As I said a few posts ago, I finally got the push I needed to start updating this site when I agreed to be on the Blasters & Blades show and podcast. The episode was a fireside chat on maps, but as you might expect with seven nerds chatting about things it tangetted a few times. I’m not even the least bit sorry, because it was fun.
Here’s the link to the audio on Spotify, or you can watch the video below for the extra map visuals (and have a better idea of who’s talking).
Episode 243: Fireside Chats: It’s All About Them Maps
Maps a a great bonus to have in fiction, but they should always be a bonus and not strictly necessary to understand the story. You don’t want to depend on readers flipping to the map whenever they get confused; actually, you don’t want them to get confused, period. Instead, you want them to flip to the map when they’re so interested in the story that they want the extra visual. When The Fellowship of the Ring mentions Mordor, the reader should ideally know approximately where it is already before seeing the map, and the map itself should be clarification rather than a primary source.
A simple map is good, like the extremely bare-bones map used for much of the Honor Harrington series by David Weber; it gives the minimum information you need and moves on from there without distracting you. Complex maps like in Tolkien’s Middle Earth setting aren’t complex because of geography, though, as most of the complexity is due to the art itself. That art isn’t there for its own sake, but rather to give the feeling of an expansive world with interesting terrain, full of amazing stories that happen just out of sight of the characters you’re actually following. Both styles help immersion in different ways: one by not getting in the way of your imagination, the other by encouraging your imagination to run a little wild for a while before drawing you back down to (Middle) Earth.
Not all maps are of geography, though, whether geographic or stellar in scope. In a story where relationships are important, like Pride and Prejudice, a character map is very helpful. A ‘murder wall’ or ‘conspiracy map’ can help visualize the connections between various clues and suspects in a mystery or thriller. A timeline is another kind of map, much more linear but full of detail that puts things in context, and can be especially important in settings that reference multiple different calendars, or as a histomap that can show the relative scope of something over time. You might have a diagram of a ship like the Enterprise from Star Trek, or a chart of magical abilities like in several different Brandon Sanderson series. (I’d love to post examples of each of these, but it would make this post rather challenging to scroll through.)
Presenting them as a visual medium, rather than a grand Wall o’ Text, helps a reader absorb the information faster and stay immersed in the story. That’s not to say that blocks of texts aren’t good bonus materials, but they’re better as something your readers can access on a wiki, as part of your Patreon, in your newsletter, or (if you’re really successful) as part of a supplemental behind-the-scenes/about-the-world book that your dedicated fans will snap up, such as The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern, or the hard-to-find (but I have a copy!) Atlas of the Forgotten Realms.
(Yes, the latter is a D&D campaign setting, so arguably its nature is supplemental materials to begin with, but that particular volume was intended as a supplement to the novels rather than the game. You know, back when those novels were good. Hmm, I should do a blog post on the early Realms materials.)
If your map, whatever it is, has a significant amount of information on it that isn’t relevant to either the story or the map, then you’ve probably included too much. By ‘relevant to the map,’ I mean that there are plenty of map elements that aren’t necessary to the plot but put the map itself in better context by pointing out certain landmarks or making the world feel larger. Your story might mention a particular country but not mention its capital; but if you mention the capitals of two other countries and mark them on your map, you should probably mark the capital of the third, too. However, if you’re detailing a map and the action only takes place in one small corner, your map may be too large; one exception is that if the next few books will go there, putting the larger map in for context might be important.
Conversely, as the series expands, it’s necessary to update the map some more to include places mentioned so far. While I praised the original Honor Harrington map for its simplicity, the way it remained static for so long despite so many star systems being introduced was a detriment until it was finally updated.
There are also in-character, in-world maps that can be very useful in other ways, and we discussed those in the episode above. Check it out, but you might want to grab a drink and a snack first because it’s over an hour long.
Prince Raoden of Arelon awoke early that morning, completely unaware that he had been damned for all eternity.
These are the opening words to one of the best novels ever written: Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson. I first read it in 2011, barely more than a year into my career as an editor. It immediately became one of my favorites, if not my most favorite novel ever.
It had been sitting on my shelf for years, though, waiting to be read. The problem was that the paperback copy doesn’t tell you what the story is about, and so I never knew if I was in the mood for it. My reading list is so long, and I stopped counting at a hundred, that I kept deciding to try something else. This is after reading both Mistborn and The Way of Kings. I’d heard good things, but not knowing what to expect kept making me pick something else.
