{"id":249,"date":"2010-01-17T11:27:53","date_gmt":"2010-01-17T15:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talechasing.com\/2010\/01\/17\/guest-post-why-sidekicks-can-make-it-or-break-it\/"},"modified":"2010-01-17T11:27:53","modified_gmt":"2010-01-17T15:27:53","slug":"guest-post-why-sidekicks-can-make-it-or-break-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/talechasing-com.local\/guest-post-why-sidekicks-can-make-it-or-break-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post: Why Sidekicks Can Make It or Break It"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Kimi graciously invited me to guest post here on TaleChasing<\/i>, I immediately said Yes without thinking.  Then it hit me and I thought, what am I going to write about?  My blog is all about the reader\u2019s experience, and since I know nothing about writing novels, I asked Kimi for some ideas.  She said the writers here would like to hear what fans want to find in great urban fantasies.  That I can do, and I\u2019m particularly inspired at this moment to riff on sidekicks.  <\/p>\n

You\u2019d be surprised how often the right sidekick can take a good story and push it to the next level for me.  I see it as the author\u2019s opportunity to make a serious impression on the reader, because a funny, mean, horny, cute, or sarcastic sidekick is often the thing I remember most about a book.  Here\u2019s an example of how the right sidekick can make even an untried urban fantasy standout from the crowd\u2026<\/p>\n

Over at Dirty Sexy Books<\/a><\/u><\/i> we have an online book club.  Each month we tackle a new genre, we nominate books within that style, and then we vote on a single winner.  Our theme for February happens to be urban fantasy, so we put together a list of eight contenders<\/a><\/u>.  The list is great, if I do say so myself, but it\u2019s never easy for us to pick a winner.  We\u2019re often flying blind, and while we appreciate good reviews, we rely on the covers and blurbs heavily.  I think it\u2019s safe to say that our February winner was picked in large part because of the sidekick<\/i>.  <\/p>\n

\"51XBBrEDVML._SS500_\"<\/a>Our winner is Spellbent<\/i><\/b> by Lucy A. Snyder.  The cover is particularly striking, but what\u2019s even more rare is that it shows the sidekick, a ferret named Palimpsest.  Isn\u2019t he cute perched on the dragon-snake-thing?  This is not the first ferret sidekick I\u2019ve encountered in an urban fantasy (Kat Richardson\u2019s Greywalker<\/i><\/b> series comes to mind), but showcasing the ferret on both the cover and the blurb has piqued our curiosity.  It seems like such a small thing, but in this case it made the difference.  <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While most books don\u2019t feature their sidekicks quite so prominently, they can make mundane scenes magical.  Take Midian in M. L. N. Hanover\u2019s Unclean Spirits<\/i><\/b>.  He\u2019s a cursed vampire who resembles a rotted corpse, he chain-smokes, and he cooks like a gourmet French chef.   I enjoyed his grumpy and gruff observations so much that when he did not make an appearance in book two, Darker Angels<\/i><\/b>, the sequel felt flat by comparison.  <\/p>\n

Sometimes a good sidekick can even be an inanimate object.  I particularly enjoy UF series where the heroine wields a weapon with its own name.  Kate Daniels has Slayer, and Dante Valentine has Fudoshin.  This tradition goes back to Tolkien\u2019s The Hobbit<\/i><\/b> when Bilbo acquired Sting (or even farther back if we include Excalibur).   Even when the sword doesn\u2019t have a name, such as Merit\u2019s katana in Some Girls Bite<\/i><\/b>, I like it when the heroine treats it with respect.  I\u2019ll never forget when Merit received her red lacquered beauty, and the way she introduced herself to it with a little speech.  I find that sharp steel is a girl\u2019s best friend in many urban fantasies.<\/p>\n

While animals or supernatural beings make particularly excellent sidekicks, boring humans need not apply.  If they\u2019re present, I figure they serve the same purpose as the red-clad crewmembers on Star Trek; they\u2019re dead men walking. Even the most beloved characters are never completely safe though, and sometimes it enhances the story to kill off the sidekick.  I know, it sounds cruel, like taking a pot shot at Bambi, but it injects emotional drama, danger, and a sense of purpose into the plot.  <\/p>\n

These kinds of decisions should never be made lightly, and this is why I read stories instead of writing my own.  There\u2019s always a risk that you\u2019ll alienate the readers if you remove one of their favorites, but that can also happen when trying to introduce new characters too.  I recently finished White Witch, Black Curse<\/i><\/b> by Kim Harrison, which is the lowest rated book in the wildly popular Hollows<\/i><\/b> series.  After I finished the book, I read back through the Amazon reviews, and a lot of hot, angry criticism was directed at the introduction of a ghost character who had a shared history with the heroine.  It\u2019s interesting that Ms. Harrison introduced another new character in the same book that met with the opposite reaction.  Nearly everyone loved the small, cute gargoyle, but the ghost guy was persona non grata.  <\/p>\n

Now personally, I have seldom met a sidekick I didn\u2019t like, but Ms. Harrison\u2019s latest book shows that there are exceptions to every rule.  If I could conjure the perfect sidekick it would be funny, fierce, and otherworldly.  I don\u2019t care if the humans bite the dust, but when the trusty sword breaks, or when the faithful sidekick is slain, I\u2019ll shed a few tears and wonder who will take their place.<\/p>\n

_______________________<\/p>\n

Rebecca runs the blog Dirty Sexy Books<\/a> and is a book lover who has taken her fascination with sublime storytelling and pushed it to new and unhealthy extremes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Kimi graciously invited me to guest post here on TaleChasing, I immediately said Yes without thinking.  Then it hit me and I thought, what am I going to write about?  My blog is all about the reader\u2019s experience, and since I know nothing about writing novels, I asked Kimi for some ideas.  She said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[66,106,108,120],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/talechasing-com.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/talechasing-com.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/talechasing-com.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/talechasing-com.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/talechasing-com.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/talechasing-com.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/talechasing-com.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/talechasing-com.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/talechasing-com.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}