Well, I've got a working keyboard again, and better still, it's actually on my laptop. My touch pad mouse is working again, too, so I was fairly "HUZZAH," when all this happen. Now I'm a little, "...Meh..." The reason for this stems from a few events, which I must explain before I can get to a point I want to make about writing.
Yesterday, I set a to do list, because yesterday several things happened, chief among them being I realized I had a lot to do. I am way behind on my book reviews, I went to my evangelism class and I wanted to read nineteen (19) books before I returned them to the library on Sunday (the 24th, not yesterday itself). Oh, and on Saturday (aka. the day before yesterday) I decided to scrap what I had for my Camp NaNoWriMo novel and start again. Backwards.
Today, I woke up, did the first thing on my to-do list and showered (yes, during the summer I do occasionally become one of those geeks who need the reminder...), I ate breakfast and I reviewed the list. The first thing I did was read the book for my evangelism class. Then I read Matthew chapter 1, as I'm also going to start doing daily devotions again. Then I brushed my teeth, and with minty fresh breath, I sat down at my computer and began to write a new scene for my CaNaNoWriMo novel, The Next Great Magician. I got about three hundred words in and then, I just lost it.
This might be a hard thing to explain to someone who's never written for pleasure, but when you have such motivation (and I do (or did), I wrote over 5000 words on Sunday), but when you loose a story which you can see so clearly in your mind, it kills you a little on the inside. But then I just decided that I was more used to writing towards the end of the day, so I decided to give it a little time. So I goofed off on the internet. Now, here I am at the end of the day.
I have not written in this blog for over a week, not counting my cop out post, I haven't written up any of my book reviews. I have barely touched a book all day (besides the Mark Cahill book for my evangelism class, and the bible), and though I did get my brother a birthday present and I had to wait a half-hour or so for my computer to be fixed. I haven't gone beyond that three hundred words.
I certainly have reasons for this; after all, I made an outline. Outlines are tricky for me, because I tend to tell too much of the story there. I visualize things as if I were writing actual prose instead of the outline. So, when I finish an outline, sometimes I feel like I've finished a story, when there's nothing good about just the outline. But the biggest reason I think I no longer feel like writing about the Next Great Magician is this: crazy goals.
To actually win NaNoWriMo in the time remaining from when I started over, I would have had to write 3334 words a day. This might have been pretty doable, but I decided to challenge myself and bump that up to 5000 words. It might have still been pretty doable, after all, I did it yesterday, with almost no problem. But now I just feel...drained I guess. I think The Next Great Magician decided it was going to take a vacation, and I decided to push it after only one day of rest. If I had set a more reasonable goal (like say, writing the 20000 words I would have needed to win NaNoWriMo), I think I might have actually done okay.
But the thing about setting such hard goals for yourself, is that when you fail, you fail hard. One of the reasons I set 2000 words as my daily goal for my yearlong writing project is that because 2000 words is difficult for me to reach, but not so difficult that I have constant trouble keeping it (okay, there was a time when I yelled at my computer via capslock, because I was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed, but could not seem to reach 2000 words, but that was just once). 5000 words did not even seem like a reasonable goal when I set it, because I wanted to power through my novel.
In fact, I think I noticed that about most my goals (save for the book reviews...maybe, I'll let you know when I get there). Trying to read nineteen books in a week isn't impossible, nor is writing 5000 words a day. But when you pile those on top of one another, along with other commitments. It gets intimidating, and more importantly, it takes the joy out of what you are trying to do. I want to read the nineteen books because my friends and I have a contest going, but it's just a friendly contest. Nothing that I actually need to get up in arms about (especially since the only prize is bragging rights).
I think that's what NaNo is for me right now. Bragging rights. Would I get The Next Great Magician published? I don't know. Maybe, if I ever felt confident enough about it. But right now, trying to write this is kind of sucking the joy out of writing for me. I think I'm going to give this novel a vacation. Maybe indefinitely, maybe not.
But I think the important thing here is that I keep writing. And, you know, set better goals for myself. I think I'll stick with the 2000 a day.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Well...this sort of counts
My key board took a water hit. So far the results have not been good. This is an update from my iPod, but it's slow going and I don't think I could write a long post like this. I will try to update soon. --Wordsmith
Sunday, July 10, 2011
The Speculative Divide: Fantasy
Well, if you thought the last post was long, just wait for this one. But first an announcement: I am changing my rules just slightly. Instead of making two posts a week, I have to make a post within three days of the last one. Don't ask me how that makes it easier to keep. It really doesn't. It may change to certain days of the week that I have to update it so that way I have an easier schedule to keep (I do well at keeping schedules), but I'll try this for now. So, I am setting the iPod to tell me to write the sci-fi genre analysis on the thirteenth (if I have not done so already, and here we go.
