TakuGifian

You’ve probably heard the expression ‘write about what you know’. You’ve probably been told that by a teacher, a writer, a university lecturer, or a friend. While this is good advice, a lot of amateur or first-time writers struggle with it.


“But how can I write about my own life? Nothing interesting ever happens to me.” There lies the problem: many amateur writers believe that in order to write something good, they must write about something interesting. But what makes something interesting? Many people who want to write usually think that interesting things include car chases, forbidden love, or government conspiracy. In short, they search for drama.


But life is rarely about drama, outside of movies and television. There are subjects for stories, and indeed, there are stories themselves, ready for the telling, everywhere you look. Yes, even within your own life. That old lady on the bus who always wears her cardigan over her head, or that boy stapling ‘lost dog’ posters onto telephone poles, or that conversation you overheard on the train: everywhere you look there is a story to be told.


“But how do I find the story amongst all of that?” There is never a golden rule for finding a story– every author is different, every writer has their own methods. But no single writer gets a story without listening, observing, and asking questions.

Who is that lady? Why is she wearing that particular hat? Is she going to a wedding or a party? Whose party is it? She might be going to see her family, or to take part in a game show, or to attend a wedding (or a funeral, or a baby shower, or a christening, or…)

Why does he look so angry? He might have had an argument with his wife, or his brother, or his boss. What’s the argument about? Perhaps he wants to move house, or change jobs, or buy a new car or a new pet iguana. Has he perhaps bumped into an ex-lover or high-school sweetheart? Or a high-school bully? What’s the significance of the chunk missing from his nose? Was he a soldier, or just a pub brawler? I wonder if he’s got children…

“Write down the thoughts of the moment: those that come unbidden are often the most valuable” –Ernest Hemmingway

Comment [9]

Whether you are One with the Force, completing quests for the Temple of Waukeen, awaiting the appearance of the Nerevarine, or fighting against the armies of the Dark in the name of the Lady of Victories, religions in high fantasy are as common as Drizzt Do’Urden’s angsty, misunderstood half-brothers and sisters.

But how does one go about inventing a convincing, feasible religion for your characters? Having religious characters can, if handled with grace and tact, give a depth and richness to character, culture, dialogue and even action that isn’t easily achievable otherwise. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s perfectly possible to have a symbolically rich, detailed story without any mention of religion at all; but in fantasy fiction, many writers seem to want to take either the ‘easy’ or the ‘exotic’ path to cultural depth in their world, via religion.

One of the first and most important things to consider when inventing religion is the Self. How does your religion view the ‘self’? As part of a larger whole? As an illusion of existence? A separate, distinct entity in itself? There are many ways of understanding the self, and the way your characters view concepts of individuality and the immaterial consciousness (Whether you choose to call it ‘soul’, ‘spirit’, or a word of your own invention) will ultimately impact other beliefs within the religion, including the language used to discuss the religion, a character’s views on killing and slavery, and the rituals and ceremonies involved.

None of Paolini’s religions address this first issue; the Dwarves skip past it with a vague sense of ‘he self as a ‘spirit’ that encompasses personality, emotions and memory, and can ‘pass on’ after death, but they never try to explain beyond the phrase ‘the afterlife’ (What sort of afterlife is it? Is it a packed mead-hall with an eternal feast with food, mead and dancing women? Some kind of underground antechamber, where they wait for the dwarven equivalent of Ragnarok?). The worshippers of Helgrind (Henceforth referred to as ‘Helgrinders’) are given a passing mention of belief in a spirit world, but only by inference: the detachment from the philosophical opposite, the ‘mortal world’, leads to a conclusion of some sense of a ‘spiritual world’, but it is never expressed directly. The Helgrinders, then, plausibly believe in some kind of distinction or separation between the physical and the mental or spiritual.

The second important consideration, leading on from their understanding of the self, is motivation. Why do they pray? In other words, what happens to the self after death? Does it become one of those glowing orb thingies that appeared briefly in Brisingr? Is it absorbed into a collective group-self? Does it pass on to another world, or does it face judgement, or does it get reincarnated? The problem of what happens to the self after death will inform a lot of the religion’s rituals, celebrations and moral issues, as well as the way people view crime and punishment, and the language that is used to discuss life and death, especially funeral and burial/cairn/pyre/mummification/entombment rituals.

Paolini’s dwarves have solemn funeral rituals, examined in Eldest when Ajihad is entombed (but strangely absent for the dwarven king’s funeral), but these rituals are little more than show; no mention is made of the dead person’s fate, the reason for the particular burial traditions, and very little is said in the way of hymns, rites or anything of real religious significance.

The Helgrinders have it even worse: Almost no justification for their actions and rituals is given. Why do they cut off their limbs? Uh… ‘because they’re insane’ doesn’t work. The thing about religions is that in order for someone to choose follow and remain a follower of a religion, it needs to offer some benefit to them. There needs to be some sense of betterment or fulfilment, or nobody is going to want to follow that religion. Especially if it’s as physically crippling as the Helgrind faith. Are the Helgrinders held above the common folk? Are they revered for their sacrifice, or given money, women, power? Short answer, no. Long answer, not at all. In Eragon, the streets of Dras-Leona were littered with limbless beggars. Apparently the Helgrind priests have absolutely no regard for the sacrifices of their followers, and nor does the general population. So why cut off their own limbs? There is no immediate benefit, a whole lot of immediate, long-term detriment, and only the barest hint of long-term spiritual benefit.

Any religion you look at, in real life or in fantasy, either has or needs to have some incentive for followers. There are two kinds of benefit to be had from following a religion: immediate, and long-term. Immediate benefits include things like a sense of belonging and community, a sense of meaningfulness or purpose, self-worth, and, for some religions, financial and physical security. Long-term benefits are those to be had after death: spiritual bliss, a cessation of suffering, or the reunion of loved ones. Neither Paolini’s dwarves nor the Helgrinders have any real perceived long-term benefit, and the short-term benefits are almost nonexistent.

Going on something of a tangent here, it is important to note that in any society, religion never exists in isolation; it coexists with culture and language, and each influence the others. Religion influences cultural values like crime and punishment, individual freedoms and cultural taboos and morality; language, particular idioms, colloquialisms and turns of phrase (God only knows; speak of the devil; thank God you’re here), as well as swear-words (Goddamn it! Where the hell is my coffee?). Paolini’s dwarves have no such linguistic idiosyncrasies, and we don’t know enough about the Helgrinders to be certain, but I’d be willing to guess that they don’t, either. For the most part, the dwarves almost seem to forget about their religion until it is being directly discussed. It doesn’t appear to inform their values, their culture or most of their language (Although the idea of using the dwarf word for ‘stone’ as the same word for ‘dwarf’ is a curious, but lonely, quirk).

One of the most important points to demonstrating a complex, fully-formed religion in a fantasy story is that the characters need to be influenced by it. Their language, actions and moral justifications need to be motivated, in some small way, by their beliefs. Otherwise the religion may as well be completely absent.

The final point I’d like to make is concerning the survivors of death — the mourners, the grieving relatives. What happens to the Self after death is one thing, but the way the survivors handle it is another. Religions, for the most part, are riddled with outlets for grief, and comforting messages, and coping mechanisms. Whether it’s directing their attention to a more positive result (“They’re in a better place now”), assuming that death is not final and eternal (“You’ll see them again, someday”), or any number of other mourning rituals, prayer, funeral songs, prayer or meditation, affirmations, candle-burning, bell-ringing or something completely different, these coping mechanisms are an integral part of the religion’s philosophy regarding death.

Paolini’s dwarves do not demonstrate any sort of mourning period; Orik, the adoptive son of slain king Hrothgar, barely makes mention of it, uttering maybe two or three lines about how he was like a father, but saying nothing about what he believes has happened to Hrothgar’s spirit. Similarly, Nasuada, who later prays to a praying-mantis goddess (in the desert?) for good fortune, makes no religious comment about her father’s fate beyond death.

And finally, I’d like to make a comment on Paolini’s method for inventing religions:

Dwarves: “[name], god of [element]”
Nomads: “[name], [animal]-god/dess”
Urgals: “[name], [family role]-god/dess”

This is one of the cheapest, easiest and least effective ways to invent a “religion”. This method is favoured by roleplaying games everywhere, including Neverwinter Nights, which includes a list of 53 different “[name], god/dess of [element]” deities to choose from. However, there is rarely any prevailing mythology behind these deities. How do they fit together as a ‘community’ of gods? What’s their philosophy regarding crime or sin, and punishment? What inter-god/dess politics plays out between them? (Mind you, Paolini did at least attempt this last question, albeit rather clumsily, in the dwarf religion).

