It may just be me, but it seems people aren't realizing that there's a difference between good fantasy and bad fantasy. You can easily write a historical novel without doing much research, it'll probably be a bad historical novel...but the same is the case of a fantasy story set in a world that no work has gone into.
You're basically saying that it can't exist because you can't imagine it . You mean like the white walkers in "Game of Thrones"? They just exist and do the things they do. And they also only attack at the beginning and the end of the tv season . Then we got a person who is immune to high temperatures (fire), but none of her relatives are (brother killed by molten metal). The sour grapes argument What was this thread about again?
It's not about work so much as how much and what kind of work. World building a fantasy novel is purely a work of imagination (combined with common knowledge), and there's a lot more flexibility. I don't mean the flexibility to be self-contradictory, but the flexibility to build the world according to the needs of the story. In the novel I referenced earlier, I wanted there to be a large number of independent and isolated nation-states that were inexorably being invaded and taken over by a larger outsider. Geography is obviously going to be a factor in the isolation. I could have made my nation-states islands, but I made them mountain valleys instead, with the invading force based on a flatter chunk of land beside the mountains. Are there real world set-ups I could have used that would have given me that setting? I don't know. Maybe. But would they also have allowed me to structure the governments the way I wanted and the cultures and the rest of it in the way that was best for the story I wanted to tell? No. So it would have been really, really hard for me to tell the story I wanted to tell as an historical novel. Impossible, really. But it was quite easy to do it as fantasy novel.
I don't really care if it was easier for you to do as a fantasy novel as opposed to another genre, what I'm commenting on here is the notion that fantasy is generally easier to write than other genres...that's what I'm opposed to.
Gonna take a stab at this discussion and say: Yes and No. Yes because you can make stuff up that can have no logical sense or understanding and still have it function in text. No because all that fancy logic breaking stuff has to be bound by some rules or natural laws that exist in said text, otherwise the whole thing would be entirely based on entropy which would in theory tear the whole thing apart in it's own failure to function. Generally speaking the 'Natrual Laws' of a fantasy setting need to be established for there to be some form of order to the madness. Just as in Sci-fi, the same applies for tech (as it is a stand in for magic), and all the other elements. To what degree you need to define these laws will greatly depend on how fantastical the elements in it are going to be. For instance you have a Wizard that performs a specific type of magic, cannot simply perform other types without first having practiced and studied them prior to use. I will use my own MC Corlixia as an example (Alien is just as Fantasy as an Elf). Despite all the nifty attributes she possess, her brain is on par with a quantum super computer. However, she can not simply pick up a new skill by picking up a wrench, gun, or even a scalpel. While she learns way faster than the average being in verse, she still had to be taught how to perform maintenance, fight, and perform surgery. To conclude, you still need some grounding in logic to what you are writing and not just simply deus ex machina the story so your characters can do whatever they like whenever they like.
And you're not able to expand from my example to see how fantasy could be easier to write in other, similar situations? I mean, it's important to pick the right genre to match the author's interests and inclinations. So it's much easier for someone who's inclined to be imaginative, rather than a researcher, to write something that's based on imagination rather than research. That just makes sense, right? Conversely, writing fantasy would be really difficult for someone who was deeply into history and research but not all that imaginative. So if we accept the premise that there are a disproportionate number of new writers choosing fantasy, it seems likely to me that a high number of new writers are deeply imaginative but aren't that into research. So it's easier, for them, to play to their strengths. I'm not trying to diminish fantasy by saying it's often easier to write. I think it's always easier for writers to choose the genre that makes sense for the stories they want to tell and for their own strengths as writers.
@BayView it would be easier to write contemporary fiction. You don’t have to research, and you don’t have to keep the details of an imaginary world straight.
... but you do enter into the whole sphere of those questions that start with "Can I..." or "Am I allowed to..." that glut any writing forum's research area. I think once the writer is sufficiently committed to his/her process, this complication (in the procedural sense) is bound to arise.