Well, now it’s the only novel I’ve ever considered worth getting in a collector’s quality leatherbound edition. And not to give you a clickbait kind of hook, but what Brandon Sanderson put on the personalization inside made me tear up.
Considering how I feel about this book, I should have done a review on it years ago. I even said on this blog that it deserves its own review. For some reason, I kept putting it off. Maybe it’s just that I didn’t know if I could do it justice. I’m glad I didn’t, though. If I had, then I couldn’t have given my readers this story. Continue reading →
A few weeks ago, I finished Son of the Black Sword, the latest book from Larry Correia. I’ve been delaying on writing blog posts, so this review isn’t the only one on my to-do list; but the thing is, if you like fantasy that’s a little bit different, you need to read this book. You’ll thank both me and Larry later.
Son of the Black Sword is the first in a new series for Correia. It’s also marketed as the first in a new genre; that’s not really true, since he’s been writing Iron Kingdoms tie-ins, but when it comes to his original fiction he’s known as an urban fantasy writer. He’s most famous for his bestselling Monster Hunter series, a contemporary story about a group of contractors whose job it is to hunt and kill the monsters humanity would rather pretend don’t exist. Second to that (and my personal favorite) is his Grimnoir Chronicles, an epic-scale alternate history/fantasy set in an alternate Great Depression where magic exists and the West is in a cold war with Imperial Japan. (Also, there are airships and Tesla superweapons.)
Compared against that, Son of the Black Sword is definitely something different — and not just because there isn’t a single gun to be found. It’s an epic fantasy, of the sort that might normally be described as “traditional fantasy” until you read through the first chapter. Son of the Black Sword is set in a world that heavily draws on South and East Asian concepts, in terms of society, politics, philosophy, and even the fantasy itself. But that’s all mere backdrop, however well-painted, supporting a story with three major twists, five minor twists, and a story where you’re not sure quite what’s going on but you’re hungry, starving for more.
This is epic fantasy at its finest. My favorite epic fantasy remains David Eddings’ The Belgariad and The Malloreon, despite such personages as Brandon Sanderson redefining and expanding the genre. Larry Correia is now approaching a rival for Sanderson, and after this start I would not be surprised if he starts rivaling Eddings for me on pure enjoyment.
As you might expect, minor spoilers ahead. Only minor ones, though, so if you want to read more you should be safe. Continue reading →
There’s a common misconception about people with high pain tolerances. They tend to be big, beefy, and burly, usually men, and if female they’re all badasses. They shrug off bullets and sword-thrusts like they’re minor distractions; they grunt from the pain and rarely, if ever, scream.
Now, I frequently impress people around me with my high pain tolerance. Most of that is in awe; some few, such as my doctors and a close friend who helps me exercise, approach it with worry, because pain is an important thing. I have such a high pain tolerance that I often automatically ignore signals that I should really stop what I’m doing and rest. I threw out my back (a little over a year ago) and my knee (a couple months ago) precisely because I could just work through the pain . . . until I suddenly couldn’t.
How do I do that? Well, it’s not because I’m tougher than other people. I’m not beefy or burly, and I’m only big if I’m standing up and haven’t turned sideways. It’s never about your mass; it’s all about what you’re used to. Establishing that difference is the key to writing action heroes and other characters that deal with pain through the course of your story. Continue reading →
We do it a lot. Of course, we might call it different things. Profanity, swearing, cursing, cussing . . . yeah, we do it a lot.
Of course, not everyone does it to the same degree, or with the same words. Sometimes that can be amusing, at least in certain contexts. A common Australian word for a cigarette, for example, is the same word as an insult for a homosexual in the US. In the UK, a very common swear word (though less severe these days than a few decades ago) simply means to have the quality of blood in the US and Canada. And that’s where everyone speaks the same language.
Swearing serves an important function, and the fact that we all do it to some degree or another means our characters probably should as well; but when should we do it, how much, and why? Continue reading →
I took a creative writing course at my first college. I dropped it later, because the professor didn’t know how to actually teach creative writing. That’s not to say that I knew what I was doing; I’d been writing since I was eleven, and by the time I took this professor’s class I was told by one professional author and another English professor that I was publishable, but I (today) wouldn’t consider myself (then) to know what I was talking about any more than that professor. I learned far more from the assigned texts than I did from her.
