I’m grappling with how to avoid formulaic fantasy tropes in my fiction writing. I lean into a nuanced character-centered novel with depth, set in a fantasy milieu, vs. a violent battle between good and evil (the popular paradigm). Ursula K. Le Guin’s notes are helpful… Immature people crave and demand moral certainty: This is bad, this is good. Kids and adolescents struggle to find a sure moral foothold in this bewildering world; they long to feel they’re on the winning side, or at least a member of the team. To them, heroic fantasy may offer a vision of moral clarity. […]
Journal
Fantasy challenges
As I’m working on some fantasy fiction, a friend asked what was the most challenging part. I said: trying to balance buoyant imagination and believable realism. But maybe there is something more challenging: learning to let your characters’ fantasies eclipse your own.
Fiction - Nature - Satire
Spider-Craft
As usual, Em Spider had skipped breakfast in favor of half a pot of coffee and five hours of remote work. “QA for a streaming media platform, blah blah, who cares,” Em would say if you asked, with a practiced laugh just uncomfortable enough to encourage a change of subject. Around 2 pm, abdomen rumbling, Em scurried down to the mini-mart located in the lobby of the adjacent apartment building and grabbed a couple of microwave flies — flavorless pill-shaped factory-farmed frozen bugs, filled with a vaguely cheese-like food product. After the hurried meal and a couple more hours of […]