World Building, Part 5: History

World Building

Artificial Historical Artifacts

Ever heard of Excalibur?  Durandal?  Patton's Ivory-handled Pistols?  What about the Rosetta Stone?  The Liberty Bell?  The Magna Carta?  These are examples historical artifacts and ancient wonders that give backstory to our world.  History both tangible and lost that shaped culture and events; a few the stuff of legends.  Now while works of fiction are planned and constructed, as opposed to seemingly random chance, these things all influenced the world at some point, and the fact that some of these things are still present in modern culture shows how much wonder and awe they inspired.  

The same principle applies to fictional worlds.  Without backstory, without history, we are left without context for the events of the story.  What would "Harry Potter" be if Hogwarts was a brand new wizard school without the secrets and mysteries that fill the halls?  What if the Deathly Hallows didn't exist?  If the fear that still existed after Voldemort's defeat (the first time) was absent?  It would be a very meaningless story about a wizard whose parents never died, who never had to outsmart the most terrible wizard ever to exist, and the books would be about mundane concerns that really don't seem that compelling.  Imagine "The Lord of the Rings" without the Rings.  Why would Frodo leave the Shire?  To buy groceries?  Gandalf would be pretty bored, that's for sure.  And if Morgoth and Angmar and all the other things that gave the novel its scope were absent, why would we care about these diminutive hobbits?  My point is: everything I discussed this week relates to a world's history.  The races, the cultures, the language, the mythology, all make the history and are made by the history.  

The Symbol of the Deathly Hallows

In fantasy, artifacts tend to usually be the goal of a quest, or needed to defeat an evil power.  Sometimes they do things that no one can explain, and others do things no one has a use for.  For my book, artifacts were one of the first things I thought about when first creating the world, and considering my age at the time most of them were weapons.  This has a lot to do with the numerous 'artifact weapons,' such as Glamdring, Orcrist, and Narsil, that have histories going as far back as the first great wars of the worlds history (many thousands of years old in most cases).  The only other artifact I came up with in my original drafts was something I called "the Omnicron," a stone that had undetermined power.  It was the goal of both the Hero and the Big Bad to get it before the other in order to accomplish their respective goals (killing each other, basically).  But I found that initial idea too simple (and way too over used in the genre).  However, the idea was morphed into something else, and is still the focus of the plot, but its origins and its purpose changed.  So maybe only changed superficially, but my beta readers have enjoyed "the orbs" in my work.  From there, other artifacts begin to take shape.

The next most important artifacts for my story are a collection of "Hero Weapons" for my protagonists.  A common trope in video games, Hero Weapons are usually something special that a hero uses in battle, and one of the most famous in literature is Excalibur.  Not to be confused with the king-maker Sword in the Stone, Excalibur was a sword wielded by Arthur and made him unbeatable in battle (until someone inevitably betrays him).  For my heroes, we have a sword, staff, a special arrow (not a bow), and a pair of daggers.  Who gets them, you'll have to read the story.  But I will let you all know about the Sword next week.  You've seen it already, and I look forward to explaining the process of how Graey Erb and I worked together to design it.  

Have a great weekend and a safe Halloween!  Look forward to a review of Halo 5 over the weekend.  Best wishes!

World Building, Part 4: Culture

World Building

A starting point for Culture

A bit of a continuation from yesterday's post

Last time I mentioned how including numerous cultures in a work can add depth and variety that makes improves the work (or it could detract from the work if done poorly).  To add to my world, one of the first decisions I made when I ultimately began the project was that it would start in a forested valley 'somewhere' beyond the borders of the more civilized parts of the world.  While the valley once was the center of an ancient civilization, wars between both mortal and immortal beings left the valley abandoned except by the few who felt it was their duty to remain and protect what had been left behind, while the rest moved on.

The people that still lived among the ruins are part of a culture I referred to as 'the Faithful' because they had chose to remain in and protect the cities of their ancestors, while 'the Exiles' were the ones who moved on from the Valley and chose not to cling tightly to their past in order to accept a new future.  A third culture, that I refer to as 'the Forsaken,' were on the wrong side of the aforementioned wars, and were driven away by the victors.  The latter two cultures I will not be discussing this time, but that they come from the same origin culture is important.  The Faithful are the predominant culture in the valley save for one village of refugees from a Exile town that was integrated into the valley and has a mixed cultural identity.

The Valley.

The Faithful are called such for they were (and still are) the pious citizens of a civilization that revered a Sun God, among others, in a henotheistic/polytheistic manner.  When the god of Night, Sun's brother, decides he wants to be king of the hill, a terrible war rages across much of the world.  Now this isn't a spoiler (you learn about this in the first few chapters) but the Night God loses, and the Sun God vanishes, assumed to have died stopping the Big Bad Night God by trapping him 'in the Path between worlds.'  The war, however, left the valley a mess and a city in ruins and a whole lot of smaller settlements uninhabitable without the infrastructure maintained by said razed city.  So the Faithful go native and become a more simplistic culture, hunting and gathering, in order to protect what's left of their ancestral home.  But what if the Big Bad comes back?

That is where the group that gives us the title of my book comes from:  The Pathkeepers.  Tasked with watching for signs of the Big Bad's return, the Pathkeeper philosophy is the driving force behind the valley culture.  And they became the stuff of legends across the world as stories of their (sometimes alleged) deeds filled taverns around the world.  But in truth they were a simple people.

