Best Non-European Fantasy (Seconds and Nominations Needed)

What is the best non-European fantasy setting?

Well it looks like there's almost NO chance this poll won't go into at least a semifinal round, so we don't have to be quite so rushed trying to tabulate our nominations, semifinals will run into July and the poll will be finished at the end of July. However while some nominations were flooded with seconds, we need more. And of course this is our last call for any new nominations.

Please head over help us shape our poll. 

However, please do remember the rules for the poll. This is not about 99% European-trope conforming fantasy setting that happens to take place in a world that simply isn't labeled Europe or is on another planet. It's not about the Scandinavian comitatus that you haven't read much about in typical Tolkien knock offs. The key word is distinctly non-European.

There is one interesting entry, and its popularity threatens to unbalance the poll. I'm going to let you all tell me your opinions in the comments to this post. Dresden. Dresden is definitely not your typical European fantasy, and it technically classes as fantasy (even though urban fantasy is a bit different). But I didn't explicitly say it had to be high fantasy or medieval fantasy. It's out of what I envisioned, but I'll go with the consensus here. So chime in in our comments and tell me what you think about that.

Please please please go back to the original page. It'll make my life so much easier when I make the poll to have all the nominations in one place.

Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Friends (Personal Update)

Time to stiffen up my sinews.  

Jazz hands!
Image description: Me doing jazz hands

If you've been with Writing About Writing for a while now, or listening to me whine like a four year old with a skinned knee, you know that summer school is historically six weeks of me trotting out some of the most spectacular jazz hands I'm capable of doing. ("What? Another day of Fortune Cookie Wisdom? You don't say!") I somehow have managed every year to avoid putting the blog on hiatus through sheer force of will and not a single bit of crystal meth no matter what the district attorney alleges, but it is a difficult time for any semblance of a steady flow of non-ridiculous posts. Unfortunately, my imminent move out means that I lost the luxury of being able to afford turning down a 35/hr teaching gig.

Of course, cancer has also provided a challenging time to keep a steady flow of non-ridiculous posts going up. In the last eight months I've had to add jazz fingers and grow my hair out so I can do some mean hairography. So now we get to find out exactly what the effect will be of stacking cancer and summer school. (And company in town. And moving out.) Jazzier jazz hands? Or just complete meltdown? Tune in to find out! If you've ever wanted to see me crash and burn, now might be your chance.

I've known this particular confluence of suckitude (not the good kind) has been coming for a few months now. Hopefully I've got a few things set up (from half written articles to some slow ball questions for Mailbox posts that I've been saving) that will help get us through. I'll be leaning hard on weekends for productivity. And of course promoting my Kickstarter will create a little more filler that isn't usually there. (Sea monsters fighting carrier groups. It's going to be great. And even just a dollar will get you on the list for updates.) I should be able to at least fake it with style. I mean more so than usual. I always feel like I'm never going to see the light of day or write a decent post again, the six weeks usually ends faster than I expected.

So if you see me floundering in the next six weeks or I miss a day (especially a Thursday), that's probably what's going on. Or maybe my kids finally revolted against the terrible aspect of my eye, and even though I inflicted serious casualties, I was no match for 25 of them.

Four Things Your Editor May Not Tell You (But You Should Know) By Bethany Brengan

If you ever do end up working with an editor (whether through a publisher or one you hire), I hope it is a delightful experience. (Or as delightful as watching someone hack away at your beloved can be.) And I hope your editor is transparent with you. But even the most honest of editors may have a hard time admitting to the following:

1. I can make your manuscript better, but I can’t make it good. Everything depends on our starting point. When I do content editing, I try to cover all the bases: from major plot holes to missing commas. I can tell you that a specific character doesn’t seem to be well-developed. I can even point you toward some tools and tricks that may help make him more three-dimensional. But I cannot make you think more complexly about people. I can tell you that a sentence sounds awkward or clunky. I can offer suggestions about ways to rewrite it, but I cannot turn you into a brilliant prose stylist. I can’t even rewrite every sentence for you. (Nor would you want me to; your book needs to sounds like you, not your editor.)

Ideally, every single manuscript would reach the same level of quality before it left my desk. But the truth is that although I try to give equal treatment to each project, it is easier to notice when the baseboards of your house need another coat of paint if I’m not also trying to deal with your flooded basement and caved-in roof. The cleaner and clearer a manuscript is when I receive it, the better its quality when it leaves my desk (and the cheaper edits will be for you).

As much as possible, I try to let writers know if they aren’t ready for edits yet. Hopefully, your editor will do the same, but just in case, I recommend at least one more revision than you think you need before you send one your work.    

