Writing Fantasy Heroes Read online

  HEROES

  Where are your heroes? Are they trapped inside the stories in your head, eager to burst free? Are you ready to share them, to brag of them, to tell of their deeds and battles, their daring and sacrifice? Are you a storyteller ready to write the tales of your own heroes?

  Fantasy heroes endure. They are embedded in our cultural fabric, dwarfing other literary figures and the mere men and women of history. Achilles and Odysseus, Gilgamesh and Beowulf. King Arthur and Robin Hood, Macbeth and Sherlock Holmes, Conan and Luke Skywalker. They dominate our legends, and tower over popular culture.

  The stories we tell each other begin and end with fantasy heroes, and the 21st Century is as thoroughly captivated with them as ever. From Batman to Gandalf, Harry Potter to Tyrion Lannister, the heroes of fantasy speak to—and for—whole generations.

  But what makes a fantasy hero? How do the best writers create them, and bring them to life on the page? In WRITING FANTASY HEROES some of the most successful fantasy writers of our time—including Steven Erikson, Brandon Sanderson, Janet Morris, Cecelia Holland, Orson Scott Card, and Glen Cook—pull back the curtain to reveal the secrets of creating heroes that live and breathe, and steal readers' hearts.

  Whether you're an aspiring writer or simply a reader who loves great fantasy and strong characters, this book is for you.

  Rogue Blades Presents

  WRITING FANTASY HEROES

  POWERFUL ADVICE FROM THE PROS

  Foreword by

  Steven Erikson

  Contributions by

  Alex Bledsoe

  Jennifer Brozek

  Orson Scott Card

  Glen Cook

  Ian C. Esslemont

  Cecelia Holland

  Howard Andrew Jones

  Paul Kearney

  Ari Marmell

  Janet and Chris Morris

  Cat Rambo

  Brandon Sanderson

  C. L. Werner

  Edited by

  JASON M WALTZ

  MILWAUKEE WI

  2013

  Published by

  Rogue Blades Entertainment

  4068 S 60th Street, Suite 401, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53220, USA

  This is a collection of opinions containing writing advice and fictitious examples and citations. All the names, characters, places and events portrayed herein are either the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, establishments, locales or incidents is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for the content of author or third-party websites.

  A Rogue Blades Presents Title

  Writing Fantasy Heroes: Powerful Advice from the Pros

  Copyright © 2013 Rogue Blades Entertainment

  ISBN: 978-0-9820536-9-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013932330

  Cover Art: “The Hunt,” by Dleoblack

  Cover Design: J.M. Martin

  First Edition: February 2013

  Printed and Bound in The United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without the prior written permission of the publisher and the individual authors, excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of any author’s rights.

  Copyright for individual works reverts to the individual authors and artists.

  “Man Up: Making your Hero an Adult,” by Alex Bledsoe, © 2012 by Alex Bledsoe.

  “NPCs are People Too,” by Jennifer Brozek, © 2012 by Jennifer Brozek.

  “The Reluctant Hero,” by Orson Scott Card, © 2012 by Orson Scott Card.

  “Shit Happens in the Creation of Story, Including Unexpected Deaths, with Ample Digressions and Curious Asides,” by Glen Cook, © 2012 by Glen Cook.

  “Foreword,” by Steven Erikson, © 2012 by Steven Erikson.

  “Taking a Stab at Writing Sword and Sorcery,” by Ian C. Esslemont, © 2012 by Ian C. Esslemont.

  “The Heroic Will,” by Cecelia Holland, © 2012 by Cecelia Holland.

  “Two Sought Adventure,” by Howard Andrew Jones, © 2012 by Howard Andrew Jones.

  “So You Want to Fight a War,” by Paul Kearney, © 2012 by Paul Kearney.

  “Tropes of the Trade,” by Ari Marmell, © 2012 by Ari Marmell.

  “The Hero in Your Blood,” by Janet Morris and Chris Morris, © 2012 by Janet Morris and Chris Morris.

