Write what you know

I'm giving my opinion here, same as you.

Perhaps some of you fantasy diehards would at least do yourselves a favour and check out dead tropes and genres. This is an interesting take on this from a publisher in 2019.

 

How do you address the rest of my message though? Is that not fair?

Edit: Keep in mind I agreed with you throughout most of this thread. I'm not intending to sound hostile!

 

Haha, no hard feelings! Here you go:

Ironically, most human lives consist of the same struggles...

I get what you are saying, but I beg to disagree. I grew up all over the world and have lived most of my adult life in Turkey. Life here is not the same as the UK so I’m guessing it’s not the same as the US. There are obviously some similar experiences but e.g. we don’t even have a word for bullying in Turkish. I’d love to know if high school life is as brutal as the TV shows depict it.

Fantasy is the one thing that allows us to escape from normality and from the mundane.

It doesn’t need to be the one thing. Before fantasy came along writers of all ages escaped from their humdrum lives by trying to understand and interpret life around them, and invent different characters and scenarios.

Yes, writing about a knight hunting a dragon isn't likely to get any literary awards and has been done a thousand times, but is that any different (more unique) than writing about relationship troubles, etc?

I would say no (obviously) because as I mentioned, the fantasy writing I come across is more like a homage to earlier writers, so I don’t find it the least bit original.

 

Sure, but isn't every story ever written an homage to something which came earlier? I mean, that's what a genre is. It develops and refines itself over time. Knut Hamsun was the originator of modernist fiction. He directly influenced people like Dostoevsky. Everything has its root in earlier work. To be honest, I don't buy that fantasy can't also apply to: "Before fantasy came along writers of all ages escaped from their humdrum lives by trying to understand and interpret life around them, and invent different characters and scenarios." All that changes is the setting. The characters should still be human and have struggles.

Just curious. What do you think of the Iliad? Does that not speak to so many different human emotions because it has gods in it?

 

a 44 minute long video? lol no.

i write fantasy because i like it. i write science fiction sometimes because i like it. 2019 might as well be a century ago when you're talking about what's hot and what's not, so it's not the favor you think it is. today, publishers are scheduling for 2023. sorry to this person but whatever she said then is meaningless now...though i suspect that, given that she understands trad too, that she realizes it.

I don't really believe in dead tropes and genres. I just write what I want regardless of what the fashion says. people have been saying urban fantasy is dead forever. I wrote an occult detective story anyway, because it doesn't matter what's "dead." what matters is what I like and what I want to write.

 

Yep. Things keep getting pronounced 'dead' and then magically resurrected as soon as somebody comes along and does an interesting fresh take on it. They're only dead as long as people keep doing them the same tired old ways.

 

I can't help but notice, @madhoca, that you posted a fantasy story here, albeit many years ago. Still, according to your logic, should you not always have written realistic stories for realistic people who want none of that fantasy drivel?

Edit: A teen fantasy no less.

 

this exactly! when people talk about "dead" subgenres or tropes what they mean is usually that something got really popular, and so tons of works that were faithful to that kind of story showed up, but they didn't try to be thoughtful or bring a new direction, and so the current crop of stories weren't bringing enough novelty and sales tanked. it's the way of things.

but that doesn't mean the idea is dead, exactly. if someone comes along and they have a different perspective or direction on that idea, they can revive that corpse pretty fast.

 

I will give you points in so much as you can, in fact, write what you know and be successful at it. One of my favorite light reading authors is Patrick McManus who wrote humor pieces mostly based on his childhood in rural Idaho. You can definitely take your minimum wage job at McDonalds, write your coworkers and patrons into an interesting cast of characters.

I just feel like discouraging young writers from writing fantasy full of tropes and hopeless mistakes is like discouraging an aspiring pianist from playing Chopsticks and Green Gravel. If that is the genre that makes Lady Muse appear for them, I have no issues with them making bad copies of Lord of the Rings complete with dark lords and quests to overthrow them. I never lost my love of fantasy and science fiction and it is still what I write as a hobby although my characters are now quite developed, my plots much more intricate and my villians tend to be multi-dimensional rather than "the bad guy cause I, the author, say so". I like writing fantasy because it makes me feel like Homer reciting the Iliad and I feel more like a bard than a writer, truth be told, when I am working on my projects. If you tell a young fantasy writer to stop writing what they love and write what they know, most will probably stop writing. Some might start writing fantasy and switch genres as they mature and branch out in their reading tastes. Most will probably quit of their own accord eventually; I think we all know more people who are writing a book than have written one. But any skills they learned along the way move forward with them, along with an increased appreciation for the writing arts, and to me that is what is important.

