As anybody who follows my Twitterfeed will tell you, I haven't been writing over the last 10 days or so due to something that I call Mechanics. More correctly I should say that I have been having problems with a specific Mechanic.
A Mechanic is a system, either in the writers head or codified on paper, that retains the internal consistency of the universe in which the writer is writing. Sometimes the Mechanic is no different from the premise or the setting. The book 'Fatherland' is a good example. The Mechanic is also the setting in that Heydrich survived and the Nazis won the war. The internal consistency must be continued. If the Nazis won the war then alluding to Italian liberal arts could detract from the suspension of disbelief. Something that is very important not to do.
In my book, the characters are capable of creating wonderous effects that in our society would be classed as magic. Having a character who one moment creates flights of birds but at the next moment claims not to have the power to bake a cake requires explanation. This explanation must be level headed and logical in 'real-world' terms as the explanation is not for the characters but for the readers.
Tolkien remarked that he wished that he had explained how magic worked. In his head, I'm confident he had a Mechanic. I have also had a Mechanic and it has worked very well. Until now of course.
Suffice to say that I will have to go through my work to implement my Mechanic but other than that, I should be restarting my writing tomorrow.
Hopefully I won't break the universe this time.
DR
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Wednesday 2 February 2011
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