Environment - More Than Meets the Eye

 

Dune by Frank Herbert - Novel Poster 1965

Today I want to explore the impact environment can have on a story. From subtle to profound, I think you'll find there is more than meets the eye...

First off, think of stories like Dune, Frank Herbert's SFF novel recently produced as a Netflix Series. I mean, Dune! The storms that cover rich resources, the sandworms that devour all and pose a constant risk to life and limb?

Or maybe you remember the dangers on Pern, the planet where 'threads' fall from the sky and like acid, devour anything organic. Anything!

The White Dragon - art by the Unicorn Lady

You might say the environment, in these cases, takes the lead role in the plot, culture and potential outcomes of a political or simply survival nature. 

If you still aren't convinced, try a hypothetical scenario that involves a team of scientists colonizing Jupiter. There are, of course, issues of atmosphere, gravity, temperature and distance from the home world. But what if the colony landed more than five hundred years ago...

BEFORE the storm - now known as the 'red spot' - developed? That red circle turns out, for real, to be ten-thousand miles wide and gaining velocity over the centuries. Suddenly this story has a built-in antagonist to rival the sandworms on Dune or the deadly Thread on Pern.

Jupiter's Red Spot data collected by NASA's Juno spacecraft

 

Two recent YA Fantasy books released in May give further examples: Sara Beth Durst's The Lake House and Zena Shapter's When Dark Roots Hunt. 

The Lake House, as per the blurb:

Claire’s grown up triple-checking locks. Counting her steps. Second-guessing every decision. It’s just how she’s wired – her worst-case scenarios never actually come true.

Until she arrives at an off-the-grid summer camp to find a blackened, burned husk instead of a lodge – and no survivors, except her and two other late arrivals: Reyva and Mariana.

When the three girls find a dead body in the woods, they realize none of this is an accident. Someone, something, is hunting them. Something that hides in the shadows. Something that refuses to let them leave....

Can I say right away that the writing is brilliant and...it's scary. Very scary! 

Part of what makes it so is the environment - the huge, murky lake surrounded by endless, dark and thick forest. Not a soul in sight.. but did you hear that? It would be impossible to achieve the intensity in, say, a populated city or suburbia. The environment here holds sway. 

***

When Dark Roots Hunt has a sense of foreboding and dread to it as well. From the back blurb: 

Don't go out onto the lake. Wyann trees search the shallows to spear passing prey with their roots. Giant water-ants hunt anything that moves on the water-skin. Sala's village survives hidden behind a wall of poisonous ivy, because everyone agrees: don't go out onto the lake.

But when her village refuses to listen to sense, and continues squeezing beautiful pond-bred 'keeiling' fish to death for their precious saliva oils, Sala has no choice. She will risk it all to prove herself one last time, else leave everything behind for the dark shaded swamps beneath the towering hillfarms of Palude.

At least that's the plan before a strange comet crosses the night sky, throwing her and her pet pointer into a race through wyann-infested swampland to unearth long-hidden truths and stir rivalries into a terrifying conflict set to change the world of Palude forever. Sala must do whatever it takes to face the truth of who she is: to save her village, to save her family, to save herself.

If only they had listened.

This story is compelling, impossible to put down, and as you read, you quickly find that the environment is as much a key to the mysteries as the people who try to survive it.

I invite you to consider the environment in a new way as you read, to see if it too is a character with needs and wants and calamity to offer. 

If you find one or two outstanding, I would love to hear about it!

xxKim

Posts in the 'More Than Meets the Eye' Series

Book Titles

The End

Backstory

Environment

Styling Characters

Desire

***

Kim Falconer, currently writing as A K Wilder, has released Crown of Bones, a YA Epic Fantasy with Curse of Shadows as book 2 in the series. Currently, she is working on the third out in 2024

Kim can be found on  AKWilder Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 

Throw the bones, read your horoscopes or Raise Your Phantom on the AKWilder.com site 

Book Titles

Another in the More than meets the eye series...

Rabelais présente Gargantua - Wikimedia Commons

Francois Rabelais, a 16th Century writer, cautioned against reading too much into a title. He said, [A book’s] title is usually received with mocking laughter and jokes. But it's wrong to be so superficial when you're weighing [a writer's] work in the balance.’ Good advice, especially nowadays when titles sell books. It pays to consider them carefully. 

But if that's true why are there so many weird titles? 

We can agree that the purpose of the title is to attract, intrigue and compel potential readers to pick up the book and buy it. It’s the headline, the very first sentence and it needs to hook the reader. That said, it can't be clickbait where the title has nothing to do with the story. Titles want to sound good—to roll off the tongue—but not be overly predictable or clichéd. 

A good title can have double meanings, though it’s best to be careful there. For example, Mouse Work’s 1995 title, Cooking with Pooh is questionable. Catchy can work, like Big Boom’s If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs but that’s not quite the style speculative fiction readers are drawn to.

Other Considerations

 Now A Place of Magic

Titles have to fit on the book cover. I’m not sure how Crown got Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam squeezed together with the author, Pope Brock, and a billygoat (I’m serious - check the image!) but they did. 

