No More Than Pen and Ink

This post has been reworked from a paper from last year.

When asked about my occupation I find myself dreading the invariable string of questions that follow my admission to being a writer: “what do you write,” they always ask, and then I have to admit that generally I write fantasy fiction (though I have taken to saying ‘fantastic fiction’ to include some of my other works), which is just not something you do in polite society. Other questions often follow: they ask things like “have you written anything worth-while?” (as if fantasy fiction itself is not worth their time) or “what made you decide to write fantasy?” (like it was a bad decision). These seemingly simple questions bring up a whole morass of hidden assumptions that plague my field. Fantasy fiction is invariably looked down upon by both art critics, literary professors, and often even by the ordinary man on the street. Many, if not most, people consider fantasy to be mere escapism, not worthy of serious consideration and certainly not worthy of a serious writer, but there is value in fantasy fiction that is often overlooked. There are truths that can more easily be communicated in a world well constructed separate from our own.

The first thing that has to be recognized to come to a clear understanding of fantasy is that there is more to fantasy fiction than scantily clad women in fabulously impractical ‘armor’, hulking men with huge swords, and antagonists who invariably return from the dead. While these things have become iconic of the genre, and admittedly have influenced more than their fair share of works, the heart of the genre is about a lot more. At it’s heart Fantasy is about looking at the world through a new lens; about comparison and contrast, about seeing the details of our own world reflected against an alien background; about showing what it means to be human in a world that has different stresses than our own.

When an author starts writing fiction their goal is to draw the reader into another world, whether that world resembles the world the reader lives in or not. As the author does this he is forced to focus his interpretation on specific aspects of the world; it is impossible to portray every aspect of the real world in a fictional setting. As such the author interprets the world as he sees it and focuses his interpretation into a ‘false reality’; with respectable generic fiction this reality is often assumed to be closer to the truth, but by being ‘closer’ to the truth it also hides the differences between it and truth. By presenting a reality that is clearly differentiated from our own fantasy gives the reader a better contrasted background against which to draw out the truth. Fantasy fiction allows the author to place events in a context of differing ethics, politics, and assumptions which allows the author to play out human psychology in situations that are impossible in the real world and which can bring revelation of human nature closer to the surface. The more literary-inclined might say that this is merely the easier way to achieve clarity of truth, but when you look at the detail necessary to create a believable and interactive world that differs from our own—that claim rings false. It might be less nuanced, but that doesn’t make it simpler or less true.

Worldbuilding takes a lot of effort to accomplish well: the author should take into account many aspects of human psychology, physiology, and sociology as he constructs a believable sense of humanity against a backdrop of different geographies, biologies, politics, religions, even physics. Every aspect of the world around them affects an individual human in different ways, the equations to figure out the human mind become more complicated the farther you move from reality.

Another misconception is that fantasy fiction is easier to write because you can just make anything up and it will work, but fantasy still bears the burden of plausibility, in fact it bears the burden even stronger than most other forms of fiction. Fantasy relies on the reader being willing to suspend their disbelief and enter another world; to do this effectively the author needs to give the reader reason to suspend disbelief; the author needs to give the reader a world which the reader can accept as possible for the story to be effective. As soon as the author loses internal consistency—the reader has left the world and the structure of the story is shattered. An author writing in a world that is exactly like our own does not bear as heavy a responsibility; he just has to stay true to what can actually happen and the reader will generally be willing to go along with it. Fantasy fiction is certainly not easier to write than it is to write any other type of story. Every genre has its own difficulties, weaknesses, and strengths, but they all require a certain level of effort and skill to do well.

Another conception about fantasy is the belief that escapism is necessarily and always a bad thing. I’m not saying that this is necessarily wrong, I myself try not to engage in mere escapism. But I would like to raise the question. In our own world situations are so complex that we often have difficulty separating the right decisions from the wrong. This complicated web of muddled perceptions and difficult decisions is a confusing and frustrating mess. Sometimes it is nice to be able to take a step back into a world where absolute truth is easier to find, where evil can be recognized by the color of their robes, and where decisions are easier to make. Escape in that sense could even possibly bring clarity to situations when the reader comes back into his own world. But even if it doesn’t it certainly can provide moments of relaxation away from the troubles of reality by showing the reader a world where troubles are much more obvious but just as expansive, where evil is clearly delineated, and where good will actually triumph. All of these things can bring a sense of peace and relaxation into an otherwise tense and hectic world. Whether it is in a right or wrong way, fantasy gives us hope.

Fantasy is often looked down upon as a lesser form of art, if it is considered to be art at all. While it may be true that many of the representatives of the genre do not present works of high art, the same can be said of practitioners of literary fiction, general fiction, and any other genre you could consider. The genre itself has just as much artistic potential as any other. Inferior works of art have been created in all genres, persuasions, and languages. To dismiss the artistic potential of an entire genre based on the flaws of a few, or even many, specific instances is not a fair assessment. There are great writers who have made use of the fantasy genre. I need only point to Tolkien and George MacDonald to prove that the potential exists (If I were trying to make this a more solidly supported paper I should probably back that claim up with actual support, but since this is just a blog post I’ll let it slide).

Fantasy fiction has its place, it might not be the most important genre, but let it not be said that it is silly, trivial, or completely lacking artistic potential. It can bring out truth about humanity, it can communicate ideas and philosophies, and it can provide relaxation. All of these things are worthy goals and I spend hours doing the best that I can to create artistic, believable, and consistent worlds through which to explore serious concepts that have real bearing on this world. Do not dismiss what I do just because it is ‘fantastic’. Give it a chance. Read it before you make a decision.

“I kill men. It’s what I do. What you look at me like that for? It’s not as hard as you think. Just slit the throat. Stab the heart. Shoot the head. It’s easy. Men die quick. What? It ain’t hard. You just move real quiet; stalk the prey. Hunt men. They easy to track. They don’t hide well. They don’t fear the open. They don’t hide their tracks. They not hard prey. They not used to the hunt. Good hunter: drop a man easy. Deer run quick. Man don’t. Deer get shot; run far. Man don’t. Easy to kill man. I see that look. You think I lie? Here, I show you.”

