Reading through Endicott's analysis of Malay magic, I find that amnesia is commonly thought to be a consequence of the loss of one's soul, or the part of it referred to as semangat (with diacriticals that I'm not coping with right now). This makes perfect sense with Nitsur's ordeal by fire as a child, followed by amnesia and a sense of complete detachment from his family and surroundings. Maybe he should have gone into shaman training instead of drumming. Or maybe that's why he has the ability to become the catalyst for the drum magic. Mafileo's in a very similar situation with her traumatic muteness and near-catatonia when they first meet.
I'm going into multiple-explanation mode. Both their cases can be easily explained in conventional psychological terms, or in terms of Malay-style magic (these concepts probably aren't unique to the Malay area). The question then is, how does it appear from the inside? Both Nitsur and Mafileo will see themselves as being set apart (Nitsur more so, because this all happens earlier in his childhood), but do they see themselves as being other than human? Nitsur entertains doubts, at least.
Showing posts with label background. Show all posts
Showing posts with label background. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Gearing up
Spent the weekend head down in reference books. I'll post a list here tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, my head is full of undigested info and I sleep poorly. It's all good; it's what I need to do to really wrap my head around this world, or this world around my head.
One of the things that's emerged from the weekend's reading is that the world the novel takes place in really is much younger than our world. Specifically, the modes of social organization I'm writing about resemble early versions of the ones I'm reading about. Eg. the steppe peoples resemble the Mongols and other Central Asian tribes before the time of Chinghis Khan: individually just as fearsome and disciplined, but without the political and organizational unity that Chinghis and generals like Subedei created. Similarly, Woneiyal drumming is less sophisticated and less pervasive in daily life than the West African drumming described in African Rhythm and African Sensibility. Also, the Woneiyal don't have, or have a very poorly developed, dance tradition, whereas the Ta'arane have an extremely well-developed dance tradition but the rhythmic/musical accompaniment is stronger on melody and uses only very simple rhythm. It's what happens when the two halves come together that is the subject here.
Syncretism and adaptation to changing circumstances are strong themes.
Reading about Indonesian and Malay religion/magic/spirituality, also Finnish. Odd mix. I'm not sure what I'm going to put where, but I'm sure all the bits and pieces will bubble up into something useful at some point.
I have about 8000 words written already, mostly from a couple of years ago but some written or rewritten over the past month. I'll post a precise word count come Nov. 1 and try to keep a running tally as I go through NaNoWriMo.
One of the things that's emerged from the weekend's reading is that the world the novel takes place in really is much younger than our world. Specifically, the modes of social organization I'm writing about resemble early versions of the ones I'm reading about. Eg. the steppe peoples resemble the Mongols and other Central Asian tribes before the time of Chinghis Khan: individually just as fearsome and disciplined, but without the political and organizational unity that Chinghis and generals like Subedei created. Similarly, Woneiyal drumming is less sophisticated and less pervasive in daily life than the West African drumming described in African Rhythm and African Sensibility. Also, the Woneiyal don't have, or have a very poorly developed, dance tradition, whereas the Ta'arane have an extremely well-developed dance tradition but the rhythmic/musical accompaniment is stronger on melody and uses only very simple rhythm. It's what happens when the two halves come together that is the subject here.
Syncretism and adaptation to changing circumstances are strong themes.
Reading about Indonesian and Malay religion/magic/spirituality, also Finnish. Odd mix. I'm not sure what I'm going to put where, but I'm sure all the bits and pieces will bubble up into something useful at some point.
I have about 8000 words written already, mostly from a couple of years ago but some written or rewritten over the past month. I'll post a precise word count come Nov. 1 and try to keep a running tally as I go through NaNoWriMo.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Ecology and gender dynamics
Another thread that's emerging here: The plains region is undergoing ecological catastrophe. Partly it's human-caused-- overgrazing, burning and logging (actually charcoal-making) by the Kesset. Partly, it's a natural dry cycle.
The last thing I want to do is set up a simplistic moral equation: Ta'arane = matriarchal = harmony with nature = good vs. Kesset = patriarchal = impact on environment = bad. It might be hopeless: the fact that the Kesset keep slaves is a moral strike against them that's going to be hard to balance.
One thing I mean to do is stress that the Ta'arane had just as much impact on their environment as the Kesset. (Mafileo and Akshedhen are going to have flaming arguments over this.) Though the Ta'arane interventions may have been more sustainable in the long term, it's not clear that they would have stood up to this drought cycle-- at least, at the population densities of the Ta'arane at their peak. (Note: make clear that the cities occupied by the Kesset hold far fewer people now than before the conquest.)
So far the Woneiyal are the most egalitarian group, and also the most low-impact on their environment. Hmmm...
