Now in the realm of nostalgia, this little essay posted on Facebook 4 January 2012, before I was allowed to provide any public plot details about my middle-grade Gustav Gloom series. Instead I let potential readers know what the books did NOT contain. It functions as a fine statement of personal fantasy-writing principles, and I’m proud to say that I lived up to every word.
(excerpt)
Athough it’s still too early to share story details about the upcoming Gustav Gloom series of middle-school novels — which are going to be teased and revealed by hands cannier than mine — I believe I can get away with telling you about things that are NOT in the books.
To wit: though there’s good and evil here, there are no Chosen Ones. The title character is unique, and does live in a situation that among other things threatens all human existence, but nobody’s been waitinwrg around for him to show up and save the world. He just lives in an insane situation and deals with it; has problems and has to deal with them.
There is no wise old mentor. There are adults of various levels of helpfulness, from the loving to the malignant, but nobody who takes the protagonists in hand and says, “You must do this,” nobody who ultimately provides all the answers. There are accordingly no literary training montages.
There are no special powers granted at birth.
There is a prophecy, of a kind, but it has nothing to do with the book’s central conflict and functions, really, as a grace note. It affects the plot not at all.
There’s no female helplessness. The viewpoint character is a girl who finds our hero strange and fascinating and infuriating, and who more than once needs to go to him for help and also more than once needs to be rescued, but it’s never less than clear that’s only because she is not quite as versed in the rules of their situation as he is. (Otherwise, she’s a quick study.) Tie her to a chair and she will damn well figure out how to get loose before the hero shows up to rescue her. Stand before her a villain who tells her how helpless she is before his almighty power and she will trash-talk the villain right back, even if she secretly agrees with him. She doesn’t beg. She threatens. She’s tough, smart, funny, flawed, and formidable. You don’t have to wait for our hero to say he’s taking the fight to the bad guys. She’ll say it on her own, and you’ll know just as surely that this declaration means that the bad guy is in big trouble. There’s only one scene so far where she agrees to stay behind because something’s too dangerous, and in that one it’s because she doesn’t really believe anything up ahead is dangerous and wants the person protecting her to feel that he’s done his best.
Oh, and by the way: She shows compassion in the face of sadness but makes it damn clear that she’s got no patience for angst.
There are no vampires sparkly or otherwise, werewolves buff or otherwise, or wizards bearded or otherwise. There are no orcs, no elves, no unicorns, no made-up languages with words broken by glottal stops. There are no divine interventions. None of the books come with a map or a glossary. I’m damn serious about this. No maps or glossaries.
In any event: that’s a quick list of things that are NOT in Gustav Gloom.
Just wait’ll you see. Hee. Hee. Hee.
Leave a Reply