Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.
I’m just about ready to release Star Wanderers: Part II–the story’s been revised and proofread, the cover art is finished, the formatting is ready to go–all that’s left is figuring out the book blurb. Which is where I could use your help!
Here’s what I’ve got so far. What do you think?
IS FIDELITY WORTH THE PRICE OF FREEDOM? CAN LOVE TAKE ROOT BEYOND THE STARS?
Oriana Station: a bustling frontier settlement between the Outworlds and the Coreward Stars. A popular port-of-call for free traders and independent starfarers alike—and the latest target in the aggressively expansionist plans of the Gaian Empire.
Life was simple for Jeremiah and Noemi before they arrived. Though neither of them speak the same language, they’ve reached an understanding of each other that goes beyond words. But when the colonial authorities make them into second-class citizens of a fractured empire, even that might not be enough.
Their newfound friends in the immigrant community can only do so much. With Noemi and her people depending on him, Jeremiah must find a way back to the Outworlds—before they lose everything that they came for.
I’m going with the family on vacation at the end of the week, but if all goes well, I should have it released before then. Newsletter subscribers will be able to download it for free on Smashwords for the first two weeks, and I’ll make Part I available for free while pricing Part II at $2.99. When Part III comes out, I’ll drop the price to $.99.
In other news, I typeset and formatted Bringing Stella Home for CreateSpace this morning, and ordered the proof just a few hours ago. With luck, it should come in the mail by the end of the week. This is the third book I’m releasing in print, and the last one for the rest of this year. I’ll be sure to post pics and links for where to get it once it’s ready.
In still other news, the Mars landing was totally worth staying up for last night. A truly awesome moment for the whole human race. And yes, I’ve been using this excuse all day.
I recently read an amazing blog post by Shannon Hale titled “Why boys don’t read girls (sometimes).” In it, she makes a number of excellent points about how our society stigmatizes boys who read “girlie books,” and why that’s harmful.
Perhaps the most moving part of the post was at the end, where she described an experience at one of her book signings where she saw a boy hanging back and asked him if he would like her to sign one of his books. The boy’s mother jumped in and said “yeah, Isaac, would you like her to put your name in a girl book?” The boy’s sisters all laughed at him, shaming him for reading anything that ran against their strictly defined gender roles.
Whatever problem [the character has]—whether terminal disease or sociopathic neighbor or anything else—the problem must be faced with courage. This means that your character can’t cry about it, no matter what the source of pain…Any time that a character breaks down, we as an audience may cast judgment upon that character.
Now, I have nothing but respect for Dave Farland. I’ve been following his “daily kick” emails for years, attended dozens of his convention panels, and even interviewed him once for an online magazine. He’s been a very influential writer to me personally, and his advice has had a huge impact on my writing.
But on this issue, I think he’s dead wrong.
Even if you don’t have any problem with the idea that men should never cry–a disturbing belief that harms men by forcing them to hide their true feelings, and harms women by teaching men that compassion and empathy are signs of weakness–even if you’re comfortable living in a culture that accepts this belief, there are still instances where having a man cry in your story can be both moving and poignant.
Cross his woman, and he’ll blow your brains out–quoting scripture while he does it.
The best example of this that I can think of comes from David Gemmell’s The Jerusalem Man. No one–and I mean no one–writes manlier heroes than David Gemmell. And among his characters, Jon Shannow ranks as one of the manliest.
In The Jerusalem Man, Jon Shannow is a lone gunman roving the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Earth on a spiritual quest for the city of Jerusalem. Near the beginning of the book, he comes across a frontier woman under attack from bandits. He stops to defend her homestead, and she shows her gratitude by inviting him into her bed.
Jon Shannow is a middle aged man, but because of the post-apocalyptic setting, this is his first sexual experience, and it moves him to tears. For me, that was one of the most poignant moments of the book. It didn’t take away anything from his masculinity throughout the rest of the story–indeed, it added significantly to it when the woman got kidnapped and he determined to rescue her.
I’m sure there are other examples that you can think of. Certainly in real life, this notion that men should never show their feelings is both harmful and outdated. To say that in fiction, no characters should ever cry–female characters as well as male characters–that’s just so wrong it’s infuriating. If crying is so taboo that it’s even forbidden in the pages of a book, then something is wrong with the culture, not the story.
