XKCD
I think the comic sums up me trying to write these posts, but I felt I had already dedicated enough brain cells to it to keep going. Now, I’ll just hand off the end of the week to everyone else.
Hi everyone, it’s Robbie with you today and I’m continuing my conversation about the benefits of reading and writing poetry for fiction writers. I am…
What fiction writers can learn from reading and writing poetry part 2
James Bonds
(I hate ties. Used to be okay when they were clip-ons. After that, I didn’t like the sensation of something being tightly wrapped around my neck. Can’t get used to that feeling at all. Also, I don’t really care about the origins of the tie. I’m going to stick with what I made up with here.)
A failure at the noose
Tool of his chosen trade
His victims always lived
To meet a better knotsman
He pondered every night
Ignorant of his mistakes
Believing himself a genius
And the masses merely fools
They did not understand
How silk was better for the throat
Leaving fewer burns
Upon the swinging corpse
His knot was smarter
More efficient than the noose
When time-consuming coils
Though weaker he admits
He countered the problem
By putting knot to throat
Instead of back of neck
To make a breaking twist
Yet his flare was his undoing
With victims falling to the ground
Eyes looking with confusion
When they should have closed for good
The hangman quit
On a sunny day
Filled with a heavy heart
He trudged out to the public
He wished to hang
By his own knot and hand
Dangling from a tree
Dressed in his finest suit
His attempt failed once more
As the branch snapped quick
And he tumbled to the grass
Hearing laughter all the way
The laughter stopped
When he stood once more
People looked at him perplexed
Whispering of his creation
He smiled in wonder
As people ordered his nooses
Calling them the latest craze
The newest style upon the scene
So the tie moved far and wide
As gents believe they’re worth
These failed nooses made of silk
Will strangle men for all eternity
With me on the blog today is the fabulous, award-winning author, Lyn Miller-Lachmann, who is here to celebrate her latest young adult book, Eyes Open…
Check This Out: Eyes Open
That Time I Was Reincarnated as a Slime
This topic is pretty tough to research since I kept coming across different lists of primordial forces and systems. Maybe one can’t really stand up and say here is the definitive list. Doesn’t help that primordial gets used a lot. For example, you see above are the Primordial Demons of ‘That Time I was Reincarnated as a Slime’. They are based around colors instead of natural forces. So, what can an author do?
Just decide on what your world’s primordial forces could be.
That’s all I could come up with. Want a bit more? Here are some ways I’ve seen primordial forces used in fiction:
The Living Physical Manifestation
There are beings walking around as the aforementioned powers. They may be gods or just roaming entities that remain neutral. That doesn’t mean they are safe, but they might show up just to make everyone nervous. Using a system like this solidly defines the forces and can bring up a dangerous question: What if one of these beings was killed or controlled by a mortal? That second part can be used with just about any system that involves the forces being controllable.
The McGuffin/Relic
Yes, this is where you will find the Infinity Gems. Unlike the previous group, these items aren’t alive and wandering around. They aren’t the embodiment of primordial forces either. They are more like conduits that can allow a person to utilize the energy they are attuned to. Of course, their existence will cause strife, battling, and all around problems because people will want them. You can make these a collection of anything as long as you have one for each force. Probably a good idea to figure out what happens if one of them is destroyed too.
Magic Schools
This one is easy because it’s common and not usually seen as primordial. Basically, a spellcaster can utilize these forces with spells. It could be more advanced that the elemental ones, but it gives them power over gravity, time, space, or whatever the forces are of the world. I guess superpowers can be put in there as well.
No Impact Whatsoever
You heard me. The forces are acknowledged and exist, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to play a part in anything. Do we always pay attention to those of our own world? No, we have gravity and electromagnetism, but we don’t think about them every day. They exist and keep things moving. So, you don’t have to feel obligated to make them a big thing in your own world. In fact, I think most authors don’t bother, which kind of undermines the topic of the week. Oops.
Jacqui here at Story Empire with the June edition of “What’s happening in the literary world?” What used to be a simple process of penning what we-…
What’s Happening in the Writer’s World–June Edition
Cover Art by Sean Harrington
The inspiration for Quest of the Brokenhearted was ‘Castlevania’. I loved the games where you played as a Belmont or Alucard to get through a castle full of monsters. Your goal was to defeat Count Dracula. For a long time, I wanted to write a story like that, but I couldn’t figure it out because the games were primarily platformer explorations games. Didn’t make for a good story. Then, I was nearing the end of Legends of Windemere and came up with an idea.
Now, I had already come up with the concept of Lacarsis. This was a city of monsters, which moved around the continent of Ralian. I tried various stories with different heroes delving into its depths to fight for . . . something. A few times it was just to destroy the castle and be a hero. Others wanted to take control of it. Some looked for missing loved ones, but the whole thing felt empty and lame. All I really had was a great set piece with no characters or story. So, I kept tinkering with Lacarsis and seeing if I had any heroes who I could throw into it. The one that caught my eye:
Kira Grasdon
Part of it was that her weapon was a kusari-gama, which is a chain connected to a sickle. It is similar to the whip that the Belmonts use in the games. I thought that would add to the homage concept and create more interesting battles than a more common weapon. A higher level of agility and cunning would be needed, which Kira was heading towards. So, this was turning out to be a good match for her character development. I threw her into different scenarios, but the goals and reasons weren’t matching up. Something was just off about things.
