Actually, I've been chatting with Jack over on IJ and I think we've come pretty close to working out a plot he could use, but nothing really concrete on mine. [bemused smile]
I don't want to just wait and start from ground zero -- I think last year's NaNo was a lot more stressful for me than it needed to be because of that. I need to finish two jobs before I really work on mine, though. I'm working on one of them (the critique/commentary one) around e-mails, and I'm about sixty pages from being done, huzzah. Even a couple of days to just think about what I'm doing and do some keyboard-babbling would help immensely. [crossed fingers]
And yeah, that part of the Branwen story could definitely use a bit of updating. [wry smile] The evil brother is an interesting character, although the whole murdered-his-baby-nephew thing is a bit O_O you know? Very common -- there's crap like that in the Bible, and in a lot of other older literature from various cultures, from when children were considered the property of their parents, especially their fathers, and people seemed to think nothing of killing or maiming a child just to punish the parents. But still. Ick.
And I know what you mean about it possibly requiring more work than making up something from scratch. I think it depends what you're good at, though. I've seen writers opine, in clear type in front of everyone, that they like fantasy "because you can just make it all up." With the implication being that you can just make up each individual chunk as you need it, and that the writer is completely unaware of any necessity for the society they're writing about to actually hold together in a logical way, for the parts to fit and relate logically to one another. Creating a good fantasy (or SF) culture from scratch is hard, and it takes a lot of thought and work. But if you have a good grounding in anthropology and history and a variety of literatures from various cultures, it's easier than if you're starting from scratch intellectually.
At the same time, doing something historical is a lot of work because you need to look everything up. Sources aren't always readily available, and there's a lot of crap out there that's been published with a straight face. (But of course you know that.) And some info just doesn't exist, so you have to absorb what is available well enough to get a decent feel for it, so you can reason or intuit what people would have done to accomplish some task, or how they'd have thought about some issue, in a way which fits with what's known about their society. Here too, it's really hard if you're starting from scratch, especially if you have a lot of garbage (like from movies, for example) to un-learn, before you can start building an accurate picture in your head about what, say, 15th century Florence was like.
So it depends where a newbie writer is coming from. Depending on the newbie, if they realize how much work a historical is, they might decide to write a fantasy because they think it'll be easier. And if they realize how much work a fantasy is, they might decide to write a historical because it's "easier." (After all, you can just look stuff up -- that's what Wikipedia is for. [facepalm])
Which one is actually easier depends on your background and how much relevant info you have in your head already. Neither way is actually easy, but one might be easiER than the other if you start out with some of the background you need.
None of which is anything you didn't know, of course, but I've been up all night and I'm babbling. [duck] Actually, I could probably get a column out of this.... :)
no subject
I don't want to just wait and start from ground zero -- I think last year's NaNo was a lot more stressful for me than it needed to be because of that. I need to finish two jobs before I really work on mine, though. I'm working on one of them (the critique/commentary one) around e-mails, and I'm about sixty pages from being done, huzzah. Even a couple of days to just think about what I'm doing and do some keyboard-babbling would help immensely. [crossed fingers]
And yeah, that part of the Branwen story could definitely use a bit of updating. [wry smile] The evil brother is an interesting character, although the whole murdered-his-baby-nephew thing is a bit O_O you know? Very common -- there's crap like that in the Bible, and in a lot of other older literature from various cultures, from when children were considered the property of their parents, especially their fathers, and people seemed to think nothing of killing or maiming a child just to punish the parents. But still. Ick.
And I know what you mean about it possibly requiring more work than making up something from scratch. I think it depends what you're good at, though. I've seen writers opine, in clear type in front of everyone, that they like fantasy "because you can just make it all up." With the implication being that you can just make up each individual chunk as you need it, and that the writer is completely unaware of any necessity for the society they're writing about to actually hold together in a logical way, for the parts to fit and relate logically to one another. Creating a good fantasy (or SF) culture from scratch is hard, and it takes a lot of thought and work. But if you have a good grounding in anthropology and history and a variety of literatures from various cultures, it's easier than if you're starting from scratch intellectually.
At the same time, doing something historical is a lot of work because you need to look everything up. Sources aren't always readily available, and there's a lot of crap out there that's been published with a straight face. (But of course you know that.) And some info just doesn't exist, so you have to absorb what is available well enough to get a decent feel for it, so you can reason or intuit what people would have done to accomplish some task, or how they'd have thought about some issue, in a way which fits with what's known about their society. Here too, it's really hard if you're starting from scratch, especially if you have a lot of garbage (like from movies, for example) to un-learn, before you can start building an accurate picture in your head about what, say, 15th century Florence was like.
So it depends where a newbie writer is coming from. Depending on the newbie, if they realize how much work a historical is, they might decide to write a fantasy because they think it'll be easier. And if they realize how much work a fantasy is, they might decide to write a historical because it's "easier." (After all, you can just look stuff up -- that's what Wikipedia is for. [facepalm])
Which one is actually easier depends on your background and how much relevant info you have in your head already. Neither way is actually easy, but one might be easiER than the other if you start out with some of the background you need.
None of which is anything you didn't know, of course, but I've been up all night and I'm babbling. [duck] Actually, I could probably get a column out of this.... :)
Angie