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mark_asphodel Well, I know what I'm doing for NaNo next year. And it'll take a year to research, so I may as well start next week.
I have always had a secret desire to write a novel about the Mexican-American War. Actually, I'd rather sit down and read one, but I've never found one that was any good. Why the MexAm War? Easy. Because it features a sweeping subset of the brilliant, colorful and just plain weird characters that make the American Civil War so damned interesting, only they're fifteen years younger and without the stupid beards. Also, they're fighting in a war that some of them know is totally immoral and Very Bad Juju, but they're doing it anyway because hey, that's their job.
I've read one or two novels that deal with the Mexican War in passing, but it kind of didn't work... the authors had too "stiff" and heroic a conception of their characters, so the Mexican War stuff didn't come alive. It was too weighed down by the future. The thing is, the skinny young lieutenant shooting up a crowd of civilians with artillery fire doesn't know he's going to be Stonewall Jackson some day, any more than another young lieutenant (the one running dispatches under sniper fire) knows he's going to be the U.S. President in a couple of decades. There's fictional foreshadowing, and there's smothering your characters with too much meaning. It's one thing to intimate that Lt. Sam Grant secretly feels that the whole "invade Mexico" business is opening up a Pandora's Box and there's cosmic retribution comin' down the pipeline. But these kids-- and a lot of them were barely out of West Point-- don't know what they are going to be. They certainly shouldn't know that people will still be picking apart their words, actions, and psyches in the year 2010. And writers just go weird when confronted with characters like Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
So, doing it right will take loads of time and effort, and that'll be a project for 2011. In the meantime, I'll go the "easier" route and fanfic it with Seth, Orson, Hector, Eliwood and friends. :D
I have always had a secret desire to write a novel about the Mexican-American War. Actually, I'd rather sit down and read one, but I've never found one that was any good. Why the MexAm War? Easy. Because it features a sweeping subset of the brilliant, colorful and just plain weird characters that make the American Civil War so damned interesting, only they're fifteen years younger and without the stupid beards. Also, they're fighting in a war that some of them know is totally immoral and Very Bad Juju, but they're doing it anyway because hey, that's their job.
I've read one or two novels that deal with the Mexican War in passing, but it kind of didn't work... the authors had too "stiff" and heroic a conception of their characters, so the Mexican War stuff didn't come alive. It was too weighed down by the future. The thing is, the skinny young lieutenant shooting up a crowd of civilians with artillery fire doesn't know he's going to be Stonewall Jackson some day, any more than another young lieutenant (the one running dispatches under sniper fire) knows he's going to be the U.S. President in a couple of decades. There's fictional foreshadowing, and there's smothering your characters with too much meaning. It's one thing to intimate that Lt. Sam Grant secretly feels that the whole "invade Mexico" business is opening up a Pandora's Box and there's cosmic retribution comin' down the pipeline. But these kids-- and a lot of them were barely out of West Point-- don't know what they are going to be. They certainly shouldn't know that people will still be picking apart their words, actions, and psyches in the year 2010. And writers just go weird when confronted with characters like Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
So, doing it right will take loads of time and effort, and that'll be a project for 2011. In the meantime, I'll go the "easier" route and fanfic it with Seth, Orson, Hector, Eliwood and friends. :D