The valley culture is sustained by hunting local wildlife and harvesting as much edible flora as the valley can sustain.  Without the infrastructure of a large city or civilization, the level of technology is somewhat primitive in certain ways, such as clothing being all animal skins, and yet they can still make more refined things like flax linen and tools (when they have the resources).  They also do not keep themselves completely separate from the larger world, except to keep potential threats out of the ancestral lands.  Instead, members of the culture are encouraged to leave the valley to see the wider world.  Divided into separate villages overlooking different ruins, the culture differentiates between the village in the skills the village needs the most, such as one village exists floating on a lake, and spear-fishing and swimming are skills they value more then others in other villages like archery or hunting on foot with a spear.

I could go further into explaining the culture and the Pathkeepers but that feels like I'm spoiling learning these things along with the protagonist.  I will instead leave you with some early artwork from which the symbol for the Pathkeepers evolved from.  This was of course from Graey Erb, Earl_Graey on DeviantArt.  Be sure to check him out at www.GraeyErbIllustration.com, or on DeviantArt.com.  I'll write a post further explaining the evolution of the image some other time.  I don't want to spoil anything before the book is even finished being written!  Thanks for reading!

World Building, Part 3: Creating a Living World

World Building

A whole new [living] world!

A dazzling place I never knew.
Aladdin © Disney

Don't judge me.

Every great story has a great setting created by a great author.  JK Rowling created Hogwarts.  Tolkien created Middle Earth.  Terry Pratchett created Discworld.  Suzanne Collins created Panem.  Whether the setting is on an imagined world, tucked creatively within our real world, or is a dystopian version of our own, these great settings did not spring forth from the ether fully fleshed out and ready to have stories told about and within them.  For Tolkien, it was his life's work that created Arda and Middle-Earth.  Years of studying old languages, creating new ones, and writing (either poetry in the trenches of The Great War or the first lines of "The Hobbit" on the back of a student's exam) culminated in the fantasy realm that inspired so many others.  The same goes for most authors.  Each took their passions and their life experiences and used them to craft their world.  And these works become the experiences of others, which then shapes the world.  There's a reason D&D, Dragon Age, and EverQuest, to name a few, all involve elves, dwarves, wizards, and dragons.  His name is Tolkien.  JK Rowling will no doubt shape the future of how people think of magic, as games, music, and even plays take inspiration from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter TM.  Each author's world has become a place others love to dwell in.

Every author seeks to draw you into their setting one way or another.  A friend of mine, Robin Dilks, self-published a paranormal romance novel that takes place in both the historical past and the present, redefining the mythology of the Biblical character Lilith in "Rachael Awakened."  (Still reading it.  Review pending.)  I was drawn into how she mixed paranormal tropes like demons, werewolves, and vampires, with historical eras like renaissance Italy.  With mine, I hope to appeal to high fantasy readers looking for something a little different, by playing with the established genre enough to make things unique and fresh.

For my story, creating the world started by figuring out some of the mythology that would be present.  Since I was following Tolkien for inspiration, that started with deciding that there would be a pantheon of deities.  From there, I had to have some sort of explanation for their existence, as well as an explanation of where the physical world came from.  I'll save the specifics for now but I ended up going with something slightly more cosmic than creationist, meaning the deities did not necessary "create" the world the story takes place in.  Shaped it, sure, but they did not "sing it into existence" like Iluvatar and the Valar did at the very beginning of "The Silmarillion."

My next step was, silly as it sounds, finding conflict.  In Tolkien's mythology, Melkor is the Big Bad Dark Lord from Day: Zero, and I sincerely wanted to do something else.  While I still wanted to play with those two tropes, I did not want my work to come off as even a little cliche (even though it probably will anyway), so I choose to take a more Lovecraftian angle toward the the Big Bad, while saving the Dark Lord bit for something else.  But I won't say more.  You'll have to read my book!

From there it was trying to decide what the world contained as far as sentients.  Most fantasy works, and especially science fiction works, have different kinds of mortal beings who interact and sometimes represent different thing.  Most times they are allegories for different real world states, religions, philosophies, or ethnicities.  "Redwall," a classic about a mouse who becomes a hero to save his little town, uses animals like mice, badgers, otters, and cats, to represent different kinds of people, with some being summarily bad (like evil rats opposed to the good mice).  Sometimes these allegorical pieces are intended and other times not, and only revealed through analysis.  I am doing some of this, but in a way where the individual cultures of my lizard people, and of any other sentients I include, will say more about what they represent then the being itself, while still letting the nature of certain beings influence that same representation.  If that sounds confusing:  You'll have to read my book!

And then it's identifying what sorts of cultures this world will have that comes next.  My story starts in a very tribal setting for a few reasons, it never stays there.  Just as LotR moves from the Hobbit filled Shire culture to the many Mannish cultures across Middle Earth (from Bree to Rohan to Gondor and back), so too will my story explore the world and its cultures.  That I think is one of the most important aspects of world building.  If you try to write a white washed world where Good here is Good there and everyone agrees that Good is Good, well it just doesn't reach the level a world that's complex and diverse.  What's Good in the protagonist's hometown might not be looked upon the same in a corrupt city where the only way to survive is to commit crimes.  That creates conflict, and conflict is what drives a story.

I wrote previously that I bounce back and forth between world building and actually writing the story.  I'm still not sure what would work best (for me or other people) but I have to say that without knowing enough about the places my characters are going, I can't write.  So if you're reading this for writing types, consider what works best for you, first, and then accept advice that you find helpful.  And always remember that if you think it will work and it doesn't, try something else.  Don't force it.  I never write well when I force it.  Thanks for reading. 

