Hot answers tagged fantasy
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 ...
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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
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 ...
7
It isn't a "bad idea" per say, as long as there are in-world reasons for what you have contained in it.
It's very common to have fantasy stories based in other cultures. Eon, for example, is based in large part in Chinese mythology. Codex Alera by Jim Butcher is based in Roman culture, even though it is not based explicitly in Rome.
World building isn't ...
6
It sounds to me like you may have been meeting with scam artists, or are severely confused about what the actual terms of being publishing are.
When your novel is published with a reputable, honest publisher, the publisher provides the cover. Period. Not only are you not required to have a cover, even offering or mentioning a cover of your own design is ...
5
To me, the science in science fiction is what differentiates the two. That is usually represented by devices of some sort. Nor does it necessarily need to be a silicon-based device, a carbon-based biological based device would equally foot the bill. But there is always some device that is what makes the special power of the world (be it a method of ...
4
I think Philip K. Dick said it best:
Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. This is in essence a judgement-call, since what is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on ...
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The important thing is that your characters do not come over as cruel and sadistic, but they treat it as just part of what happens. So your soldiers who have to impale offenders need to do it with the same sort of mundane routine as others might write weekly progress reports.
If your characters can have slaves as part of a normal life, but ignore them most ...
4
I was confused about Hael Malstrom. The first sentence indicates it is a place (all emphasis mine):
This is a story that parents in Hael Malstrom tell...
The second sentence is confusing:
...when dragons were still common and the Great Fault was young and Hael Malstrom’s redwood was only a sapling on a bare hill...
Hael Malstrom seems to own a ...
4
1) There are seeds of an interesting story there, so the premise is sound (that is, I'm basically interested to continue).
2 and 3) I don't know what your regular prose style is like, but I feel like this could be more lyrical. It doesn't sound like a legend. Legends have longer sentences, more antiquated phrasing, and more detail. They take a while to get ...
3
There are a few ways to answer this. Which answer you use depends on what you want to achieve - something lacking in the original question. Does the work already exist and you're just trying to categorize it? Or are you in the planning stages?
For this answer, I'm assuming that there are deities or other spiritual elements explicitly in your story.
If ...
3
I think you first need to distinguish between whether you are writing fantasy or historical fiction. If you want to write a fantasy novel, then you don't have to depict anything that happened in our own history. After all, you are creating a new world and you get to depict it in whatever fashion you deem necessary for telling your story. If you choose to use ...
3
I think fairy tales and folklore provide a huge resource for monsters. Around the world you can find an infinite amount of scary stories to crib from. You can take them and use them as they are, just bring them to the modern world, or you can re-vamp the to be a modern incarnation of the original.
One thing to bear in mind though is that no monster thinks ...
2
I am not much experienced in writing but coming up with ideas for a creature is not a problem for me, so I will try to help [:
The first thing I think about is its function. For example, I had to create a creature that was linked to the hive mind and its duty was making food, or specifically farming. The farmer had following specifics: a plow on belly and ...
2
It isn't a bad idea. Keep in mind that most fantasy settings today are based on Medieval European era. I see no problem at all using the Japanese one. Honestly it is already done by author. The Seventh Sword Trilogy is shouting "samurai" at me all over the place. And no, it does not play in Japan.
Combining different cultures isn't a mistake either. It's up ...
2
RPG games are the great source of ideas for monsters, as good as spells. Some of them have quite a lot of magical creatures.
One of the games I've played have very many creatures with very strange names. This was Vallheru clone. In fact I've played in 2 Vallheru clones, Orodlin and Khazbanar, but both are based on the same source code available for free ...
2
Whenever this question comes up I always say that the clue is in the name. It's SCIENCE fiction. That means that the story must absolutely rely on science in order to be told and if it doesn't, it's probably fantasy. Now that doesn't mean that the science in the story has to be real, neither does it have to make sense (except within the logical parameters of ...
2
Questions about "what to write about" are off-topic. But your question can be also interpreted as "how to start a novel" and so I'm going to answer that one.
First a misconception on your side:
I know nothing about writing.
This sentence is only excusable as a citation. But your name is not John Snow. So forget about it, because writing this question ...
2
This is a tough question and it's been in my brain all day. I've been trying to really think about what separates these two groups, which I hoped would lead me to what brought them together. At first I was thinking about sentience, but it doesn't sound like you have a person falling in love with a rock, but instead robots (or something akin).
So then I ...
2
Real difference:
Science fiction pretends to be possible. It says We haven't managed to pull this off yet, but we still might someday! Or else, it says We never pulled this off, but if history had gone a little differently, we could have!
Fantasy flat out says This shit is impossible, but it's happening anywayyyy!!!!
Secondary difference which is a ...
1
There is no standard definition. And not just for historical fantasy. Give me a definition, and I will show you a best selling book that doesn't follow it.
If your book has both historical and fantasy elements, you can market it as historical fantasy. If you think this will hurt your chances, feel free to emphasise either the historical part or the fantasy ...
1
I would say Mercedes Lackey's Shadow of the Lion and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell would both qualify as "historical fantasy." The latter has relationships, but I wouldn't call them "romance."
Actually, Lackey's entire Elemental Masters series could be historical fantasy. Again, there are pairings, but whether you'd call them ...
1
I'm not familiar with this "domain" level in taxonomy. That must be a new idea since I was in school. Of course Linnaeus originally defined the kingdom as the highest level, and he identified three kingdoms: plants, animals, and minerals. When I was in school I was taught that biologists debated whether things like fungi should not be broken out into a ...
1
To come from the other side, I think fantasy will usually have characters with some form of "mystical" power - however it is described or explained - which is core to the story. The power is not something created - which would imply that everyone could have it - but something which is indigenous to the character or characters.
In SF there is often no sense ...
1
From the reader's perspective (at least such reader like me) it's very interesting to read the fantasy stories placed in historical realities. And it applies to both stories which are placed in more exact realities and the stories which are only inspired by the real world.
There's, for example, polish writer Czesław Białczyński who has invented the Slavic ...
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It's interesting to see @Standback propose dealing with the problem by creating an anthology of short stories. Clearly there's a dissonance of execution between the first installments and the last two.
But perhaps the real resolution of fitting format and structure with story would require stepping outside the print notions of (one-volume) books and the ...
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I've read one simple rule for determining if the work is science fiction or not: if you can take out the science fiction element out, and still have the same story, it's not science fiction. For example, if it is science fiction just because it's happening on a spaceship, and could just as well be happening on a seventeen century pirate ship and still have ...
1
Yes, you should avoid using modern words in fantasy because they can break the immersion which readers are experiencing.
That said, many words are not as modern as you might think. "Rockets for military and recreational uses date back to at least 13th century China," so they can exist in medieval-themed fantasy world. Tug of war "was practiced in ancient ...
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