Excitement or Plausibility?

Back during the blog party in November, Joy asked me to write a post on the balance between fact and fiction in historical novels.  The result was fairly brief, a quick summary of my thoughts on the matter; this post, and probably a couple to come after, is something of an extension of those ideas.

At the same time, though I identify to this most as a writer of historical fiction, the topic applies just as much to other genres.  Whether writing fantasy or mystery, historical fiction or romance, there's a constant tension between what readers will find exciting, and what readers will find plausible.  On the one extreme you have old DC comics - Superman beats up all the bad guys again! - and on the other you have "realism" - everyone dies, loses their minds, is crossed in love, or in some fashion meets a depressing end.

Most of us like to write stories that land in the middle, because while people are drawn to the hopefulness of a happy ending, they are also quite capable of picking out absurdities. The quote about truth being stranger than fiction is quite accurate; truth is certain, no matter how crazy it appears, but fiction is subjected to the grueling test of the reader's credulity and can get a failing grade.  To a certain degree, it doesn't matter whether or not a far-fetched detail in a novel is true, if the reader cannot be convinced that it is so.  This is something that has stood out to me while reading Operation Mincemeat, an account of an Allied effort to convince Germany that British and American troops were invading Europe, not through Sicily, but through Greece.  The deception hinged on truth, half-truth, and lies, but it also hinged on perception and bias; and as the enemy had to be manipulated, so, in a sense, must a writer manipulate his reader.  (It is not at all surprising that many top-ranking intelligence officers were also novelists - Ian Fleming, anyone?)

In this little work of espionage, the key is maintaining a balance between the plausible and the exciting.  If we tell the reader exactly what he wants to hear up front - that Superman defeated the bad guys by bashing their heads together and escaped without a scratch - well, that is all good and exciting, but is it credible?  No.  Is it credible that Odin should conveniently discover a way to send Thor to earth just when S.H.I.E.L.D. needed him most?  No.  Is it credible that Thorin should be able to defend himself from a large enraged orc while wielding only an oak branch?  Uh, well, yes, because he's awesome.  That's pretty self-evident.

These are all exciting scenes, but if we were making them into plausible stories, Superman would be captured, Thor wouldn't be in "The Avengers," and Thorin wouldn't be Oakenshield, he would be dead.  The question then becomes, would it be better to tilt the scale toward the other end, make the story realistic, and wipe out all this melodrama?  Would this be the right formula for convincing our readers of the "truth" (and in a way, as readers we should be brought to accept the reality of both characters and plot) of the tale?

We might convince a few people of the "realism" of the story (whatever that is supposed to mean), but I can bet you nine out of ten will still be severely ticked off.  These all have a common denominator: they're adventures and fantasies, and there are certain expectations attached to them.  The excitement-plausibility scale will tend toward the former, because they are by nature fast-paced and high-stakes stories.  Disbelief is more willingly suspended.

Matters are rather different with historical fiction, where fact and imagination mingle and readers can see the lines.  When the setting is real and limitations are clearer, I know I start to look more closely for elements that stretch credulity too far or snap it altogether.  We can say glibly that fact is stranger than fiction - but when something strange in fiction tries to pass itself off as fact, we still eye it with inveterate suspicion.

Still, even in historical fiction where we expect to see more strictures, I think it is accurate to say that the majority of readers will always tend more toward excitement - because the majority of readers approach books with something of an escapist mentality.  We want to see things through rose-hued glasses for a little while; we want epic battles and happy endings, we want Superman and Thor.  We do not want the boredom of reality.  In my case, this realization gave me the necessity of relieving the monotony of blockade duty in the Sea Fever books; it was, frankly, a humdrum sort of thing, and nobody wants to spend pages reading about it.  But back on the other hand, there are a half-dozen sticky points where a story's critical points must be made credible enough to convince a reader.

The success of espionage is frequently a matter of sticking oneself in the enemy's proverbial boots, seeing things the way the enemy sees, then crafting the deception to pander to it.  That is what writers do: stick themselves in reader's boots.  Perhaps it sounds underhanded; perhaps it is underhanded.  But I think it is also the reason why writers must also be readers, so that we get a feel for such tensions as these.