World Building, Part 2: Creating Language

World Building

Creating a language when you have terrible grammar

In my quest to emulate my chief inspiration, the late great Professor Tolkien, I aspire to create a language for use in my book.  That said, I know I will not be able to do even close to as good a job as the Professor, primarily due to the fact that he wrote his great works as a linguistic exercise.  Tolkien was fascinated with languages his entire life, teaching himself Finnish and Welsh and going on to study old Norse and Latin and Ancient Greek as he studied works such as The Kalevala and Beowulf.  He studied the old Welsh Arthurian legends and most of his scholarly work was based on this, while his creative works were a way for him to come to terms with a fantasy he held of what Britain might have been like if the Frankish Normans did not invade and conquer Britain in 1066.  So Quenya, and Sindarin, Black Speech, and a few others from the LotR related works he created, and he created the world of Arda (the planet Middle-Earth is on) around these exercises.  So, while I do not have the linguistic skill or desire to do quite the same as Tolkien, I wanted to at least create one language for my own use.

The Bible
(Of made up languages)

Now this practice of creating fictional languages is not limited to Tolkien's genius. In fact, I possess a book called "The Dictionary of Made-Up Languages: From Adunaic to Elvish, Zaum to Klingon -- The Anwa (Real) Origins of Invented Lexicons."  And yes, that says Klingon.  Qu'pla!  Authors of Science Fiction and Fantasy have been creating languages for decades, and even some were meant to be used in everyday speech (such as Esperanto).  Why not try my own hand at it?  So I tried.  And failed.  Because I had no idea where to start, at first.  This book is actually what got me started.  In the back of the book is a section about creating a language with some very generic advice.  Nothing world shaking, and definitely less impressive than a linguistic textbook, but part of this section is a list of about one hundred words that a common across most languages.

Having a list of words to make, I had to decide what the language would sound like.  Deciding that the longer snouts and the more limited motion of lips, there were certain phonemes I decided probably wouldn't be common, or exist at all.  Sounds like bah, mah, puh, fuh, poo, boo, moo, foo, etc., considering those sounds require the pursing of lips.  "But Shane, you characters speak Engl-" Suspension of disbelief, darn it!  To be fair, Tolkien thought of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" as being part of a fictional historical text called the Red Book of Westmarch, originally written in the language of "Mannish" and translated 'by' Tolkien in the modern era, making his works a pseudo-history of England.  (I may write another blog on this concept and what Tolkien was trying to do some time.)  Tangent over, moving on.  So my language would lack certain sounds, but I still had no idea what the words themselves would be.  While I studied Latin in high school and Italian at Rutgers University (Go R U!), those who took the class with me could tell you how terrible my understanding of grammar is, and therefore aside from vocabulary, anything besides English makes me sound incoherent.  So instead of using a real language and bastardizing it to fit my needs, I decided a more noble course.  I bastardized a fictional language instead.  My choice, quite fittingly, was dovahzul (literally Dragon Voice), also know as The Dragon Language.  And if that name sounds familiar, it should, if you've played as the Dovahkiin in "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim."

Learn more about the Dovahkiin at
the Elder Scrolls Wikia Page

Using the website www.Thuum.org as a starting place, I read through their lexicon of words both from the game and invented by the fans to see what words might sound like in a draconic language.  And then I began to either mutate an existing word from dovahzul or made up my own, basically by making noise until something sounded good.  Not the most elegant strategy, but I also used their website to understand the supposed grammar of dovahzul, giving me a template of sorts to work from.

At the moment, I have less then 20 words.  Most I came up with myself, but a few are mutated dovahzul words.  Everything else has some place holders taken right from the dovahzul dictionary that I just haven't gotten around to creating proper words for.

So that's it for this part of world building.  I've seen other fantasy worlds steal straight from old norse or other dead languages, which makes me feel less bad about co opting some words for the time being, but make no mistake about my intentions.  Linguistics is not my strong suit by any means, so working from an existing language is some what my only option.  Besides, imitation is the finest form of flattery, right?

Leave a comment!  I would love to hear from my readers!  What do you think of my strategy?  Stay tuned for more world building!

World Building, Part 1: Designing the Protagonists

World Building

Creating a Race from 'scratch'

I'm not sure if this is as much fun for other authors, but the planning out my world while planning out the story that will be told within that world is a great deal of fun for me.  It started with my main character and quickly into the race of people he belonged to.  As far back as 2003 I knew I wanted my main character to be a 'dragon guy,' probably because of my mild obsession with the anime 'Dragon Ball Z' at the time, but it never got more complicated than that.  I was constantly changing what they could do, starting off as near analogs for DBZs saiyans that turned into dragons, to fire-breathers, to having or not having wings.  Eventually I boiled it down to the basics after reading "The Lord of the Rings" and seeing the films and maturing in my tastes and ideas a bit.  It wasn't until I had to write about them and describe them without walls of text that I began to seriously wonder what they really looked like.  So in May of 2015, I contacted an artist I discovered through Pinterest, of all places, and asked him if he would be interested in working with me on a project to design my main character, the race he belonged to, and a sword that would be at his side during his adventure.  He would later also help me create the design I use for my profile picture, which is also an important symbol in my book.  His name is Graey Erb, and he can be found on his website GraeyErbIllustration.com or on Deviant Art as Earl-Graey (We see what you did there, Graey).

The Captain Approves.