There are definitely rules to follow for selecting titles. Some writers ignore them, to their great success: 

Rule one—don’t use a proper name in the title. Like, um, Harry Potter? 

Rule two—don’t use words like Bane, Barbarian, Bard, Battle, Book, or Crystal. Like Jenifer Fallon’s bestselling Chaos Crystal? 

Rule three—don’t use adjective-noun titles. Like Sara Douglass’ bestselling Twisted Citadel? 

Rule four—don’t use needless complexity. Like, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? As in, the bestselling SF by Philip K. Dick! I will admit that Blade Runner works better for the big screen.

Rules aside, there is a website where you can put your title to the test. This program generates the odds a title has of becoming a bestseller. If it’s accurate, my book #3 in the Amassia Series will sell a zillion copies! However the Da Vinci Code shows only a l4.6% chance of being a bestseller, so maybe take it with a grain of salt. 

The Working Title w/t

Working Titles (w/t) are often named organically, like pets. Book #1 of my Quantum Enchantment Series, The Spell of Rosette was just ‘Rosette’ for years. She got ‘The Spell’ as the story matured. Book #2, Arrows of Time was eventually named for the narrative structure, but for the first year of edits it was called The Winged Lion. A little bit like George Orwells book first called The Last Man in Europe. 1984 does have a better ring. More recently, Crown of Bones's w/t was Phantoms of Aku before that was nixed.

The bottom line is, no matter what you name your book as you write it, the publisher, you or marketing will likely give it another twist. For example, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was firsts The Mute. Prometheus Unbound became Frankenstein. Catch 22 was first, wait for it, Catch 18. Treasure Island's w/t was The Sea Cook, and Gone with the Wind was Tomorrow is Another day. 

I asked my author friends to chime in on their title experiences and Merrie Defestano told me about one of her amazing novels. It's the one featuring Maddie MacFaddin (“Mad Mac” to fans of her bestselling magical stories). Maddie spent a blissful childhood summer in Ticonderoga Falls and that's where she wants to be when her adult life is falling apart... But is it really all so safe?

This title was first published by HarperVouyger as Feast - Harvest of Dreams, (see image above) but the latest edition is a revisioning of the story titled A Place of Magic released through Ruby Slipper Press. If you read the first paragraph, you will not be able to put it down. I promise!

Another author friend, Zena Shapter, has a title coming out in May
called When Dark Roots Hunt, but that was not always the book's name. Originally it was called Ruin of Shade. 

When I asked her why the change she said, "I decided the title was too abstract for readers without first knowing the world. I also then changed some terminology in the book to make it more accessible for readers. In comparison, the title ‘When Dark Roots Hunt’ both evokes the book’s exotic ‘other’ world, and hints at the action and menace to come..."

I love it, and totally agree! It's a fantastic read you'll hear more about soon.

Does anyone have a good ‘title story’ to tell? Is there one that particularly compels or repulses?  Comments welcome!

xxKim

Posts in the 'More Than Meets the Eye' Series

Book Titles

The End

Backstory

Environment

Styling Characters

Desire

***

Kim Falconer, currently writing as A K Wilder, has released Crown of Bones, a YA Epic Fantasy with Curse of Shadows as book 2 in the series.

Kim can be found on  AKWilder Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 

Throw the bones, read your horoscopes or Raise Your Phantom on the AKWilder.com site 

 

In Conversation with Zena Shapter

Hi Everyone,

Today we have a special treat - an interview with Zena Shapter, author of Towards White.

Scientists in Iceland think they’ve figured out one of our greatest mysteries – where the electrical energy in the brain goes after we die. . . but when ex-lawyer Becky Dales travels to Iceland to track down her missing brother, the government blocks her at every turn. Becky must piece together the answers fast… before she becomes a victim herself.

Zena is an award winning Australian Speculative Fiction writer, editor, tutor and self proclaimed, 'all round story nerd.'

The Supernatural Underground is happy to share some of her insights and reflection here.

Enjoy!

*********

SU I’m so looking forward to seeing Towards White in bookstores. Can you tell us when it will be out, to start, and what genre we can find it in? 

ZS It came out 29th September 2017 and you should be able to find it in your favourite bookstore under: science fiction, thriller or crime/mystery (it’s a cross-genre book). It’s also written in a very realistic style, so will appeal to a variety of readers. One of the first editors to read it was a fan of literary fiction only. Towards White converted her and now she reads science fiction all the time!

SU Becky is an intriguing character. Can you tell us how much of yourself went into her creation?

ZS  I try to put a little of myself into every story, not only because it helps make characters more authentic, but because I read to connect with others, their stories and challenges, and assume others do too. So when I’m writing, I like to offer readers the opportunity to spend time in another person’s shoes, and to do that I have to search through my own closet of shoes and find the right pair to offer up (BTW I don’t actually have a closet for shoes, my shoes are bundled up on wardrobe shelves!). Once I’ve found an experience I might be able to share, I imagine what it would be like to intensify that experience and go through it in extreme conditions, and once I know what those conditions might be, I build my character. During character development, I also think of friends and family who resemble my character in some way, and borrow bits of them to add into the mix. So there’s a bit of me in Becky Dales, there are bits from a few lawyer friends I know, but Becky’s also herself because none of us have ever been in her situation in Towards White – I’m sure we wouldn’t want to be either! We all fall apart sometimes, face the darkest of dark hours, question the essence of our being, then seek a way back to ‘normal’ life. Unfortunately for Becky, she faces having to do this during a crisis. Sometimes when it rains, it pours!