What I really want to convey is that the relationship between people and landscape is not simple and not easily reduced to a moral dimension, especially to a dimension related to gender dynamics. Different aspects to explore: effects of large-scale irrigation and flood control (salinization, reduced fertility of the floodplain? Declining food supply and chronic malnutrition/occasional famine among the Ta'arane could have been a contributing cause to the Kesset conquest), burning as a means of rejuvenating grassland and certain types of forest (are different plant species becoming more important under Kesset land management?). Invent some really horrible, painful, disfiguring insect-borne diseases (or just look them up!) that affect the Kesset when they come near the river and forests, so that their decision to burn seems less cold-blooded.
The ecological concerns have been with this story since I first wrote On the Levee lo, these many years ago. It's a two-way street; landscape influences people as much as people influence landscape.
Specific adaptations: The Wonei drumspeech exists in large part because of the steep terrain and dense forests that make any other kind of communication (including walking from place to place) difficult. Kesset culture is centered around nomadic pastoralism and isn't adapting all that well to city life. (Note: the herds are kept outside the city, far from the supervision of the owning family; there have to be problems with theft and raiding. Wild West-type livestock rustling may happen. Does this contribute to the growth of a police culture among the Kesset?) Ta'arane art and dance are made up almost entirely of curved movements, reflecting their dependence on rivers (the river).
The last thing I want to do is set up a simplistic moral equation: Ta'arane = matriarchal = harmony with nature = good vs. Kesset = patriarchal = impact on environment = bad. It might be hopeless: the fact that the Kesset keep slaves is a moral strike against them that's going to be hard to balance.
One thing I mean to do is stress that the Ta'arane had just as much impact on their environment as the Kesset. (Mafileo and Akshedhen are going to have flaming arguments over this.) Though the Ta'arane interventions may have been more sustainable in the long term, it's not clear that they would have stood up to this drought cycle-- at least, at the population densities of the Ta'arane at their peak. (Note: make clear that the cities occupied by the Kesset hold far fewer people now than before the conquest.)
So far the Woneiyal are the most egalitarian group, and also the most low-impact on their environment. Hmmm...
What I really want to convey is that the relationship between people and landscape is not simple and not easily reduced to a moral dimension, especially to a dimension related to gender dynamics. Different aspects to explore: effects of large-scale irrigation and flood control (salinization, reduced fertility of the floodplain? Declining food supply and chronic malnutrition/occasional famine among the Ta'arane could have been a contributing cause to the Kesset conquest), burning as a means of rejuvenating grassland and certain types of forest (are different plant species becoming more important under Kesset land management?). Invent some really horrible, painful, disfiguring insect-borne diseases (or just look them up!) that affect the Kesset when they come near the river and forests, so that their decision to burn seems less cold-blooded.
The ecological concerns have been with this story since I first wrote On the Levee lo, these many years ago. It's a two-way street; landscape influences people as much as people influence landscape.
Specific adaptations: The Wonei drumspeech exists in large part because of the steep terrain and dense forests that make any other kind of communication (including walking from place to place) difficult. Kesset culture is centered around nomadic pastoralism and isn't adapting all that well to city life. (Note: the herds are kept outside the city, far from the supervision of the owning family; there have to be problems with theft and raiding. Wild West-type livestock rustling may happen. Does this contribute to the growth of a police culture among the Kesset?) Ta'arane art and dance are made up almost entirely of curved movements, reflecting their dependence on rivers (the river).
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Plot
After a fire destroys his home and a vast stretch of surrounding forest, Nitsur, a Woneiyal drumspeaker, is captured and enslaved by a Kesset scouting/raiding party under the command of Akshadhen. The Kesset set the fire to clear the area of insect-borne diseases that are rife in the area and are very dangerous to the Kesset and their horses (this is why they don't normally cross the river).
Akshadhen takes an interest in Nitsur, who is the first of his people to be captured by the Kesset. On the trip back to Akshadhen's home, the city Ahon ken Tai, in the company of Ta'arane slaves and Kesset guards, Nitsur's command of Ta'arane improves and he masters the rudiments of Kesseten.
Nitsur lives as a slave with Akshadhen's family for several years and appears reconciled to his fate. (He will also treat us to an extended flashback about his early life and his apprenticeship as a drumspeaker.) Then a new slave arrives: Mafileo, a young woman suffering from traumatic muteness. No-one knows this, (in fact, no-one knows her name), but Mafileo is a dancer and formerly a priestess-acolyte of the Ta'arane religion.
Seeking help for Mafileo, Nitsur goes to the Temple of the Sun. The priestesses agree to help, but they have a hidden agenda; they need periodic sacrifices for their secret religion, and think they can make it look as though the two slaves ran away together. Unawares, Nitsur brings Mafileo to the temple, and the two are made participants in a rite which is supposed to end in their deaths. They figure out what's happening and, in the stress of the moment, the magic begins to happen. They escape. Mafileo has regained her speech, but she keeps this secret from everyone except Nitsur.