I wrote this for my Advanced Composition class. I don’t remember the limitations that were originally placed on the assignment, except that I wasn’t supposed to use words over one syllable long (as you can see I used six (and a half if you count ‘used’ as a syllable and a half), ‘easy’ (three times), ‘quiet’, ‘open’ and ‘hunter’ so that didn’t go particularly well.) And there were some other limitations on form, I can’t remember if we were limited as to sentence length (I think we might have been). I can’t find the paper that had the actual assignment on it, I might have thrown it out (that thought makes me sad).

On my evaluation of the exercise (which was more the point of the exercise anyway) I wrote: “I hated every minute of being limited to one syllable words. It is incredibly frustrating to have an entire huge selection of the English language completely restricted. I could stand having a limit on how many long words I could use. But sometimes long words are absolutely necessary.” I claimed that with the restrictions it was “Impossible to create a well crafted piece with intentionally chosen words.” And that in response to the limitations I was forced to “Create a persona, a voice, that speaks in quick clipped phrases by the nature of his character. Even then it still came across as awkward.” I said that “No-one [talks like this]. Though I imagined a gruff hunter who used few words and had little education. And even then I had to force the constraints on him.” (Which as you can see from the piece didn’t even work completely.) And that “It just doesn’t work. Unless the person is so brain-damaged that they can’t comprehend the concept of words with more than one syllable it is ridiculous to try to communicate with these restrictions. I don’t even know anyone who talks to babies or dogs like this. After all you can’t even say “daddy”, “baby” or even “Rover”.

One of the later assignments allowed us to use two syllable words and the restrictions were that each consecutive sentence had to very in length by at least 4 words (I think that was it).

“Look. It really isn’t that simple. We might be able to bring his soul back to his body, but it won’t be the same. When he died, he went to Heaven. Once you have seen that kind of glory you really don’t want to be stuck in this world any more. You know how it is. You lived with him long enough to know what his life was like. Do you really think that he would want to come back to that if he had a better option? Still, we are the best. If you really want us to try, we can find his soul for you. But we’ll make no promise that he’ll come back.”

Interestingly enough, I almost enjoyed this assignment and did not find it overly restrictive, saying that “I can make do with two-syllable words. Three-syllable words and larger aren’t nearly as necessary.” But at the same time it also didn’t coalesce into a complete story, and in the end I really don’t like it as much.

In the first semester of my freshman year I was enrolled in ENG 112 “Critical Approaches to Literature” a class which was designed to be the foundation of the literature major at Geneva College (and was also required of writing majors). In the class we explored different schools of criticism (and had to write papers attempting to use some of them). We started with a whirlwind historical survey that covered the great thinkers on literature and then we launched into the real study of the theories of Literary Criticism we would have to imitate: New Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction and the various forms of “Special Interest Criticism” (Marxist, Feminist, Cultural and Gender Studies). This class was my first C partially because of an ideological struggle that I had with the theories and my timidity at going beyond mere description of what the texts plainly said (after all, I was a freshman and these were great writers like Nathanial Hawthorne and Walt Whitman). I got over the timidity after this class, realizing that I would have to make assertions (no matter how ridiculous or obvious to me) and ‘back them up’ with textual support (however tenuous) to get good grades (and none of my professors ever called me on BS).

For those of you who don’t know what these theories of criticsim are I will give you a brief summary (albeit filtered through my own perceptions). New Criticism seeks to explore the form divorced from context and the author, looking at nothing other than the work in question and the techniques it employs, seeking to divine truth from the form of the work. Structuralism is an application (I struggled really hard not to add ‘mis-’ to the beginning of ‘application there, but managed not to. And then negated that success by writing this parenthetical, ah well) of Sassure’s linguistic theory that words are merely signs of what is signified and treats the text as an encoded artifact to which the reader applies binary oppositions that create the meaning for the reader (such as Good/Evil, Light/Dark, Man/Woman) again, it is focused on the form (though in this case of meaning) and what the reader gets out of the text. Deconstruction takes structuralism and tries to show that the opposite of any binary pairing is equally valid (so Truth=Lies, Hate=Love and Evil=Good). And the Special Interest Criticisms try to show how various groups are repressed through the work. None of these systems of understanding literature (or any form of art) care about the author and all try to impose their own ideas onto the text.

In my notes I have sketches of the author-text-reader triangle for each of these forms (the triangle is just a way of visualizing how these views relate the different elements, drawn as a triangle with the privileged party at the top) they all have the reader or the text at the top. For New Criticism the triangle has the Text at the top and in my notes I have written in big ostentations script the words “The Text Knows More Than Its Creator” and across the page in distinction I have the triangle as I used to see it with the Author on the top and the words “The Author Owns Your Mind” and in smaller print “and the text”. At the time I was struggling to understand the relationship between the artist and the reader and the art. As a creator and someone who has always had great respect for the creator of works (and as a Christian who believes in an absolute creator) I found it difficult accept that the author had no role other than as a vehicle of blind production of platforms for the exposition of other people’s ideas. The author could not be ignored. At the time I may have over-reacted and gone too far in de-emphasizing the role the reader plays in the creative act.

Since that class, which opened my mind to the world of literary criticism and the intellectual reader-games that the elite play with texts, I have come to what I think is a somewhat more mature understanding of how art works. The author creates the text, which is infused with the way that he thinks and views the world, the text then takes that view to the reader who then interprets the text in light of his own view of the world. This is inherent in the way our minds work. And it is a beautiful, interactive (almost collaborative) process that mirrors the absolute work of art that is God’s creation: God created and we are right now engaging with and interpreting his work in a cycle of incomplete understanding until the day all truth will be revealed. I think that it is the duty of the intelligent truth-seeker to use the text to get at the truth of what the author was trying to say. But I also think that it is the duty of the reader to seek out the truth in any text even when the author was aiming at lies, and that there will, by the grace of God, be truth hidden in any creative work beyond what the author intended. So nowadays I draw the triangle as a straight line with the text between the author and the reader (with God at the top), or I flip it so that the text is on the bottom and both the author and the reader are on top–and then I remove the line between author and reader.

This post came about in part because of this this post by Rosemary.

