Matt
Stormwind Member
The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,812
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Post by Matt on Feb 6, 2015 23:33:35 GMT
Well the next time you've got a spare moment to read around 4 million words let me know what you think.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Feb 9, 2015 22:34:27 GMT
Another thing. Every time I recall Game of Thrones I always feel that I could write a better sort-of-realistic fantasy story set essentially in medieval times. Unfortunately, I strongly suspect I'm really bad at character development, dialogue, action scenes and basically everything that would be required. Glossing over that though, what is it that distinguishes good and bad world-building? In my last couple of posts I made some remarks about bad outcomes, but I'm rather unclear on what you would consider a good approach.
I'm asking generally, but one thing that particularly interests me in this respect is names and language. How do you think authors should deal with them?
To clarify, I'm not seriously thinking of writing and trying to publish a fantasy novel, but I'm entertaining the idea of how I would go about trying. Probably I will waste some time writing a horrible chapter or two and some one dimensional character profiles.
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Matt
Stormwind Member
The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,812
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Post by Matt on Feb 10, 2015 1:20:22 GMT
I've flirted with the idea of trying to write a fantasy novel as well. I suspect my skills would be worse than yours if anything, but it's fun to think about and I'm sure sometime I'll make another short stab at it. My thoughts,
With names, I am a huge fan of simplicity. Anasûrimbor Kellhus is the protagonist's name in a certain very well regarded fantasy series. I didn't know at the time that it is well reviewed, or that it was actually written by a pretty well regarded mainstream literature author. I just read the first three pages, disliked the naming and sentence structure, thought it was pretentious and quit. As much as Tolkien is the author of elves and orcs and typical high fantasy, his major characters are Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, and Aragorn. Only one of those is three syllables, and Aragorn is referred to mainly as Strider in the first book. Its super simple. One of the real issues with fantasy is there is a paradox when you start each new book or series. You feel like you are being bombarded with useless information, and at the same time you feel a little lost like the author is just throwing terms around without explaining them. Try to fix either issue and you make the other worse. Names are one area you can avoid bogging down a reader for no reason.
For languages, if you aren't a linguist it's an uphill battle. Tolkien basically created languages (two full, parts of others), and the average person I'd like to believe is smart enough to tell if a sentence belongs to a fully fleshed out language or is just jibber jabber. Assuming you can't create your own language, you can do something like Brandon Sanderson, who basically states all his books are stories writtten in some other language and he is essentially 'translating' them to english. One fascinating approach in my mind to language is Watership Down. The rabbits in the book have their own language, but the author doesn't bombard you with it. Through the book he keeps adding words, and you slowly pick it up without really consciously noticing. In the climax of the book one of the characters curses the other one with a full sentence in this made up language, and you just understand it because you learned all five words or so separately. That's pretty cool.
As far as worldbuilding, I honestly think it's just about logic. Your world is basically medieval Europe (assuming a western fantasy). The fantasy stuff is the stuff that changes the world from what everyone already has a really good grasp of. This is where so many books fail. They have magical teleporting assassins, let's say, but letters are still delivered by ravens or pigeons. Or wizards who cast lightning from their fingertips but no one ever thinks to make electricity from the magic. Anything fantasy that you add to the world, you really need to draw all the effects that would have on society all the way out. Again with Martin, you can't add 10 year winters and not give me more of an effort to explain how people survive the winters. He could have looked into eskimo cultures maybe and learned how people survive in year long cold climates, instead of just making a weak adaptation of English Feudal society. Similarly, you can't stick a 700 foot wall in your world and tell me magic and some dude named Brandon the builder made it, cause you know he was called the builder and stuff. It's 700 ft, that makes no sense. I can't get over that. Any chapters written at the wall in ASOIAF, I've mentally shortened the wall to about 70 feet in my mind just to make the idea plausible.