If handled properly, a fantasy religion can give your characters depth and sincerity, and a framework for their actions and motivations, something for them to fall back on when scared, hurt or in mourning, and a way for them to either justify or take a stand against perceived evil and sin. However, if handled incorrectly or clumsily, you may end up with a shallow mockery of religion which goes no deeper than the surface, and only serves to get in the way of the story.

Comment [14]

One of the most crippling problems that can face a writer is the fear of plagiarism. Or rather, the fear of being accused. Accusations of plagiarism, like accusations of any crime, can mark a writer’s reputation forever, regardless of the facts.

Especially on the Internet, such accusations can linger for years
as a stain on one’s honour that even a writer who is concerned about such
things will feel by way of reduced sales.

I will admit that there was a time when the mere thought of a reader finding similarities between my own work and some previously published work made my blood freeze. Other writers have admitted that same fear, and while it can be used to strengthen our writing, in extremes it can prevent one from writing anything at all. But don’t panic. There are a few simple things to keep in mind that can help you to tread the fine line between imagination and inspiration.

One: The Rule of Three

The number three has a peculiar significance to the human mind: it is one of the easiest numbers to recognise when counting groups of objects; many cultures around the world assign superstitious significance to things that come in groups of three; and most Heroic Parties in generic fantasy are composed of three (or five) people (typically, the mage, the fighter, and the thief). Most lists of facts are given in blocks of three, as well. Two seems too few points, and four feels like it’s stretching it. Five is right out.

With that in mind, it makes a lot of sense that coincidental similarities between fictional works are often counted in threes as well. Let us take, for example, everybody’s favourite fantasy series: The Inheritance Cycle, by Christopher Paolini. Eragon is a farm boy in a remote region of the Empire (1), whose farm and home are burned down by agents of the Emperor (2), in search of a valuable object stolen by rebels (3). Any one of those things would be fine by themselves. Even two of those things might ‘fly under the radar’, so to speak. But the combination of three brings a specific reference to mind, and not in the sense of homage. Alternatively, another example from the same series: Paolini’s elves are tall and graceful (1), in population decline (2), and they worship the stars (3). In addition, they come from a distant land to the west (4), have control of a mysterious magical energy most people cannot comprehend (5), and have distinctly hostile relations with the dwarves (6). Three sets of three similarities relating to different parts of the story. Even without magic and superstition, that is significant.

You will notice that any one of those points is, in isolation, innocuous if not almost ubiquitous in generic fantasy. But taken together, they direct the reader’s mind to a particular conclusion.

Given the Rule of Three, what I jokingly coined the ‘threeshold’ in an ImpishIdea discussion, it makes sense to avoid suspicions of plagiarism by staying under the limit. One or two similarities with another author’s works is practically expected by the majority of readers. A writer describing one of their characters to me recently used the phrase “Like Gandalf, only with Aragorn’s muscles”. Two similarities. Not three. The description “Like Gandalf, only with Aragorn’s muscles and Legolas’ agility” is instantly more suspicious than the former. Surpassing the threeshold, “Like Gandalf, only with Aragorn’s muscles, Legolas’ agility and Gimli’s stoicism” is entirely worse (For the lack of the Oxford comma, if nothing else).

One point that must be made is that the Rule of Three only really applies to substantial similarities, not necessarily throwaway lines and descriptions that only appear once. This is unfortunately a matter for individual judgement and intuition.

Two: Mindful and Respectful

Another thing to keep in mind is to know what you are being inspired by, and to be respectful to the original works. An excellent example of this is that most definitive C.S. Lewis work, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. There are certain similarities in this work to a story written at the beginning of the 1900s by William Morris, called The Wood Beyond The World. In both stories, a person from our world with an emotively weak name (e.g. Walter or Edmund or Alice) unwittingly enters another world (1), in which they encounter a beautiful and powerful Lady, who is the sovereign of the land (2), and whose great malice and authority simmers almost unfelt behind a façade of grace and charm (3). The character finds themself trapped by the Lady and her dwarf thrall (3), but eventually escapes with the help of loyal friends, including intelligent talking animals (4). However, despite exceeding the Threeshold, Narnia is a beautifully-crafted, imaginative and genuinely engaging story.

How?

It all comes down to attitude. Lewis remained at all time conscious of the work he drew his inspiration from (as did Tolkien, drawing from House of the Wolfings by the same author), and was very respectful to the original work and author.

Secondarily, mindfulness and respectfulness can help to create a rapport with the reader. When a writer borrows something from an earlier work and is both respectful and mindful of it, readers will pick up on that mindfulness due to the language used, and a subtext develops in which reader and writer share a moment of “Hey, remember when…? Wasn’t that so cool?” In combination with the Rule of Three, this can develop a powerful subtext that can potentially garner the respect and admiration of readers.

Three: Make It Your Own

Mindful of the Rule of Three, this article felt incomplete without a third subheading.

Simply put, if you are worried about being accused of plagiarism, one of the most failsafe methods of avoiding such is to make your work as original as you can. If you do take someone else’s idea, change it or add to it substantially enough that the casual reader won’t even notice it.

Of course, if you’re good enough at that, you’re far better off not plagiarise at all.

Comment [15]

One thing that irks me about many fantasy and historical fiction stories is the way that some writers, through their characters, are so utterly fixated on swords. From Eragon’s infamous third-book catch-cry of “I Need A Sword!” to the titular Sword of Truth, it seems like Generic Fantasy almost isn’t complete without at least one swordfight. It is not so much the prevalence of swords that irks me, so much as they way they are present in a story without question. It seems that some writers do not even consider the logical consequences of weaponry of any kind, and there are more than a few stories I’ve read where swords are present more out of tradition than as a result of thoughtful, consistent worldbuilding. Swords, however, are just one option out of dozens, and are often not even the first or best option. Even among warriors who are renowned for their swordcraft, such as the Japanese samurai, and the English knights, the sword remained a secondary or even tertiary weapon to be used only after arrows, spears and lances, and other long-range weapons.

There are a few small points that I wish every fantasy writer would consider (or had considered) during their initial worldbuilding.

Everything Comes Down To Clubs

Although there is now a vast array of different specialised weapons not counting projectile or explosive weaponry, one fundamental point has remained consistent from the beginning: every mid-length rigid weapon is essentially a club. Axes, swords, daggers, staves, walking sticks, and, rather more obviously, maces and hammers, are all derived from the same basic principles, and adhere to the same basic rules. Flesh is weak and easy to wound, and human bones are quite fragile and comparatively much more brittle than, say, wood. No matter what weapon you use, if it is a rigid one-handed weapon, a person able to use one type of weapon (for instance, a mace) will find themself very quickly able to adapt to a different kind of rigid one-handed weapon (say, an axe or sword). The physical act of swinging a weapon uses the same muscle groups and the same biomechanical movement no matter what the hand is grasping.

The hard part, where the years of training are required, is using your weapon defensively against similarly armed opponents. Anybody can swing a sword and do some considerable damage without any training at all, but using a weapon defensively against other weapons is what takes practice and skill.

In this regard, swords are largely less successful than other short weapons. It takes far longer to learn to use a sword effectively than other weapons such as clubs, maces, axes and so on, and that can be a liability on the battlefield. In untrained hands, they are generally slower, less effective and more dangerous to the wielder. Compounded with the long years required to properly train a swordsman, I remain surprised how popular swords have been and are still.

Nostalgia and Romanticism

Speaking of subtle segues, the popularity of swords as a class of weapon is interesting to ponder. The way I see it, the cultural fascination with swords is tied inextricably to the cultural fascination with celebrity. Along with the universal fascination people have with persons of authority, comes a reflected admiration for their tools. A person enamoured with a particular musician, for example, will want to attempt to learn that musician’s primary instrument, or will at least show an admiration for that particular class of instrument, which goes beyond the original celebrity-awe. If an impression of, for example, a brave and bold medieval knight is made early enough, a child’s awe of the character in their bedtime stories can transfer to the symbol of that character’s power (i.e. the sword) and form a lifelong fascination.

But why swords? For almost all of the timespan in which swordplay was practised for warfare and for defence, swords were the possessions and weapons-of-choice of the noble elite, the knights and barons and the upper class. They were and eventually became status symbols, as evidenced by the (rather silly) fashion for jewel-encrusted handles, decorative etching, fanciful pommels, and so on. The association of swords with nobility and high birth has led inevitably to a metaphoric personification of swords as noble weapons, dignified weapons, a gentleman’s weapon. Swordplay is a gentleman’s discipline.

The rarity and noble characterisation of swords, compounded with people’s tendency to exaggerate and re-exaggerate stories of how, for example, a local lord put more than ten, (no, twenty!) thieves to flight with a whirl of his gleaming jewel-encrusted (fairy-forged!) sword and thus saving the village’s meagre harvest, can very easily lead to a romantic fascination with swords and sword-wielders.

