McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Common knowledge in fantasy
Roaram:
I gotta chime in and say I love glossary info. I agree its not good when they are used as a crutch, but I like it when I can use them to get up to speed on info I forget. I read too much to keep straight the small details, and a cheat sheet is great. for example, I read wheel of time books, and completley forgot that the main characters village was callled two rivers.
comprex:
I think I read about 9 of those and the only thing I kept forgetting was the loose ends.
Suilan:
--- Quote --- Well, that is guaranteed to make me not buy your book, because it says you can't be bothered to make the text work well enough on its own ground and you need to prop it up. I hate that almost as much as I do maps.
--- End quote ---
I love maps. They show at a glance what the author might describe in dozens of paragraphs without the reader being able to picture or remember as much as which country was north, east, west.
But maps are dangerous in that they reveal the author's worldbuilding at a glance. Some maps / imagined worlds just look so silly I would never buy the book. Say, one single country at the tip of a continent, and a circular reef around it to cut it off from the rest of the ocean, and a wall to the north. Wow. What about the rest of the world. Anyone out there? No. I suppose the country has been created in a vacuum.
I don't mind glossaries either, though I am usually good at picking up details. I also love a cast list at the beginning, especially in big volumes with loads of characters -- for the Tolstoys among the fantasy authors.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Suilan on April 09, 2008, 09:02:26 AM ---But maps are dangerous in that they reveal the author's worldbuilding at a glance. Some maps / imagined worlds just look so silly I would never buy the book. Say, one single country at the tip of a continent, and a circular reef around it to cut it off from the rest of the ocean, and a wall to the north. Wow. What about the rest of the world. Anyone out there? No. I suppose the country has been created in a vacuum.
--- End quote ---
The thing about maps is, they very very rarely aren't spoilers. Maybe for the fantasy equivalent of Harry Flashman sitting down over dinner arguing about a campaign he fought in thirty years ago and telling how all th generals got it wrong it's approrpriate to illustrate the details with a map, but for your standard quest-fantasy shape of the prince-raised-a-swineherd in a little village going out into a world he does not know and having exciting adventures while discovering it, it breaks the pacing of discovery for the reader to be able to go "ah, yes, heading west out of Hanser's Reach he's got a forest full of gamme dragons to cross next".
--- Quote ---I also love a cast list at the beginning, especially in big volumes with loads of characters -- for the Tolstoys among the fantasy authors.
--- End quote ---
I hate these with even more hate, actually. If you can't remember to tell the characters apart, that means the author is failing at making them adequately memorable.
comprex:
--- Quote from: neurovore on April 09, 2008, 03:01:07 PM ---The thing about maps is, they very very rarely aren't spoilers. Maybe for the fantasy equivalent of Harry Flashman sitting down over dinner arguing about a campaign he fought in thirty years ago and telling how all th generals got it wrong it's approrpriate to illustrate the details with a map, but for your standard quest-fantasy shape of the prince-raised-a-swineherd in a little village going out into a world he does not know and having exciting adventures while discovering it, it breaks the pacing of discovery for the reader to be able to go "ah, yes, heading west out of Hanser's Reach he's got a forest full of gamme dragons to cross next".
--- End quote ---
Sure, it is a spoiler for the cooked-down scenarios of villains and NPC being bound to geography.
I will provide the classic counter-example of the Emyn Muil on a map certainly not spoiling the interaction between Frodo and Gimli.
--- Quote ---I hate these with even more hate, actually. If you can't remember to tell the characters apart, that means the author is failing at making them adequately memorable.
--- End quote ---
Always thought those were overwrought stylistic conventions, and justifiable only for highly dialogued writing where not all characters could be relied on to use the handle most familiar to the reader.
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