Mad Author with a Blog

pinterest

Jenny just posted yesterday about the relationship between art and marketing; today I'll be following it up with a post on the latter subject - though I should hope it will be helpful for those of you who are currently blogging purely for fun.  We all envy you.

For those of you who have done some research on publication and read blogs dealing with the subject, you've probably already heard the concept of building a platform.  It's popular - I know of one book on the subject, and I'm sure there are plenty more - and can be made to sound quite frightening, but the basic idea is that of planting yourself deeply and squarely in your field.  In writing, this means marketing to your audience: fiction or nonfiction; middle-grade, young adult, adult; men or women; fantasy, historical, dystopian, what-have-you.  This is what makes "knowing your audience" so important, because marketing your young adult dystopian to middle-aged fans of World War II history is not only silly, it's also a waste of everyone's time.

Building a platform can take many different forms, but one of the most common nowadays is starting a blog.  It has a number of advantages over sites like Facebook or Twitter; authors can write lengthier posts on weightier topics (it's hard to be weighty in 160 characters!), but still interact with readers.  A blog also allows more of the author's voice and personality to come through and gives potential readers a better idea of what the author's book might read like.

But there are very rarely advantages without some disadvantages.  While blogs are fun at the start, when ideas are simply brimming in our minds, they can lose their charm fast and leave us quite disillusioned.  If you want to maintain a blog and use it as a platform, you have to be dedicated to it.  You can't just quit when the ideas won't come; you have to go after inspiration with a club, as Jack London would say.  ...Did say, even.  Blogs are also quite a bit of work to maintain, unlike a Facebook or Twitter account (although I confess I fail in the latter respect).  You can't just log in, type a one- or two-line comment, submit it and go your way.  You've got to make time to sit down and think out, and type out, a post of at least a couple paragraphs and some worthwhile content.

Content, too, can be a difficulty.  Glancing over the blogs I come across, I find an alarming number of ones where the writer seems to have started and then lost either interest or ideas or both.  This may mean that the last post was put up in February 2009, or it may mean that the writer has struggled along with a post per month on random and unimportant aspects of their lives.  Readers learn about the author's fifth cousin who has a deathly illness, or the author's new poodle-greyhound-Great Dane puppy, or sometimes hey! look! my new book released: whaddya know?  This is obligatory blogging combined with purposelessness, and it results in boring reading and a jittery platform.

If we want to undertake a blog for anything more than a sort of public journal (which I confess I don't understand), we have to think about it beforehand and use some sort of plan and schedule in the process.  It isn't necessary to post every day, or every other day, or even every other third day; in fact, posting too frequently, especially if the blog doesn't have more than one contributor, can get repetitive.  But neglecting the blog for weeks on end has the same effect.  It's good to have in mind a general idea of how frequently you want to post.  You don't have to stick to it religiously - at least, I know I don't - but it can be helpful to know what goal you're working toward.

In the interest of building a platform, it's also important to know what topics you want to be posting on. Again, I don't recommend setting this in stone; some people like to set a schedule of posting on one thing on Mondays and another topic Fridays and pictures on Sundays, but that doesn't suit everyone.  Just make sure you know what you're blogging for and what topics you are best suited to write on.  If historical fiction is your genre, perhaps research (but I'd advise you to take this in small doses, because out of context it can be found dull), incorporation of historical characters, and general writing tips.  Don't spend posts rambling about things that readers of the genre don't care about, like your poodle-greyhound-Great Dane.  That's what spots like private Facebook accounts and Twitter are for. 

Spontaneity is fine; it makes the blog more fun.  

Randomness is not; it is the mark of an unfocused mind.

Historical versus Fictional

The blog party (and, you know, NaNo) continues!  Jenny wrote up a post over at The Penslayer with some fun facts behind the writing and publishing of The Shadow Things.  I'll be following suit in a day or two, but today's post here at Scribbles is actually not here at Scribbles at all.  Joy of Fullness of Joy was taking a hiatus from the internet this month, and she asked if I would write up a guest post for her blog.  The topic was historical fiction, which turned out to be ideal for the theme of the party.  Here's a sneaky peek:

historical fiction: just how historical

does it have to be? 