To make the task easier for Graey, I assembled a document of things I wanted to see in my new race of lizard people.  I had seen a few years ago a piece of art on Deviant Art by another artist, koutanagamori, called "Lizard Man," that served as the chief inspiration for my own lizard man.  It showed a creature with digitigrade feet, a prehensile tail, an arched neck and a pointed snout, and some horns or spines coming out of the rear of the skull, and wielded a pole-arm, with sketches of the character expressing different emotions or movements in the background.  I knew that this was close to what I wanted, but needed my characters to still be different.  And that difference was to make take them from just being a somewhat standard lizard people, to having some more draconic (dragon-like) and dinosaur-like traits.  

Lizard Man by koutanagamori @ DeviantArt.com

With that in mind, I used the physiology of the "Lizard Man" character to describe the basic body of my own lizardfolk, I went on to explain the features I wanted my race to have.  I proceeded to research lizards, reptiles, and even dinosaurs for traits that I wanted to appropriate for my race, then use pictures of the lizard/reptile/dinosaur to give the artist a visual rather than verbal explanation.  The first specimen I found is a lizard that takes it's name from the terrible antagonist of Tolkien's "The Hobbit," Smaug!

The Smaug lizard, Smaug giganteus,
aka the sungazer, giant girdled lizard or giant dragon lizard.

Clearly a reptile after my own heart, the sungazer was a natural choice to be used as inspiration for my own creation, and I choose the horn-like protrusions on the back of his head, and the texture of his scales, to add to my lizardfolk.  Now, these features are more prominent in my main character than in other characters featured in the book, due to their being multiple sub-races (some with horns and some without, for instance), but still carried over to the general flavor of the people.  From here, I had to find features for the lizardfolk my main character interacts with through the majority of the story, which are the lizardfolk without horns.  These characters, though part of the same race, had some slightly smoother features when compared to the sungazer, so I choose another lizard friend that I'm pretty sure the internet loves.

The face of a happy lizard.  Or one about to steal your crickets.
Thank you, TheLioness24 @ DeviantArt.com, for your
beautiful gecko picture!

If ever there was a friendly (looking) lizard in the world, it's the leopard gecko.  So I wanted to incorporate them into my own lizard people.  Their 'trademark' grin and skull shape along with the eye placement made them seem an ideal candidate for my needs.  They even looked similar to koutanagamori's own lizard man that they seemed to be meant to be - um - appropriated.  

But how was I supposed to say it, Ariel!

The final piece of the puzzle was the clothes, and for that I moved away from lizards and towards native peoples.  Inparticular, I focused on the Cherokee and Iroquois for inspiration, being peoples I was familiar with and lived in a region similar to where the story begins.  Since most native peoples wore leather, the most basic material I suggested Graey to think of was such, while also suggesting that fur might make sense to include in a temperate climate like that of the north-eastern part of the United States of America (where I live).  Flaxen linens were not unheard of in other native cultures, so that was suggested as well. Also, I gave suggestions on motifs and symbols that may find their way into their clothing, since these people revere fire and light.  Ultimately, Graey took all of my notes and suggestions and produced the follow pieces of art, in order.  As a quick note, I have to point out that his first version of my lizard folk was so spot on that I was immediately in love with them, and couldn't wait to get my main character finished.

The first piece of work Graey sent me, and I was in love.  Here we have my main character, #1, an average male, #2, and an average female, #3, with crest variations.
Concept © Shane Press.

Here we worked out the colors.  The females of this race have feathers as their attractive features, and the crests and colors vary according to genetics.
Concept © Shane Press.

Here we are working out the pose for the final image.  We did this after designing the sword, which will be discussed in a separate blog post.
Concept © Shane Press.

Here Graey working on an idea I had of putting an action shot behind the fully colored finished piece.  We settled on a pose where the main character is admiring the sword.
Concept © Shane Press.

The first pass when designing the clothing.  The finished piece took parts of both and worked them together, though each was good enough to be left alone on another character.
 Concept © Shane Press.

And the original final piece.  Note the shot in the background.
This was such an amazing experience getting this in my inbox.
Concept and Design © Shane Press.

I have to thank Graey Erb again for the fantastic work he did on this project.  If it wasn't for his patience and hard work, I would not have such a great piece of art to draw inspiration from when writing.  This artwork, all of it, makes writing so much easier when I can just reference them to help describe my characters.  Please take a moment to check out his work at www.graeyerbillustration.com.  And thanks for reading!

The Weekender: A realization while playing Halo

Halo: Revelations!

So, a few days ago I posted about Halo, and why I love it.  Well, I know more about why I love it while playing it this weekend in order to get myself in the groove to play Halo 5 on Tuesday:  I love it because of the Sangheili!  

The Elite of the Covenant, the Sangheili!

"So what, Shane?  They're ali-"  They are lizard people!  And they both prove my original point about lizard people in popular media, and resist it (in a limited sense as of Halo 4).  In the original Halo, they are only referred to as Elites, and they are the ... elite... soldiers of the alien hegemony called the Covenant, which makes them the bad guys.  They are the military leaders of their armed forces, and are generally armed with a special energy sword or a plasma rifle.  Now, in Halo 2, we are introduced to the Arbiter.

Thel 'Vadam, the Arbiter,
and Redeemer of Lizard People Everywhere 

The Arbiter was the Commander of the Fleet of Particular Justice, which means every single one of the baddies in Halo: Combat Evolved.  Having failed to kill the Hero, Master Chief, he's disgraced by the leaders of the Covenant and forced to become the Arbiter, a commando meant to die on a suicide mission for the glory of the Covenant.  And guess what?  You get to play as him as he tries to redeem himself.  Well, a spoiler alert later (come on, it's been like 10 years), the Arbiter realized the Covies are crazy genocidal maniacs and the Sangheili become good guys!  (For now.)  In Halo 3, still good guys, they help you finish off the Covenant, and if you played the 4 person Xbox-Live Co-Op, Chief is joined by the Arbiter and two other elites to kick more alien butt.

