Pretty sure I won't be finished with the revising of my newest chapter this week, so I've got another Kernel of Insight to share. This is a look into the initial genre of my book and how it rapidly changed over the course of my writing.
Here's
something you may not know. At first,
this series was meant to be half drama half comedy. No, I'm serious. Some of those aspects still show through,
with the ribbing done by characters on traits they have, but this feels more
familial, like old friends or family giving each other shit because they've got
that level of comfort established. But,
when I started the drafts it was much more pronounced. For example, the first few drafts focused on
Aeon, not Mina, and had him arriving in Gesthal, setting up a glamour, and
causing it to snow just because he liked it.
It was a bit of somber tension, as this quiet, unearthly figure acted
without restraint or fear of reprisal.
Then, he'd head inside to where his vassals were assembled and walk
straight into a food fight. The
interesting thing about the different cast members is their contrasting
personalities. This could make for some
great comedy, with Vincent being fastidious, but resigned to the insanity,
Nerise being giddily accepting of it due to her child-like nature, Deminos
being hot headed, especially about his build, Gadius being snide and elitist,
while still womanizing, Yuka being independent with a bit of a mutually abusive
relationship with Merkel, where he verbally abused him and she would physically
tease him, by doing things like dropping a pie on his face. Looking back, it was kind of surreal. And Aeon was going to play the straight man
to this. It made for a very different
series.
However,
once things started rolling, I realized two things. One, I was not all that great at jokes. Exposition?
Check. Characterization? Check.
Imagination? Check. Wit...ehhhh...hit and miss. Sometimes hit and miss comedy in a fantasy
series is great. Terry Pratchett built
the entire Discworld series on fantasy humor that is occasionally hit and
miss. The difference between our styles,
however, is in wordplay and structure.
Oh, also that Terry Pratchett is a god amongst writers and I'm a
neophyte seeking to tell a simple story.
Anyway, If you are going to have humor, you need to do it with words
more than actions. Visceral humor
requires you to see it rather than read about it. So a pie in the face on the page isn't as
funny as a pie in the face in person.
And my humor in the book was largely visceral. I know how to make wordplay, but I'm not as
laissez faire with my writing in a book as I am when I make posts like this. It tends to have a lot more structure and
rely on characterization. Now, this can
go two ways. You can go the ultra light
hearted route, like Discworld, and just have people's characters kind of accept
the absurdity around them and roll with the punches, keeping their core
personalities intact while giving a great excuse to crack jokes, or you can be
more realistic. Real people don't crack
jokes after nearly escaping death. They
go "HOLY CRAP, DID YOU JUST SEE THAT?!" Or something similar. That's the style of writing I eventually
settled upon.
The other
realization I had was that structurally, I didn't like how busy the narrative
was jumping back and forth. I tend to
like having a focal point in a story and just sticking with their perception of
the world, allowing the audience to not have any knowledge they aren't supposed
to. For comedy, you kind of need a
variety of perspectives, I think, in order to keep the audience with you. I wanted to focus mainly on Aeon and Mina,
but I eventually settled on wanting to focus on Mina because while Aeon may
have been interesting, he was a reactive character. He does have his own wishes and agenda, but
Mina is the one who goes out and gets stuff done. She's the one who wants to travel, to learn
magic, to help others, etc. So, I
focused on her and the story slowly changed.
Instead of writing a comedy, I found myself writing an adventure. A coming of age tale about someone who was
out in the big bad world, but a tragedy forced them back, getting a chance to
go back once again and see the wonders of all there was. I do enjoy having the characters with a
kernel of insight(HA! Name drop!) about
the absurdity of certain situations, which they can roll their eyes to or slap
their foreheads, but I still think that's very human. We all do that in real life, like when you
read about a teenage Baptist calling Harry Potter demon worship. It's like...really...really, guys? That happens even in a fantasy world, so I
just roll with it.
But yep,
this story was initially going to have a comedic bent interspersed with pitch
dark drama. In the end, I decided that
wasn't what I wanted. It was fine to
have the drama, but make the story less of a comedy and more of an
adventure. You can have your funny
moments, but they're in balance with the sad, or heartwarming, or serious
moments. It's all part of the trip we're
on, so to speak.
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