Everything Is Triangles: Surface Area and Concentration of Force

Although it might arguably make little difference to a reader’s enjoyment of a work, I believe it is important for writers of fight scenes to be aware of the basic principles of physics involved with different types of weaponry. Especially the most important universal rule that underpins every type of weapon one could name: small surface area creates a concentration of force. This concept applies to almost every kind of weapon, including swords, axes, maces (especially the flanged variety), spears, arrows, bullets, shrapnel bombs, throwing-stars and darts, certain kinds of clubs (especially the brutal Fijian totokia club, which is designed to drive a sharp point through the top of a person’s skull), and almost any kind of weapon you can name.

One of the easiest and most effective ways of creating a small surface area is to sharpen an edge to a point, thus creating a triangular profile. Thus was fashioned the first stone knife, and the same principle was applied to swords, knives, axes, spears, arrows and even (inadvertently) modern bullets as a way of increasing the weapon’s potential for damage. The triangle shape, aside from being a product of edge sharpening, has the added advantage of gradually becoming wider toward the base. Much like a wood-splitter or wedge can force a split in brittle wood, a triangle-shaped blade can force a split in flesh or between bones. The deeper the blade cuts, the wider the split becomes. The sharper the edge and the smaller the blade’s surface area, the easier it is to force between skin cells to make a wound. The same principle applies to non-bladed weapons. A spike, barb or knob on a club concentrates the force of a strike into a very small area and thus multiplying the energy of the strike many times over.

You Don’t Need 20 STR

One of the more commonly-held misconceptions among the… shall we say ‘less-experienced’ fantasy writers whose work I have encountered is the myth that in order to be a truly effective warrior, each swing of one’s chosen weapon must be made with every ounce of strength, or that one must be vastly stronger than the average person. Certainly, a warrior needs incredible strength and stamina, but blows from any weapon do not have to be powerful to be effective. Quite the opposite, in fact: the more powerful a strike, the less controlled and easier to dodge or counter it becomes, and the longer it takes to recover from a miss. Leading on from the above concept of concentration of force, it’s a relatively simple step to understand that you don’t need much power at all to injure, cripple or even kill a person.

In order to illustrate this point, you could this simple exercise: Note – DO NOT try this simple exercise – Ed. take a flat wooden ruler, and gently tap your knuckles first with the flat side and then with the edge. Which has the greater effect? Imagine that on weak tissue and with more power. It is a common misconception that it takes 8 pounds per square inch (only 0.6 kg/cm2) to break bones. In reality, it can be much less depending on the type and position of break. Even still, it takes far less than that to bruise organs, rupture blood vessels or cut into skin. You don’t need to dismember an enemy to cripple them or prevent them from fighting.

The logical consequences are obvious: the less power required to injure an enemy, the more energy you have left for other purposes, be it fighting, marching or setting up camp. On the other hand, if you waste all your energy on powerful inefficient strikes that an enemy will be able to easily dodge, it won’t be very long before you are too fatigued to defend against a more economical enemy.

The Art of Fighting Is The Art of Mobility
Fatigue is a warrior’s worst enemy, even more so than their sworn enemies on the other side of the battlefield. Conservation of force and energy can be the difference between victory and defeat in a prolonged combat situation. Put quite simply, if you are too tired to move, your enemy will be able to hit you more easily and with greater effect.

An attacker cannot hit someone they cannot reach. That is one of the most important lessons from Sun Tzu’s famous treatise The Art of War: Be where your enemy is not. If you do so, your enemy cannot hit you, but you might be able to attack their under-defended weak areas. Master Liechtenauer wrote in the late 1300s that during combat “a man is always in motion and never at rest… motion is the heart of swordsmanship”. A warrior in motion can attack and defend more efficiently, and more importantly does not give their enemy a chance to assess the situation and consider the best approach. As with many of the points in this article, this seems like a simple point. And yet so many stories and films with fight scenes will describe enemies standing in perfect stillness, sizing each other up until one of them sees a chance to act in a sudden flurry of strikes or an almost-invisible whirl of metal. “It makes good drama”, writes John Clements, Director of the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts¹, but “it’s total fiction without any tactical validity”. Even then, what was once a point of dramatic tension has gradually become trite and lacklustre. Be they Old West gunslingers or duelling Renaissance gentlemen, a warrior must always be moving, changing their guard and keeping their enemy guessing.

Specialist and Generalist Weapons

Typically, weapons can either specialise in a particular type of damage, or they can be more all-purpose. This largely depends on the design. A typical axe, for example, is highly specialised for use as a chopping weapon to be used against bare skin, bones and joints. Axes are generally not so good at slicing or slashing, and unless they are tipped with a spike, are largely useless as thrusting or piercing weapons. A sword, however, is much more adaptable. A typical short straight sword can pierce, slash, and cleave. Depending on local armour designs and cultural fighting style, specialist weapons can offer a great advantage in combat. For example, a light sword would not be very effective against a 16th century French knight, covered in plate armour. A mace, however, would be exceptionally effective at crushing their armour inwards and causing devastating blunt-force trauma. Specialisation has many advantages in dealing with known enemies and familiar environments, but adaptability is extremely important in dealing with unknown enemies.

A Final Point

This article is little more than common sense explained, involving principles and concepts that one might assume are intuitive. One might generously assume that the average person knows these things, but overlook them as simplistic or beneath them; but how often do writers of fight scenes (Christopher Paolini, for a now-infamous example) either wilfully ignore most of these concepts, or display a pitiful ignorance of basic combat theory and physics? It has long been my opinion that no matter how simple the idea, the pursuit of reputable mainstream fantasy should demand a thorough examination of the worldbuilding and writing process, especially if it is a story that includes a great many fight scenes. If there is only one thing you take away from this rather long-winded article, it is this: Before your noble hero draws his sword (almost certainly with an impressive ‘shing!’), ask yourself where he or she got it and who they are fighting.

¹ Clements, J 2001, Why Are You Standing Still?, for theARMA; http://www.thearma.org/essays/StandingStill.html

Comment [100]

Written a year ago by myself and my good friend Elleirabird, from the Antishurtugal livejournal group, this series takes an in-depth and only mostly serious look at the various poems, songs and scraps of doggerel that Paolini managed to smuggle into the Inheritance Cycle.

E: It took me a few minutes of re- reading this to realize why I hate this poem so much: there’s no flow at all, and everything is unconnected. You could literally take the lines here and turn it into prose and it would sound better. That might be true with other well-written poems, but I always thought that poetry wasn’t just about the words, but about the format of it, the way the poet breaks apart lines and phrases to give them a different kind of meaning. I’m going to admit here that I’m not an expert at analysing poetry; we just started really going in-depth in class and the focus is more on allusions and language, not things like metre and rhythm. So I’m not going to throw those terms around. I love writing poetry myself (mostly free verse) and I go by a more intuitive, instinctive approach with it, trying to figure out how words connect and how everything flows. That’s how I’m approaching this poem.

T: I’d like to approach this in my own unique way, by examining the technical aspects and techniques of poetry, including metre, rhythm, rhyme, and literary devices like metaphor and hyperbole (as well as by laughing at logical inconsistencies and terrible word-choice, like any good sporker). Metrically, and rhythmically the first stanza isn’t terrible, but still well short of publishable. It dithers between trochaic, iambic and spondaic, and either 3 or 4 feet. The rhythm does begin with a certain sing-songiness, but the third fifth, and sixth lines more or less destroy it. Even aside from the technical aspects, the techniques of poetry (meaning specific literary devices like metaphor, hyperbole, metonymy, etc), are for the most part absent. You might find some unoriginal micro-metaphors sprinkled here and there, but otherwise it’s just flat narration masquerading as poetry.

In the kingdom by the sea,
In the mountains mantled blue,
On frigid winter’s final day
Was born a man with but one task:
To kill the foe in Durza,
In the land of shadows.

T: Others have discussed the “mountains mantled blue” line, but any proper analysis should point out that it doesn’t make sense. It’s not descriptive enough, it doesn’t create atmosphere, and it says next to nothing about the setting of the scene being described.

E: One of the main problems I have with this poem is the fact that Paolini was obviously trying to make it into an ‘epic’ poem in the vein of stuff like Gilgamesh and Homer’s work. I am neither an avid reader nor a knowledgeable source on epic poetry, but even I know that this fails as being an epic poem. From five minutes of research I found out that epic poetry follows a set of rules (most poetry except for free verse does) and epic poetry isn’t an exception. Apparently it has to do stuff like open in medias res, and usage of epithets. I KNOW THIS AFTER FIVE MINUTES OF RESEARCH, PAOLINI.

Nurtured by the kind and wise
Under oaks as old as time,
He ran with deer and wrestled bears,

E: Wrestled bears? Really? Have you seen a bear in real life? Unless if you’re freaking He-Man, they will kill you with a single blow.

And from his elders learned the skills,
To kill the foe in Durza,
In the land of shadows.

