posted
I have read fantasy series in my life like Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, and now i'm starting The Eye of the World. Each of these epic stories begin at a certain point in time and as you read, you are given a brief history of the land and some of the main characters backstory. But at times, it's these backstories that intrigue me. I wish Tolkien would have told me more about the first war against Sauron, or Martin would started with Robert and Ned fighting the Targaryen's. But even then, there is a history leading up to these points that would be just as interesting.
So, i've decided to try and write a story from the begining. It would eventually turn out to be a great epic series, spanning many generations. But for the life of me, i simply can't find the right way to start.
I want something where humans, elves, dwarfs, and the like are all separated and then discover each other. Some get along, most don't. Bonds are made and broken. But how to explain the innocent start? Gods? Magic? If not done right, these can turn a reader off right from the start.
So, I would like some suggestions. Maybe there is something i haven't thought of.
posted
A good question, and one I have thought of myself. In fact, I recently decided to go back and start before a novel I had been working on for years, telling the backstory as the first of a trilogy rather than starting where I had been. I fell in love with the backstory.
But it's never ending. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But I've always wondered where God came from. It's not the beginning. It never is the beginning.
And your proposed beginning...with separate humans, elves, dwarves, etc. Why is that the beginning? Surely, all your separate races have backstory. They have heroes and legends and painfully intricate webs that have brought them to where they now are.
And now I ask...what is your story? What is it about? And more importantly, WHOSE story is it? We don't sympathize with groups of elves, but we can sympathize with an elf. If this is a great event story, as most fantasy epics are, then we need a hero, and the story begins when the hero becomes involved with the entanglement that currently threatens the world. It ends when he has brought the world back to rights or, in a tragedy, when the world falls into darkness.
That is according to OSC's MICE view of stories, for a reference. I happen to agree with it, particularly in the case of an epic story such as the one you seem to be writing. Of course, there are no rules, only things that tend to work. Heroes (and heroines, let's not be sexist) tend to work.
posted
<I wish Tolkien would have told me more about the first war against Sauron>
Have you read the Silmarrilion? Well, technically that deals with the first age. But other stories usually packaged with that has stories that deal with the Second Age, and the first war against Sauron. It's really dull reading for the most part.
As OSC says, the myth of the story can go on for thousands of years in the past, millions. But your story begins at a certain point in your time, where it begins for the progtagonist or main viewpoint characters. Of course it all follows the MICE quotient. For fantasy, it's the "E", the event.
LOTR began when Bilbo left the ring to Frodo, that's when everything changed in Frodo's life in regards to his relationship to the events in the world at large. And it ended not too long after the ring was destroyed (well there was the scouring of the shire, and such).
The myth is a good backdrop, but you have to be selective where to begin and end. Where are the major events in your world? Who are the heros? Who are the villians? The myth gives it a texture that the reader may never know and if you try to forcefeed it to the reader, they of course will be overwealmed.
posted
Sounds to me like you are in love with a milieu, but don't yet have a story. No wonder you are confused. You have reason to be.
Until you decide on a story, all you can do is wander around in your milieu. Nothing wrong with that, just don't get frustrated because you don't know where to start.
I think your real question should be, "Where do I get a story?".
There's an easy answer, do what so many well-remembered writers did; use a story from a prior work. Take MacBeth, work out the plot elements and write it within your milieu. Take a look at our rewrite challenges, for example.
[This message has been edited by mikemunsil (edited December 13, 2004).]
quote:Let's start at the very beginning, That's a very good place to start. When you read you begin with A,B,C When you sing you begin with do, re, mi...
Okay, it worked in The Sound of Music. I think I have to agree with Mike on this, you need to know the story you want to tell before you can find the beginning or even the ending for that matter. The Lord of the Rings was written after The Hobbit. LOTR might never have been written if Bilbo hadn't gone on his little trip with the dwarves. Likewise, C.S. Lewis wrote the first book in the Narnia series after he wrote the others. James Fenimore Cooper wrote the first two volumes of the Leatherstocking Tales last.
