Excuse me? I don't know what fantasy this person reads, but maybe they're referring to a children's fantasy book they read. Sorry, but that's a CRAZY statement.
Am I alone in not really seeing what was particularly trollish in that post? Maybe the 'easy' part, but mostly everything was pretty agreeable. It just needs to be interesting, either through world building, or through characters or both.
I don't know either. I don't try to troll. Sometimes I say shit people don't agree with, but of course if you're the type of person who attributes malice to your opponents by default, then I can see why you would interpret it as trolling. My fucking eyes. These contacts. I need glasses.
Why would you say fantasy is easy to write compared to any other genre? Considering fantasy is a broad term that easily incorporate history elements, horror, mystery, romance and pretty much anything else, it would be just as hard to write it as any other genre. Do you really think the recipe is: Add a dash of elves, some racial slurs, some long forgotten war, add evil character, add prophesied main character, write 500 pages, and done? Romance is easy to write. Just add a woman who recently lost her husband and add in a sexy gardener. Done. Mystery? Have the least likely person be the killer. Horror? Cabin in the woods style. Historical fiction? American's vs nazis. Make some short of family drama for the MC with a case of PTSD and war horrors. It's easy if you make it easy and decide to not do anything with the genre. Why bother trying to be original when you can copy/paste whats been done hundreds of times over? The only "easy" part about fantasy is that you do not need to do research on the fictitious elements since they're not real. However, a lot of research can be done on the subjects the fantastic deals with and a lot of fantasy has strong ties to real myths and creatures as well as cultures that dealt with lots of supernatural forces, gods, and what-have-yous.
When you're talking about a genre and someone comes in talking about how 'easy' it is to write, I figure they probably know better and are just trolling. I could just be ignorance, I suppose. I've seen people make comments about how fantasy is easy, romance is easy, children's books are easy, etc. Such people don't know what they're talking about or else they're just intended to insult a group of writers who write something different than what they like. No great mystery why that's trolling or an equivalent.
The The easy comment was immediately clarified. If you'd like, can you drop that bit and respond to the rest of his post; the point would be the same. * you can drop... My German seems to be leaking through into my native English. Oh dear.
Spoiler: What a Teacher Makes Source: http://zenpencils.com/comic/124-taylor-mali-what-teachers-make/ This is a comic that rather explains well the point of never assuming anything about a persons work (In this case, how a certain type of writing is "easy" or less "meaningful" or less "literate" than this or that) I think it was the wording that was wrong.
That was a great poem and exactly why I reacted the way I did. I could've said more, but I calmed down.
Let me try and string together a reasonable statement here. It's late, had a long day. Sorry for any rambling. What I meant was that fantasy is easier or at least less intimidating to the youth than most other genres since it requires far less life experience to have a reasonable chance at. It requires little knowledge about the human psyche in comparison to horror, it requires less intricacy than crime (easier to avoid plot holes), it requires less historical knowledge than historical fiction. All you need is a good imagination, and fantasy truly allows you to paint anything from Rembrandt to Picasso to Dali onto your paper. Not only that, but evidently the magical and eccentric is appealing to children from a young age and also into the teenage years since it is an escape from reality. We've probably all had our own imaginary world at some point. Perhaps they aren't ready to deal with deeper aspects of the human condition. Not to say that good fantasy doesn't encompass this.
I'd point out, as well, that this is an opinion which has seen drive outing in this thread already, and fantasy can, obviously, still possess the intricacy of crime fiction (for example) without requiring it in the same way.
My intention wasn't to bastardize the genre. But words scramble when your eyes don't work, your only desires is to walk up a bridge, look over the edge, and ask the water for a kiss. When dreams become nightmares and light is just a shadow of the day before. And the day before.
There's nothing "easy" about good fantasy. An "interesting story that you can read at leisure without feeling pain. Interesting characters and interesting world building." is something that takes a lot of work to pull off well.
I am a brand new writer. Ever since I was you I have loved the fantasy genre. There is just something that draws me to it. Maybe its been TV and movies or even video games, I honestly cannot tell you. I think it is a very broad genre. In a fantasy, anything can happen for whatever reason. There is much freedom in it. I like to read and do it quite often, the fantasy genre is the only genre of book that pulls me in and keeps me in. Whether its Christian fiction written by Frank Peretti or fiction written by Kafka, these books that have fantasy elements draw me in. It makes you think. It lets me escape from reality even for a minute. That is just how I feel about this genre and why as a new author I am going to write a fantasy novel if not a series. Thanks
It's not an insignificant detail. If you haven't read any, or very little, then your perception of the genre is based on lack of information. If you're widely-read in the genre, then something else is going on and it's probably not worth responding to. Of course, there are fantasy novels as intricate as any crime novel, and that explore the human psyche, and do all of the other things you say fantasy novels don't have to do. There are fantasy novels that don't do these things, of course, but then again I've read crime novels that aren't intricate, and plenty of novels across various genres that aren't doing much looking into the human psyche. You've decided to fixate on fantasy. OK. I'm guessing you don't know much about the genre.
Honestly, I only chose to write fantasy because I was inspired by Tolkien. And it's alluring, being able to write whatever I damn well please.
I know I'm sticking my neck out here, but consider a fantasy story based on a known cannon. Then, consider fanbois (i.e. "Batman would never do that!" or "In issue #702 of Detective Comics, back in 1953, yadda, yadda, yadda) That's really hard. Now, I'm writing a YA fantasy series which takes place in the real world. I have to study the continuity of operations plan for Colorado Springs, small team military tactics, Norse mythology, archaeological scholarship, PTSD in teenage boys, herbalism, and a hell of a lot more. My series requires both research that authors do when writing for a real world setting and research that authors have to do for fantasy settings. I have to stitch them together seamlessly and believably. My experience is that making real world things accurate and believable and not weighing down the story is much harder than simply making a fantasy setting believable.
I don't know if I'm repeating what has already been said, but I'll say it anyhow. Yes, writing fantasy can be easy. Writing in general can be easy. It just won't be much good. The best books are the ones that are hardest to write. But the main attraction factor of fantasy, for me at least, is getting to assemble together this creation, this world that people can dive into and explore. A place where the people and the cultures leap off the page and into the reader's head. Why do you think game franchises like the Elder Scrolls are so popular? Why do you think Tolkien's Middle-Earth and C.S Lewis' Narnia were so rampantly popular? All three made their worlds real enough so that people could escape into them.
