Category: Articles

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What Is Geek Rock?

When Alex DiBlasi and I first set out to academically explore geek rock, we began by defining a set of criteria to describe what, exactly, IS geek rock.  I had suggested that we present a panel on geek rock at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association annual conference, and our panel set the tone and provided much of the feedback for the definition(s) and criteria that you can find throughout our book Geek Rock: An Exploration of Music and Subculture (which, btw, is the first and so far only book to address geek rock in an academic context). The really fun part (well, there’s lots of really fun parts) about trail-blazing is the very nature of trail blazing itself–marking out the general path. In our book, our authors (including ourselves) have come up with a set of criteria that we think is pretty good, but which also only serves as starting point to pave the way.

1. Geek rock is “geeky” by virtue of its lyrics. They Might Be Giants allude to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” in “No One Knows My Plan.” TMBG not only reference classical philosophy, but they are referencing it in a song sung by a narrator who is prisoner plotting to escape his cell–and he narrates his unknown plans to a rather calypso tune. This is geekery at its finest, in my opinion, because of the musical geekery (see #2) juxtaposition with the literary geekery.

2. Musical geekery is also frequently seen in geek rock. By this, I mean musically referencing other songs, genres, or artists, and/or displaying a knowledge of, well, music. An example: Barenaked Ladies’ references to Rush in the song “Grade 9,” on their album Gordon. Implicit in this reference is the idea that Rush is a band you could not only discover in 9th grade, but that you could fandom in 9th grade (I’m using fandom as a verb here because I think fandom is a complex phenomenon of joining, allegiance, exuberance, and influence. It seemed the best way to indicate the discovery of an artist in your youth that impacts you significantly.)

3. Geek rockers are geeks. Re: Weezer. After all, they coined the term “geek rock.”

4. Geek rock is generally, like geeks themselves, not terribly mainstream. This one is a little tricky, because what, after all, is mainstream? The popular in popular culture, the mass in mass media, mainstream is also fickle. And panoptic. And quo. But what do we make of the listing of artists from the first volume of Never Mind the Mainstream, a collection of MTV’s 120 Minutes (the alternative music show) from 1991? Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soul Asylum, The Stone Roses, The Mission UK, Bob Mould, The Church, The Cocteau Twins, Julian Cope, Sinead O’Connor, Sonic Youth, Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians, World Party, XTC, They Might Be Giants, Camper Van Beethoven, and Modern English. Once obscure, several, if not all, of these artists are far more “mainstream” now than they once were, reading more like a “Who’s Who” list then a “Who’s That?!” list. Even with the fluctuations in the mainstream, this list demonstrates how geek rock tends to cross the streams, and also exist in the realms of alternative music, or indie rock. Perhaps it’s best to use the lingo of the 90s, and say that geek rock is an alternative to the alternative, without necessarily being isolated from the alternative or the mainstream. It may not generally be mainstream, but it’s not exactly not mainstream, either. Which leads to my last point, #5.

5. Perhaps most importantly, audience interpretation is what makes geek rock geeky. Be it mainstream, alternative, or something else entirely, what really puts the geek in geek rock is the listener. When I listen to They Might Be Giants, I hear layers of possibility in meaning, a playground of interpretation, of sophisticated referencing of literary device and musical homage wrapped in panache. The word “geek” for me, connotates “smart.” Let’s not forget that “geek” was first equated with intelligence, enthusiasm, and an awkwardly zealous focus on pursuits. They Might be Giants are a geek rock band in my book (literally) because they are, above anything else, a SMART band. They fit nearly all of this criteria (not #3. I don’t think they themselves are geeks, and they don’t claim to be, either). My reading of They Might Be Giants as geek rock musicians is what makes them geek rock, perhaps even more than anything they are inherently doing. As a listener, it’s my interpretation and perception, the connotation that I have of “geek,” and my own invested geekiness and geeking out that puts the geek in geek rock.

One of my intentions with this column is to continue to explore geek rock from every angle we can possibly think of. In our book, we have contributions from around the world that explore geek rock from the perspectives of cultural studies, lyric analysis, gender studies, the whole shebang. I want to keep adding to this list, discussing what geek rock is, why it is geek rock, and how geek rock is important to music and, more broadly, culture and subculture(s) in general.

In other words, we intend to geek out over geek rock. And I hope you’ll join us.