2. I will make mistakes. Ugh. It hurts just to type that. Because when you are hiring an editor, you expect meticulous attention to detail. And you should; that’s what you’re paying for. But editors are human. In most cases, it’s not a matter of knowing something is wrong, but noticing the wrong thing (among a sea of other wrong things). Once, in a sports-related book I worked on, a multi-page heading read “Icing Skating” instead of “Ice Skating,” and I didn’t notice until I got the galley proof back from the printer. And sometimes, mistakes go to print. I used to flip through all the books I’d worked on until I found a “mistake” (usually an optional comma I no longer liked). Because, statistically, I knew there was probably one. But if I could find a small, unnoticeable mistake, I could still sleep at night.

Don’t be surprised if you catch your editor in a typo. Don’t be surprised if your editor sends you slightly panicked emails wanting to make changes to previously edited chapters (changes that may not seem that important to you). Don’t be surprised if she sends you several such emails. She’s trying to make sure all noticeable mistakes—the editor’s and the writer’s—will be caught before you go to print. But as long as the editing continues to be done by humans (it may be a while before robots fully grasp idiom and plot structure), there will be human error involved.

3. I don’t always agree with other editors. Editors tend to be opinionated people. Especially when it comes to grammar and punctuation. And although I may definitively tell you that you are not allowed to use literally to mean “figuratively” (and Garner’s American Usage would agree with me); I know that this usage is now so common that many dictionaries accept “figuratively” as a secondary meaning. And another editor might be perfectly fine with this usage in certain contexts. Meanwhile, a more prescriptive editor might “fix” every sentence that ends with a preposition while I roll my eyes and mutter about “the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.”

The point is that the rules of the English language are not nearly as clear and agreed on as your editor might like you to believe. Most editors have a style guide, a dictionary, and a certain attitude toward language that they rely on. Therefore, different editors have different “voices” in the same way that writers do—the differences are usually subtle, but they definitely exist. I believe that the best editors are able subsume themselves within the particular voice of the writer, but you will still want to find an editor who fits your style. And if you are uncertain about an edit, don’t be afraid to check a style guide and ask for clarification. Which leads to my next point. . . .

4. You should question me. Please, please, please for the love of all that is sweet and grammatical, read over your edits before you approve them for print. And ask me questions. Maybe I missed something. Maybe I misunderstood the way a certain character talks. Or maybe something just doesn’t seem “quite right” to you.

Recently, an author and I worked on her memoir. I had edited and she had rewritten her first chapter several times. I honestly thought it sounded pretty good. But she believed it could be better. I worried that more tweaking might ruin the flow of the chapter, but I agreed to look over another rewrite and give her my opinion. When she sent me the revision, I was blown away. It was much better. There was more tension; the emotion was clearer and seemed more honest. She had added other elements from her life story that I didn’t know about and never could have suggested. Because she was brave enough to say, “No, I think this needs more,” she got a much better opening than she would have if she’d just blindly accepted my edits.

I hope this helps you view the hacked up body of your book with a little more certainty.

Bethany F. Brengan is a freelance writer and editor who reads too many comics. She is a contributing writer to Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman (McFarland Books). Her poetry has appeared in The 2015 Poet’s Market, Poetry Quarterly, and The Crucible. She can be found at www.brenganedits.com andwww.readingwritingraptures.blogspot.com.

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices (even if they don't always agree with me). Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

My Kickstarter is Live

Help me get my first novel into the world just a little bit faster.

Check it out!!!

Triexta: A (Sub)urban Fantasy Novel by Chris Brecheen

Many thanks to the Ace of Geeks crew for helping me out with the video so it wasn't just me talking into a camera and trying for the 17th time to get it all in one take.

One of the things I want to make you, dear reader, aware of as I try to back this project is that even though this is a specific project and funds are all earmarked for it, the thing about having time to write is that the creative well never runs dry. While of course you shouldn't back my project if you don't like the sound of a suburban fantasy novel with F-15s fighting dragons, if you've always thought about supporting Writing About Writing to help me shift into a higher quality and frequency of posts, backing this project would be an excellent way to do so.

Best Non-European Fantasy (Poll Nominations Needed)

What is the best non-European fantasy?

Let's face it, most fantasy is pretty darned Euro-centric. King and queens, lords and ladies, knights and peasants, sylvan glades and thick forests, lots of armor, broad swords, cavalry (and chivalry), and sieges that demonstrate a castle's nearly indomitable defensive power given the weaponry of the day. But what about the fantasy in distinctly non-European settings. Mezzo-American? Japanese? Indian? Some great fantasy exists in these settings as well.