My favorite fantasy series no one has ever read is called The Long Price Quartet (written by one of George Martin's friends actually). It's basically set in an oriental setting. The world is a lot like you might expect from a pseudo asian culture, with one (and only one) form of magic / fantasy. Poets who can capture the essence of a natural force are able to bind it into human form, and control it. For example one poet fully describes the nature and hardness of stone, and his binding is called "stone made soft." Basically he can weaken or strengthen stone. Doesn't sound like much. But then the city he lives in is the mining capitol of the world, and then he the poet has political power because the whole economy of the city runs through him, and if his city was ever to go to war he can essentially pull a castle down. And all the while the humanoid binding "stone made soft" is engaged in a war with the poet trying to free itself. That's one poet, one ability, and the series has several. It's absolutely fascinating, but only because it's taken to all it's furthest conclusions. A wizard just ripping castles down because he can make stone crumble is cheesy and feels fake.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Feb 10, 2015 1:46:45 GMT
I think with regard to names, they should reflect some sort of cultural similarity. Names that use similar roots, prefixes, suffixes, etc are far better than throwing in a bunch of randomly picked names. It just gives a more organized feel to your world. If you have a very large world, then it's okay to have different "families" of names depending on the region, but I shouldn't feel like I'm speaking a different language every time I visit a different town, for example. There are ways to canonically substantiate odd name combinations, but they should be explained in a reasonable manner. As an example of a successful way to do this, look at LoTR, where all of the names have a Nordic or Northern European feel to them. There are some outliers (such as Khand, Harad, and Balchoth), but those are used to designate far off, exotic places, which is reasonable given the size of Tolkien's Middle Earth. Even Game of Thrones does this reasonably well in Westeros, where all place names and most character names seem to have an English feel (though by virtue of its Greek sound "Westeros" violates this rule), but Essos seems to be an inglorious cluster with regard to names and seems like Martin decided to cram every possible name type into that landmass. With regard to worldbuilding in general, start simple. Set the reader/player in a small, easy to understand setting and gradually explain the surrounding areas. People learn by associating various tangents of knowledge with each other, so gradually building upon a solid but simple foundation will ensure that your audience understands you. This is another thing that Tolkien does brilliantly. Whether you read the Hobbit, FotR, or the Silmarillion, Tolkien starts small, introduces characters, regions, and plot developments gradually and with sufficient explanation, and then continues to add to his successful start. The creation myth in the Silmarillion is a slightly different situation but likewise understandable, being a series of slowly expanding cycles of plot. It actually builds off successful mythological models, especially the Greek and Norse creation myths, but the fact that it follows their basic formula while staying unique is a mark of its success. Many writers and designers fall into the trap of concocting a grandiose, intricate, and majestic situation and thrusting it upon the audience all at once, thinking that the audience will understand it as well as the creator does. Unfortunately, the audience has not had 4 years to dream up the world that the author did, so they are immediately lost. This is where Martin goes horribly wrong in Game of Thrones. You are immediately thrust into several plotlines of a vast and complex world that apparently has a deep and detailed history and mythological canon of several religions but none of this is ever properly explained. Instead, obscure references are made to past events and deities that nobody understands. As a result, Martin had to postpone the writing of the 6th book in order to write A World of Ice and Fire, which is essentially a companion to the novels that only somewhat effectively provides the backstory and basic explanations that should have been in the story from the beginning. It's a shame, because Martin is probably better at character development than Tolkien ever was. What I said earlier about his character development being not great was actually the wrong way of articulating and conveying my point. Martin does an excellent job of coming up with myriads of characters with distinct personalities and motives and presenting them in a unique and interesting way to the readers. This, imo, is the saving grace of his books. Unfortunately, he's still so damn disorganized that he can't fit it all together and needs to chop a ton of heads in order to make his story run along. There is no rhyme or reason the Game of Thrones--literally anything could happen next and I would not be surprised at all. The positive side of his lack of skill at worldbuilding is that he can essentially pull plot twists out of his buttocks and nobody will complain because the canon doesn't contradict it (or say anything, for that matter). That's the only reason he's managed to keep the story together so far. Or he's a total mastermind who can actually handle that many moving pieces and had it all planned out from the beginning. But I very much doubt it Tolkien's characters are pretty simple and rather shallow if you look at the general literary standard. This is likely due to how much he was influenced by Nordic literature and epics. Tolkien did a great job, however, of basing most of his characters off popular literary archetypes that are easy for readers to identify with. Readers therefore don't require a higher level of characterization because the character models have been in their heads since they were little kids hearing their parents tell them the classic stories of past epics. Readers can empathize with Tolkien's characters and see themselves in their shoes, while they look at Martin's characters and say "wow, this is an incredible character, but I could not imagine myself in their shoes for the life of me". The simplicity of LoTR, however, is a strength, precisely because the characters are easy to identify with. Those archetypes have been bred into our intellectual genome ever since the Norse and Germanic tribes formulated these stories millennia ago. Then every once in a while, Tolkien throws a curveball that really shakes things up and presents something new. Frodo, instead of going ahead and destroying the Ring like readers might expect, is overcome by it and needs a stroke of luck to save the day and get the Ring destroyed. Gollum ends up being the most complex character of them all, with his various motivations and real emotional development. Observing his character literally battle with itself during the journey is evidence of Tolkien's literary genius in providing just enough variety to shake things up. LoTR is very Arthurian, very Germanic, very Nordic, but it's the little spice that Tolkien adds to deviate from the established trend that makes things truly special. Even Morgoth, the pinnacle of all evil, is not motivated primarily by the wish to be an evil maniac and cause chaos. He simply wants to have the power to create (which is withheld from him by Iluvatar), and in his quest for that power descends into evil. He is not the Surtr of Norse mythology. EDIT: Just saw Matt's post- nice analysis and I quite agree
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Matt
Stormwind Member
The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,812
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Post by Matt on Feb 10, 2015 2:28:42 GMT
He's not a mastermind. He's more of a 'gardener' than an 'architect'. He has stated so himself. He writes himself into knots, then spends years trying to write his way out.
