Conflict and Writing

Hello readers!

Alex must firstly apologise for the rather lengthy interlude in which he has not written here on the Magical Realm. You can blame it on his extensive responsibilities: university, his writing commitments in the field of journalism (firstly with Scriptus and now with Red Pers) and of course his work on Fallen Love.

Speaking of which, the topic of today will in no small part be related to Fallen Love. What am I talking about, you ask? I am of course talking about conflict. I intend to answer what conflict in literature is, and why it’s important.

So: onto business.

Defining Conflict

In principle, the definition of conflict ought to be a simple one: it’s when a character’s aims are being frustrated, and they have to engage in a series of actions in order to resolve this. A romantic conflict may involve resolving relationship difficulties; a paranormal conflict may involve coming to terms with supernatural powers; a historical book would likely involve political conflict; a thriller can be about beating the bad guys.

Nevertheless, conflict in a book is not always so straightforward. For one, it varies by genre—as you can already see, some genres tend to employ different kinds of conflict from others. For two, a distinction can be made between internal conflict (such as doubts about a romantic partner) and external conflict, which usually involves more obvious things like ‘catching the serial killer’.

Where it gets especially complicated is when the multiple types of conflict mix and interact. A character may struggle with inner conflict about identity, romantic passion, or his past; while, at the same time, struggling against an external force. Genre crossing is especially prone to this: a book that combines fantasy, mystery and romance will often feature three distinct conflicts, one internal, two external. The former would be sexual feelings; the latter would be uncovering a mystery and fighting off supernatural beings.

Now that we’ve established the ground rules of what conflict is, let us turn our attention to what conflict does.

Conflict in Fiction

Conflict makes stories. To put it simply: without conflict, there would be no plot, and no reason to write (or read!) a book.

This is the reason why I (and many others) dislike the genre sometimes named ‘literary fiction’. Any work of fiction requires an aim: something to which the characters aspire to, something that makes the reader bite their fingernails and anticipate the next page. Aimless literature is pointless literature. I’m not interested in hearing excuses about ‘oh but my characters are so developed’ or ‘but the world is such an interesting exposition into X’ or—my personal favourite—‘but I’m making social commentary!’

No. Developing characters requires putting them through conflict, and convincing conflict at that; it’s what tests their mettle and shows the reader what kind of person they are. World building is just expositional word vomit without plot. And as for social commentary? Please, write an essay.

Anyway, I am digressing. My point is that conflict is the essential part of a story—it makes plot, it develops characters, it breathes life into unfamiliar worlds.

Conflict in Fallen Love

So far I have written a general account of what conflict is and what purpose it serves. But now, I wish to address the question that is most pertinent to me: conflict specifically in Fallen Love.

You may have inferred that I am of the opinion that conflicts needs to be powerful; it needs to reach into the reader’s heart, and speak to their soul. To that end, Fallen Love has several avenues of conflict. There’s the romance—a Fallen and an Upperclassman, an unlikely and forbidden union. There’s the Party: a malevolent power, its eyes seeing all and its arm as long as the country is wide. And finally, there’s the supernatural powers; the darkness within Casey, the force that animatest the mutants, and the source of Kaylin’s magic.

The trouble is, you see, having multiple avenues of plot also involves multiple avenues of difficulty. Romance is especially tricky: it’s meant to be gentle, and passionate, but also fraught and problematic. The Party is meant to be evil, but rational. And as for the supernatural, well—they have their own agenda.

Striking a balance is no easy task. The book needs to be edgy and dark; but it must also have love and devotion. The light, and the dark.

Anyway, leave yours truly to battle his demons. The Magical Realm will see some more politics next...

Until then!

Quelle Président?

Hello readers!

Aujourd’hui Alex will give will his opinion on the French presidential elections. Why, you ask? Because Alex has a strong focus on international and, especially, European politics; and France is a key Member State. The French Président will make decisions regarding the terms of Brexit, the European response to both a revanchist Russia, and to Trump’s America. Moreover, this election is important in symbolic ways; it will give us a taste of 2017 and what it will mean for the forces of liberalism, conservatism, Marxism, and far-right nationalism.

So who is competing to become president of the République? The character cast comprises the following: a fascist, the male re-incarnation of Margaret Thatcher, two mad leftists (a post-scarcity utopian and a Marxist, respectively)... oh, and Tony Blair.

Well, not quite; this Tony Blair is French, for one. And although Blair did have fond feelings for the French—he addressed the country in French, and was given a very cordial greeting by the UMP—he was never, well, French.

