The Appeal of Noir

Patrick Stewart and Alec Guiness in Smiley's People

When I first encountered Lidda the Rogue in the 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons manual, I didn't run into a lot of fantasy that really suited me. That was probably my fault as much as the genre's, but there was a level of complexity and intrigue that I didn't see back then. I should probably have been looking harder.

I encountered the feeling I wanted to create more often outside fantasy than in it. I found it in noir: in the books of James M. Cain and early James Ellroy and above all, in the novels of Raymond Chandler, who I think is one of the best writers of the 20^th century. I also found it in William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, which defined the subgenre of cyberpunk in science fiction, and the murky, downbeat spy novels of John le Carre. All of these books contain violence, corruption and subterfuge, but there’s more to them than just chaos and death. All of them involve flawed characters trying to make the best of their position: whether by solving a mystery, hacking a company computer system, or unmasking a spy, using whatever cunning and improvised gear they can find.

Cover art by Josan Gonsalez. Note the obligatory cigarette!

And they all involve a sense of morality. Richard Morgan (of Altered Carbon fame) recently observed that all good noir involves not just noticing that the status quo is bad, but fighting against it. Raymond Chandler's detective Philip Marlowe struggles to find justice in the corruption of 1940s Los Angeles. George Smiley might fight dirty, but he’s most certainly on the right side of the Cold War. Even in the weird dystopia of Gibson’s world, there are real monsters to be defeated. That sense of justice seems to be to be one of the most basic human emotions. As Chandler himself put it in "The Simple Art of Murder": "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean".

Bit of a fantasy title, come to think of it

I think without this sense of morality - even a skewed morality that is as much about revenge as  justice - it's easy to produce a kind of war-porn, where the story exists for little more than shock value. Or, just as bad, you end up telling stories whose morals are too simple: yes, war is hell, but that's nothing new. As another author - in fact, one who'd written several Warhammer 40,000 novels - once told me, darkness works best when there's light for it to contrast with, and vice versa.

Up To The Throne isn’t a comedy, and contains no jokes. It’s also played entirely straight: there’s nothing ironic or post-modern in there, and it isn’t a parody or commentary on something else. Giuilia’s primary motivation is outrage, and, after that, the obligation to settle debts, both to her friends and enemies. But I think it’s easy to sympathise with someone like that. The sense of seeing corrupt and often downright evil people getting away with it is unpleasantly familiar.

As such, I think it is in the tradition of noir, as I understand it. A single determined person  looks for revenge in a corrupt city and, in doing so, uncovers a conspiracy. And that search takes them to some very dangerous places.

Woman With A Lockpick

Many, many years ago, I used to travel up to Cardiff every few months to visit my friends Owen and Alex. I’d stay in their house and generally make a nuisance of myself for a couple of days. Because I worked on Fridays, I’d get a late train and arrive at all sorts of weird and unhelpful times.

Once, I showed up while they had friends around, I think to play a game. I didn’t want to interrupt, so I started reading a Dungeons & Dragons manual that happened to be around (the Third Edition Players’ Handbook, to be precise). Flicking through, I stumbled upon the picture below.

It’s one of a set of pictures of example characters, who are depicted with various upgrades and specifications to demonstrate what can be done with the rules. This particular person is Lidda the Halfling Rogue, but I didn’t know that at the time.

It's interesting what prompts you (ie me) to write. Whatever subconscious reason there might have been, I looked at this picture and thought “This is the kind of person that I want to write about”.

What strikes me about this picture is its practicality. I don’t only mean the lack of exposed flesh, but the sense that this is a real person, with real problems. She’s peering at a lockpick (at least I think she is), and the end of her nose has gone pink, as if she’s got a cold. Things like that didn’t happen to fantasy characters when I was young, outside comedy.

And of course, the outfit. Actually, it’s not all that practical, and it seems to be largely made out of random off-cuts strapped together, but it looks warm and it’s got pads. After all, if you’re going to be picking locks and squeezing through windows, having reinforced gear is a pretty sensible idea. There’s also the interesting fact that her hair is rather elaborately braided, which hints at something other than practicality - vanity, or religious observance perhaps. If there are cyberpunks in fantasy, this is what they would look like.

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The heroine – or maybe protagonist is a more accurate word – of Up To The Throne doesn’t look much like Lidda, to be honest. Giulia is human, for starters, and rather more “normal” looking in terms of outfit. There are half a dozen other ways she differs, but I still look at this picture from time to time, to remind me of what this thing is all about. It’s about that sense of improvisation and pragmatism, of credible people behaving logically within a weird, impossible setting. 

I don't know who drew this. I've looked but, as with a lot of rulebook art, unless it's by one of the three or four people whose work I recognise, it's very hard to track down. So, if you do know who drew Lidda the Halfling Rogue Looking At A Lockpick, let me know. In the meantime, thanks, mystery artist.

