Last Friday, we were driving back from holiday, passing through Wiltshire and Somerset (in the U.K.), and at the same time, I was just starting the latest big fat fantasy novel I’d come across. (Well, not at exactly the same time, but, you know what I mean.)
Anyway, one of the coolest things about taking that route (other than getting to pass through Bath on the way) is seeing the names of the towns and villages that you go through.
Names are important. They tell whole stories just by themselves. For example, on our drive, we passed Dead Maids and Cold Ashton. I have no idea what the story behind ‘Dead Maids’ is, but you don’t have to to immediately know there is a story there.
If we’d been a bit further south, we might have passed through Buckland St. Mary or Netherhampton. If we’d been a couple of hundred miles further north, in Yorkshire, we could have been in the fantastically named Ravenscar (the ‘scar’ being evidence of the Norse influence in the region, deriving from the word for a cliff or a steep, rocky slope) or Stainforth.
Every one of these names is suggestive of a history, a location, and a culture. Just by their names, they conjure little stories.
By contrast, the fantasy novel I started reading was full of the far-too-common fantasy nonsense names, like Blargh and K’ching (I made these up, to save the blushes of the author of the book I’m reading now). These randomly made up names do absolutely nothing for a book. They don’t give a sense of place or culture, and they certainly don’t give any history. They make a book feel thin.
Tolkien, of course, was the master of using names to lend verisimilitude to his books (look at how the names of places reflect the history and the nature of their peoples). George RR Martin does it well, too, with names of places in the North and Dorne being quite different from those in the Riverlands, and different again from those in other countries. (There is a reason Vaes Dothrak is not next to Riverrun; the names tell you about the people, their culture, and the place; they’re not random names.)
There’s not really any excuse for using random combinations of letters as names of places in fantasy novels. It’s simply the equivalent of shouting, ‘Hey! I couldn’t be bothered to do any real worldbuilding for my book!’ Which, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly a selling point.
Anyway, because we were on vacation last week, I didn’t do any work, so this coming week, I’m on super-extra focus to make some real progress in figuring out my next book.
Oh yeah. And I’ll be setting it in the real world. Where the names have already been sorted.
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Yesterday I said I was going to blog my way back into writing, because I’d been distracted by life things and then fallen into procrastination. Yeah, I do see the irony in this…
Anyway, yesterday’s target was to go through my notebook and figure out what to start working on next. Well, I managed to get a bit of time in the early afternoon, and then some more time in the early evening while Mr D was at his first ever Drama Class (which he absolutely loved).
I think I’ve pinned down a story (possibly chapter book, possibly young middle grade) to do some work on, and so that’s what I’m going to be doing more of today. Just jotting down ideas, structures, maybe trying to get started on pinning down a voice.
Sequels are what happens as an aftermath to a scene.
I realised that I’d never really thought about sequels before. I write them, but I’ve never consciously thought about them. In fact, most books on writing focus exclusively on scenes, and sometimes I’ve found myself trying to force sequels into the structure of a scene, and that’s not been good for them, because they’re not scenes.
Here’s what Butcher says is the structure of a ‘sequel’, as opposed to a scene:
Here’s the basic structure to a sequel. It’s another little worksheet you can fill out when you’re thinking about it ahead of time:
It’s an interesting blog post, and I’m not going to try to justice to it here, but take a look. It’s certainly making me more conscious of what may be a slightly neglected part of my own writing.
Anyway, I’ve been reading a lot of Butcher’s stuff (his books as well as blog), and although I was initially skeptical (don’t know why; maybe I just tend to react instinctively against popular stuff, often to my disadvantage and later regret), but I’ve come to admire how well he does his stuff.
A couple more links, while we’re at it:
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Yes, it’s true, for one reason or another (possibly and another), I haven’t done any ‘proper’ writing for weeks. Okay, I do have some excuses:
The entire family was horribly sick with various colds for at least the last 6 weeks
Mr D has been on his Easter holidays
We had extended family visiting
W’ve been sorting out our disaster of a house so that Steph’s parents could visit
And I’ve had a freelance project with a tight deadline.
So, yes, I’ve been copping out on the personal writing thing. And, once you do miss a few weeks, it can be hard to force yourself back into the right headspace.
Anyway, the point is that the only way I’m going to force myself back into doing this is by blogging myself into accountability.
So, that’s what I’m going to do. Every day I’m going to blog about what I’m going to do. Then I’ll have to do it, right?
Today’s work is notebook work: going through the outlines of ideas I’ve got jotted down and choosing something to develop further.
And, to stop this blog being utterly boring, here’s today’s random interesting links:
