Steven Erikson’s Notes on a Crisis Part IV – The Next Novel

Editor’s Note: In his latest blog post, bestselling novelist Steven Erikson gives us a glimpse into his creative process by deconstructing an excerpt from his much-anticipated next novel in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

This is a revealing look into Erikson’s process. Fans will love this glimpse behind the scenes and writers will love the insights into the thought processes and techniques of this fantasy master.

Wasn’t I going to talk about writing? As I make this entry, I am a little more than halfway through the tenth and closing novel of my series. Yesterday I wrote a section opening a new chapter. After reviewing and editing it, it struck me that this particular sample would work well in giving readers an idea of the process by which I create fiction.

I doubt it’s anything special, but I did say I would talk about my writing process, didn’t I? The section I’m referring to works because it needs little introduction, which is saying something after nine effing books.

The point of view is from a young girl named Badalle. She is a poet, and one of the leaders of a train of child refugees fleeing environmental and political disaster. Their tale is one of suffering and deprivation, as one might expect (think of the Sudan for a real-world corollary). Of course, this being a world of fantasy, Badalle’s language has power — magical if you will — and in this section she invokes a kind of sorcery, one capable of transporting all the children farther down the trail.

They don’t know where they are headed, only that the place where they came from is no longer tenable. This mass of wandering children is called The Snake, and with Badalle there is a boy named Saddic. The boy who leads is named Rutt, who carries a swaddled baby he has named Held.

‘Shards’ are carnivorous locusts. They are crossing a desert. I can’t see any other world-specific elements.

My initial requirement for this section was to move the group along, and in doing so to suggest the extent of Badalle’s growing power. The challenge was to make the section do that in an interesting and evocative way. So what follows is how I work out such things. But first, read the excerpt (for you readers of the series, there is nothing overtly spoilerish in this excerpt, since you pretty much know Badalle and the Snake’s plight. The only spoiler detail is [STOP HERE IF YOU DO NOT WANT ANY SPOILERS AT ALL] that they have left the crystal city, and that hardly seems an earth-shattering one).

Here is the excerpt:

White as bone, the butterflies formed a vast cloud overhead. Again and again their swirling mass dimmed the sun with a blessed gift of shadow that moments later broke apart, proving that curses hid in every gift, and that blessings could pass in the blink of an eye.

An eye swarming with flies. Badalle could feel and indeed see them clustering at the corners; she could feel them drinking her tears. She did not resent their need, and their frenzied crawl and buzz felt cool against her scorched cheeks. Those that crowded her mouth she ate when she could, the taste bitter when she crushed them, the wings like patches of dry skin almost impossible to swallow.

Since the Shards had left, only the butterflies and the flies remained, and there was something pure in these last two forces. One white, the other black. Only the extremes remained: from the unyielding ground below to the hollow sky above; from the push of life to the pull of death; from the breath hiding within to the last to leave a fallen child.

The flies fed upon the living, but the butterflies waited for the dead. There was nothing in between. Nothing but this walking, the torn feet and the stains they left behind, the figures toppling and then stepped over.

In her head, Badalle was singing. She sensed the presence of others – not those ahead of her or those behind her – but ghostly things. Invisible eyes and veiled thoughts. An impatience, a harsh desire for judgement. As if the Snake’s very existence was an affront. To be ignored. Denied. Fled from.

But she would not permit any to escape. They did not have to like what they saw. They did not have to like her at all. Or Rutt or Held or Saddic or any of the bare thousand still alive. They could rail at her thoughts, at the poetry she found in the heart of suffering, as if it had no meaning to them, no value. No truth. They could do all of that; still she would not let them go.

I am as true as anything you have ever seen. A dying child, abandoned by the world. And I say this: there is nothing truer.  Nothing.

Flee from me if you can. I promise I will haunt you. This is my only purpose now, the only one left to me. I am history made alive, holding on but failing. I am everything you would not think of, belly filled and thirst slaked, there in all your comforts surrounded by faces you know and love.

But hear me. Heed my warning. History has claws.

Saddic still carried his hoard. He dragged it behind him. In a sack made of clothes no longer needed by anyone. His treasure trove. His … things. What did he want with them? What meaning hid inside that sack? All those stupid bits, the shiny stones, the pieces of wood. And the way, with every dusk, when they could walk no further, he would take them all out to look at them – why did that frighten her?

