Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope all of you celebrating the holiday are safely tucked away with friends and family and good food!
I got to thinking about writing and holidays last night. I've had only one book so far where the characters have celebrated traditional holidays as we know them. This was a contemporary piece, of course. How important are holidays to your characters? Even in fantasy, do you create holidays? I think it's an important human factor to consider, but of course, some of you don't even write about humans...
Oh, wait, in Thirds I have a very important holiday everyone celebrates and from which my main character is excluded. When I read Scott's Killing Hamlet, I particularly enjoyed the Christmas decorations he describes around the castle. I liked the descriptions of Christmas and a puppy in a box in Davin's short story, Paris Was Good - unless he's renamed it by now.
What holidays have you put in your stories?
And I'd just like to say how grateful I am for our 501 followers! I can't believe we've reached that many. You guys all rock!
501, like the jeans!
ReplyDeleteHappy Thanksgiving, everyone. I'm grateful for having people stop by who love writing as much as I do. I'm grateful for Michelle and Scott. I'm grateful to have the time to write.
I've always wanted to make up holidays for my books. I have a lot of those ideas in my head, and if ever they fit into a story, I'll definitely put them in!
I've never made up a holiday but I always loved the one Robert Heinlein made up for an alternate earth in "Number Of The Beast"--The Day They Shot All The Lawyers.
ReplyDeleteI have found few holiday passages or references in adult fiction really resonate with me, and that's made me a little nervous of incorporating them into my own writing. When I wrote fantasy and sci fi, I loved making up holidays, though.
ReplyDeleteThanksgiving, Christmas, Midwinter's Day and Easter will all figure in my next book. But that's yet to be written and it's Thanksgiving in real life today.
ReplyDeleteHappy Thanksgiving, all you who recognize it, and even you who don't.
Good freakin' point. Me ponder!
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by, everyone! Hope your holiday was wonderful. :)
ReplyDeleteI have a Christmas scene in my WIP. It's fun to tweak an existing holiday for a fantasy culture.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd also like to point out that real-life holidays are fabulous times to observe humans behaving their most ridiculously--when they're stressed out and crammed together with lots of family members. I just posted about how I'm making an effort to digest great pieces of conversation with my turkey and pie this year. :) Luckily, my extended family doesn't know about my blog. Haha.
I love writing about the imagined holidays of the worlds I create. I have a festival in my gladiator/pirate story where fun is had by all until someone tries to assassinate the dragon princess. In a later scene, when the hero is visiting the mainland, he is an observer at a festival he's not familiar with, to emphasize how alien and homesick he feels.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first science fiction stories I ever wrote (I think I was in Jr High or High School) was about astronauts trying to celebrate Hanukah on a Shuttle-like spaceship, where burning candles was problematic, especially after they started running out of oxygen. I had a lot of fun creating a scientific explanation for the miracle of the eight days of burning light.
And ditto what Genie said!
ReplyDeleteHappy Thanksgiving to all at The Literary Lab! Finding this place has been one of the things I'm especially grateful for this year...(with an extra-special shout out to Domey's class last summer...which I find is having long lasting effects on the way I approach every description I write...)
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question, Michelle, a link. In this, the hero is dreading the impending holidays, because his heart is breaking.
Hope you enjoy.
~bru
Bru,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the shout out! I'm really glad to hear that class was helpful to you.
Domey- it really was!
ReplyDeleteNow every time I write a description, I pause and wonder how I could make it not just live and breathe, but so real you could get lost in it.
Thanks to you :)
~bru