Comments on: Light and the Writer

By: fsdthreshold

fsdthreshold — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:08:20 +0000

To clarify a little: I agree, Tandemcat, that fantasy fans would have no trouble at all with a world devoid of light–IF that world were brought to vivid life in the text. The lack of light in _The Fires of the Deep_ isn’t a problem inherent for potential readers; it’s a problem for ME, the writer. Without light on my palette, I found myself unable to paint the Hurlim world in any kind of captivating or attractive way.

New vocabulary isn’t a problem, except that there are limits, and I’m quite sure _Fires_ exceeded them. Tolkien once remarked that he wished he could have published _The Lord of the Rings_ entirely in Elvish. By writing the book in English, he was (very wisely) making a concession to the human, mortal, English-speaking readers who did not yet know Middle-earth, but who soon came to know it intimately and to cherish it.

So for me, I’ve got to write _Fires_ in English and remember that my readers have light-perceiving eyes. When they can clearly see and understand, then I can risk getting a bit exotic.

I would strongly encourage you to bring your fantasy novel into the light (no pun intended here, either)!

By: Tandemcat

Tandemcat — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:30:02 +0000

“And the mosquitoes are dead”–yes, I hear you, Verralton! For myself, I like seasons when one of two things is true: either the leaves are green, or everything is white. I don’t mind the various colors of leaves in the fall, but they are all too soon gone–I just don’t care for bare branches. I’m also one of those who can’t sleep in hot weather, and the noise of an air conditioner tends to be as bad as the heat in terms of dropping off.

As for _Fires of the Deep_, I have a divergent view. I’m not arguing against people who want to see more light down there, but when I was one of the fortunate few to read the book, that wasn’t one of my problems (and I did share my thoughts with Fred). I assumed at that point that hard-core fantasy fans had no problem with a world having no light, not to mention learning a new vocabulary–to me, that’s part of the charm. OTOH, I don’t consider myself to be a hard-core fantasy fan as such, although I have started a fantasy novel myself, which may never see the light of day (no pun intended!). The world I created is different from the one we live in today, but not so different as Middle Earth or Narnia (which are, after all, pretty much just our world in medieval times, except for things like elves, dwarfs, and magic).

By: fsdthreshold

fsdthreshold — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:37:26 +0000

“To the beeches of Neldoreth I came in the Autumn;
Ah! The gold and the red and the sighing of leaves
In the Autumn in Taur-na-Neldor!
It was more than my desire….”
–from Treebeard’s song

Heh, heh! I sang that song, with music composed by Donald Swann, for a solo & ensemble contest in high school. For those of you who recall those days and might be interested, Lori M. played the piano to accompany me. I remember the challenge of explaining to the audience, “This song was sung by an Ent….”

Okay, several of youse guys clearly love autumn, and you’ve made the argument eloquently. Obviously I share your enthusiasm for the season–my one book that’s actually seen print so far is all about autumn, right?

But see, here’s the thing: we form our seasonal loves in our childhoods, don’t we? And the world of a child is inextricably bound to the school year. And I absolutely despised school, with its insistence on dictating how I should spend my time, with its misguided emphasis on all sorts of ridiculous stuff that was not books and stories and adventures. So it’s a very simple correlation: summer = summer vacation. Hot, humid weather = the time of freedom. Heat and humidity = books, stories, and adventures. That’s the whole thing. I’m like one of Pavlov’s dogs–give me sunshine and heat, and I wag my tail.

Autumn is very nice, to be sure–but autumn means “back to school,” which was always like a shadow falling across my heart. Spring is wonderful, too, but spring is “still in school when you ought to be out, already–will June never come?” Winter is . . . just plain awful. Deep in the depths of the school year, and miserable weather to boot.

And, folks–”air conditioning”? [Raises an eyebrow.] Oh, yes–that thing they have in movie theaters, supermarkets, and hotels/motels–that “imitation cave air”–yes, that’s pretty cool! Heh, heh.