In 2008, I attended a fascinating panel at LTUE in which Tracy Hickman and a number of romance and fantasy writers discussed how to write romance in science fiction and fantasy. Tracy explained that in all the novels he writes with Margaret Weis, she does the fight scenes and he does the romantic ones.
He then went on to talk about how there’s a whole side of life that our culture has shut men off from–a feminine side which is present in all of us, men as well as women. The way he explained it, romance is not just the “kissy bits,” but a vital and enriching way to see the world–a paradigm that infuses everything with feeling and passion.
It makes me think of The Princess Bride, where even the action scenes with Inigo Montoya have a certain romantic flair to them. In the old days, the term “romance” described not only love stories, but action & adventure stories as well. In modern times, we seem to have forgotten all the old qualities like honor, love, sacrifice, loyalty, heroism, and compassion–even though they still make for the best stories.
Of course, our characters need to have courage. But courage is not the absence of fear–it’s pressing on in spite of it. And crying is not always a sign of weakness–it can actually be a sign of great emotional strength. And if it’s true that the best literature helps us to see our world in a new light, giving us a greater understanding and appreciation for the human condition, how is it “courage” for anyone to hide their true feelings?
So do the characters in my stories cry? Hell, yeah! I don’t have them hide their feelings just because some readers might look askance. Some of them cry more than others, and many of them don’t hardly cry at all, but those who do cry do so because the story demands it.
Even though I write science fiction, I do my best to infuse my stories with romance–not just the “kissy bits,” but that depth of feeling and passion for life that made me fall in love with books and reading in the first place. Star Wanderers is a great example of that, and so is Desert Stars.
And yes, in case you’re wondering, I’ve read a lot of “girlie books.” They’re some of my all-time favorites.
So the proof for Desert Stars came in the mail today, and it looks great!
The front cover.The back cover.Title page.First page.No matter how much I do this, it never gets old. 🙂
It’s available now from CreateSpace, if you want to pick up a copy. If you’d rather buy it on Amazon, it should go live there in a few days. And if you want to buy an autographed copy of this one or Genesis Earth, let me know ASAP: I can order author copies and ship them wherever you want me to, but I’m leaving again for Georgia at the end of August, so I can only do that for the next two or three weeks.
As for Star Wanderers: Part II, I finished the major revisions just yesterday, and plan to go through it again this next week before publishing, mostly to fix typos and get it ready for publication. There weren’t too many story issues, but my first readers helped me to see a couple of areas where things were unclear (especially Laura–thanks for the awesome feedback!).
After going through this latest draft, I’ve got to say I am way excited to finish Part III and Part IV. It’s going to take a little more work, and it’ll definitely need some feedback before publishing, but I think I can have the first round of revisions done before the end of August. A couple of scenes are missing, and there are some key elments I need to change, but I definitely know where this story is going and I’m excited to tell it!
That’s about it for now. I’ve gotten some initial feedback from my first readers on Stars of Blood and Glory, and so far it’s been surprisingly positive. I may post the prologue here for you guys, or release it as an extra through the newsletter. The unpublished prologue for Bringing Stella Home would also make good newsletter content too, come to think of it…
Electronic publishing is like playing a really awesome video game. Once things get going and you really start getting into it, you just don’t want to stop!
I know what you’re thinking: “Huh? Why does the hero die at the beginning of the story? Isn’t that supposed to happen later?” Well…yes, it does, but the symbolic death at this point is important, too. At its core, the hero’s journey is a story of transformation and growth. When the hero comes back from the lands of adventure, he isn’t the same person he was when he first left–he’s been changed in some way. And in order for that change to take place, the hero needs to let go of who he was and move forward.
Joseph Campbell describes it like this:
The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died. This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation. Instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again.
Of course, the death and rebirth doesn’t have to be literal (though it can be, as it was with Dionysus). The point is to show that the hero has fully crossed the threshold, cutting all his ties with home and burning his ships on the shores of the land of adventure. Once the hero passes through the belly of the whale, there’s no going back–it’s all or nothing now.
