Courtesy Wizards of the Coast, Art by David Tidd & Mark Tidd
Since there is an arcanist in the party, it’s very likely her knowledge came from somewhere. She is a wizard, not a sorcerer, meaning her abilities came to her through study rather than appearing spontaneously. The knowledge of wizards in the lands beyond the Nentir Vale flows from a single place, the Tower of the Arcane.
Located on the southern shore between Fortune’s Harbor and Meloravia, the Tower of the Arcane is the bastion of higher knowledge throughout the land. Pilgrims from every corner of the Empire search for it, but it can only be found by those who have been there previously. This means that only apprentices who travel with their masters can find the Tower. The Tower is administrated by the Five Archmages, studied arcanists chosen by their peers after decades of continued research and correspondence.
Throughout all the changes of power and political and military struggles, the Tower has remained staunchly neutral. The reasoning of the Five Archmages is that magic itself holds no allegiance, therefore they should not. This caused many refugees from war-torn areas of the land to seek the Tower, but without a wizard with them, most either were forced to turn back or became lost forever.
Upon taking power, Emperor Lysander issued an edict for the Tower to open to him and pay homage, but as he is not an arcanist, the Five Archmages refused. The Emperor sent a regiment of his troops, backed by Iron Circle mercenaries and priests of Bane, to find and take the Tower. None have yet returned. Wizards have also withdrawn from the court of the Emperor, with only one remaining to serve him as an advisor. However, upon saying something the Emperor didn’t like, Lysander had the man’s tongue removed. It grew back thanks to magical healing, but the wizard has since kept his own counsel. Bane’s men are eager to try new methods of shutting him up.
For now, the Tower and its secrets remain closed to all save those few who carry their power in tomes, scrolls and the forgotten lore of the arcane…
A couple of weeks ago I touched on the subject of rewriting your novel. Wendig’s Writing Haus continues to spew fantastic advice on editing, and this mostly concerns phase two, or what he recommends as phase two. When you edit for content, after all, you’re doing something particular with the manuscript: you’re revising it. And at first, you’ll be taking a hatchet to your beloved work.
I know, it’s mostly a matter of semantics, but let’s break it down into a bit more detail.
Revise
Writing a novel, or a story of any significant length for that matter, is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a long haul from your first word to your last punctuation mark. Things will change along the way – your pace, your word choice, the dynamics between characters. It’s important to take this into account as you look over your freshly-forged story. Some of your passages are likely to be weaker than others. Shore them up. If something is happening too soon or too late in the story, trying moving events around a little. Nothing is set in stone.
Rewrite
As you revise, you may find yourself realizing that something just doesn’t work. Maybe a character needs to develop in a different way. Or maybe they’d work better if they were a different race or gender? A single decision can alter huge portions of the text. Don’t be afraid of this. You may want to save a copy of your manuscript under a different name, provided you’re working on a computer instead of by hand. If you are working by hand, you have my respect. No matter how you do it, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, but do let that water out and refill the tub.
Revise Again
After you’re done rewriting, it’s time to revise again. Dropping text bodily into your manuscript has likely left some ripples. Descriptions may need to change, events happen sooner or later, etc. Every time you do this, though, you’ll likely find yourself doing it with progressively smaller tools. If your first edit & revision was done with a hatchet, this time it’ll get done with a steak knife. If it was the steak knife’s turn last time, you’ll be using a paring knife this time. Paring knife, scalpel, screwdriver… the tools get smaller and smaller as the work moves closer and closer to being completely done and, in an ideal world, publishable.
How quickly to you find your tools shrinking? Have you ever tossed out something you wanted to keep and found the story was better for it? Has there been a time where you’ve found the story going in a direction you did not expect, and had to revise the beginning to reflect this? Feel free to share.
Once again, not nearly as interesting as Chuck’s, but at least there’s something to jabber about.
the brain
I’m not sure if they were looking for my thoughts on brainy characters, or just the smart mouse that runs around with Pinky.
troll wow, wow troll
Still on the search for troll boobs, I’m assuming.
batman
Again, this is a little ambiguous. Were they looking for a specific tale of the Caped Crusader? My general thoughts on the goddamn Batman? I haven’t talked about Batman all that often but there’s no end to discussion when you really get into it. Is he crazy, or just very dedicated? Is his “no killing” rule a good thing or a stupid decision? Who among his wards looks the best in Robin’s outfit? So on and so forth.
team fortress 2 heavy female version
Rule 34 aside, this is an interesting idea. What would the TF2 Heavy look like were she female? Would they go for a svelte Russian femme fatale like the Black Widow or Molotov Cocktease? Or should she be a husky russkie, swaddled in furs and hunting down sandviches? I wonder…
If you’re unfamiliar with OverClocked ReMix, you should do something about that. The concept is simple: take your favorite video game music, remix or rework it into a different genre or with different music, and post it on the site. The results are many and varied, as you can see here:
Chrono Trigger: Schala’s Theme
Final Fantasy VI: Locke’s Theme
Mega Man 2: Dr. Wily Stage 1
The Legend of Zelda – A Link To The Past: Dark World
Ah, the 80s. A time of big hair, big money and big ambitions. It was a time when actors could be presidents, MTV actually played music, and a young writer wrapped his hands around the joystick of an Atari 2600 for the first time. Many an afternoon in my house was spent with my sisters and me navigating digital corridors and writing down maps and passwords. Good times.
