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Tuesday and Wednesday were both 2000+ word days, and though today is moving much slower (there was writing-related business to do this morning, which also involved a trip to town to the post office), Book V seems to be over its “You ignored me–I’ll ignore you” snit. I’ve written out almost all of one of early-Tuesday-morning’s plot-bombs, and have the other still to do (notes made at the time, of course.) I think it’s not quite as “big” in terms of wordage, but that doesn’t matter. It’s an important chunk of plot, to be sure.
Sam Barnett-Cormack asked about themes in the books, and how and when I knew what they were. I don’t think about “theme” when I start a book (or series of books), but about characters. The characters have their own problems, one or more of which starts to vibrate (buzzing in my head) and announce itself as something more than a character problem. This vibration (it really is that sensation) may come early in the process of that book, or later, or not until I read the book a year after its publication. Sometimes when I think I know what it is, it’s a minor issue, and the BIG issue announces itself later. I was a dud at finding “the hidden meaning” or “the theme” in school, too…the teacher always had one thing in mind, and I was always seeing something else.
Writing to a theme feels more like writing political essays than fiction, and for me, being aware of the theme interferes with Story–with letting the characters lead the way through their problems, their issues. Nonfiction writing, essay writing, can benefit from a firm thematic structure, and I know where I’m going (nearly always) but fiction is discovery writing. Follow the footprints and the crushed leaves and the thread caught on the bark of a tree, to find out what this character is up to (they get enough ahead of me sometimes that I am, in fact, stuck with hunting for hints of where a character’s gone.)
But just as I have my cranky but very effective Plot Daemon laboring in the engine room of the story-ship, I seem to have a Theme Daemon as well (the Plot Daemon’s cousin Reilly, maybe?) who takes care of theme for me. So I’m free to follow the characters, sometimes living in their heads, sometimes trailing behind, and whatever I think the book is “about” doesn’t matter because the characters and the Plot and Theme Daemons collude to produce something better than I can think of at the start.
It’s sort of like my internal organs–a kidney, say, or a pancreas, or bone marrow. They’re doing important things in there, but they don’t need, or want, my constant intrusive attention. So “theme” gets woven or knitted up or whatever metaphor works, as the story goes along–and we might not even agree on what it is. Because readers come to any work with a mind full of previous books, previous experience in life, previous teaching on how to identify a book’s theme…so the reader may think the book’s theme is one thing and the writer may think it’s another. And another reader may think a third idea is the right one.
Before I started Oath of Fealty formally, I thought of it as Kieri’s story…and in fact, all the volumes have been in folders labeled Kieri-n (n from I to V) before they got their real titles. But once I started writing, I realized that it wasn’t just Kieri’s story. It was a bigger story, a story of change and the reaction to change–of consquences to a a good thing, some of which would not be good. Is “consequences” the theme? Is “change and the challenge of change” the theme? I have no idea. I know it’s about (among other things) disruptive change that forces people–adults in midlife as well as young people–to cope with that change, and how they react to the requirement. But I don’t know that that’s all it’s about. In fact, I’m fairly sure that’s not all it’s about. I won’t know, until I finish the last book, because every notion that comes up connects with other notions and I never know how far that will propagate.
Consider the Serrano-Suiza books, the Familias Regnant group of seven. I started out to write a rollicking space opera involving horses and spaceships–and also to play with the notion I had that how people approach problems depends in part on their age–that 20-somethings, 40-somethings, and over 60-somethings will deal with the same problem differently because they have different toolkits, different experience. That provided enough complexity to start with.
But then…what about longevity treatments? Hmmm. How would a long lifespan affect a culture? Who would take the treatments first, and why? Who would refuse, and why? Which of my characters would be eager to live longer, and what plans did they have for that? Etc.
Soon I had developed a whole range of thoughts (based on living through the characters) that predicted the kinds of conflicts due specifically to longevity treatments (as well as all the usual sources of conflict.) So the head of the Compassionate Hand sees it as his duty to call for the assassination of the Familias head of state, to prevent what he foresees as endless war with an entity that will continue to expand with exploding population and its inhuman desire for immortality. (As one instance.)