Fantasy. This is where I think my analysis might get a little over loaded and fairly tricky. Because there's a lot to fantasy. One could almost say that it's the oldest genre there is, although way back in the day, that was known as realistic fiction. I am of course speaking of mythology. (For personal reasons, I'm not going to get into Judeo/Christian writings, sorry). But let's look at the Greeks for a second. Of course you have gods, tremendous power and impossible circumstance and beings. If I could speculate I would say that it is the non-human that tends to make fantasy. After all, in Greek mythology you have beings who are like humans (the gods, demi-gods and half human creatures like centaurs, satyrs and Minotaur) that can perform acts that no human is able to do. They are meta human, or greater than the human ability. You also have completely non-existent, non-human creatures as well, such as dragons.
These factors are true of later fantasy fictions as well. Take for example, witches, wizards, fairies and other magic makers: beings who appear human, but somehow have greater abilities than an ordinary human being. An important factor of fantasy fiction is that these abilities seem to be natural, or rather inherited some how. There is a more biological, ie, never explained in writing. Then of course you have other creatures as well, unicorns, phoenixes, giant spiders and so on. These creatures appear to be natural too, if you will, seemingly evolved with other, non-magical animals.
That is not to say that humans are not a large part of fantasy fiction. After all in The Lord of the Rings (which we will be getting back to), it a human who can do such things as have power over the dead (Aaragorn). Humans also often serve as emotional anchors for the characters with magic, whether through family ties or love interests, or even in some legends become kings, create chivalry and go down in history for being full of awesome (King Arthur); the foil to that is, that they can also be power hungry rivals, easily manipulated and try and sleep with their father/uncle's wife, take over the kingdom, cause a major battle which leaves a lot of people dead and Britain easy prey for the Saxons (Mordred). In any case, humans, like magic makers and any set of characters also play various roles.
Which leads me back to this: why do people see speculative fiction as kiddy writing? After all, someone (I do believe someone out of The Late American Novel complied by Jeff Martin and C. Max Magee) said that no matter whether you write in the past or the future, you are really writing about right now. While this is more true of horror and science fiction, I believe this can on a level apply to fantasy as well. Even if the characters are interacting in a setting where maybe they are not quite human, or a dragon flies over head, it does not make it any less believable. I think the problem stems from the fact that people believe their are a lot of bad fantasy (speculative) novels out there, and so it pollutes the genre. This is absolutely true. I do not understand, however, why it should pollutes the genre so thoroughly that people could become so dismissive of it. After all, for every bad novel there is bound to be a good one. A well written story with fleshed out characters and an amazing idea. After all, there are a lot of terrible romance novels out there, but does that degenerate the value of the good ones, like Pride and Prejudice?
Anyway, back to fantasy. Now that I feel I have defined what creates a fantasy, let's talk about where it divides and crosses over into horror and science fiction. Firstly, there are two main divides in fantasy fiction: traditional fantasy and urban fantasy.
Traditional fantasy is categorized by the fact that it takes place in a completely different world. In such a world, things like magic and fantastic creatures are accepted as believable, if occasionally surprising. This fantasy also tends to use a more medieval, classical or a mixed historical influences in the setting. For this, think of Lord of the Rings, which takes place in Middle Earth, strange creatures are normal, magic exists (though it leaving the land), or for a more modern example A Song of Fire and Ice, which, while it does not use many fantastic creatures or beings, is set in an alternate world, and has some hints and leanings toward magic. The important thing to note about these stories is that, most especially in the case of The Lord of the Rings, which set a precedent for traditional fantasy, is that they resemble epic sagas or poems or classical, ancient and medieval societies. For Tolkien, who studied Norse epics and favored them, and who was trying to create a mythology for Britain, this was more intentional. For later fantasy novels, I cannot say for sure, but the better works, tend to denote their research and prior readings in style, plot and characterization.
