Working Iron and Forging Steel

It would be thrilling to go to a real, working smithy—to see how metalwork was done and perhaps take up the hammer myself. Naturally, such an experience would be great research for a fantasy author. The next best thing, for those short on time or cash, is watching these two fascinating episodes of television.

​The mysterious Ulfberht sword. Oooh. Aaah.

From PBS Nova comes “The Secrets of the Viking Sword.” The seed idea is that, though all sword-swinging Vikings were to be feared, a select few of them carried a special blade that made them even more dangerous. This sword, called the Ulfberht, was stronger, more flexible, and more durable than other weapons of similar appearance. Modern metallurgical analysis has shown that the quality of steel used in forging the Ulfberht far surpassed that of any steel used in Europe for hundreds of years afterwards. How did they do it? Why was it so rare? Watch the program on the PBS site to see modern scientists and smiths try to re-create the process and forge the Ulfberht anew. If you look closely, you can see Aragorn in the background, taking notes.

​Put the eye-yurn in the fie-yur

The BBC created a great show called Mastercrafts, about five medieval skills that are considered essential to the historical identity of Britain, but which are now threatened with obscurity due to the advance of more efficient modern techniques. All of the episodes are great, especially the ones on working greenwood and stone masonry, but it’s the blacksmithing show I’m highlighting here. The format of the show involves taking several interested amateurs and apprenticing them with a master craftsman so that they can learn to perform the skill as it was done a thousand years before. Along the way, there are lots of little informative side-jaunts to fill in details about the period and the process. Luckily, the normally-stingy BBC has thus far ignored the fact that you can watch the entire episode on YouTube.

Vikings According to the History Channel

I remember when the History Channel was just endless clips of black-and-white WW II newsreel footage. That was a while ago. Though I've not watched it more than a minute or two since the 1990s, I'm given to understand that, these days, the channel is much more about the history of Bigfoot and aliens than it is about Hitler.

​"Good luck storming the monastery."

So it was when I came across comments on Facebook by someone who had just watched a show called "Vikings" and wanted to complain: it had no story, nothing to connect the violence, sex, and blood. The History Channel had chosen to jump from documentaries into narrative historical fiction. Naturally, I decided to check it out.​

As a writer of medieval-style fantasy, involving swords and sailing ships and ancient myths, I feel I must keep abreast of developments like this. And going into episode one with my expectations about as low as they could go, my take is...Hey! Not bad. It's no Game of Thrones, but it's also no Spartacus: Sticky, Steamy Sand. Facebook opinions aside, it's getting generally positive reviews, and I'd recommend it for anyone who's into medieval drama or history. And while the writers may have gotten a few of the details wrong for the sake of convenient story beats, as this article points out, there's still a lot of good feel and flavor to be enjoyed.

Best of all, it has a bad-ass fighting female character, played by a beautiful actress, based on a real historical figure.

Drawings, a Gallery

Although it's a novel I'm writing, and not a picture book, I'd always enjoyed those novels I'd read as a kid that included interesting little illustrations at the front of each chapter. In the early chapters of The Calligraphy of Demons, I was just finding suitable images and tweaking them a little before sticking them in there. ​

As more chapters were finished and posted, I started to want images that were more specific, a better fit, and more artistically satisfying. So I decided to take little breaks from the writing to do some drawing. I've posted the results on the Drawings page on my site.​

​Perhaps not surprisingly, the drawing is much like the writing: the more you do, the better you get. I was really rusty at first, and each illustration I complete is now more competent than the last. I'm going to do another blog post soon that explains my process.

I make no claims as to how professional the images are, or if they're worthy of being compared to the art of real, working illustrators. For me, as long as they are getting the job done, and look better than the stuff I did with crayons when I was seven, I'm happy.

Chapter Twelve, a Denoument

​The action-packed conclusion of our heroes' ill-fated trip to Thasia has arrived, in the form of Chapter Twelve - "The Third Act". Download the PDF and find out if they get out of that frying pan, and what sort of fire awaits them.

