Speaking as a SF/F first-time novelist-to-be: I've always been a fan of fantasy; yes, HP, LotR, but also Bruce Coville and Unicorns of Balmora. But I'm not writing 'high fantasy'--been there, done that, yall don't want to read that manuscript. I'm writing sf/f--because I watched Andromeda. I have, for as long as I can remember, had a crush on Kevin Sorbo. First in Hercules, then in Andromeda...He's the only actor to have played the lead character in multiple fanfictions that I've done, not that that factoid is particularly relevant. But the point is, I'm writing space fantasy, instead of high fantasy, because of how much Andromeda meant to me. I don't want to be Bruce Coville; I don't want to be JRR Tolkien. I want to stand on a stage somewhere, on some far future day, and have someone say of me, 'There goes the next Gene Roddenberry.' For me, sci-fi/space fantasy was such a huge part of my childhood that when I discovered Andromeda, it just felt...right. It felt right to me. The genre feels like home. But it's magic, so it's space fantasy rather than scifi...also, fantasy fans are generally more forgiving of continuity errors and 'because magic' than sci-fi fans.
I love it. I was handed The Hobbit by my father when I was 11, in 1984. Then I moved to LoTR, obviously. These were my very first books read. My father was a fantasy and Sci/fi enthusiast, and I was influenced by him -for which I'm grateful for. There were no easy accessed Fantasy movies or TV-shows then, only lovely books with pages thin as the Bible's. Star Wars was out, and I was a SW fan, but Fantasy was never accepted like Sci/fi was, at the time. Ever since then, 90% of what I read is Fantasy or Sci/fi. 100% of what I write is Fantasy. Today, as pointed out, LoTR paved the way for Fantasy in a broader scale. There were many great Fantasy movies during the late 80's and during the 90's, but by chance and skill, P. Jackson got the budget to bring it BIG! And succeeded. Then came HP etc etc. I live in Sweden, and I looked at some book stores and their sales of Fantasy books after LoTR premiere, and well, the chart goes through the roof. I know HP is considered Fantasy, but in all honesty it isn't classic or high fantasy, but sure these books and movies helped too. So JK Rowling's annoying little magician and P Jackson's adaptation of the books is what the millennials grew up with, in an era when money and technic favour movie makers, and most content is viewed online, its as easily absorbed by them now as it was for me with books in the early 80's. And of course, writing is the first step in bringing your imagination to life. I applaude amateur Fantasy. New worlds and new species to loose one's self in. Magic and dragons! Love, murder and gritty circumstances. When I was 14, only nerds and suspicious people read and liked Fantasy. Today every snap chatting and Instagraming teen wants to own a dragon or dress up as a knight or assassin. It's like everyone has taken the red pill and experience how deep the rabbit hole really is, and what their minds are capable of enjoying! Long live Fantasy!
The irony being that 3, 4 and 5 are broken in Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire. Two bloody good fantasies (especially where $ is concerned) ie. Dothraki, Dwarves, Elves (for 4/3) and ie. Histories of both are incredibly "logical". I don't see those two as errors, at all, and think it's worth breaking them where possible.
For (3) are you missing the "that never go beyond one dimension" part? You're not really recommending a one-dimensional society, are you? I'm not actually seeing what you're saying about the others, either, but that one I find particularly puzzling.
Of course I'm recommending it. The Dothraki are one dimensional. They follow the Khal. Big whoop. Fascinating read, chum. EDIT: They have to be one dimensional so we don't have a story about the intricacies of the Dothraki and instead he can tell his other story. (this is also why we, the reader, don't care that they are so boring)
I disagree that one dimensional is ever a good thing. You don't have to tell everyone about all the dimensions in excruciating detail, but that doesn't mean that not even having them is a good thing.
Something tells me you haven't read A Song of Ice and Fire, because we're given an in depth look at Dothraki society. Weddings, general lifestyle, how they wage war, taboos and lack thereof, and funerals. Hardly one dimensional.
