Inspiration

I found that when I was younger, I would wait for moments of inspiration before writing. After all, if I had no ideas, how could I begin a story? The problem is that by thinking in this manner, I prevented myself from writing as much as I should have been.

One thing I learned from seminars on improvisational speaking is that if we are given a random subject and asked to speak about it, the issue is not that we can’t think of anything. We can easily think of something, but since we are going to speak to an audience, we weigh each thought carefully before saying it, rejecting the first few ideas that come to mind. In order to do improvisational speaking well, you have to risk exposing those initial thoughts without fully evaluating how strong they are.

When we fail to write because we’re uninspired or cannot think of anything to write, we’re lying to ourselves. Certainly we could think of something to write, but we dismiss those initial ideas. Our struggle is actually one of fear: the fear of writing something terrible. If we persist in giving in to such self-intimidation, we will never write regularly, and we will never improve upon our craft.

No one learns to walk by taking a step whenever it can be done without falling. Consider any skill for that matter. It certainly wasn’t a great experience for anyone riding with me when I first learned to drive a car, and one time I was so angry at being corrected that I threw a car into park before stopping all the way. Without risking those bad moments, though, I would be unable to drive today.

If you can’t seem to pull out any random thoughts, think about things in your life. What did you do today? How do you feel? Who did you talk to recently? Perhaps you should play some music and write whatever it makes you think about. Surely there is something you can use as a starting ground for a story.

Don’t be afraid to take chances with writing. Use those first thoughts. Think more carefully after you complete the rough draft and rework it into the drafts that follow. If a completed story is bad, it’s still good experience. I’ve written plenty of bad stories, but I’ve learned from them. The worst thing ever is to look back later in life and say, “I had a thought about a certain story once, but it sounded stupid, so I never started it. I wish I had.” Sit down, and start writing now!

The Art of War

Writers of high (or epic) fantasy will inevitably find their stories leading to a climatic battle at some point. Depicting war within a fantasy world should lend itself to a few principles of reality, but it shouldn’t become so engrossed with details so as to lose the pace of a military conflict. I offer a few ideas for crafting war into fantasy tales.

I never liked hearing this as a young writer, but this is true even of fantasy writing: you can’t effectively write what you don’t know. I’m not by any means suggesting that in order to write battles a writer must experience one first-hand. I do believe, however, that a writer must know about war and battles in order to best tell a story involving them. A parallel thought is this: a male writer could use a female protagonist effectively even though he has never been female, but he certainly won’t create a believable character if he doesn’t know any women.

Since fiction is not true, we cannot rely upon other stories for background information. I believe other stories can teach us how to write, but they should not be our sources for subject matter expertise. One of the main problems in relying upon fictional material is that it may have no factual basis for its military sequences either, so your own credibility gets washed away with theirs.

History is a great source for military knowledge, but by no means should we study medieval warfare alone. The fact that modern wars have been fought in different ways ought to aid us within the fantasy world. For example, suppose you have an army that utilizes gigantic tortoises to push through enemy barricades. Reading articles or books about tanks could give you the necessary understanding about the kinds of strategies and techniques favorable to your hard-shelled reptiles. Other things to watch for in classic battles: terrain, weather and battle formations.

If you can find someone with personal experience, that works even better. Before I wrote “From Drì Anem To Dervinâss,” I spoke with a friend of mine who participates in Civil War battle reenactments. Not only did he have the first-hand experience of what it was like to be in a battle (if only a mock battle) with the number of troops relative to what I was writing, but he also had an extensive knowledge of some realties of actual battle in that time period that I hadn’t considered. If possible, find local veterans and spend some time with them; they might be more than willing to share a few tales of their own.

A final point I would like to make is one of logistics. Research the rates of travel for armies of the type in your story. Also consider what it would take to feed and supply the army. One thing some people may not consider is how widespread an army can become while traveling. If an army of ten thousand foot soldiers is broken into ranks of ten, your army has a thousand ranks. Give each rank some breathing room, and the army easily spans over a mile in length. From being in marching band, I’ve found that even a group as small as four hundred, while marching, will stretch several blocks while moving. Ten thousand foot soldiers will likely stretch to several miles in length while moving, and they won’t all get to their destination at the same time.

I used to take fantasy writing lightly, substituting facts for my own thoughts on how things could work. It’s a trap to think that since we’re writing fantasy, especially high fantasy, that we can neglect certain principles of reality (such as armies traveling three hundred miles a day on foot without rest or food). Use nuggets of plausible facts to build credibility and establish trust with readers. Oh, and you’re welcome to use the tortoise idea if you like, but please don’t describe them as living off sunshine and happiness.

Get Organized

Submitting to markets can become rather tedious. I’ve found that the time I spend in finding markets and preparing submissions is time taken from writing. I have a few tips for minimizing the amount of time spent with this particular business end of writing.

Use a template for cover letters. A template is like a cookie cutter so that all copies look similar and uniform. Fill in the parts that won’t change (like author’s bio, your address and signature line). Then leave space for the recipient’s address, greeting line and verbiage specific to the work or the person you’re submitting to. Now, whenever you need to submit your query letter, start with the template and fill in the gaps.

With each work you complete, take a moment (the sooner the better) to write a simple synopsis of the story (for short stories, this should be only a few sentences). It should read like the back of a book, spurring interest in the story. Eventually, you will plug this into your template when submitting to markets.

Now that your work is complete and you know the word count, find all the markets that match up (fantasy writers, check out this article: finding a fantasy market). Make an ordered list of the markets you want to submit your work to. If you’ve already found and prioritized markets ahead of time, you won’t need to periodically repeat the same search. I advise keeping a link to each magazine in the list so that you can quickly lookup the address and confirm that they are still in existence and accepting submissions.

Another time saver for me is to purchase large envelopes ahead of time from the post office (my personal choice is the more expensive type used for photos because it doesn’t bend easily). Then all I need to do is print the story and cover letter. At the post office I go to, there’s even a machine set up that will calculate the correct postage and sell the appropriate stamp, keeping me free of any frustratingly long lines (unless I need more high quality envelopes).

By using these tips, you should be able to flip stories from one market to the next efficiently and painlessly. The amount of time needed to apply changes to the template, print and go should be hardly noticeable. It just takes a little organization up front.