Quicunque

While I’m generally very negative about TV or movie adaptations of books I love (and usually with full justification), I’m never sure how I feel about adaptations of books I’ve simply quite enjoyed. I don‘t have the same possessiveness about them, but I do have strong mental impressions and thus certain preconceptions and expectations. It’s not just how characters might physically look on the screen, although that plays a large part of it, but how accurately the flavour, the atmosphere of the novel might be transferred to a visual medium, and how much might be lost in translation.

Apparently there’s a BBC tv adaptation of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell being made that’s due to be aired later this year, which for some reason I only heard about today (I know….). I have no problems with what I’ve seen of the cast list and what I recall of the names on it, but I do worry about how they are going to condense 1024 pages, 185 footnotes and a whole army of major and minor characters into 7 episodes, AND handle the fact that the ending – well, it isn’t an ending really, is it? At least, not for Strange and Norrell.

Although I didn’t love the book overall quite as much as wanted to, I did appreciate the dashing sweep of its scope and prose, the Englishness of its mythology, the erudition it wore quite lightly and its affectionate pastiche of all sorts of genres and styles. For me, the footnotes – stuffed full of minor stories and snippets of imaginary lore and literature – were as intriguing as the main story, maybe more so. None of this is something that will be easily or satisfactorily conveyed in a limited visual medium.

Still, I’m sure I’ll be tuning in to see what remains of the book when it hits the screen. And if I’m feeling generous and not too grumpy I might even try and judge it on its own merits and not pick too many nits.

Oh, and in response to the meme that doesn't seem to exist yet - I'm a Strangeite.

While waiting for my friend to come online and amuse me, I was idly reading through some of the collaborative science fictions novels I used to write in and it struck me how many of the characters were assassins or bounty hunters or both. Almost invariably female and kick-ass. Probably with big bazookas. They are beautiful, lethal, do mercenary work on the side, are 'not to be crossed' and 'not to be trusted'. The future is gonna be a very dangerous place to live in because if one of these sexy yet bad-ass (and almost invariably female) assassins don't get you, a sexy yet bad-ass (and almost invariably female) bounty hunter will.

And I am left scratching my head over these clichéd character types...

Every angle of the feisty (and almost invariably female) assassin/bounty hunter stock character has been pre-digested and overused so exhaustively that unless employed as a clever parody, I can only assume that it's a rather sad and dull lack of imagination that makes people keep on cloning carbon copies. And what's so appealing about mass-murders anyway? (in case anyone thinks I'm unfairly prejudiced against assassin characters, I use the same argument for vampire-fanciers *grin*).

Sure, unoriginal stereotypes can sometimes still be enjoyable. Sometimes a clichéd character type can suddenly come become more interesting if an unusual or unexpected angle can be found to them, although if the angle is too obviously contrived and/or whacky and it can just feel staged and unconvincing. Superficial, recognisable stereotype characters can also be useful (even essential, some would say) in a story to provide a familiar level of comfort and reference for the reader. But not as main characters, please! A lead character needs a certain amount of uniqueness and complexity to interest me, and I don't just mean she might do tricks with a shuriken that would make a crime-lord's eyes water.

Maybe the assassin stereotype is just a high-tech replacement for the Tart with a Heart of Gold? Whatever, my ennui with the cliché has reached the stage I automatically read no further if I find one in a story - and that applies to both amateur collaborative fiction and published fiction.

Although I generally don't write fanfic, I have dabbled. One of my forays, back in 2003, was writing a couple of original characters in a Highlander novel at Panhistoria. The fact I'd never seen any of the TV series - and indeed only the first of the movies, many years previously and well forgotten - didn't stop me. What did stop me, was when the novel was lost in the infamous Crash of '04. Many the novels at Pan were rebult from the ground up, including the Highlander one, but I never revived my characters there. They went into space in a science fiction story instead.