SU I love the world building in Towards White. It is almost like and alien world. You must have lived in Iceland, am I right?

ZS He he, no, I’ve never lived in Iceland, but I’ve been there. I love travelling. I love exploring new places, seeking out unusual stories and uncommon sights, then taking copious notes on them. I have a heap of travel notebooks, and they allow me to travel back in time to when I was last in a place, then write scenes that really show readers what it was like to be there. I visited Iceland in 2001, and when I re-read my notes it’s like being there again. Hopefully when readers read Towards White, they’ll travel there with me too.

SU You know I’m very curious about the science and the philosophy woven into Towards White. Are these questions you’ve wrestled with for years, or did it come to you in a flash?

ZS Both! I grew up around elderly people, for whom death was never far away, and loved studying science at school, so knew all about the energy and nitrogen life cycles. As a teenager, I also enjoyed philosophical contemplations – wherever I could get them! So when I was about eighteen – home from University where I was reading English – I was up late one night philosophising with friends about life after death and I found myself layering our discussion with my scientific background... The conservation of energy theory states that one form of energy must always become another form of energy, energy cannot simply disappear. Our brains are powered by electricity, so I simply made the leap to wondering what happened to it after death. Our bodies go to the worms, what about our electricity? It can’t simply disappear, and it’s far too efficient an energy to simply dissipate, or entropy, as heat. I dwelled on the idea, pondered it, and extended it as far as I could. What if…what if that was the answer to one of man’s greatest mysteries: life after death.

Over the years I played with the idea but it wasn’t until I went to Iceland in 2001 that the story that would become Towards White started to take shape. I fell in love with the country’s austere beauty and inspiration simply poured into my brain from there. There were some delays along the way – moving to Australia, marriage, two children, a new career and finding the right publisher – but the story evolved so much it demanded to be told, and finally it’s here!

SU How much research went into the story? Can we hear a bit about your process?

ZS Well, once I knew I wanted to write a story based on my scientific ideas set in Iceland, I started thoroughly researching those ideas. For the scientific side of things, I went to libraries in the UK and over here in Sydney, read online and asked scientist friends, putting together a folder of research and ideas about energy. I researched all kinds of other relevant things too like gravity and electromagnetism, how colour works, magnetic field therapy, Reiki, astronomy, genes, artic phenomena, the auroras, the constitution and history of Iceland, and of course the brain and nervous system, including brain death and methods of execution. I also bought an Icelandic dictionary and got to know the language as best as I could, including famous cultural quotes and swearing. Many of these ideas have been ingrained in the story from the very first draft back in 2002, but I cut out a lot of the language as my writing technique developed because it didn’t bring anything to the story but ambiguity. Some of the research I cut too because it was too lengthy – but I still have it all somewhere!

SU Becky’s relationships with men are complicated. Did you know she would have such an intense history/backstory from the start, or did that evolve as you wrote her?

ZS It evolved. In earlier drafts of the novel, Becky was a self-assured confident young legal editor who had simply had enough of men. But beta readers found her too assertive, so her confidence had to take a knock. At one point she was lactose intolerant! At another point she was called Kate. But as the drafts went by (there were about ten!), she became more and more complicated, she internalised more, and the more I based her on real friends and family, the more I came to understand her. Hopefully by the end of the novel, readers will understand her too.

SU  What is a typical writing day like for you?

ZS My typical writing day has changed so much over the past few months. It used to look like: admin and emails while the kids get ready for school, exercise until about 9.30am, sit down to write until the kids arrive home around 3pm, ensure I’ve written a minimum of 10,000 words a week, then the rest of the afternoon on client work and free stuff for other authors.

But my creative support business has taken off dramatically this year, and it’s become a struggle to get to any writing at all! I still exercise three days a week, but then have about five hours of client work each day, an hour of face-to-face mentoring other authors, and an hour of teaching (as an average across the week). It’s no wonder I’ve only written a few short stories this year. I have a plan though, to instigate some better balance into my writing life – wish me luck! I will write more again, I will write more again!

SU  Finally, what’s next for you?

ZS Once I’m writing again, I’d like to re-edit a fantasy novel I’ve been working on for a few years, following on from a Writing Inclusive Fiction course I studied earlier this year. It’s so important to write with sensitivity and respect, I want to ensure I’m doing what I can to address imbalances in society, as well as in my own life. I’m also working with agents in the US and England to get more of my writing to readers. Watch this space! Or rather this space over here: http://zenashapter.com/blog/ ;)

Thanks, Zena!

You can find out more about Zena on her Website, Facebook and Twitter.

Towards White can be purchased on Amazon.com in Kindle or Print.