Sometimes he would weep, for no reason. And make fists as if to crush all his baubles into dust, and it was then that she realized that Saddic didn’t know what they meant either. But he wouldn’t leave them behind. That sack would be the death of him.

She imagined the moment when he fell. This boy she would have liked for a brother. Onto his knees, hands all entwined in the cloth sleeves, falling forward so that his face struck the ground. He’d try to get back up, but he’d fail. And the flies would swarm him until he was no longer even visible, just a seething, glittering blackness. Where Saddic had been.

They’d eat his last breath. Drink the last tears from his eyes which now just stared. Into his open mouth to make it dry as a cave, a spider hole. And then the swarm would explode, rush away seeking more of life’s sweet water. And down would descend the butterflies. To strip away his skin, and the thing left – with its sack – would no longer be Saddic.

Saddic will be gone. Happy Saddic. Peaceful Saddic, a ghost hovering, looking down at that sack. I would have words for him, for his passing. I would stand over him, looking down at all those fluttering wings so like leaves, and I would try, one more time, to make sense of the sack, the sack that killed him.

And I would fail. Making my words few. Weak. A song of unknowing. All I have for my brother Saddic.

When that time comes, I will know it is time for me to die, too. When that time comes, I will give up.

And so she sang. A song of knowing. The most powerful song of all.

They had a day left, maybe two.

Is this what I wanted? Every journey must end. Out here there is nothing but ends. No beginnings left. Out here, I have nothing but claws.

“Badalle.” The word was soft, like crumpled cloth and she felt it brush her senses.

“Rutt.”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“But you are, Rutt. The head of the Snake. And Held, who is the tongue.”

“No. I can’t. I have gone blind.”

She moved up alongside him, studied his old man’s face. “They’re swollen,” she said. “Closed up, Rutt. It’s to keep them safe. Your eyes.”

“But I can’t see –”

“There’s nothing to see, Rutt.”

“I can’t lead –”

“For this, there is no-one better.”

“Badalle –”

“Even the stones are gone. Just walk, Rutt. The way is clear, for as far as I can see, it’s clear.”

He loosed a sob. The flies poured in and he bent over, coughing, retching. He stumbled and she caught him before he fell. Rutt righted himself, clutching Held tight. Badalle heard a soft whimper rising from them both.

No water. This is what is killing us now. Squinting, she glanced back. Saddic was nowhere in sight – had he already fallen? If he had, it would be just as well that she’d not seen it. Other faces, vaguely familiar, stared at her and Rutt, waiting for the Snake to begin moving once again. They stood hunched over, tottering. They stood with backs arched and bellies distended as if about to drop a baby. Their eyes were depthless pools where the flies gathered to drink. Sores crusted their noses, their mouths and ears. Skin on cheeks and chin had cracked open and glistened beneath ribbons of flies. Many were bald, missing teeth, their gums bleeding. And Rutt was not alone in being blind.

Our children. See what we have done to them. Our mothers and fathers left us to this, and now we leave them, too, in our turn. There is no end to the generations of the foolish. One after another after another and at some point we all started nodding, thinking this is how it has to be, and so we don’t even try and change things. All we pass down to our children is the same stupid grin.

But I have claws. And I will tear away that grin. I swear it.

“Badalle?”

She had begun singing out loud. Wordless, the tone low and then building, thickening. Until she could feel more than one voice within her, and each in turn joined her song. Filling the air. Their sound was one of horror, a terrible thing – she felt its power growing. Growing.

“Badalle!”

I have claws. I have claws. I have claws. Show me that grin one more time. Show it, I’m begging you! Let me tear it from your face. Let me rip deep, until my talons score your teeth! Let me feel the blood and let me hear the meat splitting and let me see the look in your eyes as you meet mine let me see I have claws I have claws I have claws!

“Badalle!”

Someone struck her, knocked her down. Stunned, she stared up into Saddic’s face, his round, wizened face. And from his eyes red tears tracked down through the dust on his leathery cheeks.

“Don’t cry,” she whispered. “It’s all right, Saddic.  Don’t cry.”

Rutt knelt beside her, groped with one hand until his fingers brushed her forehead. “What have you done?”

His tone startled her. The cloth is torn. “They’re all too weak,” she said. “Too weak to feel anger. So I felt it for them – for all of you –” She stopped. Rutt’s fingertips leaked blood. She could feel crystal shards digging into her back. What?

“You moved us,” Saddic said. “It … hurt.”

She could hear wailing now. The Snake was writhing in pain. “I went … I went looking.”