I was thinking about my life and how I spend my time. At the moment I am unemployed and searching for a job while I write. I have a lot of free time. Which I should spend doing more writing–one of the reasons I started posting here is that I am trying to make reasons to spend more time writing. The free time that I have is taken up almost exclusively by various different story media. I read a lot of books, I watch a lot of TV and movies, I play video games, and I read comics (both web-comics and graphic novels). Looking at that list one would generally think that these are all ways to pass the time and entertain myself. But they have another thing in common as well. They are all ways that story can be experienced. They each have different limitations and strengths, and each have stories that can be best told through them, but many of them come under attack for being less worthy or not artistic (as opposed to older forms such as novels). I can see an argument for not liking some of the media based on preference, but dismissing an entire medium as not worthy or inherently not artistic is a very arrogant thing to do. I would know, I used to do it all the time.

I started out as a book kid, always reading, devouring anything that I could get my hands on, stories of all kinds. I read the standard books intended for my age, plus classics, fantasy, mystery and science fiction intended for adults, and even books intended for girls (including but not limited to selections from the American Girl series.) I didn’t think about why I took to these stories so quickly, or what inspired me to devour such a broad selection. But looking back on it I know that I did it to experience the wonder and joys of things outside myself, it was part escapism, part exploration, and part education. I wanted to learn, to experience, to discover new places and ideas. Books provided a great way to do that. And story is a natural framework for that exploration. From this initial immersion in books I gained a love of all things bookish, of stories in general, and a desire to be able to produce that same kind of experience for others.

As I was growing up with books my mom would often watch Mystery TV shows based on books, and BBC productions of Jane Austen novels and such. Also I was of an age that I experienced the adaptation of the Lord of the Rings novels (which were quite foundational to my youth) into movies. I was initially quite distrusting of this media: it was interesting to experience your favorite stories as moving pictures with all the details of image and setting fleshed out, but it was often unsatisfying. The pictures weren’t MY pictures and the adaptations always left out stuff that was important. It seemed to me that these were just not as good as books. As I matured and experienced more stories that were originally created for that medium I realized that it wasn’t that the medium was inferior, but that the medium required more attention to pacing and generally a shorter, more immediate plot. But it was very strong as a story communication tool because it was detailed, visual and created a more comprehensive sensory experience. You could react emotionally not just to the situation and how you imagined it, but also to the emotions the actors were displaying, the visual setting and the music. I came to accept the Lord of the Rings movies as adaptation and realized that it was very good for what it was (which was not the books.) And when I got to college and my free time and attention span were curtailed I dove headlong into the world of cinema and television series (often neglecting my old print world) and while I desired a level of quality that Hollywood does not often meet, I enjoyed a different perspective on story and again experienced many new ideas, characters and places.

At this point I think it would be worthwhile to mention my experience with cartoons. In my last year of high school I had friends online who talked a lot about different anime (Japanese animated TV serieses) initially I just thought the art style looked stupid and it was odd and foreign and therefor couldn’t be very good. After all I was seeing bits and pieces of the Pokemon and Naruto, which looked very juvenile and were generally poorly voice acted and translated. However the debate got so heated between some of my friends online that I decided it would be best if I experienced what this branch of media had to offer. I got some suggestions from my friends who were into that kind of stuff and I went out and watched Ghost in the Shell (which was excellent and deep), Bleach (which was pretty good at first but fell into poor execution particularly in filler story-lines), Fullmetal Alchemist (which was brilliant), and Neon Genesis Evangelion (which is either really deep and artistic or just very confused). They were very different from anything I had experienced before. But there was good story in there, there were things worth watching. And the foreign viewpoint was very refreshing. I was shocked to discover that there was art here. Even cheaply (when compared to Disney studios, us Americans are spoiled when it comes to animation) animated cartoons in different languages could tell worthwhile stories. If that was the case then anything could be worthwhile. I have had far less edifying experience with American cartoons, Disney animated movies tend to be almost worthwhile and Avatar: The Last Airbender was very surprisingly excellent. But given the state of American television animation it is no surprise that all television animation is seen as not worthwhile as art.

At college I also had the pleasure of experiencing and participating in theater (on a college level, but still not bad). As a bookish person I always had a high respect for plays, I had read Shakespeare and others. They were older and therefore definitely a respectable medium. But I didn’t fully understand what went in to it as a medium until I practiced my lines and character and then got up on stage and felt the audience reacting. Theater is beautiful because the experience isn’t the same twice and the audience contributes to the performance. The limitations are quite obvious, staging and effects somewhat limit what can and cannot be done and there can be difficulty in getting enough people together as both actors and audience to make it worthwhile. But the strengths are also very pronounced: it is an active and current moment of story living and breathing before you, which can create an astoundingly powerful experience if handled correctly.

I had always been dismissive of comic books and graphic novels when I was a kid and through high-school. What I saw of them were very juvenile and didn’t try to be anything other than mindless entertainment. To say nothing of the stupid costumes every comic-book hero seemed required to wear. Based on those interactions I rejected the graphic novel medium as nothing more than comic books dressed up for adults, made to look more mature. Picture books were for kids who didn’t have the mental capacity and attention span to read real stories. I read webcomics, but I never thought of them as particularly artistic (even if Megatokyo is a fascinating exploration of the relationship between reality and imagination and Girl Genius is just a very good story) mostly they were just a way to pass the time and get to a quick punchline. Then I saw a movie trailer for the Watchmen movie and thought it looked interesting. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that the graphic novel it was based on it had apparently won and award for best novel. . . and it was in comic form. So I picked up a copy and read it. And was blown away. This was a real novel, I could not deny the form. It WAS a novel. It just happened to be graphic. It was mature, artistic and deeply evocative of human condition and a particular era. After that I dove into Niel Gaiman’s Sandman Graphic novels which are just as good if not better than Watchmen.

I will admit that video games for me started as a fun way to pass the time. To play at being a cyborg space marine, to solve puzzles, and lead Briton armies against those dastardly Franks. I passed Age of Empires (an RTS) off as expanding my historical knowledge (which it really did), Myst as expanding my critical thinking and puzzle solving skills (which it did) and Halo as just being about the challenge of surviving (balancing ammunition and shields while using available cover to remove threats which would deplete my health) but I really was just playing them for fun. But as I experienced a wider range of video games: Bioshock, Portal, Mass Effect. I began to realize that even video games were a viable medium for story (and art) in an interactive way. Some of these games crossed the boundary between waste of time and worth-while story. Largely this isn’t the case, and many game developers aren’t reaching for the heights that they could. But there is definitely potential there, I just hope more people take advantage of it.