Okay, the nostalgia’s out of the way. Let’s take a look at a movie born of the 80s – Ladyhawke.
We are introduced to the medieval fortress city of Aquila, France through the eyes of young thief Phillipe Gastone, called the Mouse. Aquila is ruled by her corrupt and powerful bishop, and nobody has ever escaped from her hellish prison until the Mouse wiggles his way out at the very beginning at the movie. The captain of the guard catches up with the loquacious pickpocket only to have the arrest interrupted by a mysterious man, dressed in black and accompanied by a majestic hawk. The man’s name is Navarre, and he takes Phillpe with him to learn of a way into Aquila for a personal vendetta. By night, however, Navarre is nowhere to be found, and Phillpe instead encounters a vicious black wolf and a hauntingly beautiful woman named Isabeau.
With its setting and sparing use of magic, this is a story that could be taking place in the world of George RR Martin. Along with the trappings of the setting is a very strong ensemble cast of well-developed characters. Among other things, the movie does a good job of capturing the attitudes of the hawk and the wolf. The hawk is a spirited, beautiful creature, refusing to be bound and returning to whom she chooses. The wolf is a skilled and deadly hunter whose rage is only abated in the presence of Isabeau. I’m sure those of you who haven’t seen the film have already gotten an inkling of what’s going on, but I won’t say more for fear of spoiling the entire story. Which I do recommend you see, by the way.
“Wait,” I hear you ask. “Didn’t you recently review another fantasy movie from the 80s? And didn’t you hate its guts?” Yes and yes. Let me explain the difference.
Navarre is French for ‘badass’.
Here we have an example of how good storytelling can compensate for things that might not age or work all that well. Rutger Hauer, Leo MacKern and John Wood were already veterans of the stage and screen before Ladyhawke, and Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer went on to become household names. Not every line is a complete winner, but lines good and bad are delivered with just enough sincerity and concrete emotion that we are drawn completely into the story. Nevarre is a strong and resolute man, but he’s also a man of deep emotion. Phillipe may seem a vain and somewhat cowardly thief, but he’s also a pious and generous one. The Bishop is all the more menacing for the rigid control he maintains over his emotions, rarely speaking above an cold and edgy rasp. There’s nuance and presence to pretty much every major character we meet, and they damn near carry the entire movie on their own.
It’s a good thing, too, as the story may have suffered at the hands of some of the 80s trappings. The music is permeated by the syths of the Alan Parsons Project, orchestral sequences underscored or outright interuppted by rock riffs influenced by early digitization. It shines in places and plummets in others, causing some major distraction from the story. Some of the special effects haven’t really held up, though one sequence in particular still chokes me up. You’ll know it when you see it. Lastly, while the fights in the movie are pretty gritty and lean more towards the realistic than the flamboyant or fanastical, some of the swords used in the action shots aree clearly not the sturdy ‘hero’ blades. I know steel is meant to bend before it breaks, but the degree to which some of these blades curl had me scratching my head a little.
The Mouse, having an argument with the Lord.
All of this fails to matter, though, when the story is this good and told this well by actors this skilled. This is the difference between a movie like Ladyhawke and one like Masters of the Universe, or Revenge of the Fallen or Attack of the Clones. At its core, Ladyhawke is all about the stories, the lives of its characters. It takes time to develop its players and weaves connections between all of them in a very deep way. Combine this compelling storytelling with good cinematography, well-done fight scenes and some moments of both geniune levity and heart-wrenching emotion, and you have a great movie. Without that story, it’d be just so much sound and fury.
The soundtrack dissonance is overcome in a few key places. The somewhat lackluster level of special effects fails to matter in the moments the story is at its best. Things like magic and curses work as framing devices for the drama, rather than shouldering the story out of its way. This is what sets Ladyhawke apart from those other attempts at film-making. This is why it succeeds and they fail. This is why, while it shows its age in places, the core of the movie is pretty close to timeless. Ladyhawke absolutely belongs on your Netflix queue, because it is one of those movies that tells its tale well no matter what the year is. In other words, it’s a classic. And classics never go out of style.
Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.
