The Milieu Story

**The ideas here come from Orson Scott Card in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. This is my take on them.**

The milieu story is about the setting. It's the world surrounding your character, the weather, the family, the society, the pantheon. Everything you bring out during world building. These stories are often about travellers stuck in a distant land. Can the character return home safely? Will he choose to live in this new place?

A lot of fantasy is in this category. Any story about a character going through a portal and discovering a wild, strange land is a milieu story. Say hi to Alice in Wonderland, everyone. Unless I'm mistaken, Narnia also falls into this category.

If your main concern is the discovery of a world (through a series of other events, of course), then you are writing a milieu story. Chances are, your POV character is the stranger, who'll experience the wonders of your setting at the same time as your reader.

Other examples given by Orson Scott Cards are Gulliver's Travels and Shogun.

My original ideas for Edingher were of a milieu story. Most of the plotline happened at sea or on a small archipelago, whose culture and magic differed from everything the MC had seen before. There is still some of this discovery plotline in Edingher, but it now serves another type of story.

I'm curious, is anyone writing a milieu story? Can you think of any others?

The Colours of Language

I like to think words have personalities. They're more than a bunch of letters stuck together. They mean something, and behind that meaning there is a connotation. The same is true for sentences and paragraphs. The way we put them together has a certain vibe to it, a personality. It's that little thing we call voice.

But beyond that, on an even deeper level than words and sentences, I believe every language has a personality. When you speak it, you can see it from the expressions, from the vocabulary, from the sentence structures... but even if you can't understand a word of it, the language vehiculates a special vibe.

Compare italian and german for a moment. One is lyrical, full of vowels and intonations. The other is harder, straightforward, with a lot of sharp sounds.*

The language you write in brings a particular colour to the story you are telling. This is why translations can never best the original. You cannot capture one language's soul with another. You can try, and translators do an incredible job at it sometimes, but it will never have the original text's flow. It cannot.

I believe that is a beautiful thing. It does, however, raise a question: what language should I write my stories in?

I am fluent enough in English that I believe I can write a publishable novel in it. But is this wise? Would some of these stories be better served by French? Can I afford to play both markets? (probably not)

Most of the time I do not even ask myself such questions. The story came to me in English, right? That's enough to make the decision. Edingher, however... for some reason, Edingher was created alternating between French and English, and I wonder if French would not fit it better. I decided to focus on the other novel until I'd reached my decision, but there's something deeply disturbing to wondering if you're in the right language at all. It feels as though I did not know my story at all, and it does not sit well with me.

This is something I have been struggling with for three years now. I'm not sure it will ever go away.

*For the record, I love both german and italian.

Recurring Elements in Your Writing

Have you ever looked back at your writing to realise you seemed to bring back the same elements and themes from one story to another? I know I do, and I know I'm not alone, as Margo at Urban Psychopomp did a post about it last October. But as November came to an end and I looked back at my two novels, I realised I had more connecting elements than I thought, and sometimes they're present in older stories, too.

So let's take a look, shall we?

1. The wind as a divine element.


I'll blame living in a windy city and loving the constant gusts for this one. It's not the first time I associate wind with power and change. In Edingher it's the main religion while in White Echoes it's a single character's personal belief. I may have an obsession for wind.

2. Music as a channel of emotions, especially grief.


This was an intentional theme for Edingher - or, well, I knew music would be an important plot element in Prince Heike's attempt to redefine his country's obsession for expansion (from physical considerations to cultural ones). I had not planned on grief, perhaps because I had not planned on there being grief. White Echoes' use of music as a channel for grief is completely unintentional. It was a spontaneous idea, but I am likely to keep it, if I can.

3. Pregnant women giving birth

There's not a lot of explanation to give on this one, except that in both case it's a major plot point. I have no idea what made me want to write about pregnancy this year, but there it is!

4. Home/Family

Associating these two is perhaps my most frequent and obvious theme. It's in nearly every story I imagine, because family is something I care a lot about, and because I feel it's important to be somewhere you feel like you belong. I don't do it on purpose, but I'm aware it's in my writing.

So, what are your themes? What elements did you find sprouting up in all of your stories? Do you know why they're there?

Figuring out the next step

NaNoWriMo is over. I managed to write two complete stories in a month. The writing is every bit of the confused mess I predicted it would be. No, wait, this year it's even worse.

For the last two days, I've worked on accepting that the two drafts I now have are not even at a stage where I can edit them out. True, last year I would always end up rewriting half of every scenes (the beginnings were awful), but the plot was tight, at least, and held itself without needing major corrections.