Then comes Halo 4, and guess who's back to being baddies?  If you guessed anyone besides the Sangheili, you were wrong.  Sorry, I know.  Moving on.

So to my point:  More of why I love Halo!  In my experience, (which I admit may be quite limited), this is probably one of the only times outside of a tabletop RPG, an MMO, or an Elder Scrolls game that you get to play as a non-humanoid/demi-human (such as orcs, dwarves, elves, etc).  And not only that, they get a truly fleshed out culture that reminds me of samurai ruled Japan, with clans and a caste system.  No swamp dwelling, bone wearing, warm-blood deathing lizard people.  Okay, maybe they're still screaming for the death of human at first but the lore of the Halo Universe says that the Elites believed humans were worthy of respect for fighting against all odds for their existance, which is why the Sangheili eventually team up with the humans.  As of Halo 5, humans are helping the Arbiter end a civil war among the Elites.

SPARTAN Locke and Fireteam Osiris
storming Sangheilios to help the Arbiter

In relation to my book, the Sangheili probably informed the way I wanted my lizard people to look, as well as the way I want them to act.  I've always been fascinated with samurai, and the Elites are lizard-people-alien-space-samurai-complete-awesome-plasma-swords.  Anyway, here is a shot of a Sangheili (I think the Arbiter) without armor on.

Notice the four-fingered hand?

I may discuss my design decisions for my people in-depth tomorrow!  So, there's my weekend edition of my blog.  Going forward, I plan to write one Weekender sometimes Saturday or Sunday, and then one per weekday (provided I'm not too busy, and not on major holidays).  So thanks for reading.  And as always, "No politics, I promise!"

Tropes

The Building Blocks of a Narrative

First things first...

Once upon a time, over the river and through the woods, lived a farmer, who was as old as the hills, and his daughter, who was as clever as a fox.  One day, they woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and fell head over heels.  Scared out of their wits, they ran at the speed of light in the nick of time to avoid the house falling down on them.  They lived happily ever after.  The End.

The most classic of cliché, "The End."

If you've heard of any of the devices I used above before: Congratulations!  You're familiar with some of the most basic (and sadly overused) building blocks of storytelling!  We call them clichés, and they are given this unfortunate name because they are, word for word, so overused that you can't avoid them in your lifetime.  Every parent has told every child across time, at some point, some version of a cliché, either at bedtime or as a life lesson or while scolding them, etc.  These days, memes are becoming the new cliché.  But when you watch "The Big Bang Theory" on CBS and think, "Oh, Penny's blonde so she must be dumb," or you watch 'sport-of-choice' and think an athlete is dumb just because he/she/they is/is/are an athlete, congrats, cliché!  You may say, "But Shane, these are stereotypes."  Stereotypes are a type of cliché.  So enough about clichés.  If you can turn on a sitcom and figure out characters by their appearance, or see someone on the street and make a snap judgement about someone, you've 'clichéd,' and sadly that's boring.

What I find interesting is instead tropes.  Now, you may think to yourself," What's the difference?"  Or maybe, "What's a trope?"  Direct dictionary definitions aside, "a trope is a convention. It can be a plot trick, a setup, a narrative structure, a character type, [or] a linguistic idiom..." (TvTropes.org).  Generally, you know them when you see them, but they don't make you rolls your eyes and sigh thinking, "Another dumb blonde/Chinese math-wiz/antisocial scientist?"  Tropes are non-disruptive, were as a cliché is, or can be, disruptive to the storytelling.

Stormtrooper Accuracy = Cliché

A classic example of a trope is "The Captain."  Star Wars, Star Trek (and all it's spin-offs), Star Gate, Babylon 5...  you name it.  If the show has a military twist, naval or otherwise, you know The Captain.  Kirk, Picard, Solo, O'Neil, Sinclair.  I could go on, but you know that when you talk about The Captain you are referring to not just someone in charge of a naval vessel, you're talking about the guy who takes command and leads people in war.  And while they don't always carry the literal rank or title of Captain, you know who they are.  That is a trope.  It's recognizable and it doesn't get in the way.  There's no one single catch phrase or slogan that goes with it, and most of the time the individual Captains have their own.  And the trope doesn't limit the attributes of this leader like a stereotype.  Kirk and Picard are not the same types of Captain.  Han Solo goes from just 'a captain' to The Captain when he turns away form being a loner and decides to help fight the Empire.  Luke Skywalker goes from disgruntled, whiny farm-boy to a pensive, insightful Jedi and squadron leader.  None of them do the same things, but they all fit the Trope.

"O Captain! my Captain!" - Walt Whitman

I love tropes.  Why?  Because noticing tropes requires not just a familiarity with genre, but an understanding of the very conventions they illustrate.  And sometimes when you think about a particular character or story or even series, you can surprise yourself with what tropes are embedded in your favorite story.  To students of Literature, these things become plain to see after enough exposure.  For instance, what do Darth Vader, Voldemort, and Sauron have in common?  If you said, "They're all villains," then you recognize them as the classic trope of villains.  But that's just the surface.  Each one of them stem from another trope, The Evil Overlord trope.  "Wow, Shane, really?"  Yeah, yeah, stick with me.  These tropes resonate across myth and time.