So how common is this trope really? Actually, it occurs more often than you might think. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, it happens when Harry boards the Hogwarts Express and realizes he’s leaving his old world completely behind. It happens in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when Peter and the others decide to go after Mr. Tumnas instead of returning to their own world through the wardrobe. It happens in Star Wars IV when the Millennium Falcon gets sucked into the Death Star, and in Final Fantasy IV when Cecil washes up in Mysidia.
The main theme running through all these examples is that adventures are hard. If they were easy, anyone could go on them–and no one would be changed by them. They may be fun, and they’re definitely worth it, but to set out on one, you always have to give up something close to you–and that’s hard.
Some people complain about how indie authors hit up their friends and family to give them five-star reviews…well, last week I gave the Createspace proof for Genesis Earth to my Mom, and today I noticed that she posted a three-star review for the book on Goodreads. 😛
Sci-fi is not my genre, but the author is my own son! I read it in 2 days (fast, for me); after page 100, I did not want to put the book down. Had to see what would develop–see the story. I’m hosting the author at home for a few weeks, so it has been fun to discuss his characters, etc. in person. I look forward to more discussion.
I posted this on the Kindle Boards just for laughs, and the guys over there agreed that it’s pretty hilarious. A few of them suggested I rate her cooking! But don’t worry, Mom, I’d give it at least a 3.5. 😉
In all seriousness, my Mom’s actually been really supportive of my writing, and I really appreciate that. She is a tough (if loving) critic, though, so I’m sure she’ll keep me on my toes.
The most hilarious thing about this is that her catchphrase growing up was “suffer!”
On Tuesday, I finished the second draft of my latest writing project, Stars of Blood and Glory! Here are the basic stats:
words: 78,746 pages: 372 chapters: 20, epilogue, and prologue start date: 3 July 2012 end date: 24 July 2012
Also, this is probably really dorky, but I made a logo for the title:
They say to use only Courier or Times New Roman in your manuscript, but whatever. I think it looks pretty cool.
This was a lightning-fast revision, compared with the ones I did for Bringing Stella Home and Desert Stars. Part of that is because I want to try and follow Heinlein’s rules more closely. I recently looked back at how I’ve spent my writing time over the past three years, and found out that as much as 3/4ths of it was tied up in revisions, not in producing new material. Yeah…that’s something that needs to change.
For this draft, I resisted the urge to do a line-by-line edit, and instead focused on rearranging the scenes in their proper order and inserting new ones that were essential to the story but missing from the first draft. That’s probably why it only took three weeks to finish.
I don’t think there are any glaring holes in the story, but if my first readers find any, I’ll probably do another scene rearranging draft much like this one. If they give me the green light, though, I’ll do a quick pass to fix any errors and send it off to my editor to start the publication process.
Two things about Stars of Blood and Glory have really surprised me: first, how little time it’s taken to write it (two months for the first draft, a little less than one for this one), and second, how short it is. Even with five viewpoint characters, it’s less than 80k (Bringing Stella Home was 110k). The pacing feels right, though, so that’s probably its natural length–it’s just that I seem to be writing shorter and shorter novels lately instead of longer ones. Maybe it has something to do with all those David Gemmell novels I love to read.
There’s more I could say, but I don’t want to bore you guys too much. Besides, you probably want me to move on to the next one.
My next writing project is Star Wanderers: Part II, which should take me about a week to revise and another week or two to finalize and publish. If any of you want to help me proofread the final draft, let me know–I’m willing to exchange services and/or give you a free copy.
At the edge of the familiar world lies a threshold, the boundary separating the peaceful, boring land of the hero’s home from the dangerous and exciting lands of adventure. The threshold might be literal, such as the wall in Stardust and Sabriel, or it might be more symbolic, such as the field in Lord of the Rings that marks the furthest that Samwise has ever gone. Either way, the threshold is often the site of the hero’s first significant challenge–and the one who offers that challenge is the threshold guardian.
According to Joseph Campbell:
The ‘threshold guardian’…[stands] for the limits of the hero’s present sphere, or life horizon. Beyond them is darkness, the unknown and danger…The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades.
In terms of story, the purpose of the threshold guardian is not to present some impossible test or to pose some sort of world-altering threat. Rather, they exist to mark the boundary between the familiar world and the unfamiliar, and to show how the hero is different from all the other people who chose to stay at home instead. In other words, their main purpose is to kick-start the adventure.
