This rant is similar to others I’ve done—particularly in that it’s a means of getting around long infodumps—but I hope it’ll help to contribute to a sense of a detailed, living world and culture (or cultures!) on a level other than philosophy and metaphysics. After all, not all your characters will be given to those kinds of abstractions, and others will have no opportunity to come into contact with them, and your world might lack the printing press, academies of philosophy, and other easy ways to transfer them. Yet those characters are still part of the story and in contact with your created culture and world, and ideas can exist outside theories.

( So here are some ways they might exist )

Maybe the next rant can be on the history of cultures. If so, it is entirely the fault of that last point.

Inspired by a comment renakazur made in the last rant, about work being one of those things many fantasy authors don’t like to talk about because they think it doesn’t advance the plot. I took that as a challenge.

( Six ways noticing small things can advance the plot )

Unquestioning obedience to any dictate of writing can result in stale conventionality, and I think that’s what often happens when authors just assume that, “Well, there’s no way to make an interesting story out of work/food/cleaning/servants’ lives/domesticity.” It’s true that certain individual situations won’t work; on the other hand, parties, magic, destinies, swordplay, and royals’ lives are not a guaranteed success either. Working with these materials might force an author to stretch her wings a bit.

This is one of those things that fermented in the back of my head for a while, and now demands a rant.

( One culture, one language, one system of magic- one boring world )

Don’t know what I’ll do next, as that one came out of nowhere.

This, of course, depends on the techniques you use—outlining as opposed to not outlining, structuring by chapters or scenes, whether the story’s episodic or not, how many viewpoints you’re using and what kind they are—but I’m hoping that the sheer variety of suggestions here can offer at least one that crosses boundaries.

( Ten things that may help in the middle of a novel )

So there you are. Full of my own prejudices, but I’ve tried to admit them—you may have noticed the propensity to think of stories as animals—and I hope that it didn’t drag in the middle.

This is a random topic I felt like doing. Because.

( How much stays in your notes, how much goes into the story )

I will put up a poll in a while, because I seem frustratingly unable to think of topics for essays lately.

Sorry this one was so long in coming. I went through another of those periods in which I couldn’t think of anything to rant about without sounding repetitive. So I did what I probably should have done in the first place and started rereading good fantasy, in this case Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

And it hit me that while Martin’s series is incredibly brutal, with torture, rape, murder, humiliation, mutilation, wrongful executions, casual suffering, and sadism galore—in fact, the reason I’ve heard most people use when giving up on the series is that it simply makes them too depressed to continue reading further—I don’t mind the suffering. At the same time, all it can take is one abused and sniffling heroine in a different series, and I am outta there.

( So I started wondering why… )

It wasn’t until I thought about it that I realized just how much of a mess Martin has made of his fantasy world. I’m a bit in awe. A fantasy world centered on a heroine sniffling because someone teased her just can’t compare, really.

*stares at blank sheet of paper*

( There are times I really need this rant )

…That’s about as mystical as I ever get about writing, I suppose. And this may be too idiosyncratic a list to have much importance for anyone else. Oh, well.

La-la-la-la-la…

( Look at the title of the rant if you’re confused )

There. That’s what I want to see.

The last rant of the poll, and one I’ve been turning around in my head for a bit now.

“Serious optimism” is one of those Really Cool Things I’d like to see more of in fantasy—not clichéd morals, nor Impending Doom turned by a loophole or deus ex machina, but a story with heavy flesh that yet steps lightly. The author who provides the purest example I can think of is Terry Pratchett, in his last few Discworld books, but I think the principles can be generalized.

( Serious optimism )

Poll post up in a while.

I suppose I ought to add “and literary history” to the title, since this rant is also about that.

( Whee! )

That’s a lot more links than I usually give, but this is one of those rants where I can’t restrain myself from giving specific examples. I can see fantasy doing so much with these kinds of themes, without even breaking a sweat. I wish I could walk into a bookstore and find tons of books like this right now. Fantasy’s fantasy, sure, and a genre, and the little stepsister of science fiction, and the descendant of fairy tales and epics and myths, but it’s also writing, and there’s an awful lot to learn by reading what came before and taking inspiration from that.

Oooh, another “rant” where I get to burble. “Limyaael,” someone might say, “if sudden epiphanies are unrealistic and badly-handled, and static characters are silly, and declarations by fiat don’t work, then what exactly do you think well-written change looks like?”

