Continued thoughts on fantasy writing in the modern age

Ernest Hemingway might seem like the furthest author to take note from when one goes about writing fantasy, since everything he wrote was exclusively set in reality ( or perhaps some sort of dream sequence) but one thing I have found very interesting when it comes to the Hemingway "mode of writing" when it comes to attempting fantasy is that, instead of trying to take most of my inspiration from solely other novels, one thing I've tried to do is to pull a 'sort of' Hemingway by instead taking the inspiration from adventures I actually had once upon a time, not in reality, but rather in the virtual reality of the big fantasy games.

 This might, at first, sound utterly ridiculous to some - I don't know - I suppose to me it sounds sort of absurd - but what has shocked me most about the experience is actually just how difficult it is to try and explain certain scenes I experienced whilst playing some very good games, in writing. 

Take the scene featured in this video I am watching now, which features about 50 or so players in the virtual world of EverQuest, all simultaneously trying to kill a massive red dragon, in some sort of huge castle, called Lord Nagafen. At first glance, there is really nothing that looks all that impressive about the video just as a viewer, especially considering the fact that the graphics are now something like 20 years old. But, if one takes just a second and tries, in their minds eye, to transform the shoddy old computer graphics into what this scene of 50 epic players attempting to slay a dragon might look like in a film, or better yet, in actual reality, I can't help but feel that one is suddenly given a very incredible and imaginative vision that is well worth writing about, and certainly compares to anything that Hemingway would have written of his own real adventures in a hunting book like the Green Hills of Africa...

 It is also, of course, quite challenging to write about, and more than that, something that has seemingly never been written of before, oddly enough.

 For, I don't know about you, but I have been through a number of fantasy books, and yet I still can't think of a single scene that even comes anywhere close to the imaginary madness that is 50 separate characters all trying to slay one dragon. 

This, of course, is probably as a result of the fact that most books are generally written from the point of view of one character, and they are very bogged down,much of the time, with endless obsessions over plot, and theme, and whatever that specific character may or may not be thinking. This is especially the case in the world of literature that some big wig and highly critical magazine like the New Yorker might find worthy of praising on Sunday morning. Hence it is the case that, though I am sure many dragon slaying scenes exist in novels, something tells me that a great deal of them tend to just deal with one or two or maybe a small group of characters attacking them. There is never this enormous gathering that takes place, because in a certain sense, it really is very difficult to gather that many people in one book. In a video game world, of course, this isn't at all the case. Characters are literally running around everywhere. And I mean everywhere. They enter in and they leave often with no warning. They're actually more like reality than most books, oddly enough. 

 Sometimes, for example, some random elf might just be sitting by the entrance of a dragons cave somewhere, and you see them before you enter, and they randomly decide to toss you a certain Cloak of Good Light or some such thing. The cloak may very well change the entire rest of your gaming experience. Hell, it might even be the only reason you go on playing for the rest of the winter, because it was such a high level item that it gave you the ability to slay everything with ease, et cetera...

How many times, however, does something as random as that really happen in fantasy books or books at all for that matter? In my opinion, not very often, and I think this is a part of the reason we have seen such a mass exodus from the literary realm into things like television or, now, multiplayer video games. I think the leaving behind of literature by the commoners has much more to do with a lack of excitement and randomness in stories, rather than it does with the challenge of reading them. And I think Hemingway was seeing this massive problem even all those years ago when he was trying to write. I think he was sitting there reading a lot of books from his contemporaries and he was absolutely bored to tears, because all they were ever describing were either the interior lives of their characters, and their love life or something, or maybe they were describing rather dry subjects, like how a President kept order in the White House, or how someone ran their house, or was trying to start a business. Or of course they go on and on with this dialogue describing how a family came to be, or then to fall, etc. 

Look at some of the most popular books of the 1930s (Hemingways time) and you'll start to see what I am saying: There is I, Claudius by Robert Graves, which at first glance seems like it might be a fun romp through Ancient Rome, but is one of the most dreadful slogs I've ever endured, all about some family and their interior problems, then there is something like The Grapes of Wrath, which yes it is a great book, but is again so filled with this obsession of plot and "reaching somewhere". Finally we have another one like Brave New World from Huxley - which is another absolute classic - but is deeply concerned with introducng us to some whole new place, where everything gets unusually complicated and every description has to be the most enormous undertaking, etc. Then there is even the Hobbit by Tolkien himself  -- which you think I would praise -- but even in the Hobbit, nothing random really happens. Everything is dreadfully sequenced, put in order, organized, and this idea of a destination is endlessly harped over. Nobody ever just swings a hammer into some magic evil gooses head, and grabs a pair of golden eggs it drops, and then runs off happily, to do it again, or to maybe steal a sword and then just start raiding random places.  It always has to be some insanely advanced thing with some ultimate "meaning". Then the people turn around and wonder: why don't the commoners read us?  

