—Nazgul, Myrdraal, or Lannisters—and this visitor is a direct threat to our Hero’s safety, to the extent that the Hero will be forced to embark upon the journey, and may also be forced to rely upon the Fey Visitor’s strange powers for survival.
I call this second visitor the Fell Visitor, and see it as a dark-mirror image of the Fey Visitor. It seems to me that a story may be enhanced and deepened if the storyteller keeps these two Visitors in mind, plays them off against one another, and has fun comparing and contrasting them as two sides of the same coin. Moiraine and the Myrddraal, King Robert Bareatheon and Cersei Lannister, Gandalf and the Nazgul. Someone who wants you to move and change, and someone else who will kill you if you don’t.
As the Hero continues into the strange new world, eventually lessons will be learned and skills gained that will enable the Hero to overpower either of these antagonists, but for now I will leave Frodo trembling in fear as he agrees to this impossible task, when all he really wants to do is go home, have a smoke, and sit down to a nice little dinner.
Jai to wai,
Debi
Deborah A. Wolf is a weaver of tales, a lifelong student of pretty much everything, and sworn to slay the dreaded Grammarwocky.I participated in my first writers’ group this weekend.
I attended a writers’ luncheon a few years back, but I would not say I participated. For one thing, it was supposed to be a potluck, but besides my Pineapple Stuff (pineapple bread pudding, my usual what-the-hell-to-bring fallback), and perhaps some cheese and crackers, the other writers only brought coffee and wine. I made a joke about how we as writers are supposed to avoid clichés, not live them, and was met with an awkward silence.
And then things got a little weird.
A few people stood up and read or recited some of their poetry. Now, I love good poetry. I don’t really get it—I fear I’m as deep as a mud puddle—and I can’t write it. I can do a pretty good Robert Service type story with rhyme and cadence, and I can turn out a dirty limerick without a second thought, but real, true poetry is something I can only gaze at from afar. If I hear a poem about a tree, I don’t think, “Wow, what a beautiful representation of the meaning of life well lived.” I think, “Trees. I like trees.”
The stuff my fellow writers were spouting left me sitting in the corner with that odd expression you get on your face when you’re sitting in a German pub and everyone else is smoking and speaking German, and you do neither. Then someone got up and dragged in a tree branch they’d splattered with paint and strung with wire, beads, and what appeared to be a voodoo doll. I took my empty casserole dish and never looked back.
But this group was different. It was a local NaNoWrimo thing, and they were singing the song of my people.
NaNoWriMo, for those of you cursedly sane folks who have never heard of it, is an exercise in frustration, insanity, art, and the neglect of all things domestic. The official definition is:
NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.
You can learn more about NaNoWriMo here: http://nanowrimo.org/about
But I stand by my words. NaNoWriMo is great for the coffee industry and possibly the whiskey industry, but not so great for family members who wish to be fed, driven to school, or spoken to during the month of November.
Yeah, yeah, cry me a river.
We were back in the woods, away from normal humans, just the way I like it. Everyone spoke of their projects for November, and I really hope everyone finishes their stories because some fabulous ideas were presented. Someone gave a little speech about worldbuilding, a topic new and fascinating to those who write literary fiction; we spoke of characters and plot, tension and frustration, exciting hooks and sagging middles.
I find that speaking with other writers is almost a meditative experience; I left feeling grounded, and validated, and excited about this year’s NaNoWriMo.
I will be working on Heart of the Forbidden City, Book 2 of Song of the Sun Dragon. I will be drinking a lot of coffee, talking to myself, and probably losing a bit of sleep.
I will not be doing laundry.
Jai tu wai,
Debi
Deborah A. Wolf is a weaver of tales, a lifelong student of pretty much everything, and sworn to slay the dreaded Grammarwocky.I am posting this in thoughtful response to the stir caused by a comment I posted on social media last week. In a nutshell–hardly realizing I was cracking open a nutshell–I suggested that it is counterproductive and even illogical for our society (and especially artists) to be so discouraging of a career in arts. Of course my focus was writing, but I would extend this message to any career in the arts. Further, I declared my intention to personally ignore such fallacious and harmful advice, and suggested that anyone who was so determined to believe that a career in writing is simply not possible was welcome to remain behind flipping burgers as I proceed to storm the castle.
I was surprised and dismayed at the vehemence with which some folks not only cling to, but defend the argument that writing is a poor and foolish career choice. After all, this is a writers’ group. A couple of people attacked the idea that writing is a valid choice of careers–and attacked me personally–so angrily that I ended up blocking them.
I don’t have time for internet duels; my siege engine is only 50% edited. A 165k word count trebuchet takes a lot of perfecting.
I was even accused of being biased against those who work in the food industry. As if my time in the Army was not often spent at more distasteful duties than flipping burgers. Let me assure you, I don’t think less of anyone for their choice of careers (or, in this economy, whatever job someone can scrape up in order to make a living).
The same, evidently, cannot be said of those who would insist that writing as a vocation is a path littered with the bones of fools and miscreants.
Writers, for the most part, do not have an easy time of it. I can tell you just from my experience that finishing a fantasy doorstopper has taken more work and skill than anything I’ve ever attempted, and that includes learning Arabic, getting Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees concurrently, and raising a houseful of children as a single parent. A lot of 4 am, a lot of taking crap jobs so that I could keep a roof over our heads for just one more chapter, a lot of learning new skills and letting go of ego. I would say that the willingness to work hard, a willingness to let go of preconceptions, and blind tenacity are more important than sheer writing talent. If you wish to make a living at this, you need to be able to stop wishing and start doing. treat it like a career. Read trade journals, study study study, learn learn learn, write and toss, lather, rinse, repeat till your spine is screaming and your wrists are swollen and your eyes are begging for mercy.
But don’t listen to those who say it’s not worth it, it’s impossible, only xyz percent of people ever sell, advances suck, indie publishers suck, self publishing is for idiots and the Big Five will never publish another book. For those folks who say it is impossible, get real, be grateful for the opportunity to flip burgers and keep your eyes firmly fixed on the ground, I say, you’re right. A career in writing will always be out of reach for those who refuse to lift their gaze to the stars.
As for me, I am casting my fishing-net at a dragon, I am storming the castle. Life is short. Go long.
I hope you decide to breach those walls, too.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jk_rowling_the_fringe_benefits_of_failure
Deborah A. Wolf is a weaver of tales, a lifelong student of pretty much everything, and sworn to slay the dreaded Grammarwocky.