Anyway, this has turning into a quite long post, and each of the sections could easily be expanded at a later time into whole posts if not essays of their own. Basically, I would urge everyone to not reject something because of the way it looks. Explore it and see if there is actually any value in it before you reject it. Story is a very flexible thing, it can show up in many forms.

During my senior year of college (first semester, so about a year ago) I took a class on Narrative Voice and Character, it was an interesting class to say the least–made somewhat more so because the professor had never taught a creative writing class before and was still caught up in Bahktinian dialogics as the only framework for writing novels. The class itself focused much on how to write a novel, since those are the largest pieces of narrative and tend to have a lot of character. For this class we used a little out-of-print book titled “Thirteen Types of Narrative” (and somewhat dubiously subtitled “A practical guide on how to tell a story”) This book starts with an outline of a “situation to be made the basis of a series of exercises in narrative method, each demonstrating a different technique.” Okay, I can understand that particular way to teach narrative technique, show people how to tell the same story different ways. What really ended up bothering me about this book was the amount of information we were given in the “situation” I didn’t have enough information to make the characters based on the outline alone (without making stuff up) and I was given too much information to make them MY characters. We were told that the scene revolves around an American soldier named Peter Ellison (all of which is completely irrelevant to the scene–other than the American part) and that he is in England (stationed on duty) and has gone up a cathedral tower to take some pictures (for his uncle who used to live in the village and gave Peter the camera) we are given a detailed synopsis of the weather before we get to the important fact that he encounters a fat man (who thankfully does not have a name) who is distressed and intends to commit suicide. We are told quite frequently throughout the outline what Peter is thinking and feeling and (as you probably could have guessed) in the end Peter drops his camera over the edge of the cathedral tower with an attached note and tries to stall the fat guy until help arrives. The outline ends with help arriving.

The book then continues in 14 chapters (one for each ‘type’ of narrative and one conclusion) in which is gives a description of each type along with examples from literature and the authors own envisioning of the initial situation. For class we were tasked with writing journal entries which included writing segments or whole portions of the outline in draft form in various narrative forms from different perspectives.

The Thirteen Types of Narrative according to the book are, 1. Third Person Past 2. Third Person Present 3. First Person Past (As If Spoken) 4. First Person Past (As If Written) 5. First Person Past (Spoken) In Third or First Person Framework 6. All Dialogue 7. In the Form of a Play 8. Catechetical 9. Epistolary 10. In the Form of a Diary (how this is different then First Person Past (As If Written) I’m not sure. 11. Documentary 12. Stream of Consciousness and 13. Series of First Person Narratives in Third Person Framework.

While I still think it is generally rather silly to try and focus in on a single element like Narrative Voice, and I had a strong problem with the way that the outline was set up the class was rather useful to me. First, I originally went into the class thinking that a story could only have one narrative form that would work for it, but quickly realized that this was not strictly true. A story told in a different way is a different story. Choosing narrative framework and viewpoint are highly important to the overall shape and meaning of the story. So now I like to explore other possible viewpoints on stories that I am writing just to see what they could have to say. The other thing I learned is how to force myself to write within someone else’s framework. . . and how to make my own freedoms. In one entry I managed to have the fat man succeed in committing suicide (because the outline only ever said that help arrives, it does not necessitate, though much of the book assumes, that the help be effective. I also wrote Peter as a secretly arrogant jerk who is only seems to be the noble hero that the outline forced him to be. I learned how to have fun within constraints (which interestingly enough helped me later to write my resume.) I also was forced to write a whole lot of stuff in a relatively short period of time.

I still hated that stupid outlined situation. And that book.

Yesterday I was reading Smoke and Mirrors a collection of “Short Fictions and Illusions” by Neil Gaiman and I came across a story titled “One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock” which is in Gaiman’s words from the prologue of the collection:

“a story about a boy a lot like I was once and his relationship with fiction.”

The story centers around the character, a twelve year old boy named Richard and his obsession with the Elric of Melnibone stories by Michael Moorcock, which I admittedly know next to nothing about, save that they were pulp Sword and Sorcery stories from the ’60s and ’70s. But this quote about the philosophy of writing, particularly as it referenced C. S. Lewis really caught my attention.

“Richard had, however, finally given up (with, it must be admitted, a little regret) his belief in Narnia. From the age of six–for half his life–he had believed devoutly in all things Narnian; until, last year, rereading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader for perhaps the hundredth time, it had occurred to him that the transformation of the unpleasant Eustace Scrub into a dragon and his subsequent conversion to belief in Aslan the lion was terribly similar to the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus; if his blindness were a dragon. . .

This having occurred to him, Richard found correspondences everywhere, too many to be simple coincidence.

Richard put away the Narnia books, convinced, sadly, that they were allegory; that an author (whom he had trusted) had been attempting to slip something past him (. . .) Richard was young, and innocent in his fashion, and believed that authors should be trusted, and that there should be nothing hidden beneath the surface of a story.”

I remembered a quote I read in my last semester at Geneva College during my philosophy class about C.S. Lewis. In his essay “Christianity and Culture” Lewis attempts to come to a logical reason why it is acceptable if not necessary and good for a Christians such as himself to engage in creating culture (which in his context means writing stories and essays). He comes to an argument that states that he can, and even goes so far as to say that having some Christians among the ranks of those producing ‘culture’ (as he discusses the issue in the essay) is necessary and good. As part of his discussion he says that:

“In order to avoid misunderstanding, I must add that when I speak of ‘resisting the abuse of culture’ I do not mean that a Christian should take money for supplying one thing (culture) and use the opportunity thus gained to supply a quite different thing (homiletics and apologetics). That is stealing. The mere presence of Christians in the ranks of the culture-sellers will inevitably provide an antidote.”

I agree whole-heartedly with this statement. And it is one of the reasons that I generally frown on what I see as the tendency of fantasy authors who are Christians to both merely target a Christian audience and insist on following in Lewis’s steps by writing allegories of Christ’s death in fantasy. Mind you, since they are setting out to sell, as Lewis says “homiletics and apologetics” they are not necessarily “stealing”, but are they accomplishing as much as they could? I would say no. They certainly are not accomplishing what Lewis saw as good about Christian culture creators.