E: This is probably the stanza that I hate the most. There’s so much clichéd in there: the ‘oaks as old as time’ and the mentioning of elders who are ‘kind and wise.’ Meter-wise, it’s not that bad. It’s bad, but I can read it out loud and it sounds okay. But just okay! Poetry’s supposed to be about using language to tell something new. This doesn’t tell me anything at all. So this guy’s trained. Great.

T: These are the unoriginal micro-metaphors I mentioned. (For the record ‘micro-metaphors’ are the kind that only show up for maybe two lines and are never mentioned again. They can often be used really well, but Paolini just screws it up). Aside from the forehead-smashingly hackneyed personification of death, these are the only kind of metaphor that Paolini deigns to employ. Technically, this stanza is much the same as the first, inconsistent and nondescriptive. Poetry of this sort should be vivid, intense and compellingly descriptive.

E: And it’s not. This is old and tired and completely uninspired.

Taught to spy the thief in black
When he grabs the weak and strong;
To block his blows and fight the fiend
With rag and rock and plant and bone;
And kill the foe in Durza,
In the land of shadows.

E: No, this is the stanza I hate the most. This is where I realised that Paolini didn’t care about the words going into the poem; he just wants to fit stuff in, no matter how painful it is for me. I mean, what the hell? The first two lines barely make any sense, the second two lines border on nonsensical jabber for me. “With rag and rock and plant and bone?” Is he fighting Durza with magical shrubs and dishcloths? Also, I don’t like the way he keeps repeating the last two lines. That can work in some poems (T.S. Eliot, etc.) but here it just appears to be tedious. Don’t repeat it if you don’t have anything to say, Paolini.

T: I’m sorry; did I mention his personification of Death was jaw-droppingly stupid? I did? Good. It’s easy to see that “the thief in black” is meant to be Death, but it is possible to use a less-hackneyed phrase for it? Or rather, is it possible to use a more-hackneyed phrase? I quail at the thought.

Quick as thought, the years did turn,
‘Til the man had come of age,
His body burned with fevered rage,
While youth’s impatience seared his veins.

T: snerk Everybody knows what puberty is, Paolini. Stop.

E: On a less snarky level, I want to mention that this stanza is awfully jarring when put in context with the rest of the thing. There’s little to no rhyme in the previous lines, but here the last three lines all rhyme. Not to mention that it’s littered with taku’ dubbed ‘micro-metaphors’ and they’re all just shockingly bad. ‘Quick as thought’ is particularly mind-boggling.

Then he met a maiden fair,
Who was tall and strong and wise,

T: yawn. The saying “show, don’t tell” is thrown around a lot in the fiction-writing community, but it applies more to poetry than any other written form. If you want your poetry to be memorable, don’t just say “she was fair”, tell us why. Describe the graceful slope of her nose, the majestic sweep of her hair, the subtle tinge of colour on her cheeks.

E: Or, if you’re Paolini, the way she smells.

T: Besides, if you’re trying to win your girl over by writing poetry, I’m sure you can call her better than ‘fair’.

Her brow adorned with Geda’s Light,
Which shone upon her trailing gown.

T: Whose light? “Adorned”?

E: Here’s a note to all you writers out there: don’t reference your own mythology if you’ve never mentioned it before. Is Geda’s Light something really important to elves? I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it. All meaning is lost on me.

In her eyes of midnight blue,

T: I believe several people have pointed that, short of contact lenses, “midnight blue” is not a natural colour for eyes. Of any animal. There again, we are dealing with elves, and a particular Angsty Badass Princess Mary Sue Elf in particular, so who knows.

In those enigmatic pools,

E: And here we are. One of the most infamous lines Paolini’s ever written.

T: Well, it’s sort of what I’m talking about, adding a bit of description. And yet, this describes nothing. Description only works if one can imagine the scene/image being described. What does an “enigmatic pool” look like?

Appeared to him a future bright,
Together, where they would not have
To fear the foe in Durza,
In the land of shadows.

E: What? What? This is the funniest stanza because it’s so random. “Woah, suddenly I met this hot girl so screw the prophecy/telling of the elders. (Sounds like a certain book we all know and love – maybe it’s foreshadowing.) And it’s kind of odd, because this guy doesn’t want to fear this guy, so instead of taking care of the very odd problem he just goes off and marries the girl. You didn’t expect that to stay that way, did you?

T: What I don’t understand is why he presumes the maiden would agree or want to spend the rest of their days together. He only just met her and looked into her eyes, and suddenly they’re destined soul mates (and she doesn’t have a say in the matter). Also, the scansion here is terrible. Paolini obviously doesn’t understand the point of a caesura or when to use one. The only time I would break in the middle of a lexical phrase like that is for the sake of rhyme, and even then it’d better be a damn good one.

So Eragon told of how the man voyaged to the land of Durza, where he found and fought the foe, despite the cold terror within his heart. Yet though at last he triumphed, the man withheld the fatal blow, for now that he had defeated his enemy, he did not fear the doom of mortals.

E: “Yes, I defeated a maniac, bring it, Death.” This doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s kind of a mind screw – guy born and trained to kill this ‘foe’ (whoever it is, and I’m beginning to wonder if the ‘foe’ even did anything to warrant this in the first place – or if it’s Death, as Taku said) but then decides to not kill him and doesn’t think about the possible repercussions of that act. But it doesn’t matter, because he’s not afraid anymore.

T: Wait… He was that close to defeating his enemy, and then he just WALKED AWAY? Wasn’t killing his foe, like, the ONLY reason for his existence?

He did not need to kill the foe in Durza. Then the man sheathed his sword and returned home and wed his love on summer’s eve. With her, he spent his many days content until his beard was long and white.

E: And his groin was smooth and hairless!

In the dark before the dawn,
In the room where slept the man,

E: LOL I USE WEIRD SYNTAX SO I SOUND ARCHAIC. No, Paolini. Switching around your tense does nothing but annoy your reader.

T: I’m more bothered by the fact we noticed it. In a poem of this sort, syntax should be almost invisible. In fact, in prose of any sort, sentence structure and word choice shouldn’t even register to the reader. As before, the only reason I would do this is for the sake of rhyme, and even then it’d better be important.

The foe, he crept and loomed above
His mighty rival now so weak.

E: Possibly the most awkward phrasing ever, innit?

T: Serves you right for letting your sworn enemy go free without so much as keeping track of him. Not that I’m advocating a lack of mercy (dragon rider), but really, a little common sense would help.

E: We were both wrong. The foe is Spider-man. He can hang onto ceilings!

T: Spiderman, Spiderman,
Does whatever a Death-metaphor can!
Can he loom from above?
Metaphorically, I s’pose he can
Look Oooout, he’s the Spiderman!

From his pillow did the man
Raise his head and gaze upon
The cold and empty face of Death,
The king of everlasting night.

T: Didn’t I warn you about the poo-flingingly, cave-paintingly, wheel-carvingly, fire-lightingly original and genre-redefining metaphor of personified Death? We’re talking about an entire non-English culture, thousands of years of mythological and cultural development, and they have the exact same metaphor for Death as Edwardian Britain? There are teenagers still dicking around on MySpace who have written more compelling lines of verse than this. “The king of everlasting night”? PLEASE.

E: Maybe it’s because I used to be that teenager on MySpace, but this didn’t seem…that…bad. The ‘cold and empty face of Death’ is actually an okay-ish line. I like the idea of Death being this faceless entity that looms over your bed at night. But yeah, he completely ruins it with the utter wrist-cuttingly awful subsequent line.

T: Okay, it’s a nice enough line in the right cultural context, but it’s more the fact that it has been done before. A million times. It’s just so utterly clichéd that I cannot find the words to express how utterly clichéd it is.

Calm acceptance filled the man’s
Aged heart; for long ago,
He’d lost all fear of Death’s embrace,
The last embrace a man will know.

E: Is it just me, or does ‘embrace’ mean something else in this context as well?

T: Again, terrible application of caesura. This stanza (like most of the others) really lacks any sense of flow or rhythm.

Gentle as a morning breeze,
Bent the foe and from the man
His glowing, pulsing spirit took,

E: At least it wasn’t a ‘throbbing’ spirit.

T: Haha! ‘Throbbing’. Kippurbird could write a meatfic based on this! I mean, really. An unknown assailant swoops in while the man is in bed, and forcibly ‘takes’ his ‘pulsing’ manhood. And then they run off together, because it’s obviously True Love. Edward would be inspired.

And thence in peace they went to dwell,

T: At least he used ‘thence’ right.

E: It’s pretty much the only part of the sentence that is right.

Forevermore in Durza,
In the land of shadows.

T: This is not a poem. It is a disaster. No, it’s a poetaster. That’s a real word, too.

