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My genres


Ixthos

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Hi everyone, I hope you are well! At the time I am posting this – I wrote this up in advance – it should hopefully be new year here, so I hope you are all having a wonderful new year or tail end to the current one! I hope you have a wonderful and blessed time :-)

 

I am writing this because I feel like sharing something about how I write, but still don't feel comfortable sharing a lot of detailed about my settings. So this is the result – I would like to share my own “genres”, the informal models to how I write, and the philosophy behind them. They aren't really full on genres, but they are a guideline to me personally, though to someone else they could just be seen as a hybrid of existing genres, or subsets of them. Either way this is how I approach writing. They are the names I gave to the ideas of what I write. Both individually or all together, what I write is a mixture of these three.

 

I think that everyone who writes because they enjoy writing does so because, at a certain level, they either want to emulate what they have already read and enjoyed – and so to spread that joy further by both taking part in making something similar to bring joy to themselves, as well as to allow what they have made to add to the volume of the things they love and so bring joy to others – or because what they have read isn't quiet what they themselves want, and so they write to make something which does match what feel should be there for others to read. So we write either to emulate what we like, and or to make sure the itch that hasn't been scratched can indeed be scratched. I think I fit into both categories, along with the enjoyment of reading encyclopedia entries, and so my three genres are a reflection of the genres I myself enjoy reading, and all three are a mixture – with different emphasises – of both hard and soft science fiction, fantasy, and mystery, with all four of those present to various degrees, so all have at least a little fantasy, a little mystery, and so on.

 

So, without further ado, the three genres I personally use as a model are:

 

 

Cyberlamp

 

Cyberlamp is a combination of the various punk genres – cyber, steam, diesel, magic, and so on – along with the pseudo-fantasy of Girl Genius's gaslamp fantasy, itself a type of steampunk. It is the idea of amazing technology and its aesthetics, the idea of what technology or technological magic can do, while looking cool doing it. The idea that something amazing can be done – a portal, an energy weapon, robots, or even just a radio, which itself can be amazing to people who have never even considered the possibility before – and done with something beautiful, or if ugly, ugly for a reason, that is amazing. A large machine, or small. A machine with many moving parts, or none. One that seems to defy physics, or one that might be an organism in an ecology. Common place to the inhabitants of the world, or exceptional and rare. So long as it inspires awe, to me that is Cyberlamp – technology with a consistent aesthetic for a given origin that does something interesting, and possibly, hopefully, amazing.

 

 

Tribe Tech

 

Tribe Tech blends well with Cyberlamp in that it is how the technology touches the culture – what sort of people would build a given machine, what species would design it and use it? It is the idea that a given species has needs, and those needs are met with technology, or magic, or something that uses both. It is the idea that within a species there are different cultures with different attitudes, and so they design and use machines that are both similar to those others of their kind use, as well as those that are different. What philosophy is reflected in what they build, and what philosophy does their technology encourage them to embrace? What branching off points were there that made a people go one way while others went another, and how do those cultures interact? And, if they are a people using a certain machine, did they in fact build the original, or are they living in the ruins of another culture, and have repurposed something they don't understand? Or, perhaps, is that other culture still around, and so there is friction between the groups, between philosophies, between ideas? How then does their culture – their language, dress, family, beliefs – touch the others, and shape and be shaped by their technology?

 

 

And, last but not least, Cosmic Hope

 

Cosmic Hope is the opposite of cosmic horror. Cosmic horror is about the fear of the unknown – strange aliens with alien attitudes, or powerful monsters that don't care about anything smaller than them, which destroy lives and societies when they move, and minds and faiths when seen. Cosmic horror shuns both science, claiming no science can understand the alien world outside of human civilisation, and religion, claiming no faith is true, and those that come close to truth are a threat to everyone by drawing the attention of things that could destroy life in a moment. I reject that view. Cosmic Hope is instead about the opposite. Cosmic horror has aliens that are alien, and powerful creatures that are a threat to all live. Cosmic Hope has those also, but with this key distinction – those aliens aren't always hostile even when they are alien, there are even more powerful beings than the monsters, beings that both frighten them, and have our best interests at heart. It embraces both science and faith, religion and reason, and while there are dangers, terrible, monstrous dangers, there is also hope and awe. Cosmic Hope is about exploring strange worlds, dimensions, realities – the universe is full of wonder! – facing the monsters there, but also gaining an understanding of some of them, and while there are monsters that can't be defeated by humans or aliens, there is someone out there, beyond them, who is stronger then they are, as frightening to them as they are to us, and who is looking out for our interests, even when we shun or reject that help, and bring the monsters to our door. There is terror, dark, malignant terror, but against that terror there is also a much brighter, stronger hope.