Getting Home from School

I remember walking home from the bus stop. It’s summer. I’m living with my dad in an apartment in a complex of stunningly boring two-story buildings nestled amongst low, blatantly artificial mounds—which the developers suggest you consider as green hills. The fact that the mounds were formed by bulldozer and backhoe is as obvious as the origin of pail-shaped sandcastles at the beach. Sidewalk-free and pointlessly winding are the roads that snake through the grassy mounds. You’re not meant to set foot on them—you’re not meant to tread upon most roads in suburban Detroit—but there are convenient concrete paths slicing across the yards between buildings. It’s better than nothing.

The bus doesn’t deign to enter the vast apartment acreage. It stays up on 9-mile road and lets out a crowd of kids, dispersing us like a drop of food coloring diffusing in beaker of water. As far as my room is from the the bus stop (a perilous 15-minute run-walk for a teen prone to cluelessly snooze-slapping his alarm), it’s crazy for me to do what I will come to do, which is get off the bus at its previous stop, a mile further from home.

I don’t like the other kids at my stop. It not really bullying at this point, making me avoid them. Most of that treatment was years before, in junior high, in Massachusetts. But I don’t want the uncomfortable silence that comes of walking close enough to make the lack of social interaction into something awkward. I’m already anxious about such things, and I’m most often deep in my own head, wrapped up in my naïve and geeky thoughts.

I still have to get home. So I start down the gravel shoulder of 9-mile, on course to make it to my proper bus stop some 15 minutes after the other kids. I’m alone with my thoughts, allowing my imagination to run and run as I wander home. I now remember the walks as warm, glowing, halcyon times.

A house sits back on a broad lot, about half-way between the one bus stop and the other. Google maps shows the house still sitting there, as it was in the late 1980s.

From the street, a low drainage ditch and row of hedges make a barrier. I walk on up the driveway, cautiously, sure that I’m trespassing. Between the road barrier and the house is a field of grasses and flowers. It’s not utterly wild, but it’s been allowed to grow long and lush. A lithe stream sparkles in the afternoon sun, slipping over the field, and little trees pop up here and there.

The house itself is small and old, built in a time of mid-century construction, long before the ubiquitous yuppie-friendly apartment complexes spread out like so many squat, beige mushrooms. The little house is on a slight rise, guarded by tall trees and framed in a woodsy hillside backdrop. I don’t get close to the house. I never learn who lives there.

I’m only a daydreamer, wandering, observing, and the last thing I want is to encounter anyone, or be shooed away and then be afraid to return. For, in the humid summer afternoon, the golden sunlight is like a liquid thing flowing over that little field, blessing it with brilliance. The dragonflies ride above the grass-tops, and the spicy green aromas of thriving leaves mix with the sweet fragrance of blossoms. There is a fierce vitality, a beauty of isolated serenity that makes the whole yard feel like a precious oasis.

I stand. I stroll. I breathe deep and feel my heart jump—jump the way it used to in autumn in New England when my lungs would fill with the glorious pungency of turning leaves. I close my eyes and feel the sunlight wash over me. Insects drone their cyclical tittering. Birds sing.

I lose time, but I don’t lose myself. I’m fully present, in love with the world and the senses bringing it to me. As bad as I might sometimes feel, as lonely, as depressed, as despairing, I do have, for a moment at least, a perfect sunlit garden refuge. That it’s not really mine, that I soon have to leave it, only makes it more special. And though it now exists only as a fresco on the back wall of my high school memories, it can still make me happy.

Suspense is...wait for it...

I recently attended a test-screening for an upcoming Hollywood movie. Wasn't told the title, the actors, the director—just told to show up for something probably rated "R", probably in the thriller genre. So far, so mysterious. I had no idea what kind of train-wreck I was in for.

