Lois’s answer to “I just reread the Sharing Knife series - and whenever I read it I wonder, do you think you’ll ever …” > Likes and Comments
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Is the status of the rest of the world also awaiting those details?
By which I guess you mean the world of the Sharing Knife? What anything mainly waits on is a character with a problem that keenly interests me. Of which the limiting factor at the moment is "interests". I'm getting very brain lazy lately.
Ta, L.
I was in a book store today and overheard two nearby young women in conversation. They found the tale of Cyrano, and one ask the other if she wanted to get it. The reply was a firm no. She had seen the film, it made her cry, and she had no wish to read the story again. I have also seen the film and I am sufficiently old and life experienced enough to appreciate the lesson in the story as well as the impulse not to relive tragedy. Which happened to get me thinking on tragedies and what might make one re-readable (people seem to enjoy Romeo and Juliet) vs. one that people find too traumatizing to experience again. Sudden I wondered whether some researcher somewhere has done a study on which might be more effective in creating an impact on the life or choices of a reader (if that is even the author's intent). Interesting coincidence that I come and find a note about writing 'downer' stories. It inspires a lot of thoughts, too complex and currently too jumbled for these tiny comment boxes, about many types of tales, but particularly those that pull your heart strings without ripping your heart apart entirely. I am thinking here of stories like "CryoBurn" which has a, for many, brutal ending, but yet very different from the type of brutality in the Cyrano ending. Or a story like "Lessons in Chemistry" (Garmus) which is very brutal in parts but simultaneously humorous and delectable. In brief, there seems to be a lot of room for rumination.
You might have a look at Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Lantern Bearers as a possible solution to the end-of-the-world novel that isn't a complete tragedy. The trick, I think, must be to have characters invested emotionally in the new order, before the old one collapses, and the story is the moment of radicalization, when adherence to the old order ceases to be satisfying/sustainable and preparation for the new order (however daunting) becomes an interesting challenge.
My brain has always filled in a less techno-space version of the Star Wars fall of the Republic/Darth Vitiate plots for the origin of Malices. It *is* tempting to want to take a peek back at a time when they knew more about the origins and uses of groundsense magery. But I mean, as much as I appreciate and admire Lois' ability to touch on dark subjects in an other-than-bleak way, I'll concede that this one would be a biiiiit of a tall order. The...least bad? way I can think of would be to start with the survivors, and flashback to the disaster lead-up. But the survivor story would still be, like, the Western Levels and the evolution of sharing knives from groundlock-suicide-sacrifices, which is still pretty downer.
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Howard
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Jan 12, 2023 12:10PM
Is the status of the rest of the world also awaiting those details?
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By which I guess you mean the world of the Sharing Knife? What anything mainly waits on is a character with a problem that keenly interests me. Of which the limiting factor at the moment is "interests". I'm getting very brain lazy lately.Ta, L.
I was in a book store today and overheard two nearby young women in conversation. They found the tale of Cyrano, and one ask the other if she wanted to get it. The reply was a firm no. She had seen the film, it made her cry, and she had no wish to read the story again. I have also seen the film and I am sufficiently old and life experienced enough to appreciate the lesson in the story as well as the impulse not to relive tragedy. Which happened to get me thinking on tragedies and what might make one re-readable (people seem to enjoy Romeo and Juliet) vs. one that people find too traumatizing to experience again. Sudden I wondered whether some researcher somewhere has done a study on which might be more effective in creating an impact on the life or choices of a reader (if that is even the author's intent). Interesting coincidence that I come and find a note about writing 'downer' stories. It inspires a lot of thoughts, too complex and currently too jumbled for these tiny comment boxes, about many types of tales, but particularly those that pull your heart strings without ripping your heart apart entirely. I am thinking here of stories like "CryoBurn" which has a, for many, brutal ending, but yet very different from the type of brutality in the Cyrano ending. Or a story like "Lessons in Chemistry" (Garmus) which is very brutal in parts but simultaneously humorous and delectable. In brief, there seems to be a lot of room for rumination.
You might have a look at Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Lantern Bearers as a possible solution to the end-of-the-world novel that isn't a complete tragedy. The trick, I think, must be to have characters invested emotionally in the new order, before the old one collapses, and the story is the moment of radicalization, when adherence to the old order ceases to be satisfying/sustainable and preparation for the new order (however daunting) becomes an interesting challenge.
My brain has always filled in a less techno-space version of the Star Wars fall of the Republic/Darth Vitiate plots for the origin of Malices. It *is* tempting to want to take a peek back at a time when they knew more about the origins and uses of groundsense magery. But I mean, as much as I appreciate and admire Lois' ability to touch on dark subjects in an other-than-bleak way, I'll concede that this one would be a biiiiit of a tall order. The...least bad? way I can think of would be to start with the survivors, and flashback to the disaster lead-up. But the survivor story would still be, like, the Western Levels and the evolution of sharing knives from groundlock-suicide-sacrifices, which is still pretty downer.