Lewis was not trying to defraud his readers or slip anything by them. But it could easily be claimed that that was his goal as Gaiman points out. Lewis’s use of strong allegorical elements in the Narnia books is an interesting balance. The Narnia books live on today in part because of these elements and the way that Christian readers have latched onto them, but at the same time they turn some people away. They are what they are because and in spite of the allegorical elements. When I started reading the Narnia books I felt in some ways that the allegorical elements were like a secret code, you could love the books if you weren’t a Christian, but if you were you felt a special connection to them because they were about more, and they were saying something to you that others might not get.

I am a Christian, I tell stories. My goal is not to hide my Christianity, nor is it to preach it through my stories. But I think that Christian art should be so much more than allegory (which the Narnia books were but everyone seems to forget because of the allegorical elements). A story written by a Christian cannot help but be Christian as it is reflecting a Christian perspective on the world and therefore allegory is not a necessary (and even possibly in this day and age a not particularly helpful tool). God created so much more of creation than just the culminating moment of catholic redemption that is Jesus’s death on the cross, he created all of creation and the whole scope of history, writing about any aspect of that can be glorifying to God. Christian art is about where the attribution lies, not the subject matter.

That said. There will always be something beneath the surface of a story. It is in the nature of fiction.

Anyway. This post is probably somewhat disjointed and I feel like it might be trying to say two different things at the same time. Which means that it is about on par with some of my hastily written papers for college. But I just wanted to get some of my thoughts out on paper. I do not claim to have proved anything or accomplished anything really useful in this post. Other than to quote some cool people.

I know that this is the first time that I have used this site for anything other than posting portions of stories. But I originally intended it to be a much more comprehensive collection of my thoughts and ideas when I started it. I had a thought about how I tend to write characters and started to squeeze it into a facebook status, but it was not to be contained in such an abbreviated format. So here are my current thoughts on character, with some behind the scenes information about Without a Name (which hopefully you can expect more of soon).

Character has always been something of a struggle for me, whether I am trying to tell a story or play a role-playing game. One of the problems is inherent in the way that I write (or play) much of the time. I don’t do a lot of preparation and tend to just jump in where I see the action happening and explore what happens as it ‘happens’ on page (or in game). Which tends to work out pretty well for me as I think faster than I write and can usually keep ahead of myself and that helps to maintain my energy level and interest in what I am writing and I am constantly surprising myself with little gems of information. But it means that I don’t always (read almost never) come up with backstory for my characters unless the character actively ends up exploring their own past. This means my characters are often without a proper framework through which to explore the world save for my own experiences and gut instincts as to how ‘they’ would act.

I often find that it is difficult to flesh out my characters history when I try and so I tend to focus on the character at the moment, attitudes and opinions divorced from past experience. (How important can the details of an unremarkable past really be–I say tongue-in-cheek.) However, as a result my characters are all filtered through my own experiences without a lens of their own to help me focus them, this often leads to my characters feeling very similar even if they have different roles and attitudes. (Mind you, usually they won’t all act the same though they did in one of the stories I wrote, Wingless, because all the characters were, before the story began, essentially boring teenagers in a generally normal world that I didn’t care about and still don’t really know how to deal with.) On top of that my characters all apparently tend to sound like me. (Or so I have been told, I have trouble seeing this particular problem because I’m perfectly comfortable with my idiosyncrasies of vocabulary and word choice and so they don’t register as out of the ordinary to me.)

I have recently been working on Wingless but the lack of characterization kept showing up in problems with the dialog and with the very structure of the plot. So I have set that aside until I can figure out what to do about it. But it got me thinking about my other stories and I evaluated Without a Name with that in mind. And I think I avoided much of problem that has made Wingless so difficult for me.

For Without a Name I came up with a situation for the main character before I came up with anything else. Which is somewhat unusual, but I think that it was very useful to me as I have been writing it. I had this image of a young girl covered in dirt and sitting under a table in a nicely furnished house where everyone pretended she wasn’t there. I knew that this girl was somehow very powerful, so I jotted down a quick scene where a man was tasked with finding this important girl named Underfoot, this later became the prologue. And when I was searching for something to write about in the last two weeks of NaNoWriMo 2008 I found that scene and remembered the image and it exploded into this story. Underfoot channels and amplifies all of my insecurity and reliance on other people, but she has her own reasons and experiences for me to draw on and I hope that makes her at least somewhat relateable as a character.

The other problem that I have with character voice through dialog are compounded by the fact that the majority of the draft that has been posted here so far was written in the course of one week. But this problem is much easier to overcome than actual lack of character and I hope to solve that in later drafts by taking more care with my word choice in dialog and developing more voices.

I hope that this piece has at least been interesting. I must say that I had forgotten how much I rely on parentheticals when I am writing without turning on my ‘formal’ academic style. (Mind you I have lots of parentheticals even then, they are just usually switched to comma parenthesis rather than full parenthesis.)

Underfoot went back to watching the crowd. The booth to her right was selling forged items, knives, metal bits and pieces, tools and cutlery made from iron. It seemed to being a decent amount of trade. The booth to her left seemed to sell (and buy she noticed after watching for a while) just about anything. The counter near her showed cloth items, fabric, jewelry, carvings, a strange round device with little arms that moved across its face, and a stack of black and white discs. She had no idea what half the items were. She watched the dealer, a short man wearing an outlandishly bright vest, belt and sash that distracted from his dingy once-white pants and shirt. He spoke with a loud voice that she could hear even over the crowd and lots of wide sweeping gestures. She didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying, it mostly involved describing the items he had, or trying to sell them. She started watching his customers. They were a very odd group, some of them looked quite poor and brought items that appeared to be of some worth. Others were dressed decently well. One of them even looked vaguely familiar. This man was wearing a decent grey jacket with a clean, new white shirt underneath, a black hat with a stiff brim and had a bag slung over his shoulder. His face was clean and his hair fresh-cut above his ears. He was talking quietly to the seller, he reached into his bag and pulled out. . . the small mechanical bird that Farstrider had showed her the other day.

It was then the world came together and she recognized the man who was doing the selling. It was Lightfinger, all cleaned up. For a moment she just stood their, outraged, her mind processing. And then she flew out of her hiding place, swinging her fists at him and hitting him blindly, her eyes tearing up. “Your nothing but the thief. You took it from him! He was nice to us and you stole from him. How could you! How could you!” She shouted at him. Except it all came out in a torrent confused with sobs.