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Last of the Code-Talkers

Chester Nez, the last of the Navaho Code-Talkers, died yesterday, bringing to an end one of the more curious uses of linguistics in warfare. For those of you who might not know, in WWII the US military recruited around 400 Navaho to be Marines. Nez was one of the first group of 200. Using Navaho language and new terms coined to describe military topics, these Marines were able to speak in a code that stymied Axis code-breakers. They were so valuable that most of the Navajo serving in the war served as Code-Talkers.

In WWI, the US Army used 19 Choctaw Code -Talkers in a much more limited capacity. Wanting to expand on that idea, Philip Johnston, who was the son of missionaries to the Navajo (and could speak it fluently himself), suggested using Navajo because it “is the only tribe in the United States that has not been infested with German students during the past twenty years.”

Perhaps one of the more compelling arguments for funding linguistics and study abroad — because if you don’t, your enemies will say bad things about you and beat you up.

467px-Navaho-enlistment-letter-page01

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Tolkien’s Beowulf — Flash Review

JRR Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf is like the hero himself — flawed, yet triumphant. In his introductory material, the translator’s son, Christopher Tolkien, strikes a defensive tone, and seems to anticipate a negative scholarly reception, yet that tone is unfair to medieval scholars. JRR Tolkien was not only a member of that band of medieval scholars himself, but a chief in his generation, and when “the leader of the company […] opened his store of words,” [Tolkien 209-10, Beowulf 259] you should expect his band to listen with glad hearts.

First, some caveats — this is intended to be a flash review after the first reading. I have not yet read all of Christopher Tolkien’s extensive notes. Also, in order to get immediate access, I read the Kindle version of the translation, which has a few differences. C Tolkien mentions some illustrations his father drew, which unfortunately (and inexplicably) are not in included in the e-book edition.  Also, as JRR Tolkien was doing a semi-prose translation, the line numbers do not match up between Tolkien’s version and the Old English original, and although C Tolkien mentions side-by-side line references to the original, those references do not make it into the Kindle edition. This review is very much my first impressions.

As a writer, JRR Tolkien has two distinct voices in his fantasy fiction — epic voice, of the highborn characters one finds in The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings, and fairy-story voice, more characteristic of The Hobbit and “Leaf by Niggle.” His translation of Beowulf and shorter “The Lay of Beowulf” are both very much of the epic voice — intentionally anachronistic, heroic, and high-minded. “Sellic Spell,” on the other hand, is a retelling of Beowulf in the fairy-story voice. When reading his epic voice, it is hard not to feel as if Tolkien is trying to translate in the style of Lord of the Rings, when we certainly know that since he started Beowulf years before LotR, he was trying to LotR with the voice he heard in Beowulf.

And that voice is (mostly) beautiful. The translation has a few flaws, but Tolkien was writing without the benefit of so many talented translators who came later, and in any case, the flaws are few. For example, early on in the poem , we read this puzzler:

[…] Thereafter not
far to seek was the man who
elsewhere more remote sought
him his couch and a bed among the
lesser chambers, since
now was manifested and declared
thus truly to him with
token plain the hatred of that hall-
keeper [….] (Beowulf l. 138-143, Tolkien l. 111-114)

Huh? Not only couldn’t I figure out what this meant, but it took me a while even to find the lines in Old English he’s translating. To give you a sense of what it’s supposed to mean:

Then it was easy to find a few men
who sought rest elsewhere, at some slight distance,
slept in the outbuildings, once the full hate
of the mighty hall-server was truly told,
made clear as a beacon by signs too plain. (Trans. Howell D. Chickering, Jr)

Ah, OK, that makes a lot more sense. I would guess that one reason Tolkien never felt ready to publish was difficult sections like this.

But bits like that are the exception. Mostly it is beautiful, in my opinion far more pleasing than Seamus Heaney’s famous translation. Take, for example, the lines describing Grendel’s attack:

[….] And that the slayer was not
minded to delay, not he,
but swiftly at the first turn seized a
sleeping man, rending
him unopposed, biting the bone-
joints, drinking blood from
veins, great gobbets gorging down. (Tolkien 601-607, Beowulf 739-744.)

This has been wonderfully translated by others, but the alliteration of “biting the bone-joints, drinking blood from veins, great gobbets gorging down” is visceral in its imagery. Most of the translation is like this, masterful.

So, if you are a Tolkien fan, but not particularly a scholar, how should you read this? You can skip Christopher Tolkien’s preface and all his notes — they are surprisingly good, but I cannot imagine would interest any but scholars — and get right into the poem itself. Read it slowly, lovingly. If the situation allows, read it aloud to yourself or a friend. That epic voice of Tolkien’s fantasy lends itself to a powerful translation.

