You might want to check out Limyaael's rants about how everything is cliched. There are over two hundred articles about everything from magic to races to romance to plot to things of which you wouldn't have thought of unless you're an EngLit PhD.
Other than what TheDapperJack said, I think you should avoid the exact wording of "Dragon". Try Draccus instead (it's taken btw). Or Drakonn. Unless the exact allusion is what you want to achieve, then keep going! Also, Fell Deer seems nice and I doubt it's taken (Googling didn't turn up much).
Well, my idea for the Void Dragon consisted of a being/beings that would travel through rifts in the universe, observing and recording all knowledge for an unknown purpose. It would be tied in to some myths from a world I have yet to create, then the MC would come across one and the adventure would begin from there. Fell deer are black, zombie-like creatures that are created after an abortion or when a pregnant woman is killed in cold blood. I'm not sure how to describe them without grossing you out, but I'll have to be merciless here. Okay, take a deer, no horns, no ears, then take out their eyes and attach antennae to the back of their heads. Their jaws are crocidillean, but the teeth are too large. Their skin is black and rubbery, and secretes an oil that burns when you come in contact with it. They look emaciated in appearance, eat nothing but the one their rage is focused upon, and then they shrivel up and die. They have three toes on each foot, and a long, whip-like tail. Two long, blade-like barbs stick out upward from their hips, and if you get close enough you can see that their bellies are transparent, holding the body of the one that had been killed, and who they are avenging. The body within them also decays over time, and this affects their behavior. The farther it decays, the more destructive and wild the animal's nature. The few that have avoided their Fell deer and have driven them to the "skeleton" state often find out that they end up attracting others, as their Fell deer will begin screaming ceaselessly. And that's just one version of the Fell. Let alone all the other terrifying creature's i can make up in the blink of an eye. Like the Leer -but that's another topic.
Me? Grossed out? Nonsense. Anyway, the Deer are awesome. Are some of the stories available for reading? P.S. What is with the abortion topic ?
It's just a rough (note: VERY ROUGH) idea, no books yet. I think I'll probably end up changing the Fell Deer to plain murder, and deliberate malice toward mature. As for their story... eh they kind have gotten mixed up with another book that i have planned called Project Zero -when the military genetically alters a human and turns them into a being similar to a wyvern, but it's called a wyrkae. They have little resemblance to wyverns other than body shape, other than that they have a birds head with a curved beak, leathery skin, and they also come in a myriad of types depending on the job they were made for. I usually get one idea then other ideas pop up. I'm not joking -one friend asked me what kind of zombie i would make up if i were to write an apocolyptic book, and the next night i had a dream about me and my family running through a wrecked train in New York from something I didn't see until I was suddenly knocked into the side and the whole cabin turned over and got twisted. Next thing i knew, a long tongue had snaked through the gap and had wrapped around me, paralyzing me (i think it was the saliva) and when i got pulled out I saw it. I call them the Leer after that night, cuz i still get goose-bumps. I don't even know how to describe its eyes except that they were glowing, and even though it was a zombie it was eight feet tall on its legs but walked like an ape with too-long arms. It's teeth were like needles. But then it put me down and just looked at me for ages. I couldn't move, as i was paralyzed, but I was sane enough to notice the scars all over it. Then another one fo the Leer pounced from another end of the train and attacked the Leer that had caught me. Apparently they are competitive for food. What was scary though, is that the one that caught me was small compared ot the twelve-foot bugger that attacked it. I don't remember much about the fight but he grabbed me and we escaped. Next thing I knew i was in an alleyway or something and he was standing over me. I'd recovered from the parylization effect by then and was just about to flip out when it held a really old, ratty teddy-bear in my face. Yeah, imagine my expression at that. If i ever get to writing the fourteen-some stories i have locked up in my head, that one will be called Teddy Bear. *laugh* imagine what it would be like to look for an Apocalyptic book and see that cutsy title. It may just be weird enough for someone to want to pick up.
I won't take the OP's challenge because My own work of Low Fantasy incorporates our own modern world, and well, mages (which I refer to as 'casters' to set a difference). I won't go into the details of my writing, but I doubt I'm encroaching fantasy cliches, given how I very rarely read fantasy. Yes, fantasy probably is very cliche. Well.... High Fantasy (Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire). Low Fantasy, outside of the Young Adult sub-sub-genre, is probably a new, clicheless frontier.
But I would SO buy a copy of Super-Ninja Zombie Kid High School (Tried to pronounce the Death Lord's name aloud. Got half way through it and sprained my tongue!) I KNOW! You warned about that.
Not reading fantasy actually makes you more prone to get into clichés. Some ideas seem just so awesome and then you learn some dude already thought of it.
So awesome. My dreams have less content and more weird psychology. Last night I dreamt of an African slave teaching me about shamanism and suddenly I find out I am an avatar for a Japanese samurai lord and channel his spirit and stuff. Oh and I got a wonderful waif (as in, dainty) lover.