 

The thing is, this really is all just irrelevant. I think @madhoca would have more of a point if fantasy was actually considered trash and its major proponents weren't supreme literary geniuses. Everything is null and void in the presence of Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, Tolkien, E.R. Eddison, Robert E Howard, Hope Mirrlees, Patricia McKillip, Robert Holdstock, etc. Also, it's ridiculous because there are so many fantastical works which are the antithesis of typical Dungeons and Dragons fare. Many serious literary works utilise fantasy... The Otherside, One Hundred Year's of Solitude, etc. Fantasy can be just about anything--that's the point. What about Weird fiction? Is that not serious work with human themes? There really is so much literature full of magical/fantastical events and elements. My mind buzzes just thinking about it all. What about Horror? Is Frankenstein (perhaps my favourite novel) not also about gripping universal themes because it has speculative elements?

Edit: What about Kafka? What about Poe? So much fiction is based not on realistic situations but on things that exist outside of our usual frame of reference.

 

Yep, someone requested one from me. I didn't finish it though. It was fun for a while but kind of a waste of time.

 

I know what you mean but 2019 isn't long as far as trad publishing goes because those wheels grind very slowly. They may be publishing their lists for 2023 but those lists were decided a couple of years back.
You can't watch a 44 minute video? You must have the attention span of a gnat...I'm so glad I'm not your teacher. Our lessons are 50 minutes long

 

I think instead of asking people to watch a 44 minute video you should respond to my post about the plethora of fantastical stories which have nave nothing do with realistic events and yet are still extremely well regarded. I even gave examples of books which are in the Western Canon or are generally famous and iconic. I think that'll be your biggest hurdle

 

I said "perhaps you would like". I didn't ask you to watch it, it's entirely up to you what you do with 44 valuable minutes of your time.
You are getting off the point. I was talking about writers, especially young writers, learning their craft by writing about their life and experiences. That's why I titled the thread "write what you know".
I'm not concerned with established, published writers who are successful in the fantasy genre.

 

Incorrect. Publishers are acquiring now for 2023.

1. Videos of talking heads are boring. I don't like meetings that should have been an email, either.
2. The information's outdated anyway, so spending 44 minutes on what should be an 8 minute read is a waste of my time.
3. As I said earlier, i don't care about people's ideas about publishing trends because paying attention to what's trendy has no place in my career. I don't follow fashion; I make it.

 

My point is that, well, your point doesn't hold up precisely because fantasy is taken seriously and sells. Anyway, if you do want to speak about young writers, many of the writers I just used as examples wrote young.

Written by a very young Clark Ashton Smith:

Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizons infinite.
Like rampant monsters roaring for their glut,
The fiery-crested oceans rise and rise,
By jealous moons maleficently urged
To follow me for ever; mountains horned
With peaks of sharpest adamant, and mawed
With sulphur-lit volcanoes lava-langued,
Usurp the skies with thunder, but in vain;
And continents of serpent-shapen trees,
With slimy trunks that lengthen league by league,
Pursue my flight through ages spurned to fire
By that supreme ascendance; sorcerers,
And evil kings, predominantly armed
With scrolls of fulvous dragon-skin whereon
Are worm-like runes of ever-twisting flame,
Would stay me; and the sirens of the stars,
With foam-like songs from silver fragrance wrought,
Would lure me to their crystal reefs; and moons
Where viper-eyed, senescent devils dwell,
With antic gnomes abominably wise,
Heave up their icy horns across my way.
But naught deters me from the goal ordained
By suns and eons and immortal wars,
And sung by moons and motes; the goal whose name
Is all the secret of forgotten glyphs
By sinful gods in torrid rubies writ
For ending of a brazen book; the goal
Whereat my soaring ecstasy may stand
In amplest heavens multiplied to hold
My hordes of thunder-vested avatars,
And Promethèan armies of my thought,
That brandish claspèd levins. There I call
My memories, intolerably clad
In light the peaks of paradise may wear,
And lead the Armageddon of my dreams
Whose instant shout of triumph is become
Immensity's own music: for their feet
Are founded on innumerable worlds,
Remote in alien epochs, and their arms
Upraised, are columns potent to exalt
With ease ineffable the countless thrones
Of all the gods that are or gods to be,
And bear the seats of Asmodai and Set
Above the seventh paradise.

'nuff said.

 

[QUOTE="Teladan, post: 1923267, member: 85059"

'nuff said.[/QUOTE]

Quite.

Nice knowing you. I'll be signing out off this forum for another 5 years I think.

 

When you come back, maybe leave the hot takes on fantasy behind.

 

Sorry to see you go, @madhoca. I was hoping we could have an adult conversation, but fair enough if you want to vanish entirely from a forum because some people disagreed with you. I mean, this isn't even a heated thread... Suit yourself!

@hyacinthe No, he's perfectly entitled to make whatever thread he wants. It's the attitude that needs to be left behind methinks. I'm not even sure what was said to make him want to leave.

 

i dunno, though. if i rolled up and started talking about how literary fiction was boring and overrated and that no one should write it I would get pushback, and I would deserve it, because it's not a useful opinion! it's unkind and invalidating to writers who don't deserve to be invalidated! it's just there to pick a fight! so come on, what could anyone honestly expect?