Nitsur alerts Akshadhen and his father to the secret practices of the temple. The Ahon ken Tai authorities raid the temple, killing many of the priestesses. This touches off riots in the city, as it turns out there are more followers of the secret religion than anyone thought. In the confusion, Nitsur and Mafileo escape the city.
They try to get back to Nitsur's people, but the forest has been subjected to periodic burning to try (mostly unsuccessfully) to convert it to pasture for the Kesset's herds. The Woneiyal have scattered, moving further up into the hills, in inaccessible terrain, or further south and west. Nitsur and Mafileo head that direction, dodging Kesset raiding parties and flash floods along the course of the river, crossing back and forth as they can. These dangers force them to practice the new form of magic they've discovered and learn to control it.
At some point, the travelers learn that Mafileo's home has been destroyed. Probably they pass near it. Mafileo takes the opportunity to treat us to an extended flashback of her own.
They are making for the Delta. The Delta is the region where the river meets the sea, and among the Ta'arane has profound significance as a religious sanctuary. It's also the farthest of the Ta'arane lands from the Kesset strongholds. Mafileo is sure the fugitives will be safe there. Nitsur isn't sure, he knows that the Kesset are under increasing pressure from the Locust People to the east. But the Delta is even less hospitable than the forest to the Kesset way of life, and besides, it's unburnable. (Though they see increasing evidence of drought.)
Along the way, they acquire a motley group of companions: displaced Woneiyal, escaped Ta'arane slaves, even a Kesset who had been stripped of his rights and condemned to slavery for crimes (unspecified at this point. He may have been falsely accused), but had escaped.
Arriving at the Delta, they find things are not as they had hoped. Dry-season drought and severe floods during the monsoons have made the Delta physically a less safe place to live; also, refugees are putting increasing pressure on the region's resources, as the Kesset of the more southern cities are raiding further and further afield. It's clear that it's only a matter of time before the Kesset come raiding into the Delta itself.
The priestess caste retains command, but clearly the fabric of society is strained. (Ta'arane society, in many ways, has never recovered from the plague and the Kesset conquest-- even in areas the Kesset have never occupied, the Ta'arane are fearful and demoralized.) They welcome Mafileo and the other Ta'arane refugees, but turn the Kesset and Woneiyal refugees, including Nitsur, away. Mafileo begs for them to be allowed to stay at least through the rains, when traveling will be very difficult; also, several members of the party are ill. The priestesses agree.
The onset of the monsoons brings devastating flooding to the Delta (again), though the rains are lighter than usual. The Ta'arane attribute the floods to the gradual failure of the flood-control and irrigation works of the ancient Ta'arane upstream, which have not been maintained by the Kesset. Nitsur and his fellow-travelers think the cause is the deforestation of the western hills. (They're probably both correct.)
Mafileo gets into increasingly acrimonious arguments with the senior priestesses about the fate of the non-Ta'arane refugees and about how to cope with the flooding. The priestesses are very conservative, but their traditional methods are no longer suited to the changing physical landscape. Tensions are brought to a head by the unexpected arrival of Akshedhen and a handful of others from Ahon ken Tai.
Ahon ken Tai has degenerated into clan feud/civil war. Akshedhen's family has been disgraced and stripped of most of their possessions and Akshedhen's father and family have been assassinated. With his last few breaths, Akshedhen's father told his son to leave the city; the Kesset have lost their way, and Akshedhen must find a new way. He and a few friends have made their way across the grasslands, helped by the light rains, but are all desperately ill (and their horses mostly dead).
Mafileo hates Akshedhen, who raped her when she was a slave. When she first sees him, she tries to kill him, but Nitsur prevents her. The priestesses are outraged and blame Nitsur for Akshedhen's presence, claiming that Nitsur is a spy for the Kesset and means to betray the secrets of the Delta. Mafileo fights a knife duel with the senior priestess and wins. She then pulls off what amounts to a coup: refugees of various races now make up a substantial portion of the Delta's population, and many long-time Delta Ta'arane are unhappy with the ineffectual leadership of the priestesses. Mafileo and her friends reveal the dance/drum magic, and explain that they can use it to protect the Delta from the Kesset and possibly from the floods. This makes them extremely popular.
Akshedhen has pretty much been overlooked in the excitement. Nitsur, who was fairly well treated as a slave (the Kesset saw him more as a curiosity) isn't hostile towards Akshedhen and sees to it that he's looked after. Akshedhen recovers from the fever, along with some of his companions.
