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.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.Introducing SPLIT FEATHER, a Siggy Alexie book:
Siggy J. Alexie is a young woman of mixed heritage living in Bearpaw, Michigan. Given up for adoption as a child, abandoned by her adoptive parents as a hopelessly troubled teenager, Siggy struggles to figure out who she is, where she belongs, and how to blend in with ‘normal’ folks. But soon after a botched DNA test, Siggy receives a mysterious package, and when she opens it up all Hell breaks loose…
…literally.
Stay tuned for updates.
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.Just a quick note to let you know that if you like THE DRAGON’S LEGACY, you are going to love The Forbidden Kingdom, Book 2 of THE DRAGON’S LEGACY.
Here’s a quick teaser:
The wind was born of a Twilight Lord, playing a seashell flute. Webbed fingers strong and sure danced across the smooth shell as they had once danced across the skin of a human girl, delicate and sweet and all things good. That girl was gone, just as the meat was gone from this shell, leaving only the memory of beauty and faint notes in the wind. But the sea was still the same, and the song was still the same, curling round his heart thick and slow as the fog that shrouded the Sorrowful Isles.
Born of sea and sand and the cries of a wounded heart, the wind danced in rage and longing across the Sundered Sea, rousing the waves of Nar Kabdaan to wrath and ruin as they cast themselves, again and again, to die unmourned upon the heartless shores of Bizhan. The waves were born, they struggled, they died, one after another like soldiers caught in a dream of war.
The wind was heavy with salt, and the dreams of sea-witches, and the tears of lost souls. It struck at the jagged rocks, tore at the sharp grasses like a madman tearing at his own hair, it howled at the gates like the voices of a thousand ice wolves buried in fear, forgotten to legend, lost, lost, lost. The howling woke the Halfkin Child, because the song of wolves round a campfire can never truly be forgotten by the children of Man, no matter how deeply they hide it from their thick and stubborn hearts. The Child rose, he slipped from his bed and from his mother’s hearth and stumbled down the rocky path to the sea; and because he, too, could hear the howling of the wolves, could feel them singing in the shadows of his heart, the Twilight Lord put down his flute and swam to the shores of Man. The moons were faded, half-empty and without power, but he had broken so many laws already that one more could hardly matter.
Now, kindly leave me alone to write.
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.Chapter 30 was a pain in my ass.
Since I decided, with excellent help and coaching, to shorten this book by 30 chapters (120k words +/-), I noticed that one of my pov characters ends up with only two chapters in this book. No spare room for a mediocre chapter (not that there’s ever any excuse for a mediocre chapter). I had to turn what was supposed to be a bridge into a shining landscape.
Chapter 30 was a pain in my ass.
Since her character arc was ending so abruptly, I was caught a bit short. How do I showcase her importance in two scenes? How to leave my audience wanting more of her? Should I just cut her out as a pov character? (Nope, can’t do that, she’s a load-bearing wall in this story). Spent a whole day writing a scene with this character in Atualon, decided that was ‘meh’, spent another day banging my head on the brick wall…and then on Thursday I finished it. It was okay. It was pretty good. I had most of the words in the right order.
Friday morning, on the way into town, it hit me as if that brick wall had fallen on my head. I didn’t have any time to write until that evening–even writers have to pay rent–so I let it percolate in my hindbrain all day long. Got home and struggled with writing it because it’s an intense scene (edited for spoilers, but it’s killing me not to tell you).
Chapter 30 was a pain in my ass. And it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. I can’t wait to share it with you.
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.First, a disclaimer: I am pretty much full of hot air, so take everything I say here with a grain of salt. I am, after all, aspiring to be a professional liar.
I would like to examine worldbuilding, because this is a topic that a lot of readers and writers of fantasy find fascinating, and because it’s something I enjoy. By ‘enjoy’ I really mean ‘obsess over as only a geek can’. Visiting other writers’ new worlds and midwifing my own from the nether-goo…oh yeah, baby, that’s the stuff. That’s the magic powder and I can’t get enough of it.
So here I am, a green belt at best, pontificating on how to build worlds for your fantasy writing. Again, hot air. I’m not going to tell you how to build a world, or even (in much detail) how I build my world. I’ve been working on Atualon and the surrounding countries for quite some time now, and it’s been more an off-the-beaten-path meander than a forced march with guaranteed conquest at journey’s end.
And that’s why I’m not going to tell you how to build a world.
…Wait, what?…
There are a fucktillion other articles and books out there about worldbuilding, and particularly about worldbuilding for fantasy. Brent Weeks has done it, Nnedi Okorafor has discussed her worldbuilding in interviews, and so has Pat Rothfuss. Brandon Sanderson, praise his generous heart, has myriad tutorials on the web that address the issue. I’m not going to include links, because if you wander around the internet looking for this kind of stuff you are likely to find something even cooler and more useful, and who am I to hamper your destiny? Besides…if you’re reading this, you probably have access to a search engine, and if you’re too lazy to do your own research I can’t help you.
