Six Sentence Sunday: Jeharv

These six sentences appear in the opening scene of Deathhawk’s Betrayal. The conversation relates to Jeharv, the master of the assassin Order of Nizari.

The magician gulped air. ‘Why is his life worth more than those of the people he has killed, more than the lives of the people he will kill if he lives?’

Astarl let him drop to the stone floor. Why? The magician made it sound so simple. But Jeharv had saved her when no one else would and it wasn’t simple at all.

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Lessons Learned from Tobias Buckell’s Failed Stories

Tobias S. Buckell is a relatively well-known science fiction author. Although I confess I have not read much of his work, being more fantasy oriented than science fiction, I did recently read his book Nascence: 17 Stories That Failed and Why. It was an interesting look at his growth at a writer, giving us a rare glimpse of a published author’s early stories (the ones we writers are more inclined to hide from view than show the world) together with Buckell’s analysis of why the story didn’t work. 

It is worth a look for any writer who might be struggling with their own work and looking for insights as to why. I have guest posted my own review of the stories on Damyanti Writes. You can read the full post here. 

 

 

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Fantasy Writer and Lawyer: Oxymoron or Perfectly Natural?

A significant number of people have remarked it’s an unusual combination to be both a lawyer and a fantasy writer. Others, who perhaps have more firsthand experience with the field of law, think it’s perfectly natural. 

Some of you may have now jumped to the conclusion that lawyers always deal with fantasies because lawyer means liar. Believe me; I’ve heard all the clichés. I enjoy a good lawyer joke. In fact I admit to being partial to this one:

An Engineer died and went to see St. Peter.

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t let you in,’ says St. Peter.

The engineer instead goes to hell where conditions are atrocious. After a while, the engineer started to make improvements. He added an escalator, running water, and after a couple of months even air conditioning. Of course eventually God heard about the changes down below. God phoned up the devil and explained that a mistake had been made and the engineer would have to be moved up to heaven.

“No, I don’t think so,” says the devil.

"This is your last chance. Send that engineer up here or I'll sue you!"

The devil laughed "Ha, where are you going to find a lawyer?"

But as funny as the good jokes are, the tired old misconceptions wear thin real fast. And it is a common misconception that lawyers are liars. 

I’m not going to go into the role lawyers play in the justice system except to say lawyers are officers of the court. A lawyer’s first duty is to the court, even before their duty to the client. A good lawyer doesn’t lie and a good lawyer won’t behave dishonestly in the defence of a client. I won’t say there aren’t lawyers out there who do neither of those things. The point is they’re not supposed to and there are plenty who maintain that standard. I have personally refused to act for clients who lied to me about their activities in breach of the law. Last year I tried to fire a client who wanted me to act in a way I considered unethical. Fortunately – or unfortunately – the client saw the error of his ways (after only three abortive attempts by me to fire him!).

So what is the connection between fantasy and lawyers? It’s not that lawyers are creating the fantasies, oh no. It’s the clients who come to us with their fantasies! If you were so inclined you would have endless inspiration. If nothing else, the profession leaves you with a good sense of human creativity. 

Terry Brooks - lawyer and fantasy writer

My personal favourite was not a client of mine but was described to me by a colleague. This client used what she called the ‘heart of heart’ tests. If he believed in his heart of heart that the company wasn’t doing anything wrong, then they could go ahead and do it – even if strictly speaking it was breaching some law. I expect a lot of things were OK in his hearts of hearts! I sympathise with my colleague. Keeping that client on the straight and narrow was a full-time job!

A client of mine came to me seeking an appointment to a regulator-sanctioned position. It requires the person to be of good fame and character. I won’t tell you his name, but let’s call him John Smith. When I asked him about his industry experience (in selling life insurance, no less) he proudly declared he was the number one seller. While John waxed lyrical about his achievements I privately considered how the regulator might view someone who achieved high sales at the expense of his clients. 

Shortly afterwards I saw an advertisement for an air conditioner. It said something to the effect of ‘We make the most air conditioners’. I immediately thought of my client, John. Having more of them doesn’t make your product better! The fantasy that it does I now call the ‘John Smith school of thought’. 

I have had any number of other deluded clients. Clients who think they don’t have a conflict of interest when they are remunerated by the insurer to advise the insured. Clients who think regulators give a sh*t about their high-flying but totally irrelevant qualifications. Clients who think we overcharge (ha! They should see what they charge at the big-end of town).  Clients who think it’s OK to say one thing and do another. Clients who think I can magically divine their intention or facts about their business and I should just work in isolation without ever pestering them. Clients who think I can do things by yesterday or by 5pm today when they ask at 4pm. 