The new Delta community buckles down and begins developing dance/drum magic and preparing to defend themselves. Newer refugees bring word that the Locust People are gathering in great numbers on the steppes, where the rains failed almost completely. Locust People scouts and small parties are beginning to appear on the plain, an indication of growing weakness on the part of the Kesset, who normally patrol against such incursions. There are rumors that the Kesset of the nearest city (not Ahon ken Tai) have made alliances with some of the Locust clans.
Akshedhen and his fellow Kesset make themselves useful in several ways. They are able to talk to Kesset refugees and slaves who were taken young and speak little or no Ta'arane. They make sense out of news about the Kesset and the Locust People. As a trained warrior, Akshedhen advises the Deltans about battle tactics. Most important, the Kesset warrior disciplines include mental training techniques which vastly enhance the effectiveness of the Deltans' new magic.
Somewhere in this section (probably in conversation with Nitsur), we'll get a flashback from Akshedhen about his childhood, his relationship with his father, and his warrior training.
The end of the book pits the Deltans against an army of mixed Kesset and Locust People from the nearest Kesset city.
Note to self: figure out if there's a way to turn off the spellchecker in Blogger. It's driving me crazy...
Akshadhen takes an interest in Nitsur, who is the first of his people to be captured by the Kesset. On the trip back to Akshadhen's home, the city Ahon ken Tai, in the company of Ta'arane slaves and Kesset guards, Nitsur's command of Ta'arane improves and he masters the rudiments of Kesseten.
Nitsur lives as a slave with Akshadhen's family for several years and appears reconciled to his fate. (He will also treat us to an extended flashback about his early life and his apprenticeship as a drumspeaker.) Then a new slave arrives: Mafileo, a young woman suffering from traumatic muteness. No-one knows this, (in fact, no-one knows her name), but Mafileo is a dancer and formerly a priestess-acolyte of the Ta'arane religion.
Seeking help for Mafileo, Nitsur goes to the Temple of the Sun. The priestesses agree to help, but they have a hidden agenda; they need periodic sacrifices for their secret religion, and think they can make it look as though the two slaves ran away together. Unawares, Nitsur brings Mafileo to the temple, and the two are made participants in a rite which is supposed to end in their deaths. They figure out what's happening and, in the stress of the moment, the magic begins to happen. They escape. Mafileo has regained her speech, but she keeps this secret from everyone except Nitsur.
Nitsur alerts Akshadhen and his father to the secret practices of the temple. The Ahon ken Tai authorities raid the temple, killing many of the priestesses. This touches off riots in the city, as it turns out there are more followers of the secret religion than anyone thought. In the confusion, Nitsur and Mafileo escape the city.
They try to get back to Nitsur's people, but the forest has been subjected to periodic burning to try (mostly unsuccessfully) to convert it to pasture for the Kesset's herds. The Woneiyal have scattered, moving further up into the hills, in inaccessible terrain, or further south and west. Nitsur and Mafileo head that direction, dodging Kesset raiding parties and flash floods along the course of the river, crossing back and forth as they can. These dangers force them to practice the new form of magic they've discovered and learn to control it.
At some point, the travelers learn that Mafileo's home has been destroyed. Probably they pass near it. Mafileo takes the opportunity to treat us to an extended flashback of her own.
They are making for the Delta. The Delta is the region where the river meets the sea, and among the Ta'arane has profound significance as a religious sanctuary. It's also the farthest of the Ta'arane lands from the Kesset strongholds. Mafileo is sure the fugitives will be safe there. Nitsur isn't sure, he knows that the Kesset are under increasing pressure from the Locust People to the east. But the Delta is even less hospitable than the forest to the Kesset way of life, and besides, it's unburnable. (Though they see increasing evidence of drought.)
Along the way, they acquire a motley group of companions: displaced Woneiyal, escaped Ta'arane slaves, even a Kesset who had been stripped of his rights and condemned to slavery for crimes (unspecified at this point. He may have been falsely accused), but had escaped.
Arriving at the Delta, they find things are not as they had hoped. Dry-season drought and severe floods during the monsoons have made the Delta physically a less safe place to live; also, refugees are putting increasing pressure on the region's resources, as the Kesset of the more southern cities are raiding further and further afield. It's clear that it's only a matter of time before the Kesset come raiding into the Delta itself.
The priestess caste retains command, but clearly the fabric of society is strained. (Ta'arane society, in many ways, has never recovered from the plague and the Kesset conquest-- even in areas the Kesset have never occupied, the Ta'arane are fearful and demoralized.) They welcome Mafileo and the other Ta'arane refugees, but turn the Kesset and Woneiyal refugees, including Nitsur, away. Mafileo begs for them to be allowed to stay at least through the rains, when traveling will be very difficult; also, several members of the party are ill. The priestesses agree.