He seemed truly surprised for a moment, fending her off instinctively. And then he collected himself. “It’s not what you think, Chipmouse.” He said, he caught her in his arms and held her so that she couldn’t struggle. “My little sister.” He said to the dealer. “She gets a little excitable, and sometimes doesn’t understand what is going on around her very well.”

“All the same.” The seller said, nodding his head to indicate that Lightfinger should look over his shoulder. He did, swore, thanked the man and carried Underfoot off into the crowd. She was still squirming and struggling. “He was nice to us and you just took from him! How could you!” She continued to sob, getting quieter.

“Shh,” he hissed in her ear. “Or we’ll get picked up by the city guard.”

She turned to glare up at him. “That’s what happens to thieves, isn’t it?”

He relaxed a little. “Farstrider gave it to you. Since you wouldn’t take it I took to to sell. Even if you couldn’t stand to see that bird you could stand to have a new dress and some fresh food in your stomach.”

She felt a little foolish. Her anger was subsiding. When he put it that way it made perfect sense. “He gave it to you?”

He hesitated for a moment. “Yes, he gave it to me.”

She felt horrible. “I’m sorry Lightfinger. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. I just saw you and it. . . and I assumed. I’m so sorry!” She started to cry again, this time from shame.

He shifted his grip so that he was no longer restraining her and patted her shoulder awkwardly. “It’s all right.” He said. He slipped down an alleyway and set her down. Checking to see if there were any guards after them. “No harm done.” He said, pulling her into a hug and petting her hair. “Just remember that I’m trying to help you.”

She nodded, tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“You okay now?”

She nodded again.

He reached into his bag, and pulled out a piece of bread and cheese which he gave to her.

“You troubling that girl there?” A deep gravely voice broke the lull created as Underfoot devoured the food, tears still trailing down her face.

Lightfinger spun quickly to face the newcomer, a weathered man with scars on his face and dirty matted black hair falling down his back. His clothes were a ragged collection: shirt, tunic, vest and at least two different lengths of clothing, all of which seemed to have lost all traces of color. He was picking his black teeth with a rusty knife and tapping a heavy staff against the cobblestones. Underfoot noticed a couple pale faces peering around the corner behind the man, both Brightgrin and Clover were there, Brightgrin motioning for Underfoot to make a break for it while Lightfinger was distracted, and Clover had an uncharacteristic look of concentration on her face. Underfoot shook her head.

“No,” Lightfinger said. “Everything is all right. Isn’t it Chipmouse.” He said, looking back at her.

She nodded her assent. “He’s my brother.”

“Well then. That’ll be all.” The strange man said and walked back up the alley and turned the corner, without even glancing at the two children peeking around the corner. Brightgrin and Clover approached cautiously. “We were worried when we saw him drag you off like that.” Brightgrin said to Underfoot, casting a wary eye at Lightfinger. So we went to get the Beggar King and asked him to help you.”

Clover nodded, once again at Underfoot’s side. This time her hand caught Underfoot’s sleeve, the cat wound itself between her legs.

“The Beggar King?” Lightfinger asked, crouching so that he was more on their level.

Brightgrin nodded, looking pleased “The Beggar King is a legend. He helps beggars, particularly helpless ones. Children in particular. He watches over them and he makes sure they aren’t mistreated. When children are mistreated, or beggars are beaten he comes to punish those who are responsible. He keeps us safe.”

“I see.” Lightfinger said, looking a little unsettled. “Well, you have nothing to fear from me. Any friend of Chipmouse is a friend of mine.” He smiled reassuringly.

Brightgrin still looked a little wary, “You’ll have to earn our trust.”

“I look forward to it.” Lightfinger said with a bow. When he straightened he had a thoughtful look on his face, a few coins appeared in his hand. “Would you mind keeping an eye on the Library tower on Greenhand Street for me?”

Brightgrin’s attention focused straight on the coins in Lightfinger’s hand. “What you want that for?” He asked, tempering his greed with caution.

“There’s someone I need to talk to. Something I need to see in there. I like to know what is going on before I go into a place, you know what I mean?” Lightfinger smiled smoothly.

Brightgrin made a knowledgeable smile. “It might be a few more coins if you want to know who comes when?”

A coin disappeared from Lightfinger’s hand.

“Okay, okay!” Brightgrin said, making the coin reappear, his hand flashed out. A coin dropped into it.

“The rest is for when you come back.” Lightfinger said. “Now go on.”

The beggar-boy darted away. Underfoot expected Clover to follow him, but she stayed right where she was. She kept glancing at Lightfinger, a shadow crossing her face every time she did. Lightfinger stared after Brightgrin for a while, he shook his head slowly. “I remember when I was just like him.” He said. “Except my ‘Beggar King’ was a drunken father. . . ” He noticed Clover standing next to Underfoot. “I see you found yourself a friend.” He grinned. “Let’s get back home before it gets completely dark. I have a new dress for you.”

The dress wasn’t so much ‘new’ as in one piece and still identifiably intended to be blue, though it was faded to a soft blue-grey, which Underfoot found to be quite pleasing. After changing into it she felt completely different. The cloth moved smoothly over her skin, a sensation she had forgotten after wearing the same soiled dress for days. This dress also reached below her knees. She presented herself to Lightfinger, who seemed somewhat impressed. He cocked his head sideways and his face curled up in an unreadable smile. “It certainly is a vast improvement.”

When they settled down to sleep Underfoot found Clover bedding down at her feet. “You don’t need to be so close to me.” Underfoot said.

Clover shook her head.

“I don’t know who you think I am.” Underfoot said, looking at the little girl. “I’m nobody. Nothing, just another girl. You shouldn’t have to follow me around.”

Clover just sat there. Her lips didn’t move at all, but Underfoot heard her clearly. “But I do.”

The next day Underfoot spent following Lightfinger around, with Clover in tow, as he went various places around the city. She lingered outside a tavern while he went in to discuss some business or other with a man with a bald head and a bad rash. And then she went with him to several stores, where he bought things he quickly tucked into his pockets. And finally she found herself outside the Library tower on Greenhand Street. The tower was not the tallest thing on the street, which was one of the richer streets, and home to several guild-halls (as Lightfinger explained to her as they approached).

