The Wood Beyond The World Forum Writing styles: Audience Aware..

I've been thinking about this subject. What do you all think is better, writing fantasy with awareness of your real-world reader audience, or writing as if you yourself are in your fantasy world, writing for the people of that world? If this is confusing, think of The Chronicles of Narnia as an example for real-world audience awareness, and (much less well-known) The Prince of Nothing trilogy by R. Scott Bakker as an example of the second way. Most people nowadays tend to write the second way, but it can be confusing for the real-world audience, unless there's a glossary or dictionary of fantasy world terms.

We were kind of discussing this in the True Minds thread, concerning naming of common articles like money, and systems of telling time.

I think we have to strike a balance. A skilled writer should be able to give readers enough clues to draw inferences that reveal meaning. Some readers will be better at this than others -- but it doesn't make sense to write to an imaginary "reader" with a particular comprehension level. I prefer to stay in-culture as much as possible, giving clues to meaning and significance that translate to our world. Even historical novels sometimes require glossaries and notes to elucidate unfamiliar material, but a thoughtful reader "gets" it, sometimes through previous knowledge, sometimes almost instinctively, as he reads. In any case, the story matters more than the details of what a particular coin denomination might be called, or how the hours of the day are measured -- and the story is the characters. People are people, even when they're hobbits or dwarves, or inhabitants of another planet, or furry critters.

Staying in-culture is more realistic. If it's a separate reality it's going to have the earmarks of one, and that's part of what readers of fantasy are reading for in the first place.

Further thoughts.

Narnia concerns people from our world traveling to another world, and that in itself justifies a certain amount of cross-cultural explanation.

In LotR Tolkien takes us straight into his alternative reality, without any intermediaries, any representatives of 'us' in the story. He matches style to subject too -- the hobbits and common people get a contemporary, colloquial style; noble humans and elves get an epic, heroic style; Tom Bombadil gets a dreamy, medieval style all his own. Exposition and dialogue both undergo stylistic transformation, depending on characters and situation.

I sometimes let myself get submerged in the cultures my stories spring from, and the rhythms and structures of my language seem peculiar and awkward to people who read only contemporary 'realistic' fiction. I'm trying to strike a compromise in that, so that I'll have the tone I want and still be readable. But stylistic markers are useful for characterization -- differences in characters and cultures influence the way I use the language. Since I like to stay in a particular PoV for exposition, those differences aren't limited to dialogue, but suffuse the whole narrative. I've tried to get rid of the outside narrator, except as an occasional observer of interactions between characters.

Narina was also writen for a younger audience.

Fiction, of any genre, has both experienced readers as well as inexperienced readers. Most writers do not want to alienate a segment of a potential audience and so they write for a general audience. That is not to say the story has to be dummied down. There are stories out there geared for a certain segment of society...the experienced reader, the educated reader, and even - the literary snobs, I mean purest. lol Meaning...there is something for everyone and it all depends on what the writer is shooting for.

When I was younger, if a word was just too hard to pronounce, I put my own tag on it. Nagarathomogota might have become just Nag everytime I came across it. With, time, monetary, or even political pecking order, while helping to create a more complex and realistic world, the writer has to ask, how important is it to the overall storyline, pacing, plot, etc. If a writers fantasay novel is geared more toward LOTR, (action), then all this monetay stuff is waisted. But if your Tom Clancy and writing a international banking terrorist plot...then your going to need to explain accurately so that professional financial wheelers and dealers, as well as the average guy can say say...wow...this really could happen, I putting my saving in Kuggerands and precious gems.

With that said, I do target my current work to a certain audience. My romance stuff is also targeted to a certain audience...females, so I will hit all the right buttons for that audience. The futuristice doomsday stuff I have sitting and collecting dust also follows a formula, and is geared to the action adventure crowd. If I were to write gothic horror stories, again, I more than likely would follow a formula. But all the formulas I follow, I put my own take on it, my own rules, and try to make it above average. Unsure if I am succeeding on any of them, especially my current stable of works, but its what I am comfortable with, and what I am shooting for.

I think everyone of us here that is writing a Fantasy Fiction or Sci-Fi piece, we all have our own individual voices, our own orgianal thoughts and spins. I think its fantastic that we are all so different. Like I always say...Would it not be boring if we all wrote alike, in the same voice, the same style, the same everything.

Ok...rambling now...I now return you to your regularly schedules programs.
Nick.

This is a very practical discussion thus far. Let me wander off a bit.

I write for the human heart. When I was very young, certain authors thrilled me because their works seemed to speak to where I was at the moment, or where I wanted to go in my future. They were uplifting and inspiring. They revealed to me worlds I hadn't known existed, let me know how much I didn't know and how much slothful or careless minds can overlook, to their own detriment. They showed me that heroes were thoughtful, mindful, courageous, intelligent, sensitive.

So my job one in writing is to broaden the minds of my readers, spur them to investigate their world, to wonder about microcosms and macrocosms and where they fit into the cosmic scheme. I feel, with great certainty, that the hearts and minds of readers are so essentially similar to my own, that by simply plumbing my own depths, I can reveal truths they will see as belonging to themselves.

If an author can reveal truths of the human heart, the human situation, then the genre in which s/he does this, the body types characters inhabit, the architecture and money used, the methods of aggression and compassion, matter little. They are the forms, the text. But always, the subtext must be human nature. And the words must be clear to those with an average education AND a strong yearning to know themselves. If they don't have this yearning I would rouse it in them. If they are altogether berift of it, they likely do not read for pleasure.

Sure, target a special audience if you like: by education, gender, genre. But I think if an author concentrates on heart to heart communication with a HUMAN reader, and speaks as clearly as s/he can from and about the human heart, then s/he may break the mold and create something lasting.

