One of the most common mistakes, even with professional storytellers, is to deliver a lot of exposition in a small space, or otherwise give “idiot lectures” where you have one character being a bit more dumb than usual simply so that a second character will have to explain something to him (and therefore to the audience). This is often called infodumping, and it’s often hard to avoid — but the best authors watch out for it and work around it.
Archive for March, 2014
Kind of like remembering a messy divorce, only with more epic battles.
That’s right, Tolkien fans! It’s the anniversary of the day when, mumbleteen thousand years ago, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum entered Mount Doom to pitch the One Ring into the fire below.
“Wait,” some of you are asking, “Why did Tolkien use modern dates in a fantasy world like Middle-earth? I mean, I get that it’s supposed to be our super-duper epic forgotten past, but really.”
Yeah, I get that. But you also have to remember that Tolkien was three things, in this order: a proud Catholic, an expert philologist, and a fascinated medievalist. What does all that have to do with March 25th? I’m glad you asked!
World-famous, multiple-time New York Times bestselling author Larry Correia recently posted a rant. This is nothing new; he rants a lot, though the difference between him and your average Internet Joe is that his rants are educational snark and not simply complaints. (Well, other than stuff like complaining about government bureaucracy, but hey, if my wife were treated that way, I’d be ticked off too.)
This particular rant was about something I talk about a lot too: the pricing of books. You can click here to read what Correia wrote (language warning), but the gist of it was that someone posted a review of one of his novellas without reading it, simply so he could complain about the price. It seems that a 30,000-word novella written by a very big-name author in a moderately big-name IP (Warmachine), with full-color illustrations and accessible to people who know nothing about said IP, is not worth the huge, huge cost of . . . five bucks.
Similarly, there’s a member of a Facebook writing support group I’m in who has said multiple times that he won’t bother reading any ebook priced higher than $3.99, because “That’s how much mine is and I doubt anyone worked any harder than me.”
Tonight, multiple-time New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson (who has won and been nominated for far too many awards than I care to list so I’ll just provide a link) will be signing books in my area as part of his book tour for Words of Radiance. If you’ve read his books, he needs no introduction. If not, you should really fix that. His Mistborn series is what he’s truly known for, though Elantris is near and dear to me personally due to the way he writes about chronic pain (and the book deserves a dedicated review). He’s also famous for finishing the acclaimed Wheel of Time series after Robert Jordan died. Now he’s come out with the second book of The Stormlight Archive, and it is incredible.
Pictured: a famous author, and a guy in a Schlock Mercenary shirt who now runs a blog called Novel Ninja. This was taken several years ago, on the book tour for The Way of Kings.
I am not, however, going to be at the signing. I’ll be running a writing workshop at Christendom College instead. While I’m disappointed that there’s a conflict, and that Sanderson is coming through today rather than some other day, I’m fine with my priorities. I’m doing my part to get more great authors out there, and I consider that more important than getting yet another scrawled book or tantalizing hints about future publications. Still, it made me remember that I haven’t reviewed this book yet, so I thought I’d introduce you all to an epic series.
Oh, and this cover scene is actually in the book.
Several months ago, I met author Charles Gannon at Capclave, and he asked me to review his 1632 series book, 1635: The Papal Stakes. It picks up the Spain/Italy/Church thread that I detailed in another post, but I hadn’t read it when I met him so I didn’t really know what it was about.
Now, the reason he requested me to review his book is because of some credentials I have in regards to both the Catholic Church and the historical period. I have a very in-depth formal education in Catholic theology, philosophy, and history, and at least half of the work I do is with Catholic authors. Gannon was hoping that I could give a favorable review that would interest the Catholic audience I deal with, due to the subject matter of the book.
Note: This review was not commissioned or supported in any way by either Charles Gannon or his publisher, Baen Books, including through review or gift copies, or discounts of any kind. My conclusions are my own.
Continue reading
Note: I was asked to write a review of 1635: The Papal Stakes. I decided to do a separate post to provide context for those who don’t know what the series is about.
My friend and sometime employer Regina Doman, who owns the small publisher Chesterton Press, is extremely picky about the covers of the books she publishes. I’m not quite as picky, but there’s good reason to pay attention because it’s often the first thing that a potential reader will see. It gives a sense of the adventure you’ll find inside; or perhaps it’ll make you curious about the symbols or people shown there; or, sometimes, there will be something so incredibly grabbing about it that you’ll pick the book up and say “That had better be in here!”
Many years ago, I was browsing the Baen Books catalog of upcoming releases when I spotted the latter kind. Rather than describing anything else first, let me just show it to you:
To quote my friend Andy after seeing this for the first time: “Wh-wh-whaaaaaaaaaaaaa?”
This is 1632, by Eric Flint, first book in the Ring of Fire series (originally The Assiti Shards, and now more commonly known as just the 1632 series). This impossible scene doesn’t quite happen in the book, but it comes close. Yes, those are modern Americans with modern guns. Yes, those are 17th-century soldiers with 17th-century guns and armor. No, those 17th-century guys don’t know what they’re getting into. Continue reading
Novel Ninja 
You must be logged in to post a comment.