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Medieval Medicine (and Toothpaste!)

We’ve got this stereotype of medieval people as being stupid and ignorant. When late-medieval poet Petrarch started referring to the early Middle Ages as a time of darkness, he probably didn’t guess that some day he would be lumped into that pejorative category of the “Dark Ages.” Legit scholars today would never use the term “Dark Ages” (except ironically), but the idea remains fixed in the popular mind. I’ve had these types of conversations hundreds of times:

Student: In medieval times, people didn’t know about sex.
Me: Where do you think modern people came from?
Student: Huh. I never thought about it that way.
Me: NOW who doesn’t know about sex?

Student: Medieval people didn’t know as much as we do today.
Me: Like what?
Student: Well, like how to drive cars and stuff.
Me: Why would they know how to drive a car? They’d never seen one.
Student: Right. They were too ignorant to know how to make them.
Me: Could YOU make a car?
Student: Well, no. But I could probably find someone who could.
Me: Can you ride a horse?
Student: I … probably not.
Me: So they were stupid because they never saw a car, but you’re some kind of genius because someone else made you a car, and because you can’t ride a horse even though you’ve seen one?
Student: Riding a horse doesn’t make you brilliant!
Me: Neither does owning a Honda.

You get the picture. And to be fair, 19th and early 20th century scholars often reinforced this attitude. J.H.G. Grattan and Charles Singer’s book Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine (1952) has this little gem:

Surveying the mass of folly and credulity that makes up the A.S. [Anglo-Saxon] leechdoms, it may be asked, “Is there any rational element here? Is the material based on anything that we may reasonably describe as experience?” The answer to both questions must be, “Very little.”

Since that time, scholars have pushed back hard against this idea. For example, just this past week at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Renée Trilling gave an excellent paper on the subject entitled “Between Science and Superstition: Thinking About Anglo-Saxon Medicine.” Historian Winston Black has a recent article intended for popular audiences, and I’ve got a forthcoming article entitled “The Rationality of Medieval Leechbooks.”

The truth is that we have hundreds and hundreds of pages of medieval remedies, and they run the gamut from There’s-No-Way-This-Would-Work to Hey-This-Totally-Works, with every variety in between.  And they are based on an understanding of how the body works that is drawn from observation and reason. Want to find another place where some remedies work, and some don’t? Try the over-the-counter remedy section of your local pharmacy.

So, as a little bonus, here’s a recipe for breath-freshening toothpaste found in Bald’s Leechbook:

If a man’s breath is foul, take good barley meal & clean honey & white salt, mix it all together and rub the teeth with it well and often.

Basically, the medieval remedy for bad breath is to brush your teeth with toothpaste often. Sounds good to me!

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Free Book Offer for Medieval Scholars!

We here at Professor Awesome’s University like free stuff. And we like smart people. So we especially love giving free stuff to smart people.

Side note: We also love giving smart stuff to free people. And free smart stuff to free smart people. We’re just givers, really.

So, this week only, in honor of the 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies, in conjunction with Witan Publishing (purveyors of fine medieval scholarship), we are offering the medieval scholars in our audience TWO chances to get a free medieval e-book of their choice. Your two opportunities:

  1. You can submit a proposal for a book with Witan Publishing. Just click here and send in your initial submission, and mention your free book selection (from the Witan titles listed below) in the “Comments” box (also, mention if you want it in Kindle or Nook format). Whether Witan decides to pursue your project or not, you’ll get the ebook absolutely free, courtesy of Professor Awesome’s University and Witan Publishing.*
  2. What if you’re a medieval scholar but don’t have a project ready for publication at the moment? No problem! Everyone in attendance at Professor Awesome’s session at K’zoo can also choose a free e-book. Just come  to “Irrationality as a Fruitful Methodology,” Session 504 in Schneider 1220. Unfortunately, it is a Sunday morning 8:30am session (boo!), but check out the luminaries in that session: You’ve got The Skipper (of the Englisc Listserv), The Swain (of the Heroic Age), Jenn Jordan (of Darwin Carmichael fame), Deanna Forsman (also of the Heroic Age), and Silas Mallery! All these folks PLUS a free e-book!

