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3526
Author Craft / Re: What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
« on: January 31, 2008, 11:24:24 PM »
Couldn't was Micheal does be called Theurgy, as opposed to Thaumaturgy, which is was Harry does?
Thaumaturgy is just one school of magic that Harry practices.  Its the voodoo doll side of it; Little Chicago and the tracking spells mostly.  He also does a good bit of evocation, for example, and has dabbled in Necromancy.  And Molly's viels would be an illusion, which is likely a separate school.  Theurgy would be as good a term as any, but I dont see how its a separate thing.

3527
Author Craft / Re: First person POV question
« on: January 31, 2008, 08:54:00 PM »
One thing Ive seen done, though this may be cheating as well, is to break out of the first person view in small excerpts at the beginning of each chapter (ender's game cones to mind).  This gives a point in the book to break the POV without otherwise disrupting the story. 
This can make pacing difficult though, and you want to be careful not to give too much away.  One way to handle that is to make these excerpts entirely unidentified dialog.  Make it sort of a conversation over-heard, and you can give vital info while still stringing the reader along with clues as to who these people are.
Another way is to start the chapters with in-world document excerpts:  official document/reports, journal entries, letters, etc. Items that the character could potentially come across somewhere sometime, but while being relevant at that point in the story, dont have to be known to the character or attached to any particular point in the timeline. 

Then of course you could try to work a non-linear timeline, lots of flashbacks or something, but that can get convoluted.

3528
Author Craft / Re: What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
« on: January 31, 2008, 08:44:07 PM »
I don't want to derail the thread, but I don't think we've ever seen Micheal use magic.


From GP:
Quote
"Iesu domine!" Michael's voice rang out from beneath the vampires like a brass army bugle, and with a sudden explosion of pressure and unseen force, bodies flew back and up, away from him, flesh ripped and torn from them, hanging in ragged, bloodless strips like cloth, showing gleaming, oily black flesh beneath. "Domine!" Michael shouted, rising, slewing gutted vamps off of him like a dog shakes off water. "Lava quod est sordium!"
Quote
Michael didn't come down into the lab with me because the whole concept of using magic without the Almighty behind it didn't sit well with him,

Looks like magic to me.  And how Michael isn't a big fan of magic that God isn't behind, which is a distinct difference than him being against all magic.

Ive been meaning to post a thread on the supposed difference between faith magic and normal magic, so ill do that to not derail this one.

3529
Author Craft / Re: Vampires, Werewolves, and Elves as Evil Beings
« on: January 31, 2008, 05:20:32 PM »
Werewolves as a primal hunter spirit sort of thing works too.  Something along the lines of the Predator, the Canim, or the Erlking (or a mix of all three). 

Elves in the older version as malicious tricksters and such, or expand teh definition to include things like sirens and other ancient perils.

Vampires are traditionally evil, it mostly depends on where they fall on the savage/evi-genius spectrum

3530
Author Craft / Re: Forums
« on: January 31, 2008, 05:08:06 PM »
*looks around at the Forum we are talking on*  What are you wanting exactly? Are you looking for a Fanfiction forum or what? 

3531
Author Craft / Re: What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
« on: January 31, 2008, 05:06:02 PM »
Personally, when I write magic as science it's because it allows the reader to have a reasonable notion of what is and isn't possible, so you can play fair within the ground rules you set up.  Magic that is not rational means that whatever difficulties and dilemmas your characters get into, there's always the lurking possibility that one of them can pull a magical solution out of their backside and save the day, even if you don't actually do that; and to me that undermines the possibility of generating many kinds of narrative tension.
Exactly.  I want enough eexplanation of the workings of the magic of the world that when the hero does something suitably impressive, I feel that too.  I like magic having some amount of defined limitations, so that when they are pushed, surpassed, or even just circumvented with nice innovation, we feel as impressed as we should.  An impressive amount of fireball in Dresden is a far cry from an impressive amount in Alera, for example.
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Fictional takes on magic where you can hear the dice rolling for the damage the fireball does suck, I have no argument there.  The other thing that strikes me as a possibility for magic-as-science, though, and that I've not often seen much done with, is magic-as-science that feels like actual real scientific research does, and has the excitement and adventure of being on an expanding frontier of human knowledge.  As a working sicentist in my day job, this is one of the things I aspire to do in my fiction.
One of the reasons I enjoyed Full-Metal Alchemist so much.  I thought they took teh whole "magic still has to deal with physics" idea to a new level, and did it well.

3532
Author Craft / Re: What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
« on: January 31, 2008, 02:37:10 PM »
One thing I really want to see less of: Attempting to make magic a form of "science."  (Sorry, Mr. Butcher. That's the one thing I dislike about the Dresden-verse.)  Magic(k) isn't science. Magic is religion.

When magic is assumed as science, it also assumes that, like science, magic is dispassionate towards mythology, culture, and tradition.  In short, the urban fantasy axiom is "Magic is the same everywhere. Culture and tradition are just 'flavorings.' "  In the real world, that just isn't true.  Not all magic systems fit into the Egyptian/Golden Dawn/Wicca template.  (Disagree ?  Try plugging in the ancient Chinese, Babylonian, or tribal New Guinean magic systems into that template.)

