Writtenwyrdd

No magical consequences?

"Who hasn't wished to have some sort of superpower at least once in their life? But we don't like heroes whose superpowers come with no cost. Superman is perpetually an alien, Batman is incapable of carrying on a reasonable relationship with anyone other than the Joker or Catwoman, even the Kwisatz Haderach has to pay over and over again for his gifts. Frodo ended up saving the Shire, but couldn't go back to his old life within it. There must always be a cost/consequence, because Real Life is full of consequences." Lilith Saintcrow from a Witchychicks blog post.

 

Lilith Saintcrow guest blogged last week on the witchychicks blog on writing paranormals. Ms. Saintcrow mentions the need to have consequences and costs for magical or super powers--something I've mentioned a time or two myself, as have others such as Lawrence Watt-Evans.

 

I've said before (but am too lazy to look up the post and link it)the only logical consequence of magic users with no metaphysical brakes is despotism. Absolute power corrupting absolutely is practically a given when magical ability is as easy and inconsequential to the wielder as breathing*; and to give your magicians such massive power without any means of it being checked is to ensure they logically would become the evil overlords that your protagonist has to overcome. And while evil god/evil overlord stories have their place, if you want a magic wielding protagonist, you should consider how his magical abilities are limited and the rules by which they are 1) used, 2) distinguished (so your take on magic isn't the same as every other author's), and (most importantly) 3) the cost and consequences to the wielder.

 

Idea.

However, supposing you have a character who's observed to have all these super magical powers and yet there appears to be no consequence. This might be an interesting set up for a story. (It actually is an idea that I've had percolating for a while which I thought might make an interesting screenplay a la the Thirteenth Floor.) So say you have this character, and your protagonist gets to wondering how they can defy the laws of physics, etc. and how they can have godlike powers that cost them nothing. He wonders if these people have a secret source, or if they are a danger to society as in they want to take over the world with their super powers. It would be sort of inhuman for them to be all Justice League dutiful and not be at least strongly tempted.

 

Which brings me to the what if part. What If...the super powers are something more sinister, something being taken from another world, or from the people of the story's world?

 

And my conflict goes off from there as the secret is accidentally discovered and the protagonist has to save himself--either by revealing the secret or using the same dire means of gaining the powers himself. Talk about a moral dilemma! (I love moral dilemmas.)

 
And, as a final note, let me refer you to Lawrence Watt-Evan's Laws of Fantasy:

1. Watt-Evans' First Law of Fantasy: Stories are about people.

2. Watt-Evans' Second Law of Fantasy: People are never wholly good or wholly evil, and therefore characters should never be wholly good or wholly evil.

3. Watt-Evans' Third Law of Fantasy: The basic human motivations are universal.

4. Watt-Evans' Fourth Law of Fantasy: Everything other than the basic human motivations will vary, depending on the cultural setting.

5. Watt-Evans' Fifth Law of Fantasy: Magic, like everything else, has rules.

6. Watt-Evans' Sixth Law of Fantasy: If a story can be written without a fantasy element, then don't bother with the fantasy element.

And, just for kicks, read up on the Turkey City Lexicon's speculative fiction gripes and groaners (provided by a vast array of sff writers over the years.)  Some of these are used in other genres; many are spec fic specific, like the "squid on the mantlepiece" or the "smeerp."

*Thus Harry Potter is solidly in the kid lit camp for that reason alone, although they are excellent reads. 

Visual aid: genre

Thought you might like a visual aid.  This is more geared toward movies, but I figure you can get some mileage from it.  I give you Don Hertzfeldt's Genre:

And more of his shorts can be found here.  (God I love You Tube!  Such a glorious wasting of bandwidth!)

Marketing horror

For a great story, it is important that the character take on the burden. There must be a choice against the darkness.  Interview with Necrotic Tissue editors by D.L.Snell

Two sites that have some good info on the horror fiction market are HellNotes and Market Scoops by horror writer D.L. Snell.  Have a scan and see what suits your writing projects.  Neither is as easy to use as Ralans or some other market listings, but still a lot of good tidbits.

And a shout out to Charles Gramlich, whose flash horror challenge got me web surfing (don't ask, but it wasn't writing avoidance exactly) and Whirlochre who challenged people to write a flash piece where some part or all of themselves turned to chocolate.  Now I'm working on a piece called Chocophobia.  I really needed another project...

Genre-bending & thinking about plot

"I've never seen a clear border between Science Fiction and Fantasy. Or even Horror, if they mean supernatural, as opposed to meaning just bloody hatchets and eyeballs on corkscrews, things like that."  Tim Powers interview

Due to a crit partner's off-the-cuff reference to something Tim Powers said and my consequent search for the whole quote, I ran across the above-referenced interview where Mr. Powers discusses genre definitions.

He has a point about there not being a lot of difference between the various flavors of speculative fiction.  I am on the side of the fence that opts for the loosest definition possible--at least in terms of the shelves at the local brick and mortar store.  In terms of selling the things, well...I guess we have to split hairs in order to market in this day and age, although I'm not entirely pleased at the thought.