The second major kind of fantasy is conventional/urban fantasy. These differs from traditional as it usually takes place in modern times, on Earth as we know it. These only have a few minor differences, which is why I lump them together. In urban fantasy the settings lean toward popular and large cities (why we call it urban), and this can occasionally, though not always mix with more action and adventure, usually culminating in large chase scenes. As a friend with more experience in these novels said, they also may include more negative aspects about urban life (drugs, decay, etc) and a little more adult content (sex, swearing, though on this your mileage may vary). For urban fantasy think: War of the Oaks by Emma Bull, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and Lament by Maggie Stiefvater. Contemporary is not so much focused in the setting, but more about the innovation, how it's different from previous novels. The best and probably biggest example I can give you is none other than Harry Potter. Yeah, okay, it does have it's traditional fantasy leanings, but J. K. Rowling made a fine point of always showing the muggle world in her novels, and in the seventh book, we are not much in the wizard world at all. I should note that a few of my examples do make distinctions between worlds (Muggle and Wizarding of Harry Potter, and London Above and London Below in Neverwhere), but it these are more societal divides than physically seperate worlds.
Now we come to the part where fantasy, horror and sci-fi tend to collide.
As I said in my post on horror, you do see a lot of early overlap with fantasy in the development of the horror genre. With fairy tales and early horror movies many of the evil/monstrous beings were fantastic, as they came from places that were not exactly explained, or explained by what was believed to be supernatural events. And speaking of the supernatural, it tends to be when contemporary fantasy crosses with traditional horror elements that you get the supernatural (sub) genre. I think I'll come back to that later, since there's much more that I want to say on it, and I'm not sure I want to get too much into in this post. I will say, though, that what we describe as the supernatural sub genre is mostly found in contemporary works, where as more traditional horror you would just say mixes genres. But these lines are fairly easy to notice and see where they cross.
With science fiction, the distinctions tend to blur much more. You have such distinctions as science fantasy, which creates an environment from possible scientific advancements with many more fantastic elements. Many times this includes deep space travel, or things that have some scientific elements, such as the use of machines, but use this to achieve an end that would not be possible for many years to come.
There are also many different degrees of combinations the two undergo. The Dragonriders of Pern comes to mind as a good example of this, as the early series within the saga indicate a more fantastic setting, what with dragons, but later on, the reader is introduced into a much more science fiction oriented setting.
Then there is alternate reality fiction, which can be any variety of integration between the two genres, as it can propose fantastic elements, such as a world with fairies, unicorns, magic and other fantastic elements, and where these things are more out in the open, but can also do certain things like suggest a change in historical events which led to different developments in technology, such as the SteamPunk genre (but since that falls more under the realm of science fiction, I'll get to that in my next post).
Another of the distinctive sub genres, comes from the superhero stoies, where a person can have inherited, magically developed, or mythic super-human abilities, but one can also use technology, scientific accidents and scientific atrocities to gain or perfect super-human abilities mostly for the sake of crime fighting. But even then the two genres mix together, and sometimes, a reader can be quick to forget the distinctions (guilty). It is the many different blurings of possibilities that make the two so hard to separate and distinguish from one another, and even label sub genres
One of the reasons I think these two mix well and seem so similar at a glance is that they both have spectacular outcomes, they are simply achieved through different means. I mean, if you genetically engineer a horse with a horn, or magically poof one up from a combination of horse/goat/rhino, you still have a unicorn. It makes it easy to see why people arrive at the conclusion that these genres are the virtually the same. But as many have said, it's not the destination, its the journey. How we got the unicorn is the important thing. The plot in a speculative novel, the means of the spectacular, really denote the differences in genre. With fantasy that means magic or the unexplained did it. With horror, something you want to kill did it. With science fiction....we'll get back to that later.
Thanks to Grace on this post who helped me clarify some things through discussion. She's the friend I mentioned above.
Fantasy. This is where I think my analysis might get a little over loaded and fairly tricky. Because there's a lot to fantasy. One could almost say that it's the oldest genre there is, although way back in the day, that was known as realistic fiction. I am of course speaking of mythology. (For personal reasons, I'm not going to get into Judeo/Christian writings, sorry). But let's look at the Greeks for a second. Of course you have gods, tremendous power and impossible circumstance and beings. If I could speculate I would say that it is the non-human that tends to make fantasy. After all, in Greek mythology you have beings who are like humans (the gods, demi-gods and half human creatures like centaurs, satyrs and Minotaur) that can perform acts that no human is able to do. They are meta human, or greater than the human ability. You also have completely non-existent, non-human creatures as well, such as dragons.