This year my two outlines were incomplete on both novels. I had little idea what would happen past the halfway point, except for a few key scenes in Edingher. It caused problems in the final version, though not of the same nature.

Some characters have to be removed. Others need radical changes. Entire subplots were added in during November, and have to be better tied in. Edingher's ending has to change (somehow...) and White Echoes' beginning is, despite two complete rewrites, still clumsy. It will have to go.


So, where to go? Where to start? I have plots and characters that have matured during november, but now it means I have to start over again. It was always a risk. At least I have two weeks to think it through (finals are coming and I will not be doing a lot of writing during these).

Anyone else had massive revisions in their storyline? How do you deal with it?

NaNoWriMo Status Update 3: Still Behind

So I may or may not have vanished for a week. I have to say, I half-expected it happen with NaNo, especially with being so late on my attempted goal. I still am, for the record, though a bit less with every passing day. Hopefully this weekend will allow me to catch up more completely.

Last week I waited to post until I had finished my 50k. This week I am at 89,9k, and I just finished Edingher's NaNo Draft. I can't even call it a first draft, at this stage. I need to apologise to the fourth wall for this writing. It's by far some of the worst I have done during NaNoWriMo.

Nevertheless, I move on to White Echoes, and characters I already know and shouldn't jump some surprise complexities at me. More twists and turns, perhaps, but nothing the scale of a decade-long hatred.

Soldiering on.

Inspiration - The Initial Idea

I find it funny how when I decided to write my first novel, my family wasn't surprised. They just looked at me and went "Oh? That's nice. Good luck!" No questions. They could easily guess it was fantasy, and I did not leave time for more before I explained what NaNoWriMo was.

Now that I am working on my 4th and 5th story, however, I think they are beginning to understand I did not only have this one idea, shimmering under the surface, waiting to be told. I had many, and they kept coming.

This led to one question, which I am sure you've all heard: Where do you get all your ideas?

In my case, what happens most of the time is that I will notice a detail and linger on it, wondering what would happen if it became central to a story, or if I changed it. Sometimes I combine two of these. A few examples:

1.  I wondered what would happen with a fantasy world in which magic did not appear with puberty. I chose to have it come with age (or infertility). From there I built a world, and from this world my current plot emerged. I struggled with it on quite a few occasions, and today the 'old magic' is a background element, but that's where it all started.

2. I read two novels recently in which there are a fair amount of vineyards in the world. It's never an important element, but a little voice in my mind says it would be cool if it was. It's on my list of Things to Write Someday.

3. I was watching something about hot air balloons on TV while listening to A Criminal Mind. My mind jumped from one to the other, and thought it would be cool if a balloon driver unknowingly took a criminal on board. This was the very beginning of White Echoes.

Anything can spark my initial ideas. It's more frequent when I read, but it has happened with music and TV and dreams. I grab passing thoughts and force them to stay, until I see their potential for an unique story element.

How about you? Where do you get ideas?

Classical Music Concert

Friday evening I went to a classical music concert. It's not something I listen to at home, but when I get a chance to see an orchestra on a stage, I always jump on the occasion. I find there's something immensely relaxing to sitting down, closing my eyes (or watching the maestro) and just listening to the notes.

There's also something incredibly inspiring.

Friday's was my second concert and for the second time, I had a major breakthrough. Last time I was stuck on a scene and figured out how I wanted to edit it. This time, I found what bothered me with my plot.

I have a whole useless arc. 

Okay, it's not completely useless. I managed to tie it back to the others in the end. But I could easily remove it entirely by tweaking things here and there. Writing it and including it would be indulging myself. I might do it during NaNoWriMo, because it'd be the perfect occasion to do such a thing, but I have to accept that this arc won't be in the final version. It hurts, but it's necessary.

Besides, I have a new arc to replace it with.

Edingher has always been about a social revolution, and the big changes were meant to start with a shift from war to culture. I knew the wood-growing industry would be diverted from ships and war machines to art. I spent the concert staring at the violins. Wood. Music. Art.

I love the new possibilities. I have to replot a third of the novel, but I don't care. This is splendid, and it's far closer to what I want to achieve.

Now I just need to get to work!

The Unexpected Ramifications of your Setting - Part 2

As I said in my last post, there was more than one way in which my setting surprised me with special ramifications and forced me to give more thought to the world I have created. Today is the second part of this small series: fortifications.

First, though, a disclaimer. I am not well-versed in the art of medieval warfare. I have basic knowledge, gathered from years of fantasy reading and from talking with those who do know what they are talking about. It has always been enough to get by in the past, because I have not been writing war-centric novels. So, if I say something stupid, please forgive me (and correct me. I live to learn!)

