starfishstar (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
starfishstar) wrote2016-02-21 09:47 pm
starfishstar) wrote2016-02-21 09:47 pm
Of Water Horses and What to Write Next
More thoughts about writing...
(Can you tell I only really get a chance to get online on the weekends these days, and have to post all my thoughts all at once then??)
Anyway:
Perhaps surprisingly – given that Harry Potter is one of my favorite things – in my original writing I've never felt particularly drawn to write either fantasy or YA. My writing tends to be quite serious and realistic, looking at questions of life and human connections, and character-focused almost to the exclusion of all else. (Er, much like my fic, yes. And yes, even in my Harry Potter fic I've often had to remind myself to add magic bits in, because I'm so focused on my character explorations, I almost forget to even nod to this whole fantasy setting that was the source of it all!)
When I made a stab at writing a novel a couple years ago, though, I quickly realized that going on about character development for 50,000 words is not actually enough. A novel needs a framework, be that "mystery" or "quest" or "romance" or whatever other type of plot, to form the scaffolding; then the character development can drape elegantly over and around that structure. Or at least that's how I've come to see it.
So I've put my energy into writing fic (yay!) and especially into trying out stories with more plot, stories based around a mystery or action or adventure, where the character stuff is woven in around that, rather than being the sole focus. It's been really fun! I'm learning a lot!
But every now and then I check back in with myself to see whether I have any ideas about what kind of story I might want to tell whenever I do circle back around to writing original stuff, and every time the answer seems to be...uh, nope, sorry, still no ideas.
Which brings us to:
I'm finally reading a book by Maggie Stiefvater. (I say "finally" because her name seems to come up constantly in YA circles, so I decided I really needed to pick a book of hers and get to it!) This one's called "The Scorpio Races" and I'm really digging the world-building. The premise involves "capaill uisce," or water horses, scary mythical beasts of Celtic legend, and the author both draws on the folklore about these creatures and also plunks them down in a quite mundane setting of cars and shops and tourists, and lets you figure out gradually how the particular magic of these creatures works, in this modern-day context.
And I love stuff like that! I've contemplated the idea of a Sherlock/Song of the Sea fusion (i.e., as selkies), and for Holmestice I wrote a fic where Sherlock was a dryad and Mrs Hudson was a griffin (and Lestrade was a very baffled, normal cop trying to figure out what the hell was going on around him) and it was so much fun! Also: I have loved writing the werewolf pack OCs for "Raise Your Lantern High," and researching Celtic/Pagan traditions for them has been one of my favorite things about that story.
So maybe there's something there for me, some potential to play in the fantasy genre by discovering and reimagining something out of this kind of folklore/mythology and turning it into something "original". (As much as any story in our collective storytelling tradition is ever completely new!) I mean, I know I would also still have to come up with an actual plot, and not just "hey, look, it's got this cool mythical creature in it." But it's an idea and a start, and the first thing that's pinged my "ooh, that might be fun to write about!" sense in a while. (Outside of fic, I mean. I have "ooh, I want to write that!" moments about fic constantly.)
(Can you tell I only really get a chance to get online on the weekends these days, and have to post all my thoughts all at once then??)
Anyway:
Perhaps surprisingly – given that Harry Potter is one of my favorite things – in my original writing I've never felt particularly drawn to write either fantasy or YA. My writing tends to be quite serious and realistic, looking at questions of life and human connections, and character-focused almost to the exclusion of all else. (Er, much like my fic, yes. And yes, even in my Harry Potter fic I've often had to remind myself to add magic bits in, because I'm so focused on my character explorations, I almost forget to even nod to this whole fantasy setting that was the source of it all!)
When I made a stab at writing a novel a couple years ago, though, I quickly realized that going on about character development for 50,000 words is not actually enough. A novel needs a framework, be that "mystery" or "quest" or "romance" or whatever other type of plot, to form the scaffolding; then the character development can drape elegantly over and around that structure. Or at least that's how I've come to see it.
So I've put my energy into writing fic (yay!) and especially into trying out stories with more plot, stories based around a mystery or action or adventure, where the character stuff is woven in around that, rather than being the sole focus. It's been really fun! I'm learning a lot!
But every now and then I check back in with myself to see whether I have any ideas about what kind of story I might want to tell whenever I do circle back around to writing original stuff, and every time the answer seems to be...uh, nope, sorry, still no ideas.
Which brings us to:
I'm finally reading a book by Maggie Stiefvater. (I say "finally" because her name seems to come up constantly in YA circles, so I decided I really needed to pick a book of hers and get to it!) This one's called "The Scorpio Races" and I'm really digging the world-building. The premise involves "capaill uisce," or water horses, scary mythical beasts of Celtic legend, and the author both draws on the folklore about these creatures and also plunks them down in a quite mundane setting of cars and shops and tourists, and lets you figure out gradually how the particular magic of these creatures works, in this modern-day context.
And I love stuff like that! I've contemplated the idea of a Sherlock/Song of the Sea fusion (i.e., as selkies), and for Holmestice I wrote a fic where Sherlock was a dryad and Mrs Hudson was a griffin (and Lestrade was a very baffled, normal cop trying to figure out what the hell was going on around him) and it was so much fun! Also: I have loved writing the werewolf pack OCs for "Raise Your Lantern High," and researching Celtic/Pagan traditions for them has been one of my favorite things about that story.
So maybe there's something there for me, some potential to play in the fantasy genre by discovering and reimagining something out of this kind of folklore/mythology and turning it into something "original". (As much as any story in our collective storytelling tradition is ever completely new!) I mean, I know I would also still have to come up with an actual plot, and not just "hey, look, it's got this cool mythical creature in it." But it's an idea and a start, and the first thing that's pinged my "ooh, that might be fun to write about!" sense in a while. (Outside of fic, I mean. I have "ooh, I want to write that!" moments about fic constantly.)
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Scorpio races has a really interesting premise, but from the summary I gather that there's likely going to be a hetero love story in it, so I'm saving that for sometime later when I'm feeling less hostile towards that sort of thing.
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I agree the premise of the Shiver stories sounded lame to me too (yet another entry in the "paranormal romance" vein which is generally just "thinly veiled romanticization of actual straight-up stalking behaviors, WTF, how is this STILL the standard for "romance"?? I'm looking at you TWILIGHT) but I was willing to give it a try since my impression of Maggie Stiefvater is good so far. But maybe I'll read something else of hers instead!
Scorpio Races is, yes, partly a hetero romance storyline, but I found it refreshingly atypical - very understated but powerful, no manufactured "DOOMED LOVE" obstacles thrown up to create tension, no sickeningly eye-rolling love triangle - just two very fierce, tough people finding a way to survive in a fairly harsh existence, and quietly learning how to lean on each other a little along the way.