I think I’ve finally worked out the difference between what I write in fan fiction versus what I write in my own work, and why my own work is much harder.
It’s because it’s difficult to think in archetypes.
Take, for example, two cities. One is the city of Hamhyre, in Irthiron, part of my Spell Merchant series (which I still haven’t been able to pull a story together for). The other is the city of Bikarr in Ingvarr, made up as part of my Tangled series Lingering in the Golden Gleam. I made both these places up.
But we know one or two things about Bayangor that can’t be contradicted—its royalty look rather Persian, they have an entirely female army, and they tend to wear relatively bulky but form-fitting armour—and some things which can be accepted as headcanon—it being the “Iron Kingdom” in the Varian and the Seven Kingdoms world, a relatively gloomy place with much heavy industry. That in and of itself gives the place some character, and that character I can actually use.
Whereas Irthiron…I made Irthiron. I made Hamhyre. It’s the capital of Irthiron, it’s at the mouth of the river Mishneal, the west bank contains the government buildings and a lot of old architecture belonging to the old nobility while the east bank is crowded with art deco skyscrapers and steampunk factories.
But it is difficult to think of what life is like there, because there is nothing to go on. I don’t have random pieces of data to thread together in a work that’s already reached so many people, I have to try and pull things together for a world I cannot see or touch and don’t have an archetype for.
I can write all I want about Hamhyre, but without that archetype in place, I can’t see it like I can see Bikarr, even though both of these cities are ones I made up. I can talk about the legend of Steeple Jack the demon born of the smoke from Hamhyre’s factories, but I can’t see him like I see the chimney-sweeps scuttling across the rooftops like rats in the shadow in Bikarr. I can explain how the buildings in Irthiron make great use of squared arches as a tribute to spirit gates across the country, but it doesn’t provoke the same reaction as the great pyramids of stone and glass and wrought iron that dominate the landscape of Ingvarr.
Because Irthiron as of the moment has only an ephemeral use in the story of Spell Merchant. It exists. It has people in it. These people are not tied to a coherent story because I cannot, for the life of me, come up with one for them. Whereas writing a story using characters who already have a story to build on means it’s easier to imagine a landscape for them to visit. The base is there, so the complexity becomes easier.
Who would want to read about Irthiron when Ingvarr has a story to be told in a bigger story that’s already been told?