Recently, myself and several of my original writing partners from that first venture into Highlander territory have started to pick up our story again, after a 5 year hiatus. This time it's at Pan's sister novel, Panerotica, even though the story is no racier than it ever was (ie not really at all *chuckles*). We've started by undertaking to repost everything we had saved from Version 1 before picking up where we left off - and it's been an interesting exercise to say the least. I have managed to frighten myself with the realisation I wrote much better 5 years ago than I do now.... *laughing*. Oh, and I still haven't see any of the TV series at all!

Since you have to be a member to read everything at Panerotica I thought I'd share a brief excerpt from the story here. So here is my Watcher character, Dante Sparda, newly arrived in Rome to take up his new (and first) field assignment - observing the Immortal known as Zaekim Sanburd - and harbouring a private agenda that threatens to distract him...

Making notes

Roma, August 21st in the Year of Our Lord 1585. The Woman hath taken a House in the Monti District of the City, at the corner of the Via del Boschetto, where she doth now go by the Name of Margarita and passeth freely amongst the Artisans and all People. Your Servant hath taken a Lodging nearby, and doth Keep close her close in Observing her though she knoweth him not…

Old archive entries from long ago that had been encrypted in code by an unknown Watcher and buried deep in the dusty chronicles, until Dante had found and deciphered them. He had read them hundreds of times, using them to painstakingly plot Marguerite Chauvelin’s route across Europe and three hundred years. Now he read them again on his laptop in the small room of his pensione.

Dante sighed in wry self-amusement as he realized he’d got distracted again while painstakingly transferring the handwritten notes on his present assignment to the computer. Almost without thinking he had brought up the codeword-protected files that contained information on another Immortal, one that held a deeply personal interest for Dante. Though the chronicles asserted she had been dead these last hundred and forty years, she was the reason for his existence and his secret obsession, just as she had been his father’s.

He lit a cigarette, leaned back and closed his eyes, letting his mind slide back to how it had all begun: himself sixteen years old and left without family or means after the violent death of his father in mysterious circumstances. No one had known what to do with him, until a man he’d never seen before had turned up to “tell the boy his heritage”. This was Tomas Le Haine, and what he had told Dante had changed his life forever.

“I am here because of what your father was, and because we look after our own. Andreas Sparda was not just a bookseller, he was also a research Watcher, Dante,” Le Haine had smiled at the grief-numbed boy gently. When he returned to the Watcher Academy in Geneva, he had taken Dante to train him to follow in his father’s path.

But although he was studious and often found pouring over old manuscripts in the library, there proved to be a secretive and wild streak in Dante. He was often missing for hours or even several days, from which he would return inexplicably cut and bruised as if from a fight.

He told no one, not even his beloved mentor, that he had now discovered something to focus his bitter vendetta on. It was in his father’s personal notebooks recording their own family history that he had first found the name of the obsession that had drawn Andreas Sparda into this secret society, and hence to his death.

… Shit! The forgotten cigarette had now burned down low enough to threaten Dante’s fingers and he quickly stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray on the writing desk. A glance at his watch showed he had spent longer simply sitting here mulling over the past than he could afford. Shaking his head and muttering at himself, he closed the Chauvelin file, and dutifully began a new one to continue transcribing notes on the one who called herself Zaekim Sanburd instead.

[from Highlander: For All Eternity, all rights reserved]

Another piece of fiction from me. The beginning of a fantasy story that started out as the familiar old 'portal between the worlds' scenario but was beginning to incorporate all kinds of wierd, disparate elements just before it's host 'novel' at Panhistoria came to an end.

Yes, I suppose really one day I should post a sample of what I'm writing NOW rather than older, defunct stuff. But this is as much for me as it is for you (my hypothetical reader, maybe I have one!) and I am shamelessly prone to nostalgia. I can see the faults in these pieces now, and even ways to improve them (though I haven't), but that's half the point of this exercise for me.