Every time someone mentions dothraki I get an image of big fury space cats, but that was the kilrathi. Far more interesting in my opinion. Whats also interesting is that this thread started way back in 2013. I doubt the thought was new then and its still relevant now. Fantasy tends to have the biggest impact on us, especially when growing up. You remember fantastical things (like big furry space cats) so it is no wonder that so many new writers turn to fantasy, or sci-fi, first. You are letting your imagination run away with things. You tend to see 'real world' genres written by older people, often with experience in that particular field.
People reduced to being one dimensional occurs often in media. War movies are very guilty of this. The good guys are an adventuring band of various characters while the bad guys are a nameless menace. Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter was published in 1924. Tolkien's LOTR was published in 1954. You can see a maturing in the way Tolkien writes his story from the way Dunsany writes. I believe what today's fantasy readers are wanting to see is writers taking the fantasy genre forward the way Tolkien did. I did say fantasy, but, I want to single out high fantasy. As readers mature, they want their writers to mature with them. Godspeed!
Bradbury: Sci-Fi : Dead Andre Norton: Sci-fi : Dead Timothy Zahn : Sci-fi : 60s Piers Anthony: Sci-fi/Fantasy : Late 70s Asimov : Sci-Fi : Dead Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional. All the greats in those 2 genres are old/dead farts. Don't talk bad about Sci-fi, or you get the Q.
Then you are saying that more dimensions = ALWAYS necessary, well, in a story you would enjoy reading. Anyway. I disagree with this. That several dimensions are always necessary (even for someone as... er... like 'you'.) Mostly on the grounds that we do not go into absolute specific detail about the thisness of every single object in our story just so the reader can get a better picture of what is going on and shorten things (leave them up to the imagination of the reader) - "he drew the half-full pot from the well" instead of "he drew the half-full pot of water from the well which was made of a fine clay mined in the region of Diss which is known for its amazing clay, on top of this, the pot had small cracks in the side which were made from when it was dropped a few years ago by the clumsy porter named George. George used to whisper sweet nothings to the pot at night and the sheer ferocity of one passionate encounter left the pot cracked and what he considered broken, his pot, it no longer was, but let me not stop you there! The water inside, oh, let me tell you about the water inside! This water came as rainfall which had evaporated into the sky just once, as a mass, yet each particle fell in the same area! It did!" - and so on and soforth. I'll not go down to the quantum level because this is boring in relation to the story, which is nothing to do with George, nothing to do with Pottery, nothing to do with Diss, nothing to do with hardly any of the above and is all about 'A brave warrior knight called Sir Gauen on his way to the castle to fight the evil king Hodor.' - that, and Sir Gauen is just trying to draw a drink before he equips his armor and is off to battle. But do you see how adding many dimensions to a simple thing (that only need be simple) is unnecessary, and in this case certainly taxing to the reader? Sure, we can introduce this pot in a way that makes it three dimensional, but again, what's the point? ....and Merlin spoke in tones of dread "upon thine arrival to the Castle. Draw from a pot, you shall know it. Ravaged by a porter named George and mild cracks down the side, thou shalt know of it upon it reaching thine eyes! Twill of thine thirst... quench." Merlin flashes a devilish grin towards Sir Gauen to let him know the author is fucking with him. and then we'll expand on it a little more in a later chapter just in case to drill it into the reader's mind that this pot is VITAL to the plot and everything about it is VITAL to the plot, even though we never meet George, never see the pot and once it's drunk from... nothing happens... it's just a pot. ...and King Arthur declared "Few have had their parched mouths blessed by the kiss of this so-noble pot. Legend has it, and heard have I, that this pot, by all accounts... ravaged and cracked in a state of drunken lust by a porter named George, passed down, for generations, since the Druidic tribes. Christ touched it." Arthur nods as to affirm his belief in the rumour "and in this pot, within this pot, the contents of this holy, blessed, sacrament of God... is a drink of water." Essentially, the same goes for characters. And armies, and races. Our expansion need only be as much is as necessary to affirm its importance within the story. People don't need know every dimension. Now characters, they have to be 3D, unless they are plot oriented only (one or two lines, a barman or such), in which case... It helps to create them as 3D and then figure out how they'd say what they say... and to whom. Sure, what I just did was telling the reader excruciating detail. But when you're creating something that is 3D, you have to do all this legwork and consider all of these things, along with slotting them into your own history that you're creating. Frankly, it's easier to just have a pot there. Why? Who cares. When is it there? Now. Why was it brought there? Dunno, who cares. If Sir Gauen acts like pots are always at wells, they're always at wells. Where will it be when our hero leaves? Still there. How did it get there? No one cares. Et cetera.
