Bathed in eternal darkness, the City in Darkness hangs impossibly in a plane of complete nothingness. Flickering light from thousands of lanterns and torches illuminates what one could only describe as a huge rock suspended in space. The top of this rock is covered in closely huddled buildings that aim ever higher at an empty sky. This blog attempts to chronicle this mysterious city and hopefully, improve my writing ability.
Monday 26 May 2014
On Writing
It has been over two weeks since I last posted anything. It's not that I haven't been writing, I try to write half an hour a day. It's not that I am running out of ideas already, I haven't even started going into the culture of the city, the guilds or any of the other locations around the city. The problem is that I have been writing loads of half completed blogs, but lack the motivation to finish them. Such is the life of an aspiring writer I guess. I suppose I just need to buckle down and finish something. Of course, writing this post is complete procrastination and unhelpful to you or I, so I must add something something interesting.
I have been reading Elminster's Forgotten Realms recently, despite my dislike of the realms in general (note: not Ed Greenwood, I loved his Geanavue book for example). It
was a really cheap buy at my FLGS and I thought perhaps it might contain some interesting and deep cultural information that might inspire me to add the same to the city. It does contain that information, but I can't shake the overwhelming feeling that the cultures of the Forgotten Realms are modern, with renaissance and medieval trappings. The Purple Dragons for example, appear to operate as a modern police force, with high efficiency and incorruptability. This really rubs me the wrong way for some reason. I won't bash on the book any more, because despite it's failings, I would love for more books of this type to be written. I imagine the fantastic Year 1000, but set in Faerun, Harn, or the Scarred Lands.
That modern / renaissance pastiche that is Elminster's Forgotten Realms reminded me not to make the same mistake. I must not let modern ideas, philosophies and behaviours infect my writing too much. Of course, I am a product of my time and can never presume to write from a true historical perspecive, nor do I want to (my world is fantasy after all, with a mixture of historical and fantasy periods), but I think that if I keep this in mind, I can avoid falling into the trap of a fantastical façade over a modern society.
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