Anyway, the man’s name is Emmanuel Macron. He was an investment banker before becoming an adviser for Hollande (the current president, if any of you don’t know); he was then subsequently promoted to being a Minister for the economy. But now, seeing how dismally unpopular the current president is, he’s decided to jump ship and form his own campaign (“En Marche!”).

As for the others, let me give you a quick rundown. We have Marine Le Pen, who is likely to obtain the largest number of first-round votes. She is the daughter of a fascist, and is of course a fascist herself. We also have François Fillon—the surprise candidate for France’s mainstream right, Les Républicaines—who is a Thatcherite. Lastly, we have Benoît Hamon—surprise candidate for Partide Socialiste—and Jean Luc Mélenchon, who, though an outsider, is de facto the candidate for the Communists and associated far-left politics.

So who does Alex think the French should vote for? Tony Blair, of course...

Mais Pourquoi, Alex?

This is not a particularly easy decision, in part because none of the candidates (as you may have guessed) are really ideal. But perhaps I can share my reasoning with you, and convince you to vote as such.

Let me be clear: Macron resembles Blair in more than just centrist policy and vague, feel-good rhetoric. The two are also similar in that both are quite dishonest politicians—they are masters of spin, however, and both convinced their electorates that they’re the Good Guys (TM). In Blair’s case, it was convincing everyone that he was a great, progressive politician, not beholden to corporate interests or neoliberal ideology; and in Macron’s case, it’s been about convincing the French electorate that a former investment banker is really an outsider ready to stir things up.

But even so, Macron remains the best option on the table. Allow me to firstly deal with the two main alternatives: Le Pen and Fillon.

Le Pen, as I have already said, is very, very, very bad. Her policies include (but are not limited to): dragging France out of the EU—likely destroying both entities—waging Cold War on Muslims, and ushering in an era of chest-thumping economic and political nationalism. The woman is essentially a Vichy collaborator, only her preferred foreign power is Putin’s Russia.

Fillon is basically a throwback to 1980s conservatism. Aside from his plans to cut 500,000 public sector jobs, ‘liberalise’ the labour market, and Thatcherise the economy, he also has another odious goal: to undermine gay marriage. It seems Section 28 continues on from the grave.

Once you understand who the two main candidates for the French presidency are, you will also understand my key imperative: anything but. Any of the other three candidates are preferable to these two execrable politicians.

Now, finally, onto the two remaining candidates. Hamon has been recently elected by the PS as their presidential candidate, scoring a surprise win against Manuel Valls, Hollande’s prime minister. On the surface, Hamon looks cool: he’s a radical leftwinger that beat the established candidate—a triumph of socialism over confused social democracy. But then, you look at his policies and his poll ratings. Hamon wants to a) tax robots b) reduce the working week to 32 hours and c) bring a system of universal income.

All of which would be great—if we lived in a post-scarcity society dominated by automation. Unfortunately, we don’t live in Utopia, and Hamon’s policies don’t make a whole lot of sense. Universal income would be impossible to afford unless it acts to replace social benefits, which would be idiocy: there are disabled people who need more than €750 a month to live on, and instead UBI would send money to millionaires. Taxing robots seems hard to implement, and pointless at best or Luddism at worst.

The last candidate, Mélenchon, is a nice enough guy. His platform is basically moderated Marxism: he wants to nationalise companies and regulate banks; he wants an increase in the minimum wage and also previously campaigned for a wage cap; he is a firm environmentalist, even supporting ‘degrowth’; and he wants to legalise cannabis.

I agree with most of his positions except cannabis and—more importantly—Europe. Mélenchon’s position vis-á-vis the EU is Marxist to an M: he thinks the concept of the EU is a great idea. As a supporting group, In Defence of Marxism, puts it: “Only a Socialist Federation of European States will unify the continent on a progressive basis, paving the way for a world socialist federation.” link

But, he thinks the current EU is contaminated by neoliberal economics; there needs to be a revolution, to replace the EU with the United Soviet European Socialist Republics.

Aside from being a bit bonkers, Mélenchon is polling at just over 10% of the vote. Recall the maxim I stated previously: anything but. It might be nice to have Mélenchon as president, but it’s highly unlikely he’ll be elected.

And this is the important bit: to keep Fillon out of winning the first round, Macron needs to get as much of the left vote as possible. The race is very close. The latest polls put Le Pen on around 25%, Fillon on 22%, Macron on 21%, Hamon on around 16% and Mélenchon just below him. (Poll by Kantar Sofres)

Of course you might wonder whether the latter two can team up. Unfortunately, Mélenchon is reluctant to join the PS campaign (the party is considered toxic in leftwing circles) and so this is sadly improbable. Even if it happened, there is unfortunately no guarantee that Mélenchon would beat Le Pen. He probably will—most French people don’t like her very much— but Macron is more likely to succeed in this regard. If this changes (and there have been some surprises in this election) I will reevaluate my position.