So with no further woffle, here is Burn - a Fire Elemental, resident of Faerie, and reluctant guardian-to-be of that pesky portal.

The Earth Moved in Faerie

Something was terribly wrong. The Land knew it too, and moaned and trembled with its unease. The rumbling echoes of the groundquake and following rockfall faded back into silence, and after a brief pause during which everything seemed to hang in tense stillness, the birds began to sing again, though tentatively. The black horse, which had lifted its head from cropping the sparse grass to stare with anxiously pricked ears at the mountains facing them across the forested valley, gave a soft snort and stamped a hind-hoof, nosing at its master’s shoulder.

Burn absently murmured soothingly to it and patted its strong arching neck. “And what was that?” he mused. It was a rhetorical question – he knew what it was, just not what had caused it.

I don’t know but I don’t like it, said a small leathery voice from inside his jerkin. I think we should move on. Wherever we’re going.

“Hmm.” Burn looked across the valley at the hillsides beyond and frowned. There wasn’t much that could make a more-or-less immortal fire-elemental uneasy, but the series of unusual events he’d encountered over the past few days were getting close to it. Two days ago, he’d been drawn by the smell of fire and smoke to a meadow down in the valley below them, where he’d found nothing but ash blowing amongst the trees and long grass. The work of dragons, he’d assumed, scenting sulphur and brimstone on the hot breeze, but the mighty creatures generally kept to the mountain fastnesses and were rare visitors in the valley without good reason.

He thought he understood the reason for the dragons’ presence when he went a little further, and in a small clearing in the woods he found a rift in the fabric of the world, a rippling shimmer in the Spring sunlight that as he stepped closer revealed a view into another world beyond. The world of the humans, Burn had decided, creatures he generally had nothing to do with, not even those who had passed into Faery years before and stayed. He never went near their small, scattered settlements. He saw no point in it although he didn’t resent or regret their presence in the Land.

Small rips in the continuum were not uncommon and generally easily sealed, but Burn could see this one was something different. It had a force of its own that hissed in the wind and rippled in the aether, as if in defiance of any attempt to close it. Not that Burn did even think of trying to close it: he was Fire and this was not his responsibility. He had simply ridden away, assuming those who could, would deal with it.

But since then, he had begun to wonder. The next day he had found something wandering about in the valley that had no right to be there and had aimed a small metal weapon at him that spat fire. Burn had retaliated in kind and left the ash to mingle with that already lightly dusting the leaves of the trees. And then today—the Land itself had spoken and Burn realized that the rift he had ridden away from was of more ominous significance than he’d thought.

But still, he was a fire-elemental and such things as holding the boundaries between the Worlds were not his business. He gathered up his horse’s reins and swung into the saddle, careful not to squash the salamander that lay quietly beneath his jerkin. Normally Pyro would have been up riding on his shoulder and filling his ears with its chatter, but today the little creature was silent and hiding.

The big black horse moved sure-footedly on the rocky slope down to the valley floor, ears flicking back and forth as if it too had caught some of the salamander’s unease. As the ground levelled out and became more thickly wooded, Burn turned its head into the trees and crossed the valley floor at its narrowest point, fording the small stream that meandered along its length until again the land began to rise towards the foothills on the other side. What had made him decide to see for himself the aftermath of the Land’s protest he couldn’t say, and he never asked himself because he never questioned his own motives for anything.

Like many other creative fiction writers, I have a virtual cigar-box full of beginnings that have no endings. A good collaborative fiction writer tries on many different types of character and ventures into a variety of scenarios and histories during his journeys. Although my experiments have not always worked, I would like to think I have at least voyaged, and my virtual cigar-box contains a collection of old posts from my early days at Panhistoria when I was trying on various characters and novels as if they were hats.

Some of these posts are the only ones I wrote for that particular character. Sometimes I found the hat I tried on just didn't suit me, or it was too constrictive or cut from the wrong cloth. Several of the posts are for novels long since lost to posterity. None of these characters exist in my current fictional dabblings, although some of the names live on in different roles.

