Dirk Strasser
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The Invisible Writer

12/10/2013

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According to the American novelist and screenwriter, Elmore Leonard, who died earlier this year, the most important rule of writing is: "If it sounds like writing... rewrite it."

There are two schools of thought when it comes to what makes good writing.  The Elmore Leonard view is based on the assumption that the writer should be invisible, that the ultimate aim of an author should be to disappear so that the reader isn't aware of the writing.  The alternative view is that the writing should be something that draws attention to itself, that the words themselves should be works of art that elicit an emotional response from the reader.

The SF writer Isaac Asimov used the metaphors of stained glass and plate glass to make the distinction between the two views.  He says in I, Asimov: A Memoir:

"There is writing which resembles the mosaic of glass you see in stained-glass windows.  Such windows are beautiful in themselves and let in the light in colored fragments, but you can't expect to see through them.  In the same way, there is poetic writing that is beautiful in itself and can easily affect the emotions, but such writing can be dense and can make for hard reading if you are trying to figure out what's happening.

"Plate glass, on the other hand, has no beauty of its own.  Ideally, you ought not to be able to see it at all, but through it you can see all that is happening outside.  That is the equivalent of writing that is plain and unadorned.  Ideally, in reading such writing, you are not even aware that you are reading. Ideas and events seem merely to flow from the mind of the writer into that of the reader without any barrier between."

Plate glass authors are clearly invisible writers.

Asimov goes further than simply stating the two extremes of writing styles.  He is clearly a plate glass author himself, and he argues that plate glass is actually a more recent invention than stained-glass and is much harder to make, implying that plate glass writing is the more modern and superior style.

So should we all aim to be invisible writers?  Both Elmore Leonard and Isaac Asimov are convinced.  But there are a lot of writers (and readers) that would argue the reverse.

Clearly there's room for both – as well as all the gradations across the scale.  I would argue, however, that the balance between the two styles varies significantly depending on the genre, with fantasy having one of the highest emphases on stained glass writing and fewer invisible writers.

We all need to decide how much invisibility we want.

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Do you really need a map in a fantasy novel?

12/4/2013

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My Books of Ascension don't have any maps.  There, I've said it.  Zenith doesn't have one.  Neither do Equinox nor Eclipse.  I've committed a serious transgression as far as epic fantasies are concerned.  Please forgive me, and let me explain.

The world of Ascension is a giant mountain.  A mountain so huge it takes a year to travel from its base to the summit.  Maybe  I'm a bit challenged in the 3D visualisation department, but I just can't picture what the map of a world mountain would look like.  I can't even begin a rough sketch to show an artist how it might work.  So I'm stuck with no map.  (I'm open to offers though, if anyone thinks they can have a go or if they can show me some examples that work.)

What do readers think when they come across a fantasy novel without a map?  I personally like well-drawn, detailed and thought-out maps, like the one depicting Tolkien's Middle Earth, but I think the simplistic scribbles that sometimes fill the opening pages of fantasy novels are actually a turn-off.  They make the world seem smaller and more trivial.  They diminish the story, rather than enhance it. They block the imagination.  They suck out the magic.


My feeling is, if you're not going to do it properly, don't do it at all.  The map should fit the setting and style of fantasy depicted in the work.  A richly detailed epic requires a richly detailed map, and a pre-industrial or medieval-type world needs to have a map that appears hand-drawn and in a style that is in harmony with the world.

Assuming the map is of high quality and one that matches the work, should fantasy novels always have maps the same way they should always have characters and plots and magic?  Are maps one of the integral aspects of a fantasy novel that define the genre?

If this is true, then I think it is only true of epic fantasies.  Epic fantasies are large scale, intricately detailed, and usually involve travel, so a having a map fits the bill, suggesting a sweeping story on a grand scale.

However, outside of truly epic fantasy, how crucial is the map?  Is it just a crutch because the words alone don't create the right pictures in the reader's mind?  Is a failure of the writing?

I'm not sure if I have definitive answer to these questions, but a reader shouldn't have to refer to a map to make sense of the story.  A map adds flavour, a feel to the novel, an interesting side-reference, but the reader should be orientated though the narrative alone.  They shouldn't be dependent on the map.

So, I hope you forgive me for my mapless epic fantasy.

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    Dirk's a writer, editor and publisher of science fiction, fantasy and horror

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