#191 - Book This!

Weaved words flowing soundly;textual melodies relaxing to the eye."

It's been awhile, and I've kept myself somewhat busy since the last time I even entered anything into this blog. I suppose what I really need to do is to sit down more and just type to see what comes out. Such is the case with tonight, because I desperately need to type something, and everything I've done so far hasn't been particularly ... well, good.

I should try writing more. I always used to tell myself growing up that I was going to write a most excellent series of fantasy novels, but the reason that I gave myself for never really sitting down to work on them was that I didn't have the proper tools to accomplish that goal. I'm fairly certain that most editors would frown upon me sending them several notebooks full of handwritten novelization, so I figured I'd wait until I had a computer and a printer before doing so. Then I got one. Granted, it had an orange screen and it came from a Holiday Inn and I had to operate every program with MS-DOS because it had no form of Windows or any other visible operating system whatsoever. But I used it nonetheless with some little graphics program turned word processor to type stuff up.

It sucked. Granted, I was in like...middle school, but it was disappointing.

Truthfully, I know the problem with my writing, and it stems from RPGs. Everything I write is dialogue heavy, and full of battles, and most good fantasy novels only have a few battles in them through the entire course. I imagine this is because a properly described battle takes several pages, so with tons of battles, you're talking an extra few hundred pages of work. This simply does not compute. Beyond that, I'm used to having the surroundings right in front of me in the form of graphics, so I often emulate the same storytelling formula of games - dialogue and battle.

I don't use nearly enough to describe my characters, and sometimes I'm not sure I'd have the words even if I try. I mean, I could do what most fantasy type people on the internet do (thesaurus-thumping), but that's just not my style. Still, without the good words, I'm not entirely sure you can sell a book. Beyond characters, I don't spend enough time designing my worlds, and even less time describing them.

And that's what a fantasy novel should do. It should paint a vivid picture of the world the story takes place in, and the characters should be the same way. It's difficult, however, to do that while relying almost solely on dialogue to tell a story.

At the same time though, I don't really have the perfect story I've been searching for yet either, and thus...I lack the motivation to undergo the project itself.

Nonetheless, if Harry Potter can become such a huge deal in this country, I guess it's not that hard to strike gold. It's not as if Harry Potter is that well written, you know? It just has a certain appeal that the masses seem to enjoy.

I don't know. I should try it sometime, though. Perhaps with my studies of japanese, I'll come across some old folklore that will inspire me. You know, like the kind that inspired Yuu Watase's Ayashi no Ceres. I'm certainly not gong to find anything in American folklore.

Yeah, here's my fantasy novel spawned from an extended reading of Paul Bunyan. It's going to be huge.

Anyway, see? Sometimes if you just sit down and try, the words come.

~Don