Authors do this kind of thing all the time, they sometimes choose to publish the part of the story they happen to have written as it helps pay some of the bills while they write the befores and afters.
Also, it takes years to fully understand and develop a complex milieu. As Christine said, once you find A beginning, you find yourself in the position of, what happened before that? and before that? and before that?...
Find a place where you can start. Write about it. If you aren't satisfied that it is close enough to the beginning, write about what happened before that. There is no rule that says you must write things in the order in which they occurr. Write Chapter 21 before Chapter 3, Book 7 before Book 1, whatever helps you get the story told.
(That probably didn't help much, but best of luck, and welcome to Hatrack! )
[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited December 13, 2004).]
posted
thanks for all the fast responses. i guess i just need to start and hope that things come to me. now, i do have a story, but it takes place a bit later on in the timeline. so, i figured it would be easiest to write a chronologigal tale of events starting with the begining, rather than having to weave in a telling of the past.
as far as the comment christine made about never truely getting back to THE begining, i guess that's true. however, i want to get to the begining of how the world is the way it is now. think of it as a telling of the pilgrims and the indians, just more races and people being forced together. i wish to tell how alliances formed and wars started, not just that they did. this way, when i get to the story i have in my mind now, you are already aware of certain events and people. the past, the time before the pilgrims came to america, is not useful.
i hope this gives you a better perspective of where i hope to start my story, but i guess i should start anyway and hope the past develops.
as a little side note. i plan to write this story/series in a way that you, as the reader, cannot clearly identify the hero. the one you cheer for may turn on his friends later and now you find yourself rooting for the "bad guy" to defeat the one who crushed your emotions.
[This message has been edited by StoneyG (edited December 13, 2004).]
quote:as a little side note. i plan to write this story/series in a way that you, as the reader, cannot clearly identify the hero. the one you cheer for may turn on his friends later and now you find yourself rooting for the "bad guy" to defeat the one who crushed your emotions.
This is hard to do. When you as a writer make a social contract with the reader, you had better not cheat. You'll lose the reader. If you do it successfully, you'll have to foreshadow a bit, and provide information that the reader can backtrack to, and say with chagrin, "Ah. I should have caught that." If the info was never there in the first place, you will piss off the reader. And if that reader was the overworked editor working his way through a pile of manuscripts, then he'll be your ONLY reader.
That said, you started describing a milieu story, then moved on to say that you had a plot, indicating an event story, then finished off with what looks like an idea story.
Which is it?
Do a search on this forum for "mice" (milieu, idea, character and event) and see if the info/discussions there are any help in figuring it out.
quote:If you do it successfully, you'll have to foreshadow a bit, and provide information that the reader can backtrack to, and say with chagrin, "Ah. I should have caught that."
I would put it differently. I would say that the reader should come to that point knowing that there is a danger of this character going bad. The reader shouldn't have to backtrack at all to understand what happens. The reader should say, "Ah, but I had hoped he wouldn't do that."
Note, only if the reader is already aware that this character might turn evil can the reader be positioned to care when the character actually does. If I'm taking it for granted that Frodo will have no problem throwing the Ring into the fire, then when he claims it for himself I'm just going, "What? Oh, whatever!"
Anyway, as for backstory, Christine is right, you always have backstory to be filled in. Nothing starts at THE BEGINNING. And Chris is right that telling everything "from the beginning" the way you seem to be planning on doing is immensely boring unless the readers have already become invested in some story that happened later and are digging back into the origins of that story. MM is right that milieu and backstory are not the story. Robyn is right that starting somewhere is better than trying to find THE BEGINNING before you write anything.
And even you are right. It's easier to dump your milieu up front than to reveal it through the action of the story. You're also right that you need to already have the perspective of where the present characters and world came from before you start writing. Otherwise they won't make any sense or be consistent.