The onset of the monsoons brings devastating flooding to the Delta (again), though the rains are lighter than usual. The Ta'arane attribute the floods to the gradual failure of the flood-control and irrigation works of the ancient Ta'arane upstream, which have not been maintained by the Kesset. Nitsur and his fellow-travelers think the cause is the deforestation of the western hills. (They're probably both correct.)
Mafileo gets into increasingly acrimonious arguments with the senior priestesses about the fate of the non-Ta'arane refugees and about how to cope with the flooding. The priestesses are very conservative, but their traditional methods are no longer suited to the changing physical landscape. Tensions are brought to a head by the unexpected arrival of Akshedhen and a handful of others from Ahon ken Tai.
Ahon ken Tai has degenerated into clan feud/civil war. Akshedhen's family has been disgraced and stripped of most of their possessions and Akshedhen's father and family have been assassinated. With his last few breaths, Akshedhen's father told his son to leave the city; the Kesset have lost their way, and Akshedhen must find a new way. He and a few friends have made their way across the grasslands, helped by the light rains, but are all desperately ill (and their horses mostly dead).
Mafileo hates Akshedhen, who raped her when she was a slave. When she first sees him, she tries to kill him, but Nitsur prevents her. The priestesses are outraged and blame Nitsur for Akshedhen's presence, claiming that Nitsur is a spy for the Kesset and means to betray the secrets of the Delta. Mafileo fights a knife duel with the senior priestess and wins. She then pulls off what amounts to a coup: refugees of various races now make up a substantial portion of the Delta's population, and many long-time Delta Ta'arane are unhappy with the ineffectual leadership of the priestesses. Mafileo and her friends reveal the dance/drum magic, and explain that they can use it to protect the Delta from the Kesset and possibly from the floods. This makes them extremely popular.
Akshedhen has pretty much been overlooked in the excitement. Nitsur, who was fairly well treated as a slave (the Kesset saw him more as a curiosity) isn't hostile towards Akshedhen and sees to it that he's looked after. Akshedhen recovers from the fever, along with some of his companions.
The new Delta community buckles down and begins developing dance/drum magic and preparing to defend themselves. Newer refugees bring word that the Locust People are gathering in great numbers on the steppes, where the rains failed almost completely. Locust People scouts and small parties are beginning to appear on the plain, an indication of growing weakness on the part of the Kesset, who normally patrol against such incursions. There are rumors that the Kesset of the nearest city (not Ahon ken Tai) have made alliances with some of the Locust clans.
Akshedhen and his fellow Kesset make themselves useful in several ways. They are able to talk to Kesset refugees and slaves who were taken young and speak little or no Ta'arane. They make sense out of news about the Kesset and the Locust People. As a trained warrior, Akshedhen advises the Deltans about battle tactics. Most important, the Kesset warrior disciplines include mental training techniques which vastly enhance the effectiveness of the Deltans' new magic.
Somewhere in this section (probably in conversation with Nitsur), we'll get a flashback from Akshedhen about his childhood, his relationship with his father, and his warrior training.
The end of the book pits the Deltans against an army of mixed Kesset and Locust People from the nearest Kesset city.
Note to self: figure out if there's a way to turn off the spellchecker in Blogger. It's driving me crazy...
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Some answers, maybe
So I have at least partial answers to the problems I posed myself in the first post.
Problem #1: How to create believable and coherent language fragments for three imaginary languages.
Research, research, research.
I actually already have a fairly good idea what the Ta'arane language sounds like. It's similar to Hawaiian in having a restricted consonant set (a different set, though) and a very complex vowel set, with multiple stress levels and different dipthongs. This creates a small problem in itself, in that the Roman alphabet isn't optimal for such a language; I've seen Hawaiian written with all the diacriticals and it's pretty intimidating.
I know Woneiyal is agglutinative:
won = person, human (lit. a speaker)
Wonei = the Speech
Woneiyal = the Speakers, the humans, the real people
I don't really know what it sounds like, but think it has a larger sound set than either of the other two languages.
Kesseten I know nothing about. There's lots of room for growth here. NB: Any and all character or place names that appear in these excerpts are subject to change...
Problem #2: How to write effective dialogue between characters not fluent in each other's languages.
The character who's going to carry the bulk of the narrative is a Woneiyal drumspeaker. (You met him in the first excerpt.) He has an extremely good ear for sounds and sound patterns. He'll pick up languages quickly and when he reports dialogue, it'll sound fluent. Because I don't want to gloss over the problems of communication, there will be plenty of scenes where he's not present and the other characters have to fight their way through to understanding each other; also, as being from the least materially developed culture around, his vocabulary won't always be up to the task. The trick will be to give readers a sense of real difficulty without making the story just plain hard to read.