Now, I don't need to be a pro to figure out why thick and high stone walls are useful against an army. The problem with fortifications is when you decide to factor in magic. In my case, stone-shaping magic.

Suddenly, the castle's impressive walls don't mean so much. Any mage can make a hole in it and let his troops in. Or he could dig a tunnel and send a small team to strike at the enemy army's head. 

In such a world, tacticians would've elaborated defenses to counter the magic and make forts effective. There's no way around it: it doesn't make sense to keep your fortifications exactly the same as during the Middle Ages.

I am still going through my options to counter this. Since I have two fighting faction, one which can shape wood while the other has power over stone, I may build fortifications with a thick layer of wood behind the stone walls. Small frontier villages might be up in the trees, with the cultivated fields below. The details aren't clear yet.

What I do know, however, is that magic changes the art of war, and that if I want my world to be credible, I cannot ignore the new possibilities.

The Unexpected Ramifications of your Setting - Part 1

When you start worldbuilding, it's hard to grasp all the consequences of the decisions you make. You have an idea of what you want, and what's different about this world, but your picture is still rather blurry. You don't know the details yet, and you can barely make out the shapes. And sometimes, when you look more closely at one element, you get a surprise.

As this happened to me twice in the past week, with totally different aspects of my world, I figured I should (read, totally wanted to) share them here. It was getting a bit long, though, so here is the first part:  

Beauty Standards

I was working on one of my characters and trying to define her better, both personality-wise and appearance-wise. I knew she was young-ish (16-17), reasonable, that she had sharp wits and that she knew how to deal with a court, or mostly. She still had a fair layer of naivete, but she was the kind of woman you could get along with easily. So I guess I was more trying to define her appearance-wise after all!

Anyway, I went on thinking I wanted her to be rather nice looking (no, I swear, she's not perfect, but that's not what I want to talk about here).

And here's the catch. Nice looking. Beautiful. What does that mean?

We know what it means today, in our world. We know the most common beauty standards. We like our women thin, with nice breasts and full lips, shaved and shapely legs, and smooth, silky skin. We like our men to be muscled, with a firm ass and a great smile. Among other things.

In a fantasy world, it doesn't have to be the same. It can be, and that's all good. Except there are times where it would make more sense for it not to be.

In my case, this lady is from a culture that obsesses about expansion. They spent years warring. They wear large and ample clothes, with sleeves hanging down low. They like their cities to span on a lot of ground without being high. And I think they should like their women with some fat on.

There are cultures on Earth in which fat is connected to wealth (with good reasons) and this also makes sense in this world. Nobles can afford it and while the ladies will want to keep slim enough to be graceful, they definitely won't be all skin on a stick. And the men, once they grow too old to fight, will acquire a belly. Here, fat will be a good thing, not a bad one, because it is, in a way, a physical expansion.

Common fantasy assumptions

In my few years of writing, I have always written novels that took place in worlds different than Earth. Sometimes these world were filled with magic. Sometimes there was nearly none. Sometimes there were elves and dwarves and gnomes; at others all you could find were humans of different nations. None of my settings are the same, and none of them give quite the same vibe either. Fantasy worlds have the power to be anything. When you throw the first bases, your imagination is the limit.

And yet, there are certain things common to all fantasy settings (or nearly) and that do not have to be.

Sometimes last week, Ted Cross posted on his blog about how most fantasy settings were north-hemisphere centric. He also noted in the comments that we tend to put the ocean on the west side of our continents. Fantasy writers do these without even thinking about it. I sure did, and more than once!

These can be explained by the fact fantasy settings are often similar to medieval Europe, but there are other aspects of fantasy we include almost without noticing. About a year ago, I decided to go after one that irritated me.

Magical powers are discovered at puberty.

Harry Potter has this. Eragon has this. Nearly every YA fantasy in existence has this! But I don't think it's YA exclusive. So many things happen to a teenager at that age, it's only natural to throw magic in the lot.

Well, no more. For a year now, I have been working on a setting where magic is associated with old age, because it arrives at about the same time menopause/andropause would. It's associated with loss of fertility, among other things, and I have tried to rethink a lot of my fantasy assumptions around this new fact.

It's important to understand my story isn't about magic being restricted to old people. It's something else entirely. But this is an important shift in how magic functions, and in certain parts of my world, it has a great influence. It is as much part of my world  than the religions, the kingdoms and the geography.

So let me ask you... are there any common fantasy assumptions you break?