Do either of those, and you get to pick one of these freebies, in either Kindle or Nook formats:

  • Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century by Steven Muhlberger
    Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century presents the lifetime of scholarship by respected professor Steven Muhlberger in an accessible format that will engage both scholars and amateur enthusiasts alike. Adapted from various scholarly addresses over Muhlberger’s career, each chapter represents a different element of formal combat. Muhlberger presents formal combats as neither senseless violence, nor stylized maneuvering, but rather as controlled violence with deep personal and political implications. He examines formal combats both among nobles and non-nobles, questioning what these deeds meant practically, culturally, and morally.
  • Drout’s Quick and Easy Old English by Michael D.C. Drout, Bruce D. Gilchrist, and Rachel Kapelle
    Michael D.C. Drout has now transformed his classic “King Alfred’s Grammar” into a comprehensive guide for learning Old English. Appropriate for students and enthusiasts alike, Drout’s Quick and Easy Old English presents the basics of the language in an accessible form. Even the most novice student can learn to read the classics of medieval literature in their original language with this system. Drout’s Quick and Easy Old English covers:

    • The history of Old English
    • Orthography, covering the unfamiliar characters of Old English writing
    • Pronouncing Old English
    • Grammar, from nouns and verbs to pronouns and adjectives
    • Tricks for translation

    With the help of Bruce Gilchrist and Rachel Kapelle, Drout provides exercises to reinforce the lessons. After years of testing in classrooms and online, these exercises have been thoroughly vetted for accuracy by scholars around the world, and have guided countless students through their first lessons in Old English.

  • Insular Art Forms: Their Essence and Construction by Robert Stevick
    Dr. Robert Stevick’s Insular Art Forms: Their Essence and Construction emerges as the most innovative work of his long and illustrious career. Building on years of research into medieval manuscript design and construction, Stevick has produced a masterpiece examining the ingenious ways in which insular scribes used geometry and mathematics to produce complex and beautiful designs. In addition to a detailed academic description of these processes, Stevick provides videos clearly illustrating the methods he describes, and materials for practical hands-on recreation of their methods. Insular Art Forms is the only guide that offers both a true scholarly study of these methods and the means for modern readers to reproduce them.Included along with Insular Art Forms is the Insular Art Online Companion, a collection of videos created by Dr. Stevick to explain certain concepts within the work.
  • Beowulf: A Verse Translation for Students by Edward L. Risden
    Beowulf: A Verse Translation for Students offers the famed Anglo-Saxon epic in Modern English. Noted Beowulf scholar Edward L. Risden has crafted a translation that is accessible even to students with no previous familiarity with medieval literature, preserving the beauty of the original verse without sacrificing accuracy. Risden’s translation presents the tale of the warrior Beowulf and his lifetime of intrigue, heroic deeds, and battles with monsters, and his ultimate confrontation with a dragon. Risden’s Beowulf is the exciting yarn of adventure that should electrify the imagination of every student.
  • Alfgar’s Stories from Beowulf by Edward L. Risden
    Alfgar’s Stories from Beowulf is a work of original fiction by noted medieval literary scholar Edward L. Risden adding to the traditional tale of Beowulf, a heroic Scandinavian monster-slayer. Inspired by the original epic, Risden has created a work of gripping adventure and deep emotion. In “Grendel’s Mother,” Risden approaches Beowulf from the perspective of the feral monster of the same name from the epic. “Lay of the Last Survivor” tells of a fated man who finds himself alone, the sole inheritor of a violent and greedy culture. “Scyldingasaga” goes back to the past before Beowulf, to the exploits of Scyld, Beowulf’s legendary ancestor, events that ultimately set the stage for the famous poem. In “Freawaru’s Lament,” Risden builds on a digression in Beowulf to the story of a woman whose marriage leaves her trapped between two families in conflict that can only end in tragedy for her. 

*One small caveat: It has to be a serious proposal of medieval scholarship, not a memoir of that time you went backpacking through Europe or your research into Malaysian business practices.

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Jean de Meun’s Fortune-Telling Dice

Apparently Jean de Meun, a medieval writer most famous for writing the continuation of The Romance of the Rose, wrote a fortune-telling manual that used 12-sided dice called The Dodechedron of Fortune. The Folger Library has an English-language version, including a sample page of fortunes.  From reading the descriptions of other scholars, it looks like Jean based his 12 on the 12 signs of the zodiac.

No word yet on the location of Jean de Meun’s Monster Manual or Fiend Folio.

 

[For medieval scholars: Looks like it might be covered a bit in a special session at the International Congress on Medieval Studies this Friday at 1:30. Session 239, Fetzer 2040. I already had that marked in my own program even before I knew they were covering this.]