These fine folks, who are all more experienced than and perhaps not as full of hot air as I am, will tell you to figure out coinage systems and architecture, flora and fauna, religious and magic systems…yes. Do that. It’s interesting, it’s cool, it’s necessary.
…But wait, there’s more…
Brandon Sanderson, in a recent interview (this is me still not providing links) mentioned that he does not think writers have yet scratched the surface of epic fantasy. I hollered “YES!” and startled my dog. Because there’s more.
Now, I love a big stone castle as much as anyone, rabbit stew after a long day’s ride, and good old-fashioned wizards with their pet crows (or owls). I can watch the Rohirrim ride downhill and smash into the enemy forces three times a day and never get tired of it. And who doesn’t love a folded-steel broadsword? Especially if it’s got a name? That’s all good stuff. Arthurian legend from a new point of view? Yes please, and a side order of Fae magic to go.
But there is so much more to our world and our world’s history than the Lady of the Lake and brooding castles made of stone, there are more stories than the rise of Christianity and the fall of Rome. Werewolves and zombies and vampires? Yes! But what else have you got for me?
In building my world, I wanted something different. Not necessarily more, or better, just…a different flavor. Squid curry instead of rabbit stew. Tournaments that are more closely related to World Wrestling Federation cinema than to the gladiator pit. Matriarchy in the desert…and humans that are not within reach of the top of the food chain. Pemmican. Potlatch. Naked people stranded in olive trees.
Inspiration for worldbuilding is everywhere. I could spend (have spent) entire days watching BBC and National Geographic specials on everything from super volcanos to clouded leopards to radioactive wolves and hallucinogenic honey.
Okay, I’m actually going to share a link for this last, because these Nepalese honey hunters could give our Navy SEALs a run for their money, in sheer what-the-fuck-dude-machismo. Seriously:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_b2i_FvYPw
Read about the Black Death: how it spread, how it affected whole societies, how it altered the course of history. Read about portable blacksmith forges used during America’s civil war, farming with water buffalo, the growth cycle of a bamboo forest. Types of coins used by humans, medicinal plants, implements of torture. Imagine using a trebuchet to fling a rotting cow’s carcass into a city you’ve besieged. You know you want to do it. Because flinging a rotting cow into the enemy’s town square.
Okay, one more link: The French Knight’s Guide to Trebuchets.
http://thisiskira.com/portfolio/trebuchet-tech-illustration/
And go as far off the beaten path as you can go…venture into South America, into Italian tombs and Indian temples. Please, take the journey, and create new worlds of wonder and brilliance.
And then sell me a ticket. I’d love to come along for the ride.
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 caught a baby crow.
Now, I have been a fantasy geek since I read The Hobbit at age six (my mother threw books at me in a desperate attempt to cope with my hyperactivity). And I grew up on wildlife refuges…we always had this or that wild critter rehabbing at our house. A raccoon in the dog house, a grebe in the bathtub, a hawk in the kitchen…I have always, ALWAYS, wanted a pet crow or raven.
The little guy was fully fledged and unhurt; he’d simply worn himself out learning to fly. I held him in my hands and felt the frantic thrumming of his heart, stroked his glossy feathers, looked at the bright intelligence in those eyes. And I wanted that baby crow with every fibre of my being.
His folks were circling overhead, distressed. Crows’ murders are very social, very close-knit groups. They were crying, but afraid to come near me.
His clawed feet clung to my hand. So warm and strong, so clever. His beak was like ebony, and his feathers iridescent. I knew that if I clipped the first four flight feathers, I could restrict his flight until he had bonded to me and would never leave. I live in the woods, and he could have a nice big rookery all to himself.
Four crows circling overhead, and then five. I let my little girl stroke his feathers with one finger, and he was still as only a young wild animal can be, afraid to breathe lest I decide to eat him.
I thought of a perch next to my writing desk, where he could sit and watch me write. And I could put him out in his rookery from time to time, so that he could watch the other crows flying, doing their crow thing, and maybe they would come down and stare at him in his glorified bird cage.
I explained what was in my heart to my little girl, who will one day fly away from me. And put the little crow on a branch, as high as I could reach, so that he would be able to rest and recover out of the reach of predators. He climbed up to a higher branch, quickly, and sat there regarding me with those bright, intelligent eyes.
His murder began to circle lower, crying for their lost child.
I walked home; my steps were as reluctant as my heart, heavy with the knowledge that I could turn back and he would still be there, glossy and bright and beautiful. I could take him home…I could take him to my home, never to return to his own.
I held my little girl’s hand. So soft, so warm, trusting in me with every fibre of her being.
The crow’s mother cried out and I heard him answer. And I smiled to myself, thinking:
I caught a baby crow.
Deborah A. Wolf is a weaver of tales, a lifelong student of pretty much everything, and sworn to slay the dreaded Grammarwocky.