I got news for them. That ain’t fact. That’s fantasy.

 

In fact, here is a list of 8 lawyers who became science fiction or fantasy writers. I even only knew of one of them! But there are others floating around, I’ve read a few ‘About the Author’ blurbs for authors who were or had been lawyers. 

So there you have it. Law and fantasy are not all that incompatible after all, although on my most trying days I certainly wish they were!

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Six Sentence Sunday: The Ring

I haven't done much work on Deathhawk's Betrayal recently as I'm currently doing a workshop called '5 in 10'. We write 5 short stories in 10 weeks. It's been a great experience so far and we've written three stories. Excellent for getting the creative juices going. Once that's done, I'll go back to Deathhawk's Betrayal as I have learned so much recently I have more changes to make. Until then, here's another snippet.

Danek curled around his belly, gasping. Astarl seized his hand, plucking out the finger bearing Aldenon's signet. Leaning in close, she jammed his wrist between her knees and braced it with her right hand. Her breathing came fast and ragged. ‘I’m taking back what’s mine, with interest.’

With one jerk of the knife, she sliced the finger off.

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Dialogue and Endings: A Case Study with Joe Abercrombie

I recently finished reading Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law Trilogy (The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged and The Last Argument of Kings). Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it very much and I think Abercrombie is a great writer. But dialogue and the ending were the two things that stood out for me as flawed. I make my comments on the dialogue as a writer and my comments on the ending as a reader. 

Dialogue

Abercrombie uses alternative dialogue tags instead of 'said' a lot. There are literally rivers of growled, grunted, hissed and more. Not only does he use these alternatives copiously, but I felt he was repetitive in his choices. Grunted and hissed were used with disproportionate frequency – obviously, because I noticed, right?

As writers, this is something we are told to do with care and even then in small doses. I don’t think either rule was followed in this case and the story suffered for it. Not significantly, but it did eventually annoy me, and after that, every time was an eye roll moment. A definite distraction from the story, which no writer wants.  

To add insult to injury, some characters hissed words, phrases and sentences that did not contain the letter ‘s’. How can you hiss a word that has no sibilants, I ask you? Go ahead and try it!

The dialogue problems were not a major issue for me, but what annoys me most is it was unnecessary. It could have been so easily fixed. 

 

The End 

No, this isn’t the end of the post! I’m talking about the end of the book. I know what Abercrombie was aiming for when he wrote these books because I read his notes on his website. Dark, dirty, gritty, realistic. It was all those things. But, what’s the problem with realistic?

Real life is sometimes, or even often, unsatisfying. Isn’t that part of why we turn to fiction?

What annoys you about those intriguing news stories? Why did he do that? Did they ever find the person responsible? What was the motive? Did they have a happily ever after? You never find out. 

Happily ever after might not be realistic, and therefore not in keeping with Abercrombie’s raison d’être for The First Law series, but in many cases it’s what the reader wants. This is particularly true in fantasy where we tend to expect the good guy to defeat the bad guy. Even if you don’t have that kind of ending, all the loose ends should be tied up and it should be possible to look at the character arc and say yes, these experiences changed the character, even if he didn’t get the outcome he wanted. 

I didn’t get that feeling when I finished these books. Rather, I was looking for more – the reason I was on Abercrombie’s website, trying to find out when the sequel series (say, The Second Law?) would be released. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be one. 

It is one thing to make your reader want more. It is another thing to make them want more and then not deliver. 

You want to make the reader want more at the end of Book 1 so they will buy Book 2. You do not want to leave them wanting more at the end of Book 3 when there is no Book 4 (or a sequel series). Why? Because if the reader wants more, to the point where they incorrectly expect there is another book, you haven’t done something right. The reader thinks the story isn’t finished. When they realise it is, they feel robbed. 

For me, the end of this series felt like nothing had changed. A group of people came together, they fought in a war, possibly on the wrong side, or at least on a side only several shades lighter than the other side, then separated and went on their merry way unchanged. The character I considered the main protagonist went on much as the series started and that wasn’t a very nice road he was walking. His romantic interest disappeared in the other direction with no satisfactory resolution to their romance of any kind. One character looked like he would probably die but the book ended before he did. One character changed into a much better man but faced a future of being used by a man who isn’t very nice at all. Yeah, there wasn’t a lot of happiness going around. 

The only satisfactory conclusion for any of the characters was the one I predicted. Now that’s a good ending. Where you give the reader enough subtle clues they guess at the ending and it makes them happy.