And a thought about plot development.
The article also quotes Mr. Powers as saying this, which I found very provocative.  (I like thinking about thinking, about finding a way to squint at something to see opportunity in the newly blurred view.):

In a way, I arrived at the plot of this book by the same method that astronomers use in looking for a new planet - they look for "perturbations," wobbles, in the orbits of the planets they're aware of, and they calculate the mass and position of an unseen planet whose gravitational field could have caused the observed perturbations - and then they turn their telescopes on that part of the sky and search for a gleam. I looked at all the seemingly irrelevant "wobbles" in the lives of these people - [ed. persons who an alternate reality were spun from] Kim Philby, his father, T.E. Lawrence, Guy Burgess - and I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar - and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all.

A fascinating take on using actual facts as a jumping off point and a means of doing so effectively.  The whole article is thought provoking.  Basically, though, Powers says you look for the gaps in your research, find what isn't explained and work from that to create your story.  That way you keep your historical facts straight but can create fiction.  (I don't know about you, but when someone cheats and alters the facts of a based-on-a-true-story tale it bugs the crap out of me.  Possibly not, though, if they footnote the changes so I know the difference without having to go research the book points myself.)

Tim Powers is an award-winning author of something like eleven novels, and he's a fine writer.

And don't forget my contest to commemorate my 2nd year blogaversary!  Entries due on Friday!

Dark Science Fiction? Science Horror?

Will the hair splitting never end?  Now I discover that there's this thing called 'dark science fiction', and Blade Runner seems to be the quintiscential example in movies, at least; and 'science horror,' defined as "a heroic brand of speculative fiction that blends science and horror...Picture Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, or 1984 by George Orwell."  And, apparently, 'dark science fiction' is just another term for the same.

Also, for yucks and grins, I give you the Christian Guide to Fantasy, which lists another take on the genre classifications.  Equal time clause now invoked.  Just sayin'.  Cuz, according to them, Fantasy is "[t]he purest form of Fantastic Fiction: the majority of the action does not take place within this world."  (Oh, really?  Coulda fooled me with all that Dark Fantasy around...) 

And, just to add to the puzzlement, Hard Science Fiction is "[a] subgenre of Science Fiction; almost strictly "nuts'n'bolts" literature, wherein the author pauses the plot to describe exactly how something works."  (Say what???)

Tech Noir & other new terms for what's current in spec fic

"Something is happening in the literature of the fantastic. A slippage. A freeing-up. The quality is astounding. Notions are sputtering and bleeding across internal and external boundaries. Particularly in Britain, where we are being reviewed in the papers, of all things, and selling copies, and being read and riffed off by yer actual proper literary writers. We are writing books which cheerfully ignore the boundaries between SF, fantasy and horror."  China Mieville

I've discovered a new term: Tech Noir.  And, in researching it, I've discovered that there appears to be much discussion about how the trend in cross-genre has been making folks consider that speculative fiction is changing in interesting ways.  Specifically, at Dark Echo, there's a nifty article (from which I lifted China Mieville's quote) and which discusses a variety of new-ish genre terms in the speculative fiction array.  New Weird, slipstream, miscellaneous varieties of Noir, Dark Fantasy, etc. 

Now, I don't agree with all their definitions.  Dark Fantasy, for example, is defined as Conan but not anything with vampires.  WTF?  I say.  Vampires ARE dark fantasy.  Harrumph.  But aaaaanyhow, it's interesting to see another listing of sub-genre types in the spec fic arena and from a horror-oriented perspective.  And a new word for horror:  Dark Fiction.  Hadn't heard that one before, either!

Elsewhere, Kat Richardson talks about Tech Noir, defining it thusly:  "Tech Noir is a presentation style or genre which marries the technologically-looking details, hallmarks and devices of Science and Speculative Fiction to the underlying premises, themes and style which we now identify as Noir, beyond its mere "look" on film." This is rather what I interpret Tech Noir to be-- from having read it.

Dark Echo defines Noir as "[u]sually set in an urban underworld of crime and moral ambiguity. Dark, cynical, paranoid themes of corruption, alienation, lust, obsession, violence, revenge and the difficulty of finding [red]emption in a far from perfect world. An oppressive atmosphere of menace, pessimism, anxiety, suspicion, and dingy realism. You'll also find the term in combinations like neo-noir, future noir or noir sf, tech-noir."

Wikipedia calls Tech Noir neo-noir and defines it as a type of noir film which incorporates the moody lighting and other technical aspects of noir film with a dystopian science fiction setting.  Examples given of course include Blade Runner, which is the quintessential Tech Noir film out there.  (Most of what I've seen is anime, like Ghost In The Shell. FWIW.)  But it's interesting that wiki doesn't recognize the written examples.

So I went looking for examples.  Most of them seem to have fallen in my dark fantasy list.  Because, to my way of thinking, the Tech Noir is really the dark urban fantasy scene with high tech details.  One such series being Kelly McCullough's Ravirn series (Web Mage & Cybermancy.) Wen Spencer's  Ukiah Oregon  books, which is a science fiction that reads like dark/urban fantasy and pretty much fits into the mold.  Or the Dante Valentine series by Lillith Saintcrow.  Lots of them by Rob Thurman (Caliban), Mark DelFranco (Unshapely Things), Marianne dePierres (Nylon Angel).

As usual, I take this pigeonholing with tongue in check.  A good read is, after all, a good read.  Labels be damned.
 

References:
Kat Richardson's article.
Dark Echo article.
Wikipedia article.