The necessity of historical accuracy is a pretty well accepted concept in today's literature.  In past centuries it was typical for "historians" to twist and embellish history according to their own bias, or whoever was funding their literary efforts; nowadays there is at least an ideal of presenting a true, unbiased picture of the past (ironic, rather, since the importance of history has reached such a low in the minds of our generation).  Although we still come across novels where events or characters are blatantly misrepresented, there is a tendency to scorn the author when the mistakes are recognized.  This much is agreed upon by most writers: extensive research is indispensable.

All the same, I think just about every writer who has any scruples has wondered, just how accurate do we have to be?   How many dates do we have to incorporate?  How many events can we get away with leaving out altogether?  How much care should we take in handling a historical figure?  Why can't Abraham Lincoln be a vampire slayer?  Do we really have to specify the exact type of food banqueters in 1317 would be eating?  Is it necessary to record every single skirmish of the Civil War our particular regiment went through?  Is the whole world going to end if we get our hero's weapon wrong?  Are we actually creating a tear in the space-time continuum with our inaccuracy?

read the rest on Joy's blog, and don't forget to leave a comment!

because comments make the world go 'round.

In Defense of Nonfiction

I don't write nonfiction. At least, I haven't written any yet and I didn't see it in the near future when I looked at my scrying mirror; I have too many novels to write. Yet a defense of the genre seems to be needed in this day and age, both to writers and readers alike, for people are much more eager to read fiction now than to pick up a biography or even a "religious" book. The reverse used to be true, of course. There was a time when the novel was considered to be a frivolity and the primary books read by literate men and women were works of philosophy, science, history, and religion. Now the tables have turned.

This is not, of course, to say that I dislike fiction or that I read as many nonfiction works as I would like. I agree with Jane Austen's tongue-in-cheek comment in Northanger Abbey: "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." Novels can have many truths in them, and stimulating the imagination is a good thing. I would rather see a person reading a decent novel than flipping through the comics section of a newspaper. The classics, especially, are classics for a reason and (generally speaking) ought to be read and enjoyed.

But what about nonfiction? This genre seems usually to be reserved for the middle-aged and elderly, while younger readers prefer novels. Many read widely - classics, fantasy, historical fiction, what-have-you - but don't read nonfiction, not realizing how much they are missing by never reading a biography longer than a hundred pages or delving into a Puritan Paperback. Few people take note that if fiction is an ode to man's imagination and creativity, the real world is an ode to God's. And fact, as they say, is stranger than fiction.

There are numerous reasons why the reading of nonfiction is an almost lost art, not least of which is the argument that biographies, histories, etc. are dull and tedious. I think, however, that this is more a holdover from textbooks than a truth about the majority of nonfiction; after all, writing something like a biography is still classified as "creative" writing, which implies that the author puts imagination into the crafting of his or her book. Writers like David McCullough and Robert K. Massie are so skilled at writing that their books read with the ease of a novel while still presenting the facts in all their fascinating detail. Nonfiction certainly is a different style than fiction and one that takes getting used to, but it is no more unusual or difficult than the style of classic authors like Jane Austen is today.

"Religious" works (the term seems rather loose and open-minded, but I don't really know what else they might be called) are just as important as histories, if not more so, for they feed the soul. Yet if anything, they are less read than biographies - or, if readers do pick up a book on some aspect of the Christian life, it is usually a modern, insipid work about what religion can do for you. Granted, these are easier to read than Jonathan Edwards, but they are, as a whole, neither well-grounded in Scripture nor lastingly worthwhile. Books by the Puritans or such men as John Piper and Charles Spurgeon are a little harder to read, but provide meat for the soul rather than what my sister-in-law calls "candy-reading."

As a caveat to all that, I will say that I don't advocate that someone who only reads novels run out and buy Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or Jonathan Edwards' Treatise on the Will. The best way to slide into a habit of reading nonfiction is to start with something relatively small on a subject that interests you. My first adult nonfiction read was Robert K. Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra... but it's over 600 pages and was a long, hard slog to get through. That was, by the way, not because of any deficiency in Massie's writing, but because I wasn't used to such big books. I made it to the end through a combination of sheer determination (also known as stubbornness), interest in the Romanov family, and love for Massie's writing. On the other hand, the excellent book Amazing Grace, a biography of William Wilberforce by Eric Metaxas, is only about 300 pages and makes for a much lighter read.

As for books on the Christian life, there are plenty of good ones for laymen and laywomen; they are not all as overwhelming as Karl Barth's Dogmatics or John Owen's works. (Which I haven't read. Just in case you thought I was actually smart or something shocking like that.) Some good authors are John Piper, J.I. Packer, and A.W. Tozer, and the series of books called "Puritan Paperbacks," put out by the Banner of Truth Press, are well-worth getting as well. Once you've dipped your toe into the water, you may find that the pool isn't as terrifying as you first thought.

Day Six {Genre} and Day Seven {Project}

As you will no doubt realize if you've seen the list of the Fifteen Day Challenge writing questions, I am taking liberties and skipping a couple of them. Day Six has to do with one's "bucket list," but I don't have one and therefore can't answer that; Day Eight is supposed to be a video about books or writing, but the only one I know of is Julian Smith's "I'm Reading a Book" and I can't stand rap. So I'm going with the questions I can answer.

day six: your favorite genre to write in

Earlier this month I wrote a post on diversity in which I pointed out the advantages of both reading and writing in many different genres to stretch the imagination. I am currently reading my father's dissertation on biblical economics, and in learning a little about the basics of Capitalism, it occurred to me that the Division of Labor encouraged by Adam Smith is today as pervasive a concept in the field of arts as it is in the field of physical labor. Authors are expected to hone their skills in one genre - something which, no doubt, earns them prestige and money. I contend, however, that although it might bring financial success and get the writer into the New York Bestseller List, it is damaging to the mind and will eventually doom the author's writing to tedious repetition.

All that to say, I like to write in several different genres. Currently I have two historical fictions and a fantasy; two of my planned novels are a time-traveling novel (science-fantasy) and a light "historical fiction" composed entirely of letters. I also have a historical fiction and a romance bumping around in my head. If forced to choose I would probably say that my favorite genre to write in is historical fiction, since in that one field there are a thousand different possibilities of time, setting, and characters. I like the research that goes into making the past come alive; I like the feeling of having created a story within history and made it authentic. And - well, I just love history and writing is the closest I can get to being there.

day seven: your current writing project

This question is an easy one for me to answer because I have a one-track mind - in this area, at least. Although I will occasionally scribble down a section in my writing notebook for another story, in general when I begin one novel I concentrate my energy on finishing it. I can't write two novels at the same time. Right now I am writing The White Sail's Shaking, my first "sea novel," set during the United States' first war with the Barbary states of North Africa. I always like a good intrigue, and that is what White Sail's is - an inner war among four midshipmen set against the backdrop of their nation's war with Tripoli.

At any level an officer's single goal is to get to the next highest, and Tip Brighton is as eager as his messmates to succeed when he first joins the Enterprize. He has always been a failure - in society as well as in his own family; that's how he ended up being dumped into the navy in the first place. But now that he is there, he means to prove himself...until he finds that the cost of success is higher than he is willing to pay.

I am roughly 90,000 words in to The White Sail's Shaking, placing me at about the two-thirds mark. The writing has been rather slow (I started this novel as my 2010 NaNo) but I am heartily enjoying this novel through all of its chaotic ups and downs and I hope it won't be the last naval fiction that I write.

Imagination Limited

When writers write and when readers read, they often explain their love of stories by saying that the words take them away to other times and places. Their imagination is fueled by stories and, in the case of writers, finds an outlet in stories. While it is true that very small and seemingly inconsequential things in daily life can inspire a novel, books and the written word continue to be the prime medium for the activity of the mind; reading promotes some degree of intelligence.

To have a well-rounded mind, however, it is necessary to not focus on a single genre of literature. You shouldn't read only fantasies and fairy tales; you shouldn't even have a steady diet that is 53% fantasy and fairy tales. You shouldn't have a steady diet of romances, "Christian" or secular. Nor should you wear a track from the library door to the historical novels. Histories should not gather dust while fiction is being constantly pulled off the shelf. There is no genre that can be indulged in to the exclusion of all others; the mind will be stunted if fed the same thing day after day, just as the body would if you only ever ate carrots or potato chips.