The issue was that I was trying to plan Quest of the Brokenhearted around who she was at the time instead of who she would be. This would be where I came up with the title and jumped the timeline seven years. Kira was no longer a happy heiress to a wealthy merchant house who was in love with a heroic champion. Now, she was alone, broken, depressed, and working in a brothel (not in the way you think). Her reason for going into Lacarsis was that she felt she had nothing left to live for. Kira no longer cared if she died, so she sets off to take on the challenge. It brought a darkness to the story, which I could gradually alleviate as she grows stronger.
Of course, all of my other ideas couldn’t work with the broken Kira. I came up with the demonic ruler of Lacarsis making a challenge to the outside world. Heroes would enter and never be seen again, but nobody knew why. Kira shows up to find that the ruler is hosting a competition with the intruding hero as the guest of honor. They go one-on-one with various monsters at any moment while being treated like nobility. It was all for the monster’s entertainment until the hero died or did well enough to earn a battle with the ruler.
Going this route, allowed me to flush out Lacarsis into a more self-sustaining society instead of a castle with roaming creatures. There were artisans, businesses, hierarchies, and things you could find in other cities. I was able to create a better supporting character system without having to depend on other humans. Lacarsis now felt alive and complex instead of being nothing more than a backdrop, which is why I tend to look for reasons to bring it back. Not sure if Darwin will go there, but Sin has a visit planned in one of his books.
Quest of the Brokenhearted is also where I started the storyline of Rayne. This was an amnesic elf that someone played in my college DnD game. I had a complicated backstory for her that became convoluted and no longer worked. She would have a connection to Luke Callindor, which gave me a reason to have her debut in Kira’s adventure. This set the stage and explained a lot of Rayne as well. Her odd luck, which could be both bad and good at the same time. I mean, she was a child who was abandoned in Lacarsis (bad), but ended up being raised as a servant by the monsters (good). It explains why she seems to attract creatures too. Given that Rayne was slated to be a major player in Windemere, I liked that she would be drifting through other stories until she finally lands in her big adventure.
Looking back, I might have leaned harder into Kira’s depression. That’s really it, but it would have been tough since each chapter revolved around a different monster battle. I was able to fit character development and relationships in there to build up to the fight or be around it. Yet, I never gave Kira a chapter of total downtime and reflection. I felt that having a chapter with no action in this kind of story would kill momentum and feel very out of place. Must have been some way to fix it though.
How about some questions?
Google Image Search
In fantasy, you may come across the term ‘primordial forces’. It shows up in other genres too, but it tends to pertain to ancient powers. Some may think of ‘primordial soup’, which was basically the goo that started off life on Earth. That’s close to what we’re talking about, but still very far often. So, what would be primordial forces?
Primordial forces existed before everything else and are considered older than the universe or whatnot. They were here at the beginning of time and will exist for all of eternity. This can include reality, matter, energy, magic, space, time, and many other forces. The point is that they have to be something that existed at the beginning of a world’s existence. So, you do have some limitations depending on how the story’s world works.
These forces tend to be what keeps the world together or birthed it as well. This can allow life and death to be included since one could say primordial requires there to be living things. Same goes for time, which would need beings to exist for it to be noticed. Much of this depends on your personal definition and the building of your world though. You can see that there is a lot of flexibility. Still, they all share the traits of being ancient and becoming a building block for the world itself. This is probably why the genetic soup gets the name.
Science has some primordial forces too, which are: gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear forces, and weak nuclear forces. Those last two cover a lot of ground, but that does simplify things. Makes sense to me too. These are the forces that keep our universe together, so they had to exist at the start. Otherwise, the universe would never have formed and everything else wouldn’t be created. Space and energy might be the only other forces I could see coming before them, but that might not be scientific enough for this group’s use.
Another possible primordial force is change. Everything changes at some point, so one could say it’s a force. It could be defined as evolution, but that doesn’t include non-living things changing. So, the general term could be change, which explains how the original components of the universe become what people see during the story. Maybe this falls under the strong and weak nuclear forces.
The interesting thing is that I kept finding different sets of primordial forces depending on the world. So, I don’t think there’s a clear set. Science does have the 4, but fiction tends to be different across the board. Yes, the Infinity Gems could count as would DC’s seven forces of the universe. I know at least the first one would be mentioned in the comments if I didn’t do it first. It does prove the variation of systems and how there tend to be stories about people trying to capture all of this power. Makes sense since one who controls the primordial forces of a world would be able to change that world to whatever they want.
So, what do you think of the overall primordial forces concept?
Greetings to one and all. Beem Weeks here with you again. This month, I want to dip into Building the Scene. First, what exactly is a scene? A scene …
Building the Scene
I was going to do an animal post or maybe choose a funny holiday. Then, I noticed that this was today. I know many people who survived cancer. Pretty sure most people can claim that. Been lucky to not have to face this monster myself so far, but I know it’s a brutal battle. Anyone who survives it should be honored. That’s really it. Give a hug to a cancer survivor today. Ask permission first, of course.
Legends of Windemere 