Huh. I have no recollection of this. I thought they appeared much, muuuuch later. Edited to add: Which is not to say that I doubt you. Just that apparently they made no impression on me whatsoever.
I certainly don't remember any zombies being mentioned as such in the first couple of books, which is as far as I got. If White Walkers morphed into zombies later on, I missed it. I thought they were another race or culture of humans. If they made the zombies—how do you make a zombie? No, I don't want to know—
I know, but didn't some of the dead wildlings the Watch came across come back to life? Might have just been in the show where the little girl was dead one moment and then walking around the next. Either way, later in book 1, they found a brought a dead guy back to Castle Black who came back to life and Jon Snow had to re-kill his ass. Personally, I never made it through the first chapter of book 2... the writing was clunkier than my 1984 Camry with the rusted undercarriage.
I didn't even try reading the second one. I read the first one expecting a bad story with good writing, but it turned out to be the opposite: a mostly-good story with problematic parts, but incredibly awkward writing to slog through.
@EdFromNY, when you wrote the initial question, "What is it with new writers and fantasy," what did you mean by "fantasy"? I have a hard time thinking you meant "What is it with new writers and The Picture of Dorian Grey?" or "What is it with new writers and the Odyssey?" We might be able to delete 2/3 of this thread if we could get a clarification.
Fantasy is a wonderfully wide field and its relatively easy to write. Your imagination can run wild with little to no limit to scope of the setting, characters or the type of story you can tell. Plus its been popular for so long that their are almost endless sources of inspiration for others to drawl on in common culture. IMO
I'm writing a fantasy book and I do not see how it is 'relatively easy' to write. But, honestly, I do not see how any book of any genre can be 'relatively easy' to write. But, I'm willing to listen. Can you explain your statement, please.
Usually, people mean, “easy relative to literary fiction,” which is true in the sense that I’m not going to go back in time and read a bunch of literary fiction so that I can write it instead. It also hinges on what you think literary fiction is, and if you can accidentally write it while shooting for a genre (I think you can).
Usually, people mean, “easy relative to literary fiction,” which is true in the sense that I’m not going to go back in time and read a bunch of literary fiction so that I can write it instead. It also hinges on what you think literary fiction is, and if you can accidentally write it while shooting for a genre (I think you can).
I don’t know about the easier part. I suspect most good literary fiction writers couldn’t write a compelling thriller, and most writers who are really good at thriller would have a hard time with literary fiction. Same with fantasy versus literary, etc. Of course, there is genre fiction that is also literary fiction.
Many new writers are seeking an escape from everyday life. Fantasy offers that in abundance. My first novel was fantasy and continues to be my favorite. I identify with the protagonist, except that he got the life I always wanted and I suspect that I got the life he wanted. Funny thing about writing, we tend to romanticize what we find lacking in our own lives.
In my opinion, as a fantasy writer myself, it's easy. I would definitely call Fantasy one of the easiest genres to write for the sole fact that, you actually don't have to follow the rules of the world, you can make your own rules. Yes, the escapist fantasy is also a driving factor, but I would definitely say it's mostly because Fantasy is easier than most other genres.
It’s easy if you want to write crap. To write good fantasy you have to make up logically consistent rules to your world and follow them in a consistent manner. Everyone knows the rules of the real world, so that’s much easier to deal with.
Alright, I think I'll make a clarification here. When I said that "you actually don't have to follow the rules of the world", I meant the rules of the real world, not the created one. That one's on me, I should've been more specific. I feel that, when someone writes Fantasy, it's easier because the rules of your world doesn't have to follow the rules of the real world. Again, I should've made my point more clear the first time, that's my bad.
The problem is—it does have to follow the rules of the real world except where you’ve created rules for something like magic that don’t follow the real world. So you’ve got all the baseline rules of the real world that any writer has to follow, and then the job of creating rules that violate them in certain cases, gaming out their implications, and following them consistently. Unless you’re writing a story where you just invoke magic anytime you want to do whatever you want, and that’s usually bad writing.
When someone writes Fantasy, it's easier because the rules of your world doesn't have to follow the rules of the real world. <-- This one? Well, magic would be a pretty big one, with it breaking the law of conservation of mass. Also prophecies that actually have credibility. Or magical items that have a kind of pseudo-sentience. Also, when "The Power of Friendship" actually grants special powers, instead of just giving a boost of determination or will. Also talking animals (not as common, I know). Or straight-up Gods (Looking at you, Riordan). Well, I honestly didn't consider some of these when I first made my response. This was kind of fun. So, thanks for that. The same goes for you Steerpike.
Well damn, I actually don't have a counter to that one. I guess I didn't really have a good point in the first place. Guess I'll have to rethink how I look at the genres, huh?
Many writers find their own lives to be tedious and boring. They turn to fantasy because its more interesting. However, they fail to grasp how exhausting universe building can be. Too many new fantasy writers are great at telling the what, but fall short when it comes to why.
You can have all of that stuff. The more of it you have, and the more they affect the resolution of the conflict, the trickier it becomes. Take gods, for example. Perhaps the best recent example is Steven Erikson's Malazan's books, because the gods are active in the world. Because of that they need to have, and do have, limitations--often quite serious limitations, including the fact that they can be killed. Erikson has one of the most heavily developed worlds in fantasy, and pulling off what he did is a lot more difficult than setting something in the real world. Magic powers, items, and the like, have to be similarly constrained by magical rules, at least if you're going to use them to resolve conflict. The most common examples where magic doesn't seem to have a lot of rules, or at least doesn't seem to have a lot that are stated by the author, are old sword and sorcery stories like Conan. But the distinction is that magic in those stories was generally evil and not used by the protagonist to resolve the conflict. You can get away with more amorphous, ill-defined magical powers if the antagonist is using them and your protagonist has to overcome them. But as soon as you start using magic or other non-real aspects of your fantasy world to resolve conflict, you've got to have some logically-consistent definition around them or you're just using it as a deus ex machina, which is typically bad writing in any genre.
One of the biggest mistakes new fantasy writers make is thinking they can get away with anything without thinking it through. When it comes to magic I refer them to what is now knows as Sanderson's first law.