Next time, some thoughts on noir. And maybe I'll tell my Games Workshop anecdote.

A Supercharged Renaissance

So, why set a fantasy novel in the Renaissance?

Well, first up, it's important to say that it isn't our Renaissance. It's the equivalent of our Renaissance in a fantasy world, where magical events happen and are expected to happen. It's what's known as a "low magic setting", in that impossible things don't occur all that often - which is lucky if you happen to live there, as a lot of the impossible things are really dangerous.

Such as this.

So, alongside the developments that humanity is making - in engineering, painting, literature and learning about the world - you have a small number of monsters, wizards, fey folk, revenants and other (frequently lethal) beings. Also, while there aren't many people with the magical skill to shoot lightning or turn people into frogs, there are some with the ability to strengthen mechanisms, summon weather, enchant objects and basically supercharge things that would otherwise hardly function into effective machinery. So, with the right enchantments, that clockwork cart that only rolls downhill and is so heavy that it sinks into the ground can potentially become a very useful and stylish set of wheels.

This could really happen!

But still, why the Renaissance?

For one thing, it's hard to pin down one period in one place as "the Renaissance". England barely had one, at least not in the same way as Italy. But we all know what the concept is, and it encompasses some really interesting things. Developments in thought, in scholarship, in art and in understanding man's position in the world really accelerated between 1400 and 1600 (in Europe, at any rate). It was also a time of some truly foul, vicious and crazy behaviour. Of course, I'm talking about something of a caricature, but that's how historical periods tend to be remembered. 

Giulia's world is a condensed and accelerated version of that (it's the magic, you see), in the same way that a lot of epic fantasy uses a condensed and exaggerated version of the Middle Ages (another long and varied time period). That enables a character to have lots of interesting adventures: in Giulia's world (if you had the cash), you could chat to a philosopher, buy a potion from an alchemist to change your appearance, steal a painting from a genius artist and go for a ride in a flying machine - or on a wyvern - on the same day. And then get murdered by a pack of revenants. It's not all perfect.

"I'll distract him with this hourglass while you loot the barrels."

There are other aspects, too: gunpowder was becoming more prevalent (very useful against those undead hordes) and Christianity (or its fantasy equivalent) was in serious turmoil. Both of those enter Giulia's world, in strange and distorted forms.


So you set Up To The Throne in the Renaissance because...

At some level, the answer to a question like this is always "because I think it's cool", and I'm not sure that's much of an answer at all. That aside, I think it comes down to possibilities. The Renaissance itself was a time of possibilities, when mankind's potential for greatness (and badness) was coming into its own in Europe. And Pagalia, where Up To The Throne is set, is a microcosm of that: a city where geniuses cross paths with assassins, and magical creatures clash with the fanatics who would wipe them out. Something really good could come of it - and something truly awful. Aptly, it's a powder-keg. All it needs is a spark...

My Next Book!

So, slightly different post here.

Both of you who read this blog will already know that I write books. More particularly, I wrote the Warhammer 40,000 novel Straken, about Colonel Straken of the Imperial Guard killing a lot of space orks, and the six Space Captain Smith books, about Captain Isambard Smith of the British Space Empire killing a lot of space ants.

Now I've got something else planned. In December 2018, I'll be releasing a new book onto Kindle. It's called Up To The Throne, and it looks like this:

Giulia returns to her birthplace to kill the man who scarred her and left her for dead - only to find that he is no longer a gangster but a powerful politician, and may be the only person who can save Pagalia from its enemies. As she carves her way closer to vengeance, it becomes clear that her revenge may destroy the entire city.

It's a dark fantasy story, a sort of revenge thriller set in a magically-supercharged Renaissance, full of clockwork tanks, haunted ruins, flying machines and a lot of menace and intrigue. I'm not that keen on the term, but if you want to call it Grimdark, feel free.

This is a first expedition into the world of self-publishing, and I'll update you guys as I go along. It's pretty daunting, to be honest, but I'm looking forward to it too!

Info-Dumping

You probably know what an info-dump is. Basically, it's dropping a wad of back-story into the text to "prime" the reader for what is to come. For instance, if Dave gets into a space shuttle and starts the engine, and then spends three paragraphs thinking about the history of space travel, that's infodumping. It doesn't matter that Dave is a spaceship pilot, or that this is a journey into space: after all, I don't think about the history of the internal combustion engine every time I start my car.

The problem is particularly bad in science fiction and fantasy (and I could imagine it being bad in historical stories, or any with an unusual setting) but it happens everywhere. A few lines about how the history of a specific character  is fine. However, the further back in the past and the more generalised it becomes, the more like a background essay it is starting to become, and the more it takes the reader out of the narrative, ie what's actually happening in this story.

Once you've finished reading this background info, you're allowed to read the story.