If I were to attribute his success to anything, I'd say it the fact that he was a professional TV writer. He writes novels the way TV is set up. A cast of compelling characters (with at least one for everyone to identify with), route for your character or relationship, lots of cliffhangers to keep the audience coming back, shocking plot twists, and a nice serving of gratuitous sex and violence to entertain. It's basically TV in book form, and a huge portion of the populace watches TV and doesn't read. My opinion anyway.
Abercrombie does the whole gritty character centric fantasy much better in my opinion.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Feb 10, 2015 2:37:11 GMT
Yup, totally agreed. I actually had no idea that he wrote TV, but it makes total sense. I've always actually thought the show was better from a literary standpoint than the books, and now I see why
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Feb 10, 2015 19:24:45 GMT
Thanks for the replies.
That method had occurred to me and struck me as an excellent way of shutting down criticism in a legitimate way. In particular, it justifies using ordinary real life names. Of course, it still requires a degree of cultural similarity. But the important thing is that the cultural similarity that matters is what sounds right and not what was actually the case. Many Jewish names for example would not have been in use among non-Jewish medieval populations, but would not sound so out of place to us now.
Yes, that's bothered me - I had assumed they had vast stocks of non-perishable food accumulated during summer, but then during the war he makes a point of there being food shortages even though winter hasn't really started. In addition, I always wonder where they get the idea of a 'year' from given that it bears no relation to their seasons. What's worse is that the point of having variable and massively long seasons is entirely unclear, beyond being able to say "in a world where winter lasts for years...". In many ways, the idea of a long, brutal winter that lasts for years would be more disturbing if that wasn't the apparent routine.
Yeah, that can be a problem. However, I really like the idea of a complicated inter-twining plot with multiple competing characters rather than a single protagonist. My experience of GoT was not quite what you describe here. I actually thought he started off relatively sensibly, with nearly all the viewpoint characters together at Winterfell. From memory, these are Eddard, Catelyn, Arya, Sansa, Bran, Jon, Theon, Tyrion. Then there's Daenerys. Although I think that number is arguably too many it was just about manageable, even when they were no longer all in the same place. The real problem, in my experience, was that it grew from something manageable into something horrendous. I stopped reading because I felt the original characters had largely stopped interacting with each other, and the introduction of more and more viewpoint characters was making it very unlikely that things could be tied up halfway decently at the end. I lost any faith that there was an elegant plot unfolding, and the pace was slowing intolerably under the weight of so many diverging storylines that it wasn't fun, light reading any more.
I am surprised to hear that he has written for television, which seems a rather disciplined medium. Unless he was writing for Lost. I could believe that.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Aug 22, 2015 23:26:32 GMT
I watched the third Hobbit film today. I think it is the weakest of the three.
It had its moments, but I felt that overall it's just not clear what this film was about. I enjoyed the bit with the dragon at the start, but I have no idea why that wasn't included as the ending of the second film. Then the rest of the film was almost entirely comprised of a never-ending battle. I did not care for the stuff about Legolas and Tauriel (why are they in any of these films?), and I didn't understand or appreciate the storyline with Gandalf and those other people in the dark fortress. I couldn't believe that eagles were used as the easy answer to a problem again.
I did like the fighting in/on the collapsed tower wedged between two cliffs and on that sheet of ice. There were also a number of good visual moments in the battle.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Aug 23, 2015 1:06:29 GMT
Agreed that Bard vs Smaug should have been at the end of the second movie - I never was a fan of the cliffhanger BS they pulled there. Going for a cliffhanger there is especially pointless considering that Tolkien canon is common knowledge. The Legolas/Tauriel/Kili plotline was excruciating as ever to see, but I guess they had to get a romantic plotline in there, just like how they blew Aragorn/Arwen out of proportion in the LotR movies.
The plotline with Gandalf & co in Dol Guldur is well explained in the appendices of RotK but not so well in the movies. To be fair, the eagles did come in the clutch in the book, so I won't begrudge them that. That and the similar scene in the first movie are both products of unfortunate clichés that Tolkien included in The Hobbit but generally avoided in LotR.
You're quite right that the film was pretty disorganized. The entire trilogy bit off a bit more than it could chew, honestly, and sometimes their focus was bizarre. Wasting time on scenes like Gandalf getting high with Radagast, every Legolas/Tauriel/Thranduil scene (except for the Thranduil scenes that actually occurred in the book), and every Alfrid scene ever while ignoring several important aspects of the book held the movies back a little.
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