There are rejuvenants who continue to accumulate wealth with their very extended lifespans–and people who can’t succeed in their careers if they can’t afford rejuvenation, because they age “too fast.” Increasing concentration of wealth, along with increasing paranoia of the multiple rejuvenants as they fear accidental (or intended) death more when death is no longer inevitable. Wealth and long life span makes people “prudent” in this world, too, but prudence isn’t the only virtue. What about the military–it’s nice to have someone with long experience, but what if that means they define “prudent” in a way that means timid (think of some of the older US Civil War generals early in that war, or some of the older admirals in the Royal Navy in WWI.) Increasing frustration of those whose elders may never die off (so when DO you inherit the company?) and those who will never be able to afford rejuvenation.
Vatta’s War also has generational complexity, but ignores longevity concerns for several other complicating topics: the benefits and costs of monopoly, intrafamilial relations with siblings, cousins, etc., and the psychology of killing, trust and betrayal across a broad field of opportunities.
So with the current Paladin’s Legacy group, I’m still in progress and have no firm, final answer. And remind people that the way I write is the way I write. Other writers do it very differently. There are only two rules to writing: Shut up and write (or it never gets written) and Don’t bore the reader (or it never gets read.)
Comment by Kerry aka Trouble — April 12, 2012 @ 2:21 pm
Hm…the Serrano-Suiza books – will there ever be more of those? That series never did feel finished to me. When you’re finished here, of course.
Comment by Linda — April 12, 2012 @ 2:21 pm
Hmmm. I think I have to revise my notion that I prefer books with themes to those which are “just” plots. I can see that there are books where theme over-rides story (ugh). And we know there are many written to provide a living. It seems there is something about the author’s personal motivation from which the various aspects of a work of fiction grow.
Perhaps there are some writers (like you) whose souls/values infuse all that they write so that it comes out looking like theme. I suspect that partly it’s a matter of the characters you create. Many have the sort of character (or divine guidance) which pushes them to consider the consequences of their acts and to make choices accordingly. Who they are drives the plots through the choices they make.
Which leads me to a question. Will we ever learn how/why Dorrin went from being the abused child of an evil family to a Knight of Falk? Some of the abused go on to become abusers, other to be fighters for justice, and many spend their lives just trying to pick up the pieces. In the Dragon’s way of speaking … how did she become wise?
Comment by Genko — April 12, 2012 @ 2:43 pm
The fiction books I’ve read that have what I call an agenda (maybe another word for theme?) I mostly don’t enjoy as much. It feels like it’s about the agenda, not the characters. Maybe that’s one reason I like Elizabeth’s books, because they feel like real people dealing with real stuff, and often without any way of knowing how it will come out, much like the way we live our lives. When there’s an agenda, I start to figure it out, and I know more or less how the book will end, and kind of resent the preachiness of it.
Of course, some writers are better at it than others, and manage to make characters believable, etc. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books, for example, arguably have an agenda of sorts. It’s one I happen to agree with, and he is definitely skillful with it, and you are still on the edge of your seat not knowing how things will turn out.
Still … being able to simply ride along with things as they happen and have the lessons emerge, just like they do in life, is more what I prefer.
@Linda — yes, that’s always a question — how do some people survive horrendous abuse when others are destroyed by it? One theory is that often there is one person in that person’s life that witnesses and validates something there, and that is enough for a person’s own resilience to save them. Dorrin didn’t seem to have that at the Verrakai estate. One hypothesis here is that something inherent in her allowed her to know that what she was seeing was wrong and determine to get away. Some internal strength, perhaps, maybe even her own latent magery. It’s hard to know for sure.
Comment by Kip Colegrove — April 12, 2012 @ 4:01 pm
I’ve always thought that the longer and more complicated a narrative is the more likely it is to have more than one significant theme. And I think it’s spot-on to say that the theme or themes that foreground themeselves in a particular reader’s experience depend in considerable measure on the reader’s background: experience, interests, etc.
For example, because I’m a “military brat” I’m always going to notice and track with interest a sub-theme that’s often present in space opera: the contrast between military and non-military aspects of the alternative world being presented, or differnt aspects of the military world: careerism, families with long military traditions, etc. One of the great pleasures I find in the Serrano and Vatta series is the believable (indeed, edifying) way these themes are handled. Come to think of it, that’s a thematic category in the Paksworld books as well
Comment by Sam Barnett-Cormack — April 12, 2012 @ 4:01 pm
Wow, thank you! That is really interesting, and it’s really nice to get a question answered that fully.