The NDA I signed prevents me from saying anything specific about the film. So, no mention of the big movie stars, the famous director, the top-notch screenwriter. But it was a fascinating experience, and a master class in how *not* to make a suspenseful thriller. If they take the audience's comments to heart, this might turn into a story of redemption: how a big, expensive movie gets improved before release. And, speaking as a writer, it really reinforces the value of "beta readers" examining your work.

This was not your typical sneak preview: there were metal detectors, all cell phones were taken to prevent any recording, and there were at least a half-dozen market research people—slick, professional personnel—hovering around, filling seats, and directing people to fill out feedback forms. We were warned that this was an early version of the film, with some unfinished special effects (I noticed a few of those), possibly unfinished music, and the like.

What worked? The scenes that felt like the director working alone, and the scenes that felt like the writer working alone. How those scenes blended together, however, was an epic fail. In a way, that's good news, because they've got enough time before the release date (according to IMDB) to do some heavy editing, some ADR work, and perhaps even re-shoots.

When I say "the director working alone," I mean scenes of action and movement, the way the camera captures gorgeous vistas and textures, and virtuoso visual storytelling. The quality of the screenplay showed in clever exchanges of dialog, verbal storytelling through voice-over flashbacks or soliloquy, and the depth of the ideas in the story. There were engrossing and funny anecdotes shared between characters that were almost Tarantino-esque in quality. There were metaphors of the non-clichéd variety that were put forth early and picked up later for a payoff.

But…
There were many passages of groan-inducing dialog. Things that sounded, in context, far too pretentious for any person to say to another. Other lines felt like the cheesy work of an uncredited script doctor, or ad-libs from misguided actors, or words tossed in by the director. The impression was one of slipping from believable, flowing conversation to head-slapping, did-she-just-say-that non-sequiturs.

There were instances of terrible repetition. Imagine that, as a screenwriter, you need to convey that Mr. X is "getting too old for this s#!t" (not an actual like from this movie). So you have three scenes in a row where three separate characters tell Mr. X that he's "maybe getting too old for this s#!t," and now you've bludgeoned your audience with information they already got. Here's an idea: if you're devoting so much screen time to telling us that Mr. X is getting that way, why not give us a scene that shows it, instead?

A thriller with no suspense is a failure. An Alfred Hitchcock quote springs to mind. Paraphrasing liberally: "Two men get on a train and sit down to talk. Some time later, the train explodes. That's action. Now—two men get on a train, and one of them sets down a case containing a bomb with a 20-minute timer. He talks with the other man. He checks his watch repeatedly. He's distracted, and starts missing things being said. He begins to perspire. That's suspense."

Suspense is about information. That's where this movie falls short. Despite smacking us over and over with things we already understood, it leaves out crucial details—seemingly in service of being "mysterious"—that the audience has got to have. We're not sure if the main characters are criminals, or are just opportunists who want to rip-off the criminals.  A rip-off does occur, but we're not sure who's doing it, why they're doing it, and why everyone else seems surprised. The film ends up as a pile of well-shot, well-written scenes about creepy people doing nasty things to each other for no good reason.

Criminals back-stab and betray one another? Yes, I've been paying attention to pop culture for the last few decades: I got that memo. But take a look at The Godfather. Loyalty is the highest value. A strict code governs behavior within the mob like some sort of perverse and twisted morality. The stakes for each character are laid out, motivations both overt and hidden. The audience knows more than any one character, but doesn't know who the traitors will be or when the betrayal will come.

The key points being: we need to know stakes, motives, and relationships. Only then can we invest in the outcome. Only then can we empathize with the characters, sharing their aspirations, somehow rooting for them even when we know what they're doing is wrong.

It's a great lesson for a writer to learn: give your readers a chance to invest in the plight of your characters. Give readers opportunities to care by sharing what characters hope for, what they dream of, what precious things they'll put in jeopardy by taking action. By showing what your characters stand to lose, you stand to gain readers who will stick with your story.

Wilder's Wonka's Wonderful