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The “Jesus’ Wife” Forgery and the Limits of Knowledge

It seems that the media is starting to realize that the “Jesus’ wife” papyrus is likely a hoax. This should not surprise us. As soon as we heard that spectroscopy had somehow offered the “definitive” proof (and not coincidentally, just before the annual spate of Easter “who was Jesus” articles), it should have sent up a serious red flag.

Layman who don’t understand textual scholarship (study of books, scrolls, handwriting, etc) typically have an unrealistic sense of what these sorts of physical tests of the artifacts can tell us. They generally aren’t as precise as what we can gather from other types of evidence, such as internal references, linguistic structures, and handwriting styles (I’m talking about paleography here, not the pop culture “Oh, if you make big loops in your handwriting you have an assertive personality” stuff). We can gather information that is both more accurate and precise without ever whipping out a microscope. Usually those sorts of physical tests just work as part of a basket of data confirming what we are already pretty sure of.

But even then, understanding what the information MEANS confuses the general public. For the moment, let’s take out the issue of intentional forgery (which we may have in this case), and assume that we have a legit artifact. And let’s further go into some science fiction universe where we can put the artifact under a microscope and know with 100% certainty that the papyrus was harvested Saturday, May 2nd, 314 AD at 10:52 AM exactly. That doesn’t tell us that the writing comes from that date — it tells us that it could have come from NO EARLIER THAN that date, since it might have sat around for years or even centuries before anyone wrote on it. And since it may be a copy of another text (as was common in pre-printing press days), even if we know that at that very moment a scribe took quill to papyrus, it might be a copy of something first drafted the day before, the year before, or a millennium earlier. Without the other linguistic information, it doesn’t tell us much at all.

But let’s go even farther into the realm of science fiction. Let’s say that we know with 100% certainty that the author of the text first wrote it down on that Saturday morning in 314 AD, and that he was not copying from anywhere else. That would tell us … what, exactly? That some dude in 314 thought Jesus might have had a wife? Heck, I can point to some dude in 2014 who thinks Jesus might have had a wife. Dan Brown made a fortune off that idea — yet it has no bearing whatsoever on whether the historical Jesus had a wife or not, nor is it even an accurate representation of general 21st century belief (let alone 4th century belief).

My point here is not to beat up people who were taken in by a hoax; who hasn’t been tricked at some point in their lives? Instead, it’s to offer a caution — the next time you read a headline saying that some sort of scientific test “proves” something about an ancient, classical, or medieval text: that the Beowulf manuscript was written four centuries earlier than we thought, or that Edward DeVere was really Shakespeare, or that Emperor Shun flew with reed hats — take it with the biggest grain of salt you can find.

__________
Professor Awesome, PhD

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Deadlands TV — Through the Xbox

Microsoft announced yesterday that it will make original programming for the Xbox, that they’re calling “Xbox Originals.” Some of the programming looks like it might be interesting (though even with Ridley Scott and Steven Spielberg on board, do we really need TWO Halo projects?), and other programming, meh.

One exciting project is a show based on the “Deadlands” RPG. Yes, that’s a tabletop RPG, not an MMORPG. For those unfamiliar with the setting, it’s a mix of magic and steampunk in a Wild West setting. The Civil War drags on, and a mineral called “ghost rock” that burns hotter and longer than coal fuels the devices of mad scientists. The town drunk might actually be an intelligent zombie using alcohol to slow his decay, and the cardsharp in the saloon can use playing cards to cast magical hexes. You’ve got spiritual revival among the indians, gunslingers, railroad robber barons — fun for the whole family.

There are some other interesting projects in the Xbox pipeline — “Signal to Noise,” “Humans,” and “Winterworld” all look good — but hopefully a Deadlands series will renew interest in this classic tabletop RPG.

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Happy St. George’s Day! And Sad Shakespeare’s Death Day!

If you like slaying dragons and Elizabethan theatre (and I know you do), today is both St. George’s Day and the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. You might consider doing your Google searches on the UK page, which has as its doodle St. George slaying the dragon (though why Google would position itself as the dragon rather than the saint is unclear). In 2009, Google attempted a St. George & the Dragon / Romeo & Juliet mash-up, though usually they have preferred non-Shakespeare depictions.

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Why Your Fantasy Novel Sucks

There are some phrases you never want to hear. As a publisher and editor, one phrase in particular is a harbinger of doom:

I’m writing a fantasy novel — well, a trilogy, really.