These factors are true of later fantasy fictions as well. Take for example, witches, wizards, fairies and other magic makers: beings who appear human, but somehow have greater abilities than an ordinary human being. An important factor of fantasy fiction is that these abilities seem to be natural, or rather inherited some how. There is a more biological, ie, never explained in writing. Then of course you have other creatures as well, unicorns, phoenixes, giant spiders and so on. These creatures appear to be natural too, if you will, seemingly evolved with other, non-magical animals.
That is not to say that humans are not a large part of fantasy fiction. After all in The Lord of the Rings (which we will be getting back to), it a human who can do such things as have power over the dead (Aaragorn). Humans also often serve as emotional anchors for the characters with magic, whether through family ties or love interests, or even in some legends become kings, create chivalry and go down in history for being full of awesome (King Arthur); the foil to that is, that they can also be power hungry rivals, easily manipulated and try and sleep with their father/uncle's wife, take over the kingdom, cause a major battle which leaves a lot of people dead and Britain easy prey for the Saxons (Mordred). In any case, humans, like magic makers and any set of characters also play various roles.
Which leads me back to this: why do people see speculative fiction as kiddy writing? After all, someone (I do believe someone out of The Late American Novel complied by Jeff Martin and C. Max Magee) said that no matter whether you write in the past or the future, you are really writing about right now. While this is more true of horror and science fiction, I believe this can on a level apply to fantasy as well. Even if the characters are interacting in a setting where maybe they are not quite human, or a dragon flies over head, it does not make it any less believable. I think the problem stems from the fact that people believe their are a lot of bad fantasy (speculative) novels out there, and so it pollutes the genre. This is absolutely true. I do not understand, however, why it should pollutes the genre so thoroughly that people could become so dismissive of it. After all, for every bad novel there is bound to be a good one. A well written story with fleshed out characters and an amazing idea. After all, there are a lot of terrible romance novels out there, but does that degenerate the value of the good ones, like Pride and Prejudice?
Anyway, back to fantasy. Now that I feel I have defined what creates a fantasy, let's talk about where it divides and crosses over into horror and science fiction. Firstly, there are two main divides in fantasy fiction: traditional fantasy and urban fantasy.
Traditional fantasy is categorized by the fact that it takes place in a completely different world. In such a world, things like magic and fantastic creatures are accepted as believable, if occasionally surprising. This fantasy also tends to use a more medieval, classical or a mixed historical influences in the setting. For this, think of Lord of the Rings, which takes place in Middle Earth, strange creatures are normal, magic exists (though it leaving the land), or for a more modern example A Song of Fire and Ice, which, while it does not use many fantastic creatures or beings, is set in an alternate world, and has some hints and leanings toward magic. The important thing to note about these stories is that, most especially in the case of The Lord of the Rings, which set a precedent for traditional fantasy, is that they resemble epic sagas or poems or classical, ancient and medieval societies. For Tolkien, who studied Norse epics and favored them, and who was trying to create a mythology for Britain, this was more intentional. For later fantasy novels, I cannot say for sure, but the better works, tend to denote their research and prior readings in style, plot and characterization.
The second major kind of fantasy is conventional/urban fantasy. These differs from traditional as it usually takes place in modern times, on Earth as we know it. These only have a few minor differences, which is why I lump them together. In urban fantasy the settings lean toward popular and large cities (why we call it urban), and this can occasionally, though not always mix with more action and adventure, usually culminating in large chase scenes. As a friend with more experience in these novels said, they also may include more negative aspects about urban life (drugs, decay, etc) and a little more adult content (sex, swearing, though on this your mileage may vary). For urban fantasy think: War of the Oaks by Emma Bull, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and Lament by Maggie Stiefvater. Contemporary is not so much focused in the setting, but more about the innovation, how it's different from previous novels. The best and probably biggest example I can give you is none other than Harry Potter. Yeah, okay, it does have it's traditional fantasy leanings, but J. K. Rowling made a fine point of always showing the muggle world in her novels, and in the seventh book, we are not much in the wizard world at all. I should note that a few of my examples do make distinctions between worlds (Muggle and Wizarding of Harry Potter, and London Above and London Below in Neverwhere), but it these are more societal divides than physically seperate worlds.
