A Darker Shade of Magic	Both	Neverwhere
Everyone is born with magic, usually elemental	Magic and mundane leads, both male and female, though genders opposite.	Magic seems random
Magic has specific rules	Overlaid Worlds as if below/above London	Magic seems to have no system
Only Antari can pass between worlds	Magic Lead is Nobility	Sentient Animals
Magic has a will/Is alive	Scrappy female leads	Londoners Above cannot recognize Londoners Below
Most of the rest of the worlds are different besides fixed points	Mundane Leads have seemingly little significance at the start	Anyone might possibly travel between worlds (Unclear how this works)
Evil World where Dark Magic Lurks	Doors between Worlds	Magic is a force/not alive
Leads become love interests	The Worlds are separated, few can cross over	Unclear if the there is an underworld anywhere besides London
Magic Lead is a unique race	Landmarks exist in both worlds but are different	Destiny to go to London Below
	Most are unaware of other worlds	No romance plot between leads
	Villains that are cruel just to be cruel
	Compulsion of Villains by an Overlord

 

After reading a few books for this course it has become apparent how the pacing of a story makes a big difference in the keeping hold of the audience’s attention. In Un Lun Dun, the pacing was fast, perhaps too fast. Since it was written as a young adult novel it makes sense that the pacing is a bit quicker since the attention span of the intended audience is likely shorter than that of most adults.

In stark contrast, A Discovery of Witches is exceptionally slow by comparison. The difference in the audience might account for this difference. Discovery is very detail oriented and the plot moves at a snail’s pace. It is more about the moment and the experience. Harkness seems to be enthralled by the trivial, going out of her way at times to talk about what the characters are wearing today and how Diana feels at the given moment. Even the romance is unbearably slow until it isn’t. It takes so long for it to develop and then suddenly they are married after saying they love each other. Some of the slowness may be justifiable, especially at the beginning of the novel in the library where it serves to describe the mood. Overall however, it is inefficient in its pacing and left me bored and distracted on several occasions.

Finally, both a Darker Shade of Magic and Neverwhere are paced a bit faster. At times they seem to move faster than I’d expect but I enjoyed the movement of these novels. One thing seems to move into the next without overdue focus on experience. However, this means that several characters in both works remain undeveloped. The King and Queen of Red London are flat and uninteresting for example, as is Hunter in Neverwhere. Perhaps the Author did not feel there was time to give them any meaningful personality.

There are certainly many factors to consider when deciding on the pace of a novel. There are likely always going to be problems in any method. So far among the novels we have read for this class, Neverwhere has demonstrated the best pacing. I shall try to take better note of the way in which it achieves this as I go on.

 

I have struggled almost constantly with balancing my creative whims with my responsibilities. Before school I struggled with the inability to express my ideas as they appeared in my head, mainly due to lack of skill. Now that I am in college I have fallen into a different sort of struggle. My skills have increased nearly to level that my creative aspirations are within my ability to grasp, both in writing and in visual mediums. The new struggle is finding time and creative energy to spend on the projects that I am passionate about. Although I am usually able to find something in each project that interests me, it still is not the same as pursuing projects that are personally important. The constant pull of school projects both feeds and saps my energy. I am fed by the influx of new techniques and of the possibilities that these new techniques unveil. Yet, the ever-present pressure of due dates and my desire to perform well seem to devour those creative impulses.

There must be balance between the opposite pull of these forces. However, I have yet to find it. I constantly feel as if I am out of time. I feel as if any moment spent for personal enjoyment is a sin against the unfinished assignments that taunt me from the future. Why would I spend time working on my own things when there is always more work ahead? In addition, my completionist nature compels me to finish tasks before beginning new ones. Thus, I have trouble with long term projects. Rather, I have trouble switching between multiple such projects. I am unable to feel the satisfaction of completion because there is always more to be done.

Finally, I have a bad habit of putting off work that I am unsure of how to complete. These journals are a prime example. I have been unsure of what precisely to focus on. Should they be exclusively about this one class or include others as well? My experience in this class is certainly affected by other aspects of my life, including other classes, therefore it would seem fitting that these journals document all aspects of my creative process. Perhaps these journals may even lighten the load I bear. Expression after all, has always been a method by which I relieve stress. Perhaps I might even find a way to infuse that into other parts of my work, even for school related projects. I suppose time will tell. And the unstable act of balancing continues…

 

The amount of reading necessary in this course has been troublesome. I have never had such a vast amount of material to read in so short a time. That is, at least not as a requirement. In my early teenage years, I often become lost in books, taking my current obsession with me everywhere. I would read constantly, not stopping for anything unless it was absolutely necessary. I wouldn’t even stop to shower, opting instead to take baths where I could continue reading until I was shriveled and soggy.

Reading for this class has caused me to remember those years of ceaseless reading but it has also been different due to the pressure of completing in time. On my own time it was always voluntary, meaning I could read for nothing but enjoyment. Some of that blissful escapism has been lost while taking this course. The constant pressure of due dates from this class and others affects the enjoyment considerably. Another factor is that I have no choice as to what I am reading. My mind seems to rebel at the thought of reading at the behest of another. Yet, I do my best to stifle that feeling and simply enjoy the texts which we have been assigned.

Aside from the novels, the other reading we have been assigned has also been enjoyable. The books in the library especially have been enjoyable. Though long and at times still a chore, reading in the library somehow satisfies an idea I have had about college in the past. The idea of scholars going to libraries to glean knowledge from the vast troves gathered within. It is a pleasant thought to consider myself among those imaginary scholars.