For example, in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the threshold guardians are the Tusken Raiders who roam the Jundland Wastes surrounding Luke Skywalker’s home. Venturing out into the wastes is dangerous–yet Luke does it, to bring back R2D2 after the droid runs away.
When R2D2 warns Luke that the Tuskens are approaching, Luke doesn’t run away from them–he crawls to the top of the ridge to get a better look. This leads to his first real encounter with danger, and almost gets him killed. Fortunately, Obi Wan Kenobi rescues him and takes him home, telling him about the ways of the force and presenting him with his father’s lightsaber. The adventure is off to a good start.
If Luke had never ventured out into the Jundland Wastes, or if he had run from the Tuskens at the first sign of danger, he never would have been rescued by Obi Wan, never would have learned about his father, never would have left his home and probably would have died when the Imperials attacked his uncle’s homestead. If the Tuskens had never attacked him, he would have loaded R2D2 into the speeder and gone back home, never meeting Obi Wan as well. Without the Tusken Raiders, the whole story never would have happened.
In Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, Draco Malfoy plays a similar role. If Harry Potter had joined House Slytherin, Voldemort would probably have taken over before the end of the first book. Instead, the early animosity between Draco and Harry’s newfound friends pushed him to take sides, setting the stage for everything else that was to come.
The threshold guardians don’t always have to take an adversarial role. In a lot of stories, defeating the guardian means winning an ally, even sometimes a best friend. That’s what happens when Robin Hood spars with Little John–in fact, the trope is subverted because Little John actually wins. Or perhaps the whole thing was a secret test of character, because it’s Robin Hood’s good-natured reaction to losing that wins Little John over.
Not every instance of the hero’s journey has a threshold guardian, but many of them do. It’s a clear and compelling way to mark the threshold between home and adventure, which is present in every hero’s journey, simply by definition. When done well, it’s a great way to show what makes the hero different from all the other would-be adventurers who chose to stay home.
First of all, I recently did an interview with Elizabeth Baxter on her blog, Small Blonde Hippy. In it, I discuss Star Wanderers, Stars of Blood and Glory, and a bit about my path to becoming an indie author. You can find it here–go check it out!
Second, in preparation for the new ebook versions of my novels which I plan to release soon, I’ve been going over some of the old blurbs and updating them. It’s harder than you might expect! I think the new ones are getting better, but I’d appreciate some feedback before I post them. What do you think?
For Genesis Earth:
A BOY AND A GIRL ON A VOYAGE TO AN ALIEN STAR.
Michael Anderson never thought he would set foot on a world like Earth. He only studied planetology to satisfy his parents, two of humanity’s most brilliant scientists. But when they open a wormhole to an alien planet—one emitting a signal that can only be a sign of intelligent life—he soon becomes caught up in the mission to explore it.
His sole mission partner, Terra, doesn’t care nearly as much about the science as he does, though. The child of a bitter divorce, she sees the mission as a chance to escape from the expectations of others.
Before they can work out their differences, a mysterious alien ship begins to hunt them down. Alone, twenty light-years from the nearest human being, they must learn to open up and trust each other—but how can they do that when they can’t even agree why they’re there?
As Michael struggles to keep the mission from falling apart, he is forced to reexamine his deepest, most unquestioned beliefs about the universe—and about what it means to be human.
For Bringing Stella Home:
HE’LL GO TO THE ENDS OF THE GALAXY TO SAVE HIS BROTHER AND SISTER.
The New Gaian Empire is crumbling. An undefeatable enemy from the outer reaches of space is sweeping across the frontier stars, slagging worlds and sowing chaos. No one dares to stand up to them—no one, that is, except James McCoy.
As the youngest son of a merchanter family, James never thought he would get caught up in the Imperial wars. But when his home world falls to the barbarian Hameji, his brother and sister, Ben and Stella, are taken away as prisoners and slaves. With the rest of the galaxy thrown into chaos, only James has the determination to rescue them—even if it means losing everything in the process.
For Sholpan:
SHE’D RATHER DIE THAN BE A SLAVE TO THE CONQUERORS OF HER HOME WORLD.
Stella McCoy never thought she’d fall prisoner to the barbarian Hameji. The oldest daughter of a working class family, all she wanted was to finish her apprenticeship and start a career an astrogator. But when the Hameji conquer her home world with their starfaring battle fleets, she is forced against her will to become a concubine to one of their highest ranking warlords.