Now, here's the thing: the reader isn't as interested in your back-story as you are. You may have laboured hours to produce a something like this:

In the late 29th Century, the North American Conglomeration merged with the Democratic Federation of Colonies to produce the Galactic Alliance of Free Nations, which is now commonly called the Alliance. When Duncan Poke, the beloved president, was assassinated, laws were passed enlarging the space fleet and granting the navy new photon-based weapons for their capital warships. However, the Galactic Senate...

This may be fascinating to you, but let's be blunt: to a reader, you might as well say "It's a space empire and a bit like America" or just "You know, kinda like Star Trek". To drop a potted history like this on a reader runs the risk of simply boring them. Further, some settings are so familiar that you just have to say "steampunk" or "noir" and people will have a solid idea of what to expect. It's not the things that make the setting predictable that are interesting, but what make it different.

"Kinda like Star Trek."

 In some ways, this is a good thing. Anyone who's seen a bit of pop culture knows the basic rules of, say, epic fantasy. There is magic, armies fight, it's a bit like Medieval England. You don't need to explain why it's like that unless it's of great importance to the narrative - and even if that is important, you really shouldn't drop the reason on the reader in a heap of background information, like a travel guide.


What really matters is the stuff in the foreground, not the stuff that happened before the story began. It's not that a bunch of religious maniacs have staged a coup, but whether Offred is going to survive or be murdered by the secret police. Because, ultimately, it's her story. And, by following her, we learn about the setting - not because it was forced on us like a pamphlet, but because it appears naturally, in the course of the book.

Action - Reaction - Discussion

I was going to call this post "the rule of three", but then writing and life in general seems to be full of rules of three. And it's not exactly a rule. Anyhow, please be aware that spoilers follow for Alien. If you've never seen Alien, stop now and watch it, because it is one of the best films ever made.

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One of the problems facing writers of a lot of genre stories is how to demonstrate what the characters are like without slowing the story down too much. I've always felt that an action plot shouldn't include much except action and characters planning more action. That's fine, but it doesn't give much opportunity to learn about what the characters are really like. They may all be deadly killers, but is there anything more to them than that (there should be) and, if so, how do we show it to the reader?

One way of doing this is in the action-reaction-discussion cycle. It works like this: an event happens, the characters discuss the event, and then the characters either talk more generally, so that we learn more about them as people. Then we repeat.

In Alien, for instance, Science Officer Ash is disabled by Ripley, Lambert and Parker. That's the "action". Then comes the reaction: they talk about the fact that Ash is a robot. That's the discussion of the event. Then, the characters talk about what to do next (with Ash's questionable help). In that discussion, we see the characters acting in the way that characterises them the most. Ripley is tough and smart, Parker is tough and aggressive, and Lambert is smart and weak.

A lot of fiction involves things becoming steadily worse or more extreme for the characters until they either succeed against terrible odds or die trying. Each new problem creates an opportunity for the action-reaction-discussion cycle to begin again.

Now, there are plenty of stories where this doesn't happen, and I don't suggest that you try to use it to construct a novel. It's more a tool to be wielded retrospectively, in analysing something that's already there. But it is useful to note, because it keeps in both the action and the characterisation, meaning that not only do the characters have to face risks, but the stakes rise through the author showing what the characters are like, and encouraging us to root for them.

Authorial Punchbags: Thoughts on Sympathy and Dynamism

When you set out as a serious fiction writer, you'll soon be told that you have to make readers care about your characters. You'll also be told pretty shortly afterwards that the way to do this is to put them in jeopardy. Give them some problems, and away you go.

To an extent. Logically, a character should become more sympathetic the more woes you heap on them. However, there comes a point where the character's problems become excessive and their miseries actually start to make them less sympathetic to the reader.

Why? First, "pitiable" doesn't mean the same thing as "sympathetic" or, more accurately, "readable". A character who has been kidnapped by a villain and is now shivering at the bottom of a pit is wretched and deserving of pity. But reading about them is something of a chore. Once you've realised that they're cold and terrified, where is there to go? Chances are, they're going to die. They won't have the opportunity of doing anything very interesting before they die, so what's the point?

Consider the same character at the bottom of the pit, cold, frightened and hiding a piece of sharp stone. Sooner or later, someone is going to come to find him, and then he'll make his bid to escape. Will he succeed? The odds don't look good, but there's a chance. The only way to find out is to read on.

I think Thomas Harris realised this when he wrote The Silence of the Lambs. The kidnapped girl, Catherine, is more than just a puppy to be kicked: she comes up with a plan to escape, and is putting it into action when the final showdown takes place.

My own feeling is that - in terms of making a reader want to keep going - dynamism is just as important as likeability. A character who has a goal and a plan to achieve it is just as readable, if not more, than a character with whom we sympathise. Of course, a dynamic character with whom we sympathise is almost a sure thing in terms of audience enthusiasm - but the knowledge that we are reading about someone who, by their actions, will drive the plot forward goes a long way.