Hot answers tagged fantasy
21
Seems to me that consistency is a big thing. Internal consistency and external consistency.
External consistency: on Numb3rs, they use real mathematical jargon assuming people will not understand it and will accept it at the Wikipedia level of understanding. But I actually do understand many of the techniques they talk about and they simply cannot be used ...
18
Look at Stephen Brust's Taltos series. All fantasy, written in a modern voice.
I think as long as you're not using obvious modern idioms, it's fine to write in a modern voice. If you want to put in the time and effort to use a vernacular, that's fine, but it's more often done poorly than well.
Think about it this way: when you're trying to write ...
18
It is a better mentality for fiction, no matter which genre.
Probably everyone wants to be god-like one way or another (even so I doubt it would be fun if you really think it through). But reading about god-like characters is only one thing: boring!
Even if you describe monumental battles, nothing really happens. The reader knows who will win from the ...
14
It often helps because fantasy books often involve quite a bit of travel. It is not strictly necessary for the novel to be coherent, but I have found the ones that I've read that lacked maps to be worse off because of it.
Namely, "The Blade Itself" by Joe Abercrombie is a good example of a book that lacks a map that really needed one. He talks about wars ...
14
Basically, anything that the reader considers implausible when he's already suspending disbelief, can spoil the illusion and break that suspension. The key issue to understand is that up to a certain point, your story is exposing the world of the story, and explaining what's allowed and what isn't. Anything you establish clearly, the reader will be willing ...
14
There are two main ways to structure a series: each book is essentially a stand-alone with a continuing story as part of the plot (Harry Potter), or each book is a critical part of the whole and they are difficult to read out of sequence or without the other books (Lord of the Rings). Either is fine; they just accomplish different things.
Stand-alone books ...
14
What has worked for me in the past is to simply concentrate on telling the story. I'm assuming you are on your first draft and have yet to complete even that. In that case, you need to spend less time analyzing and more time telling your story. If you spend too much time reviewing as you write, you'll end up with a case of paralysis by analysis.
Sometimes ...
13
Time is based on an Event. We are in the year 2010 because someone inaccurately took the birth of Jesus Christ as the base (hence b.c. And a.d. denominations). Other cultures have other years, I believe either the China or the Arabian countries have a completely different year.
In the Star Wars Extended Universe, the battle of Yavin is the base for their ...
13
An invented language can be a tool for exposing the traits of a culture. Different languages not only sound different, but they feel different. They shape ideas differently. They are also shaped by their environments. The way a language works can help illustrate the thought processes of the people who speak it.
As an example, I recently saw the Star ...
12
If I'm following you, it seems that the travelling itself isn't important, but that the characters have traveled is advancing the plot.
You can cut out most of the actual journeying, showing the quest in what the characters do when they stop moving. You can have characters refer to the travelling enough to make it clear how far they traveled -- gods damn ...
12
I have not read it but Soon I Will Be Invincible is the closest I can think of to what you're proposing, other than the excellent short story collection If I Were an Evil Overlord, inspired by the Evil Overlord List.
My question is, why should your main guy be only petty, shallow, and selfish? Do you want him to win at the end, or be defeated? I think LOTR ...
11
So, the inner purpose of the journey is to forge the relationship between the two characters, show the reader how they interact with each other, and also show the reader who each character really is.
Conflicts.
There doesn't need to be any major conflict, but even a minor conflict, just to show how each character reacts.
I'm pulling this out of my head ...
11
If you're writing for an English audience, your readers are expecting an English novel. From a reader perspective, it is utterly tedious to read a lot of dialogue you cannot understand. Providing translations can help, but that's equally tedious, since the POV character won't have those translations. I would recommend keeping use of foreign language to a ...
11
Absolutely. Agents specialize in the genres where they know editors (or they specialize, SO they know editors) and of course some publishers don't publish fantasy at all, while others focus on it.
You can get basic information on this by looking at the books you think yours resemble. You can generally find an author's agent just by googling the author's ...
11
I'm assuming that when you say "realistic fiction", what you really mean is "non-fantasy fiction". Then the answer is, of course fantasy has less of a readership than "realistic" fiction, because you're comparing one genre against the collective power of all other genres.
If we start looking at comparisons between genres, fantasy is probably at the low-end ...
11
Why just as antagonists? But well ...