( I’m so glad you asked )

One big advantage of the “stair” method of change over the gradual one is that it’s absolutely clear. Most readers aren’t going to have any doubt about what the author’s doing, and it answers questions that they may have carried along for half the book. But since I end up skimming those scenes anyway, and the gradual process seems so much more challenging, exciting, and complicated to me, I’m still not a great fan of it.

This one won by a huge margin, by which I conclude that a) a lot of people have gotten bored with their novels in the past, b) a lot of people think they might get bored with their novels now or in the future, or c) a lot of people want to be pointlessly entertained.

( Well, I aim to please )

Sociopaths are next.

Okay, the rant on deathbed scenes and last moments. If you notice a seemingly invisible subtitle floating about, which is “How to make them something other than disgustingly sappy”…yes, well, that’s deliberate.

( Onwards! )

Perhaps parts of that were excessively bitchy, but considering how much of a big fat purple pustule on the ass of fantasy most deathbed scenes are, I don’t think so.

And another largely “Whee!” rant. Third in a series, of sorts, following this one and this one. More shiny!

( Here we go… )

Love these, because I like babbling, and they always make me want to go out and write more books like this, and go on writing until I die.

And it’s the ‘ten alternatives to writing genetic magic’ rant! Aren’t you excited?

For the purposes of the rant, I’m defining “genetic magic” as: inborn, inherited magical talent, where the protagonist got it through a family line, perhaps a distant ancestor (very common), or was simply “born” with it (often done when the author doesn’t want to deal with a whole magical family). I often dislike it because the author wants to exalt the protagonist as special, but I don’t consider a person special just because she was born with magic, any more than I consider someone special just because she’s tall or got blue eyes. It’s what’s done with the talent that counts.

( Ten alternatives, and most of them have even been done before… )

Sorry for not answering comments, but I have to run; I’ll do it later.

In a way (a very vague way) this is like one of those rants about things I think are cool and ignored too often, but it concentrates more on plot and characterization ideas than world-building or themes. And it springs directly out of having read far too many fantasy short stories that follow the exact same structure.

What is that structure? Very simply: A character starts out the story convinced of something, usually a philosophical idea, which is obviously Wrong. There’s another character in the story, who may be a sibling, parent, friend, lover, whatever, convinced of something else, which is obviously Right. By the end of the story, the Wrong character learns the Rightness of the Right idea and is instantly converted to it. The action of the story often has surprisingly little to do with the learning of the lesson. Examples are children learning to respect their parents, parents learning that their children are much more important and special than they ever gave them credit for, male chauvinists learning that girls are just as good as boys, and atheist characters learning that faith is Good and True. (I especially hate that last one).

I dislike them. ( There’s so many different stories to write. In fact, at least ten of them )

This rant gave me about three more ideas for more rants. Good deal.

This is a follow-up, in many ways, to the rant that I wrote here. That means more happy burbling, more “oooh, shiny!” ideas, and more dreams—I regularly dream about walking into a bookstore and finding books like this. I am always so disappointed when I wake up.

( Oooh, shiny! )

*purrs* I am in a happy burbly mood now, which makes for a good one to go teach my last class in.

This rant is very similar to one I did a little while ago, things Limyaael thinks would be really cool. Transformative fantasy isn’t a defined genre of fantasy as such. It’s one I’m defining. The books I like best tend to have at least one of these qualities, and the more they have, the better I like them. Summed up, they tend to add up to:

( Change is Lord, and God )

Damn, that was fun. Transformative fantasy is what keeps me reading the fantasy genre, even when it seems overrun with clichés. The ones I find affect me like no other books ever have, and maybe like no other books ever will.

This rant is so personal it’s not funny. And it’s full of more wide-eyed burbling than bitchiness. Just a warning.

(When did the day come that I have to warn people for something not containing bitchiness?)

( Things Limyaael thinks would be really cool )

This is the way that I get stuck with so many story ideas, by the by. Something’s not there. I want it to be there. I ransack shelves looking for books like these. I don’t find enough of them, so I think I have to make them.

And yep, if everyone followed these prescriptions, fantasy would be a pretty boring genre. But then someone would come along and change it again, into something else, and then it would change into something else yet again. And I think that’s wonderful. Because it’s living things that change.

The second part of the “daily life” rant, containing a few things more specific to fantasy.

( Because altering a nod into a zgeiwak just asks for a beating )

Next rant is on council scenes, I think.