I can't speak to Jeraliey's opinion, but mm is again right to caution you on having a "good" character turn bad. I suppose (agreeing with Jeraliey) that such characters are important to any work, but they do have to be carefully handled so that the audience understands and cares what happens.
posted
ok, mike, have you read george r r martin's a song of ice and fire series? if not i suggest you do. if so, look at his books. there is a lot of history that takes place before the first pages of the first book, and tries to revisit all of those events (event). they have a grand world with many strange places and again he tries to make sure at least one character visits those places (milieu). there are times when the characters elude to things we the reader don't know, and are shocked or delighted to find out (idea). finally, the characters (who live) change due to the experiences they encounter. take jamie. he's a prick at the start, and by the end of the third book you start to feel bad for him (character). so, which sort of story is this?
it fits well into any category. but then, why must any story fit a mold? i thought about this while reading OSC's book. if you love the vivid world, the wonderful and frightening characters, the intricate plot twists, and trying to figure out "what did the fortune teller mean when she said______?", then it is truely a great story. this is all it is. disecting it do find out which "mice" formula it fits takes away from the enjoyment of it.
on a side note. i used to watch WWF religiously for some years. for those who don't know, good guys are called faces, and bad guys are called heels. faces are always turning on their friends, becoming heels, only to show it was a ruse to get the true heel in the end. some times the heels would become good just to defeat a common enemy, then turn back at the most inopportune time. THIS is what i have going on in my head. i have one character that will make it to the end as the hero, but the reader doesn't know who it is.
But before you even consider the MICE model, consider that it does allow for multiple types of stories. I think you are describing a true MICE story, with a millieu, an idea (a mystery or a riddle), an event (epids do this by their very nature), and a character story all in one. I think that's terrific but consider this...Does any one of those four step out ahead of the others? Is it more a millieu story or an idea story or a character story or an event story? I'm asking because the answer should help you figure out where to start and where to end...nothing more. In fact, that's just about all that the MICE formula is designed to help you with...figuring out where to start and where to stop.
The thing is that all stories should have a main plotline, and that's what MICE is getting at. That main plotline, no matter how complex it is, no matter how many subplots, no matter how many intricasies, should be able to be summed up in a sentence or two! I know, it's difficult, but you should be able to do that. That summary will help you to determine how to tell your story. You start with that sentence and then grow your outline and your story from there.
And one truism of science fiction and fantasy that I think it may be prudent to discuss: backstory is difficult! It is more difficult than in other forms of fiction because we often have whole worlds to describe. But however fascinating you find your world, you will lose your reader if you describe backstory with nothing for them to latch onto, no sympathies, no character, no event, no mystery. Even a millieu story is told through the eyes of someone seeing that millieu for the first time. (Or through someone leaving that millie for the first time and comparing it with another, like our own.) As readers, we need something, anything, to get our minds around that interests, shocks, sadens, or otherwise plays with our emotions. Once we have that, you can tell us about backstory. We will listen with rapt attention to your elven history once we understand that King Fador must find the magic gem or all the elves will die. Then you can tell us all about that gem and why it's so important. Or you can tell us how the elves lost it in the first place. Once we know that Nobody Whatshisname from RandomRemoteVillage is the one person prophesied to safe the world from the impending darkness and we have suffered with him a long night of running from BigUglyMonsters, we can sit and breathe with him in the morning as the cloaked mysterious man tells him about his ancestor, the great and wise one.
Point is, the fact that Old Dead Guy formed a gem to protect the elves from the darkness that nearly destroyed the elves 5000 years ago isn't interesting until we have a context, and especially a character. We sympathize with people, and by that I mean a sentient creature. We sympathize with people in trouble. Why do young children's eyes glaze over in history class? Because most teachers suck at creating a human context for history when it might otherwise have been a neat story.
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited December 13, 2004).]
I hate to bring it up again, because it seems everyone had their fill of MICE a while back (search prev. threads), but one good thing about MICE is that they all offer a good point at which that type of story should begin and end. I'm not going to repeat it here. Get Mr. Card's book How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy. Seems to me that could be the best thing you do, right now.
[This message has been edited by Magic Beans (edited December 13, 2004).]
posted
I read this thread a little more closely and I chatted with my husband (I do that, FYI....I talk about all of you whenever you say something interesting ) and we kind of agreed on something about the idea of a hero you can't trust: It won't work. Well, that's awfully simplistic because I don't know specifically what Stoney is trying to do with it. There is leeway in the hero thing, don't get me wrong, but basically pepole expect a hero. My gut reaction when I read it was that I probably wouldn't enjoy it personally, but maybe someone else would. And maybe that's still true, but I've got to have a hero.
Now, that hero can disappoint. That hero can change. Thatre can be several heroes and one can answer to the darker angels of his nature, but those dark angels need to be speaking to him all along.
The best example I have is Smallville. I really enjoy that show, it's about the only one I watch on TV right now...everything else I get in reruns through netflix. Anyway, Lex is slowly evolving into Lex Luther, but at first he's a good guy. In fact, I have to admit that even though I *know* he's going to become Lex Luther, I'm rooting for him to find the light. I keep hoping he does. Now, they can do that and I know what's going to happen....just imagine if I didn't! But the groundwork is there. He's afraid of his dark side and he knows he has one. His father was terrible to him and raised him to be a ruthless jerk.
So, like I said, there's some leeway on the hero thing, but at the heart of it we need to be hoping for something with a human touch...usually hoping that the hero will win against the world, but even hoping he will win against himself is a very good plotline. But not having anyone at all to sympathize with, having someone unreliable, or having someone betray you without any warning....I don't think it would work for *me.* Others are welcome to please disagree with me. And of course, the author can write absolutely anything at all. That's part of the great thing about being an author, IMO.
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited December 13, 2004).]
posted
I have found that I have a fascination with main characters that are meant to be hated. Knowing that the reader is hoping the character will fail is something I would like to do. Will it make a good story? I'm not sure.
I do know that any good story for me has to have a character. Someone to see the world the author creates through their eyes. No matter how increadible your world is, it will only be as incredible as it is seen through the eyes of someone. I tried to read the simmerillian (sp?) years ago, but after a several chapters I was bored out of my mind. While it was full of all kinds of details of Tolkien's world, it was a history book of middle earth. I found it dry and boring.
When we chose to write a story, there are a great number of things we need to know. The world our characters live in, and enough of the characters background to know them. Does the reader need to know all these things? No, not at all. Any story is created by making choices about what the reader needs to know to follow and enjoy the story. The dreaded "show don't tell" pops up often because of pages of backfill the reader never needs to know. Your world can be the most incredible world ever created, but it needs characters to show it.
I also pause every time I read about a new "epic" tale. I know we have had discussions about that word before, but it comes up often. I doubt Tolkien concidered his story "epic" (I could be wrong). I would think and epic tale would be determined by readers, not writers.
What you write is up to you, and you should write the stories you have to tell. Maybe instead of determining the type of story first, find out what the story becomes. Creating a vivid and intriguing world gives you a large place to write in. Until you have characters to show it to readers, it remains only details in your mind.
posted
The narrative artform of WWF isn't known for playing to strong, believable characters that the audience is supposed to really care about.