Problem #3: Fantasy readers expect to see magic. How can I hold the interest of such readers, given that the magic isn't going to start happening until probably about halfway through?
Flash-back and flash-forward. As I'm envisioning it now, the novel will begin with the first half of the very last scene, and end with the last half of said scene. That my be giving too much away right at the start, though: I may want to start the novel with a flash-forward to some other magic-using scene. I'm not going to worry about it too much for now; once the pieces are written, I'll play around with arranging them.
Plan for the immediate future: Develop some more linguistic background and some more supporting characters. Write up a formal plot outline and maybe character sketches for the main characters. Regard none of it as set in stone.
I expect to spend the next couple of weeks and most of October doing groundwork. After Nov. 1, I want to start serious writing, in keeping with NaNoWriMo. I'll probably post a daily word count.
Problem #1: How to create believable and coherent language fragments for three imaginary languages.
Research, research, research.
I actually already have a fairly good idea what the Ta'arane language sounds like. It's similar to Hawaiian in having a restricted consonant set (a different set, though) and a very complex vowel set, with multiple stress levels and different dipthongs. This creates a small problem in itself, in that the Roman alphabet isn't optimal for such a language; I've seen Hawaiian written with all the diacriticals and it's pretty intimidating.
I know Woneiyal is agglutinative:
won = person, human (lit. a speaker)
Wonei = the Speech
Woneiyal = the Speakers, the humans, the real people
I don't really know what it sounds like, but think it has a larger sound set than either of the other two languages.
Kesseten I know nothing about. There's lots of room for growth here. NB: Any and all character or place names that appear in these excerpts are subject to change...
Problem #2: How to write effective dialogue between characters not fluent in each other's languages.
The character who's going to carry the bulk of the narrative is a Woneiyal drumspeaker. (You met him in the first excerpt.) He has an extremely good ear for sounds and sound patterns. He'll pick up languages quickly and when he reports dialogue, it'll sound fluent. Because I don't want to gloss over the problems of communication, there will be plenty of scenes where he's not present and the other characters have to fight their way through to understanding each other; also, as being from the least materially developed culture around, his vocabulary won't always be up to the task. The trick will be to give readers a sense of real difficulty without making the story just plain hard to read.
Problem #3: Fantasy readers expect to see magic. How can I hold the interest of such readers, given that the magic isn't going to start happening until probably about halfway through?
Flash-back and flash-forward. As I'm envisioning it now, the novel will begin with the first half of the very last scene, and end with the last half of said scene. That my be giving too much away right at the start, though: I may want to start the novel with a flash-forward to some other magic-using scene. I'm not going to worry about it too much for now; once the pieces are written, I'll play around with arranging them.
Plan for the immediate future: Develop some more linguistic background and some more supporting characters. Write up a formal plot outline and maybe character sketches for the main characters. Regard none of it as set in stone.
I expect to spend the next couple of weeks and most of October doing groundwork. After Nov. 1, I want to start serious writing, in keeping with NaNoWriMo. I'll probably post a daily word count.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Getting Started
Welcome to Outside Over There.
I created this blog back in January, when I was getting ready to switch Knocking From Inside to the "new" Blogger, and wanted to be sure I could do everything with the new version that I'd been doing with the old version. At the time, I had no idea what further use I would make of it.
Now I think I'm going to use it chronicle an attempt, insh'allah a successful attempt, to write a novel. If successful, you can expect to see my efforts to find a publisher, etc, here.
You will see, as I go along, excerpts of text; probably more than that, you'll see my ruminations about the writing process, about particular problems I'm trying to solve, maybe things like character sketches, stuff like that. I'm not going to post the whole thing here.
Why Outside Over There?
Outside Over There is the title of a wonderful fairy tale by Maurice Sendak. It's obviously not going to be the title of the novel. The novel doesn't really have a title, even a working title, yet. The idea for it goes back to the summer of 1990, when I was a grad student at UC Santa Cruz, living in Davis and working on my grad advisor's research project in the Sacramento area. I wrote a short story then called On The Levee, which has been extensively revised (the latest draft, with Steve Perry's help, in 2005).
Meanwhile, I was studying drumming and martial art and converting to Sufism, and all kinds of other things-- We're talking seventeen years of my life, here. On The Levee now stands as a short sequel to this as-yet unwritten novel, taking place probably some 200 years later.
What's triggered me to work on it again? Well, for one thing, National Novel Writing Month is coming up in November. The goal is 50,000 words in 30 days. I don't know if that's realistic, especially given the Thanksgiving holiday, traveling, family stuff etc, but it sounds like fun to try.
For another thing... it just seems like time.
What is this novel about?