“For what?” Rutt demanded. “For what?”

“For claws.”

Saddic shook his head. “Badalle. We’re children. We don’t have claws.”

The sun dimmed then and she squinted past Saddic. But the butterflies were gone. Flies, look at all the flies.

“We don’t have claws, Badalle.”

“No, Saddic, you’re right. We don’t. But someone does.”

The power of the song still clung to her, fierce as a promise. Someone does. “I’m taking us there,” she said, meeting Saddic’s wide eyes.

He drew back, leaving her to stare up at the sky. Flies, roiling in a massive cloud, black as the Abyss. She clambered to her feet. “Take my hand, Rutt.  It’s time to walk.”

Well then. This deconstruction thing to follow will use up more than one installment at Life As A Human. If it bores you just skip my entries for the next month or so.

The fantasy novels I write are character-based in that I hold to a single point of view for each section, although there are multiple sections. The challenge lies in stepping back into each character when it’s time for their part of the story, in finding their voice again, their way of seeing the world. I call it a challenge but in fact it’s what I love doing the most. It’s like sucking on multiple personalities sweet as candy. There are so many ways of seeing the world, and I want to experience every one of them.

In a general sense, I write elliptically. By that I mean I open sections with some detail I want to resonate throughout the entire section, and through the course of writing that section you can imagine me tapping that bell again and again. Until with the final few lines, I ring it one last time – sometimes hard, sometimes soft, depending on the effect I want, or feel is warranted. It’s become such a habit now that I often do it without conscious thought.

On a most basic level it shows up in paragraphs (and no, there’s nothing unique to me in any of this). Look two paragraphs upward on this screen. The opening line talks about multiple points of view; the last line describes the many ways of seeing the world. But that last line isn’t just reiterating the first one. Something is added (in this case, a personal comment on my desire to experience every one of them). It’s probably the only structural lesson I learned in school that I still use on occasion – the whole introductory and concluding sentences to frame a paragraph.

Anyway, extrapolating this pattern is how I write — within a scene, from section to section, from chapter to chapter, from novel to novel. While the narrative infers something linear, as in the advancement of time and a sequence of events, in fact the narrative loops back on itself again and again. And each time it returns, the timbre of that resonance has changed, sometimes subtly, sometimes fundamentally.

I read somewhere that Scott Bakker has recently complained that I’m repeating myself in my series, but he’s missing the point. It’s more that I return again and again to particular themes, from as many perspectives as I can. Maybe it still rates as a flaw in my writing, but it’s also my whole point in writing. Forget the conceit of hunting for the right answers – let’s start with trying to find the right questions. Personally, I doubt I will ever get past that stage; for me, the more ways I discover of looking at something, the more humbling the whole exercise becomes (Think you got the answers? Sorry, don’t believe you. Never will).

Elliptical. Looping back. It can be an image, a detail of setting, a mood or flavour, a particular action, or an idea. There’s countless ways of coming round back to where you started, and I admit I like the sly ones, though sometimes it pays to be more obvious.

So, let’s get practical with that excerpt. There are multiple loops in that section. In fact, if you want to, you can make use of one of the recurring images in that section: flies. The way you shoo them away, only back they come. Badalle’s internal narrative is a buzz of flies, persistent in its obsessions. (By the way, as my students in my last workshop already know from me, I do go on about making the physical details of the scene serve the internal drive of that narrative: so of course I used flies, and not just because I wanted to echo certain elements of the second novel, Deadhouse Gates, but also because I wanted them buzzing in the reader’s head, just as they’re buzzing in Badalle’s.)

I am writing this right now with considerable hesitation. There’s a feeling of self-indulgence here, or maybe a sense of blowing my own horn – it’s one of the reasons I have avoided writing blogs up until now. It’s one thing for me to know what I’m up to; is it really my place to describe it to all of you?

Tell you what. I’ll start mercifully small: tackling only the first paragraph of that section, and then stop there for this installment, to await reader comments. (Want more? Want me to get the fuck on with something else? Let me know.)

White as bone, the butterflies formed a vast cloud overhead. Again and again their swirling mass dimmed the sun with a blessed gift of shadow that moments later broke apart, proving that curses hid in every gift, and that blessings could pass in the blink of an eye.