E: This. Poem. Does. Not. MAKE . SENSE. I don’t understand the story – some guy was born to fight some other guy in Mordor? But apparently he decides to go for a girl instead and gets killed by the foe about sixty years later? And then he goes to heaven? In Mordor? It’s a very confusing poem, and I don’t think it’s my fault. Paolini is trying so hard to be epic and it just fails horribly. It’s a definite poetaster. The metre is off just enough to make it hard to read, the language is uninspired (yes, Death is cold and the king of darkness and all that) and it tells me absolutely nothing I haven’t read before. But what’s the message of this poem? Be a pussy and you’ll get killed eventually? Show mercy and it bites you in the ass? That seems pretty wrong to me. Was the foe Death? If so, how can you kill Death? WHY would you want to kill Death? It’s a natural part of life.

T: I agree that the underlying moral is just, well, there doesn’t seem to be one. This is just mundanity disguised as epic adventure. The story basically is, a man goes to school until he grows up, then he meets a girl, gets into a fight and lives the rest of his life peacefully until some burglar climbs through his window and goes stabbity.

E: This is an empty poem. Empty of originality, empty of substance, and empty, I’ll dare to say, of a soul. I think that really passionate writing has a spark all its own, and this just lacks that. Paolini just strings together pretty words and hopes that we don’t dig beneath them.

T: I think that’s entirely apt. Paolini included an epic poem in his books because Tolkien sprinkled songs and poems through his. Just like the novels, however, he’s jumped into it without even the most basic of research. In terms of the actual techniques of poetry, Paolini only makes use of some of them by accident, and then only sparingly or inconsistently. The use of metaphor is amateurish at best, and at worst it’s so clichéd that it’s bordering on universal plagiarism. There are barely any descriptive nouns or strong verbs, there’s no emotional investment for the audience, and the rhythm is dissonant and annoying.

For my final point, I’d like to mention the mode of creation. According to the book, Eragon wrote this poem in a single frenzied sitting of passionate artistic creation. I’ve read a lot of work created in this manner, and been involved in it a fair bit myself, and I can tell you this poem does not conform to the expectations of ‘passionate frenzy of writing’. This poem has a careful, studied feel to it, as though each word has been carefully chosen (which would actually make it worse, I think). It is languid to the point of monotone, clumsy and awkward, and has none of the energy or vibrancy of a truly inspired rush of words.

E: Agreed. I’ve written poems in one sitting that have been crazy and passionate and kind of awful in many ways. This is a very pedantic, droning piece of work. In fact, this poem is like a miniature version of Eragon: it was obviously written in one draft, with no real research done on how the craft works, and made partially in effort to echo the great writers of our time. The language is pretty at times but disgustingly overwrought as a whole, with empty descriptions and metaphors that we’ve seen a million times before. There’s no emotion.

T: And yet he continues to try. Stay tuned for the next instalment of Elleirabird and Takugifian Spork, in which we look in-depth at the dozen or so poems Paolini managed to smuggle into his three books (mostly Eldest). It’ll be epic.

Comment [24]

T: Much has been said about the epic fail that is Eragon’s epic poem in Book Two of Christopher Paolini’s “Inheritance Cycle,” and, having said our bit about it, we turn our thoughts to the under-acknowledged smaller failures of poetry scattered throughout the series. Where they don’t have a name, I’m calling them as I see them.

E: Before we really get into this…be warned. There’s a lot of fail in these poems. I mean a lot. Maybe even more than in the “EPIC!paoem.” Prepare yourselves, readers.

T: At least the Epic paoem had a proper continuous narrative.

Paoem the First: Song for the Road

O liquid temptress ‘neath the azure sky

T: Okay, stop right there. What? Not only does this completely lack any sense of single-line rhythm, but the imagery this conjures is simply absurd.

E: Oh, dear. This is just such a strange description, not to mention a way to start off a poem and/or song. “Liquid temptress?” Is that supposed to be the ocean? Because it’s not. It sounds like a badly-named club drink.

Your gilded expanse calls me, calls me.

E: This poem makes me nauseous, nauseous.

T: If I ever refer to something by its “gilded expanse”, I expect to be immediately shot for the benefit of humanity.

E: If you ever do, I’ll shoot you.

For I would sail ever on,
Were it not for the elven maid
Who calls me, calls me.

T: The next two lines are quite nice, which would be a credit to Paolini if the first line wasn’t ripped almost directly from Tolkien (“The road goes ever on and on”, from Lord of the Rings). The last line completely throws off any fragile sense of rhythm we might have imagined. It’s simply too short. Where the very first line was about a half a foot too long, this line is a full foot short. That’s 12 whole inches!

E: I’m starting to notice a trend with the Paoems here. What’s with him and repeating the last line twice? It doesn’t drive home any particular point or emphasize the importance of a line (as in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland: “This is the way the world ends.”) He just does it…for the sake of doing it. And that’s just wrong.

T: Also Robert Frost: “And miles to go before we sleep”. These repetitions are powerful because they focus our attention on an emotion that the rest of the poem has been building towards.

She binds my heart with a lily-white tie,

T: record-scratch Hold it! Why, when the previous lines manage to drift between three and five feet, is this one so much longer? Paolini once excused his prose by saying he is tone deaf. Even if that’s so, it doesn’t take a musical genius to write poetry with a consistent metre. Especially since it requires less “natural talent” and more mathematical skill.

E: Poetry schematics aside, I’m still reeling in confusion over what this line even means. Why is she binding your heart? Is that a metaphor for…um…love? And why is the tie lily-white – or any white, to be exact? Is it a symbol? If so, for what? Paolini, obscure metaphors don’t work IF THEY DON’T EVEN MAKE SENSE. Also, isn’t the literal interpretation pretty macabre?

Never to be broken, save by the sea,
Ever to be torn twixt the trees and the waves

E: I’d make some comment about the metre or the rhythm, but really I’m just cracking up over the image of Paolini sitting at his desk. Writing this poem. And thinking to himself, “Yes, yes! This is truly the epitome of poetry!”

T: Lookit me, I can use fancy words like “twixt!” No matter that it messes up the line and doesn’t make sense even in context. The last three lines of this poem could easily be a different poem altogether. This time, we don’t have the excuse that Eragon’s new to the language and doesn’t really know much about Elvish linguistics or folklore. This was supposed to be written by a great master of poetry, and translated by someone fluent in both languages who masquerades as a bard!

E: And fails at being both.

Paoem the Second: Blacksmith Song

. . . hey O!
And a ringing and a dinging
Rang from old iron! Wily old iron
With a beat and a bang on the bones of the land
I conquered wily old iron!

E: The poem sucks, but I really can’t get past the “hey-o” bit. That’s something I say. As in, “Hey-o! Lame pun!” Though, I will admit…I like the bit about “bones of the land.” That’s it. The rest sounds nothing like a song a blacksmith would actually sing.

T: I don’t think this guy was saying “hey-o!” in the same way that you or George Burns would say it.
While I will admit this mostly does sound like something a blacksmith might sing while they’re working, I feel the need to point out that no self-respecting blacksmith would be caught uttering the phrase “a ringing and a dinging”. That sort of thing is for affected minstrels in tights and tunics with scalloped edges, skipping through the woods and feeding the bunny rabbits with corn from their pockets. Not for a muscle-bound village blacksmith who works with fire and bellows and hammers and tongs and very hot metal. Also, the line about “the bones of the land” is something I’d expect from a miner, not a blacksmith.

Paoem the Third: Down the Rushing Mere-Wash

Down the rushing mere-wash
Of Kilf’s welling blood
We ride the twisting timbers
For hearth, clan and honour.

T: Not a bad beginning, I guess. It does, shockingly, have an interesting (and almost consistent!) rhythm. The imagery used is a little strange. “Mere-wash” in particular is needlessly unconventional. “mare” in Latin means “sea”, so “mere-wash” must mean a river that empties into the sea, but this strikes me as forcefully old-fashioned (like much of Paolini’s dialogue) rather than a natural poetic element.

E: I agree…though it doesn’t make much sense in a contemporary context, the rhythm of the first two lines isn’t bad. “Mere-wash” is unconventional, sure, but it has a nice ring to it, I’ll admit. The last line ruins it, though. I’m not as good as explaining the schematics of a how a poem works as Taku here, but the first three lines are action-oriented, and kind of “free” – describing the movement of a mighty river that empties into an ocean. Then it’s ruined by the “hearth/clan/honour” bit. It stops the rhythm completely. Kills it dead.

Under the erne’s sky-vat,
Through the ice-wolves’ forest bowls,
We ride the gory wood,
For iron, gold and diamond.

E: What the hell is a sky-vat?

T: I don’t know if “erne” is supposed to be a proper noun, but the first lines make little to no sense. “sky-vat”? “forest bowls”? It’s almost like Paolini’s just throwing random words together, like playing with “Magnetic Poetry” while blindfolded. And what exactly is so gory about the boat? Was somebody disembowelled in it? If so, why didn’t they clean it out before they started their journey? Or maybe Eragon really doesn’t have the stomach for white-water rafting.

