With Saint Patrick’s Day less than a week away, Fresh-scraped Vellum is focusing on all things Irish! So for the “beginning” of this week I’ve chosen the opening passage from Morgan Llywelyn’s Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish. This novel was an easy call for today’s “beginning” because it tells the story of the legendary…
In the third post in my six part series on The Top 5 Clichés in Fantasy Fiction, I’m discussing the second of my listed clichés: The Wise Wizard. This character is so recognizable in fantasy novels it almost seems like a mandatory ingredient. He’s the one who teaches the protagonist how to be a hero –…
With the debut of the film John Carter, I chose the opening passage of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first John Carter novel, A Princess of Mars, for the “beginning” of this week. Burroughs wrote this novel in 1912, so the writing may differ a bit from today’s norms, but I think the first passage delivers an…
In the second post in my six part series on The Top 5 Clichés in Fantasy Fiction, I’m discussing the first of my listed clichés: The Farm Boy with a Secret. Since Frodo Baggins left the Shire in J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1954 novel The Fellowship of the Ring, we’ve seen a plethora of such characters in…
This week’s “beginning” comes from Chapter One of Greg Keyes’ The Briar King, the first book in his The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series. In my view, this a compelling opening passage that quickly hooks the reader: Aspar White smelled murder. Its scent was like a handful of autumn leaves, crisped by the first frost…
The word “cliché” makes some readers shudder. Others gag. It brings to mind something so overdone, so stale, so lacking in originality it makes you roll your eyes and mutter, “not this again.” Since at least J.R.R. Tolkien, fantasy fiction has been the Fertile Crescent of clichés. I’ve read numerous articles pleading for authors to…
For this week’s “beginning” I’ve chosen the opening passage from Frances Sherwood’s The Book of Splendor, a novel set in 1601 about the legendary Golem of Prague. I highly recommend this novel for anyone who hasn’t read it! Creating a Golem requires patience, brilliance, study, prayer, and fasting. The creator must be worthy in character,…
According to Wikipedia, “an antihero … is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero.” This character is usually the antithesis of the “knight in shining armor.” But what makes him work? In my view, the antihero has to be someone…
As I noted in my previous post on Great First Lines, the first sentence in a novel can often be its most important. But not always. Some stories need longer to develop. Still, it’s hard to underestimate the significance of the story’s opening passage. This is the “beginning” of the tale, a chance to hook…
The trailer for Season 2 of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which will air in April 2012, was released this week (you can watch it here). Season 1 was fantastic and, from the trailer, Season 2 looks equally promising – as it should be since it depicts A Clash of Kings, the wonderful second novel in…
This is not a new phenomenon, but for authors of short stories the market for their work seems to be forever shrinking. This past November, we saw the demise of one of the higher-end publications for speculative fiction, Realms of Fantasy magazine, and now there is news that Zahir, A Journal of Speculative Fiction, is…