Actually, I'm not saying that. For one thing, I think that you may have misread part of my post: Above, "having them" doesn't necessarily mean having them in the final words of the novel. It may mean having them in the author's mind, even though very little of that lands in the novel. Also, I didn't say "necessary". I said that one-dimensionality is not a good thing. I think that it's rarely to never good for an author to say, "You know, I have too deep and complex an understanding of this character/society/culture. It would be better for me to throw that understanding away." Again, he doesn't have to write it all. But that's not the same thing.
I added an edit dealing with this. I was answering only your disagreement before that, check the italics at the bottom.
Nothing like the smell of smug elitism. This comes off as an argumentum ad absurdum. Something being three dimensional doesn't require excruciating detail. Nor does it require you to write mind numbing infodumps. To circle back to where this began, the Dothraki are given their dimensions over the course of A Game of Thrones, and to a lesser extent in the other novels. A steady drip of relevant information that reveals them as more complicated than Generic Barbarian Tribe A.
I don't feel that you're following my point. I also think that it's entirely possible that you just misstated your original point.
I'm barely halfway through the first novel, and I agree; they're not particularly detailed, but we're given so much to help us understand just how different they are to the rest of the world.
I never set out to write fantasy, mystery is my genre of choice, but for some reason this one I'm working on now just came to me. And these characters are far pushier than my mystery characters. I go with the story that comes to me and consider genre later.
Table top gaming, video games, orsen scott card, terry brooks, terry goodkind, robert jordan.... My favorites. As for me fantasy is my life I'd be one of those nerds larping if I had money to sink into it. ETA: I like to think I lean more towards sci fi fantasy with what I'm writing. Ignore all my grammer breaking rules toddler feeding time ETA: It's not really a resurgence as much as its always been there popular to begin with, many nerds like me write quietly in their homes and few gain the courage to show their work. ETA: Larping and games doesn't make for an immature person, everyone has their hobbies. I'm mature, clean, and not typical of a nerd. Responsible and handle money and finances rather well. My needs come way be for my wants, and my needs are my family. I saw fantasy being labeled as immature but I could turn around and label another genre I don't care for the same way. But I don't.
That last part there. I'm depressed as shit and it's always been my release to be someone I'm not. I've accepted this. I enjoy roleplaying from the perspective that it allows me to pretend I'm someone else with different problems, not be mediocre, and gives me temporary relief from the stress of life as well as entertain me. I grew up in an abusive environment so being a heroic character always gave me some kind of control over that environment. ETA: Some people say this is narcissism, being a gamer, roleplayer or whatever, but I feel like it can be the contrary as well if anything I have a low self-esteem and that's not narcissism I'm my eyes. I noticed growing up writing fantasy or loving it also go one labeled this way. But if I were to systematically start labeling my friends growing up only 1 of them would have narcissistic tendencies. Everyone else while lacking maturity and is depressed they are looking for that escape as well. I wasn't trying to make things awkward sorry if I did. I just had to point out a huge majority of people in my area display crippling depression, anxiety, or other problems and fantasy or sci fi is a common way people escape and relieve.
