It doesn't happen often. After I finish a great book, or story, I get a longing for the grandeur, the scale, the majesty, and the power of the thing, and - how can I convey it
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Thinking in mundanities gives you an in right there - people's lives keep going when the big epic stuff happens around them, and they fight for their mundanities when they get sucked in and their lives go to pot - someone has to round up the cows and stick 'em back in their pen, after all; someone has to make sure the bread gets baked and the streets stay passable and the that the laws get enforced (or not).
Not saying you have to write the mundane around the epic, but that the mundane that goes on inside the epic, the mundane that keeps going despite the epic, because it's necessary to human life, is what makes the epic *real*.
Some epics, you'd think your Heroic Band never used a latrine, for all the attention that gets paid to details like that.
(laughs) that's true, and I think, as you do, that it's an advantage. Certainly if I ever wrote something so big it would be from the inside, with the little details and daily things given importance (if only because that's what El Hero/ine is missing out on? lolno, I have more sense than to make details only special cause of that.)
But yeah. It's not Heroic Band I'm thinking so much as - well, lots of people taking part in a great change, something that changes the entire world. There would be Various Viewpoints. Yes.
There are times when I feel like ATS is epic in, at the very least, length and breadth of the timespan that I'm tackling. It never ceases to terrify me. There's a great sense of "How can I write a story over ≈30 years when I don't even know what ≈30 years feels like?" hanging over my head - and then I look at the actual *scope* and it's not the whole world*, it's just TBI. All of my older characters and some of my younger ones will be dead by the end of the books. (And I'm not even sure whether it's a Decline And Fall story anymore; with each decision I make the ultimate ending branches off into more and more potential directions, but that's another blither for another time.)
I don't think I could write a genuine epic without tongue firmly in cheek - whenever I think, "SRS BZNS" I start cracking up.
*except where it is - technological revolution spreads like fire
(nodnod) it works for epic-ish, I think, in that it goes through some real lows and real highs, and that its story spans a huge change in the world. Ditto, I think, for Olinscarr, with the same qualifiers.
I think they could fit at a mid-level of epic - a realistic level of epicness - I don't know what would be considered "genuine epic".
And now my mind is asking, "What is epic?" Because there's a certain kind of story that inspires these awe-filled feelings in me, and there's a certain type that doesn't.
Perhaps ... epic could be subdivided: majestic epic versus realistic epic versus herioc epic versus mythic epic. Because certainly there's things I read that I sit back and feel wow because of that, if I define epic as something that, as above,
1) has a great importance to the world it's set in 2) has far-reaching consequences 3) encompasses a great thing in the story/in the reader.
So - now I'm thinking it through there'd seem to be different kinds of epic, and they don't need to be high fantasy or straight-up mythos to be
( ... )
Always give it a shot. Though historically "Epics" are few and far between, that doesn't mean you can't write one for your own worlds.
Also, Epics have some sort of moral lesson, which I know you try to aviod in your stuff since you don't like it. But that's what makes the story have such great importance to it's world/culture. It speaks to us about what it means to be human, to be part of a community, to be a part of something greater than ourselves - and it shows us that those things which make the heroes triumph can be found within all of us.
Yeah. I'm thinking it may be possible that Book of a Hundred Letters may possibly end up an epic, maybe. It's striking me as having a big story like that, a plot and goings-on that affect the entire secondary world, and to be pretty emotionally involved, too.
(I don't know if it'll be a historically-enduring book, but it'll be as good a one as I can make it!)
Hmmm ... I have to think about that. The thing I don't like is preaching: it's not the "moral" part that concerns me so much as the "lesson" part. I like the freedom of depicting life's complexities without imposing a You Should on things: sure, a person Should this or Should that, but that doesn't mean they will. I like that people have that element of randomness, and I also like them rationalizing their choices, because it's fun to write. :D
I dislike "Preachy" stories as well, but all the really good Epics I can think of certainly have moral lessons. (Beowulf, The Iliad, LOTR, etc.) I don't think that having a "lesson" necessitates a You Should Do attitude towards it, nor that you suddenly have to give-up representing the rationalization of characters for their choices. The "lesson" is no more than the character acting in context in such a way that the reader can relate to the action and it's consequences.
One of the great things about art, and writing in particular, is that you can always take something that's "been done" and do it again. Pretty much always. If you're good at what you're doing, you'll be able to combine story elements in new and interesting ways, or at least take same-old and give a fresh perspective on it.