  “Watching from the Sidelines,” by Cat Rambo, © 2012 by Cat Rambo.

  “Writing Cinematic Fight Scenes,” by Brandon Sanderson, © 2012 by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC.

  “Afterword,” by Jason M Waltz, © 2012 by Jason M Waltz.

  “Monsters—Giving the Devils their Due,” by C. L. Werner, © 2012 by C. L. Werner.

  Rogue Blades Entertainment

  Putting the Hero back into Heroics!

  Heroic Anthologies from RBE:

  Return of the Sword

  Rage of the Behemoth

  Demons

  ~ ~ ~

  To those who do things

  Worth writing about,

  Worth remembering,

  Worth doing

  ~ ~ ~

  Contents

  Foreword

  Steven Erikson

  The Hero in Your Blood

  Janet Morris and Chris Morris

  The Heroic Will

  Cecelia Holland

  Taking a Stab at Writing Sword and Sorcery

  Ian C. Esslemont

  Writing Cinematic Fight Scenes

  Brandon Sanderson

  Watching from the Sidelines

  Cat Rambo

  Man Up: Making your Hero an Adult

  Alex Bledsoe

  Two Sought Adventure

  Howard Andrew Jones

  Monsters—Giving the Devils their Due

  C. L. Werner

  NPCs are People Too

  Jennifer Brozek

  Tropes of the Trade

  Ari Marmell

  So You Want to Fight a War

  Paul Kearney

  Shit Happens in the Creation of Story

  Glen Cook

  The Reluctant Hero

  Orson Scott Card

  Afterword

  Jason M Waltz

  Contributors

  Foreword

  Steven Erikson

  When asked for a single piece of advice for beginning writers, I reply with “Finish what you start.” It sounds simple, and for many, even obvious. But there is more to it, because writing is a learning process, and this process is unending. I would even go so far as to suggest that most of the learning takes place in the last third of whatever it is you happen to be writing—a scene, a chapter, a novel, or a series.

  There is a mindset at work here, and it needs to be approached with both humility and a kind of relentlessness. The act of creation—in the telling of a story—imposes pressure on the writer, while the purpose behind that pressure is, ultimately, grace. In other words, the reader is witness only to the finished product, and if the making of that product entailed sweat and not a little blood, well, that’s between the writer and her or his maker (or muse, if you prefer; or, indeed, the face in the mirror).

  When I was starting as a writer of fiction, I pored over ‘how-to’ books, from John Gardner to Eudora Welty, in search of secrets of the trade. Being young and inherently lazy, however, I made little effort to read between the lines. Now, years later, I have come to the belief that it is precisely between the lines that you will find the hard truths. They hide in the
voice of the teacher, in the words they have put on the page.

  Finish what you start. I voice it as a challenge, and let the silence hang. If the challenge in my tone makes the listener uncomfortable, well, good. It pays to be uncomfortable, especially as a writer. Uncomfortable with easy answers; uncomfortable with the process itself; uncomfortable with sage advice. Now, that’s not quite the same as skepticism, or disdain. To be made uncomfortable means that something got through, something stuck, and now you have to start worrying it. That may be irritating, distracting, whatever. And you’re free to dismiss it. But if you can’t get rid of it, you have no choice but to think about it.

  Words of advice are freely given—the authors in this book each sat down, prepared to talk about process and the creation of heroes, and talk they have, offering up many of the hard-learned lessons they each have won in their writing careers.

  But I would advise: look between the lines. These are confessions of hard work, of contemplation, of the struggle to find grace, and finally, of the distillation that comes when you finish what you start—those moments in the writing of a tale, when you can see the end, when every sentence is like skinning your knuckles, when from all the sweat and day-in-day-out grind you stumble upon realizations, glimmers of comprehension, when you find yourself in slow revelation. That’s what this was all about. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know for a fact. I’ve been looking, tracking it down, hunting sign…and here it is.

