((I started writing this at 11pm, so the date was meant to read Sept.9. A well...I mean to post something else later. We shall see what happens. I hate it when my posts end up appearing on the wrong date. bleh...easily annoyed i guess.))
I'm trying so hard to post every times I write, though my original goal was to write every day and post something about it here, even if it was just some kind of musing I did while writing. I meant for it, as I said in my very first post, to be a way to be accountable. It's not working as well as I'd hoped. Granted the group on DeviantART is also giving me a certain sense of accountability though not nearly as regimented as I intended here. But musings, musings...not why I wanted to write this.
Of course I didn't start writing this with any real thought as to what I did want to muse on...not very helpful I know. Looking back to my earlier post, maybe I should consider my ideas for Calliope Jones. Why is it that I can come up with lots of ideas and not one of them related to what I want to do with the first plot? Maybe I should sit down and try reading more YA fiction than I do. I have read some but perhaps not enough. Urban Fantasy is a good place to start and I do read a fair bit of that. Perhaps the first plot should be related to who/what the main characters are, allows for introduction of the rules of my world and definitions of different groups. It makes sense and gives me some plotting ideas but still not sure.
Plotting always seems like it would be easier than it is. I suppose if one doesn't concern themselves with potential plot holes or if the plot makes sense it might be. I know that things used to come more easily when I was younger and more interested in writing fanfiction but perhaps that has something to do with using a prebuilt world and drawing a plot from that. that does make things easier I'm sure. I'm also sure that I didn't worry so much about how much sense the story made whether within the context of the canon or as a plot on its own. When I write though I like for the world to make a certain level of sense. Even if it is a fantasy world, or the real world with fantasy being drawn into it it is not enough for me to use fantasy and magic as an explanation.
Though fantasy might seem an easy genre to write, even more if it is aimed more at younger readers, I have found that the best fantasy, traditional or urban, is in one way or another anchored in reality to an extent. I don't believe that it needs to reflect the way this world was in the past, though it is a good place to start when thinking about research (and yes, even when writing fantasy a writer should do their homework, at least enough to anchor their reality into something that the reader can relate to). One can learn a lot from just studying history of countries, cultures and religions and drawing on that research and adding it into their own writing. Having a minor in anthropology and a BA in history in art gives me perhaps a bit more knowledge than others and i admit I do find it useful when thinking about architecture, religion, culture and perhaps even other things. I find that using this knowledge as an anchor for my writing helps keep me thinking about whether or something works, how it works, why it works and hopefully allows me to write stories and create worlds that will allow the reader to suspend disbelief rather than having those jarring aspects that bring a person out of the story because something is clearly off. (I can think of a Canadian author, who I won't name, who may have mistaken the coastal mountains of BC for the Rockies. Perhaps I should reread the story and see if she meant for the character to seem ignorant though I don't recall any other characters making a correction. If this author had done a wee bit more research they might not have made that glaring mistake and being from BC i picked it up immediately. didn't ruin the story for me but it did bring me out of the story.)
fantasy does have it's allowances though. When making a fantasy race there may be room to bend certain aspects to allow it to make sense within the world of the story. It is best, I've found, to avoid using magic and fantasy as an explanation as much as possible, though of course there is always some aspects that are likely going to fall into that explanation to some extent (eg: the wands in Harry Potter...clearly magic is going to be the main explanation). I guess in a way it is always an explanation, if only as to how certain creatures might exist and so on. Still, it helps to have some basis to make their existence make sense beyond that basic explanation. That is what I strive for in my own writing, to take a step beyond the basic explanation and delve deeper. It is not just magic that makes a person able to change their form, for example, but maybe a deeper understanding of anatomy combined with an understanding of how those energies called magic flow and how they can manipulate those energies to change their anatomy to that of something else. I try to think along those lines rather than saying "It's magic, that's why." i find that doing this allows me to ground the magic itself in fictional "facts" and use them as the frame to build up more complex explanations for things. and it is something i would recommend to anyone who writes...but this is just my process and anyone who wants to write has to figure out how their own processes work.
Wow...i did not end up for this to end up being a writing advice...column/blog/post...I should try writing more posts like this too even if no one reads them. It helps me organize my thoughts. This was what I was intending for this blog though we'll see how often these particular posts come out of me. XD
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