The problem with many creative writing courses is that they spend a lot of time teaching you what not to do rather than what you should do. That’s a lot easier, I suppose; as I frequently say, writing is an art, not a science. There are a few ways to fail, and an near-infinite number of ways to succeed. It’s easier to talk about what not to do. The problem is that these courses go on and on with their rules rather than treating it as an art form. When I teach writing, I actually approach it the same way one might teach drawing or painting: here’s some stuff to try, and here’s how to refine it. The rules of fiction aren’t the laws of physics.
One such rule, which this professor was quite strict on, is one that many of you will no doubt have heard. Don’t use adverbs. The professor in question was even more specific: “Don’t use -ly words.” Whether she didn’t care about adverbs that didn’t end in -ly or she just thought we didn’t know what an adverb was, I don’t know; it could honestly have gone either way. (You can tell I didn’t enjoy that class.) Continue reading →
It’s that time of year again. It’s time to wake up an hour early, only to look at the clock and be confused because it’s an hour later than it feels like it should be. It’s time to grumble and moan and ask yourself and anyone in earshot why do we do this ridiculous thing!?
This time, though, it made me think of a different topic. Strange peculiarities that may or may not make sense but always seem weird from a different perspective are what make a real-life culture seem, well, real. What kind of things can we learn from that for worldbuilding? Continue reading →
As I said in my review of Shanna Swendson’s Enchanted series, I wound up with a lot more to say that was really appropriate for a review. Like many of my posts, it’s a long one, clocking in at over three thousand words, but it’s aimed more at writers than all readers. And, I promise: spoiler free! (Well, except for the romance angle.)
So, without further ado, here’s my analysis of this new favorite series. Continue reading →
Yep, I’ve been away for a while. I had some personal-life things to take care of. Nope, I’m not going to describe them here, because they don’t have to do with writing or fun stuff. This ain’t no LiveJournal or MySpace here, bub! (Aaaaand I just dated myself. Moving on.)
I was going to make my first post back be a book review, but instead I decided to get off my duff and start the worldbuilding series I’ve been meaning to do for months now. The reason is that two parts of my life have converged on the same topic very recently. The first is that my workshop at Christendom College has restarted; the second is that I play World of Warcraft on the side.
What’s the relevancy? you might ask, and rightly so. Warcraft players might be able to guess, of course, but I’ll address the workshop angle first. Most of my students are interested in writing fantasy, which is a happy coincidence for me as I fully expected the opposite even though all evidence of youthful interest in fiction backs it up. (Just glance through the Teen Fiction section at your local bookstore, or see what the most popular movies are among the teens-and-twenties demographic.) I tailor my workshop lectures to my audience’s interests, and when I mentioned I could do some lectures on worldbuilding, there was much rejoicing.
One of the things many people overlook when worldbuilding, however, is economics. That doesn’t mean Wall Street and esoteric ideas of bull and bear markets or how one makes money using other people’s money. No, I mean taking into consideration what is valuable to a different society, what constitutes that level of value, how you represent and trade that value, and how you go about creating value.
Oh, dear. I did promise non-technical, didn’t I? It’s right there in the post’s title. I guess I need to live up to that! Continue reading →
Normally I ignore April Fools’ Day, but it occurred to me that it would be thematically appropriate to talk about a valuable writing skill: hiding things from your audience.
“Wait, what? Hiding things? That doesn’t sound like a good idea! The whole point of writing is to tell them things!”
Exactly! But you don’t just tell them the end first, do you? You build up to it, with clues that set up the twists, but then hide those clues so that it’s still a surprise to all but the most eagle-eyed.
I feel I should issue a warning, though. Learning these concepts can lead some people to feel that all stories are ruined forever. If you’re just here for the reviews, don’t read any further. Personally, I find it enjoyable to spot the tricks, especially with a skilled author; it doesn’t ruin it any more than knowing how to spot individual brush strokes will ruin a masterful painting. Still, I’ve seen people become disappointed, and so I give you fair notice. Continue reading →
1) A person who uses subtlety and a vast array of skills to bring out the best in a story, preferably when the audience least expects it. E.g.: an editor.
