Have you ever picked up a random book from say a thrifty-shopper or a goodwill? And was said book either science fiction or fantasy? And was this book, with great hope of finding a hidden gem, a complete disappointment upon opening it?
Yeah I've done that before.
Here is what I mean: I believe sci-fi and fantasy run the greatest risk of sucking. Out of all genres, these ones run the highest risk of alienating their audience, and often border on reading a technical manual. There is a line between what constitutes a good fantasy and what does not, and I'm not sure if I know the exact parameters of this division, but I do sense a pattern. Without bashing on specific authors, and because I don't have the books in front of me, forgive me if I speak in generalities, but here's what I notice.
I'll probably say this a thousand times again, but so much of it boils down to character. If you neglect to develop your characters half so well as you spend devising the use and rules of magic in your world you run the risk of sucking. If you spend whole paragraphs talking about how specifically the king is trapped in the court wizard's spell, and just how exactly the magic entrapment runs along said king like a spiderweb and how it glows purple and how it makes his skin feel like it has ants crawling all over it and how the the wizard must move his hands just so in order to keep this delicate balance while chanting certain words from a long lost kingdom that the audience shouldn't be required to care about yet, and you do this all within the first two pages you run the risk of losing this reader.
Honestly I don't care-I don't want to care-about such things so early in a story. I want to get a strong cast of characters, or at least one, that interests the audience enough to keep us turning pages. Why does life suck now for our protagonist? Who did him wrong? Who did she do wrong? Where and why do they need to get somewhere? I've read other books, or at least started them, only to be disappointed by how the author belabored the mechanics of their magic. Let's call it...The Rejection of AlleyCat (it's an anonymous name.) *wink* And in this book a seemingly interesting character and innocuous narrative move along until we find the protagonist in possession of a certain book that he reads for years before he can unlock the secrets of its magic. Cool enough so far. The character was even marginally interesting, a sort of thief/rogue type that you know destiny has greater things in store for. But here's about where it lost me; its author(s) began to devote too much attention to detail to the manner in which the main characters were able to divine magic from the book, going so far as to tell us (not show us) how they were doing it, spelling out the specific words that the book used to levitate a guy and I'm pretty sure it just translated the word to English. I was done with it. By that point the author was showing signs of developing their characters lazily, and when I got to a point where the narrative read more like a manual in the use of magic rather than a story, I gave up.
It seems many authors are too quick to give it up. They spend a great many hours, days, hell probably years imagining how the rules of their paracosm work. Believe me, I know. Yet they're too eager, once their audience would start stroking their back, to roll over and display the underbelly of their imagination. And worse, such an underbelly we find to be shaved, we see the surgeon's stitching, the gross saggy nipples, and every mole, blemish, and skin tag. You're just too eager authors. You need to tease us, make us wait, be OK with leaving your audience in the dark, we need a little mystery. In fact, we crave it. Save the big reveals for later, but please, PLEASE don't save it all for a monologue by the villain at the very end. There are better ways of doing it. In fact, consider even not revealing everything completely.
How much are people still talking about say, A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones because of all the mysterious elements still left hanging in the air? (i.e. a red comet, White Walkers, Long Winters, etc.)
(**! Spoiler Alert** pssst, I still haven't finished A Dance of Dragons, so don't say anything to me OK?)
What my real grievance with some of these SF/F authors is that their not letting their audience join in on any of the fun. They've done so much work crafting their world/story that they're compelled to just whip it all out right away thinking we'll be impressed, but instead we run away screaming like teenage girls (or giggling, depending on the size...) We, as an audience, want to engage our stories, we naturally want to guess, or fill in the blanks. If there's something we don't know, we need to have fun with it and use our own imagination at least a little. That's when story is the most successful, when there is a give and take between the audience. So who cares if we don't know exactly how Mr. Thief/Rogue divines the secrets of his magic book? It's OK. You know what the audience will latch onto much quicker, even though they want to read a book about aliens or magic or swords? Character.
Let me leave you with something rather on the universal side. Harry Potter. Chances are you've at least watched them. The Harry Potter series starts off with a rather ridiculous premise, in fact you could tell me, and you would be right, that Rowling belabors the rules of her magic as well. But you know why most people don't get mired into her rulebooks of spells and potions? Because just as soon as we're introduced to the rather silly, "unbelievable" world of muggles and wizards, we are introduced to a boy, an orphan boy who feels all alone in the world and needs a hug. That the audience gets. They are distracted from the fantastic, their noses aren't forced into it, because there is a character that they suddenly care about regardless of how wacky the setting. And when Harry is in charms class, we are not just told how he must specifically wave his wand and recite the incantations, we are told how he struggles with it. We are told what moral dilemmas are distracting him from focusing on his schoolwork...hey, it's almost like Harry's a real person, having feelings and all that weird people stuff. And what's more fun about Harry, was how long we were left to guess how he survived Voldy's attack as a baby and all the fun mystery around that.
So, Dear Authors of Science Fiction and Fantasy,
It's not a sin to spell out the magic, to eventually show your shaved underbelly (maybe), but at least give us real characters and a good deal of time to wrestle with the mystery ourselves. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Brand Mark,
Hopeful Author of Science Fiction and Fantasy
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