It seems to me that all modern urban fantasy takes a magic-is-science approach because it is dispassionate and, as a result, won't offend anyone.  In short, magic has become politically correct.

If your character is a Catholic, give him a Catholic viewpoint and make his magic match it according to Catholic tradition; If your character is Wiccan, give him (or her) a Wiccan viewpoint and make his magic match it.

Sure, it takes a LOT of extra research.  But it makes magic less homogenous; As a result, you gain real-world verisimilitude and lose that "I cast a ninth-level fireball. Roll your saving throw" feel.

While I can agree with you to some point, in that overly "crunchy" magic systems in fantasy novels can leave the sound of dice in your head.  But I dont really think thats the case in Dresden.  While sure, Harry personally looks at it as a Science sort of thing, its constantly pointed out that that is not how everyone does it, and in fact it almost a minority viewpoint;  magic is too subjective to be considered a science.  Michael uses magic, its just powered by God, wiccan magic practitioners can create holy water in their shrines, Etc.  The only homogeneous things I can think of are the basic ways a human handles the energy (words/focii/gestures as mental insulation which is a common theme worldwide, the death curse, the murphyonic field, slowed aging) and some of the distinctions made about mortal magic (like how its the only thing that can canll outsiders, etc).  Most of these seem to me to give a basic framework that allows all types of magic to exist.  The problem about saying that the magic is a purely catholic thing or purely a wiccan thing is that people then ask why that one is real and all the other types of magic out there are fake?  People (or at least me) like some sort of unified view of the world. 

Aslo throughout Harry's association with Michael, it seems to me that his view of things is slowing swinging towards the faith side.  Its one of my favorite continuing plots, the Harry's reconciliation with God.   

3533
Author Craft / Re: A Writer who can't Write
« on: January 24, 2008, 02:48:19 PM »
My college Gaming buddies have been trying to get a game together.  I was going to try to swing them over to the Fate system...  This could work. And if it doesn't I still gt to Game  ;)

3534
DFRPG / Re: The difference between diceless and LARP
« on: January 23, 2008, 02:50:16 PM »
That's ...hmmm...kind of....retarded.
  There were stats and modifiers and everything else that would constitute a system, but for the random element they use r-p-s.  In a park at midnight its kinda hard to role dice. 

3535
DFRPG / Re: The difference between diceless and LARP
« on: January 22, 2008, 04:45:33 PM »
I knew, for example, a Masquerade LARP that resolved everything with a rock-paper-scissor system.

3536
Author Craft / Re: A Writer who can't Write
« on: January 17, 2008, 03:13:45 PM »
Thats actually probably very good advice blgarver.  Thank you.   :)

I do have a few lesser projects floating around back there, and I've been wanting to try something first person. I find it easier for me to write, flowing more conversationally.  But my original story had too many characters to work it well.

Side note, I too have a crazy map.  I adapted a lunar map from like the 14th century that I found in a calender  :P

3537
Author Craft / Re: A Writer who can't Write
« on: January 16, 2008, 09:55:56 PM »
Don't know if this will help or not, but I've taken to carrying a notebook everywhere I go, and when I come up with a bit of detail or dialogue, I write it down ASAP.  This is especially helpful as I tend to think up my best dialogue when driving, and if I wait to get home to the computer it's gone.  If your handwriting is illegible, maybe one of those voice-activated tape recorders would be a better bet.
  I kept a little leather journal notebook in my pocket for years, and while it works great for those quick little details (world-building and stuff) I could still never get anywhere with the actual text   

So far the only part of the thing Ive actually written out (midnight run in college outside my dorm with a cheap cigar) is a prologue that takes it right up to the birth of the main character  :-\

3538
Site Suggestions & Support / Re: Dresden Files Book Club
« on: January 16, 2008, 09:42:21 PM »
OK, cool.  Up til now Ive been generally using the spoiler Board for Dresden Files topics (plot, characters, future speculation, etc) and the Book club for more abstract Dresdenverse topics.

Let me know if you want any help getting the Book club going.  It seemed like great idea and I would love to get into it   8)

3539
Author Craft / A Writer who can't Write
« on: January 16, 2008, 09:04:17 PM »
So here's my hangup, Ive been working on this novel idea off and on since High School, and while over the years Ive com up with an incredible amount of detail, I can never seem to sit down and record it, which inevitable leads to me loosing things to the annals of time (and for a while the alter of college drinking).  Im at best an average typist, and my handwriting is barely legible even to me.  Neither of which seem to keep up with the pace of a given creative brainstorm, so when I slow down I end up loosing the momentum.  Any suggestions?  Ive looked into dictation software in the past (though not recently), but they all take soo much training to even get 50% accuracy, and you throw in common enough sword and horse fantasy terms, and it all goes wonky.

3540
Author Craft / Re: The first line
« on: January 16, 2008, 08:53:46 PM »
*shrugs right back* I dunno; that never bothered me, especially how he would slip in that little bit about where the wind was coming from to set up the chapter. The man could write like nobody's business; it takes someone like Jim, writing equally well in a totally different style, to catch my readerly interest so much.
Never said it makes sense or anything, it was just a little pet peeve of mine i guess. 

As to Robert Jordan himself,  I miss him, all the great things he could have written *hangs head in silence for a moment*   :'(

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