Now we come to the part where fantasy, horror and sci-fi tend to collide.
As I said in my post on horror, you do see a lot of early overlap with fantasy in the development of the horror genre. With fairy tales and early horror movies many of the evil/monstrous beings were fantastic, as they came from places that were not exactly explained, or explained by what was believed to be supernatural events. And speaking of the supernatural, it tends to be when contemporary fantasy crosses with traditional horror elements that you get the supernatural (sub) genre. I think I'll come back to that later, since there's much more that I want to say on it, and I'm not sure I want to get too much into in this post. I will say, though, that what we describe as the supernatural sub genre is mostly found in contemporary works, where as more traditional horror you would just say mixes genres. But these lines are fairly easy to notice and see where they cross.
With science fiction, the distinctions tend to blur much more. You have such distinctions as science fantasy, which creates an environment from possible scientific advancements with many more fantastic elements. Many times this includes deep space travel, or things that have some scientific elements, such as the use of machines, but use this to achieve an end that would not be possible for many years to come.
There are also many different degrees of combinations the two undergo. The Dragonriders of Pern comes to mind as a good example of this, as the early series within the saga indicate a more fantastic setting, what with dragons, but later on, the reader is introduced into a much more science fiction oriented setting.
Then there is alternate reality fiction, which can be any variety of integration between the two genres, as it can propose fantastic elements, such as a world with fairies, unicorns, magic and other fantastic elements, and where these things are more out in the open, but can also do certain things like suggest a change in historical events which led to different developments in technology, such as the SteamPunk genre (but since that falls more under the realm of science fiction, I'll get to that in my next post).
Another of the distinctive sub genres, comes from the superhero stoies, where a person can have inherited, magically developed, or mythic super-human abilities, but one can also use technology, scientific accidents and scientific atrocities to gain or perfect super-human abilities mostly for the sake of crime fighting. But even then the two genres mix together, and sometimes, a reader can be quick to forget the distinctions (guilty). It is the many different blurings of possibilities that make the two so hard to separate and distinguish from one another, and even label sub genres
One of the reasons I think these two mix well and seem so similar at a glance is that they both have spectacular outcomes, they are simply achieved through different means. I mean, if you genetically engineer a horse with a horn, or magically poof one up from a combination of horse/goat/rhino, you still have a unicorn. It makes it easy to see why people arrive at the conclusion that these genres are the virtually the same. But as many have said, it's not the destination, its the journey. How we got the unicorn is the important thing. The plot in a speculative novel, the means of the spectacular, really denote the differences in genre. With fantasy that means magic or the unexplained did it. With horror, something you want to kill did it. With science fiction....we'll get back to that later.
Thanks to Grace on this post who helped me clarify some things through discussion. She's the friend I mentioned above.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
The Speculative Divide: Horror
Here's my first late week post as one of my friends reminded me I haven't been keeping up with the blog this week. To remedy this, I though I would expose on world building a little bit and my experience with it that led to the beginning of this blog. But that lead me to another topic entirely in prep for world building. That is, talking about speculative fiction, and expanding on that a little bit more, because well, it's kind of a broad topic now a days. Because even though it would seem to me that world building is fairly exclusive to speculative fiction--in any other type of fiction, you already have a world: reality-- speculative fiction has diverged along so many paths that this may not even be necessary in all cases of speculative fiction.
And hey, that's what this blog is about, right? Let's get started then.
The first thing you need to know about speculative fiction is that it divides up into three categories: fantasy, science fiction and horror. (In recent years, there has also been a call to add a fourth, supernatural, but I'll get to that towards the end.) Many people who don't write between these genres don't often see the difference, and truthfully there is a lot of overlap between the three, and subcategories that don't seem to fit into just one of the three main categories, and I think that's where people get confused. This may even be where some of the loss of appeal comes from a lot of speculative fiction. That and the willing suspension of disbelief does not get suspended far enough (but we'll get back to that later).
Time, though, does strange things to fiction. After all, have you ever heard the term "Action/Adventure," used to describe a novel or (more likely) a movie? Well, as it would happen, action and adventure are two different genres, but they often overlap because of similar themes between the two. For instance, people in a film mostly described by it's action may go on an adventure to catch the bad guy/stop the world from ending. But the reverse is also true: people on an adventure to find pirate's gold may encounter some scoundrels who are hoping to use the gold for diabolical purposes, and action ensues. In fact, much fiction (films being an especially guilty party) overlap genres, whether speculative or not.