By the way, I’ll say this just in case: I don’t mean to be a rude jerk here. I value every single one of your comments, and my tone in this one is meant in the spirit of passionately defending our favorite seasons. Hee, hee!

This has been a busy week, but I fully intend to write a proper post again tomorrow! (Oops!–I mean “later today”–I SERIOUSLY ought to be in bed!)

By: I experienced Verralton

I experienced Verralton — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:37:15 +0000

Nick nailed it — humidity is a tool of the devil. The great thing about winter snow is it dries out the air. Of course, desert air is TOO dry … we are talking everything in moderation, folks!
I always loved late September and early October, when the leaves first begin to turn and the air is crisp. Daytime high 65, overnight low 50 — in other words, a sweatshirt later in the day but no jacket. Now we are talking! And clear, cloudless blue skies made ever so bright by the axis of the earth.
This is when to read outdoors, with your back to a tree as the leaves rustle and fall, spinning in the soft breeze. Ahh the earthy smell, the slight tingle on your cheeks from the cool air, the gentle scratching of squirrels busily hunting acorns. Oh the colors of autumn, the dappled sunlight under the eaves, the golds and reds and browns and ten shades of orange.
Nature is busy reaping the fall harvest in preparation for winter — and the mosquitoes are dead.

By: Nick dropped in

Nick dropped in — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:39:21 +0000

I am the one here who can make the claim to being a desert native: my birth and first twenty-two sweltering years of life were lived in Phoenix, AZ. And I, too, must confess that I am no fan of the heat. When I moved to the midwest, I first stayed in houses that did not have central air. I discovered that without it, I could not sleep. If anyone calls me a “wuss” for this, I’ll kindly remind him/her that I have spent many hours tramping through the desert when it was 118 degrees Farenheit. The day in the ’80s that set the record topping out at 120? I spent most of it outdoors (tubing down the Verde River and getting burnt to a crisp). I dislike hot, humid days; I loathe winter weather. Give me Spring and Autumn!

By: Preacher

Preacher — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:16:37 +0000

“are you nuts?”
I would ask that question too. I can’t STAND summer heat and humidity. And reading is a crime in sticky weather as you might do damage to the pages of a precious book. Fall is the best season, winter is next. After all–if you’re cold you can put on a blanket or a jacket to warm up. But when you’re hot, there’s nothing you can do but suffer. Fred, you are brilliant and artistic and a wizard with words. But you’re so WRONG on this one! (My air-conditioning is set on 72!)

By: I experienced Verralton

I experienced Verralton — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:23:40 +0000

Ahh my friend, the dust you have kicked up! I recall with joy havig your imagination unfold before us and inviting the members of the Flail to flesh out the masterpiece, the grand mystery of Verralton. From the splendor of Ekkadhim’s Chamber to the love the Breve Elliott and Sarano had for their valley to the ‘water always being up’ … the immense scope involved was appreciated deeply, at least by those of us willing to step, heart and soul, into your creation and not just idly feed Hooper fig newtons.

For those of you going ‘huh?’ I can testify to Fred’s deep love for Mammoth Cave (and for others as well). Tolkien once called himself a hobbit — Fred is definitely one of his dwarves! “A little tap here or there, maybe, in whole anxious day” as Gimli said.
I was always in love with the elves, identifying with their downfall, their broken nature. In was also in love with the Dunedain of Arnor, silently fighting on from the shadows.

As for Mr. Durbin’s (and so many fellow entrants’) love of summer, I can only say “are you nuts?”
So hot you stick to the sheets? Not in my apartment, where the AC kicks on whenever the mercury tops 80. And in the winter the heat barely comes on. I live in a quite large unit in the basement of an old college building, so it stays warm.
Dearest Fred, those cold winter nights are THE nights for reading! For snuggling into a blanket. For midnight strolls on freshly fallen snow when it is 10 degrees F and the earth is illuminated in the beautiful silvery bath of moonlight on argent! When the breath you have unknowingly been quieting rolls forth like the blast of some mighty ice dragon.
The stars sparkle in a clear, cold sky while the gift of the clouds lie glittlering on terra. The air is hushed, the crunch of your boots sounding impossibly loud, as if to be heard a mile off. The beauty in the stark, twisted branches of the trees, when all is quiet … ahhh!

By: fsdthreshold

fsdthreshold — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:57:52 +0000

You go, Catherine! Write, write, write! Yes–see what I mean? Light tends to be the single most powerful force for bringing writing to life. If you’re writing a story, and a scene just seems static or doesn’t feel engaging, more often than not, you just have to ask yourself, “What’s the light doing?” And suddenly your description is crackling with vividness and life again.

That having been said, it’s interesting to consider: two of the most enduring works in Western culture are the Iliad and the Odyssey. IF Homer was one single person (which, I know, is a debatable fact), then according to tradition, he was blind. And John Milton went blind before he had written some of his greatest work (“When I consider that my light is spent / Ere half my days in this dark world and wide. . . .”). Which goes to show, I suppose, that there are no absolutes in writing, except that you have to write. (In that same poem, Milton called writing “that one talent which is death to hide”!) If you no longer have light and colors at your disposal, it’s not necessarily the end of the world. Beethoven went on writing music after he was deaf. But as long as we have sight, it seems good and wise to make the absolute most of it. (Not that we should neglect the other senses. I do some exercises in my writing classes to get students to focus more on their senses _other_ than sight, which also really helps to bring writing to life.)

By: Catherine

Catherine — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:20:51 +0000

YES–I read this post and walked away; then I suddenly remembered what made me start getting description-heavy in the last story I wrote. And it WAS light. I was trying to describe the way the light gets just before sunset on a late-summer afternoon, when it turns everything to a tired gold–grass, wood flooring, brown hair…the like. And then I was trying to describe the way a single lamp in a very dark winter night is very pale and wan and lonely. Just now, I was thinking about a church at night with the lights off in the sanctuary, with a single stained-glass window shining dimly in the light from the streetlights outside, a pale, faintly-colored shadow of what shines in all its brilliance on a sunny morning with the sun streaming in. The light is so dim that you can barely see the pews or anything else, but what you can see is bathed in purple, blue and red, rather than plain white. It gives a very sacred feeling.

Oh, no–now you’ve got me started…

By: fsdthreshold

fsdthreshold — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:34:49 +0000

Hey, Baron T.! In response to your first paragraph of your first comment: I’m sure my delivery was clumsy, but the point I was making was that both caverns-as-perceivable-by-me — and the great medieval cathedrals — make use of highly-controlled light. You’ve seen cathedrals firsthand, I haven’t — but I know the builders did all sorts of clever things like arranging windows so that the sun, at a particular hour of a particular day in the year, would shine directly on a particular feature of the floor or elsewhere in the building. And the windows (at Chartres, the height of a six-story building) are so tall that the details of their higher panes can’t possibly be seen by viewers on the floor; their purpose was chiefly to fill the interior space with beautifully-colored light: to bathe the faithful in the colors of the things of Heaven, the stories told in the stained glass.
It’s the lighting in caves that makes them so incredibly wondrous to me as a writer — the shining minerals, the dim depths, the shadows implying passages to another world: without the lighting, they’re still wondrous to you, the geologist. But as art, _The Fires of the Deep_ falls flat for precisely the reason you re-emphasized: it’s set in a big, lightless world where there are no colors. As John said back in his comment, we need a human interface. We need a pair of human, photoreceptive eyes to bring this world into the realm of our own perception and experience.
It’s very cool that mountains really do have roots! So Tolkien was (probably unwittingly) reaching into the realm of science with such lines as, “As well set your boot to the mountain’s root, / For the seat of a troll don’t feel it!”
And as to your P.S. about how scientists can “molest art”–no doubt, no doubt! We writers of speculative fiction have been “molesting” science since the dawn of our genre, so if you mean that science feels free to suspend the laws of art, that’s only fair.