In Discovery of Witches the story thus far has been told from 1^st and 3^rd person perspectives. The main Witch is the focus of the both the exposition and the narrative for most of the book. Receiving all our information from her creates a kind of bond with the character. She is telling us a very personal story. On the other hand, Mathew, the curious Vampire seemingly obsessed with her is given scenes from a 3^rd person POV. This presents a kind of separation from the two characters, while allowing for the focus to remain on Diana. Her experiences are delivered straight to us, while Mathew’s are presented as a kind of out of body experience. The Reader watches him move through her apartment near the beginning of the story, almost as Diana might if she were awake. The reader gets a kind of wary feeling from watching Mathew in her personal space, while not having direct access to his direct thoughts via dialogue. If the reader were given his POV then they likely wouldn’t feel the danger that he presents. He is a mystery, both to Diana and to us, and the segments we get with him are designed to put us on edge.

Consistency is among the most important factors in creating believable worlds. Somehow this fact seems to be lost on many movie makers. One prime example is Star Wars Episode Saga. Although the original trilogy was largely consistent with itself, as was discussed in the text by Wolf. However, the prequels and the recent sequels have widened the gaps in the vast Star Wars universe. Firstly, the prequel trilogy created the odd situation of the Empire completely erasing the Jedi from public knowledge in a mere 17 years. The Jedi Order had previously been highly influential on the affairs of the universe, yet most characters act as if they have never heard of the Jedi, even though many of them saw the fall of the Republic and subsequent rise of the Empire. Further, the technology of the universe seems to regress rather progress as would be expected.

The gaps in consistency are widened further with the release of the Episode VIII. Sep nearly forty years after the original trilogy and the fall of the Empire, one would assume that technology would flourish as oppression ceased. Yet in Episode VIII many of the spaceships seem to be based on WWII technology. Especially in the case of the bombers which attack the Dreadnought at the beginning of the film. These bombers seem to rely on gravity as the delivery method for their bombs which violates a core assumption of the way physics would behave in a zero-gravity environment. There are a few other instances of inconsistent physical laws and technology throughout the film that further break the rules as we have come to understand them, and we are not offered an explanation to account for these aberrant occurrences.

If a world is to be believed, it must be consistent within the framework of its predecessors, explaining the exceptions to the rules as necessary. Star Wars Episode VIII fails to do so, in many areas. The quote in the text by George Macdonald states, “Obeying law, the Maker works like his Creator; not obeying law, he is such a fool as heaps a pile of stones and calls it a church.” His words echo the sentiment felt by many who have watched and re-watched the film. As was also stated in the text, the more complete a world becomes, the more difficult it becomes to stay consistent. It is unfortunate that a franchise that is so beloved has been become an object lesson in poor consistency.

While reading Un Lun Dun I realized how humor could be used to engage the reader. In my writing, I tend to keep things far too serious and thus miss out on the opportunity to engage with my readers in that way. In actual conversations I am cracking jokes almost constantly, especially puns and other language related humor. Yet, I have somehow never made that connection with my writing. Usually I like writing about serious topics and that causes me to stray away from humor.

I have some seen some shows that use humor to contrast darker themes, such as tragedy, loss, or violence. The shift is jarring and thus the effect of violent or sad events is amplified due to the vast difference between the two. Further, the reader is often able to better connect to characters with which they have laughed. The contrast of themes and the increased connection to the characters work together to make the readers care about what happens.

It may be difficult for me to implement humor into my writing since most of my humor is generated from interactions with other people. The question then is whether I should take note of humorous interactions in my everyday life and insert them into my fiction, or to try to write characters that have similar differences to people I know and hope my mind will be able to improvise humor between those characters. If I use jokes that are drawn from life, then they may seem out of place unless I edit them heavily. On the other hand, the humor generated between characters may not seem as genuine without actual people to exchange ideas with. There is likely a sweet spot between those extremes. If I can take note of the humor that takes place between friends and set up my characters correctly, I may be able to fabricate genuine humor that could amplify my fiction.

The World Seeps In

No written word can be entirely separate from the world of its author. While reading the section on Inspiration in Wonderbook (p 37), I had a realization that my stories always drew upon my interests, regardless of whether I intended for them to be. I have written fantasy stories for Dungeons and Dragons for years. The game provided a way to vent my creative needs to a group of people that chose to live in worlds I created.  I often tried to create separate stories to avoid boring repetition but found that my “new” ideas inevitably tied themselves to their predecessors.

Additionally, the types of stories I found myself wanting to write were influenced by my daily life. At times it was intentional but other times it was subconscious, and I only realized much later that my ideas were not quite so original as I once thought. As VanderMeer said, “…Your mind can transform anything into your current project and make it work”, I too have experienced this phenomenon. The mind often bridges the gap between separate islands of thought as it ever seeks patterns among its many separate bodies of information. All the experiences of an author find themselves embedded in their work.

 

Most of my books are digital. The few physical books that I have are mostly instructional books to improve my artistic ability. I also watch a lot of shows on Netflix, which it makes it difficult to narrow down to my favorites. I am omitting games due to the number of which I would feel compelled to include in this list as well.

Audio Books: The Circle books 0-3 by Ted Dekker

The Priest’s Graveyard – by Ted Dekker

The Sanctuary – by Ted Dekker

Faust – by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy

At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft

The Witcher Saga Books 1, 3-6 – Andrzej Sapkowski

The Southern Reach Trilogy – by Jeff VanderMeer

Netflix: Full-Metal Alchemist

Fate/Zero

Daredevil

The OA

Agents of Shield

Parks and Recreation

Better Call Saul

Green Arrow

The Punisher

Physical Books: Drawing people

Portraying the Clothed Figure

H.P. Lovecraft the Complete Fiction

The Animator’s Survival Guide

Fantasy Art in Video Games

Podcasts: Hello from the Magic Tavern

Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People

Dr. Gameshow

Lore

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton