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Author Craft / Re: SF Writers' Lexicon from Bruce Stirling
« on: January 23, 2008, 05:47:37 PM »
oh, yeah, the Turkey City Lexicon. I love it, gives me a laugh every time.
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Author Craft / Re: What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
« on: December 28, 2007, 08:00:26 PM »
Shared universe -I don't know, maybe. RPG retaled books have often done this. Shadowrun was pretty cool, while it lived and it certainly was easier to pick up a book at random and know that the rules of the world stay the same. Again, though, so much depends on the treatment the individual writer gives it. What I find with shared worlds -whether Shadowrun, Battletech or Dragonlance - there's inevitable only 1-2 writers I read and the rest I don't.
Somethign that I would also like to see is more of a clash between mythologies. Ok, we have the Mayan artifact, but is the object itself powered regardless of who uses it? does it depend on belief and therefore strenght in its gods to function? if no one believes in the Mayan gods anymore does the artifact lose its powers? or maybe a ring from Norse myth that can banish demons looks exactly similar to a ring from Sumerian mythos that's used to summon demons.
Somethign that I would also like to see is more of a clash between mythologies. Ok, we have the Mayan artifact, but is the object itself powered regardless of who uses it? does it depend on belief and therefore strenght in its gods to function? if no one believes in the Mayan gods anymore does the artifact lose its powers? or maybe a ring from Norse myth that can banish demons looks exactly similar to a ring from Sumerian mythos that's used to summon demons.
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Author Craft / Re: What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
« on: December 27, 2007, 09:42:55 AM »
Silver as Achilles Heel for werewolves is part and parcel of the mythos. A person self doesn't need anything extraordinary to use silver. An overweight housewife trapped alone in her house with a werewolf, her baby starts crying in the next room, the werewolf pauses for just a moment, she grabs the first thing she can find [a silver spoon] and beats the werewolf over the head with it. Maybe, in this world, silver doesn't need to penetrate werewolves, only make contact and then it acts like acid, or it releases a skin-contact neurotoxin into the werewolf that's lethal to their species.
Gremlins was one of the funniest movies I ever saw, but if memory serves, the nasty little critters were utterly enthralled the moment the Snow White jingle played. It was an accident they were sitting in the cinema and the movie started rolling to begin with.
It was also an accident the gremlins ended up with the kid who turned out to be hero. And he had no powers, just a sense of responsibility to fix the damage he'd caused and the guts to do it.
Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstanes can be heroes, and there are means to fight the supernatural that might require some creative thinking but doesn't mean you need to have either special blood, martial arts or any kind of fighting skills whatsoever.
A woman who is nevous around mice and blood, can become exceptional when her family is threatened and there is no one but her to protect them.
How on earth would a perfectly ordinary, wussy woman protect her family against critters of the darkness? I don't know, but as a reader, I'd love to keep reading and see if she can do it and how she does it. Everything against her, nothing going for her - the stakes have suddenly becoming delicious.
And, you know, this mousy timid woman might really always have been dominated by her father, her husband, trained to rely on men to do the job. "Go stand in the corner and look pretty, honey."
When push comes to shove there are no men and she has to do something she's never done before -make decisions and take action. She fights back and wins againts the odds and discovers she's not the wilting wallflower she always beleived herself to be. That kind of story and character can have power and resonance with today's audiences.
I'd like writers to stop trying to up each other by going bigger and more explosive and become more inventive and broader in terms of character and story. A hero who kicks monster butt not through his fists [he can't, they'd mop the floor with him], but through some other means. Discovering their weakness, exploiting their hubris of superiority, etc.
I like characters who have magic and can fight, but not all the time and I don't like the chosen one syndrome at all. "Only I can fight the monsters because only I have been accidentally blessed by birth with the right genes."
Down that path lies pure bloodlines, eugenics, racism, Adolf Hitler.
or do use that concept, but put some thought into how it would really go - only half-vampires can fight vampires. Fine, they are the speshul ones. Would they not be arrogant? would they not start looking down on full humans? would they not start feeling themselves entitled to certain exemptions from normal human law and morals? after all, they are a higher breed of being.
there's lots to explore there.
Heroes become extraordinary, but they are not always so to begin with and sometimes it's more an accident of events that forces them to choose - do they run, or do they fight and become a hero? Heroes are still very often ordinary people - baker's boys or handmaidens in second world fantasy - who do extraordinary things. Therein lies the charm of fantasy to all readers, we want to believe we, also, are capable of great things. That an extraordinary person is not ordained extraordinary, but is an ordinary person who becomes extraordinary.
I'd like to see urban fantasy employ more variations in character than tropes, really. Tropes can become new and fresh when used against characters who are not run-of-the-mill. Basically, characters whom you expext to lose.
Gremlins was one of the funniest movies I ever saw, but if memory serves, the nasty little critters were utterly enthralled the moment the Snow White jingle played. It was an accident they were sitting in the cinema and the movie started rolling to begin with.
It was also an accident the gremlins ended up with the kid who turned out to be hero. And he had no powers, just a sense of responsibility to fix the damage he'd caused and the guts to do it.
Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstanes can be heroes, and there are means to fight the supernatural that might require some creative thinking but doesn't mean you need to have either special blood, martial arts or any kind of fighting skills whatsoever.
A woman who is nevous around mice and blood, can become exceptional when her family is threatened and there is no one but her to protect them.
How on earth would a perfectly ordinary, wussy woman protect her family against critters of the darkness? I don't know, but as a reader, I'd love to keep reading and see if she can do it and how she does it. Everything against her, nothing going for her - the stakes have suddenly becoming delicious.
And, you know, this mousy timid woman might really always have been dominated by her father, her husband, trained to rely on men to do the job. "Go stand in the corner and look pretty, honey."
When push comes to shove there are no men and she has to do something she's never done before -make decisions and take action. She fights back and wins againts the odds and discovers she's not the wilting wallflower she always beleived herself to be. That kind of story and character can have power and resonance with today's audiences.
I'd like writers to stop trying to up each other by going bigger and more explosive and become more inventive and broader in terms of character and story. A hero who kicks monster butt not through his fists [he can't, they'd mop the floor with him], but through some other means. Discovering their weakness, exploiting their hubris of superiority, etc.
I like characters who have magic and can fight, but not all the time and I don't like the chosen one syndrome at all. "Only I can fight the monsters because only I have been accidentally blessed by birth with the right genes."
Down that path lies pure bloodlines, eugenics, racism, Adolf Hitler.
or do use that concept, but put some thought into how it would really go - only half-vampires can fight vampires. Fine, they are the speshul ones. Would they not be arrogant? would they not start looking down on full humans? would they not start feeling themselves entitled to certain exemptions from normal human law and morals? after all, they are a higher breed of being.
there's lots to explore there.
Heroes become extraordinary, but they are not always so to begin with and sometimes it's more an accident of events that forces them to choose - do they run, or do they fight and become a hero? Heroes are still very often ordinary people - baker's boys or handmaidens in second world fantasy - who do extraordinary things. Therein lies the charm of fantasy to all readers, we want to believe we, also, are capable of great things. That an extraordinary person is not ordained extraordinary, but is an ordinary person who becomes extraordinary.
I'd like to see urban fantasy employ more variations in character than tropes, really. Tropes can become new and fresh when used against characters who are not run-of-the-mill. Basically, characters whom you expext to lose.
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