Tag: books

New TV Season

Laura Highcove

So, the new season of TV has begun. Here’s a quick review of the new TV series I’m watching and what I think an episode or two in:

Shadowhunters

I liked these books by Cassandra Clare (though I liked the “Clockwork” series based in the same world better) and so I figured I would give the TV series a go.

While the differences between the TV series and the books did not bother me, (Except the fact that Brother Zackariah has his eyes and mouth sewn shut.) the acting was so poor that every time any actor opened their mouth, all I could do was cringe.

Seeing as it was the pilot, I did give it a second episode, in which the acting was thankfully better; except for Clary. She’s still pretty bad, but at least now I’m not wincing all the time. I was not expecting this to be amazingly written or acted, so now it simply falls into the “I could enjoy it.” space, which is a fine place to be.

Legends of Tomorrow

Another DC series set in the same universe as Arrow and Flash, and quite obviously as this series pulls the …well ancillary characters from those two series and gives them something to do.

It was a two part pilot in which it set up the basic premise of the show. Does it count as spoilers if it happens in the pilot? Anyway, we gather six minor heroes and two villains who are told by a rebellious Time Master (Not Time LORD mind you.) that since they don’t really effect time much on their own, he’s going to pull them out and go after this super bad dude who, in the future, takes over the world, but since he killed the Time Master’s family, we have enough bodies in the refrigerator to spur action.

The most amusing thing about this show, and the real reason we’re watching it at this point, is the amazing dialogue created by taking such a wide cast of characters and playing them against each other. It seems it will be entertaining at least, even if we have to continue to put up with the Time Master’s cheesy dialogue.

Lucifer

I had a hard time with this episode at first since I was raised Christan, there was no space in my mind for Lucifer to not be a villain. Once I was able to put years of religious conditioning to the side, I was actually impressed with this episode.
Mostly I love the actor playing Lucifer, who I followed over from Rush (which was pretty bad and canceled after one season). He has such a boyish innocence to him which somehow lends itself wonderfully to the confidant character he’s playing.

Now the main female lead spent most of the episode with her pupils absolutely tiny which just made her freaky to look at, but she doesn’t seem too bad.

Writing wasn’t amazing and my husband and I are wondering how convoluted things will have to be considering most people just blurt out important information whenever Lucifer smiles. Time will tell, but I am super excited for the second episode.

Researching Arthurian Legend

Laura Highcove

So today I’ve done a bit of research on Arthurian Legend. The first part of the second half of The Storyteller, I’m sending Tabitha into The King Arthur tale.

Before this I knew the basics of this myth like most people:

There was a king named Arthur. He had a special sword called Excalibur that he got out of a stone or a lake, depending on who you ask. He had a wizard mentor named Merlin. He has a group of knights and a round table. He has a wife Guenevere who is also in love with one of his knights, Lancelot and that got everyone into a lot of trouble.

Places I have seen the Arthur Legend:

The Sword in the Stone by Disney, with adorable little Wart and old man Merlin who taught him everything important.

I saw a live action movie one time that may have been based on the book The Mists of Avalon (which I haven’t read) that focused more on Morgan le Fay. I don’t remember much of it except that she was tricked into sleeping with her half-brother, Arthur.

The BBC series Merlin, which toward the end used the less than happy ending to the Arthur story, ie Arthur getting mortally wounded by Mordred and then “disappearing”, but oh hey it might come back some day. (Argh, I don’t care how ‘faithful’ that ending was, I was so unhappy.)

New things I discovered:

Excalibur actually came out of the lake. There was a lady there who took care of it, and she and Merlin had a thing.

The sword that Arthur pulled out of the stone was not Excalibur.

There is apparently a lot of illicit sex going on among the peoples of this mythology. Arthur’s father slept with a married woman to get Arthur. Arthur slept with his half-sister Morgan and/or Morgause and sired the person who would kill him, Mordred. And some of his knights got naughty as well (Besides Lancelot).

Chivalry was a super big thing, but most things involving Courtly Love eventually just turned into illicit sex.

and …

I’m not sure how I’ll use this information for my story yet, but it was only an hour or so of research. Just enough to get me the basics. I think my main issue is that there are a lot of people in the Arthurian Legend, and if I’m keeping with calling people by their roles instead of their names, it gets a lot more complicated when there are all those knights. We’ll have to see what I come up with.

Extra Writing Time

Laura Highcove

Otakon is done and over and was tons of fun. We actually put events in our guidebook and went to them! Spent money in the Dealer’s Room and Artist Alley. The weekend on a whole was great.

Then I hung out for three days at my mother-in-law’s with basically nothing to do except write. So I worked on my outline, which got done more quickly than I thought it would, I spent some time working through the ‘major’ issues (both straight up plot holes as well as concepts I just hadn’t fleshed out yet, and that needed to be fleshed out) and reading the 1300 page Words of Radiance by Branderson.

