Brace Yourself... November is Coming

Okay, okay, I know. November is still more than two months away. But it's coming nonetheless, and across NaNoWriMoLand can be heard the NaNoWarrior's cry: "I have an idea!".

Well, I have an idea, anyway.

I'm still plugging away at "The Roadkeeper's Daughter", but haven't made much progress numbers-wise; much of what I've done has been a substantial reframing of the first few chapters. I felt that the initial event and character motivation were under-developed, so I've gone back and fixed that. It continues, and I've set myself the goal of writing four new chapters before NaNoWriMo begins.

"The Roadkeeper's Daughter" is set in a warm, dry place, with a wholly POC cast, eucalyptus trees on the hilltops and blue sky overhead, and a somewhat Arabic-inspired styling. My NaNo work for this year is a substantial shift, from the hot winds of Lynnar to the misty, cool Yorkshire Moors, or at least a fantasy version thereof. Echoes of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Deira in the late 500s/early 600s infuse this YA adventure.

Tentatively titled "The Fourth Princess Dances", it riffs off the fairy tale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses", although naturally it is an elven princess, not prince, who is sought across the underground lake. Sixteen-year-old protagonist Cyna (/k/-/igh/-/n/-/ə/) is largely sidelined in her parents' royal hall, due to her weak and unpredictable limbs and dislike of strong sunlight. Bored and lonely, she finds a passage into a cave beneath the fort, but what starts as a harmless adventure with the bewitching elf Melis soon turns dangerous. As both humans and elves arm themselves against the gathering threat from the north, will Cyna and Melis be able to broker peace between their people, or will their unsanctioned romance cause a war that neither side can afford to lose?

... I hate writing blurbs/teasers. That's one off the top of my head, but I'll no doubt tweak it as time goes on. Too many commas, as usual!

The inspiration for the location comes from two events I attended at Bolton Castle in Yorkshire. Although the castle itself is nearly a thousand years too young for this story, its position on the edge of the moors is perfect, and some of my experiences there have cast it in a somewhat mythical light. I first saw it before dawn, stepping out of a taxi from Darlington having taken the overnight coach from London; and as no one was awake to let me in, I spent the following two hours standing on the gravel outside, watching the sun gradually rise over the hills and valleys below. That event was cold and damp, going down in SCA history as "never again". The second event there, on a sunny June weekend, was much more pleasant; I spent much of it working down in the kitchen or drifting in solitude around the castle. In the evening most of us went to the villas down the road to relax; my friend S and I decided to walk back to the castle where we were staying at 1am. We didn't even have a torch, got lost in one field because we forgot which field we were in, got scratched by prickles, and frightened by sheep. Although this event was sunny, between the kitchens and the midnight walk my impression of Bolton Castle is overwhelmingly one of darkness, and it is from there that "The Fourth Princess Dances" begins.

I'll leave you now with a picture of something else entirely. This year I attended the entire SCA Ffair Rhaglen, at Raglan Castle in Wales. 10 nights under canvas, with a grass floor, is an adventure even in summer, but how irresistible does it look nonetheless?

If you can blazon my arms, you deserve to be able to
work out my SCA name. Have fun! Photo: CSF 2015

The Power of Story

It's been a while since I've posted. My word count dropped dramatically when I cut out the off-track chapters, and I've spent several weeks combing through the existing chapters getting the landscape, climate and furniture ironed out after a change of image. I'm back on to regular writing now, however, with a wordcount of 25,060 and rising. And I'll be back to posting here regularly!

Today's post was inspired by a conversation on that other website we all use, in which a friend expressed unconcern about a certain controversial novel with the phrase "it's just fiction".

I don't think there's any such thing as "just fiction".

Terry Pratchett has been on my mind an awful lot since his passing last month. His books were a very positive influence on my teenage years, with their witty and incisive observations of the follies to which we all cling. Mort was my first Pratchett experience, aged 16, when two of my classmates convinced our Drama teacher to let us perform it as our class play. I've been an avid reader of his books ever since, and I owe a lot of my familiarity with science concepts to his co-authorship of the "Science of Discworld" series. In these, he gave Homo sapiens a new scientific name: Pan narrans, the storytelling ape.

Aren't you a little ... short ... for a Bursar? Photo: NR 1997

The name fits. The only way we humans can deal with the complex world in which we live is to tell ourselves stories about it. The harder something is to understand, the more we try to turn it into a simplified narrative. We often fall foul of our own narratives too...believing the story we've told ourselves and being surprised when the universe doesn't seem to have rehearsed its lines as we have. This isn't how this scene is supposed to play out...

The fiction narratives we encounter as children, teenagers and young adults definitely shape the way we see ourselves and relate to the world around us. Whether it's realistic fiction or fantastic fantasy, we internalise the messages of gender, sexuality, relationships, how to be an adult, what success looks like, and what makes things right or wrong based on these stories. Narratives that teach us less than safe ways of relating, in particular, can really mess us up when we're older.

"You wouldn't actually have liked the Victorian
period, Christine. It was dirty and smelly and full
of disease, you'd have had half a dozen siblings by now
and opportunities for women were really limited."
Photo: NR circa 1990.

This is not to say that no one should write these kinds of relationships. The dark heroes (male or female), have their place. But it serves us well to cast a critical eye over them, and ensure that the young people reading them have the opportunity to hear those narratives challenged. It's important that adults in all parts of their life share that understanding that some narratives aren't meant to be followed, that some narratives are cautionary tales even if the tale itself pretends to have been about a successful relationship.

I remember the thrill of the fear-lust-romance-danger brought on by a dark hero. I still get it, sometimes (*cough*AlexVause*cough*). And there's nothing wrong with that. But there's also no excuse for letting that go unchallenged because it's "just fiction". There's nothing wrong with saying "Jareth is extremely sexy but also a giant jerkface" or "actually Angel's kind of a selfish idiot a lot of the time even when he DOES have a soul" or "Alex is broken, do not engage until and unless she sorts her shit out, seriously". Because these messages are important, and fiction is powerful. Dangerous stories are fine as long as we know they're dangerous. It's when we think that Lessa and F'lar have a healthy relationship because the book says so, despite providing plenty of evidence to the contrary, that we have a problem. When we internalise those faulty messages, we live out those problems in our own stories.

"It's just fiction" does fiction an injustice. Stories are the most powerful social tool we have. Everything we do relates back to the narrative we believe in about who were are meant to be. We can shape our society, for better or worse, with the narratives we approve and the narratives we criticise. Challenging a negative narrative is not being too sensitive, it's not interrogating it from the wrong perspective, it's understanding and valuing its power.

I can't promise I'll always write powerfully positive narratives, chock-full of characters who own their behaviour and treat each other well. But I hope, if I ever write a dark hero with a happy ending, that people will call me out on it. Life's too short to believe that old story.

CSF xx