Copperfox
Well-known member
DO NOT LOOK AT THIS THREAD!!--that is, UNLESS you want to receive, or offer, advice on methods of writing prose or poetry. That is what this thread is for; and here is my suggested way of operating it.
I, for my part, will NOT use any part of any item written on this forum as an example either of the good OR of the bad. I will either point to well-established literary examples, or make up imaginary pieces of writing to illustrate what's good or bad. I urge any others contributing to this thread to do likewise, so that no one within our forum will feel he or she is being adversely compared to anyone else.
Now for the first lesson, or session, or whatever--let us consider the question of whether "bigger" is always better in fantasy.
When I was a boy, there was a second-string fantasy and sci-fi author named Lin Carter, who founded his career on copycatting better-known authors, notably "Tarzan" creator Edgar Rice Burroughs and "Conan" creator Robert Howard. It seemed that the one way Carter could think of to outdo his predecessors was to be more sensational. So, if a Tarzan story featured a twenty-foot-long monster, Carter would write a story with a thirty-foot-long monster. If a Conan story featured a forty-foot-long monster, Carter would write a story with a fifty-foot-long monster. But no matter how big he made his monsters, Carter could not seem to make his heroes and heroines as interesting as those of the older stories; and so I didn't care as much about whether they survived their encounters with the inflated monsters.
A real-world monster, the Soviet dictator Iosif Stalin, said once that "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are just a statistic." The old-time sci-fi and horror critic Robert Bloch (who was also the screenwriter for the classic suspense film "Psycho") referred to this saying in one of his essays, when dealing with the overdoing of sensationalism. A reliance on flashy or shocking elements in a story can be like a drug that requires ever-increasing doses; this is often remarked on with regard to recent movies, but it also applies to the written word. Rather than being in an "arms race" over who has the wildest flights of imagination, I feel that authors should focus on creating protagonists and situations that will engage the reader no matter HOW many or few spaceships and enchanted castles are involved. One well-conceived, sympathetic character being in distress or danger in a book should be just as capable of holding the reader's anxious interest as if the author took a Doctor Who approach and insisted on having the entire universe in peril.
There, that was our starter.
Joseph Richard Ravitts, author of "Southward the Tigers"
I, for my part, will NOT use any part of any item written on this forum as an example either of the good OR of the bad. I will either point to well-established literary examples, or make up imaginary pieces of writing to illustrate what's good or bad. I urge any others contributing to this thread to do likewise, so that no one within our forum will feel he or she is being adversely compared to anyone else.
Now for the first lesson, or session, or whatever--let us consider the question of whether "bigger" is always better in fantasy.
When I was a boy, there was a second-string fantasy and sci-fi author named Lin Carter, who founded his career on copycatting better-known authors, notably "Tarzan" creator Edgar Rice Burroughs and "Conan" creator Robert Howard. It seemed that the one way Carter could think of to outdo his predecessors was to be more sensational. So, if a Tarzan story featured a twenty-foot-long monster, Carter would write a story with a thirty-foot-long monster. If a Conan story featured a forty-foot-long monster, Carter would write a story with a fifty-foot-long monster. But no matter how big he made his monsters, Carter could not seem to make his heroes and heroines as interesting as those of the older stories; and so I didn't care as much about whether they survived their encounters with the inflated monsters.
A real-world monster, the Soviet dictator Iosif Stalin, said once that "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are just a statistic." The old-time sci-fi and horror critic Robert Bloch (who was also the screenwriter for the classic suspense film "Psycho") referred to this saying in one of his essays, when dealing with the overdoing of sensationalism. A reliance on flashy or shocking elements in a story can be like a drug that requires ever-increasing doses; this is often remarked on with regard to recent movies, but it also applies to the written word. Rather than being in an "arms race" over who has the wildest flights of imagination, I feel that authors should focus on creating protagonists and situations that will engage the reader no matter HOW many or few spaceships and enchanted castles are involved. One well-conceived, sympathetic character being in distress or danger in a book should be just as capable of holding the reader's anxious interest as if the author took a Doctor Who approach and insisted on having the entire universe in peril.
There, that was our starter.
Joseph Richard Ravitts, author of "Southward the Tigers"