E: I just can’t get past the sky-vat and the forest bowls…what? What do those even mean? WHAT DO THEY MEAN, PAOLINI?

T: It also seems odd they would value iron as equal to gold and diamonds. Iron is such a common element, especially in large rocky hills, that is should be almost worthless to the civilization of Dwarves who live almost exclusively underground and make a living from digging up previous metals and gems.

E: SKY-VAT?!

Let hand-ringer and bearded gaper fill my grip
And battle-leaf guard my stone
As I leave the hall of my fathers
For the empty land beyond.

T: It took me a while to work out that Paolini’s probably referring to an axe in the first line. If only he paid this amount of attention to his riddles (below). “Bearded” axes are a particular style favoured by the Vikings. It adds length to the blade without adding too much weight. Still, “hand-ringer” and “bearded gaper” are far too obscure (I still don’t know what the first thing means) for a poem in a fiction book aimed at teenagers. As for the second line, the only thing I can come up with is a Roman-style cingulum belt to protect the wearer’s, ahem, stones.

E: knows absolutely nothing about weapons But, um, the rhythm’s not that bad. Read it aloud. You can kind of get a rhythm going in there. But when you get to the actual poem, it’s very minimal, and kind of empty. Basically it’s saying “I’m gonna take my weapons and leave home.” Poetry should do the opposite – it should say as much as possible with only a few words. This fails absolutely at that.

T: Well, yes, the rhythm’s not bad, if you sort of chant and hope people mistake the awkward pause for an extra gulp of air… but the lack of absolutely anything worth saying sort of spoils it.

Paoem the Fourth: Nari’s song

O!

The day is done; the stars are bright;
The leaves are still; the moon is white!
Laugh at woe and laugh at foe,
Menoa’s scion now is safe this night!

T: Now, I genuinely like the first two lines of this verse. It’s a good start. This proves that Paolini isn’t as tone-deaf as his previous (and following) poems suggest. The first lines have good rhythm, actual rhyme and metric consistency. I was quite pleasantly surprised. The only this that ruins an otherwise really nice stanza is the awkward final line, which is about half a beat too long and loses that natural grammatical flow by reversing the article. A shame, really.

E: I’m sorry, but I have to rant a little here. In every poem – every single freaking poem – Paolini makes a reference to some god, or ancient person, or some myth from Alewhatthehellumlaut. I get why he’s doing this – it’s in the line of epic poetry and all that shiz. The problem is, though, is that nobody knows what the hell he’s referencing? Who’s Menoa? I don’t know. I don’t care. Yeah, I know – Tolkien did the same thing in LoTR. The difference is that he spent years coming up with the language and the world of Middle Earth and so forth, and there are the appendices and supporting books that explain all the mythos of his world. I’m not even a fan of LoTR (much) and I know that. Paolini’s just farting out random “mythical” names at this point in an effort to make his writing look more distinguished. It. Doesn’t. Work. Rant over.

T: That’s a good point, but his worst pseudo-namedropping crimes are yet to come. Menoa actually turns up at some point, which is more than you can say for poor Geda or Erne.

A forest child we lost to strife;
A sylvan daughter caught by life!

E: Caught by life? What does that even mean? Is that a metaphor for death? Life finally caught her…so she died? What?

T: Wait, what? What was all that about laughing at woe and the moon is bright? Is this a celebration of evening, or a requiem?

Freed of fear and freed of flame,
She tore a Rider from the shadows rife!

T: ;___; I think Paolini’s mocking me. “Here, have a nice poem for a change! Ha ha, just joking!” I mean, “the shadows rife”? Rife with what? Fleas? As far as I know, “rife” either needs something to be rife with, or needs to be used differently from this. And still, I don’t know if we’re meant to be celebrating or mourning.

E: I’m going to go with mourning.

Again the dragons rise on wing
And we avenge their suffering

E: Hey…wait a moment. These lines don’t suck! There must be something wrong.

T: What kills me is that this is a brilliant couplet with a creative rhyme and absolutely flawless rhythm. Paolini clearly is capable, unless this is the biggest fluke since Einstein forgot to carry the remainder.

Strong of blade and strong of arm,
The time is ripe to kill a king!

T: What? I still don’t know how I as the audience is supposed to react. Am I celebrating, mourning or rising up in rebellion? This poem lacks thematic focus, which is actually a common problem with all of Paolini’s works, now that I think about it. Including his novel, poetry and that Urgal folktale he embedded in Brisingr. He simply lacks focus.

E: I definitely agree. This calls back to what I said above – poems are supposed to use minimal language and say as much as possible. There should be some kind of focus. These are just… scattered words and phrases loosely bound together, and it doesn’t work.

O!

T: What is up with that unassigned vocative tense? If it’s an exclamation, it should be spelled “Oh”, to differentiate it from the vocative tense O, as in “O mouse, where art thou?”. As it is, it’s just silly and pretentious.

The wind is soft; the river deep;
The trees are tall; the birds do sleep!

E: This poem sucks; I hate this thing/This stuff is obvious; it’s really annoying. SEE PAOLINI? I CAN DO IT TOO.

T: And now we’re back to this. If we simply got rid of the last two stanzas, I wouldn’t have anything to complain about. It would have been nice if he’d tried a mid-rhyme instead of just throwing “soft” and “tall” in there without second thought.

Laugh at woe and laugh at foe;
The hour has come for joy to reap!

T: To reap what? TO REAP WHAT?!

E: Our IQ points. And my sanity.

E: This is the end of the first part – there are several more Paoems to go, but for the sake of everyone’s sanity we decided to stop here for now. To sum it up in my thoughts…I think these poems are actually worse than the Epic Poem in Eldest. Not because the rhythm’s necessarily awful or anything like that, but simply because they’re so damn hazy. Half the time I have no idea what Paolini’s trying to talk about. When I do understand, it’s still confusing simply because Paolini has no idea what kind of emotions he wants to evoke. Poetry is supposed to evoke feelings in us. No, scratch that – good poetry’s supposed to evoke feelings in us. Strong feelings. Whether they’re good feelings like happiness of affectionate nostalgia, or negative feelings like bitterness or even despair – we feel something. Poetry is taking emotion and putting them into words. It’s about taking something ugly or unnoticed in life and making it beautiful. This is not poetry. This is garbled words strewn together in an effort to sound “deep” and “cool” and make it seem like Alawhatever has a rich history a la Middle Earth. And it fails miserably.

T: I definitely agree. Poetry is supposed to be emotion made verbal. It’s supposedly characterised by intense language and heightened expression, which not only Paolini’s poetry, but also his prose, almost completely lacks. It’s not hard to evoke emotion. Henry Lawson managed without a single “O!” or “twixt”: “They thought of the far-away grave on the plain,/They thought of the comrade who came not again,/They lifted their glasses, and sadly they said:/‘We drink to the name of the mate who is dead’.” (from The Glass On The Bar) .

Tune in for Part Three, in which we continue to spiral towards insanity (or alcoholism).

Comment [7]

Sadly, Elleirabird was caught in the horribly knotty fishing-net of Life, College, and Work, so after her sincere apologies and regrets, I find I must bravely soldier on by myself through the tangled and nonsensical jungle that is Paolini’s poetry.

Paoem the Fifth: Elfsong

For the consideration of the readers, I’m presenting the translated version of this poem, which was put very considerately in the long list of pointless translated words and phrases at the back of the book that nobody ever looks at.

Sing, O white-browed Fate
Of ill-marked Berundal
Born under oaken leaves
To mortal women . . .

T: One of the things that consistently bugs me about Paolini is that he throws in all of these throwaway references and never mentions them again. It’s a small blessing that either Paolini or his editor didn’t want to print the whole thing. Berundal? Sounds like Paolini was trying to plagiarise the story of Beren and Luthien, but didn’t have the patience or chops to rewrite the entire thing in his Ancient Language. As a poem, it’s difficult to judge given the Word Of God ‘translated’ nature of it, so things like rhyme and metre can be a bit more flexible, and it’s possible some metaphors could be lost in the translation. Possible, but unlikely. The phrases are simple to the point of uselessness, and only really the first line has anything in the way of poetic techniques. But why is fate ‘white-browed’? That just seems to be playing on the cliched ‘Father Time’ trope, the metaphor of time or fate as a wrinkled old man or woman. “Born under oaken trees” adds precisely nothing to our understanding of the character, expect that he was born possibly in a forest. The point of a poem is to reveal the most information with the fewest words. If you waste lines to add that sort of information, it had better be absolutely essential.

Paoem the Sixth: The Raven’s Riddle

Dragons, like wagons,
Have tongues.