The Rules

1- Your nomination can be a single book or a series, but it has to take place primarily in a non-European setting. A "European setting" or "non-European setting" doesn't have anything to do with actually being IN EUROPE. Dragonlance takes place in a world called Krynn that has never even heard of Earth or Europe, but it is very European styled fantasy. 

As always, I leave definitions up to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. However please consider that this is a call for distinctly non-European fantasy. Not simply a transfer of all the modern tropes into a place "with lots of sand." Or an incredibly European fantasy looking setting that happens to be another planet. 

2- Your reasons for choosing the book/series can be because you love the setting or because you love the plot and characters that happen to BE in a non European setting. It is entirely up to you.

3- You may nominate two (2) books/series. (Remember that I am a horrid and unyielding power hungry monster here at Writing About Writing. To encourage reading and reading comprehension I will NOT take any books or series beyond your second nomination.) If you nominate more than two, I will only take your first two and consider any beyond that to be "pre-seconding" for a future nomination. 

4- You may (and should) second as many nominations of others as you wish. No books/series will be going on to our poll that doesn't get at least one second.

5- Please put your nominations here. I will take books nominated as comments to this post on other social media; however, they may not get the seconds you need because no one will see them.

This call for nominations is late (it's already the 7th) so please hurry and expect the last call early next week and the poll to go up in just over a week from today.

Filler Splat (Personal Update)

A screen grab from last night's filming.
Image description: Me! With a pretty big smile on my face.

Hi everyone,

Fire up your non-European fantasy settings for tomorrow's call for nominations. We won't have as long as we usually do to gather names and turn them into a poll.

Today I am trying to catch up on fifteen things at once, and doing a personal update. One is a Kickstarter for a novel that will be rolling out soon and I am desperately excited about it. If it funds, you'll be looking at a full fledged novel by yours truly rolling out in serial blog post format about a year from now. (If it doesn't fund, it could be more like two or three.)

Another is approaching summer school. I've been putting off a bunch of paperwork (I'm changing the curriculum a little) and today I realized that it was the last day to submit things that I'll need for copies.

I also need to make some headway with my move. Nothing big. I still have 24 days until I even start moving boxes, but it's time to start writing e-mails and packing things in my current room in a less haphazard way.

Radiation starts tomorrow. We have NO CLUE what to expect. Some say sunshine and rainbows and a much improved frame of mind. Some say a lot of fatigue.

Which reminds me that I may have answered a mailbox about this already, but just so everyone knows the time of prophecy is nigh! The next week should be pretty prolific if radiation is not terribad, but then life is going to bodyslam me awfully hard. Basically every week until I am out of the house and done with summer school involves a new strata of complication. This week is radiation. Next week is summer school. The week after that is multiple overlapping visits. And the week after that is starting to move. Each of those things will stack onto the growing pile too. It won't be until early July before they start to clear one by one, and not until I'm moved, radiation is over, and summer school is done for the year that I will begin to have a normal schedule again.

This is the calm before the storm.

I'll keep posting, because writing is what I do, but there may be some skipped days, upside down schedules, weekend make up posts, and a WHOLE lotta jazz hands for the next seven weeks.

Prompts!

I don't have a weekly or monthly prompt, and tend to favor quality over quantity when it comes to prompts, but after a few years, they have tended to add up.

Here are links to all the prompts I've put up in the past here at Writing About Writing.  Most are prompts I've done myself in some writing class or another or have had to design as part of other projects.

Some are whimsical and mostly free writing. Some are extremely structured and will require you to write exactly the amount or time that they call for. While each "rule" in a prompt often has a reason (most people write better under a time pressure than they do with none, for example) the only real rule with any prompt is to get you writing, so if you feel inspired by parts of the prompt but not the rest, feel free to cheerfully ignore whatever isn't quite working for you.

It's All About the Food                                    Recombine, Reconfigure, Reconstruct
Sunday Prompts--Disney Style                       Fast and Random
Get Into The Head of Your Characters           Metaprompts: The Prompts About Prompts
Concrete Detail                                               Dental Writing Prompts?  Oh yeah.
Writing as a Child                                           Truth and Compassion...And Politics
Make Yourself Aware of Filtering                   Significant Details Eulogy
First Sentences                                              Practice Daily Goal Setting
Sonder: Deepening Minor Characters         The Paradox of the Human Condition-A Civil War Prompt
From a Slightly Different Angle                      NaNoWriMo Warm Up (best done before NaNo)
A New Year's Inventory                                 What Does Success Look Like?
Look Down Your Own Mountain                    The Genre Shell Game
Pinterest Story                                                 "Scene 2"
What Have You Done for me Lately?