What did I discover during this process? First off, doing the physical post it note on posterboard is better than the program I had for index cards because I can see it all at a glance. So I could see where all the pink cards are (those are scenes that still need to be written) and where important character moments happen for Rose (pink) Tabitha (yellow) and Garrett (green). Through the middle, the blue are the plot holes, and everything else on that line are things that need to be explained that I don’t actually have a place for yet …

However it brings into super sharp contrast the fact that my second half of the book just doesn’t exist. I knew this was an issue before I started the outline. It has been a problem for a while, but this is the perfect time to have this problem because I’m going to the Writer’s Digest Conference this weekend. I will be surrounded by writers and writing teachers. I’m sure something in a panel will pop out at me and propel me forward again.

For now, getting ready for my trip to New York.

Author Challenge

Laura Highcove

So a few weeks ago my DIYMFA mentor suggested I do an author challenge. In it, I picked an author in my genre (fantasy) and read three of their books. One of their earliest, one of their most recent books, and one that is right in between. This process is to help me see how an author has evolved as a writer from the first book they published, forward by giving a wide sample.

At first I was going to choose Brandon Sanderson (because Brandon Sanderson…), but then I decided I would choose my first favorite fantasy author, Mercedes Lackey. I read her gryffin series (The Black Gryphon, The White Gryphon, The Silver Gryphon) what feels like a million years ago. I didn’t read any of her more famous books about the Companions until much later. I am also such a fan of her Joust books and the 500 Kingdoms. I just love most everything this woman writes (not that I’ve read it all, she has written a lot).

So I went and found a list of her books. Her first book was Arrows of the Queen which was published in 1987. I chose that one. Right in the middle were two books that I already owned. I decided to choose the one I had enjoyed reading more, called Brightly Burning. Her most recent book is part of the Elemental Masters series. I have not read any of that series, but I chose it anyway. It seems pretty stand alone. It is called Steadfast.
So I started off with Arrows of the Queen. I have to say that the plot for this book was rather rough. The story jumped around and didn’t really focus well and when we got to the big bad conflict at the end I was left a little lost. However, I could see the care and detail she put into her characters and her world. Foreshadowing for books she wouldn’t write for years were all in this first book, and the characters were alive and real and I cared about them.

Since it was my second time reading Brightly Burning, I was able to look into it with a bit more detail. What really got to me is I got about a quarter way into the book before the actual plot started. I just felt that there didn’t need to be quite so much back-story. Once the ‘actual’ story started, the story and plot worked well. Again, the characters and world are wonderful.

I am about halfway through Steadfast and so far it is proceeding in standard Mercedes Lackey fare, though I feel like the ending is pretty well-dictated at this point and I’m not anticipating a twist. This doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying it.

When I read and immerse myself in a book, unless there’s a major issue, I just read it and enjoy it. Now that I’ve learned to read more like a writer I can see that authors are not gods. They are good at certain things and not as good at others.

The book can be entirely enjoyable without being perfect. That was something I knew logically, but it’s different having read the books and seen the imperfections.

It gives me more confidence in my own writing not needing to be perfect. Now I still have to figure out what my strengths in writing are, but baby steps.

Getting Tropey

Laura Highcove

It occurs to me that since right now I don’t have any writing stuff to talk about, that this is a perfect time to talk a bit more about the story I’m working on itself, as opposed to the process.

If you’ve visited the “The Stories” link over on the right, you may have noticed the line under The Storyteller heading: “I have always wanted to do a story in a fairy tale world where the characters are genre savvy (ie, they know the fairy tales are stories and respond accordingly.)”. Being genre savvy involves a knowledge of expected outcomes based on stories similar to the current situation. These expected outcomes are also known as tropes. Click on that link. I’ll wait.

Back so soon? I’ve been known to get lost for hours on that site.

Basically, all of the things that you expect to happen in tv, movies, books, etc. because you’ve seen them before. You know it is a bad decision to go down into the basement when there’s a serial killer or scary monster somewhere in the vicinity, but the person in the situation has no idea that they’re in a scary movie.

Part of what I’m playing around with in The Storyteller is that the laws of magic in this world are tropes, and fairy tales happen over and over in different places to different people. These people have no idea they’re in a story. My main characters are Storytellers, and it’s their job to be Genre Savvy. They have to know the laws (tropes) in order to make sure the world stays stable through the successful completion of the tales.

Think for a moment about Cinderella. It doesn’t matter if you think of the Disney version, or any other version. There are certain things you associate with the story. Cinderella is treated as a servant. Her ball. She meets a prince, loses her slipper, and is identified by it.