Depends how much world-building you do for contemporary fiction. I've spent a LOT of time researching geography, legal systems, etc. for contemporary fiction. I've also been forced to set more of my stories in the US than in my home country of Canada because I needed to match the reality of the different cultures. For LIVING, it's great to be in a country with strict gun laws and a reasonably protective social safety net, but for fiction? Much more dramatic to have characters dealing with overwhelming debt from medical bills and with ready access to hand guns! I've had to change my fiction to match reality, rather than shaping "reality" to suit my story needs.
We really need to define "generally easier to write". If we mean in the actual production of prose then sure, it's not particularly easier or harder than any other genre. Where one might be able to make the argument of ease is the worldbuilding and research front. You're not bound by the geography, culture, history, laws, technology, biology, or science of the real world. You are bound only by internal consistency. Your research is more generalized. If you have a blacksmith character, you only have to find techniques that would actually produce what they're working on. You don't have to find whether a particular technique was around in the time period you're writing in; you get to set the level of advancement. Obviously this is only true in a secondary setting. Historical and urban fantasy is a different story. Speaking as someone whose entire body of traditionally published work is fantasy of various subgenres, secondary world fantasy is much easier than historical fantasy. I spent a ridiculous amount of time researching relatively minor but very important details for a short Weird Western. Was this model of gun around in 1890-whatever-it-was? What perfumes were commercially available? What sort of wildflowers grow in this area? Trees? What songbirds lived in this range? What days were Sundays in April 1890-whatever-it-was? Where exactly was the Ponca reservation? What towns were around and how big were they? Were their names the same, and if not what were they? What were traditional Ponca clothes like? What were some Ponca mythological figures besides the central one in the story? What churches were around at this time? Lots of question, and this isn't even a novel. Just because someone does something for what looks like no particular reason to our POV characters doesn't mean they don't have deeper motives. Martin himself has said the conflict with the Others isn't as black and white as it first appears. As for Dany, her immunity to fire is tied to her accidental use of blood magic in executing Mirri Maz Dur on her husband's funeral pyre. And in the book, her immunity to fire is limited to this one instance. She gets burns later on down the line.
So...the easiest thing to write is literary fiction set entirely in your own bedroom about two uneducated strangers pondering their existences...
As I see it, research isn’t hard. It’s time-consuming, but not hard. Writing good fiction of any genre, the actual putting down of the words on paper in a compelling way, is the hard part.
Alternatively, we could just cut it off at: "Every genre has its own complexities as well as simplicities." I think that's a pretty accurate conclusion, don't you?
I think that is mostly true, though I admit it seems to me good literary fiction is very difficult to do well (which doesn’t mean a lit fic writer could easily write comment oak fantasy; most could not). To understand the draw of fantasy for new writers one has only to look at the popularity of fantasy in books, film, and television.
Okay, 'splain me, Lucy. The other day I picked up "travel-log fantasy" but that's pretty self explanatory (my worldbuilding folder IS my novel!). What's "comment oak fantasy"?
Apparently it is what the iPhone thinks one might mean when one types “commercial fantasy” with a typo in it. Maybe it could be a modern social-media twist on Emma Bull’s classic War for the Oaks.
Being quite the history nerd and having done tons of research in my own spare time, I'd say it's a lot easier to research that sort of thing than it is to make up a bunch of stuff about a fictional world and have it all make sense and stay consistent. But that's just my own personal experience...I don't see how research = harder makes sense in this context.
Well, the original 'relatively easier' comment was actually a 'genre fiction vs literary fiction' remark. Which is apples vs oranges, in my opinion. Funny you should say that. Robert E. Howard, of Conan fame, wanted to write historical fiction, but felt like he wouldn't be able to adequately research the subject matter, so wrote fantasy instead. In my opinion a good fantasy writer has to be a sort of jack of all trades; able to write action, military, politics, horror, myth and drama all in a single story. Where else would you have a story line about a teenager fleeing from an marriage arranged to unite two warring kingdoms into a single faction to face an invasion from an empire of wizards? Is it easy to write. Yea, sort of, I guess. Will someone please define easy? It is easy to write well? Heck no. That's why we're still talk about Robert E. Howard and none of the countless hacks that have tried to emulate him.