Until then, my message is this. The last thing France needs is a run off between a homophobe and a fascist. So, to the French left, I say: vote tactically. C’est la vie.

Writing a book at 14

Hello everyone!

Since I am terribly busy with my Dutch lessons, various administrative tasks, and of course my writing, I have decided not to write any original work at present. However, the piece below was originally published in the university journal, Scriptus; and I believe you will find it to your great interest...

When I tell people I wrote a book at 14, it would be an understatement to say that I get a lot of responses. But beyond the look on people’s faces, writing the Necromancer changed my life in many deeper (though sometimes subtle) ways.

Firstly, allow me to address the obvious factor here: commitment. Writing a 108,000 word high-fantasy book is not something you do on a whim. Indeed, it took me over six months to complete the first draft—a feat that required writing multiple hours per week—and a whole 18 months to get feedback, edit, seek agents, do more edits, and eventually hire professionals to do the artwork.

This leads me onto the second obvious question: motivation. Why, exactly, does a fourteen-year-old undertake such a quest? In my experience, laymen often draw on analogies with entrepreneurs: perhaps, they think, I wrote because I want to build something. Maybe I want to make the world a better place. Maybe I’m just in it for the money, or the pleasure of throwing down a 500 page book and saying ‘I wrote that.’

But this is only a small part of the reason I write. To understand my motivation, you need look a bit deeper, and trace the origin to my love of reading. I have always loved reading, even from an early age, and this was particularly true of the years just before I began writing. A transcript from the school library showed that I read about 400 books between the ages of 11 and 14.

The old adage is true: behind every writer there is a profligate reader.

So how did my love of reading affect me? It is safe to say that I became enraptured by the world of fantasy. Like the children in Narnia, I had opened the wardrobe and found a whole world waiting for me. Eragon and Northern Lights kept me up at night. I saw myself in their shoes: I fought urgals on the back of a dragon; I met angels; I fought dark magicians and consorted with vampires.

I was, in truth, smitten by the occult. My fascination was endless. It seems almost inevitable that I came to write about it; that my ideas grew, morphed, and took a life of their own.

One grey October afternoon, I began writing. I believe the necromancer compelled me to write that day; that the curve of his arrogant jaw, the icy power held in his ‘cold orbs of sight,’ all but forced me to put him down on paper.

Laymen often ask writers where their inspiration comes from. This, I am afraid, is the best answer I can give you.

The first few chapters I wrote were not worth the paper they would have been printed on, however, so I had to rewrite them from scratch. This is true of nearly all first time writers—you can blame it on the fact that writing fiction is… hard. It is difficult for a non-writers to understand just what kind of challenges writing presents: the elaborate art of writing itself; the magnificent difficulty of capturing whole personalities, often in few words; the intricacies of plot—all to name a few.

The rest of the book was a journey. I followed Linaera—apprentice mage and unwitting protagonist—through her journey into the Northern Mountains. I watched on as Nateldorth, Great Mage, uncovered dark conspiracies in the capital, Dresh. Most of all I followed the necromancer. I was witness to him: to his betrayal, his descent into madness, and his ultimate redemption.

Books are journeys. The journey of my book was in a way my journey: where my characters struggled, I struggled with them. For them it was question of facing up to existential challenges. For me it was knowing their motivation, and building all the twists and turns of plot that made up their lives.

Writing the Necromancer was often a pleasure. I liked the dark, unexpected turns of the plot; the characters’ inner lives; and most of all, I enjoyed writing in the world of Arachadia. I loved the towering mountains, the vast, sprawling forests; the great stonework of the mage buildings and the fine craftsmanship of the wooden cathedrals; the world of dormant dragons and powerful magics.

Of course, writing the Necromancer was often a challenge. I was young, and devoid of experience. I often struggled to write fluently—it took much work to correct the early mistakes. It was as if a vast realm had been entrusted to a young king; a king with many ideas but few ways to actually conquer.

But conquer it I did. Perhaps I did not quite succeed. Perhaps there are other worlds yet unconquered—other vast and distant places full of promise. But writing the Necromancer was not the finishing line; it was only the first milestone of a long journey. I do not know what dragons still slumber in the path I am taking.

Nor does it matter. My advice to my younger self—as well as to other would-be writers—is perseverance. Many monsters lie in wait (some of them are called publishers, critics, and yourself) but the treasures they guard are beautiful.