“In that tower is a book. A book that can teach me how to use my magic better.” He told her. “But the only way to get it is to steal it. I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to be upset at me. And because I need your help.”

She nodded, it seemed reasonable. She didn’t want to let him down again like she had yesterday. Though she was a little worried about the stealing part. “They won’t just let you look at it?”

He shook his head. “Not without taking me and locking me up just because I can do magic.” He said.

“But doing magic isn’t illegal.” Underfoot said.

“It principle it isn’t. But you know about the ‘academy’.”

She nodded. “They take people who can do magic and teach them so they don’t hurt other people.”

“That’s where you are wrong. The academy is where the government sends normal mages under the pretense of teaching them to control their powers. But they do something else. They take away their freedom. They take your name and use you as a tool. I don’t want to be a tool. I want to be free. I don’t want the nobles making me do things I don’t want to do.” Lightfinger said.

“So you are telling me that we are doing something that might get us sent to jail so that you can be free?” She asked.

“We won’t go to jail.” He said. “Not if we do it right.”

Brightgrin approached the corner where they were standing and stood waiting expectantly until Lightfinger produced the coins again. He snatched them quickly and tucked them away. “A’right.” He said. “Two guys went into the tower early today. Came out a few hours later. The tower itself appears to be unguarded, though there is a fancy rune drawn on the door. The lights were all off last night, and are all off now. I don’t think anyone is there.” He said.

Lightfinger nodded. “Very good.”

He looked at the tower himself. So did Underfoot. There was indeed a rune on the door, but it didn’t attract her attention. The walls themselves were crawling with runes, just like the walls outside the city. Except that these were all the same symbol over and over, where the city walls had been long complicated strings that didn’t seem to have any pattern.

“I think the one on the door is just for show.” Lightfinger said. “But there is something, else magical around the tower. I figured the whole place would be warded. That’s why I brought this.” He pulled a necklace with a key on it from a bag, it too was glowing with criss-crossed runes that Underfoot couldn’t read. “It’s a pass-key that allows the penetration of magical barriers. I just hope my source is right in that it will work.” He handed it to Underfoot, she almost dropped it out of surprise. He knelt down. “I’m going to need you to climb through the window around the side of the building and unlock the building from the inside.

“Me?” She said.

“I won’t fit, and I can lift you up to the window.” He smiled. “Beside, I know you can do it.”

She felt a warmth in her chest. She could be helpful. The fact that she was involved in a robbery melted to the background. She would do whatever she could to make sure this went well. She clutched the key in her hand and then put the cord around her neck, the key bumped against her breastbone reminding her that she would have to succeed.

They began to move after dark. Lightfinger motioning for Underfoot to stay close as he walked up the street. When he saw that no-one was coming he motioned and they quickly dashed to the side of the tower, into a small alley. In the dark they would be nearly indistinguishable against the dark stone of the tower. The tower loomed over them. And Underfoot felt that the glow from the runes should have been more than enough to see them by, but to her surprise the light of the runes did not reflect on any of their faces. But it didn’t matter, no-one was around.

“Ready?” Lightfinger asked, cupping his hands to make a stirrup for her feet.

Underfoot nodded, looking down at Clover. “Stay here Clover. You can’t come up here with me.” Clover nodded. Underfoot looked up at the tower one more time and then put her foot in Lightfinger’s hands, placed her hands on his shoulder and she rose to the level of the window. It was a small glass construction, maybe two feet high and two feet wide with an arch above it. The runes moved along the window. She clutched the key around her neck and closed her eyes, hoping that it would allow her to pass through the barrier unnoticed. She reached out and touched the window, hoping that it would open. It shifted at her touch. She opened her eyes and found that the window had opened completely, and that the ward was still in place. She looked down. Lightfinger nodded. And she climbed through the window. She found herself on a spiral staircase that was completely dark. She went down the stairs a short way and found herself in a small entry chamber with a thick carpet and two chairs. Unlit candles sat in candlesticks on either side of the door. The door was large, and barred with a wooden cross-beam. She lifted it gingerly, not sure that she could make it move. But her strength was just enough. It took some effort, but it moved smoothly out of the way. She then opened the door. Lightfinger and Clover were both in before she could blink and the door was closed again. Lightfinger left the crossbeam off to the side, so that they could get out easily.

“Well done,” Lightfinger said. “Now to find the book.”

Lightfinger started to move into the main chamber on that floor, but Clover started up the steps. Lightfinger paused for a moment. then he shrugged. “You take her and look upstairs. I’ll start down here and work my way up.”

“What is the book called?” Underfoot asked.

“The Fundamentals of Magic” He said.

She nodded and followed Clover up the stairs. “Where are you going?” She asked quietly.

Clover pointed. A doorway. Beyond which was a library much larger than Sternbrow’s. Underfoot smiled to herself and ran forward. It was just like the old days. Sneaking around a library in the dark. Except that this time things would be worse if she got caught. And better if she didn’t. She realized. She looked around the library for a moment. Thinking how hard it was going to be to find one book in the midst of all of these.

But one of the books was glowing, runes running along its cover. And it was sitting on a small round table next to a chair. She looked at the cover. It read “The Fundamentals of Magic: A Primer of the Planes” She reached out to touch it.

And the world collapsed into a tunnel around her.

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The world came into focus all at once. The blackness of sleep being washed away by the dim light of sunlight all too quickly. She had a headache. A big headache. And even the dim light was enough to make her very unhappy. She groaned a little. And tried to get up. She had to clean Sternbrow’s study! He would be so unhappy if it wasn’t done before he got back! What was she supposed to do. She was already halfway across the room when she realized that she wasn’t in any of the rooms at Sternbrow’s house. Indeed she wasn’t in any proper room at all. She had been put to bed atop a morass of worn and torn rags and rotting straw. It was lumpy and dirty, but it was obviously more comfortable than the raw dirt and piles of garbage that made up the other furnishings. It wasn’t a room, it was an alcove made by the hap-hazard construction. Apparently there had once been a street here. And then someone had built a second story that crossed the narrow street and after a while that had been closed off itself by another building. Leaving a small 1-room alcove beneath the edge of one building and bounded on three sides by stone walls. The other side opened into a narrow alleyway. The boy who had dragged her to the church earlier was leaning against a wall counting a stack of silver and gold coins. And there were a dozen or so other children, almost as dirty and thin as she was arrayed all around, stashed in nooks, perched on ledges and bits of garbage. They were all different sizes, some older than others. But all of them had one thing in common, they were all looking at her. One of the younger ones tapped the boy she had met before on the arm and gestured at Underfoot.