T: Maybe I’m behind on wagon terminology, but do wagons really have tongues? I’ve never heard of it before.

Dragons, like flagons,
Have necks.
But while two hold beer,
the other eats deer!

T: Behold the might of Paolini’s wit. Working with the theory that Paolini is sincere but inept (or, at least, sincerely inept), I can really see him laughing himself to tears over his brilliantly witty wordplay. The original and creative rhyming of “dragon” and “flagon” reminds me a bit uncomfortably of the “the flagon with the dragon holds the brew that is true” sequence from The Court Jester.

Paoem the Seventh: Under the Moon

Under the moon, the bright white moon
Lies a pool, a flat silver pool,
Among the brakes and brambles,
And black-hearted pines.

T: Definitely not the best description I’ve ever read. What can a pool be except flat? Unless it’s a pool of mercury, ‘silver’ is the wrong word as well. I like the line ‘brakes and brambles’, but I had to consult my Indo-European dictionary to check if ‘brakes’ is used right. It is, but in Middle Low German. Seems like the sort of thing that would translate across to English, but I’ve never heard it before. Possibly it relates to the English word ‘bracken’? Also, when are pines ‘black-hearted’? I mean, aside from when they’ve been roasted by an angry red-haired Shade.

Falls a stone, a living stone,
Cracks the moon, the bright white moon,
Among the brakes and brambles,
And the black-hearted pines.

T: Reversing the syntax does not make it artsy and poetic. “falls a stone” requires some syntax/logic of position. Like “From the cliff falls a stone”, or “tumbles a stone down the gully”, but even then the grammar is suspect. I can only imagine that “a living stone” refers to a dwarf, but that might be reading too much into it. Paolini’s the sort of author who would carve a house “out of the very living rock”, after all.

And what’s the moon doing in the middle of a forest? How is it cracked by a falling stone? Unless the rather oblique image is a stone falling into the pond through the reflected image of the moon. Quite probably it is that, but the way he describes it is ridiculous.

Shards of light, swords of light,
Ripple ‘cross the pool,
The quiet mere, the still tarn
The lonely lake there

T: See, that’s actually a really interesting image, and an effective metaphor. Why does Paolini taunt us with hideousness when he is capable of such beauty? Again, I had to look up ‘tarn’. Paolini has a really bad habit of using inappropriate words from other languages, and long-dead words and phrases. Some authors can get away with it, but with Paolini it looks exactly as it is: blatant and unrepentant etymological thesaurus abuse.

In the night, the dark and heavy night,
Flutter shadows, confused shadows
Where once . . .

T: The third line there throws off the rhythm. This is a real shame, because this is a rare time when Paolini actually had a rather nice rhythm flowing, if you squint sort of sideways at it. Unless he’s pronouncing “confused” as “confus-ed”, which is an old poetic trick that only really works half of the time.

All in all, not one of his worst poems. The pace and rhythm are appropriate for the content, the imagery is largely appropriate, and only a few words seem out of place. It almost gives me hope.

Paoem the Eighth: Arya’s Song

Away, away, you shall fly away,
O’er the peaks and vales
To the lands beyond.
Away, away you shall fly away,
And never return to me.

T: This first stanza is terrible. I don’t know if Paolini was just burned out at this stage or what, because he went from bad to good to terrible in the space of a few chapters. There’s almost no rhythm to speak of, the metre is all over the place and this poem hobbles around like an ant missing a few feet. Which, incidentally, it is.

Gone! Gone you shall be from me,
And I will never see you again.
Gone! Gone you shall be from me,
Though I wait for you evermore.

T: This really doesn’t say anything, and that’s one of the biggest problems. If this is a poem about love and loss, as it seems to be, there should be much more emotion in it. This is like saying “I am sitting in a room. It’s rather dirty, and smells funny.” instead of saying “I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy ray/Of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall” (A.B. Patterson, Clancy of the Overflow). There’s no emotion, no powerful or descriptive language, and certainly no metaphors or anything else that one usually finds in poetry.

Paoem the Ninth: Eragon’s Epic Poem

Please refer to Part One for a proper dissection of this mess.

Paoem(s) the Tenth: Assorted Shorts

1: Raven’s Second

While two may share two,
And one of two is certainly one,
One might be two.

T: By this point I’m prepared to believe that Paolini’s editor actually believes the guy is good at this stuff. This should have been cut, as it serves even less of a purpose than the Seventh Paoem (which was literally just “Eragon found a scrap of paper with some writing on it”).

2: Riddles

Tall I am young
Short I am old.
While with life I do glow
Urur’s breath is my foe

T: That’s funny, the version of that that I learned in primary school was “Thin, I am quick; fat I am slow. Wind is my foe.” Credit to Paolini for trying to make it his own, retracted for using such a well-known pre-existing one.

What herb cures all ailments?

By the black raven’s crime, and by this rhyme,
The answer would be thyme.

T: This isn’t even a proper riddle! The clues and rhyme are supposed to be the question, not the answer. Riddles are supposed to be answerable by someone other than the writer, and unless everybody has this answer ingrained into them from an early age, that’s just not going to happen. Second, what does “the black raven’s crime” have to do with anything? This is rhyming for the sake of rhyme, and DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE.

I am named Morgothal’s Forge and Helzvog’s Womb.
I veil Nordvig’s Daughter and bring grey death,
And make the world anew with Helzvog’s Blood.

T: ANY Dwarf raised in Dwarf society should be able to answer this from the word “forge”. Riddles about religious symbolism are all very well, but when it’s so blatant as that then the audience should be rolling their eyes in disdain. Also, the Sun is a really absurd thing for an underground civilisation to fixate on as the origin of their gods. One might think, say, a volcano, or underground rock formations (which also come up), or any number of things. One day a god was mining when his pick hit a piece of diamond that splintered into a thousand pieces and became the Dwarves. But the sun? That thing that more than half of them have never seen?

3: Scrap of Doggerel

Under a cold and empty winter sky
Stood a wee, small man with a silver sword.
He jumped and stabbed in a fevered frenzy,
Fighting the shadows that massed before him. . . .

T: Yes, that four-points ellipsis actually appeared in the book. This one is supposed to be crowding out Eragon’s conscious thoughts, in an effort to prevent his mind from being read. A common enough tactic in fiction. The problem is, this is far too narrative for such a thing. The absolute best defence against a mind-reader would be either 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, or What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor?. Why? Because they are ear-worms. They have a clear beat, a simple repeating pattern and are difficult to forget. They can be marched to. Eragon’s Scrap of Doggerel (that’s what the book refers to it as) is just too difficult to remember and recite while under stress. Even more so without any clear rhyme or rhythm.

Paoem the Eleventh: Woolly Goat

T: The good folks over at Anti-Shurtugal tried to rewrite this to fit into some sense of song-like verse. Despite their best efforts, none of them could successfully sing it in any sort of songlike harmony.

So with her hair a-flying, sweet Aethrid O’Dauth
Ran to Lord Edel and cried, “Free my lover,
Else a witch will turn you into a woolly goat!”
Lord Edel, he laughed and said, “No witch shall turn me into a woolly goat!”

T: Bear in mind, this was supposedly being sung by a minstrel troupe. Somebody was paying money for this tuneless piece of tripe. As I said before, we tried (and failed) to give this… thing… even the slightest sense of rhythm, let alone try to turn it into a song. The closest we got was to force it rather messily into the tune of “Mist and Shadow”, as sung in the movie version of Return of the King. Even then, it was a really tenuous fit.
Basically, there are no redeeming features of this so-called “song” whatsoever.

Paoem the Twelfth: Eragon’s Fantastic Flower-Song Spell

For the consideration of the readers, I’m presenting the translated version of this poem, which was put very considerately in the long list of pointless translated words and phrases at the back of the book that nobody ever looks at.

Grow, O beautiful Loivissa, daughter of the earth
Grow as you would with sun and rain
Grow and put forth your flower of spring
For all to see.

T: This is simultaneously a song and a spell, so I’m going to make some concessions about poetic content. After all, one cannot lie or exaggerate or personify or use metaphor in the Ancient Language, can one? Except that here we have anthropomorphism, which should be impossible in the Ancient Language (come to it, that goes for every single poem we’ve heard in the Ancient Language. None of them should exist in a language where the word is the thing, and no lies can be spoken). I can’t quite imagine the tune that this would be sung to, but the concession has to be made that this is the translated version. The meter of the Ancient Language version is far less consistent.

Paoem The Last: Eragon’s Terrible Riddle

Strong and stout,
Thirteen stars upon his brow,
Living stone sat shaping dead earth into dead stone.