But I cling to these outdated and defunct introductions, not simply to revisit them and (hopefully!) consider how I might have improved since, but also because although they are no longer tied to their original novels/storylines, maybe they will one day fly again as something else altogether or provide inspiration for future stories.

This one is relatively 'recent' - from 2004. It was the beginning of a story in the pirate-themed collaborative fiction group at Panhistoria called Ile de Torture, and although neither the character nor the story came to anything, I was fond of him - Christophe Malheur, mixed-blood plantation foreman and local voodoo priest. Somedays, I feel he may still have a story to tell....

Answering Marie's summons

On this wildest of nights, the boy sent to fetch Christophe Malheur found him sitting on the storm-torn wooden verandah of his house with the wind whipping his long black hair about his face and lightening reflecting a yellowish hue in his ebony eyes. Thunder rolled back from the hulking black mass of Mont Pelée and lightening twisted in brilliant flashes through the torrential rain, but Christophe’s quiet observation of the storm’s wrath was more of appreciation than concern. They said he had been born at the height of just such a storm, his mother’s agonized cries muffled by the roll of Shango’s vengeful drums while the mambo-midwife called on the loas to give life and protection, and something of the storm had always remained in him.

He didn’t seen either surprised or much concerned to see the boy appearing on his doorstep in such weather, but simply got to his feet, took hold of the boy’s thin arm and hauled him inside the house out of the tearing wind and rain before remarking softly, “Not a good evening for a stroll, mon p’tit, so what’s wrong?”

“Madame Leveau sent me,” stammered the child, breathless with the force of the storm and the exertion of running. “They found a man washed up by the storm at Anse Ceron and took him to Colline Plaisante.” He danced from foot to foot nervously under the steady regard of Christophe’s ebony gaze, wide-eyed with awe of this man the gens de couleur called Nwa Kònèy, the black crow.

Most people on first meeting the facteur of Marie Leveau’s plantation tended to assume from his looks that Christophe Malheur was white—maybe even one of those pure-blood but dirt-poor haute Français one could find around the island. But he never troubled to conceal the quarter of his blood that was Dahomean or his servitude to the loas, and this had brought him a certain respect amongst the people of color, both slave and free, around Anse Ceron.

Christophe nodded his understand of the situation, calmly pushing long wind-tangled hair off his sharp-featured face. “I’ll go straight away. Has the doctor been sent for?” he asked the boy. “Good. Now you stay inside, mon p’tit, you may shelter here til the storm’s passed. But mind you don’t touch anything.”

“Non, m’sieur, I won’t!” The boy glanced nervously round the room, which was dimly lit by a single candelabra standing on what appeared to be a small shrine against the wall: Nwa Kònèy’s djab-spirit was said to be possessive and fierce if you were not safely protected with its garde.

“Mesi,” Christophe smiled at him and touched his head gently, then like a storm-crow was gone into the raging night.


If you wish to explore the stories told in Ile de Torture further, you can use the guest login option at Panhistoria to read there.

Good writing advice from an author whose succinctly clipped and immediate style (a style she calls "very tight limited third person") I have always envied as much as her imagination.

All following text is copyright © 1995 by C.J. Cherryh who gives permission it to be reprinted with full credit.

Writerisms: overused and misused language. In more direct words: find 'em, root 'em out, and look at your prose without the underbrush.

1. am, is, are, was, were, being, be, been....combined with "by" or with "by....someone" implied but not stated. Such structures are passives. In general, limit passive verb use to one or two per book. The word "by" followed by a person is an easy flag for passives.

2. am, is, are, was, were, being, be, been....combined with an adjective. "He was sad as he walked about the apartment." "He moped about the apartment." A single colorful verb is stronger than any was + adjective; but don't slide to the polar opposite and overuse colorful verbs. There are writers that vastly overuse the "be" verb; if you are one, fix it. If you aren't one---don't, because overfixing it will commit the next error.

