My Novels
There are three1 and a never completed sequel to the first. What did I learn by writing them?
One lesson from Harald, my first novel, was that world building feels more like discovery than invention. You invent the first little bit of a world and its history and the picture spreads, like a drop of ink on blotting paper.
An example from that book:
The Emperor keeps invading the kingdom of Kaerlia, losing, and invading again. There must be places in the world he could be invading whose king did not have the good luck to find an extraordinarily talented military leader from an allied polity to put in charge of his army. Would it not make more sense to invade one of them and put off Kaerlia until Harald is no longer around? My reason for multiple failed invasions was the story I wanted to tell but what was the Emperor’s?
The answer is that Kaerlia and the adjacent imperial territories used to be a cluster of related kingdoms, sometimes allied, sometimes feuding. Kaerlia is the only one of those kingdoms that is still independent, neither imperial territory nor a client state. Its continued independence, its ability to beat off imperial attacks, poses a threat to the Emperor’s continued control over his grandfather’s conquests. That answer to my puzzle not only expanded my view of my world and its history, including the internal politics of the empire, it gave me ideas for a sequel.
Another example is a question that only occurred to me after the novel was finished. Elaina is an important secondary character, the younger daughter of the Lady Commander of the Order, Kaerlia’s other ally. Ladies of the Order do not marry, sometimes bear children to a lover; Leonara’s other daughter is Harald’s. Elaina is not. I never say who her father is; when I finished writing the book I did not know.
Now I do.
My guess is that a reader, even a careful reader, could not answer that question; if any of you have read the novel and think you can guess Elaina’s paternity, let me know. Since I know more about my characters than can be learned from the text of the book I can deduce things about them that I suspect a reader could not. The picture of a created world in the author’s head is richer, more detailed, than what he can put on paper. It follows that my book is not as good as I think it is, that the book I wrote is not as good as the book I thought I was writing. That might be less true if I were a better writer but I suspect the difference would still exist.
A second lesson I learned from writing Harald was the importance of voices. I created a verbal style for my protagonist loosely based on the style of speech in the Icelandic sagas.2 I gave that style not only to Harald and other residents of the vales but to almost everyone in the story, whether or not it was appropriate, and to my narrative voice. I enjoyed telling the story that way, only discovered my mistake when the book was published and readers pointed it out.
Recognizing the problem is easy, dealing with it is not; in my second novel I tried to give different characters different voices. I may have succeeded with two or three but the rest all sounded like me — as reviewers on Amazon familiar with my nonfiction pointed out. I have spent my life in the academic world and the setting of the novel is a college of magic but even in the academic world, even among professors and still more among students, not everyone sounds the same.
The failure to give different characters different voices is both an artistic failure and a technical problem; it means I have to find other ways of signaling who is speaking.
Harald was marketed by Baen as a fantasy but is more accurately described as a historical novel with invented history and geography — real technologies and institutions, no elves, dwarves or magic.3 Salamander, my second novel, was a fantasy. There were still no elves or dwarves but a lot of (very scientific) magic.
The theme was the magical version of the central planning fallacy, the dream of a world where some sensible person could make all the decisions and make them right. To get that I created a world where magic was weak, a fire mage more like a match than a blow torch. A brilliant young theorist, Coelus, comes up with a spell, the Cascade, a sort of magical chain reaction, that lets one mage with the assistance of four others pull in the magic from many others, channel it, finally be able to do the sorts of things that mage’s had dreamed of doing.
Think how much we could do with the pooled talent of fifty mages and five hundred, or five thousand, or fifty thousand ordinary people, each adding his trifle of talent to the pool, pouring it through a trained mage. Almost unlimited power to end a plague, to heal even someone at the point of death, to build a road or monument, to do things that no single mage, whatever his talent, could do before.
He invites Ellen, his equally brilliant student, to participate in creating the spell. She refuses and points out one of the things wrong with the central planning fallacy:
She shook her head. "My mother is a healer; I have seen sickness enough. Men with gaping wounds that she has closed. When you have seized her power to shift a flood, on whose hands will be the blood of those she cannot heal?"
All those resources are already being used by their owners, quite possibly for more important purposes than the planner would divert them to. There are two other problems with the fallacy, only one of which comes up in the plot.
As I originally imagined the story, the climax would be a magical duel between Coelus and a powerful mage opposed to what he was doing. That was a mistake. Coelus as I drew him was naïve but well intentioned and highly intelligent. At some point he would realize that the spell he was inventing would make the world worse, not better; it was not necessary to defeat him, only to convince him.