Meet 'Ares'

For instance, "Gods of War."  Ares, Athena, Odin, Freya, Set, Horus, Ishtar, Bishamon.  Gods of war across the world from Greece to Japan to Norway to Egypt.  They even are applied to real people.  George S Patton, US General of the Third Army during World War Two is said to have believed he was a reincarnation of the Spartans of Greece, who were the War-Godliest people of ancient Greece.  And then there's Spartans themselves.

Meet SPARTAN Team Noble:
Jorge, Kit, Carter, Emile, and Jun.

How many college and high school teams call themselves the Spartans.  The fascination with Spartans in sports, movies, and video games (whether the historical Greeks, the Fictional Greeks, or the Augmented Super-soldiers of HALO) comes from our fascinations with yet another trope: The Proud Warrior Race.

I could rant for pages about tropes.  And yet I've hardly touched how deep tropes can go.  They refer to theme, plot devices, character development, character archetypes, even the things in media that don't make sense!  When people someday read my novel I look forward to people prying it apart to discover the tropes I've purposefully worked into my novel, and discovering the tropes that snuck into it.  Because it's a form of literary archaeology, a process of looking at what was used to build the story, consciously and subconsciously, that fascinates me.  So many things from the books, games, and movies I've enjoyed over time will find there way into my novel, and I can't wait to dig them up with others and discuss them.  

A look into the mind of an Author.

How I Write (and sometimes not write)

Between public school, college, and chatting with fellow writers, I have heard of many different ways authors write.  Some prefer to have the entire plot outlined with all the varying subplots and twists and reveals and turns figured out and waiting to be fleshed out.  Some determine the goals of various characters and write out how their methods of attaining those goals conflict and breed conflict in a natural way.  Others just wing the first draft and fix it later.  I think of myself as the later most type of author, except that I'm really all three fighting for control of one mind and one set of hands.

When I the novel living in my head first started to form in the early 2000s, I could have told you everything that was going to happen in modest detail.  How my Main (how I'll refer to him for now) was this outcast loner with dead parents and a bad attitude and how he was protecting the little town he lived in despite no one liking him and then getting pulled into the larger plot when the brother of a princess comes looking for his sister in town and how Main had to go find her "or else."  He finds her, she tells him of the badness happening in her city and how her brother's okay but he's misinformed so Main and princess sneak out of the town and out of the valley to the city.  Then they confront the bad guy but he's got control of the city and now the Main and the princess and the motley crew they end up assembling have to go to the...

Are you still here?  If you are, welcome to an author's mind.  For me, it's just like that.  This string of events that are like points plotted on a chart, laid out in my mind with varying alternatives leading to other events that sometimes interconnect with the connections of choices not made because the bad guy is making things happen, too.  And when I first started, I thought I knew them all.  I thought that making my Main a lizardman version of a hobbit with his petty coats and houses and taverns and blacksmiths in his Valley home made sense.  Until I started to write.  And as I wrote, I would struggle to get to each event.  So how exactly does Main get into the forest to get confronted by the Brother to get roped into finding the Princess to get roped into going to the City to...

Ugh.  If poking a hole in my temple and letting the story bleed out on to the page as I've imagined it it would be so easy!  But instead I would fuss over everything:  What my characters wore;  How to describe the way lizard people sit; how to describe The Sword (I'm going to write an in depth article about The Sword soon, stay tuned.)  All these things would basically stop me from writing because I was so conflicted about what or how to write that I wouldn't do the thing I wanted to do: write!  (And you might even say that now I'm focusing too much energy on writing a blog instead of my book.)  

During these times when the book isn't coming easy, I would focus on world building.  Sometimes that would unblock the writer's block because it gave me time to figure things out, like world history, or an area's culture, or even try to explain how lizard people sit down.  A lot of the evolution of my story took place when I was writing this information that most people probably won't ever know unless it becomes relevant to the story as it's being told.  For instance, when I initially started working on my book I was so enthralled by "The Lord of the Rings" and by Peter Jackson's movie interpretations of Tolkien's epic story that I literally lifted the idea of the Valar and Maiar from "The Silmarillion!" (and if you didn't know, the Silmarillion is literally the entire history of Middle Earth.)

Gandalf & Saruman,
two of the five Maiar from Tolkien's world.
Photo credit of New Line Cinema and Wingnut Films

Not even kidding.  I took the concept of each one of the Valar (the Gods/Goddesses) and just gave them a different name and some of my own tweaks to better fit my story (like gender swapping or altering their theme/domain).  More recently, I've revisited them to make them fit my story better.  That mainly involved fitting them to the world, and since pantheons of deities are common place in fantasy literature, I've never looked back.  I don't pretend to be doing anything that hasn't been done before (apart from featuring lizard people as my protagonists).

The Valar, Couples Edition
By wolfanita on DeviantArt.com

Then, at some point, it's back to the story itself.  Sometimes I then return to writing what was otherwise unwritten before.  Other times I let myself be drawn into revisions and edits that would be better saved for later.  But I can honestly say that if I hadn't been fussing over certain aspects of my story, it would be nowhere near as 'figured out' as it is now.  I have a much better vision of what I want to write and how I want to portray the characters and the world than I did as the insanely inspired but directionless teenager I once was.  Now I'm just struggling to wring the details out of a very busy and distracted adult brain.