My point of that rather random paragraph was to point out that at their sources, there were things that were pure science fiction, fantasy or horror. But as time goes on, ideas get mixed in together and things happen to the way people perceive fiction. I'm also digressing into problem that not a lot of people understand speculative fiction, because they aren't quite sure what to call it, and where the genres overlap. So, I'll try and give a description to the best of my knowledge of where the areas over lap, and how they stay true to themselves.
Let's start with a fairly easy category: horror. Horror is probably the easiest of the three to categorize because these are the stories that are intended to frighten you. And not just frighten you, but do terrible things to you every waking and sleeping moment for many years to come (all right, that was a hyperbole, I apologize, horror writers and lovers of all ages). But even in it's simplicity, horror has divulged into its own subcategories and crosses over with fantasy and science fiction.
Some of this probably comes from the roots of horror. For instance, if you want to look at horror that crosses over with fantasy, all you have to do is look back far enough to many original fairy tales. While it might be hard to believe, many earlier fairy tales were stories of rape, demons, pillaging, princesses being quite willing accessories to murder and villains dying in terrible deaths, such as, but not limited to being rolled down a hill in a barrel full of nails, being made to dance in hot, iron shoes, and being burnt to death. The originals were not kids stories, and were meant to frighten the bejezzus out of people, but most had fantastic elements to them, such as actual fairies (and in later versions, the Virgin Mary). But also in later projects such as say, Dracula, or the Wolf-Man, there are a lot of unexplained fantastic elements, such as say, where vampires and werewolves come from (aside from, you know, hell). This also links back to the the supernatural genre, but again, I'll get to that later.
If you go later into one of the most famous examples of horror writings, even today, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. While Frankenstein has some fantastic elements, it is more routed in a science fiction background. After all, it is speculative science, mostly medical science such as dissection, tissue donation and resuscitation (only of a being that had never technically lived at all), that creates the Monster and dries Dr. Frankenstein into madness. In fact, I might even consider the original novel more science fiction than horror, but that's another debate entirely. The point I'm trying to make here is that when horror began it was a lot of political fiction. Perhaps not Frankenstein, but many of the films and novels that followed after were trying to relay a message about the way man lives and treats it's fellow man--and how maddening things can get. But, since they would not do this with out people at first, they had to rely on monsters, such as the Wolf-Man, Frankenstein's monster and Dracula.
As time went on horror continued it's flirtation with fantasy and science fiction, and eventually began to create its own subcategories beyond the other two genres. These being mostly slasher fiction and realistic horror (heaven forbid, there actually be such a thing). Slasher fiction denotes the type of fiction where the reader/watcher is introduced to a fairly large cast at the beginning of the work, and watches as members of the cast are slowly picked off until only one or two are left at the end. The most popular of these seem to still have their roots in fantastic (and occasionally science fiction) elements, such as Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th and even Final Destination, where the slasher is Death, though not all slashers are like this, such as I Know What You Did Last Summer or Scream where the slashers are people. These last slasher films tend to overlap with realistic horror in which the killer is a person who seems to be normal, but obviously wants to kill people. These occur in relatively normal situations, such as road trips, or renting out apartment space.
Out of the three, I want to saw that horror has probably expanded the least, but I am not a huge fan of modern horror, and I would also say that it has crept into other genres. There should also be something said about the thriller genre, which overlaps occasionally with horror as they both can use excessive murder to frighten the audience, but thriller does not always use these techniques, and can rely on other means to create tension and adrenaline in the audience.
I'm hesitant to continue with either science fiction or fantasy, because I realize this post is getting quite long. So, I think I might split that up into three posts and maybe map out more thoroughly the differences between science fiction and fantasy, and also plan out how to go about talking about the newest (sub?) genre supernatural fiction. So, until tomorrow.
And hey, that's what this blog is about, right? Let's get started then.
The first thing you need to know about speculative fiction is that it divides up into three categories: fantasy, science fiction and horror. (In recent years, there has also been a call to add a fourth, supernatural, but I'll get to that towards the end.) Many people who don't write between these genres don't often see the difference, and truthfully there is a lot of overlap between the three, and subcategories that don't seem to fit into just one of the three main categories, and I think that's where people get confused. This may even be where some of the loss of appeal comes from a lot of speculative fiction. That and the willing suspension of disbelief does not get suspended far enough (but we'll get back to that later).