  It’s no small challenge to backtrack and see how it all fell into place: how each choice made in the telling also created inevitability, which now stands solid and irrefutable in the writer’s mind. You only get this at the tale’s end, and that is, in part, what I meant by the learning coming close to the finish.

  The essays in this book are more than invitations to the cruel craft of writing fiction; they are anticipations of delivering authentic heroes: this is bared to the bone stuff, because honesty begins and ends with the writer. And nothing requires more honesty than character. No one here is spinning you a line. Each one is, in effect, saying you need to think about all this if you want to be a writer—especially when writing heroes.

  I admit, my first time around, all those years ago, I never quite got that. But then, suddenly, I did. So, take this book here as one stone in your foundation. You’ll read it, forget bits of it, remember other bits, and a few salient observations will lodge in your mind. It’s not simply enough to say “Think!” It helps when someone takes you in hand and says, “Think about this.”

  As for my own contribution, I’ll throw out the following:

  Think about your hero. To find the hero in your tale, it pays to search inside yourself, and find some inkling of the heroic within you. Every fiction derives from a truth, but it is the act of writing that fiction that can drag you, kicking and screaming, closer to that truth. It’s not a thing to be reached, not a thing to be taken hold of and known utterly. It’s elusive, and even at the story’s end, it hovers just beyond reach. But damn, I got close.

  Next time I’ll get even closer…

  Steven Erikson

  Victoria, Canada

  November, 2012

  The Hero in Your Blood

  Janet Morris and Chris Morris

  The hero in your blood has always been there. Close your eyes and feel your rage, your battle, your honor, your struggle: all are part of the human condition, with us in body and mind from our earliest days. This hero is in our genes, hardwired. Heroism is our heritage: the hero in your blood will always be there.

  This heroic struggle forms the basis of our earliest myths, our stories, our songs. Call it what you will. Call it species altruism, which makes a human risk life and limb to save a stranger. Call it our legacy from the Paleolithic, and before, when only willingness to risk and sacrifice ensured our survival as a race. Or call it literature’s primary driver: the hero has been a focus of humanity’s lore from our beginnings; wisdom from our ancient hearts transmitted at great cost—our reminder to ourselves, lest we forget who and what we are.

  From the Epic of Gilgamesh onward, humanity memorializes its journey through story—epics of our histories and of our psyches from cave walls to clay tablets to paper to electrons. Was Gilgamesh a historical king in the 26th century BCE, who heard the tale of the Great Deluge from a survivor; who was buried in the diverted riverbed of the Euphrates as legends say? Some think so. In 2003 a German expedition claimed to have found his ‘long-lost’ body; yet we never lost his heroic story—it’s the beginning of our own.

  Fiction and nonfiction, mixing together, make myth; myth carries forward the common values which defined us once and define us still. Tales of heroes and gods, magic and monsters, upheaval and cataclysm make sense of our chaotic world, put value in tragedy, put strength in our souls. Heroic literature is our literature: it carries forward the best in us, makes sense of the unrest in us, and ignites the desire for greatness which inspires us.

  FINDING YOUR INNER HERO

  Finding your inner hero can be easy.

  Simply listen. Hear the thrumming of your pulse, the urgings of your heart; they’ve been with you all your life. Research suggests humans organize information into story form: the heroic tale organizes our shared consciousness, our species pride, our aspirations.

  Or read. Read myth, read history, read the greatest writers of fiction and the annals of the great nonfiction heroes of the ages—all of them distilled heroism for their times. Allying your inner hero with the defining mythos of humanity is perhaps the highest calling for a writer. Not through disconnected invention or by mimicry, but only by resonating with the ontology of our most ancient souls can you take your place in the great procession of the mind.

  You won’t find your inner hero in cartoon reductions of Good and Evil, nor in body count and mechanistic slaughter. Heroism is not a numbers game. Heroism is the triumph of quality over quantity; it has always been the exaltation of the individual.