3. florid verbs. "The car grumbled its way to the curb" is on the verge of being so colorful it's distracting. {Florid fr. Lat. floreo, to flower.}

If a manuscript looks as if it's sprouted leaves and branches, if every verb is "unusual," if the vocabulary is more interesting than the story...fix it by going to more ordinary verbs. There are vocabulary-addicts who will praise your prose for this but not many who can simultaneously admire your verbs as verbs and follow your story, especially if it has content. The car is not a main actor and not one you necessarily need to make into a character. If its action should be more ordinary and transparent, don't use an odd expression. This is prose.

This statement also goes for unusual descriptions and odd adjectives, nouns, and adverbs.

4. odd connectives. Some writers overuse "as" and "then" in an attempt to avoid "and" or "but," which themselves can become a tic. But "as" is only for truly simultaneous action. The common deck of conjunctions available is:

- when (temporal)
- if (conditional)
- since (ambiguous between temporal and causal)
- although (concessive)
- because (causal)
- and (connective)
- but (contrasting)
- as (contemporaneous action or sub for "because") while (roughly equal to "as")

These are the ones I can think of. If you use some too much and others practically never, be more even-handed. Then, BTW, is originally more of an adverb than a proper conjunction, although it seems to be drifting toward use as a conjunction. However is really a peculiar conjunction, demanding in most finicky usage to be placed *after* the subject of the clause.

Don't forget the correlatives, either...or, neither...nor, and "not only...but also."
And "so that," "in order that," and the far shorter and occasionally merciful infinitive: "to..{verb}something."

5. Descriptive writerisms. Things that have become "conventions of prose" that personally stop me cold in text.

- "framed by" followed by hair, tresses, curls, or most anything cute.
- "swelling bosom"
- "heart-shaped face"
- "set off by": see "framed by"
- "revealed" or "revealed by": see "framed by." Too precious for words when followed by a fashion statement.

mirrors....avoid mirrors, as a basic rule of your life. You get to use them once during your writing career. Save them for more experience. But it doesn't count if they don't reflect...by which I mean see the list above.

If you haven't read enough unpublished fiction to have met the infamous mirror scenes in which Our Hero admires his steely blue eyes and manly chin, you can scarcely imagine how bad they can get.

limpid pools and farm ponds: I don't care what it is, if it reflects your hero and occasions a description of his manly dimple, it's a mirror.

As a general rule...your viewpoint characters should have less, rather than more, description than anyone else: a reader of different skin or hair color ought to be able to sink into this persona without being continually jolted by contrary information.
Stick to what your observer can observe. One's own blushes can be felt, but not seen, unless one is facing....a mirror. See above.

"as he turned, then stepped aside from the descending blow..." First of all, it takes longer to read than to happen: pacing fault. Second, the "then" places action #2 sequentially after #1, which makes the whole evasion sequence a 1-2 which won't work. This guy is dead or the opponent was telegraphing his moves in a panel-by-panel comic book style which won't do for regular prose. Clunky. Slow. Fatally slow.

"Again" or worse "once again." Established writers don't tend to overuse this one: it seems like a neo fault, possibly a mental writerly stammer---lacking a next thing to do, our hero does it "again" or "once again" or "even yet." Toss "still" and "yet" onto the pile and use them sparingly.

6. Dead verbs. Colorless verbs.

- walked
- turned
- crossed
- run, ran
- go, went, gone
- leave, left
- have, had
- get, got

You can add your own often used colorless verbs: these are verbs that convey an action but don't add any other information. A verb you've had to modify (change) with an adverb is likely inadequate to the job you assigned it to do.

Colorless verb with inadequate adverb: "He walked slowly across the room."
More informative verb with no adverb: "He trudged across the room," "He paced across the room," "He stalked across the room," each one a different meaning, different situation. But please see problem 3, above, and don't go overboard.