One of the best monsters out there is a human being. A nice guy. No-one expects (i.e the reader) that he is a monster. A well known pattern with uncountable variations--use them.
Reading mythology of all kind (Greek, Northern, Indian) is a good source for monsters (Tolkien has proved that).
When your kid next time is ...
11
Every part of your work needs to have its own logical arc and structure. In a novel, this can be a chapter or a scene and in a trilogy or series this a book. Each piece should have a beginning, middle, and end. The parts don't live in isolation, though, and each one should leave give the reader enough to enjoy what they are reading but hold back enough to ...
10
To add an extra perspective into the already excellent answer above.
In RP we call characters on a quest to game the rules and create a sort of Mary Sue RP surrogate "Minmaxers" or "Power Gamers" (these are both derogatory terms). As irritating as these people are in a game with an extensively defined ruleset (a "crunchy" system) they have the potential to ...
10
If everything you write is sounding like overused tropes and clichés, it may be that you're simply showing your influences. And when you see your writing, all you're seeing are those influences. Hence, it feels less substantial to you.
What, exactly is "bland, generic fantasy" to you? I suggest you define what it is you're trying to avoid. Make a list if ...
9
I would limit the use of invented languages as much as possible. I'm not saying this to play devil's advocate, but because I often find that exotic names and words distract from the story. In fact, I've written short stories in which all the characters had names like Brown (has brown eyes), Lightning (very fast with the sword), etc. This somehow keeps the ...
9
Isn't one of the non-Rowling definitions of "squib" "a firecracker which doesn't explode"? So Rowling took something which means "has potential or is expected to do something, and fails to deliver," and used it for slang in a very appropriate way.
As I've said elsewhere, copy the work ethic, not the end result. Find or invent some other term which implies ...
8
Is there's anything distinctive about the people of the area? Something that you could show in her rural location and then have her find familiar or comforting in the city?
Alternatively, cities tend to have a wide range of people in them, so maybe there is some element of the xenotic (apparently not a word) that you could use to contrast with everyone ...
8
There is significant overlap in genres, and nowhere more so than speculative fiction. There are few hard and fast rules to identifying genre, and one man's Urban Fantasy is another man's Supernatural Horror. To a certain extent, you can choose the genre you want to claim for your story. What aspects of this story do you consider to be the most important?
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8
If you look to Tolkien, you see no time. Everything is long ago, far away, in the past, whatever. I am a dork of the numeric kind, so I'm forever trying to squash my tendency to use "real" numbers, because I think it's mostly unnecessary, limiting, and a little jarring...When you speak, you never use exact time. The closest you're going to get is "a few ...
8
Have a look around for the AD&D 2nd Ed. Monstrous Compendium (or whatever the current equivalent is under their new rules), which listed hundreds of possible monsters (I think there were several of these books). Easy enough to get ideas from these, or other RPG books.
For my own part, I tend to scour around for books on myths and legends from countries ...
8
On the first draft: you won't. First drafts are almost invariably clunkers.
But your first draft is not meant to shine. Your first draft is meant to get the story onto paper and out of your head where it's been languishing for years.
Once it's on paper, then you can edit, revise, polish, and get an editor/editors to scrub out the bland and generic.
But ...
8
As a rule, when people read fiction from another time period, they expect the culture / thinking style from that period. I can't remember how many books I've read based in medieval Europe, where the hero talks about the rights of man, individuality, democracy etc. I usually throw such books away, as it shows the author hasn't done their research.
Second ...
8
To me, the difference is not whether the story has a logical explanation, but whether it could have an explanation in this universe. Another way to say it: Fantasy may violate what we know to be true of the universe. Science fiction may not.
A monster, an alien planet, or "magic" could be either fantastical or science fictional, depending on whether it ...
8
Is Star Wars fantasy or science fiction? I say fantasy, but they sell it as SF.
So there are stories which meander along the borders. But to categorize your story you should not only ask what it is about. For example it's also important how the story ends.
We are tagging genres to make it easier for the readers to pick what they want. If you sell a romance ...
7
One of the most compelling things about fantasy is that reading a work of fantasy transports you to a different world. Not only are you the reader seeing life through another perspective, you are seeing a completely different possibility for what life might be like.
Because the change in possibility is part of what makes fantasy a compelling genre, I would ...
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