A common rule to opening a scene is to set it quickly. I ignore that all the time. The only details here are butterflies and a presumably cruel sun. It’s got to be cruel because shade is a blessing. But there’s also something a little more ominous going on, since the whole section begins with white bone. Sure, it’s just a description, a simile. But no, it’s more than that. And less, since as a simile it doesn’t quite fit, does it? It’s texturally wrong. I could have written something more seamless. I could have written:

White as a cloud, the butterflies swarmed overhead.

But let’s face it, that sentence is flat. It’s lazy and just looking at it now makes me cringe. No, I wanted the simile of ‘white as bone’ to jar in its wrongness. It really is all wrong, but it’s also dreadfully right. Because ‘bone’ is the first bell I’m ringing. But before I get to all that bell-ringing stuff, read that first sentence again. Read it out loud. No need to be mindful of alliteration and all that technical stuff: how does it roll off the tongue? How does the rhythm feel?

Badalle is a poetic character, and even though as a reader you don’t yet know it’s Badalle’s point of view, well, I do. And with that opening line, I’m there, into her head again. She has a rhythm to her thinking. For her it’s mostly unconscious, and actually, once I’m with her it’s unconscious with me, too. I look straight down and I’ve got her cracked, swollen feet, and I’m hurting as much as she is (sure, it’s all a conceit, but it needs to exist, and as a writer I need to feel it as honestly as I can, or I’m screwed).

That opening line has poetic elements that relate to the sentence that follows it, and the whole paragraph proceeds like that. It’s all in how the mouth forms those words, how the breath plays out in the voicing of that line. Poetic, but more suited to the oral tradition than the written one, which fits the whole Homeric thing I’m riffing on with this series.

At the same time the rhythm changes in that second line, even as I moved from the physical descriptive grounding of the first bit (real butterflies, then sun and shade) to something distinctly not literal, something thematic, something that in fact signposts the entire section (think opposites, beginning with blessing and curse – this whole section is about opposites, and moving from one to the other, but I’ll get back to that later).

The butterflies, related back to bleached bone, are death. It hangs over them, literally, and even the blessing of shade quickly breaks apart, heralding the return of the killing sun. And from that notion, the line moves into ‘curses’ and ‘blessings’ as the as-yet-unnamed point of view takes the environment and immediately internalizes it, which is what someone suffering deeply will do. The environment becomes symbolic almost without transition. The sun becomes that indifferent, relentless killer. The butterflies, as it turns out, will scavenge the dead down to their bones, and maybe death is a blessing and maybe it is a curse – she’s yet to decide, but she’s on the very edge at this moment.

The last key to take from this first paragraph is that we begin the section with ‘death.’ As an exercise for all you nascent writers out there, read through the excerpt again and see how many times I ring that bell, and try and work out how the tone changes as the section moves along.

All right, let me add this caveat. I can almost hear someone reading this and thinking … but … this is insane! I agree. I never said I was sane. But I do this section after section, novel after novel. I’ve done it with this level of pressure, on as many lines as possible, for so long now most of it comes naturally. So, no, I didn’t work out all that shit in advance of writing that opening paragraph. Not consciously. But subconsciously? I think the answer has to be ‘yes.’ And the test comes in being able to go back to what I’ve written, as I have done here, and deconstruct it – either it works or it doesn’t. That’s the test.

As an experiment, I have tested myself many times, by randomly selecting sections I’ve written in previous works (in fact, it’s part of my self-editing process). Occasionally I see where I could have made it more seamless, where I could have worked it better than I’d done. But not often, to be honest. Once it becomes ingrained in the creative process, it becomes the reason to write: this is for me the very act of creation — this layering, these looping of themes round and round and back again, the crazy cymbal clash of resonances all over the place. I feed on it like nectar.

Don’t be daunted.  You too can become an insatiable addict to the wonders of the written word.  Unless, of course, you happen to be overly fond of sanity.  Overrated in my books.

Need I repeat that last sentence?

Cheers for now.

 

Photo Credits

“Steve Erikson” © Chris Holt, All rights reserved.

Central Malazan Empire, Daelstorm’s Melted Maps

Recent Steven Erikson Articles:

• Deconstructing Fiction (For Writers and Readers): Excerpt Deconstructed (8)
• Deconstructing Fiction (For Writers and Readers): Excerpt Deconstructed (7)
• Deconstructing Fiction (For Writers and Readers): Excerpt Deconstructed (6)
• Deconstructing Fiction (For Writers and Readers): Excerpt Deconstructed (5)
• Deconstructing Fiction (For Writers and Readers): Excerpt Deconstructed (4)