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I'm past 250 pages on the modern fantasy book I've been cranking on since I finished the 1003 page sequel I never believed I'd ever write. (proofing and editing that one is going to be a long slow process) This one is going a bit slower, because I have to balance research and writing with systems design. And the research is about to get technical, because I have several articles I need to dig into along with an adventure module to work out the mechanics of how modern firearms work in a setting designed for medieval fantasy. And that's going to involve hooking up one of my mirrored drives from the server (I upgraded those drives, but the BIOS in that machine can't see the upgraded drives and for some reason that machine won't hit the network) so I can get into my archive of The Dragon to dig out those articles. And there's modernizing the skills list and number of skills, working up appropriate spells reflecting around 600 years of development, and so on. To make things a bit more interesting, I'm refusing to use anything from D20 because I want to keep some purity of the first edition system. So that's sort of reinventing the wheel, but it's a wheel for a different type of vehicle.
Enough of the back story. My main character is trans at the start of the book. I'm old school enough that the goal is to cure being trans as much as possible, it's not a lifetime state. And this got me to thinking about an article I encountered recently and how it relates to fiction, both trans and otherwise.
I wish I remember exactly where I encountered this, as I listen to a lot of magazines and it was probably either in Analog or Asimov's. The article author made a distinction between stories and folk tales. Add to that a distinction another writer made in an earlier issue of analog between stories and vignettes -- a story is where characters develop, while a vignette is where they don't. Vignettes can be interesting and fun just like stories, but they don't have that change arc classic fiction theorists say is mandatory for proper character development. Where folk tales come in is how they resolve. Any "happily ever after" story is a folk tale.
This is problematic though, not from a conceptual angle but from one of how such things are viewed. I know someone who got her doctorate in folk tales, so it can be viewed with the same level of respect and critical thinking as the traditional story form, but a lot of folks aren't there in how they view them. Where I run into concerns is that so much of certain genres fall into that category, and they get minimized because of it. Case in point, romance fiction. Yes, there's a problem with formulae in a lot of them, because of the major players in that genre and how they control the plot structure. But plot isn't everything. And romance fiction tends to have excellent characterization and development. And there's also the question as to how the author is going to deal with the constraints the form puts on the story. (I love it when I'm surprised because the characters manage to avoid one or more of the standard points, especially the breakup that they both regret) Also, one thing you can count on with romance is a happy ending, and that can be welcome in chaotic and troubled times.
Another common place for this folk tale model is in stories of transition, both gender and otherwise. I've read a lot of ones where going through a change and making it a part of the main character's life is the point of the story or book. That's okay, but it's not what I'm all that interested in a steady diet of it or in writing much of it unless it's happening on a larger scale. Why? Because for me the transition is just the start of the journey. I've written several where that's chapter one, and in a couple of cases it's scene one and the meat of the book is "what happens now?" Those types of stories intrigue me. In the current novel my main character goes through several of them as she finds out about herself and the new secretive world she lives in. And I think I know where it's going to end up, so I may have a solid direction on where it's going to go.
So, what are you reading? I'd list my current title, but I go through books so fast it'll be done before several of you can respond. And I still have War and Peace on my talking book player, so at some point I'm going to delve into that 65 hour monster (that's listed time, I listen a lot faster than that) and deal with it.
Enough of the back story. My main character is trans at the start of the book. I'm old school enough that the goal is to cure being trans as much as possible, it's not a lifetime state. And this got me to thinking about an article I encountered recently and how it relates to fiction, both trans and otherwise.
I wish I remember exactly where I encountered this, as I listen to a lot of magazines and it was probably either in Analog or Asimov's. The article author made a distinction between stories and folk tales. Add to that a distinction another writer made in an earlier issue of analog between stories and vignettes -- a story is where characters develop, while a vignette is where they don't. Vignettes can be interesting and fun just like stories, but they don't have that change arc classic fiction theorists say is mandatory for proper character development. Where folk tales come in is how they resolve. Any "happily ever after" story is a folk tale.
This is problematic though, not from a conceptual angle but from one of how such things are viewed. I know someone who got her doctorate in folk tales, so it can be viewed with the same level of respect and critical thinking as the traditional story form, but a lot of folks aren't there in how they view them. Where I run into concerns is that so much of certain genres fall into that category, and they get minimized because of it. Case in point, romance fiction. Yes, there's a problem with formulae in a lot of them, because of the major players in that genre and how they control the plot structure. But plot isn't everything. And romance fiction tends to have excellent characterization and development. And there's also the question as to how the author is going to deal with the constraints the form puts on the story. (I love it when I'm surprised because the characters manage to avoid one or more of the standard points, especially the breakup that they both regret) Also, one thing you can count on with romance is a happy ending, and that can be welcome in chaotic and troubled times.
Another common place for this folk tale model is in stories of transition, both gender and otherwise. I've read a lot of ones where going through a change and making it a part of the main character's life is the point of the story or book. That's okay, but it's not what I'm all that interested in a steady diet of it or in writing much of it unless it's happening on a larger scale. Why? Because for me the transition is just the start of the journey. I've written several where that's chapter one, and in a couple of cases it's scene one and the meat of the book is "what happens now?" Those types of stories intrigue me. In the current novel my main character goes through several of them as she finds out about herself and the new secretive world she lives in. And I think I know where it's going to end up, so I may have a solid direction on where it's going to go.
So, what are you reading? I'd list my current title, but I go through books so fast it'll be done before several of you can respond. And I still have War and Peace on my talking book player, so at some point I'm going to delve into that 65 hour monster (that's listed time, I listen a lot faster than that) and deal with it.