2) A blog run by freelance editor Matthew Bowman, focused on advice for writers and reviews for readers.
![20151222_000616[1]](https://novelninja.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/20151222_0006161.jpg?w=168)
Prince Raoden of Arelon awoke early that morning, completely unaware that he had been damned for all eternity.
We do it a lot. Of course, we might call it different things. Profanity, swearing, cursing, cussing . . . yeah, we do it a lot.
Novel Ninja 
Maps with Blasters & Blades
As I said a few posts ago, I finally got the push I needed to start updating this site when I agreed to be on the Blasters & Blades show and podcast. The episode was a fireside chat on maps, but as you might expect with seven nerds chatting about things it tangetted a few times. I’m not even the least bit sorry, because it was fun.
Here’s the link to the audio on Spotify, or you can watch the video below for the extra map visuals (and have a better idea of who’s talking).
Maps a a great bonus to have in fiction, but they should always be a bonus and not strictly necessary to understand the story. You don’t want to depend on readers flipping to the map whenever they get confused; actually, you don’t want them to get confused, period. Instead, you want them to flip to the map when they’re so interested in the story that they want the extra visual. When The Fellowship of the Ring mentions Mordor, the reader should ideally know approximately where it is already before seeing the map, and the map itself should be clarification rather than a primary source.
A simple map is good, like the extremely bare-bones map used for much of the Honor Harrington series by David Weber; it gives the minimum information you need and moves on from there without distracting you. Complex maps like in Tolkien’s Middle Earth setting aren’t complex because of geography, though, as most of the complexity is due to the art itself. That art isn’t there for its own sake, but rather to give the feeling of an expansive world with interesting terrain, full of amazing stories that happen just out of sight of the characters you’re actually following. Both styles help immersion in different ways: one by not getting in the way of your imagination, the other by encouraging your imagination to run a little wild for a while before drawing you back down to (Middle) Earth.
Not all maps are of geography, though, whether geographic or stellar in scope. In a story where relationships are important, like Pride and Prejudice, a character map is very helpful. A ‘murder wall’ or ‘conspiracy map’ can help visualize the connections between various clues and suspects in a mystery or thriller. A timeline is another kind of map, much more linear but full of detail that puts things in context, and can be especially important in settings that reference multiple different calendars, or as a histomap that can show the relative scope of something over time. You might have a diagram of a ship like the Enterprise from Star Trek, or a chart of magical abilities like in several different Brandon Sanderson series. (I’d love to post examples of each of these, but it would make this post rather challenging to scroll through.)
Presenting them as a visual medium, rather than a grand Wall o’ Text, helps a reader absorb the information faster and stay immersed in the story. That’s not to say that blocks of texts aren’t good bonus materials, but they’re better as something your readers can access on a wiki, as part of your Patreon, in your newsletter, or (if you’re really successful) as part of a supplemental behind-the-scenes/about-the-world book that your dedicated fans will snap up, such as The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern, or the hard-to-find (but I have a copy!) Atlas of the Forgotten Realms.
(Yes, the latter is a D&D campaign setting, so arguably its nature is supplemental materials to begin with, but that particular volume was intended as a supplement to the novels rather than the game. You know, back when those novels were good. Hmm, I should do a blog post on the early Realms materials.)
If your map, whatever it is, has a significant amount of information on it that isn’t relevant to either the story or the map, then you’ve probably included too much. By ‘relevant to the map,’ I mean that there are plenty of map elements that aren’t necessary to the plot but put the map itself in better context by pointing out certain landmarks or making the world feel larger. Your story might mention a particular country but not mention its capital; but if you mention the capitals of two other countries and mark them on your map, you should probably mark the capital of the third, too. However, if you’re detailing a map and the action only takes place in one small corner, your map may be too large; one exception is that if the next few books will go there, putting the larger map in for context might be important.
Conversely, as the series expands, it’s necessary to update the map some more to include places mentioned so far. While I praised the original Honor Harrington map for its simplicity, the way it remained static for so long despite so many star systems being introduced was a detriment until it was finally updated.
There are also in-character, in-world maps that can be very useful in other ways, and we discussed those in the episode above. Check it out, but you might want to grab a drink and a snack first because it’s over an hour long.
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