After a brief hiatus, the blog is back! And, after a short time away, I have returned with another follow-on to Laura Perry's guest post on writing the real world - click here to read her post!
I am joined this week by Ken Magee, author of Dark Tidings and its sequel, Black Conspiracy, both available to buy on Amazon! The third in the series, A Darker Shade of Black, is coming soon.
While this technomacy time-travelling comedy is partially set in the medieval period, it's not troubled by the issues of historical accuracy - this is not a Historical Fiction series, it's a Pratchett-esque romp through space and time. I will be looking into building a "fantistorical" world later, and perhaps also tracking down a Historical Fiction author to discuss the aspects of research and recreation of the zeitgeist of another time. However, Magee has taken great pains to create the 'illusion of the medieval world' through the smaller aspects of his research as well as broad-brushing.
[I suffer from one of the worst afflictions as a reader of novels with medieval settings - I'm a social historian in the last year of my PhD, focusing on thirteenth century England. Even so, I still enjoyed the books and laughed out loud! After all... would socio-economic accuracy really add anything to the plot or the humour? Honestly?]
Not Building a World
Some fantasy writers have to work incredibly
hard to build a mystical world for their characters to inhabit. There are so
many questions to answer. What colour is the sky? How many moons are visible? Is
there vegetation and what about gravity and air? There is so much detail we
take for granted in our ‘normal’ world. We know about night and day, and how
long a day lasts. We know about history and how our world came to be the way it
is. We understand descriptions of architecture, culture, fashion, religion,
crime and punishment, weapons and war, currency, food, how long people live
and, naturally, language.
Of course, not all of this needs to be considered when
building a new world, but the author needs to know enough about his imagined habitat
to ensure everything around his characters remains consistent. And indeed, his
characters personalities, aims and ambitions will all be shaped by the
environment in which they live.
Authors of contemporary, historical or urban fantasy have a
much easier time, or do they? I thought it might be interesting to jot down a
few of the things I do to draw the reader into the story and make them believe
that magic is real and it’s all around them. And, by the way, it is.
Before I look at my world building, I want to mention one of
the unbreakable rules in fantasy… if there’s magic, there has to be a magic
system. I wanted mine to be simple and readily understandable… and it is. I
won’t go into the system here, but I will stress how vital it is that all
spells and enchantments adhere to the rules otherwise the belief in the story
is broken. As far as weaving magic into the twenty-first century way of life
goes, I was determined to make it believable and consistent. First, I needed to
explain, in a logical and believable way, how the magic came to exist in our
modern world. Then I wanted to challenge the reader’s perception of the world…
maybe there’s more to this magic malarkey than meets the eye. That actually
required me to work my imagination muscle pretty hard.
One technique I used was to interlace little sub-plots which
suggested that some of the phenomena we think we can explain with science are
in fact a result of magic or the action of supernatural powers e.g. global
warming, the expanding universe, weather forecasting and evolution. I think
this helps blur the line between fact and fiction. So much so, that I now
believe half the things I made up… which isn’t going to help me in my science
exams.
Okay, where does the magic happen? My ‘ancient magic meets the
Internet’ trilogy mainly takes place in the twenty-first century. What’s that
world like? Well, just look out the window! That’s that sorted. A bit too easy
maybe, so let’s have a glimpse at a thousand years ago.
Dark Tidings, the first book in the trilogy, began in medieval
times, an age when magic dominated society. Let’s have a quick look at just a
couple of the ways I built the illusion of the medieval world. This time I
couldn’t just look out the window, but looking at the Internet was nearly as easy.
I researched the relevant years and made sure the buildings, customs, clothes, foods
etc pretty much reflected the period… that really wasn’t too difficult.
I have plenty of scenes which reflect life a thousand years
ago. There is poverty, most food is rubbish, ordinary people suffer arbitrary
imprisonment, torture is commonplace and rich folk (like the barons and earls)
have all the power. Actually, not much has changed if you think about it.
On top of that, the story is peppered with real events, like
the battle of Hastings or the problem with the Vikings. I think introducing things,
with which people are familiar, adds to the believability and once again helps blur
the reader’s perception of what’s real and what isn’t. The blurrier the line
between fact and fiction, the more credible the whole story becomes.
The characters’ names are important too. I want them to
either sound right or be right for the period. And if I can use the name to build
a little amusing anecdote, that’s a bonus. Let me take Courtney as the example.
I was surprised to discover it was a popular medieval name. It’s derived from
the nickname for a person with a snub nose, from the old French ‘court nez’… court (short)
and nez (nose). It was also the nickname of a hero from a medieval story… an
axe took off the tip of his nose in a battle. Now’s there’s a little story
which needed to be told. Interesting, true and fun.
As a side note, I have a particular dislike of difficult to
say names, they slow my reading each time I encounter them. Some Sci-Fi authors
are particularly prone to this. Come on guys, I don’t need to learn how to
pronounce Xyegraroxivert to believe he’s from another planet.
One thing I decided
not to do in my thousand year old world was make my characters use medieval
language. A few reviewers commented about that, but I’m happy with my decision.
The vocabulary was extremely limited back then and I felt that restricting
myself would detract from the storytelling without really adding to the
authenticity of the setting. For example, how many people know that the word
‘money’ wasn’t used until about 1250? Does using that word really destroy the
image I’m building? I don’t think so.
Once my characters arrive in the twenty-first century they
do get confused by modern terminology, customs and of course, technology. I
think that’s enough to keep the reader believing they’ve travelled a thousand
years across time. And, of course, some of the misunderstandings are very funny.
Oh, my computer’s reminding me about my next appointment.
The magic of technology!
How about, ‘be consistent and blur the line’?
- Ken Magee
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