A Few Tantalizing Tidbits

I'm deep into the planning of my next novel, and it's getting to be so good that I can't help but share a little. So read closely, and gather what you can! Most of it is fairly obscure and should tantalize you a little.

"It always seemed most curious to me, that the Elarasters have always sworn to peace and have never participated in anything remotely warlike...if in battle, they would be unstoppable, and forever immortalized as heroes, hailed as the great warriors of old reborn." Loc Shallin, "The Elarasters: A Collection of Loc Shallin Works" (Tower-Summit Publications) Printed 852 W.C.

"The spring, the spring! The mountain must not be uncovered! Doom be upon us if we unveil that which must never be brought to light!" (A quote from my 15,000-word document titled "A History of the Elathim")

"Not even the oldest and wisest can remember the tales of days long past, when the dew was heavy and the sun dim and far away. The memory of those days is lost, only preserved in the writings of one man, but he does not enter this tale, and his name is not known." (A History of the Elathim)

Here are also two poems that also pertain to this novel. They're edited for length: the original versions were much longer.


The Curse

Once a dear friend spoke these words to me
While the realm took refuge in the lee:
"One man's folly made the Mist burn
One man's drink will make the curse return."

One man's folly made the mist burn
One man's drink will make the curse return.

Can the lost be found, the low arise?
Can the blind see with different eyes?
Can those who fall be lifted up again?
Can those unclean be made clean men?

One man's folly created a wall
One man's cup sealed our pall.

All is brought to ruin, all has failed
While the voice is in prison jailed
The fell sons of men die and are naught
All this because of one man's draught.

It was one man that started this curse:
It was one man that brought us worse.

The haunted one shall seek a cure
The cursed one will make us pure
The curse is liquid, the cost is blood
But forgiveness shall release the flood.

Two men brought our curses nigh:
Will two men cause the curse to die?

The Day the Voice was Lost
A Wyndian song
from the Hundred-Year Siege

The spring was clear and cold
The mountains tall and old
The man was strong and bold
The day the voice was lost.

Reaches he the water cold
In those mountains dark and old
His spirit to the darkness sold
The day the voice was lost.

Now we stay and count the cost
The day the voice was lost.

What do you think? Good? Better yet, what sort of notions do you gather from this? (*chuckles* I'm feeling rather sadistic - but I think that comes with being a writer. Withholding information is such fun.)

And while I'm at it: what are you all working on? Have anything so epic that you just HAVE to share it?

World-builders forever. ^_^ *fist-bump*

Tip: Showing...History?

Well, history is a tricky thing.  Why?  Except by means of fiction, history is always told.

Now, for the likes of me, history's not all that bad.  I own Tolkien's the Silmarillion as well as other collections of Tolkien's histories.  I love reading them.  However, even for people like me, there is a limit of how much history you can read before passing out.  O_o  Mainly, this is due to the lack of 1) Showing 2) Actual POV 3) and the general factual nature of the plot.

In fantasy and sci-fi (and to a lesser extent, regular fiction) history is usually coupled with prose, making it more interesting.  We eliminate the lack of a POV in history writing, and we tone down the factual stuff.  However, it's still more dense and hard-to-get-through than, say, a battle scene, or a normal dialogue.  And some writers make the mistake of an information dump, one of the writing fallacies I hold to be very, very deadly.

An information dump is where you introduce characters, places, things, ideas, religions, names, etc. in large amounts, clumped together.  It causes confusion in the reader and annoyance, jolting them out of the story.  This is the telling side of history in fiction.

Not good.

So how in the world do we show history?  It's an oxymoron by itself.  And flashbacks aren't always the way to go.  History, specifically in fantasy, needs to be explained.  Who is this guy?  What's this place?  Where is it located?  What happened to exile this person?

And explaining it tends to be telling.  So we need to find a way to do show and explain history at the same way.

One of the popular ways is to have a person in a novel on whom we can dump information. It's a clueless person who has no idea what's going on, and so things need to be explained to them.  In this way, events and places are explained to the reader in a believable way, without 'telling'.  It is very, very useful.

There are other ways, too.  A very simple (and limited) way to 'tell' where someone is without telling is to just spit it out. My readers have no idea where my characters are, so I write this: "The man, staring out over the dry, desolate landscape of the Sunlands, didn't answer for a few moments."  I just told them that they were in the Sunlands, without telling.  If that makes any sense. ;)

Alluding to things in conversation works well too.  I 'told' my readers that three brothers were attempting to regain their father's throne in the first chapter....through their dialogue.  That, in itself, is almost a whole 'nother post, but revealing history through dialogue--or even the telling of a story from one of the characters--is very good for 'showing' history.

Memory is another way to show history (as well as backstory).  One of my characters was from a certain location, and the other character (whom he was speaking with) recalled some memories he had of that place.

What kinds of showing do you find helpful when revealing history?  Or are you not much of a history person?

Until next time.