Oddly enough, one of the bits of advice most promoted by many writers today is that you should read extensively...in the genre of your choice. If you want to write historical fiction, read historical fiction. If you want to write fantasy, read fantasy. Never mind that this may very well mean that your plots, characters, story arcs, and what-have-you are being fed to you by authors who have come before, or that you are stuck in the rut of one genre both as the source and outlet of your imagination. 'Read in one genre, write in one genre' is the rule of the day, and so authors are pigeonholed into specific fields of writing to develop themselves there until they are ready to expand (if not forever).

This is not wholly ridiculous. From a marketing standpoint, it is true that if you write and publish a historical fiction, then write a fantasy and want it published, you will likely have to seek out a new publisher. I speak from personal experience; I am currently querying Wordcrafter, a fantasy, and it is almost like being an entirely new author. I have no guarantee of acceptance. But I wouldn't trade the time I spent writing that story for the certainty of publication, and I would far rather have been writing Justin's story than grinding out another historical fiction. Of course, I am writing a historical fiction now. I simply didn't want to then, because I didn't have the inspiration for one.

Writing is an art, although it must be balanced with the more "practical" side of marketing, and some of the most renowned artists are those who experimented in many different mediums. Michelangelo was a sculptor as well as a painter and architect; Leonardo da Vinci dabbled in a dozen things, from sketching to painting, from writing to inventing. In the realm of writing, Agatha Christie is most famous for her mysteries, but she also wrote romances. C.S. Lewis wrote essays on faith and philosophy as well as fantasies and "science fiction." Rosemary Sutcliff, acclaimed for her Romano-British works, wrote children's books, stories set in the Middle Ages, some nonfiction, and retellings of The Iliad and The Odyssey.

These artists were never equally lauded in all mediums, but that was not their purpose; their imagination was fired in many different directions, and so they followed that and did not remain inside the box of their own especial genre. Their minds were well-rounded, so that they could and did tackle fantasy as eagerly as nonfiction, sculpting as readily as painting. Practically speaking, if you read widely, it is unlikely that you will be able to stop your mind from developing tales in many different genres - and this is not a bad thing, even if you are not as skilled with one as with another. It's good for the imagination to expand, and not to be allowed to stagnate in a single medium.

What Do You Read?

Reading has somewhat gone out of vogue nowadays as more and more people spend their time in other, quicker pastimes, such as watching movies and playing video games; reading good books seems to have lost even more charm. The classics are still revered as classics, but few people dare to open one. Biographies and histories are considered pretty dull things. Theology, philosophy, sermon-collections, and the like seem to be the most disliked of all categories, even among believers. If people do read, they generally turn to the action-packed, romance-stuffed, gore-filled, often plotless novels produced in mass quantities today.

This is unfortunately true of many writers, as well. Reading is not considered necessary for someone to be able to write. However, what you read, and if you read at all, will color your writing - for good or ill. If you want to write, it is important to read, and to read extensively. Just as some people don't read at all and other people read only the latest vampire novel, others lock themselves into a certain category - be it Christian fiction, mystery, romance, or any other genre - and read very little outside this appointed comfort zone. However, this is almost as bad as not reading at all; your writing (and your whole outlook on life) will be so affected by this one genre that it is likely that there will be little originality and little of yourself in your work.

Just like with any diet, reading demands variety. While I'll never recommend reading a trashy novel for the sake of "something new" (that's kind of like eating a tub of lard for the same reason), there are plenty of novels that are not specifically Christian, yet are clean, inspiring, and thought-provoking; take many of the classics, for instance. A good dose of nonfiction can not only be very enjoyable, but will also enlighten you and make you think - and, too, histories can easily inspire a story in undeveloped territory. A knowledge of history, as a whole and in detail, will give your stories depth. Something more than a glancing acquaintance with the writing styles of "the Great Ones" will help your own writing progress.

What are you reading? What are some of your favorite books?

NaNo: Pros, Cons, and News From the Front

Photo by vonslatt, Flickr.

National Novel Writing Month is the incredibly fun, incredibly insane time of year where writers attempt to bang out 50,000 words of a novel from day one of November to day thirty, hoping to get something good from their efforts. This is my third year participating in it and watching others participate in it, and the pros and cons of it become pretty apparent the first or second year; a home-school curriculum that my family once used listed in its catalog who would benefit from using their material, but also who wouldn't. And it is true that while NaNo is very fun, it may not help everyone with their writing. So here are some of the pros and cons that I've noticed while doing NaNo myself.