I would say that epics don't have a moral lesson so much as they very strongly express the attitude(s) of a culture. That can be one and the same, but it doesn't have to be. Also: many recent authors have done the "cowherd in a crisis" angle on epic storylines, and many more, past and present, have given us the perspective of more grand figures, as well. Again, it's not about doing something new (Terry Pratchett beat you to the punch with Guards! Guards! in 1989, if you wanted the little guy's POV), but about doing your take on something, which is definitely new.
(nodnod) See, there's a great difference between the attittude "nothing new under the sun" and the attitude "combine old things in new ways". I much prefer an optimistic stance, of people being able to do new things. At this point in history, any person will have so much background influence that making a new story needs not reworking of old tropes, but new ideas.
Hell, I'd argue Tolkien beat Pratchett to the punch, writing the little guy: Frodo, literally and figuratively, is the little guy, who seriously jsut wants to sit back in his round-doored-house, eat food, and smoke pipeweed. Of course that's not what happens, but it is a perspective on epics that was not common before.
(Also, I don't know if I'd consider Pratchett epic. Would you?)
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Not saying you have to write the mundane around the epic, but that the mundane that goes on inside the epic, the mundane that keeps going despite the epic, because it's necessary to human life, is what makes the epic *real*.
Some epics, you'd think your Heroic Band never used a latrine, for all the attention that gets paid to details like that.
Reply
But yeah. It's not Heroic Band I'm thinking so much as - well, lots of people taking part in a great change, something that changes the entire world. There would be Various Viewpoints. Yes.
Reply
I don't think I could write a genuine epic without tongue firmly in cheek - whenever I think, "SRS BZNS" I start cracking up.
*except where it is - technological revolution spreads like fire
Reply
I think they could fit at a mid-level of epic - a realistic level of epicness - I don't know what would be considered "genuine epic".
And now my mind is asking, "What is epic?" Because there's a certain kind of story that inspires these awe-filled feelings in me, and there's a certain type that doesn't.
Perhaps ... epic could be subdivided: majestic epic versus realistic epic versus herioc epic versus mythic epic. Because certainly there's things I read that I sit back and feel wow because of that, if I define epic as something that, as above,
1) has a great importance to the world it's set in
2) has far-reaching consequences
3) encompasses a great thing in the story/in the reader.
So - now I'm thinking it through there'd seem to be different kinds of epic, and they don't need to be high fantasy or straight-up mythos to be ( ... )
Reply
Also, Epics have some sort of moral lesson, which I know you try to aviod in your stuff since you don't like it. But that's what makes the story have such great importance to it's world/culture. It speaks to us about what it means to be human, to be part of a community, to be a part of something greater than ourselves - and it shows us that those things which make the heroes triumph can be found within all of us.
Reply
(I don't know if it'll be a historically-enduring book, but it'll be as good a one as I can make it!)
Hmmm ... I have to think about that. The thing I don't like is preaching: it's not the "moral" part that concerns me so much as the "lesson" part. I like the freedom of depicting life's complexities without imposing a You Should on things: sure, a person Should this or Should that, but that doesn't mean they will. I like that people have that element of randomness, and I also like them rationalizing their choices, because it's fun to write. :D
Reply
I dislike "Preachy" stories as well, but all the really good Epics I can think of certainly have moral lessons. (Beowulf, The Iliad, LOTR, etc.) I don't think that having a "lesson" necessitates a You Should Do attitude towards it, nor that you suddenly have to give-up representing the rationalization of characters for their choices. The "lesson" is no more than the character acting in context in such a way that the reader can relate to the action and it's consequences.
Reply
I would say that epics don't have a moral lesson so much as they very strongly express the attitude(s) of a culture. That can be one and the same, but it doesn't have to be.
Also: many recent authors have done the "cowherd in a crisis" angle on epic storylines, and many more, past and present, have given us the perspective of more grand figures, as well. Again, it's not about doing something new (Terry Pratchett beat you to the punch with Guards! Guards! in 1989, if you wanted the little guy's POV), but about doing your take on something, which is definitely new.
Reply
Hell, I'd argue Tolkien beat Pratchett to the punch, writing the little guy: Frodo, literally and figuratively, is the little guy, who seriously jsut wants to sit back in his round-doored-house, eat food, and smoke pipeweed. Of course that's not what happens, but it is a perspective on epics that was not common before.
(Also, I don't know if I'd consider Pratchett epic. Would you?)
Reply
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