I’ve already mentioned that this last short story had me researching into Tang Dynasty poetry, the imperial exams, short story tradition, and student life. Can you believe all that for 15,000 words? I know readers will always say they wish short stories were longer, but for me, there’s something beautiful about opening up a time capsule and getting just a glimpse. Like one of those crystals you hold up to the light to watch the refraction of its many faces onto the wall.
A short story can’t capture everything, but neither does a full length novel. Nor a whole series of novels, for that matter. To me, a short story is that rare stone, cut in a specific way by the author, in order to catch the light just so.
But I digress! One of the areas of research I touched upon was the music of the Tang Dynasty. Specifically, the pipa. The pipa is a stringed instrument similar to the lute. The name is said to come from the sounds it makes “pi” “pa”.
I discovered there are two styles of pipa music: lyrical and martial.
Here is where my research gets muddy. There’s huge interest in reviving Tang Dynasty style music. Some sources indicate that the popular song “Ambush from All Sides”, which is featured in The House of Flying Daggers, was written in the Tang Dynasty. Other sources indicated that it was written in the classical Tang Dynasty style, but appeared much later. Now, does appeared mean appeared in print? Or that it was composed at that time?
A gold star if anyone can point me to a definitive source.
In them meantime, these two popular pipa songs gave me great inspiration for the mood of my latest short story.
The harder, martial style: “Ambush from All Sides” (aka Ambush from Ten Sides)
The softer, lyrical or civil style: “Falling Snow Decorates the Evergreen”
I just had a breakthrough. I realized why I’m stuck in my current WIP. I had all this research about the Tang capital of Changan, but once I left the city, the geography becomes vague. As a result, two of my books became plagued with what I’ll call “stuck in the forest” syndrome. The characters travel through nebulous trees and mountains and rivers until they emerge in the inhabited world.
I’ll blame the wuxia trope for part of it. A huge component of those stories were travel. Technically, the fictional world where all those stories take place is Jianghu which simply means “rivers and lakes”. If you think of Tolkien’s Middle Earth as the characters traipse through Hobbiton and all the surrounding lands on their way to Mordor, that’s sort of what Jianghu is. And, with all due respect, Tolkien had a bit of “stuck in the forest” syndrome too.
So early on as a writer, I was criticized for becoming bogged down in description. As a result, I started glossing over details to skip to external action. But then, I was always given a lot of positive feedback for description. I think I learned something in the course of writing the subsequent books. I learned how to move my characters through Jianghu, through places and settings that were important. But now I’m back here, back at Book #1 and I realize I’ve got to get these characters out of the forest because Jianghu has more interesting adventures to offer them.
So I’m researching, honest! And not ummm…wasting time on the Internet when I should be writing.
Here’s a quick tour through some ancient sites. It’s amazing what they do with digital animation. *sigh*
Victoria was the first person ever to ask my guest blog! She’s a fellow historical romance author who writes for Harlequin Spice. I was giddy to be invited to blog anywhere. Usually I just ramble on over here.
I’m on her blog today discussing research, my muses and feminism in the Tang dynasty as well as historical romances in general. Hop on over if you have a chance. How did I sound? Too stuffy?