I'm not saying that it would be impossible to write good fiction using the model, just that it isn't a particularly compelling argument in favor of what you're attempting.
posted
ok, folks. here it is. the story as best i can describe it, since it is still in my mind. Mr X is king, and his best friend Elf X is mistrusted due to something in his past. Elf X is the prince's teacher. Mr X is killed and Elf X flees with the son to continue grooming him to reclaim the throne. Son X accomplishs this only to lose it. Finally Grandson X conquers it for good.
now, i hate the stereotypical linear story where the hero (or in this case, the family) from the start to end is the focus of your emotion. the good guys almost always win. knowing this fact as a reader, there is, in my opinion, no real threat of danger to the hero.
so, i will have multiple perspectives and multiple hero's at the start. some will change sides, some will change back and forth. some villans will be good by the end. some hero's will die. some villians will win..... for a time. if you didn't know the timeline i stated above, you wouldn't know who would be the winner in the end. hopefully, that's what keeps you reading. "who's going to win?"
now, why did i start this thread? because i thought about mr. x and elf x's past. how they met and started their friendship. what happend to elf x to make the public dislike him? so i needed to start earlier. then i thought about the past before that, and the past before that, and on and on. so.... i came to the conclusion that mr. x's father would be with the first humans to encounter the elves, dwarves and such. but i can't come up with a good way to explain how each race believed they were alone in the world.
[This message has been edited by StoneyG (edited December 14, 2004).]
posted
So, it sounds like you do have a story in mind after all. Good.
Why couldn't you just make it that each race was aware of the other, but didn't believe they existed? Already a given for humans, and a nice quirk for the eleves.
posted
To use another example other than Tolkien for a change, Runelords. I just finished the series.
Like Tolkien, Farland begins the story at the end of an age. Transition times. The series begins with people preparing for Hostenfest, and effegies of the Earth King are everywhere. Who was the Earth King? By the end of the first novel we learn, in drips and drabs. By then a new Earth King is manifested.
The history even of individuals is something done gradually. We are presented with a character first, and maybe later on we may get some flashbacks.
By the end of the series we learn more and more about the old Earth King as the new Earth King struggles to fulfill his new quest. Of course, we see how the history relates to the quest at hand.
posted
Stoney - It occurs to me that your storyline is very similar to the one Herbert used in the original 3 books of the Dune series. (Before I go any further, let me add that it is OK to be similar, Herbert never owned the idea of this sort of storyline, it has been used for ages.) But maybe reading Dune will give you an idea of how to handle this sort of storyline. Herbert also had a lot of backstory that he needed to work into it. He accomplished it by focusing on one central heroic character, one villainous character and several minor heroic characters. Chapters change POV character and setting often. You learn enough of the backstory through the context of the present story to understand it. Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson are attempting to fill in the backstory with prequels. To do this, they are also focusing on specific characters to carry the story. (By the way, I'm NOT recommending the prequels, just the technique)
(edited for spelling)
[This message has been edited by NewsBys (edited December 14, 2004).]
posted
If you want to start with the Elves, Humans Dwarves etc, not knowing about each other, just start not long from their creation. In fantasy always start at creation. If the humans live a hundred miles from the elves then they won't meet till either can travel a hundred miles. (translate to sci-fi by lenghtening the distance to lightyears.) As to when to start writing? Look at your history and find the most interesting point, write that to catch readers then they will want to read more. Think of the Dragonlance Chronicles and the Ledgend of Huma. I'm not sure people would want to read about Huma till they know how important he is to the future. Also if you can't do Gods and Magic well then you will turn off many Fantasy readers. (BTW the WWE has good chars but they abuse them in the name of plot twists. They care more about making you go 'oh!' then actually caring. Please don't do that.)
ps. just some advice on Robert Jordan only read the first two.
[This message has been edited by Pyre Dynasty (edited December 15, 2004).]
posted
i think a rich backstory, like Tolkien has for LOTR (which he actually did write about, it's called the Silmarillion), is very important in a fantasy series. it gives everything potency and makes you realize how much history is behind the story itself. it's like looking at a person, who on the outside is very interesting, and finding out that they have a rich and lush history behind them. they've been through so much, and experienced amazing things. it makes that person seem so much more interesting, as it does with the fantasy story.
[This message has been edited by Natosis (edited November 14, 2005).]
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