  You may find your inner hero in isolation. If so, try to render him or her whole cloth—don’t reduce heroism to merely what is seen, since what motivates a hero is fervor felt and lived. To accomplish this, you must understand what makes a hero. We think a hero is someone who struggles in the service of an ideal. Our fiction reflects this, informed by history and myths from every age.

  We have been writing since 1975. Since 1979, we’ve written heroic fantasy (or mythic fiction) about Tempus and his Sacred Band of Stepsons. Tempus is at the nadir of his career when first we meet him, solitary, beset and angry, representing heroism in its darkest form. In subsequent tales, Tempus forms an elite squadron of hand-picked heroes, mercenaries whose core is comprised of paired lovers and friends (based on the historic Sacred Band of Thebes) and the Sacred Band’s ethos begins to emerge.

  Our story “High Moon,” from the novel Beyond Sanctuary (Baen, 1985), joins fantasy ethos to historical mythos through Nikodemos, one of our most heroic characters. Here Niko is badly wounded and Critias, just assuming command in Tempus’ absence, comes to see him:

  The young officer peered at him through swollen, blackened eyes, saw the bow and nodded, unlaced its case and stroked the wood recurve when Critias laid it on the bed. Half a dozen men were there when he’d knocked and entered—three pairs who’d come with Niko and his partner down to Ranke on Sacred Band business. They left, warning softly that Crit mustn’t tire him—they’d just got him back.

  “He’s left me the command,” Crit said, though he’d thought to talk of hawkmasks and death squads and Nisibisi—a witch and one named Vis.

  “Gilgamesh sat by Enkidu seven days, until a maggot fell from his nose,” said Niko harshly. It was the oldest legend the fighters shared, one from Enlil’s time when Lord Storm and Enki (Lord Earth) ruled the world, and a fighter and his friend roamed far.

  Crit shrugged and ran a spread hand through feathery hair. “Enkidu was dead; you’re not. Tempus has just gone ahead to prepare our way.”

  Thus the connection to our
heroic heritage is made, and the context of our story enlarged. Throughout the Sacred Band of Stepsons series, ethos and mythos interlace, merge with history and blend with fantasy, and each is stronger for it.

  Our historical novel of the Hittite empire, I, the Sun (Dell Publishing, 1983), begins with a line from the actual annals of its hero: “Thus speaks Suppiluliumas, Great King, King of Hatti…” Suppiluliumas styled himself “Favorite of the Storm God, the Hero.” And he was. His speech exemplifies the ancient heroic tradition that made men into emperors and changed the maps of history. His own words illuminate the novel throughout: a real hero who led his men to battle and surmounted treachery at home speaks to us across the centuries. His was an age when kings fought kings one on one—the winner he whom the gods loved best, or whose god was strong enough to prevail through the struggles of his chosen.

  Such resonances among fantasy, myth, and history have been used by our greatest storytellers to evoke common values across millennia.

  For example, Hesiod prays, “Come, Muse, sing to me not of things that are, or shall be, or were of old, but think of another song.” Here Hesiod signals a fantasy. Blind Homer tells us that the men of his day were not as bold or brave or physically endowed as the heroes of his Iliad, his Odyssey, and claims Odysseus as his grandfather. Shakespeare and Marlowe use both historic figures and fantastical ones for their greatest works: from the downfalls of Othello and Julius Caesar to Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Tamburlaine the Great, fantasies study the human condition, especially in extremis. Horatio says in Hamlet, of Hamlet:

  Now cracks a noble heart. — Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! —

  In between the heroes Gilgamesh and Hamlet we find humanity itself, in all its glory. Heroism to serve any fantastic purpose, if you’re but brave enough to connect your work to mankind as you know it; bold enough to innovate when you do. Like Plutarch and Shakespeare and all writers from the unknown author of Gilgamesh onward, feel free to stretch the truth, deform history to fantasy to better tell your story. Historicity does not a hero make, but rather passion does the job.