Stella would rather die than spend the rest of her life as a concubine. Fortunately, as she looks for a chance to escape, she starts to make friends in high places. But in the dangerous world of harem politics, with new friends come new enemies—ones that have the power to destroy her.
One of the changes I plan to make is to insert the blurb immediately before the first chapter. I’ve heard that a lot of ebook readers are downloading so many free books and samples that it often takes months before they get around to reading them. This parallels my own experience, so I figure it’s a good idea to have something in the beginning to remind readers what the book is and why they picked it up.
Other than that, no big changes except fixing typos and formatting errors. I’m not the kind of writer who makes sweeping changes to a published story based on reviews, one-star or otherwise.
In other news, I’m almost finished with the second draft of Stars of Blood and Glory. This has been a surprisingly fast revision, but then again, that might be because I haven’t sent it out yet to my first readers. Based on their feedback, I’ll probably do another draft before putting it in the publishing queue.
Star Wanderers is going to be my main focus until the end of the year, though. I’ve gotten a lot of excellent feedback on Part II, and should start the revisions in the next couple of days. With luck, I’ll have it published by mid-July. Part III is going to take a little more time, but I’m pretty confident I’ll have it up by October at the latest.
For that to happen, though, I need to get back to writing. So long!
Under the hood of my latest ebook release, Star Wanderers: Part I.
So a couple of days ago, I set out on a quest to figure out a better way to build an ebook. In the process, I ended up learning WAY more about ebooks than I’d bargained for, in the most awesome of possible ways. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so empowered as an indie author as I do right now.
My old process was extremely convoluted. It basically involved saving my manuscript as HTML (introducing all kinds of excess code) and using four or five programs to cobble together a Frankenstein-like creation, with bolts sticking out of its forehead and extra arms and fingers sticking out of weird places. The tools I was using were like blunt instruments, and I was operating them blindfolded.
So what changed? Well, three things:
I added the Writer2ePub plugin for Open Office / Libre Office,
I downloaded an open-source epub editor called Sigil, and
I watched this video:
So what did I learn?
<geek>
First of all, that ebooks are WAY simpler than I thought they were. An epub is basically a zipped folder containing HTML files for the text, jpgs/gifs for the cover and any interior illustrations, a CSS stylesheet, maybe some extra fonts (if you want to get fancy), and two additional additional files ending in .opf and .ncx that look a lot like HTML files.
So why is this so exciting? Because it means that if you know HTML/CSS, you can build a fully functional epub file using only notepad, windows explorer, and the command prompt. THAT’S IT! And if you want to learn HTML, you can do so for free at w3schools.com.
Basically, an epub is structured just like a website, except that an ebook reader reads it instead of an internet browser. If you can build a website, you can build an epub with very little trouble. Even if you can only tweak a website, you can build an epub with very little trouble.
</geek>
In other words, the barriers to entry for ebook publishing are ridiculously low. If you’re patient and a good learner (or hell, just a good learner), there is not a single reason why you need to spend any money to format your ebooks, upload them directly to retailers, or do anything else. Using tools that are 100% available for free, you can create a product that looks every bit as professional as anything coming out of New York–in many cases, even more professional.
So what’s my new process?
1) Format the master file in Open Office.
This includes adding the copyright page and table of contents, adding anchors (in OO they’re called “bookmarks”) and hyperlinks, adding the author’s note and acknowledgments, any teasers, etc. I save the file in open document format, add “Smashwords Edition” on the copyright page and save it as a .doc file for Smashwords.
At some point, I’m going to upgrade to Libre Office, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. When I do, it’ll basically be the same thing.
2) Export as .epub using the Writer2ePub plugin.
I cannot tell you how happy I am with this Open Office / Libre Office plugin. It pulls out all of the unnecessary formatting and breaks up every chapter into a separate, cleanly coded HTML file, all bundled together into a fairly simple epub. SO MUCH BETTER THAN SAVING AS HTML. Or Mark Coker’s “nuclear option,” for that matter.
I don’t add the cover at this point, though. Writer2ePub adds some weird stuff if you do it that way, and I find it easier just to code it manually in the next step.
3) Finalize the .epub in Sigil.