I’ve (repeatedly) read all the Paksworld, Familias Regnant and Vatta novels, and from your writing one thing occurs to me; not so much the original Deed, but I think change is a recurring feature of your books/series – it’s a creeping social change in the Familias, sudden upheaval in Vatta, revolution with Gird, and now the most complex and subtle yet in the new Paksworld books – far reaching, manifold and deep change.
In a sense, that’s not surprising – it’s a feature of any story that involves grand conflict, after all. I certainly don’t think it’s a negative – there’s enough variation between your books otherwise, after all.
An aside observation… the gods (and saints) seem to be far more vocal to more people in the new books than in the Deed. It actually reminds me a little of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Holy Family books, Curse of Chalion etc (which I also love). I probably spend close to half my reading time reading or re-reading books by the two of you put together 🙂
Authors often talk about themes and such in their work, but usually after (or just before) publication – and it’s unclear how much those themes were in the author’s mind while they wrote, or are post facto analysis of their own.
Genko, I kind of understand what you mean by books with an agenda, though it depends how it’s done. Ursula LeGuin always comes to mind when I think about this. The first three Earthsea books are quire similar (though the third is a little more abstract), and don’t touch on gender very much, though she is famous for gender interest. The fourth, Tehanu, adds the gender stuff quite in-your-face, and it makes the book feel very different, and a little awkward. However, Left Hand of Darkness is clearly about gender, thought-provoking and brilliant – and it doesn’t feel awkward. The gender issues involved are part of the premise, and then it works.
On the question of Dorrin’s ‘surviving’ the trauma and abuse of her childhood – maybe she was already touched by Falk?
Comment by Wickersham's Conscience — April 12, 2012 @ 4:56 pm
Terry Pratchett has described “Critters,” which devour good writing and excrete thin volumes of literary criticism. I’m skeptical of literary criticism in general and searching for themes in particular.
Many critics come to the work they are criticizing with a world view; a Marxist critic will always find Marxist or anti-Marxist theses in the work. It’s a Procrustean approach: strap the author to the frame, and lop off the inconvenient parts, and then apply your world view to what’s left. Worse still are the ones whose criticism is that a work of literature “doesn’t have a theme,” because they lack the wit to find one.
I can count on one hand – with digits left over – the number of critical essays that actually gave me insight into the work I had read. Which is what I understand literary criticism to entail. Besides excreting those thin volume of criticism.
Continue to write well, Ms. Moon. Obey your rules of writing. And ignore the critics, including me.
Comment by patricia nancarrow — April 12, 2012 @ 5:05 pm
my family keep at me for reading ‘that drivel’at my age , I am 76, and have given up trying to explain the sheer joy I get from all your books, so if you keep writing the way you want to I will read them
Comment by june Mattes — April 12, 2012 @ 9:26 pm
I really don’t care if you stand on your head to rattle out your ideas for writing, I just want you to keep writing. It is interesting to know the process, kinda nice to know I am not the only one to wake up in the middle of the night with solutions to problems.
Would like to see more Suiza as well, maybe because I am on that downside of my life and just keep wondering why anyone would want to live to 200 and yet would like to as well. I have a hard time thinking of just a few more years with all the aches and pains.
Comment by Naomi — April 13, 2012 @ 4:28 am
Keep doing it your way, Elizabeth! my first opus started from ascene which had been running round in my head for a while, so I scrapped the hours of pain in how do I write the opening sentence and got with that pesky scene – okay, so I had to then think of how it fitted into the early beginning, but at least I was up and running. I never used to reread books; however thre are several authors whose books are on display and readily available for rereads – just finished Deed again and now onto the new seet – very satisfying!
Comment by Nigel — April 13, 2012 @ 9:11 am
Can we have more of the Vatta’s war series and the Serrano-Suiza series as well?
Thought that you could even make Ky and Rafe as the ancestors to the Serrano’s …
Comment by elizabeth — April 13, 2012 @ 9:30 am
Patricia: You’re 76. You earned the right to read what you want to read decades ago. They have no right to nag at you. Pull rank on ’em. (If they’re older than you, you can still point out that you reached the age of consent a long time ago and they should buzz off and sting someone else.)
june: Ever since my first rejuvenation story (“The Generic Rejuvenation of Milo Ardry”) I’ve considered that “rejuvenation” has to come with literal reversal of age-related aches & pains or it’s not worth it. Living to 120 with the body you had at, say, 30 or 40 has its appeal….with what will happen to *this* body between its late sixties and 120…not to be thought of. Nor do I want to go back through childhood and adolescence.
naomi: I was an early re-reader because it was that, or not reading–and besides I wanted to feel the stories again. But I know some people aren’t re-readers, and I know it can change over time. I now have favorite re-reads, and books that–though I read them all the way through–go immediately into the giveaway sack. I don’t even have to hate them–I just know they won’t stand up to re-reading. I’m honored that you think mine do.