It's about communication. It's about the utter, desperate importance of communication to people trying to survive, and to the humanness of people in general. As such, it's about language and speech. There are three cultures in collision; their relationships are such that they have not developed a pidgin or trade tongue. The characters have to learn each other's languages, and thereby absorb something of each other's world-views. In addition both of the main characters undergo periods of traumatic muteness or near-muteness, in which they become temporarily less than human.
Problem #1: How to create believable and coherent language fragments for three imaginary languages.
Problem #2: How to write effective dialogue between characters not fluent in each other's languages.
Besides language in its conventional sense, there are several other important modes of communication at work. The Woneiyal have a form of drumspeech that carries across distance, through thick forest and over difficult terrain. The Ta'arane have a pictorial (can't really call it written) language. The Kesset are more numerate than the other two; they also don't have anything you could call a written language yet; I see them possibly developing something like cuneiform eventually. They also have a heliograph/smoke signal code.
The novel is also about the discovery of a new kind of magic, a new way of working on the world. This magic arises from the synergy of at least two out of the three cultures. No one culture alone would have been likely to have stumbled across it.
Problem #3: Fantasy readers expect to see magic. How can I hold the interest of such readers, given that the magic isn't going to start happening until probably about halfway through?
Places and People
The setting is the semi-arid tropics. The action takes place in and around the valley of a very large river (think Ganges, Yangtze, Mississippi). The river is flanked by forested hills, giving way rapidly to mountains, on the northwest. On the southeast, there's a gallery forest and then a gradually rising grassland plain, the low-lying parts of which are subject to flooding, which ends abruptly in a steep escarpment (think Rift Valley). Further east, there are high, dry steppes. The river ends in a massive, multi-channeled delta that blends into the ocean on one side and into the surrounding grasslands on the other. (Think the Nile delta.)
The Woneiyal live in the foothills. Of the three peoples, they have the least material culture. They hunt and grow food, mostly root crops; they also gather considerable amounts of food in the forest. They tend to live in small villages set fairly far apart. They have never had a centralized form of government.
The Ta'arane live on the plains below the escarpment. In the past, the Ta'arane did a lot of engineering; they built flood control and irrigation projects all along the course of the river and built cities at the foot of the escarpment. They used streams falling down the escarpment as sources of hydropower for mills and the like, had municipal sewers, baths and fountains, and all kinds of other good stuff. They grew linen and hemp and kept animals.
The Woneiyal and the Ta'arane had trade relations along the line of the river (bronze tools, ceramics, and fiber goods from the Ta'arane; forest products including skins of wild animals, fruit, feathers, medicinal herbs from the Woneiyal). They got along OK but kept pretty much to themselves.
The Kesset were originally a tribe of horse nomads from the eastern steppes, where their kin still live. A couple hundred years ago, they came down over the escarpment and took the Ta'arane cities. The Ta'arane had been badly reduced by a plague; also, their bronze weapons and armor were at a serious disadvantage compared to the iron equipment fielded by the Kesset. The rest was history.
Now the Kesset live in the cities and raid the surrounding countryside for Ta'arane slaves. The Ta'arane are depopulated; much of their farmland has been converted to pasture for the Kesseten herds. The waterworks have fallen into disrepair. The Woneiyal haven't been affected much... yet.
The Kesset are facing a crisis of their own. The world has entered a long-term drying trend, which is not severe yet in the valley (strong, reliable monsoons carry a lot of moisture, which is trapped by the high ground on both sides), but is putting terrible pressure on the eastern steppe tribes. Lately the Kesset have suffered attacks from a tribe or confederation of tribes whom the Kesset disparagingly call the Locust People; they are, in fact, distantly related to the ancestors of the Kesset.
Will the citified Kesset be able to withstand the ravages of their savage cousins? Will the Ta'arane take advantage of their oppressors' weakness to throw off the yoke of slavery and restore the cities of the plain? Will the Woneiyal decide once and for all that the folks across the river are just plain crazy?
Insh'allah we will all find out one of these days...
I created this blog back in January, when I was getting ready to switch Knocking From Inside to the "new" Blogger, and wanted to be sure I could do everything with the new version that I'd been doing with the old version. At the time, I had no idea what further use I would make of it.
Now I think I'm going to use it chronicle an attempt, insh'allah a successful attempt, to write a novel. If successful, you can expect to see my efforts to find a publisher, etc, here.
You will see, as I go along, excerpts of text; probably more than that, you'll see my ruminations about the writing process, about particular problems I'm trying to solve, maybe things like character sketches, stuff like that. I'm not going to post the whole thing here.
Why Outside Over There?
Outside Over There is the title of a wonderful fairy tale by Maurice Sendak. It's obviously not going to be the title of the novel. The novel doesn't really have a title, even a working title, yet. The idea for it goes back to the summer of 1990, when I was a grad student at UC Santa Cruz, living in Davis and working on my grad advisor's research project in the Sacramento area. I wrote a short story then called On The Levee, which has been extensively revised (the latest draft, with Steve Perry's help, in 2005).