Pro: The primary goal of National Novel Writing Month is to get people to just write - to sit down and finally bang out whatever story has been itching in their brains. This is very helpful for those who want to write but believe that they don't have the time; it will amaze you how much time you realize you actually have when you've got a deadline.

Con: What you bang out may be abominable. I know the organizers of NaNo would probably say that this isn't the point, but it's true: what you write may be riddled with grammatical flaws, plot holes, and characters who appear to have schizophrenia. You may cringe at the thought of editing the thing.

Pro: But chances are, you'll come out with something good, even if it's a diamond in the rough. You're at least writing the outline of a story that can be expanded and revised after November comes to a close, and if nothing else, it's at least good practice for people just starting to stretch their wings in writing.

Pro: The goal is reasonable. It's not like the Write-Or-Die program that threatens to delete your document if you don't type like a rabid squirrel. 50,000 words sounds very daunting when taken as a whole, but once you break it down and realize that the daily count only has to be 1,667 words, it doesn't seem so large anymore. Plus, you have the encouragement of watching your wordcount rise.

Con: Targeting a certain amount of words in a certain amount of time does lend itself to manuscripts full of what is called "adjective-padding," "adverb abuse," and what my friend calls "blargh-spackling" - the making up of nonsense words to boost one's wordcount. This really isn't a decent way to do NaNo, especially when even the creators of NaNo try to make it clear that the wordcount isn't the purpose of the organization. If you end up with 50,006 words, 35,629 of which do not aid the plot and 1,885 of which border on blargh-spackling, your month of typing was in vain. What you've ended up with is fluff, not a story. Don't. Blargh-Spackle.

Con: After you get through that month-long rush of creativity in November, you may hit a slump. It's easy to lose interest and set your partially-finished novel aside, especially if you feel like what you wrote is rubbish. Many people squeak by 50,000 during November or even get a larger wordcount, but stop writing on December 1. Since that date is outside the jurisdiction of NaNo, technically this is an acceptable way of doing it; however, if you won't stick to it and make something of what you've been wrestling with for a month, NaNo has been a failure and a waste of time. Don't do NaNo if you don't have some reason for writing that will keep you going.

And now, news from the front.

Novel in Progress: The White Sail's Shaking

Genre: Historical Fiction

Time Period: 1803-1804, set during America's First Barbary War

Favourite Theme: The Chariot Race, Prince of Egypt Soundtrack

Wordcount as of 10:45 am November 8: 17,010

Fantasy: Creating Worlds

I received a couple of questions on my last post and on my Inspiration for Wordcrafter about how to create a solid fantasy world and how to do the research for it. I was really at a loss how to respond, at first, seeing as the parallel world in Wordcrafter was one of those things that came into my head and needed little help; but as I thought about it, a few ideas occurred to me.

For starters, you have to be willing to take the time to make your world like one of those that I mentioned in my last post; because if yours isn't one that was fully formed already (most aren't), it will most likely need research and brain-storming. Just like a historical fiction, fantasies take planning. What happens when a person jumps out of a plane without a parachute? He goes splat. And what happens when a writer jumps into a story without any forethought? Chances are, the story goes splat. So you have to be dedicated enough to the story to not skimp on the hard parts.

Now on to the actual suggestions. Chances are, your fantasy realm is tied to something in our world - probably English history and culture. Only God can create ex nihilo; we build off of things we know. And for Americans, what we know is largely our own history: that is, the history of the United States and the history of our mother country, England. It's no wonder, then, that most fantasy worlds in modern novels have some basic themes in common, such as the existence of a ruling king and queen. I mentioned in my last post that Tolkien fashioned Middle-Earth largely on the old legends of Britain and the myths of the Norse, and a few writers have followed his lead (such as Christopher Paolini). Considering how fascinating English history is, it's not a bad or strange thing that writers utilize it in crafting their own worlds; but that leads to my first thought -

Think outside the box. The realm you're making is your own and so is the story itself, so you know best what kind of a world will fit with your plot and the feel of the novel. But if you're going to have a fantasy set in a Medieval sort of world, then do your homework; read books on life in the Middle Ages, because knowing your material will give you what you need to manipulate and bend those facts to spice up your story. You might try delving into cultures more foreign to American readers, such as ancient Asian empires or the Aztecs. Don't limit yourself to the culture of the Western world just because most authors do.