I think today's post went tangential to my original purpose but that's okay (I think!)  Tomorrow I may write about something a little more structured.  Still figuring out this blogging thing.  Should I be professional and very structured or just let thoughts pour out of my head?  Feel free to tell me what to do in the comments.  I may take it under advisement.  Or not.  Thanks for reading!

Off Topic: Halo

Video Games!

So yesterday, after I got home from work, a nice little box was on our front porch.  Inside sat my new game system, in all it's silvery-black glory.  I know that Microsoft did an unboxing so if you want to see what's inside, I posted the video below.

So after letting the system update all night and all the next day, I'm looking forward to playing with it.  But the bad news?  Halo 5 isn't playable until next Tuesday.  So instead, I'll be "blastin' and relaxin'" with The Halo Master Chief Collection... once that downloads.

Halo is an interesting story.  I'm not going to even try to summarize over a decade of world building that I still don't know everything about.  However, I love the story too much not to talk about.

When I first played it I was drawn into the world not so much by the theme, or the gun-fighting, or the level design, but by the atmosphere created by Bungie's brilliant decision to not make the protagonist a strong personality.  So what do I mean by that.  Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, the grand hero of the series, was practically a blank slate in the first game.  Sure, he talked.  He wasn't the silent Doom hero who just grunted as you blasted demons.  But instead, what little you got from him allowed you to project your self into his Olive Green armor.  Bungie pulled you in by making you feel like the Hero.  No past was offered.  He's not even referred to by name until the second game.  Everyone called you Chief, and that's who you were.  The only Spartan left.  Some NPCs even suggested you were a robot.  Maybe you were!  There were no novels yet.  No animated shorts.  No Halo Channel or Sequels or ODST spin offs.  Just "Halo: Combat Evolved."  The first game most Xbox players owned because it came with most consoles.  And while all the critics talked about how Xbox had no chance of standing up to the Playstation 2, hundreds, thousands, millions of people were blasting Covies and saving the universe from the Flood, probably one of the most terrifying things I'd ever seen in a video game at the time, and I used to play Resident Evil 2 in the basement at night.  (Once the power went out while I was playing and I flipped out.  When the flood first poured out of the floor in The Library, it was daytime.  I still flipped out.)

That's why that box was sitting on my porch.  The game- no the story got me where Bungie wanted it to.  Right in the "You can be a hero and save the world" part of every teenagers heart and mind.  That "you can do anything" mentality that makes classics stick with people for so long.  And now over ten years later (nearly 14 in fact) I still love Halo.  The story has gotten deeper, wider, multileveled.  Instead of the idealistic Humans vs Aliens story of the first game, pitting the human spirit of survival against a genocidal confederation of alien races, it's now much more.  Now the good guys aren't so good, the bad guys aren't so bad.  Maybe it's because the world has changed.  The post-terrorist universe of the early 2000s has been replaced by skepticism and a world were it's hard to really know what's best, and who's good, and who's bad.  But I promised no politics, so I'll just leave by saying that Halo has evolved with the times.  They've created a fascinating world that's as multifaceted as our real world.  But under it all, that fantasy of being the hero remains.  John-117 stands as the consummate hero in a universe filled with treacherous covert organizations, dangerous terrorists both alien and human, and the ever present threat of the unknown, and fights to bring those who value "the greater good"  together to keep the innocent safe.

Went from idealism to realism back to idealism.  Most of the great stories do that the best.  I hope my own tale can touch on this.  I'm sure my first novel won't have even close to the depth of a franchise 14 years in the making, despite being almost as old (in concept, at least).  So one day, when readers have a copy of my novel in their hands, digital or paper, I hope someone gets as inspired by my work as many were by Halo.  

About my Book

The Pathkeeper Chronicles

So you may have asked, after reading the first post, "So Shane, what exactly is your book about?"  The simple answer is:

My Lizard People.
Art by Graey Erb.  Copyright Shane Press 2015

And now you may be wondering, "Why lizard people?"  Let's go way back into my past to answer that question.

So I grew up in the 90's, and if there was one thing I loved as a child it was dinosaurs.  Jurassic Park came out in 1993 when I was five years old, and seeing that T-rex roar as it came out from behind the electric fence during the storm was mind blowing.  Even before then, I would watch anything I could about Dinosaurs, including a Walter Cronkite hosted A&E special called "Dinosaur!" which I probably watched so many times that I'm surprised the VHS tape didn't snap.  (Leave a comment if you ever watched a VHS tape over and over again...)

Also as a child, I spent a lot of time out doors, specifically in the small city of Oneonta, in upstate New York, USA.  Mostly rural, the mountain my grandfather built a house on as a family retreat was where I met these cute little lovelies.

The red eft, or red-spotted newt

These little guys were always underfoot in the late afternoon, coming out to search for bugs and enjoy the moist warmth of rotting logs.  I would collect that and feed them ants and then let them go again to find the next time I would visit.

That said, as I grew older, my dinosaur fascination turned into a Godzilla fascination (Or Gojira for the purists).  A giant radioactive dinosaurian monster that fights other monsters (and occasionally levels cities) was an instant favorite of mine, especially since I was completely naive to the allegorical underpinnings involving Japan's sad history with atomic energy.  But that's for another blog.  I was hooked.

So what else is huge, levels cities, and breaths fire?

Dragons!

And you would think for a fan of fantasy that the dragon would be the apex of awesomeness, right?  Well, you would be right to think so.  They don't call it "Dungeons & Dragons" for no reason.  Before Gygax and Tolkien, story tellers throughout history have held the dragon (and there various cross-cultural equivalents) as the apex of power.  There is an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the various draconic beings across the world.