Nigel: No speculation on other groups of books in this blog, please. I’m not going to discuss the SF groups except briefly in terms of craft, as here.
Comment by Daniel Glover — April 13, 2012 @ 5:44 pm
I’ll just add congratulations. That’s a big chunk from the plot bombs with more still to finish up. Which, as you’ve mentioned in prior posts, when coming from plot bombs tend to stick through all the necessary revisions. So I hope you are closer to your schedule now after all the delays from Limits of Power and your other life stuff. I want you to be able to meet your contract (as well as be out in about a year 😉 ).
Comment by elizabeth — April 13, 2012 @ 10:12 pm
Daniel: Schedule not so much, but I’m working on it. Today was pretty much a bust, due to various things around the place, but I’m hoping for more tomorrow.
Comment by Kevin Steverson — April 14, 2012 @ 7:01 am
Ma’am,
I like the way you write. I re-read all your books, all series..and you are right about reacting to change. It’s been said many times..when the real shooting starts “the battle plan goes out the window” and then it’s time for reaction. You improvise, adapt, overcome…or you die…
Comment by Roberta — April 14, 2012 @ 8:12 am
Re-reading a book for me is a joy. Especially since each time I open them up I uncover somethinig I didn’t see the first or even the tenth time I read it. My own life experiences change how I see the stories. Death, birth, family problems and joys all impact on the story and how I interpret it.
What the author has written is exactly what he/she meant to be, but my interpretation and interaction with their story impacts me the reader differently, allowing me to see even more layers in their wonderful works.
Comment by Ginny W. — April 14, 2012 @ 8:52 am
I read books for the characters – if I like them they become friends of a sort, and I re-read the books, often at widely separated intervals. I have noticed that in books by the same author, the characters tend to have issues that recur, just like real people. The advantage of story is that the context of a given issue can be very different in different stories.
For instance, the generational/longevity thing is connected with rejuvenation in the Serrano books, where it is in some sense an option. In the Paksenarrion books, this issue is connected to the elder peoples, (look at King Mikeli’s reaction to Dragon’s offer of a boon ‘every hundred years’ or Kieri’s reaction to marrying an elf who was his mother’s age) and is not a choice any given character can make.
The advantage of issues over themes is that they can happen over and over for different characters for different reasons and with different consequences. And they intersect with other issues … Like a good tweed fabric, you keep noticing a thread of a different color or shade. So thanks for letting those characters out onto the page where we can meet them…
(I liked Remnant Population…)
Comment by elizabeth — April 14, 2012 @ 6:31 pm
Started on the other (previously mentioned) plotbomb today, only to find out it had gone cold while I worked on the first. Gentle rewarming (so as not to cause permanent congealment) is going on.
I know that AT SOME POINT Mmmph meets Ummph, and they have a conversation of major plot importance, but right now Mmmph is standing on a hillside, barely in sight of the sea, wondering what the dickens happened. No, this does NOT represent the mental condition of the writer, who knows moment by moment why she is getting back to this plotbomb this late.
Oh, well, something will happen….if you just throw enough oddities at the scene, it will either accept one, or it will shudder like a horse waking up, give you a startled and disbelieving look, and trot off with determination.
Comment by Patrick Doris — April 15, 2012 @ 9:39 am
That last sentence in comment 17 made me think of the Wind steed’s look to the children when he changed from the cart horse in “Surrender None” and the Red horse’s look when someone said he belong to Paksenarrion
Comment by Greg Gregnon — April 15, 2012 @ 2:12 pm
Thank you for all of the books.
I first encountered Paks in Germany in the early 90s and have read and re-read the full set repeatedly. I was delighted to find Oath of Fealty in the airport just before Kings of the North was released. I pre-ordered that and Echoes of Betrayal.
As a forever Marine and Army veteran I really enjoy the realistic flavor of military life in the series. As someone who has been sword fighting for three decades I have enjoyed the tactical and strategic sense of the action. The characters entrance me and lead me on.