 

 

These three blend together easily, and in many ways touch one another to the extent that one being written requires the others to be as well. The distinction, however, is that of emphasis. Cyberlamp focuses on the technology, the aesthetic of that technology, and what that technology can do, especially with other pieces of technology. Tribe Tech focuses on civilisation and how that technology shapes it, just as it shapes the technology and both interact with other cultures and so on. Cosmic Hope focuses on the unknown and the strange, but with the reminder that in the end everything is in hand and will be brought to vibrant order, though there is darkness that first must be overcome.

 

Those are my three genres. Thank you for reading!

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Wow, I love the idea behind cosmic hope! There is darkness, but the light is stronger. Cosmic Hope seems to focus more on the theme of your story, while Tribe Tech and Cyberlamp enhance the setting.

I would describe my own writing as Cosmic Hope, with the added detail that the ultimate good is the omnipotent, everlasting God of all creation, and the greatest good we can receive is a relationship with Him.

 

 

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8 hours ago, Zachary Holbrook said:

Wow, I love the idea behind cosmic hope! There is darkness, but the light is stronger. Cosmic Hope seems to focus more on the theme of your story, while Tribe Tech and Cyberlamp enhance the setting.

I would describe my own writing as Cosmic Hope, with the added detail that the ultimate good is the omnipotent, everlasting God of all creation, and the greatest good we can receive is a relationship with Him.

 

 

Amen! That is the same belief I have, and also the motivator behind the idea of Cosmic Hope :-) Ultimately there are threats that humanity can face by itself - after a fashion - but the root of those threats and the greatest danger to all life is something humanity can't face by itself, but that The Living LORD can and does face for us - though we also face it it is only winnable because He is facing it with us - giving us His aid because we can't face them and win by ourselves, but that can be faced and won by Him. Without giving major spoilers, the threat to the entire setting is the embodiment of human corruption, and the forces of humanity - and other species - aren't equipped to fight it, because it represents the flaws within the human soul. However, as in Christianity, my religion, in the setting the whole point is that there is nothing humans can do to fix themselves, but God can. It still involves the characters overcoming, but the main point is it wasn't them overcoming by reaching deep within themselves, but rather embracing the life line given to them. I don't write generally in a "real world" setting, but what I want to imply heavily in my writing is that it is God, with the story itself being in a sense about a broken soul being saved, that broken soul being the soul of all life.

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Fascinating. So the story of world as a whole could serve as a metaphor for the salvation of an individual soul?

 

One of the ideas I had when I started writing is that I want to combine the incredible scope of Brandon's novels with a Biblical worldview. Brandon's work is amazing, and raises lots of important questions, but without an eternal perspective it falls short of providing an answer for those questions. Dalinar becomes a better person, Shallan learns to accept herself, Kaladin overcomes hardship and eventually regains his hope-- but if they're all just going to die anyway, do any of those things really matter? Realistically depicting the human experience is an important part of storytelling, but as a Christian author, I want to point my readers to hope beyond this life, to the salvation offered by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

You have me intrigued. Have you published or are you planning on sharing any of your writing any time soon?

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@Zachary Holbrook That is a good summary of it, yes :-)

That is a good attitude to have. Though Brandon writes the way he does because he wants to give a lot of freedom to the reader, that isn't the only way, and I agree with your view on this, as we have to write with our conscience.

I'm still working on the outlines for several things and making sure the setting is consistent. I have a short story I want to get finished before I write anything else, and I'm mainly focused on getting that refined first, but I tend to alternate between different stories. God willing when I get published I will make a thread about it though :-)

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