In other words, Hemingway, though he is known as the realest of the real writers, actually sort of pursued a fantastical style of writing in the only way that was available to him at that time. In my opinion, though he still obeyed a lot of rules, he did somewhat deviate and throw convention to the wind in a way these other writers did not do.  He went to the jungle in Africa to hunt, after all, and many of his early stories deal with fishing, and just sort of sitting out there, wandering arond near lakes in the woods, and catching the most random fish. No one has to come to some enormous conclusion about life, no one has to figure out a theme, they are just out there catching random fish, and often they are the most beautiful scenes I've ever read from him. So you see, he didn't write of dragons, but he wrote of an exciting and random hunt all the same, and many random characters often enter in, in a way they don't in many "high class" literary novels.

 It's all about the randomness, you see. The lack of this aspect is what, I'm convinced, is killing so many modern books, and especially these older ones, for people. People want excitement and real adventure. Both of these things do not involve casts of characters or themes or the ever present plot that insists all novels must "go somewhere" or "wind up somewhere, eventually". We are still very much trapped and very deeply concerned with these uber organized styles of writing the old writers were obsessed with. In my opinion, the umbilical cord needs to be cut.  

So this brings me back to trying to write the scene with the 50 characters trying to kill a dragon, and why it doesn't really exist in many books: Writers couldn't figure out a way to work it into their intolerable plot, and so it has never got the chance to get written. If the writer had somehow found a way to work it into the insufferable plot -- which I think is the great killer of so much creavitiy -- we would probably see this scene, and many others like it, continually. But writers literally, solely because of plot, don't allow themselves these "one off sketches" oftentimes. The start of books always have to revolve around us being introduced to the cast, and then from there we often have to follow them through a series of movements that "get them somewhere", and so 50 random people slaying a dragon never manages to get worked in, because who would all those other 46 people be? 

Everything, and I cannot figure out why, but everything with writers always seems like it has to be about this enormous all encompassing picture, and if a scene doesn't work its way into that plot and that picture, it has to be scrapped. It cannot be included. Cannot! 

Think though of how much we have lost due to this obsession that, for the most part, only the school teachers, the New Yorker magazine writers, and the literary professors are responsible for. Think about how many scenes so many common writers will never allow themselves to write just because they don't know what scene might come after it, or what scene come before it. Think about the scope of how many random characters most common writers will never allow to enter into their stories, because stories need to have a "specific cast" and they are convinced that every character needs an endlessly specific purpose and that we must know them down to the pair of underwear they are wearing. No one ever seems to just pass in and out of  the traditionally laid out novels. You talk to a fish merchant, and he has to lead you somewhere. He can't just say good morning. 

 I can't stress it enough: all the characters are always lifers...they're in the book for the whole ride, or they are not there at all.  You would never in a million years, like I said with that elf in that cave before, just get handed off a random cloak that helps you slay everything, by a character who then disappeared completely from the text with no explanation whatsoever. In a book,this act would, for some reason, feel strange, and perhaps the writer would be accused of actually creating something "that doesn't seem real". Yet, in video games, or even in reality, things like this happen literally constantly. 

For example, a typical night in the wilds of EverQuest (since slaying dragons only happens for the experts) usually involves nothing but fun randomness: You will be sitting at the base of the dungeon, looking around for other characters, hoping someone shows up, then you might find a high level magician who is willing to go into the dungeon with you, and when you get into the dungeon you suddenly find two high level warriors who join the party, and the next thing you know you go on for a full night of six hours slaying everthing in sight in the dungeon. Then at one in the morning you count your treasure and you go to sleep. No plot. No goal. No intense discovery of God or some life. Nothing of the sort has happend to the character, beyond just one single good hunt.  In a book, this thing cannot be. Those two random high level characters who entered would have to meet the guy again tomorrow. They would have to become his best friends, or his traitors. They would have to adventure with him further. Something would have to be found in the dungeon that ruined everything or spun the characters out into something further. And I just can't fathom why I suppose? Why do we find things that don't come to some great big conclusion worthless to write about? When oftentimes those things are actually the best of all? 

Just some food for thought.