I understand what Abercrombie was trying to create, as a writer, but as a reader, it completely failed to satisfy me. If there had been a sequel series, I would have bought it by now. Instead, I’m hesitant to buy his other, unrelated books for fear of equally unsatisfactory endings. 

The moral of the story? The ending should make sense, tie up the loose ends, make you happy – and make the reader happy. 

 

If you want your readers to come back, anyway. I know I do. How about you?

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Six Sentence Sunday: Kain 2

By request, I have continued immediately where we left off last week. If you haven't read last week's Six Sentence Sunday post, you can read it here.

Astarl stared, paralysed, while he held out his cloak. She’d heard of the Machaera, of his black reputation.

A knife sat sheathed on his belt. Her fingers brushed its hilt and the next she knew his arm was around her neck, the blade at her throat. She hung limp in his grasp, struggling to make sense of what just happened.

He was fast, though not as fast as she; rather, anticipating her move, he left himself recklessly, dangerously open to counter her.

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Why Do The Bad Guys Need To Be So Ugly?

My mother fell asleep during the first hour of The Fellowship of the Ring. When the movie finished, I asked her did she really find it that boring. She didn't like the orcs. 'Why do they need to be so ugly?'

'You can't save the world from fluffy bunny rabbits,' I replied.

Lord of the Rings orcs

On reflection, I think the villains in high fantasy are not nearly as ugly as those found in other fiction. People often think fantasy is escapism and to some degree it is. The good guys nearly always win and the bad guys get their just desserts and that satisfies some inner need for justice or fairness that most of us seem to have.

But most of all, it's not real. No matter how terrifying, how depraved, how hideous the villain, I'm never going to lose sleep over him. Because I know it's fiction. Someone made him up. He can't possibly come knocking on my door. None of these things are really happening to real people in the real world. If they were, I might cry. But they're not.

Not so true for other kinds of fiction which often sprinkle in facts - I mean, actual facts from our actual real world, something those of us in the high fantasy genre only have a passing acquaintance with.

I am currently reading 'Grave Secrets' by Kathy Reichs (yes, not my usual genre) and I just watched the movie Fair Game. So I've been bombarded with various hideous real things like:

• governments destroying the career of someone just to keep a secret;
• people who make death threats against the small children of a person they hate (even though they have no good reasons for that hatred);
• people attack someone publicly on the basis of mixed media reports without firsthand knowledge of that person;
• genocide and murder, rape and torture, in less fortunate countries than ours, where such things may all be in the ordinary course of a day, never investigated, condoned or authorised by the government, and conveniently forgotten. 

It's enough to depress a person. While fiction is, by definition, not real, it usually has some basis in fact, whether it is based on a true story or just inspired by some fact, snippet or tidbit. So while the particulars of the stories I have read and watched may not be accurate, it's a pretty safe bet all of the above have happened and will happen again.

Don't get me wrong, I know about the bad things that happen in life. I donate to charities and do what I can to help. I have a friend who is currently in Nairobi as a volunteer aid worker, so I know. I see people being nasty and cruel and spiteful to each other, judgemental and intolerant. I know it's happening. But there's a difference between knowing and wallowing in it.

When you wallow in it you get a very jaded view of humanity. Start to think maybe our species is a waste of space, maybe it wouldn't be such a great loss if we were all wiped out. When you look at what we do to one another you wonder what kind of monsters we are.

Why do the bad guys need to be so ugly? Life is ugly. 

When I read high fantasy, sure the villains are all ugly monsters. They are just as ugly as those in the real world.

But high fantasy also has heroes. The genre becomes inspirational rather than mere escapism. 


Because the heroes in high fantasy remind me of everything that is good and beautiful in us.

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Six Sentence Sunday: Meet Kain

A mother shouldn't have a favourite child... but I do. And it's Kain. Of my fictional children, of course! Don't get me wrong, I love Astarl, as much as one can love a cold-blooded killer, but I love Kain more. As much as you can love an insane, cold-blooded killer! Look, they both have their reasons, OK?

Kain has his own trilogy (the Nemesis Trilogy). In fact I conceived it before the Deathhawk Trilogy. But he has a cameo in Deathhawk's Betrayal and this is Astarl's impression on their first meeting.

The man was tall and whippet-lean, with his blond hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. The face was stony and set, all hard planes and angles, carved from rock. 

‘I am the Machaera.’ His voice was low and harsh, a man who has spent much of his life shouting, and yet at the same time hypnotically compelling. One hand unclasped his stained travel cloak and held it out to her, averting eyes cold enough to make a blizzard feel welcoming. 

Glancing down, Astarl realised she was naked.

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