Now I'm not the first to decide that lizard people should exist.  Ignoring myths and legends, D&D, The Elder Scrolls, Dragonlance, the classic Warhammer, and many other games and novels have decided that lizard people should exist!  But more often than not they turn out to be enemies (the lizardfolk in D&D), or enslaved (the Argonians in much of The Elder Scrolls Lore).  On top of that, when they aren't evil or antagonistic, they seem to be consistently portrayed as swamp dwelling tribals (often in a Mayincatec fashion) that scream, "Death to the warm-bloods!"

The D&D Lizardfolk

Now, those are some sweeping generalizations I made.  A website I enjoy visiting, TvTropes.org, has numerous articles on the subject ranging from a synopsis of the common tropes to an explanation of why they are so often villainized.  And I recognize that these tropes get challenged sometimes.  The Elder Scrolls games let you play as Argonians.  Dungeons & Dragons has made so many types of lizard people (some of draconic origin) as both NPCS (non-player character) and PC (player character) templates that you be almost anything with scales with the right Dungeon Master.  But I challenge anyone who reads this to point to me a book that has any form of scaly humanoid as the principle protagonist, and not some sort of side kick.  Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and predominantly Humans feature more often than lizard folk.  Even anthropomorphic animals get more prominent roles than our scaly friends.  Ever read Redwall?  A Narnia novel?  An Aesop fable?

So, being the dino/dragon/amphibi-reptile lover that I was, I declared that I would tackle the glaring absence of non-human like protagonists in literature that I believe exists with my book.  And by embracing some tropes common to them and fighting against others, I slowly devised a race of beings that I thought would make a fine contender as the "next big thing" in literature.  Or at least something I had fun writing about.  My lizard people (I will reserve revealing the name of the race for now until my book comes out) have varying cultures and numerous civilizations within my world.  In the beginning of my book I showcase a tribal culture, to root the book in some of the recognizable aspects attributed to lizardfolk in literature and games.  But the story leads the protagonist and his allies to European style city, a Japanese/Mongolian themed nomadic culture, and beyond.  I wanted to make them as varied as humans.

Which brings up the last thing I'll write about in today's blog, the dreaded question I've been asked several times by different alpha-readers whom I showed my early work to in college:  "Why don't you just make them human?"

As I mentioned, lizardfolk don't get top billing unless they happen to be 500 stories tall and named after a Japanese legend (I'm looking at you Gojira).  So while my lizard people may act like humans, talk like humans, wear clothes and use tools like humans, and even have interpersonal relationships like humans, I will never, ever, for any reason, make my characters human.  Maybe it's because I don't see the point when the internet is full of anthro-dogs, -cats, -rats, -dragons, etc.  So why not some lizard folk headlining a novel?  I mean wouldn't this guy look good on a cover?

Meet the main character, somewhere in the middle of the novel!
Art by Graey Erb.  Copyright Shane Press 2015.

Welcome to the Draconic Author's Blog

Welcome to my blog!

Greetings!  My name is Shane Press.  In 2000, I was introduced to a novel known to many around the world as "The Hobbit." Handed to me by my mother one day while I sat in a chair watching TV, I was quickly drawn into a colorful world filled with orcs, goblins, dwarves, wizards, dragons, and of course hobbits.  Unsatiated by the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and Thorin Oakenshield, I quickly dove into "The Lord of the Rings," and followed Bilbo's nephew Frodo on his own, far more epic and dangerous adventure, to save the world from the Dark Lord Sauron by destroying the treacherous One Ring.  And then, on December 19, 2001, something happened that would change my life forever.

When I first saw "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" I was blown away by the music, the costumes, the weapons, the scope, and the sheer genius of the production.  The classic novel I read and the daydreams of fighting in Helm's Deep and on the walls of Minas Tirith were brought to life by the performances of Viggo Mortensen, Elijah Wood, Sir Ian McKellen, and so many others.  And in the two following years as I got to watch "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King" I came to realize I had to do one thing:  I had to write my own epic fantasy.  In the years since, I have been slowly working through my own novel.  The earliest iterations have evolved from a simple plot-clone of Tolkien's fantastic work to a developed coming-of-age tale.

I am currently 78 pages into writing the novel's most current and stable iteration.  Whether it was good or not, from 2006 to 2013, I wrote very little due to my time at Rutgers University for my undergraduate work and at Kean University doing post-baccalaureate work.  To compound the difficulties I had writing during my university career, I suffer from the constant desire to revise and edit things I've already written instead of just writing!  However, I was lucky to be able to take some Creative Writing classes at Ocean County College in 2014 and early 2015 where I finally found my stride, and the disparate threads of my story finally began to be weaved together into their current form.  So now as I slowly march forward, struggling with the urge to revise and the other constant distractions of life (I like video games too much), I look forward to sharing the story with the world.

So I hope to occasionally post some snippets of the book here, as well as some conceptual art I had commissioned to assist me in solidifying certain aspects of my characters and important objects in the story's world.  But I will close this post out with a piece of art:  An amulet that once belonged to an ancient organization devoted to protecting their world from an evil more ancient than the Gods that enlisted them.  They also give us the working title of my novel.  They are The Pathkeepers, and the newest member of their ranks may prove to be the only being that can prevent disaster.

An amulet that once belonged to a Pathkeeper, showing the sun motif, the runic motto of the Pathkeepers, the purifying flames, and the central labyrinth (the Path) that they guard.
 Art by Graey Erb for Shane Press, Copyright 2015.