“Why if it ain’t miss the’atrics herself.” He said, a huge grin swallowing his face. “If that wasn’t a marvelous performance I don’t know what is. You had the Duke eating out of yer hand!”

She looked at him, touched her head and whimpered softly. “What happened?”

“I dunno.” He said. “He held out the coins, you took them and then collapsed an he vanished. Not that tha’s all that strange. I figured I’d get ya outta there ‘fore anyone else took the money.”

She sat up quickly, memory flooding back, but still confused. Her head hurt more. She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again a pair of bright blue eyes were obscuring her view. She skittered backwards instinctively to get away from the thing that was in her face and realized that it was only a small child. A girl in rags like hers, though a few years younger. She smiled at the girl warily. The girl seemed oddly clean in the filth of the alleyway. Her skin was white where Underfoot’s was darkened by dirt, her hair shining gold and her eyes. . .

“Well I’m impressed. Clover likes you,” the street-boy appeared over the girl’s shoulder and knelt beside her, facing Underfoot. “She don’t like many people.” The boy flashed a smile. “Means your safe.”

Underfoot looked at the girl and tried to smile as well. But she just wasn’t very good at the whole smiling thing, she thought it came off rather poorly.

The boy chuckled. “Say Clover, what you say we call her Magpie, ’cause she brings in what’s shiny.” He shook the bag of coins he had procured. Seemingly in a very good mood.

Clover shook her head, keeping her eyes focused on Underfoot the whole time, her wispy blond hair dancing in the slight breath of air stirred by the motion.

The boy frowned a little, and looked at Underfoot intently. She flinched at his unwavering attention, which made him smile again. “okay, how about Rabbit, cause she acts scared all the time?”

Clover shook her head again. Underfoot spoke up. “They call me Underfoot. . . Or Chipmouse,” she remembered.

The boy grinned and Clover just stood there. “I’m called Brightgrin.” He said. “I don’t need to explain that one. And Clover, she’s just lucky.”

“Is she always like this?” Underfoot asked.

“Not usually no.” Brightgrin said, his grin vanishing in concern. “She gets funny around some people. I don’t know why. Hey Clover.” He reached out and touched the girl’s arm. “Clover? You want to go play with the other kids?” She shrugged, still staring at Underfoot.

Brightgrin looked around for a moment and then stepped away. When he came back he was carrying a tortoise-shell cat. He handed the cat to Clover, who took it and continued staring at Underfoot.

Underfoot stared back. And after a moment she realized that the cat was staring at her too, it’s silver eyes locked on her, tail twitching.

They stayed frozen like that for a while, with Brightgrin making the odd comment trying to break the tension. Until he finally got around to suggesting that they head back out into the city. Underfoot readily agreed. She needed to head back to where she would meet Lightfinger anyway.

This truly was a strange city. Underfoot thought as they walked along. Brightgrin rambled on about various things, how they managed to get by in the city, various locations and their benefits for begging and other such things that Underfoot couldn’t bring herself to care about. And all the time Clover and the cat continued to follow them. Underfoot was begining to feel lost in this city. She had no idea where she was or how to get back to where she started. She was begining to worry she wouldn’t make it back to the warehouse. She didn’t want to disappoint Lightfinger after all the good that he had done for her. And she was about to ask Brightgrin to take her back when he turned around and flashed his brightest of grins.

“And here we are. One of the best spots for making money.” He said and pulled her out into a crowded street.

She had already been feeling overwhelmed by the city, but this was something completely different. So many people, towering over her, bumping into her. Dirty beggers and peasants mixed together with more well-dressed citizens. Women, children. Everyone seemed to be in this single street, which was admittedly wider than the rest, but that fact was compensated for by stalls and stores lining both sides of the streets and the hawkers with trays of merchandise pushing through the ranks of people, trying to find someone to buy. From her position in the midst of the crowd she couldn’t make out what anyone was selling; she had to concentrate too hard to merely avoid being knocked down. Brightgrin didn’t seem to have any such problem. He slipped and wove through the crowd like a little fish weaving through the holes of a fishing net. The jostling crowd seemed to last forever, but at last she managed to pull towards the edge of the crowd, near an alley-mouth where no booth had been set up. She quickly managed to find a place to shelter her from the crowd, a untended barrel full of water made the perfect spot.

“This place is insane.” She said, peering around a barrel at the crowd she had just left.

“It’s magnificant.” Brightgrin said, counting the coins from several purses.

Underfoot couldn’t even bring herself to chide him for stealing. She just went back to her wide-eyes staring at the crowd. It was much better watching it from the edge, where she was now that it had been caught up in the mad tumble of it all. She actually had time to process the people that went by, rather than being struck by and impression of a knee, or suddenly made aware of a solid boot on her toes. She could now see that there were not as many richly dressed people as she had seen at the church. This was obviously a more ‘common’ gathering place. Where trade took place. She saw some men wearing patterned clothing that matched the colors of the nobility she had seen earlier, but with less manifest wealth. And then it came to her; the nobility would send their servants down to the market to get what they needed rather then mingle with the commoners themselves. But didn’t they worry that the servants would run off with their money? She also saw several men clad entirely in metal: she had never seen a man in full armor before. They stood near the edges of the crowd, looking over the masses. She wondered what they were for until she saw two of them push through the crowd towards a disturbance and pluck two men apart with liberal application of the cudgels they carried. She wondered where they were taken too, and if the same thing happened to thieves.

From this closer position she could see that the booths on either side of  her had not been hastily constructed, nor had they been constructed to be dismantled or moved, as the booths that were set up during the yearly arrival of the travelling market back at Eldale. These were constructed to last, more open-air shops than market booths. She turned to Brightgrin to ask him how they managed to support a market all the time. But he had already vanished back into the crowd. So instead she asked Clover, who she had completely forgotten about in the mad rush of the crowd. Clover shrugged.

“Is it always like this?” Underfoot asked.

Clover tilted her head from side to side with a little shrug.

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