Not really sure if this is original or not.... but I recently wrote a short story about a being who claims to be the personification of day dreams and has a conversation with a lazy boy in Math class. Kinda vague I know but I'm still cleaning it up and adding and taking out things. But yeah a conversation with day dreams
Also while on the topic. I believe it is important to be original and also keep the old ideas and stuff. If you have a new and original idea and want to write a book or write whatever using that idea and developing it then you should certainly do so because fantasy genre in general is in need of new and innovative ideas. And we are all capable doing this and I'm sure many of us already have come up with ideas as such and it is GREAT when we do that. But on the flip side..... Cliches are cool Obviously they are overused but vampires, fairies, dragons, werewolves, gods etc those awesome things. They always will be to me and when I'm not thinking up something new its fun exploring old myths and legends and writing them about them in your own way. Note I said you own way. You can use cliches and not be cliche you just have to exploit them and do your own spin on it or tell the story so its interesting and different enough that its fresh. My point is Both complete original concepts you make and the old folklore and myth concepts are important. I enjoy writing both because their both fun to play with and make creative magic with
I've talked with people who do read fantasy and they say I'm not encroaching. I know of the standard things, but I just haven't read them. I don't want my style to encroach as I know that my plot isn't
Actually, regardless of the genre, everything is, to one extent or another, a cliché. It's all been done before... and done and done and done. It only really becomes cliché when it becomes old and stale and predictable. So the trick, then, is to present the concepts in new and unique ways which, one would hope, all writers with integrity would do. I mean, despite the Beatles song, "Paperback Writer", no one really grows up thinking, "When I grow up I want to be a hack writer and re-write ever cheap paperback novel ever written, over and over again!" The concept of dragons has been around long before people were writing fantasy novels. Stories of knights, with or without round tables, have been with us for ages along with the ubiquitous damsels in distress. And powerful gods running roughshod over evil villains... or becoming evils themselves? Weh-hell. THAT has been a staple in human society since loooong before the Torah and Quran and Bible and all the other big books. The big Deus ex Machina, the god machine to come in and set things aright at the end of the show... Talk about a cliché! Truthfully, there is no way to wholly avoid cliché topics. The only sure way to avoid being cliché is to write with imagination and always try to infuse your writing with freshness and energy. (That means, don't have the guy with the ring try to destroy it while the bad guys try to destroy him and the mages try to destroy them.)
I think that David Attenborough once said something like:" Our world is so unbelievable we don't have to create new worlds". I could be misquoting here but hopefully you get my point. I still loved Harry Potter that was full of cliches.
I don't know why anyone would resort to the Tolkien archetypes when writing fantasy. There's literally no limits! fan·ta·sy 1. imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained. 2. the forming of mental images, especially wondrous or strange fancies; imaginative conceptualizing. 3. a mental image, especially when unreal or fantastic; vision: a nightmare fantasy. 4. Psychology . an imagined or conjured up sequence fulfilling a psychological need; daydream. 5. a hallucination. I think it lacks originality because people have convinced themselves they are not as capable of creating worlds and races (or re-imagining them) as the writer of a few classics in the genre.
While there are many amazing sights to behold and many strange wonders throughout our universe, those documentaries actually do a lot to inspire people to create new worlds; it is a desire of many writers and other artists to take what they know of this world and create something that never was, that never can be. We see something, hear something, read something, and our subconscious starts taking it apart and figuring out how we can reassemble it in our own way. An artist's interests drive his/her very desire to create what they create - for an artist who's primary focus is fantasy, those interests include language, culture, history, mythology and the natural world.
I did a wonderful off topic post and deleted it. Traditionally, publishers choose books with content with a history of success. Dragons, magic, wizards, goblets of fire, and all that stuff have sold in the past, that's why they'e still around. Just be glad as a fantasy writer your genre is still drawing a crowd. Sci-fi is really getting slaughtered even with some pretty big movies out. Edge of Tomorrow came in third at the box office its first weekend and it got 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. Maleficent got 52% and will probably make a billion dollars at the end of its run.
How about a story where a space craft lands on a planet populated by beings who live in castles and fight in suits of metal armour? The astronauts would be accused of witch craft and their vehicle seized by the locals as they try to comprehend a world where science has been abandoned and magic is the order of the day. An evil wizard then begins applying magic to the confiscated technology in the space craft and discovers the true nature of the visitors before vowing to rule his planet before conquering other worlds. It then comes down to the enchanted locals and the technologically endowed aliens to fight their way into the wizard's castle, which has been upgraded with laser cannons and cyber-knights in addition to the standard castle defences, defeat the wizard (who is now a cyborg) and make a difficult decision - leave the planet and risk them developing space travel before they're ready for it, or stay behind and educate the locals in the nuances of interstellar etiquette? I've just realised that this story borrows heavily from the Space Chimps movie, but this has cyber-knights on motorcycles and a half-man-half-machine wielding a magic staff in command of a medieval castle which has been retrofitted with an array of futuristic weapons. If someone else doesn't write this into a full story, I will, but I'm sure there are people out there who can better interpret this than I.
I am already writing a fantasy story that takes place in the future after a magical comet hit the Earth and turned the entire human race into magical battling humanoid animals. Your idea does sound good. Perhaps the alien planet is actually the medieval period on Earth, and the astronauts ended up changing the future by mistake.
What's wrong with this name? I can pronounce it without any problem (seriously). It's a bit long, though
Oh, the conlanger in me so wants to point out that the letters we use in the Roman alphabet and the combinations thereof do not necessarily reflect the actual sound of a word - 'their', 'there' and 'they're; 'your' and 'you're'; 'for', 'fore' and 'four'. Those are specifically English examples, but they serve to exemplify that the letters in a word aren't what they appear to be. Your Dark Lord's name could be incredibly easy to pronounce or nigh-on impossible (relative to the speaker - it might be harder for a speaker of English than, say, Arabic) depending on the transliteration of the phonology in the language that his name belongs to, and the various phonological rules of that language. EDIT: I know this is probably going to annoy other conlangers, but I'll do it without the IPA at my own peril... 'Rahankak' could be pronounced something akin to 'Rarn-car' (the 'Rar' part sounding like 'car'), and the 'lopélpmén' akin to 'low-pell-men'. It depends on the actual sounds in the language and how they and different features such as stress are transliterated into the Roman alphabet.
It was a joke, didn't know people would go so in depth on it. I was satirizing how many fantasy authors just put random letters in succession, throw in an apostrophe to make it sound foreign (compared to English) and there you have it.
