Have you ever loved a character and plot in a fantasy book, but there seems to be a hundred weird characters you have to keep track of? It can be frustrating for the reader.
If you write fantasy, chances are you like creating your own world. The problem with making our world from scratch is it slows the reading.
"The Norbian charged into the room brandishing a queasitar weapon from Opitoly."
OK, the reader thinks, is a "Norbian" the little guys with flat faces or the fat, rat-like type things? Queasitar...Oh Yeah! Now I remember what that is. Opitoly. That's got to be a city. No, it's a country.
Do you like reading like this? It's like reading a Charles Dickens where you refer to a dictionary every paragraph.
On the other side of the argument, the reader expects new worlds. That's why they read fantasy. So what are we supposed to do?
I personally like to ease my reader into a new world. Introducing more than one kind of new creature per chapter might confuse them. Also, make characters with huge differences in appearance and temperament.
I hope this was useful. Just leave a comment if you disagree or want to talk about this more.
9 comments:
Hi Jamin,
my name is James, and I recently (two days ago) created a blog for the first time. In browsing other people's blogs, I stumbled across your corner of the web.
I wanted to start out by saying, I applaud you and your zeal for writing, and more importantly, your zeal for the Lord. I, too, am an aspiring author, and I would like to exchange some information regarding publishing with you, via email if I may. If you do not wish to do that, I understand, for you don't know me from Adam. I suppose that if leaving comments on one-anothers blogs is where you feel comfortable drawing the line, that is fine with me.
As for myself, I am a married man, I have two children ages 11 and 5, and have spent time in the Marine Corps and trying my hand at starting and running my own business. I recently came to the Lord (about 7 years ago), and have struggled with bringing my writing under the scope of my Creator, and what I feel would be most pleasing to Him. Funny thing, you address cursing in your blog, and that is something that I have struggled with myself. Being a former Marine, I had a hard time trying to figure out how to portray Marines for how they really can be (for example, when coming under enemy fire, a Marine does not say "Golly gee, fellas, we are being shot at! Somebody please return fire on the evil bad guys who are shooting us!").
Anyhow, even if you choose to not respond to my comment, that is fine. Know that I applaud your efforts, especially at your age (I wish I had the nerve and the wherewithal at the age of 17 to be as focused on the Lord and on writing as you are), and wish you nothing but the best.
Also, should you choose to not reply to me, I highly recommend checking out a Publisher called Flying Pen Press. I am currently in the middle stages of having one of my fantasy works approved for publishing. Nerve-wracking! They are not a Christian publisher, but my work is definitely Christian in nature. In choosing a publisher, I wanted to have the widest dissemination of my works to the unchurched; what good is a novel about discovering the Creator of the Universe, if it is only found in Christian book stores? Perhaps that is something for you to consider as well.
Keep up the good work, and if you'd like to check out my blog, it's www.45-1.blogspot.com
R/S
James
Nice blog! So what exactly is a Norbian? Is it like a smurf, lol?
P.S. thanks for the ideas you gave me on my blog!
Say, do you want to join the YCF? (Young Christian Force) It's a group of Christian bloggers (young and young at heart) that try to spread the Good News over the web and talk a lot about story writing and stuff like that. We have 14 members right now! Let me know if you're interested! Thanks
I'm definetly interested in YCF. Sounds great! What do I have to do?
oh, man! You're a dude???? All this time I thought you were a girl! Ok, I'm Debbie from Writer's Bloc...and I found you through a comment you left on Lydia Rule's blog. When I clicked on your profile, I started laughing. All this time I'd naturally assumed you were a she...LOL.
Debbie from Writer's Bloc :-)
OK...that kinda hurt:)
Maybe I'll change my name to Atilla. Honestly, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of guy writers out there.
At a conference I went to, out of 400 or more people, there were two other guys close to my age.
Yeah, I've noticed that, too. There are a couple of guys on the board at Writer's Bloc, but they don't pop in often. They're both in college now...so I know that has something to do with it.
Debbie
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