7. Themely English
With apologies to hard-working English teachers, school English is not fiction English.
Understand that the meticulous English style you labored over in school, including the use of complete sentences and the structure of classic theme-sentence paragraphs, was directed toward the production of non-fiction reports, resumes, and other non-fiction applications.

The first thing you have to do to write fiction? Suspect all the English style you learned in school and violate rules at need. Many of those rules will turn out to apply; many won't.

{Be ready to defend your choices. If you are lucky, you will be copyedited. Occasionally the copyeditor will be technically right but fictionally wrong and you will have to tell your editor why you want that particular expression left alone.}

8. Scaffolding and spaghetti. Words the sole function of which is to hold up other words. For application only if you are floundering in too many "which" clauses. Do not carry this or any other advice to extremes.

"What it was upon close examination was a mass the center of which was suffused with a glow which appeared rubescent to the observers who were amazed and confounded by this untoward manifestation." Flowery and overstructured. "What they found was a mass, the center of which glowed faintly red. They'd never seen anything like it." The second isn't great lit, but it gets the job done: the first drowns in "which" and "who" clauses.
In other words---be suspicious any time you have to support one needed word (rubescent) with a creaking framework of "which" and "what" and "who." Dump the "which-what-who" and take the single descriptive word. Plant it as an adjective in the main sentence.

9. A short cut to "who" and "whom."

Nominative: who
Possessive: whose
Objective: whom

The rule:
1. treat the "who-clause" as a mini-sentence. If you could substitute "he" for the who-whom, it's a "who." If you could substitute "him" for the who-whom it's a "whom."
The trick is where ellipsis has occurred...or where parentheticals have been inserted...and the number of people in important and memorable places who get it wrong. "Who...do I see?" Wrong: I see he? No. I see "him." Whom do I see?

2. "Who" never changes case to match an antecedent. (word to which it refers)
I blame them who made the unjust law. CORRECT.
It is she whom they blame. CORRECT: The who-clause is WHOM THEY BLAME.
They blame HER=him, =whom.
I am the one WHO is at fault. CORRECT.
I am the one WHOM they blame. CORRECT.
They took him WHOM they blamed. CORRECT---but not because WHOM matches HIM: that doesn't matter: correct because "they" is the subject of "blamed" and "whom" is the object.
I am he WHOM THEY BLAME. CORRECT. Whom is the "object" of "they blame."

Back to rule one: "who" clauses are completely independent in case from the rest of the sentence. The case of "who" in its clause changes by the internal logic of the clause and by NO influence outside the clause. Repeat to yourself: there is no connection, there is no connection 3 x and you will never mistake for whom the bell tolls.

The examples above probably grate over your nerves. That's why "that" is gaining in popularity in the vernacular and why a lot of copyeditors will correct you incorrectly on this point. I'm beginning to believe that nine tenths of the English-speaking universe can't handle these little clauses.

10. -ing.
"Shouldering his pack and setting forth, he crossed the river..." No, he didn't. Not unless his pack was in the river. Implies simultaneity. The participles are just like any other verbal form. They aren't a substitute legal everywhere, or a quick fix for a complex sequence of motions. Write them on the fly if you like, but once imbedded in text they're hard to search out when you want to get rid of their repetitive cadence, because -ing is part of so many fully constructed verbs {am going, etc.}

-ness
A substitute for thinking of the right word. "Darkness," "unhappiness," and such come of tacking -ness (or occasionally - ion) onto words. There's often a better answer. Use it as needed.

As a general rule, use a major or stand-out vocabulary word only once a paragraph, maybe twice a page, and if truly outre, only once per book. Parallels are clear and proper exceptions to this, and don't vary your word choice to the point of silliness: see error 3.

CHERRYH'S LAW: NO RULE SHOULD BE FOLLOWED OFF A CLIFF.