Like the news-bearing heralds of old, Fresh-scraped Vellum is becoming a bit more newsy, albeit in a potentially wayward fashion. So every Monday for the foreseeable future, the Wayward Herald will report on news and items of interest to readers and writers of historical and fantasy fiction. For his inaugural post, here are some interesting…
In the final installment in my series on the Top 5 Elements of a Great Epic, I’m focusing on Grand Events – those major conflicts that makes a great epic so breathtaking. Grand events are critical because they are a primary vehicle through which the author shows how huge the stakes are in the story. They…
Every story needs a protagonist, and often he or she possesses qualities that could be described as “heroic.” A great epic, however, needs a hero in the truest sense of the word. Just look at three of the first four definitions in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to see what I mean: Definition of HERO a mythological…
Great epics often span considerable time periods. That’s one of the reason these novels tend to look like small telephone books in hard copy. These aren’t 90,000 word novels like so many popular thrillers, which move at break-neck speed and sometimes account for a mere 24 hours (or less) of story time. No, epics are…
Among the Top 5 Elements of a Great Epic, setting is at the top of my list. Great stories, of course, can take place in a very limited setting. Stephen King’s The Mist, which largely takes place in a convenience store, and Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, which primarily takes place in the protagonist’s home,…
I adore epic fiction. It’s likely the fault of George Lucas and J.R.R. Tolkien. I was eight when Star Wars came out in 1977, and I’ll never forget staring wide-eyed at the opening image of the rebel ship and that star destroyer. Then Darth Vader emerged through that smoke-filled portal and it blew my mind. Later that…
I’m concluding my series on the “beginnings” of vintage fantasy fiction with Tolkien—after all, where would the genre be without him? I’ve already written on the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, which I thought was quite good. But does the opening of The Two Towers hold up as well? Aragorn sped on up…
Once upon a time the most common narrative viewpoint was called third-person omniscient. The story was told through the point-of-view of an all-knowing storyteller who played no actual role in the novel except to relay story events. This was the rave back in the nineteenth century and in much of the twentieth century too, used by…
The final “cliché” in fantasy fiction needs little introduction. He is the granddaddy of all antagonists, the embodiment of evil that threatens the main character, and often the survival of kingdoms, continents, and worlds. Relatively recent incarnations of this antagonist, whose power usually dwarfs that of our poor hero, include Sauron from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The…
Since this typically is a joyous time of year, I tried to find a happier “beginning” for this week – which should be a challenge given the desire to create tension in the opening passage of a novel. The beginning of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring comes close to fitting this bill, while…