The Way of the Wizard
Walking
Sandy upland forest, mixed hemlock and beech.
I hear there are forty different fern species native to Western Mass. I do not own a fern book as yet. But here’s a big old list of latin names and undecipherable plant anatomy vocab if you’re interested.
I would like to note that this is the most in-focus picture I’ve ever taken of a detailed tiny thing. Satisfying!
Get Small Beer Press books for $1. $1!
Kalpa Imperial, Magic for Beginners, Generation Loss—these are %@!$ing phenomenal books. I feel guilty promoting this sale. They are worth more than that!
But what can I do.
I just stumbled onto possibly the best object lesson in showing, not telling in fiction I’ll ever get.
In 2005, I wrote a story called “Hope and Erosion”, about a kingdom living in a sandcastle threatened by the rising tide. It was the second story I’d ever sold, to a Christian fantasy e-zine called Dragons, Knights and Angels. I was very proud of it at the time. At the time, it was the best story I’d ever written.
In 2004, all unbenknownst to me at the time, Jeffrey Ford wrote a story called “The Annals of Eelin Ok”, which was published in Datlow and Windling’s The Faery Reel, and won the Fountain Award for that year (and on whose website it can still be read for free). It’s based on the exact same premise: a tiny, fantastical being living out his life in a sandcastle made by human hands. His story is way better. I just listened to it on a Podcastle show from a couple weeks back, read by Rajan Khanna, who may be my new favorite podcast reader—his voice is understated, quiet and calm and eminently listenable, but somehow capable of hitting just the right emotional notes with the strength of a clapper striking a cathedral bell. It almost made me cry.
Here’s the lesson: everything about a story is more powerful when you’re experiencing it right there with the character. “Hope and Erosion” is told like a parable. Hermit, the hero, is a hero in the classic fairytale sense, the way Sir Gawain is a hero, or the Red Cross Knight. Which is fine, but there’s no understanding that kind of hero as a person. He’s away up there on the pedestal of myth.
Eelin Ok is a fairy, but he’s a person. His whole life is there on the page, his heart is open, and you’re in it.
I suppose this lesson may work better on me than on you, gentle reader, since you may not have had the luck to have written the exact same story as Jeffrey Ford. But if you feel so inclined, you might could get a similar effect if you read the two stories side by side.
Read the Jeff Ford story, anyway, if you haven’t. It’s awesome.