Sigil is basically just an HTML editor with some extra functionality that allows it to build an epub from those HTML files. It’s easy to learn, simple to use, and tells you exactly what’s wrong when something breaks. Unlike Calibre and Mobipocket Creator, you can always see what’s going on underneath the hood. Simple, clean, and elegant. I love it.
This is the phase that takes the most work. I add the cover, fill in the relevant metadata, tweak the CSS stylesheet for margins and indents, add the book guides, build the table of contents, etc. If you want to know exactly how I do this, let me know and I’ll write up a post on it later. It’s a little technical, but not too difficult. Like I said, if you know even a modicum of HTML, you can figure it out.
Once this step is finished, I have the final epub version of my book. I upload that to Pubit! and Kobo Writing Life, and just about anywhere else outside of Amazon where I sell my book. Someday soon, Smashwords will hopefully allow you to directly upload an epub, at which point I’ll do that here as well.
4) Convert to .mobi with KindleGen.
Amazon uses its own proprietary format for ebooks, unlike everywhere else, which takes the open source epub format. This is probably because of all the weird and funky stuff that Amazon likes to track for data collection purposes, although honestly, who knows? A mobi file is about twice as large as an epub, and I suspect that that’s the reason.
KindleGen is a free program that Amazon has made available to developers in order to facilitate conversion of epubs and other ebook formats into mobi. It’s a command line tool, which means that you have to get a little retro to use it. But hey, I grew up in the 90s with DOS, so it’s actually kind of nostalgic.
Once you’ve got KindleGen installed to c:\kindlegen, all you basically need to do is go to the file folder where your ebook is saved and enter the following command:
c:\kindlegen\kindlegen mybook.epub -c1 -verbose
“mybook.epub” is whatever you named your epub file, “-c1” stands for standard DOC compression, and “-verbose” stands for verbose output (whatever that means). There are other options you can enter, but I’m not sure what they do yet. All I know is that if you want to convert from epub to mobi, this will give you a clean result.
There are a few small things that get lost in the conversion, so you need to add them as redundancies in the epub. The biggest one I’ve noticed so far is the paragraph indents: if you go into the CSS stylesheet using Sigil and add p { … text-indent: 2em; … } that should fix it.
And that’s it! Once this step is finished, I’ve got the final mobi version and can upload that directly to Amazon and my kindle. Once that’s done, my book is available from every major ebook retailer in every country in the world. Total time = maybe an hour (plus however long it takes for the retailers to publish the files to their stores).
I know it’s 2012 and this is old news by now, but do you have any idea how cool this is? With one hour of work and two or three programs, all of which are available for free, I can produce a clean, professionally formatted ebook, and sell it around the world instantaneously with a marginal cost of zero.
And now, because I took the time to learn how to use the tools, I can be confident that there aren’t any bits of rogue or useless code in it either. The only “black box” is really the mobi format, but I could probably crack that and figure it out if I wanted to.
So yeah, needless to say, I am extremely happy to be an indie writer. 🙂
However, it is not typically where the story begins. In order for the hero to leave the ordinary world, he must first start out there, so we know what’s at stake and what he’s leaving behind. This is why Luke Skywalker starts out on his uncle’s homestead, and why Neo starts out as a bored and lonely employee of Metacortex. Events outside the hero’s experience may have already put him on a trajectory to leave on the adventure, but he won’t know it until the call comes.
The hero may start out in a quiet, peaceful village, far removed from any sort of conflict–or he may start out in the middle of a crapsack world, as is the case with dystopian fiction. The important thing is that it’s the world he’s always known–that he hasn’t ever really made an effort to leave or change it.
How he feels about his world largely determines how he chooses to respond to the call. In older literature, the hero typically refuses it. The advantage of this is that it gives the reader a sense of scope–that this adventure is not a small or a trivial thing. It also sets up an immediate minor conflict that gives some motion to the opening chapters.
In modern stories, though, it’s more common for the hero (or his friends) to jump at the call. There are also many advantages to this. In Lord of the Rings, it gives Frodo an immediate band of sidekicks. In Harry Potter, it plays up the sense of wonder at the magical world. In the Chronicles of Prydain, it highlights the impulsiveness and naivete of Terran, as he realizes later on in the story just how stupid of him it was.
