Clarion Blog Week 1

They posted a writing challenge over at the Clarion Blog. Writers need to answer the following questions about the novel they're working on.

1. Who is the character whose actions and decisions most drive your novel? (We will call this person the hero.)
2. Describe your hero in five words or less.
3. What has to happen for your audience to know that the novel is over? (We will call this the goal.)
4. Describe this goal in ten words or less.
5. What is the one most profound or pervasive reason that your hero cannot accomplish the goal right away? (We will call this the primary obstacle.)
6. Describe the primary obstacle in ten words or less.
7. What person most clearly drives, creates, or causes the primary obstacle? (We will call this person the antagonist.)
8. Describe your antagonist in five words or less.
9. Look at the answer to question 2, and find three other sf&f novels whose hero could also be described in these exact or very similar words.
10. Look at the answer to question 4, and find three other sf&f novels whose conflict could be described thus.
11. Look at the answer to question 6, and find three other sf&f novels with the same basic primary obstacle.
12. Look at the answer to question 8, and find three other sf&f novels whose antagonist meets this description.
13. Which novels appear more than once in your answers to questions 9-12? List them here by name.
14. List the ways in which your novel stands in stark contrast to each of the novels listed in question 13.

Even though for this Write-a-Thon I chose to rewrite a short story in English, I’m also working on a novel in Hungarian, set in the same world as the short story. I’ll do the exercise for both.

Golden Apples (short story)

1. Arany, a tengeri, a fairy whose job is to guide mortals
   
2. powerful, dedicated, gentle, wise, overconfident
3. We know the story ends when Princess Sage, Arany’s new charge gets a husband.
4. Arany has to find the perfect husband for Princess Sage
5. The first candidate is not good enough, that is, Arany is backing the wrong horse.
6. Arany failed to find out who the right candidate was.
7. Bibor, Arany’s elder brother
8. Invisible, clever, capricious
9. Practically all of Guy Gavriel Kay’s books have a similar character, but stretch it a little and it fits even the mighty Ned Stark.
10. 90% of all folk tales, anything by Jane Austen (I know she wasn’t a sff writer, but still).
11. Happens in almost all historically driven epic fantasy stories, though it’s usually just a side story.
12. Intriguing nobles in several historically driven epic fantasy stories, another Guy Gavriel Kay favourite, it’d be Shinzu in his last book, Under Heaven.
13. Huh, novels by Guy Gavriel Kay?
14. The setting is a contrast stark enough, also the fact that it’s just a short story.
    

Sparrow and Oriole (novel)

1. Cinke, a young girl.
2. Capricious, driven, clever, brave, immature
3. When she finds out what happened to her twin brother and finds her way home.
4. Find her brother and her home.
5. There’s an awful lot of ground to cover if you want to go to the end of the world to find out what happened to your twin brother.
6. The road itself. And travel is always self-discovery.
   
   
7. There’s no real antagonist, this is a story about a girl growing into a woman. The only real antagonist would be herself, but if you look through the answers, this seems to be the case with several stories. I think it’s because in these “coming into their own” or “growing up” stories, the hero has to defeat themselves. It’s completely different from those stories with a clear cut villain. Last evening I spent hours looking for similar sff stories, and couldn’t come up with too many, though the Bildungsroman is a legitimate category.
   
   It’s also interesting how sometimes the conflict with the antagonist is not what’s driving the story. Consider for example the Twilight series, where Victoria with her cabal of man-eater vampires looks like the perfect antagonist, but the conflict that makes the readers read on is that Bella’s upset with Edward for refusing to make her a proper member of his family. But even if you put Twilight aside (as it’s not a really good piece of writing from any aspect except the commercial), there are plenty of other stories where the apparent “antagonist” is an extra and does little else than spike the real conflict.
   
   
8. Capricious, driven, clever, brave, immature
9. YA books with a heroine.
10. I can’t recall anything else but folk tales and legends right now but I’m sure looking for a lost relative has been done before...
11. Stories about travel and growing up, the thing that’d spring to mind right now is Shai’s part in Kate Elliott’s Crossroads series.
12. YA books. Funny how adult sff seems to be antagonist-centered...
13. YA books and fairy tales in general? No big genre hits that I remember I’m afraid...
14. The setting itself is exotic enough, but there are also some twists in the story.