Meanwhile, I was studying drumming and martial art and converting to Sufism, and all kinds of other things-- We're talking seventeen years of my life, here. On The Levee now stands as a short sequel to this as-yet unwritten novel, taking place probably some 200 years later.
What's triggered me to work on it again? Well, for one thing, National Novel Writing Month is coming up in November. The goal is 50,000 words in 30 days. I don't know if that's realistic, especially given the Thanksgiving holiday, traveling, family stuff etc, but it sounds like fun to try.
For another thing... it just seems like time.
What is this novel about?
It's about communication. It's about the utter, desperate importance of communication to people trying to survive, and to the humanness of people in general. As such, it's about language and speech. There are three cultures in collision; their relationships are such that they have not developed a pidgin or trade tongue. The characters have to learn each other's languages, and thereby absorb something of each other's world-views. In addition both of the main characters undergo periods of traumatic muteness or near-muteness, in which they become temporarily less than human.
Problem #1: How to create believable and coherent language fragments for three imaginary languages.
Problem #2: How to write effective dialogue between characters not fluent in each other's languages.
Besides language in its conventional sense, there are several other important modes of communication at work. The Woneiyal have a form of drumspeech that carries across distance, through thick forest and over difficult terrain. The Ta'arane have a pictorial (can't really call it written) language. The Kesset are more numerate than the other two; they also don't have anything you could call a written language yet; I see them possibly developing something like cuneiform eventually. They also have a heliograph/smoke signal code.
The novel is also about the discovery of a new kind of magic, a new way of working on the world. This magic arises from the synergy of at least two out of the three cultures. No one culture alone would have been likely to have stumbled across it.
Problem #3: Fantasy readers expect to see magic. How can I hold the interest of such readers, given that the magic isn't going to start happening until probably about halfway through?
Places and People
The setting is the semi-arid tropics. The action takes place in and around the valley of a very large river (think Ganges, Yangtze, Mississippi). The river is flanked by forested hills, giving way rapidly to mountains, on the northwest. On the southeast, there's a gallery forest and then a gradually rising grassland plain, the low-lying parts of which are subject to flooding, which ends abruptly in a steep escarpment (think Rift Valley). Further east, there are high, dry steppes. The river ends in a massive, multi-channeled delta that blends into the ocean on one side and into the surrounding grasslands on the other. (Think the Nile delta.)
The Woneiyal live in the foothills. Of the three peoples, they have the least material culture. They hunt and grow food, mostly root crops; they also gather considerable amounts of food in the forest. They tend to live in small villages set fairly far apart. They have never had a centralized form of government.
The Ta'arane live on the plains below the escarpment. In the past, the Ta'arane did a lot of engineering; they built flood control and irrigation projects all along the course of the river and built cities at the foot of the escarpment. They used streams falling down the escarpment as sources of hydropower for mills and the like, had municipal sewers, baths and fountains, and all kinds of other good stuff. They grew linen and hemp and kept animals.
The Woneiyal and the Ta'arane had trade relations along the line of the river (bronze tools, ceramics, and fiber goods from the Ta'arane; forest products including skins of wild animals, fruit, feathers, medicinal herbs from the Woneiyal). They got along OK but kept pretty much to themselves.
The Kesset were originally a tribe of horse nomads from the eastern steppes, where their kin still live. A couple hundred years ago, they came down over the escarpment and took the Ta'arane cities. The Ta'arane had been badly reduced by a plague; also, their bronze weapons and armor were at a serious disadvantage compared to the iron equipment fielded by the Kesset. The rest was history.
Now the Kesset live in the cities and raid the surrounding countryside for Ta'arane slaves. The Ta'arane are depopulated; much of their farmland has been converted to pasture for the Kesseten herds. The waterworks have fallen into disrepair. The Woneiyal haven't been affected much... yet.
The Kesset are facing a crisis of their own. The world has entered a long-term drying trend, which is not severe yet in the valley (strong, reliable monsoons carry a lot of moisture, which is trapped by the high ground on both sides), but is putting terrible pressure on the eastern steppe tribes. Lately the Kesset have suffered attacks from a tribe or confederation of tribes whom the Kesset disparagingly call the Locust People; they are, in fact, distantly related to the ancestors of the Kesset.
Will the citified Kesset be able to withstand the ravages of their savage cousins? Will the Ta'arane take advantage of their oppressors' weakness to throw off the yoke of slavery and restore the cities of the plain? Will the Woneiyal decide once and for all that the folks across the river are just plain crazy?
Insh'allah we will all find out one of these days...
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