No plot survives contact with the characters. For the story to work they have to do what those people would do, whether or not that fits the author’s plans.
Having eliminated my central conflict I needed a replacement so introduced a new antagonist, Prince Kieron, brother and heir to the king. He too is both intelligent and well intentioned but with a different set of priorities, sees the spell Coelus is inventing as both peril and opportunity, wants it kept secret and developed under royal control in case someone else, an enemy or an aspiring usurper of his brother’s throne, learns enough to reproduce it. That puts him in opposition to both Coelus and Ellen, now allied against him.
The book contained no romances when I started writing it, two when it was done. Ellen and Coelus, joined by shared interests and abilities, are falling in love, although it takes Coelus a while to realize it. Ellen’s best friend, Mari, is the daughter of a high ranking nobleman, much less talented in magic and the associated mathematics than Ellen, much better at understanding people. The Prince, trying to locate Ellen as one of the people with knowledge of the Cascade, arranges for her friend to be brought to him:
"Send her in."
One of the guards opened the door. Mari walked through it, dropped a low curtsey to the Prince.
"Greetings, Your Highness. It has been some time."
The Prince stood regarding her silently for a long moment. Mari spoke again.
"It is a common name."
He replied with a visible effort. "Yes. I had not expected to find Duke Morgen's daughter as a student at the College."
"It is surely not that surprising, Highness. I am told that even princes can sometimes be found here."
"Sometimes, but rarely." He closed his eyes a moment. "It is true that you have talent. And yet … . Just when did your father decide to enroll you?"
"This is my first year, Highness."
"And Nan died a little more than a year ago, leaving me … . If I were inclined to suspicion, and if your father were not a man utterly without subtlety or intrigue, I might suspect some connection."
"Indeed, Your Highness. As might I, were I not an innocent and unsuspicious damsel."
Their eyes met, held.
"You were a clever child, and I see that you have become a clever lady. I do not think this is the time and place to discuss your father's plans. Still, it would at least not be boring."
Which set up the second romance. Part of the fun, entirely unanticipated, was the contrast between the courtship of a pair of intellectuals who take a while to realize that they are falling in love and that of two very sophisticated aristocrats, fencing all the way to the final declaration.
If we wed I will deal with you honestly, serve King and Kingdom as best I am able. But merge my will in yours, no. If I believe you are mistaken I will say so, and I will act as I think right, with your leave or without it."
"You drive a hard bargain, lady mine. I could name three or four maidens of rank who would have me with no such conditions."
"If you would rather wed one of them … ."
"I think not. I know both sides of my bargain with your father; if I accept your terms, what do you offer in exchange?"
"Besides my person? You have not declared your love; are you inquiring as to mine?"
"If I say that I love you more than sun and moon and stars, will that suffice?"
"Too much and not enough. No."
"So far as the charms of your person, you are certainly the most desirable lady I know, but I do not think that is the question you are asking."
Mari said nothing, waited.
"You are the only lady I would be willing to have to wife on the terms you offer. I accept them. Does that suffice?"
"And does your son …?"
"Agree? Yes. I asked him before I made my final decision."
"That was well done. Then to answer your question, if I had my choice out of all men alive there is none I would rather wed."
None of which I expected. When I started the novel Mari and the Prince did not exist at all, Ellen only tentatively as a student at the college where Coelus taught and the daughter of the powerful mage opposing him,.
Three lessons.4
Past posts, sorted by topic
My web page, with the full text of multiple books and articles and much else
A search bar for text in past posts and much of my other writing
Harald, published by Baen, Salamander and its sequel Brothers, self-published, the partly written sequel to Harald.
The society of the Vales, Harald’s home, is loosely based on saga period Iceland.
My favorite example of the genre, by an author much better than I am, is The Paladin by C.J. Cherryh.
A previous post discussing my novels.
> The picture of a created world in the author’s head is richer, more detailed, than what he can put on paper.
One writer, Tolkien, attempted to solve this problem by adding lengthy appendices to his greatest work, giving a lot of back story. His son then continued that by publishing a lot more back story, based on unpublished writings that his father left behind after his death. In other words, Tolkien tried to write down everything he possibly could about his created world. As far as I can tell, he did that simply because it came naturally to him, not because he was consciously trying to close the gap between the picture in his head and the picture on paper, but that was the effect.
I have felt the same when developing game modules; that feeling of discovery comes from, I think, the fact that everything you think of has to interact with everything you made before or have a good reason why not— itself a form of interaction.
You make a place for people to go and then unbidden come questions of why was it there, why bother making such an elaborate structure, why was it abandoned, why is there still anything left worth finding...