Now that I have found Paksworld and your LiveJournal I can find even more about some of my favorite characters. Thank you again.
Comment by Greg Gagnon — April 15, 2012 @ 2:13 pm
Stunning to mistype my own name. 🙁
Comment by Elizabeth D. — April 15, 2012 @ 5:36 pm
As to themes: I always found a different “main idea” than others, and my outlines were horrible. But I learned something when my class studied Hamlet: there were so many themes it was practically several different stories: from the boy coming back from school with too many modern ideas to be able to handle a real-life circumstance, to the girl who tried to break out of her class only to find that the free-spirit boy from school was just like all those old-fashioned royalty that took nobody but themselves seriously, and all other sorts of plots and themes in-between (25 students, 25 themes). The point to me is that any sincere character has something to teach, but only after the fact.
Another author had characters that escaped danger magically, not as in Paksworld, but “Deus ex machina” because they were in a corner. There must be some limitations, or else everything becomes too convenient, as you point out that rejuvenation has its own horrors for society. In Paksworld, magic can cause more problems than it solves, and horses have to be fed.
As to re-reads: O.K., I do find a few minor details annoying in some books (Frodo’s knife disappears, then reappears, in “The Fellowship”). But the most major annoyance is when a book is entirely based on themes, power struggles, and cliffhangers. There is a series (not yours) that seemed fairly good at first read, but (for me) fell apart on the re-read because knowing what would happen next ruined any reason at all to read it. I know a character is going to die, so I know that his family is going to do something else, so what is the use of them setting up power alliances when they will all be dissolved soon… everything is about power, not building of character, and the word “nice” isn’t even in any of their vocabulary. (And further out, the lack of “nice” really bogged down the series so that there was not one living character with enough humanity that would make me care to read more.)
When I re-read the Deed of Paks for the third time, I tried to seek out a reason for myself that I could re-read it and derive more pleasure every time; the only reason seemed to be that the plot moved with the characters, not that the characters were pawns to the plot, and the experience was new every time, because we ride emotionally with it, and care about Paks and the other characters.
Thank you for writing such engaging books!
Comment by Daniel Glover — April 15, 2012 @ 5:42 pm
@Elizabeth D.
Not only to horses need to be fed, but so do sergeants, as a certain dragon found out. 🙂
Comment by Jenn — April 15, 2012 @ 7:39 pm
Elizabeth:
This is one of those great threads that comes along and just sets me thinking. I am also happy to learn I was not the only one who could never guess the theme right in English Class. Fortunately it never stopped my love for reading.
Patricia: I was introduced to Elizabeth’s work by a 94 yr old man who still reads the Deed and Remnant Population every year even as he is approaching 100.
Ginny W: I too, love Remnant Population. It is one of my favorite books. I love the last line.
Comment by Karen H. — April 16, 2012 @ 1:54 pm
@19 Greg – When I was in the second grade, I had a spelling test where I got all the words right, but the teacher gave me and F on the test because I misspelled my name. As I am over 60 and this is one of the few actual memories that i have from when I was seven, the lesson stuck with me forever more.
Comment by Ginny W. — April 16, 2012 @ 4:31 pm
I went through an academically disastrous year or two in junior high school, because I stopped reading any of the books for my English class (or writing the assignments). It began with a teacher who always emphasized what (I thought) was the most boring, obvious and badly worked out “theme” and divorced “plot” from “action”…
Elizabeth – what did happen? I can wait until the book comes out, but can whoever?
Comment by pjm — April 16, 2012 @ 5:40 pm
It seems I can count myself fortunate to have done English when it contained grammar, spelling, clear thinking (where has that gone?) and not much literary criticism. Meant I could read for fun. Hooray for Maths and Science in schools!
I have done (and used as a teacher) a “test” where students are told to read the paper first, and after all the difficult questions the last one says to write your name and NOT answer any other questions. Most do exactly what I did and attack the questions on the way through.
Come to think of it, we do a lot of that in some of these threads.
Peter
Comment by Richard — April 17, 2012 @ 3:01 am
Peter,
that reminds me of a story my aunt tells (she was a teacher). Once a class was told that the school office wanted some information, so each pupil should take a clean sheet of paper, date it, and write down – she didn’t say what, but bureaucracy gone mad. When they had all finished they were told they could screw the papers up and throw them in the bin. The date: April Fools’ Day.