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Entry tags:
issues in world-building
I have a story idea. It involves a world where there are frequently brawls, sometimes fatal, in the streets.
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age and matrimony
was philosophically contemplating some lit-crit I had read about William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The critic was objecting to the habit of featuring many characters in it as old. Evidence? Both Malvolio and Sir Andrew think of themselves as wooer for Olivia.
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arranging the marriages
Plugging along on the outline, and it occurs to me that two characters will talk about an arranged marriage to cement a political alliance.
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then comes the wedding
Building up a long time to this wedding. It's not the climax of the story, but it's a major turning point.
So I hit it in the outline and go AAAARRRRRGGGHHHH! I need to world-build their wedding customs!
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So I hit it in the outline and go AAAARRRRRGGGHHHH! I need to world-build their wedding customs!
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witch hunts
grumble grumble grouse grouse grouse. . . .
Read a bit of world-building where a writer was talking about a Dark Ages analog in his world. And then threw in a comment about having latter concepts such as inquisitions -- and witch trials.
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Read a bit of world-building where a writer was talking about a Dark Ages analog in his world. And then threw in a comment about having latter concepts such as inquisitions -- and witch trials.
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Women's Work
Recently ran across a discussion in which someone asserted that women were -- historically -- judged more by their looks than by their handiwork.
( Read more... )leaving the field
Thrashing around with the outline, and whether our hero, so loyal to his lord, has to go off and do stuff while some evil sorcery is desecrating his lord's body and exploiting his men for its own purposes. . . and pondering how long he would stay, and then remembering: this guy was on the battlefield where the lord fell.
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lucky on loyalty
Odd thing in my reading lately: a number of stories making good use of feudal, or almost feudal, loyalties.
Now, there's no denying that this makes a wonderful plot device for supplying even a down-and-out noble with forces and cannon fodder in general, who are willing to do the difficult or impossible in aid of the noble.
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Now, there's no denying that this makes a wonderful plot device for supplying even a down-and-out noble with forces and cannon fodder in general, who are willing to do the difficult or impossible in aid of the noble.
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first comes marriage
Got thrown out of a pseudo-medieval-setting book recently. . . the heroine didn't want to get married. Her friend laughed at the very notion, but no, she didn't want to. . .
And this in a culture where she might as well have said that she didn't want to curtsey to the king.
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And this in a culture where she might as well have said that she didn't want to curtsey to the king.
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walking a mile
In Tom Simon's Zeno's Mountains, he says
to which my immediate reaction was not how he was applying it metaphorically, but to think that a mile was out the front door, around the loop until I reach the arterial road, down it to the next complex, then down that complex's road and back up it again.( Read more... )
In one of his moments of wisdom, David Eddings observed that a man who has never walked a mile on his own legs has no clear idea how far a mile is.
to which my immediate reaction was not how he was applying it metaphorically, but to think that a mile was out the front door, around the loop until I reach the arterial road, down it to the next complex, then down that complex's road and back up it again.( Read more... )
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Losing Our Roots: The Inaccessibility of Classic SF
Some natter about what the classics are, but as one panelist pointed out, if they polled the room, there would probably be some fair consensus.
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fin, out, up, down -- across
Matrimony can have some interesting requirements, which tend to get short shrift in fiction.
Part of it is nowadays, you expect to marry freely with minimal requirements. Not in a certain group (endogamy), or up or down (hypergamy for the one marrying up), or across (isogamy). Requirements were rather sterner in older days.
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Part of it is nowadays, you expect to marry freely with minimal requirements. Not in a certain group (endogamy), or up or down (hypergamy for the one marrying up), or across (isogamy). Requirements were rather sterner in older days.
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primary source, rules, and cliffs
C. J. Cherryh has a rule for writers: Never follow any rule off a cliff.
This is about reading for what your writer was up to and following that off a cliff.
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This is about reading for what your writer was up to and following that off a cliff.
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reasons for primary source reading
Having told you how you should do it, I will now tell you why I recommend that all aspiring writers read a lot of primary sources, from as many eras and places as they can pull off. 0:)
It's not for research purposes. It may prove useful for that in the long run, but the recommendation includes eras and places that you have no interest in writing in. Indeed there's enough primary source floating about that it would be a trick and half to sample a lot of it and manage to use it all as research. That's not its primary benefit.
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It's not for research purposes. It may prove useful for that in the long run, but the recommendation includes eras and places that you have no interest in writing in. Indeed there's enough primary source floating about that it would be a trick and half to sample a lot of it and manage to use it all as research. That's not its primary benefit.
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ah, love
Once read a passage where the writer claimed that the conflict of Aida would not have been a conflict for any man really in Radames's position: he could marry Amneris and keep Aida as his concubine -- problem solved!
Er. Eep.
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Er. Eep.
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Christmas, changing
The muse has felt the season. She made some suggestions about a story with some Christmas themes still in outline. Not, mind you, Christmasy suggestions, just things about making the villainess nasty and the hero and heroine's lives unpleasant. But still had me off and mediatating on the changes in Christmas customs.
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the grim reaper
One thing that's different in older settings is death. And it's not just that the life expentancy is lower and so death more immediate in that way.
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