Making And Breaking The Rules Of Fantasy

I'll admit right now that I am a one, maybe two genre guy, depending on how closely related you consider Science Fiction and Fantasy.  Yes, I'll read other genres, and it's even possible I'll write other genres down the line, but this is where my heart is.  Fantasy, especially.

When they say "write what you know," this is what I go to.  It's true that I've never dealt with daemons, travelled strange and fantastic lands or wielded mighty magics, but if there's one genre I know inside and out, this is it.  I know the rules of Fantasy instinctively, the same way I know when a Chinook* is rolling in.  And the biggest rule is?  There are no rules.

Ok, that's a lie.  There are lots of rules, and they're different if you're talking about High Fantasy, Contemporary Fantasy or Urban Fantasy.  Good and evil are more black and white (or at least you know which side a character/creature ought to be on,) magic and fantastic creatures abound, and chances are someone has a Destiny.  The fun part is, even within these rules, you get to reinvent the world each time.  In fact, that's pretty much the point.  While there's only so much you can change about a certain "race" or "species" and still have it be recognizable, you get to take it and make it your own, with your own rules.  For example, there are certain things that make a faerie a faerie or it isn't a faerie, but that can range from sweet Victorian flower fairies, through Tinkerbell right to something downright malicious like Jenny-Greenteeth.  Don't like what came before?  Reinvent it.

Vampire stories are notorious for having a different set of rules for every author, and while each reader has eir own preference, we can (usually) recognize that it is a vampire when you tell us so.  As long as we have drinks blood + immortal/unnaturally long-lived, we'll go "yep, that's a vampire all right," even if the rest of the details get changed faster than topics in an ADD conversation (though some of us still draw the line at sparkles.  I mean, seriously!  He's a vampire, not a disco-ball.)  The upshot of this is, in Fantasy you get to change the rules.  A lot.

One thing you can't do is break your own rules.  Once you've established a magic system in your universe, you have to stick with it.  Your trolls turn to stone in the daylight?  You can't have one suddenly take a noonday stroll.  Your vampires are allergic to garlic?  They probably won't be going out for Italian.  Whatever else you do, you have to keep up an internal logic or the reader with think you have no idea what you're doing.  Keep that in mind when you're doing your world building; consistency is key.

If you're writing a Fantasy story, how well are you sticking to your own rules?  Think I'm full of crap here?  Tell me why.  I'll never learn otherwise.

*For those who don't live just west of the foothills of the Rockies, a Chinook is a warm wind that comes in from the Pacific Ocean, over the mountains, and is known to raise the temperature above freezing in winter.  Also known to cause nasty headaches from the pressure changes.

Friday Flash: And the Mysteries Knew Me

Going through an old notebook, I found this little piece.  I'd say it's circa 2008, though possibly as early as late '07.  I was a bit spotty with dating my work in here.  Uncertain time-line aside, I do remember that it was one of those things I wrote in a torrential flood of inspiration and then had no idea what I was going to do with it, especially since I didn't know about flash as a writing style at the time.  So I'm posting it here, with a little on-the-spot editing and a new title.

And the Mysteries Knew Me

She sat with me all the while, singing the songs we'd learned in the empty places. Her voice shone with her wings, both lit from some wondrous source. As I lay there, listening, I could feel it. The velvet night wrapped me up in its warm embrace and carried me up through the higher planes of its silence. When I sought to look, I found that my eyes were no more, nor was my body.

The song though, was a thing I could see, a thing I could touch. Her voice became my world and my world became the stars. Light came to the deepest shadows and dark engulfed where light had been. I was ecstatic. When I laughed, my voice was that of the stars which were bells, shimmering in the highest of the heights.

Then the skies became cold, so cold. The very marrow of my being shivered and ached. I found my body again and with it, I found agony. My laughter was no more. My screams ran at right angles to my being. Her song now was a keening, a wailing despair echoing in my existence. The world trembled, and I trembled with it.

Within eternity I wept, tears running hot over cold sweat. Her voice was softening, a whisper then. The chill became bearable, the kind found in a draughty winter shelter. The song slowed. My trembling eased. My breath ragged, I returned to myself, but I was changed. Innocence gone, I now knew the mysteries and by the gods, the mysteries knew me.

Flash Friday: Lockbox

This was originally for a contest, but I never did finish it before the deadline.  Instead, I kept it around until an ending occurred to me.  Now I'm sharing it with you.  Proof that I should be writing fantasy rather than crime or noir.

Lockbox

I shuffled into my room, not bothering to turn on the light, and fell into bed.

“Ow! Sunnova-” Rubbing the back of my head, I got up and flicked on the light.

There was a box on my pillow.

It was a standard metal cash box, which explained why it hurt like hell when it connected with the back of my head. Since it remained inert after a blow that threatened to give me a concussion, I figured I could safely assume that it wasn't wired to explode. I picked it up and began examining it.

The box looked brand new, without so much as a scratch on it. No name, no note, nothing to indicate where it could have come from, and what's more, it was locked. There must be a key, I decided. Who would leave a locked box on my pillow with no way for me to open it? Oh, sure I could pick the lock, but if I didn't have to put in the effort, I wouldn't. I looked around for a place to put the box while a searched for a key, quickly realizing why whomever had gifted it to me had left it on my pillow. There was nowhere else to put it.

Ok, so the place was a mess. Who was I trying to impress? For me the room was little more than a place to crash out after a long night of either hunting or hiding other people's secrets. I didn't really care what they were up to so long as the money was right, and until now, none of it had ever followed me home. Hell, I wouldn't even know if this was my work following me home until I got the box open.

I gave the back of my head another rub before tucking the box under my arm while I searched through the rumpled bedding one-handed. After a little while, I spotted a glint of metal where the key had fallen between the pillows. Keys, actually. It was the standard two keys on a small split ring that came with the purchase of such a cash box, confirming for me that it was bought new just for this purpose. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I balanced the box on my knees and unlocked it.

The small figure inside stood up.

“T'were 'bout time, Jack-a-daw, though I'd thank ye not to rattle me 'round so,” he said, dusting himself off.

I stared at the fey creature for a moment before closing the lid on him again and locking it. Whatever he wanted from me could wait.

Sample Sunday: Christmas at Barnaby's

Since it is now technically Sunday, I figured I'd take advantage of #SampleSunday and post a sample here.  This is a rough scene from a short story in progress derived from a novel just newly into the editing stages.  And yes, that is all the context I'm giving you.  For now.  And now, I hope you enjoy them as much as I've enjoyed bringing them to you:


The Faerie mummers from Christmas at Barnaby's

They were watching the mummers, Michael sitting at Barnaby's feet. Isabell sat before Tristianne, her arms around Lisa. It was, to say the least, an entertaining show.

“My Lord,” said Michael, “are you quite certain hiring the Faeries for this was such a good idea?”

Barnaby raised an eyebrow. “We always hire Faeries. Besides which, where else could we find mummers these days, particularly ones who will perform in the Realm?”

Michael shook his head slowly. “I suppose, my Lord. It's just that this here is the strangest Herod I've ever seen.”

Lisa looked more closely at the Faerie cavorting before them. She wasn't sure what the creature looked like it might be, but she definitely couldn't see how Michael had gotten the biblical king out of it. “Herod? How d'you figure?”

“Who else would the villain be?” said Michael, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Lisa watched the Faerie a while longer as it pantomimed running off the end of a cliff like Wile E. Coyote.

“Michael,” she said, “you might not have watched any TV, but between this and the carollers back there, I think these Faeries have.”

Isabell giggled and the Daemons smiled while Michael just shook his head again. “Strangest Herod ever,” he repeated.