Fantasy-Sword and Sorcery-Science Fiction Authors: Know the Essence of Epic? By Mark Orrin, Senior Editor Editing-Writing Whether they’ve known it or not, most authors I’ve worked with in Fantasy, “Magick,” and Sci-Fi genres have been trying to write in an even older genre predating even Homer – Epic – on large word-canvasses. And at the risk of sounding doctrinaire let me point out several elements of epic of which many authors in these genres don’t seem to be aware. First, epic must almost of necessity be constructed over a certain “skeleton,” bedrock of which is a grand schema: an ominous, fatal threat arises to a nation, a people, a world, perhaps even a cosmos. One person (let’s call her for these purposes Epica) who’s caught up in the whirl of such times and uniquely gifted (though she may not know it at first) emerges from her threatened people, and she’s pressed by the culminating crisis to grow, suffer, endure and ultimately prevail over a series of increasingly formidable challenges to save her people-nation-world-cosmos. That’s epic, in essence. And as its central figure, Epica’s thoughts and actions must be driven by the urgency of her people’s situation – thus, the author must make the dimensions and seriousness of the threat quickly and clearly apparent to readers, at least in broad dimensions. This means plot must first and foremost drive and then increasingly reveal Epica’s character growth, so she can then in turn drive the plot toward rescue from the evil, the triumph of which seems at the start inevitable. This means as an author you have to get sufficiently and very quickly into readers’ minds Three Big Things: Character, Context and Conflict. And where in my experience many authors of epic err is in overpainting Character as they begin, while they set inadequately or not quickly enough the threatened situation’s Context and hint only insufficiently at the national or cosmic Conflict that’s to be waged. Context: If readers don’t quickly grasp what’s going on “Big Picture” and get some sense of what’s “cosmically” at stake, they won’t care about your Characters, even Epica, or your Conflict, however well you eventually depict and/or how thoroughly you eventually inform them of the Context. So serious flaws that result from neglect to paint Context and Conflict adequately can emerge like this: While your Prologue may hint that you’ll soon be filling in readers on the Big Picture and the Big Conflict, you instead after the Prologue plunge them into excessive Characterization to start with that has little or nothing to do with the Big Issues. And though this characterization may begin introducing Epica, her initial action the author depicts isn’t particularly compelling: There’s no hint of cosmic menace in it, or that anything general’s “rotten in the state of ______.” Readers ought to feel that sense of rot right from the start of a book like this. Yet all too often I’ve seen Epica and her close associates sort of ramble along through some nicely-drawn mis-en-scene that gives little notion of what’s going to be at stake, nor is Epica fundamentally unhappy with the world she lives in (a few people in it are minor nuisances, true, but she shows little “social conscience,” if you will, though the seeds of her dissatisfaction should also be those of her society at large – and be apparent in both from the start. Rather, this kind of book should begin its telling farther along after the Prologue than it often does, with Epica’s private, birthing, horrified thoughts about the implications of supernatural or extraordinary powers she’s beginning to discover in herself, even her ability to do magic, not just accidentally, but intentionally. She knows her fascination with such things and her fledgling uber-ordinary actions could mean her life if they’re discovered; she knows how her society would respond. Her indulgence in these (examples of which can be distilled in brief, not played out fully) she thinks may or may not be a symptom of the same underlying compulsion that drives her to do them. At this point you can give much Big Picture illumination about her society/universe and its perplexities as part of her thoughts – and you can supply even more during her meetings and/or encounters with others who recognize her gifts and can help fill her in on her magickal heritage, while giving her a summary of the outline of the world they live in, its origins and history and what’s now “rotten in the state of _____” and what might be needed to cure it, that only she can do. Thus, Epica’s discovery of her quest and its significance in the scheme of things begins with her sudden self-revelation of her growing, astounding powers and the significance of those, which her mentor(s) can begin to help her understand. You’ll have your story off the ground, given Context and introduced the overarching Conflict and several significant characters – and you’ll be able to background all this much more briefly yet dynamically as these characters and developments appear and move forward.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 19:00:01 +0000
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