hard choices...
Apr. 26th, 2014 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lagilmanThis was originally a friends-locked post, then I decided what the hell...
I've done a lot of research and worldbuilding, to get the tone of the WiP right. I know, for example, that there's a way to shape bark into a crude tray, so you're not trying to balance your meal on your knees, around a campfire. And that would be a nice little detail, the kind of color that an epic fantasy novel seems to call out for, the kind of detail that readers of same seem to enjoy. And it would be easy - enjoyable, even - to slip that sort of detail into the book. To detail the meals, the way they travel, sleep, fight, cook, until it's almost as though you're watching, rather than reading.
And that would be good, and satisfying, and fun.
But... the underlying tone of this book has always been more sparse, broad strokes of daily life, with the details focused elsewhere, allowing the reader to assume and presume, rather than spelling it out. To make the reader dig for the meat, a little more. And I know...I know that this could hurt the book. The readers who will come to it, thinking "oh, epic fantasy with horses and magic n' shit" and then discover that the tone is...not that?
I could do the traditional thing. I could do that and nobody would think twice about it, because it would be expected, what the readership prefers. And the book would probably please more people/sell better. But...
It would change the book.
To clarify off the comments: if I thought this would be a negative change, it wouldn't even be under consideration. The fact that some of you seem to think I would...huh.
Change isn't bad. Traditional isn't bad. It's just a different journey to the same destination.
I've done a lot of research and worldbuilding, to get the tone of the WiP right. I know, for example, that there's a way to shape bark into a crude tray, so you're not trying to balance your meal on your knees, around a campfire. And that would be a nice little detail, the kind of color that an epic fantasy novel seems to call out for, the kind of detail that readers of same seem to enjoy. And it would be easy - enjoyable, even - to slip that sort of detail into the book. To detail the meals, the way they travel, sleep, fight, cook, until it's almost as though you're watching, rather than reading.
And that would be good, and satisfying, and fun.
But... the underlying tone of this book has always been more sparse, broad strokes of daily life, with the details focused elsewhere, allowing the reader to assume and presume, rather than spelling it out. To make the reader dig for the meat, a little more. And I know...I know that this could hurt the book. The readers who will come to it, thinking "oh, epic fantasy with horses and magic n' shit" and then discover that the tone is...not that?
I could do the traditional thing. I could do that and nobody would think twice about it, because it would be expected, what the readership prefers. And the book would probably please more people/sell better. But...
It would change the book.
To clarify off the comments: if I thought this would be a negative change, it wouldn't even be under consideration. The fact that some of you seem to think I would...huh.
Change isn't bad. Traditional isn't bad. It's just a different journey to the same destination.