I agree wholeheartedly. Even the most brilliantly complex, well-thought out fantasy world complete with realistic culture and geography and politics and magic really means nothing if it doesn't speak, if there isn't a certain level of humanity. I think that's why so many people look down on the fantasy genre nowadays, since so many published works are pretty much gaming sessions of D&D without character value or substance. I wonder how these books get published, anyway.

As for me, I kind of just write, and I think, whoever will read it will read it. Is that bad? I mostly write for me, just to see what I'm capable of. If it ends up being really good and a company wants to publish it, then great!

I try to be original and not use ideas from our culture, like "monday" and "three oclock", but I also try not to inundate the text with outlandish terms without an explanation. Even with a glossary, when fantasy works dump me into a place of all new things and ideas, symbolized in words I'm not familiar with, and don't give me some explanation, then I would probably get confused/irritated.

Andy,

I would be interested in how you begin writing a piece. Do you just sit down and write what comes? That can be an effective way to get something started. But I think to be effective a writer must plan at minimum to include certain elements within his writing.

Read this one page document I entitled "Writer's Block in Fiction," but which really is a checklist to achieve purposeful writing:



In addition, once the first draft of a scene or short story is on the page, I think at minimum an author should ask himself thus:

What did I establish with this scene?

What did I want to establish?

Have I succeeded?

Imagine presenting the piece to a reader, then ask her, "Now, what do you think is going to happen?" The author is the Roadrunner. The reader is the Coyote. Your writing must stay one step ahead of the reader, and also be sure to stay in sight of the reader, so the reader doesn't get lost or give up the chase.

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My husband and I often discuss this stuff -- usually after he's expressed his derision for fantasy fiction. I think we've pretty much established that storytelling arises from the human mind and heart for a dual purpose -- entertainment and understanding. Whatever serves that purpose well is good writing -- whatever speaks to people in those two realms through age after age earns the position of great writing. (And every great story has its flaws -- every writer, good or great, has lapses and blind spots.)

For me, what I want to do is engage the reader into whatever world I am creating, be it a fantasy world or Earth 50 years from now. Yet, like Native North American storytelling, I want the reader to be active, not passive. Andy points out:
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I suppose it really depends on the audience you are writing for. For me, Tangled Threads is not going to ever be fully main-stream. I am writing to a small group of fantasy readers who have no problems with unknown words and using cycles instead of years.
Most readers nowadays are passive (I feel). They want the storyteller to give them everything. In many ways, think for them. They are reading just to while away some time, not to get involved in the story and the characters.
I agree with Leah:
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When I write, I try to be completely in my world and push out everything else. And the characters help me with that also. And I find it hard work.
In the end, as Bill pointed out, if it comes from the heart, most likely more than your target audience will get it. Look at LotR. It came out in the 50s but it wasn't until the 60s that it really caught on.
In the end, I feel you have to follow your gut. You're the storyteller and in control. If it is good, the readers will come.

Long as we're commenting on how we like to write I suppose I might as well add in mine as well. I like to write what I like to read, stories I can get lost in and more importantly stories that after they are done keep my imagination fired up spinning it's own stories on it. I'll admit my greatest hope when I'm done is to have people ask for more of it but also to spark people who are interested in their own stories involving the characters.

As for awareness as several have said above I have to agree with leah, strike a balance. Can't count the number of otherwise great fantasy books that come across as annoying because of their money/time/distance systems etc (and not to mentions names, I know it's a side note but I do advice being careful on how odd you make your names).

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I call what you intend with your work, James, writing to be memorable. As opposed to writing to keep readers turning pages. It's best to do both, of course, but it seems that most commercial fiction focuses on the latter and ignores the former.

When it comes to names I like to follow Orson Scott Card's advice -- actually I figured it out on my own, following Tolkien. Base names on this-world names, according to what sort of culture your characters inhabit. The Shire was full of Anglo-Saxon based names -- Elvish language and names derived from Welsh with a bit of Finnish, and so on. I've morphed Scandinavian, Germanic, and Finnish names for the places and people in Vaaseli -- Ravella is Anglo-Saxon -- Albrahar, Arabic and Hebrew -- Xanthia, a European's idea of Chinese and Japanese. I've tried to avoid being unprouncable, but it will still probably be necessary to provide some kind of guidance -- maybe not a glossary, but a pronouncing gazetteer, a dramatis personae with pronunciation directions. . . .

I always ignore pronunciation directions in fiction. I even ignore them in non-fiction.

Why, I can't even pronounce many of the words in the real world, especially French words.

So I do my best as I read. I am never going to have to say any of the names I read in fiction. I've never even heard many of the names I use in my own fiction (especially Sanskrit, which as I understand is spoken nowadays no more than is Latin).

If I don't need to know, then neither do my readers. Just so long as the names are not long or otherwise serve as strumbling blocks. This is not to say that others might not find interesting details in pronunciation guides.

On the other hand, I do love maps.

I agree with Bill. I think, many real-world names in other languages sound just as outlandish as any fantasy name that I could conjure and still be pronounceable. So, I just do whatever, as long as it doesn't sound too cheesy, and is still pronounceable. I always hate it when i come across a name like Nhndrldr'lrc, or something. How am I supposed to say that in my head?

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I've enjoyed lurking around here all. Sorry I haven't been very productive but I haven't been productive period lately. I've been firing off short works to magazines these past few weeks. I think this is as good a place as any to jump in.

Personally, Andy, I am of the view that you best write the whole darn thing in draft thinking about "your" story and voice so it makes sense to you. When you're done or at a near finished stage, start thinking more about how it'll come across to the reader. That doesn't mean forget what a reader might think at any given point, but a quick read by a reviewer, like here, is going to point out vagueness and issues anyways. Focus on the goal -- initially to complete the work, then worry about the rest.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers! Rob