Surface research. This is what I suggested to a friend of mine when she asked me about ideas for world-crafting. It's basically just skimming books on a wide range of subjects to see if anything catches your eye. Children's books are great for this, juvenile as they may seem, because they give the reader a cursory look at different cultures and don't take an age to look over; plus, they usually have pictures, which are great helps to some. So if you're seeking inspiration, you could try getting one small book on each culture that even remotely interests you - Mayans, Japanese, Chinese, Greeks, Phoenicians, etc. - and looking over them. You may either find a variety of things from each that would all work together to inspire a fantasy world, or you may find one culture specifically that interests you. And then...

Read. This is probably where most who call themselves writers lose interest, but it's imperative. If you don't read, you won't know how or what to write. Once you find a culture that catches your attention, look into it more deeply and pick out those features that you think you would like to weave into your fantasy. Read books and look up internet articles on it, and then brainstorm.

Brainstorm. Brainstorming is especially important to the writer, because here is where you make sure that those tidbits from history that you fell in love with will actually work in the story. It's no good to have fascinating points that don't work or that stand out garishly from the context. Brainstorming is one of the parts of writing that polishes ideas, as well as creating them, so don't leave it out of the process.

Why Write Fantasy?

Fantasy is very popular in the writing world right now, and has been since Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was published - and especially since it was made into a movie by Peter Jackson. There is a whole slue of fantasy trilogies, sequences, cycles, and sagas out there now, from Paolini's Eragon to Rowling's Harry Potter, crowding the shelves of Barnes & Noble. There are few people who don't love the epic qualities of Frodo Baggins' journey to Mount Doom and the fight to save Middle Earth from the evil of Sauron, and if you're a writer of fantasy, chances are you've been inspired by Tolkien's books in one way or another. But what is the attraction of fantasy? Why write it?

Well, one big reason is that the concept of "another world" holds a great deal of charm to writers and readers alike. We like the feeling of power we get when we create this other world and populate it with fantastical creatures and evil overlords, and many readers like the newness of a Middle-Earth or a Narnia. Sure, Earth is all well and good, but it gets kinda boring after awhile, you know?

That's great, but writers can go overboard. Easily. That feeling of power and freedom that you get in the creation of a new world can lead to mindsets that damage the story in the end, such as the assumption that, because your novel is of the fantasy genre, readers will suspend their disbelief more readily - because it's your world and you can do what you want in it. This is true, but only to a degree. You obviously have to be more careful writing an historical fiction to get all the facts and figures correct than you do with a fantasy; but all the same, readers aren't necessarily going to accept with awe a character's special powers just because it's fantasy. Your writing has to be believable, no matter what genre it's in.

So how come Tolkien got away with it? He had balrogs and orcs and little round people who live in holes, not to mention a Lidless Eye and immortal Elves, but readers willingly accept all his impossible creations. So why not ours? The problem with that question is that we should never take it upon ourselves to say that if a great and famous author could get away with it, so can we. That's the height of arrogance. But the actual answer to the question comes in a look at how Tolkien crafted the world of Middle-Earth. Most people are aware of the amount of research and behind-the-scenes construction Tolkien went through in The Lord of the Rings, and our initial response is to exclaim, "Good heavens, was he MAD?" But all that crazy work was what made his world believable. He drew from the myths of the Norse and the history of Britain and used those as foundations for the world, the peoples, the backstory, and the legends of Middle-Earth, so in the end, he wasn't dumping readers onto something ungrounded and strange. Middle-Earth makes sense, because it has all the facets of the world we live in.

Most writers nowadays aren't going to go into the depth that Tolkien did, but some amount of research and incorporation of ancient (and, if possible, nearly forgotten) history will add to the depth of any fantasy. Sure, there are readers who will obligingly go along with wild tales and impossibilities, but intricate worlds will pack much more of a punch.