T: Miraculously, this was acknowledged by the characters in the book, including Eragon himself, as a terrible poem. What’s terrible about it? Maybe the fact that the first two lines are three and seven syllables respectively, and then the last line is 22 syllables long? Maybe the lack of rhyme or rhythm, or the complete lack of any sort of emotive content? I suppose we might never be able to properly dissect such condensed, concentrated fail. As a riddle, it doesn’t make sense, and as a poem, it lacks almost anything that might be called poetic.

Until Paolini publishes again, this may well be the last! A moment’s silence for our fallen stomachs and IQ scores, and a toast in memory of my brave and wise comrade-in-sporks, Elleirabird.

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In this two-part series, I will examine the place of the trilogy in fantasy fiction, and the problems that one faces when writing a trilogy, and what, in my opinion, is the best way to go about doing so.

No matter how long you’ve been a part of the genre, as a reader, writer or general hanger-on, you’ve probably come across the legend of the Fantasy Trilogy. It’s a mainstay of the mythology of the genre (that’s for all of you who like academia and university-level answer-padding and argument-obfuscation). In shorter words, it’s a very common trope that has been a part of fantasy for a long time.

Now, I’m not arguing against trilogies in general. Trilogies have a long and proud tradition in fantasy, and not only in written, printed fantasy. Most people will recognise the Star Wars trilogy (numbers 1, 2 and 3 don’t count in my book) as a ‘space fantasy’, and let’s not overlook Lord of the Rings, which, although not an intentional trilogy, still became one of the defining trilogies of the genre (and indeed, one of the initial trend-setters). These trilogies are a credit to the genre, and will most likely survive for and be cherished by uncounted future generations.

However, many of us will also know about the Inheritance Cycle and Twilight, among others. These and other lesser-known trilogies and series most emphatically do not do credit to the form. They are poorly-conceived, lacking in focus and therefore unenjoyable.

Just where do these trilogies go wrong? And what, then, is the folly of the trilogy?

3. The Middle Slump

The middle book, book 2 of 3, the book that is neither the beginning nor the end, is a particularly challenging one to write. Here, you must continue to follow the threads of the story without letting things sag or stagnate, as well as maintaining consistent characterisation and an interesting storyline. Certainly, this is a problem faced by The Middle of any story, no matter how short or long. It is a problem as old as storytelling, I would be willing to bet. What happens between the beginning and the end? The problem with trilogy middles is one of perception: the author sets out to Write A Trilogy, but they might not have enough of a story to fill three books. What do they do, instead? Random encounters! Seemingly endless, unconnected side quests! These are of course temporary solutions at best, and at worst serve only to bog the story down further, possibly even making the reader lose interest.

Not every trilogy or series feels the Slump, however. Nobody ever said that The Empire Strikes Back was a disappointment, as far as I’m aware (if you have, please raise your hand and place your head within range of my rifle, thank you.) So what’s the secret to avoiding the Eldest Problem? In order to avoid Middle-Book Slump like we see in Eldest and Brisingr, the answer is quite simple: Don’t set out to Write A Trilogy. Set out to write a story, and if that story happens to be long enough for three books, so be it. Setting your sights on the big picture may cause you to forget about the details, and those details are what flesh out a story’s middle. And please, don’t give your hero Seven Promises that they must fulfill in turn. While this may well be acceptable in the realm of computer games, in a novel it’s just not cricket. Above all, remember that quality (how good it is) is the most important thing, while quantity (how much there is of it) is unimportant. The finest Belgian chocolate truffles are tiny little things, and yet they are incomparably better to ten gallons of tasteless, watery mystery-meat soup with yellow wobbly bits and not enough salt.

2. Trilogy Creep

I’ll spare you the link to TVTropes, and summarise the fact that ‘trilogy creep’ is what happens when an author writes Book 4. Many famous series that started as trilogies have suffered from trilogy creep, including the Wheel of Time trilogy, which exploded into 11 books including a 12th written by a different author; and The Belgariad, which was planned as a trilogy but became 14 books in two collections. Most recently, Inheritance has expanded from three books to four.

That being said, not all Trilogy Creep is inherently bad: The Earthsea Trilogy became five books when the author went back years later to expand on the characters’ lives. This is the best kind of Creep, where the story genuinely can and should go on, being driven by characters who don’t stop living just because the books are finished. These characters lived beyond the trilogy, and their stories were worth going back to and expanding upon. Or The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, cheekily referred to as a ‘trilogy in four (now five) parts’, where the story continues naturally beyond the three-book plan, and doing so is in the best interest of the story. The kind of Trilogy Creep to which I refer in the negative is most often the result of poor planning, unwieldy prose, endless descriptions of pointless minutiae, or substantial padding and ‘filler’ material of the sort present in abundance in Eldest and Brisingr.

In my opinion, Trilogy Creep happens because of reason number 1, below: the first books are published before the story is finished, and the author changes his or her mind halfway through, taking the story in a new direction. Or they didn’t plan it out and ended up with far more story than 3 books could hold. Trilogy Creep that happens because of poor planning, excessive filler, or because the publisher wants more to sell is inexcusable, as I see it: if you set out to write a trilogy, write a trilogy. Don’t name something “book 1 of 3” if there’s even the slightest chance of a fourth book.

1. Publishing One Before the Second is Finished

Absolutely the number one reason trilogies and others series may be ruined, is when the author publishes book 1 before finishing (or worse, before starting) book 2. The simple fact of the matter is that worlds change, ideas change and writing styles change.

In my experience as a worldbuilder, one thing that I have noticed is that no imaginary world is fixed. They grow and evolve as you add new things, discover and attempt to close up holes or gaps, and as you re-evaluate old ideas or learn new ways of thinking. Therefore, publishing your first book before the second is finished is definitely one of the worst things you can do for continuity, unless you are really strict about the details and circumstances of your world and the psychology of your characters. A good example of bad continuity (or a bad example of good continuity) is the Inheritance Cycle, yet again: magic is tied to the language. No wait, it’s the thought that counts. No, sorry, a tiny grammatical error will dramatically change the spell’s effects. No wait, you don’t need the language at all. Nono, now it’s about singing. Or is it about emotion? In only four books, Paolini’s stance on magic, and therefore his internal continuity, slingshots from one extreme to the other, and then off the rails altogether (and, predictably, crashing into a ditch on the side of the road). If Paolini had waited for all of his books to be finished before publishing the first, he would have been able to edit out such inconsistencies.

Second, especially for less-experienced writers like Paolini, writing style and narrative voice is something that develops over time and experience, and it takes a long time and a lot of practice to ‘find’ the voice you are most comfortable with. If you write the first book in a series and publish it before the others are finished, you may well find that Book 3 uses an almost entirely different narrative voice, and that over the course of your series your style may change and shift constantly. If you wait until the series is finished before publishing, you will of course be able to develop a consistent narrative voice that doesn’t change too drastically between books. An example of this is, once again, the Inheritance cycle: in book 1, Paolini starts with a particularly… fresh-faced eagerness in his narrative voice: a writer discovering the joy of telling a story with words for the first time. However, in books 2 and 3, his narrative voice changes dramatically in each book. Paolini has yet to find his voice, and that is quite disconcerting to readers.

Last, especially in the economy of the market, where profits matter more than quality of material (again, quality over quantity!), there is always the risk that if the second is published too late after the first, the audience and readership will have moved on to something else, and the second book will not be nearly as successful. This, of course, potentially leads to termination of the contract, which would mean your half-finished trilogy may never be completed. And that’s the worst fate for any trilogy-maker. Remember Obernewtyn? Eight years on, we’re still waiting for the final book. The series stalled, we readers moved on, and now we no longer care or remember what happened to the characters. (Possibly not the best example, given that Obernewtyn is such an excellently crafted series that I, personally, am happy to wait for the last book to come out and eagerly re-read the entire series in preparation).

If your trilogy isn’t cancelled because of lack of interest, then you risk the ire of impatient fans (assuming you have any after the three-year wait between books 1 and 2). In the case of Paolini, his fans became restless, and more and more grew dissatisfied with the existing books during the wait for Inheritance, the final book in the series. As one commenter quoted, his fans are growing up while he’s left behind. The waning fanbase can only spell trouble for Paolini, not only for this particular series but for all his future works.

Conclusion

While trilogies and series are not themselves inherently bad, jumping the gun and publishing before the series is finished is. In my opinion, the best trilogies are written as a single seamless story, all at once, and only later divided into books (for example, Lord of the Rings, divided at the printing stage purely because of technological limitations). Using this method, you can keep track of internal consistency, timelines, characters and your writing voice. You can go back at the end and edit out any unfortunate slips in logic or the laws of your world, as well as streamline the prose, dialogue and characterisation into a consistent form that unites the three books as a single body of work at a linguistic level. Unless you can exercise the obsessive attention to detail and discipline of a computer, or perhaps a Star Wars fan, doing so mid-production is a daunting task, to say the least.

Tune in soon for Part Two, which unfortunately has been cancelled due to lack of interest.

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