Writing Alternative “Facts”

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My first and pretty much only experience with the “Choose Your Own Adventure” genre of books was, unfortunately, with Goosebumps. “Reader Beware, YOU Choose the Scare!” As someone who perceives stories in a very linear way and prefers to know “what really happened,” this type of book was an exercise in frustration. This was before I was exposed to role-playing games of any kind, although I am more acclimated to this style of story-telling in video games thanks to RPGs from Bioware and otome from Steamberry Studio.

But there still is part of me that gets very frustrated with multiple storylines or multiple routes, especially with books. I don’t do well with stories that tackle multiverses, alternate timelines, or transporter accidents. I want to know the proper order of events, the single “right way” to experience the story… and that just isn’t present in that style of writing. All of the “facts” are equally plausible. (Well, at least, they are if the game or book is good.)

So imagine my surprise when I found myself writing just this kind of story for my day job.

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The Problem With Chosen Ones

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The trope is endemic to fantasy literature. Especially middle grade and YA fantasy literature. How many times have we gone through the old song and dance of a single person who is “special,” who feels like an outsider or doesn’t fit in, and turns out to have special powers or is the long-lost heir to the fairy throne or some other trite nonsense that hangs the fate of the world on the decisions of a single hormonal teenager? (Nostalgia Critic’s review of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief covers a lot of the issues with this trope of “Wowed Teenagers” quite nicely.)

Now, to be fair, a lot of people do connect with this base character type, and as long as the story does something interesting with it, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the trope. For people just discovering works featuring that character type, it’s something new and unfamiliar to them. For people like me who have read a lot of fantasy and see the same tropes and cliches turn up over and over again without much variation, it can be a little grating. To each there own, of course, and I would prefer to see more variation. But a lot of people, especially those in the middle grade and YA audience, do feel like outcasts and want to be reminded that they to can be something special. It can be inspiring for them and help them discover their own talents.

But there’s a Dark Side to this emphasis on being a special, super-powered Chosen One. It can help reinforce two very unfortunate mental states: Magical Thinking and Delusions of Grandeur.

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Fluff and Fairies

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I’ve been feeling cold and unmotivated for quite a while, so today you folks get more of a fluff piece than anything really deep or serious.

For National Novel Editing Month in March and for the April edition of Camp NaNoWriMo, I’ve been working on a Young Adult (abbreviated as “YA”) fantasy novel that I’m currently calling “Faylinn,” which is the name of the world in which the story is set. (Like with Rinamathair, the name of the world is the title of the work-in-progress until I find something better.) This is… a different experience from my other writing projects because it’s a hybrid. It isn’t being written completely from scratch like Mariner Sequence, but it also isn’t a fan fiction outline that got revamped and then written from scratch. Faylinn is based on an already-complete piece of fan fiction, but I’m swapping out character names and adjusting the plot and world to be its own thing. I am also generating new content, but at the same time, I’m rereading the preexisting piece of work and doing major cuts and rewrites to it. Maybe that isn’t the best project to choose for Camp NaNoWriMo… but I just can’t do Mariner Sequence justice right now. I don’t want to spend all of my writing time on stories that aren’t as near and dear to my heart, but I also know when I’m not in a fit state for a particular story. So, fluff it is.
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