There are many tropes associated with this story, and tons of re-tellings of the Cinderella story that use different tropes. Some tropes are less necessary than others. Would it still be a cinderella story if she started out rich? If her stepmother loved her? If there is no prince? What about if there were two princes?

In The Storyteller, the Storytellers have to make sure that certain tropes (laws of magic) happen properly within the tale or the magic can go completely wild. As such, I’ve had a lot of fun playing with what tropes I can put into stories, and which I can take out without losing the essence of the story. And that doesn’t mean that my Storytellers don’t have tropes of their own.

Tropes are not good or bad on their face, they’re just a tool. A way of creating and possibly subverting expectations in the reader quickly and easily. If you find any tropes on TV Tropes that you particularly like, feel free to share them in the comments section or post to my wall.

Drafting: A New Step Forward

Laura Highcove

So things are getting back underway. I have a new plan (outline) that my husband helped me hash out. In addition to that I had a realization from the most recent writing book I have picked up Story Engineering, where the author said there is little difference between plotters and pantsers, just that plotters do all their planning by perfecting their outline and such before they start to write, and pantsers do all their planning in multiple edits while they’re writing.

In the past when I wrote, I started in on the story and wrote until I had this GREATNEWIDEA that I had to add into the story, so I started over. And I would do that over and over again. That in itself only got me so far because I didn’t understand story structure and I didn’t discipline myself to get to the second half of the book very often.

It did, however, make me realize that I probably will need to go through a few edits like I used to do, so I am starting over from the beginning of the story to add in all of the planning and world building I have developed since January.

Once I get to my halfway point again, I am going to push through to the end, using my new outline. I figure I may not need any more edits than that because I spent so long after my first draft just planning world, characters, and story, but I won’t know until I get there.

My deadline is June 5th, because starting June 6th, I am going to play Xenoblade Chronicles as my reward to myself for getting through the story.

As such, I have three weeks to get through what I already have planned out pretty well (which I think is actually past the halfway point, and to the Dark Night of the Soul (The absolute low point of the story.) <—Look at me embedding parenthesis.) And then four weeks to hammer out the rest of the story. So my specific measurable result is three sections a week. (It's 19k words.) I need to get through, probably two of them this weekend in order for that to work.

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

Laura Highcove

Elantris starts off in a world on the verge of a religious war. There are only two holdout countries and from those two countries we get the main characters who are signed up for political marriage; only the prince dies while the princess is on route.

Or at least everyone is told he died, because it’s a better idea than telling them he turned into one of the cursed creatures of Elantris. We follow the prince through the mysterious circumstances inside Elantris, which used to be a wonderful place filled with god-like creatures. On the outside, the princess, now a widow, tries to establish herself in the court with many of the prince’s old friends. She also has to pit herself against a powerful representative of the strongest religion in the world as he tries to convert everyone before a time limit.

In my opinion, the characters were believable and a lot of fun to follow. The mystery of Elantris kept me guessing, and I enjoyed finding out about it along the way. There were a few plot devices that were very obviously there only to be useful at the end, but those are forgivable, and there were plenty of others that managed to catch me by surprise.

One of the things I like about this book is the relationships/friendships between characters. Also, I feel like the author knows the ins and outs of his world such that he can play with it in a way that really makes the world feel real. I felt satisfied having read this book and would recommend it to others.

Casual Vacancy

Laura Highcove

So this is the ‘other’ book written by JK Rowling. I wasn’t really interested in ever reading it. It wasn’t Harry Potter and it didn’t sound like a fantasy, so why bother? Then I heard from Morgan that it was apparently a really good book. She said that all of the characters are unlikable, and yet you want to keep reading anyway. That caught my interest, because if the characters are unlikable, then the story must be something amazing. So I downloaded it on my Kindle, and gave it a shot.

I saw immediately why it’s such a popular book. The woman is a wordsmith like I have rarely seen. I don’t remember this level of craft in the Harry Potter books, but perhaps she just stuck with a particular style throughout those and tried something new in this one. Reading her words was like sailing down a smooth, crystal blue river that is lined with the most luscious garden. Now the plot might be good too, I didn’t get far enough into it to really form an opinion.

That being said, I will not be finishing the book. I think I got about 30% into it (says my Kindle) and the unlikable characters are just too much for me. I don’t read to stare into the blackness of the human soul. Probably why I hated so much reading books for school; all they care about is blackness of souls. I read (and write) fantasy. I want my characters to be heroic on top of their humanity. I don’t want to be wishing I could punch every character in the nose through the pages of the book. I want to read to enjoy myself and root for the main characters. Heck, I even like my villains to be affable. But I certainly will be going back to it on occasion to review the art she made out of those words.