Time, though, does strange things to fiction. After all, have you ever heard the term "Action/Adventure," used to describe a novel or (more likely) a movie? Well, as it would happen, action and adventure are two different genres, but they often overlap because of similar themes between the two. For instance, people in a film mostly described by it's action may go on an adventure to catch the bad guy/stop the world from ending. But the reverse is also true: people on an adventure to find pirate's gold may encounter some scoundrels who are hoping to use the gold for diabolical purposes, and action ensues. In fact, much fiction (films being an especially guilty party) overlap genres, whether speculative or not.
My point of that rather random paragraph was to point out that at their sources, there were things that were pure science fiction, fantasy or horror. But as time goes on, ideas get mixed in together and things happen to the way people perceive fiction. I'm also digressing into problem that not a lot of people understand speculative fiction, because they aren't quite sure what to call it, and where the genres overlap. So, I'll try and give a description to the best of my knowledge of where the areas over lap, and how they stay true to themselves.
Let's start with a fairly easy category: horror. Horror is probably the easiest of the three to categorize because these are the stories that are intended to frighten you. And not just frighten you, but do terrible things to you every waking and sleeping moment for many years to come (all right, that was a hyperbole, I apologize, horror writers and lovers of all ages). But even in it's simplicity, horror has divulged into its own subcategories and crosses over with fantasy and science fiction.
Some of this probably comes from the roots of horror. For instance, if you want to look at horror that crosses over with fantasy, all you have to do is look back far enough to many original fairy tales. While it might be hard to believe, many earlier fairy tales were stories of rape, demons, pillaging, princesses being quite willing accessories to murder and villains dying in terrible deaths, such as, but not limited to being rolled down a hill in a barrel full of nails, being made to dance in hot, iron shoes, and being burnt to death. The originals were not kids stories, and were meant to frighten the bejezzus out of people, but most had fantastic elements to them, such as actual fairies (and in later versions, the Virgin Mary). But also in later projects such as say, Dracula, or the Wolf-Man, there are a lot of unexplained fantastic elements, such as say, where vampires and werewolves come from (aside from, you know, hell). This also links back to the the supernatural genre, but again, I'll get to that later.
If you go later into one of the most famous examples of horror writings, even today, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. While Frankenstein has some fantastic elements, it is more routed in a science fiction background. After all, it is speculative science, mostly medical science such as dissection, tissue donation and resuscitation (only of a being that had never technically lived at all), that creates the Monster and dries Dr. Frankenstein into madness. In fact, I might even consider the original novel more science fiction than horror, but that's another debate entirely. The point I'm trying to make here is that when horror began it was a lot of political fiction. Perhaps not Frankenstein, but many of the films and novels that followed after were trying to relay a message about the way man lives and treats it's fellow man--and how maddening things can get. But, since they would not do this with out people at first, they had to rely on monsters, such as the Wolf-Man, Frankenstein's monster and Dracula.
As time went on horror continued it's flirtation with fantasy and science fiction, and eventually began to create its own subcategories beyond the other two genres. These being mostly slasher fiction and realistic horror (heaven forbid, there actually be such a thing). Slasher fiction denotes the type of fiction where the reader/watcher is introduced to a fairly large cast at the beginning of the work, and watches as members of the cast are slowly picked off until only one or two are left at the end. The most popular of these seem to still have their roots in fantastic (and occasionally science fiction) elements, such as Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th and even Final Destination, where the slasher is Death, though not all slashers are like this, such as I Know What You Did Last Summer or Scream where the slashers are people. These last slasher films tend to overlap with realistic horror in which the killer is a person who seems to be normal, but obviously wants to kill people. These occur in relatively normal situations, such as road trips, or renting out apartment space.
Out of the three, I want to saw that horror has probably expanded the least, but I am not a huge fan of modern horror, and I would also say that it has crept into other genres. There should also be something said about the thriller genre, which overlaps occasionally with horror as they both can use excessive murder to frighten the audience, but thriller does not always use these techniques, and can rely on other means to create tension and adrenaline in the audience.
I'm hesitant to continue with either science fiction or fantasy, because I realize this post is getting quite long. So, I think I might split that up into three posts and maybe map out more thoroughly the differences between science fiction and fantasy, and also plan out how to go about talking about the newest (sub?) genre supernatural fiction. So, until tomorrow.
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