I heard some variation on this theme every week or so, and over time I have developed certain methods allowing the victims of would-be fantasy writers to survive. First, it is important for the victim to accept that loss of the next 20 – 45 minutes of life. Second, the victim should prepare to hear a very long pseudo-history, and perhaps a treatise on pseudo-languages too. And third, if the victim is unable to avoid being force-fed a manuscript, never tell the assailant the truth: Your fantasy novel sucks.

“But wait!” you object. “How can you know it sucks if you haven’t even read it yet?” Well, my friends, as it turns out, I have read your novel. I read it the last thousand times someone else shoved it into my face, with slightly different (yet equally flat) characters and a very slightly different (yet equally thin) plot. It sucked then, and it sucks now.

Books can suck for many reasons, and everyone is (or should be) aware of the usual culprits: The author isn’t well-read, the story is gimmicky, the characters are unbelievable, the plot is poorly constructed, the prose tells rather than shows, etc. Any attempt at writing a book can go wrong, and every professional writer has a few books are articles that they look back on as personally embarrassing. But fantasy novels tend to suck in very specific ways not common to other kinds of books.

The problem is the example of Tolkien. He created his artificial languages, and built around them an artificial world, complete with geography, history, and all the trimmings. And so would-be writers of fantasy novels understandably try to follow his example. They begin like latter-day Inklings, as world builders, cosmic creators, attempting to develop rich settings for their tales.

The problem is, you are not Tolkien. That isn’t to say that you might not have his talent (you probably don’t, but you might). Nor that you can’t have a better writing process than Tolkien — his writing process was famously slow and clunky, and his response to any criticism was to begin rewriting from the very beginning. No, you are not Tolkien in that you simply don’t have the world-building chops he had. Tolkien had become one of the most important medieval scholars in the world by the time he was in his early 30s, so this was a guy who knew all about the world he was building.  He hadn’t just read the classics of medieval literature — he had translated and taught them at Oxford for years before he really started working on his own stories … and they truly were his stories, because he had spent his professional life dwelling in them.  You can have Tolkien’s backwards writing process only if you are Tolkien. The rest of us need to put story first.

When someone tells me they are writing a trilogy, I’ll sometimes ask, “Oh, you have three stories?” And they never do. If I ask them some detail about the history, geography, or languages of their world, they always launch into a long treatise on the subject, but if I ask them questions about their protagonist, or some detail about the plot, they never have much to say. “Well, I’m still working on that,” or “I want to see where the story takes me,” or “I want to get this history right first.”

Would-be writers of fantasy novels see the example of Tolkien and imagine writing a book is a lot like playing “The Sims” — you just build a world, drop some people in it, and see what happens. That just doesn’t work. You might object, “But some authors don’t know how their plot will end!” That’s true, but such authors create rich characters first. You can have a plot-driven story or you can have a character-driven story, but you can’t have a world-driven story. Look at fantasy authors who aren’t Tolkien, and one thing you’ll notice is that maps tend to be drawn by fans, or retconned after the fact. First, comes the story, then they map the world around the story.

OK, so what do you do if you’ve just realized that your nascent fantasy novel sucks? That you really don’t have any kind of story or characters at all? Well, if you’ve really got nothing, just start by drafting out a compelling story (ignoring who’s an elf, or what languages they speak, etc), and then once the story or characters are interesting, map your world out over it. But the truth is, you might already have the seeds of a story in your novel. You know that little throw-away you have about how the kingdom was divided 600 years ago in a clash between two brothers, and the priestess of whatever fake god you’ve imagined prophesied the coming of a hero to reunite the kingdom? Instead of dropping your clichéd prophesied hero into your fantasy world, write the story about the two brothers. THAT story has potential, and if you really want to, after you are done you can end it with the prophecy and follow with a second story about your hero — but this time instead of just some stupid “Uh, I guess he fights orcs or something until he slays the big bad guy with a magical sword” plot, you can have his quest undo what had previously been done by his progenitors, healing his family as well as his kingdom. And this is the kind of thing you could write the heck out of, because you’ve never been the subject of a kingdom-healing prophecy, but you have experienced sibling rivalry, have seen family conflicts spiral out of control, and have turned to your faith to heal the rifts in your relationships. Those are your stories.

To unsuck your fantasy novel, search through all your world-building notes for the seeds of compelling characters and plots. Write about them first, and be willing to completely remake the world to fit your new focus. No one wants you to be Tolkien — Tolkien already did that better than you could ever do. Instead, do something Tolkien could never do — tell your own story.

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